In this video, we are looking at Ubuntu 20.10 Daily Builds with Gnome 3.38 Beta.
We get an update from PipeWire developer Wim Taymans on the status of Linux's new audio and video subsystem.
Plus Alexi Pol joins us for two big updates from the KDE community.
First up, in our Wanderings, I recorded some how-to’s, Moss has computers raining on him, Joe reads and repairs, Tony Watts jams and tinkers, and Bo and Tony Hughes will be back next episode.
Then, in the news, we have news from Mint, Debian, and MX Linux. We also say goodbye to a team member.
In security, we take a break from the doom and gloom and just talk tinfoil.
Lache is a patent-pending lightweight file system that runs on top of Ext4 on Linux, to improve browsing and copying files and folders from Windows.
When we are storing data, we typically assume that our storage system of choice returns that data later just as we put it in. However what guarantees do we have that this is actually the case? The case made here is the case of bitrot, the silent degradation of the physical charges that physically make up today’s storage devices.
To counter this type of problem, one can employ data checksumming, as it is done by both btrfs and ZFS. However, while in the long run btrfs might be the tool of choice for this, it is fairly complex and not yet too mature, whereas ZFS, the most prominent candidate for this type of features, is not without hassle and it must be recompiled for every kernel update (although automation exists).
In this blogpost, we’ll therefore take a look into a storage design that actually checks whether the returned data is actually valid and not silently corrupted inside our storage system and is completely designed with components available in Linux itself without the need to recompile and test your storage layer on every kernel upgrade. We find that this storage design, while fulfilling the same purpose as ZFS, does not only yield comparable performance, but actually in some cases even able to significantly outperform it, as the benchmarks at the end indicate.
The Amiga Fast File System (AFFS) is making a minor comeback in the new version of the Linux kernel.
IT’s Mr Sweary, Linus Torvalds, noted a a change to AFFS popped up among what he described as a collection of "the usual suspects" in new submissions to the kernel over the last week.
The Amiga was ahead of its time, but is now largely a curiosity. However Suse developer David Sterba has noticed that "The basic permission bits (protection bits in AmigaOS) have been broken in Linux' AFFS - it would only set bits, but never delete them. Also, contrary to the documentation, the Archived bit was not handled".
"Let's fix this for good, and set the bits such that Linux and classic AmigaOS can coexist in the most peaceful manner", he added.
When looking at the performance of Zink's OpenGL over Vulkan implementation just about one year ago the performance had a lot to be desired. But since then they have patches bringing it all the way to OpenGL 4.6 compared to the OpenGL 2.1 days and there has also been a lot of work on the performance. The performance at least for select operations is now turning out better than even the developers were expecting.
Proposed last year were a set of patches aiming to improve the Intel virtual GPU "vGPU" performance in para-virtualized cases by having optimizations around the shared memory region between the guest and Intel GVTg code. With optimizing the workload PV submission and PPGTT PV updates, the glxgears performance could improve by 30~50% while for large media/3D workloads was more around a 4% average improvement.
With Intel Gen11 graphics and newer supporting Adaptive-Sync / Variable Refresh Rate for minimizing tearing and stuttering, their open-source developers have now added the necessary bits to the generic xf86-video-modesetting X.Org driver for supporting the VRR functionality.
Months ago they posted the VRR patches for xf86-video-modesetting while now the patches have been merged to X.Org Server Git. These patches in turn are based on AMD's FreeSync/VRR support they added to the xf86-video-amdgpu driver.
Wired up in Mesa 20.3-devel is a new DriConf option override_vram_size for overriding a smaller amount of video memory to report to the program/game being run. This is intended for development/debug purposes.
RADV co-founder Bas Nieuwenhuizen added the "override_vram_size" DriConf tunable for the RADV Vulkan driver as well as Gallium3D drivers.
Hi everyone,
I'm happy to announce version 2.2.0 of the `hikari` wayland compositor. Thanks to everyone helping with testing, fixing issues and providing new features such as adding support for `wayvnc`.
https://hikari.acmelabs.space/releases/hikari-2.2.0.tar.gz
CHANGELOG
* add support for virtual input (`wayvnc` support) * add middle click emulation * add fallback layouts * add child view configuration for native Wayland views * add output relative view positioning actions * add `WITH_ALL` compile option * improved handling of maximized views * add graceful shutdown * multi monitor improvements for Xwayland and locking * Fix assert fail with layout select and invisible views * Indicate focus view on layout select * clear focus on mark select * Fix indicator bar coloring bug
Kind regards, raichoo
Hikari, the FreeBSD-focused Wayland compositor that also works on Linux systems, is out with a new feature release.
Hikari is a stacking Wayland compositor focused on offering a minimalistic look and feel with modal interface, keyboard oriented commands, and is based on the WLROOTS library.
HardInfo (in short for “hardware information“) is a system profiler and benchmark graphical tool for Linux systems, that is able to gather information from both hardware and some software and organize it in an easy to use GUI tool.
HardInfo can show information about these components: CPU, GPU, Motherboard, RAM, Storage, Hard Disk, Printers, Benchmarks, Sound, Network, and USB as well as some system information like the distribution name, version, and Linux Kernel info.
Besides being able to print hardware information, HardInfo can also create an advanced report from the command-line or by clicking the “Generate Report” button in the GUI and saved in either HTML or plain text formats.
Linux Candy is a series of articles covering interesting eye candy software. We only feature open source software in this series.
Some of the programs in this series are purely cosmetic, frivolous pieces of fun. Candy at their finest. But we also include some programs that aren’t purely decorative.
There’s a diverse range of programs included in this series. Programs such as eDEX-UI and Variety are actually highly practical programs. ASCIIQuarium has soothing and relaxing qualities for your desktop. Other programs included in this series (such as lolcat, cacafire) are included purely for their decorative qualities. And then there’s some really fun software that just raises a smile or two.
Cawbird, an open-source fork of Corebird Twitter client, released version 1.2.0 a few days ago with many improvements and bug-fixes.
Text editors play an important role in the Linux environment. When editing a file or developing an application in the Linux system, you will need a text editor to complete certain tasks. This article will explore some best text editors for the Linux Mint 20 distribution.
GStreamer 1.18 is now available for this widely-used, cross-platform multimedia framework.
There is a lot of new material in GStreamer 1.18 from much better Microsoft Windows support to including Intel's SVT-HEVC H.265 encoder.
The GStreamer team has announced a major feature release of GStreamer.
The sort command is used in Linux to print the output of a file in given order. This command processes on your data (the content of the file or output of any command) and reorders it in the specified way, which helps us to read the data efficiently. It is very useful in cases where large quantities of information are available and need to be arranged in alphabetical or ascending or descending numerical order.
Linux has a set of powerful commands for doing different operations. Among those commands is the Head. It is also an important command that use to display the N numbers of lines of a file. Why is it needed? Imagine a scenario where you are working on the Linux command line, and continuously a log file is being built or getting updated.
It provides not just the date/time of the most recent file changes, but also shows when files were most recently accessed and permissions changed. It tells you the file size in both bytes and blocks. It displays the inode being used by the file along with the file type. It includes the file owner and the associated user group both by name and UID/GID. It displays file permissions in both the “rwx” (referred to as the “human-readable” format) and numerically. On some systems, it might even include the date and time that a file was created (called its “birth”).
I keep getting comments from viewers of the channel saying that they would like to switch from Windows to Linux, but they can't switch because they need Notepad++. Now this is a strange comment to me considering how many text editors that we have on Linux. But, I will show you how to get Notepad++ installed on Linux, and I will also show you a native Linux text editor that mimics Notepad++.
Enjoy traditional tabletop games and RPGs? SmiteWorks have release Fantasy Grounds Unity into Early Access recently along with Linux support.
A much expanded and improved version of Fantasy Grounds, which originally released in 2004 and does not support Linux. This new version does, built (as the name might suggest) with the Unity game engine giving them a lot more tools to work with.
POSTAL: Brain Damaged, another new POSTAL game has been announced although this time a new developer is taking charge and it's going in a different and weird direction.
Running With Scissors are publishing this time, while teaming up with developers from Hyperstrange / CreativeForge Games to bring it all to life. It's also going to be another retro themed boomer shooter, so expect plenty of action and lots of body parts flying.
After starting a Kickstarter campaign with an impressive demo, it appears Dwerve is easily going to be a success with the goal achieved and loads of time to spare.
Inspired by SNES RPGs like A Link to the Past, Dwerve takes all the mechanics you know and love: dungeon crawling, questing, exploring, and storytelling; and presents it with a new style of tactical turret-based combat where strategic turret and trap placement decide the outcome of each battle!
With their initial $10,000 goal, they were able to pull in enough backers to get fully funded within the first day of their campaign. Not really surprising though. Mixing two genres in such a way that we don't often see, along with a demo supporting Linux, macOS and Windows for people to actually get a feel for it. They did a lot of things right.
Unpacking, an upcoming 'zen' puzzle experience from Witch Beam (prev Assault Android Cactus) gains a proper trailer to show some gameplay.
Due to release sometime next year for PC platforms, including Linux, it's all about the satisfying feeling of getting everything unpacked and in the right place. They say it's part "item Tetris" and part home decoration, and as you're doing so it you learn clues about the life you're unpacking. You do this across eight house moves too, although having to move eight times sounds anything but zen to me.
Originally made for the Ludum Dare 46 Game Jam, Cubic Currency has been expanded and overhauled for a full release to have you deal a crazy new currency: dice.
The idea is that at some point in a dystopian future, a huge mega-corp named DiceCorp came along and invented a new currency with dice. You become a dice vendor, as you attempt to turn a profit in a vast, volatile, and violent market. With rent to pay, you need to make ends meet and this is how you plan to keep on going. From aliens, to tech, to cultish corporate leaders — Cubic Currency "has it all!" the developer says.
Godot 3.2.2 was released on June 26 with over 3 months' worth of development, including many bugfixes and a handful of features. Some regressions were noticed after the release though, so we decided that Godot 3.2.3 would focus mainly on fixing those new bugs to ensure that all Godot users can have the most stable experience possible.
Here's a sixth Release Candidate for the upcoming Godot 3.2.3 release. Please help us test it to ensure that no new regressions have slipped through code review and testing.
With the surprise announcement in August that Left 4 Dead 2 would be getting a brand new update many years after release, we now know a little more.
A few days ago, a second teaser trailer went up. In the description it mentioned that it will feature a brand new campaign based on the original "The Last Stand" survival map from Left 4 Dead, designed by community modders including "NF, Roku, and Wolphin" who worked on the Steam Workshop campaigns Hard Rain: Downpour and Dark Carnival: Remix. There's more coming, as they are just a few of the names who have been working on it with more yet to be revealed.
Matthias Müller and Vladlen Koltun, two engineers at Intel, have shared their new robot to tackle computer vision tasks. The robot, called "OpenBot", is powered by a smartphone, which acts as a camera and computing unit.
The OpenBot prototype components cost $50. It's intended to be a low-cost alternative to commercially available radio-controlled models, with more computing power than educational models.
To use OpenBot, users can connect their smartphones to an electromechanical body. They can also use Bluetooth to connect their smartphone to a video game controller like an Xbox or PlayStation.
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Born in the early aughts as a project called TuxKart, Joerg Henrichs renamed it "Super Tux Kart" in 2006. Lux is the latest open source mascot to feature in the project: Blender and GIMP's mascots are represented as well.
Along with adding Tux to the mix, Super Tux Kart Version 1.2 includes lots of updates. iOS users can create racing servers in-game, while all official tracks are now included in the release built on Android. And since the game is open source on four platforms, all players can make their own changes to submit for review.
Singled Out looks like an amusing time-waster, giving you a short description of a target and you need to quickly pick them out from a small crowd.
A short, simple and yet slightly addictive arcade game that offers up plenty of challenge on how fast you can think and react. Ideal for short breaks or to test yourself. You get 10 seconds to find your target and shoot the 'GALACTIC SUPERCRIMINAL', with only one person in the crowd having all three of the traits you're shown. Originally made for the GMTK 2019 game jam, it was a popular entry that's been made into a more full experience.
When do games just become work? It's a question in my mind as I look over and try out DevLife, a new Early Access sim from Roman Studio and Mesote Games.
I'm being a bit playful of course as we have such a huge variety of games from all sorts of weird and wonderful genres, and business sims have been done many times before. DevLife is trying to offer a fresh take, not limiting you to being a game developer like other similar games have done. Instead, you pick your computing industry across many different fields.
"DevLife will allow you to take on the shoes of a beginner programmer who is starting an adventure in the IT industry just before hitting 18. You will be challenged not only by incoming contracts and fierce clients, but also elapsing time - your character will get older and it is up to you how your career and life will go."
Without the Linux desktop environment or GUI, any Linux operating systems including Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04 LTS, or older versions are difficult to operate, especially for beginners. And above that choosing right and the best GUI for the Linux system will not only enhance the experience but also makes it quite friendly to operate with various functions and applications of Linux.
Although Ubuntu has its own easy to use custom Graphical user interface based on Gnome, however, you are not limited to that only. Yes, the Linux is another name for possibilities, we can customize and create our own User interface, of course for that one should have the knowledge of coding. Whereas, we don’t have to take a pain of coding thousand of lines when there are a handful of Linux Desktop environments available to install on Ubuntu with just a few commands. Here we will not only see the list of best Linux Desktop environments for Ubuntu but also the commands to install them quickly…
The team behind cross-platform IDE KDevelop has pushed version 5.6 of the tool into the wild, featuring improvements to CMake support as well as a way of nudging devs about code problems inline.
Inline notes are meant to help developers get a better overview of what’s still to be done, displaying a short description of found issues – such as compiler warnings and errors – next to where they have been discovered in the code, with additional information on the problems at hand available via mouse-over.
In the last six months, KDevelop also learned to work with Python 3.9 and understand the syntax for catching multiple exceptions used in PHP 7.1. Most of the changes, however, are related to CMake project support. The IDE team started working on ways to use the cmake-file-api, as its predecessor cmake-server was deprecated last year and is about to be removed.
Monday was the first day of Akademy 2020 BoFs, group sessions and hacking. There is a wrap-up session at the end of the day so that what happened in the different rooms can be shared with everyone including those not present.
Tuesday continued the Akademy 2020 BoFs, meetings, group sessions and hacking. There is a wrap-up session at the end of the day so that what happened in the different rooms can be shared with everyone including those not present.
The final evaluations of the Google Summer of Code projects are open now; it’s pencils down time for the students. In 2020, four students have worked really hard on four really exciting projects, of course, so let’s take a look at their achievements!
[...]
Amy Spark implemented a new type of fill layers. Fill layers are dynamically generated layers in Krita. SeExpr is a library created by Disney to generate patterns, with a set of UI elements written in Qt.
As part of this project, Amyspark has made it possible to translate SeExpr, as well as improving the provided the widgets and usability of the expression editor.
But the main work was, of course, creating the new fill layer type, making Krita preview your SeExpr script and making it possible to save scripts as resources, so you can share your scripts with others!
There’s a new port in the FreeBSD ports tree: kirigami-gallery.
This “gallery” application is one that provides examples, showing off a specific technology: Kirigami! Check out those documentation pages to see what Kirigami can do, for convergent, reponsive and elegant applications. The gallery application shows it off Kirigami “live”, although the application page on KDE.org gives only a very quick overview, and the source code repository just tells you how to build it.
In the previous post, I promised to take a deeper look at list models and what GTK 4 offers in this area. Lets start be taking a look at the GListModel interface...
The GNOME Power Profiles Daemon (power-profiles-daemon) has begun taking shape over the past few weeks for ultimately allowing better controls over system power preferences with different profiles.
Longtime GNOME developer Bastien Nocera has been developing power-profiles-daemon this summer for supporting power profiles handling and exposing it via D-Bus. The intended power profiles at this point are "balanced", "power-saver", and "performance" but the performance profile ultimately will only have any bearing on systems with hardware capable of being set to be optimized for performance.
This is going to be a short post, as changes to Videos have been few and far between in the past couple of releases.
The major change to the latest release is that we've gained Tracker 3 support through a grilo plugin (which meant very few changes to our own code). But the Tracker 3 libraries are incompatible with the Tracker 2 daemon that's usually shipped in distributions, including on this author's development system.
Another summer is about to end and with it comes the autumn* with its typical leaf loss. There’s beauty to the leaves falling and turning yellow/orange, but there’s also an association with melancholia. The possibilities and opportunities of the summer are perceived to be gone, and the chill of the winter is on the horizon.
The weather changes set in at the same time our Google Summer of Code season comes to an end this year. For a couple of years, I have planned to write this blog post to our GSoC alumni, and considering the exceptional quality of our projects this year, I feel that another GSoC can’t go without me finally taking a shot at writing this.
Outreachy and GSoC have been critical to various free and open source communities such as ours. By empowering contributors to spend a few months working fulltime in our projects we are not only benefiting from the features that interns are implementing but also having a chance to recruit talent that will continue pushing our project forward as generations pass.
As an MPD frontend the app provides you with clean, straightforward window through which to browse, manage, and stream music. Both responsive and lightweight Ymuse can apparently handle a 12,000+ track playlist with greater ease than Sonata, another popular GTK MPD client.
Because Ymuse is a frontend to MPD and not a music player itself you do need to have MPD set up and configured correctly in order to use this app — or to put another way: this isn’t a ‘user friendly MPD set-up wizard’.
The past two months were hectic, and many changes and new features landed just in time for the 3.37.90 release. As the release freezes approached (user interface freeze, API freeze, etc), part of the queue of merge requests needed a final decision on whether or not they were ready for the upcoming GNOME 3.38 release.
These two months were also punctuated by not one, but two conference talks related to Mutter and GNOME Shell.
As this is the final development summary before the 3.38 release, we decided to change the format a bit and cover the biggest changes that happened throughout this cycle.
With just a week ahead of the final release of the highly anticipated GNOME 3.38 desktop environment, we finally have a look at some of the hottest new features and enhancements of the upcoming release.
GNOME 3.38 entered beta stages of development a few weeks ago, along with the Feature Freeze stage, which means that no new features will be added. But we didn’t actually know much about these new features anyway, until now.
Developer Georges Basile Stavracas Neto shares today a first look at the new features coming to the GNOME Shell interface and Mutter window and composite manager in the upcoming GNOME 3.38 release, and boy they are big.
With GNOME 3.38 due to be released next week, the GNOME Shell and Mutter development blog has put out their overview of all the improvements and new features to expect.
- Compositor bypass support for full-screen applications to avoid bypassing of the desktop compositing work when only displaying a full-screen game, media player, or other full-screen software. For GNOME 3.38, this only works with Mutter on Wayland.
- Split frame clock support for improving the multi-monitor experience where the displays have different refresh rates.
The next version of Zorin OS 15.3 is here as the latest point release in the Zorin 15.x series.
The team behind the user-friendly Linux distro say this update is “…focused on strengthening the core essentials of the operating system to bring you the features and reliability that help you work, play, and use your computer better.”
Zorin OS 15.3 is based on the Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS release made in August. This comes with a new Linux kernel (courtesy of Ubuntu’s Hardware Enablement stack) that gives users better system performance, greater security, and improved hardware compatibility.
The latest Firefox is present, as is the recent LibreOffice 6.4.6 point release (but alas not the newest LibreOffice 7.0), and there’s an updated version of phone-integration suite Zorin Connect included for good measure.
Zorin OS 15.3 comes six months after the release of Zorin OS 15.2 to offer those who want to deploy the Ubuntu-based operating system on new computers an up-to-date installation media, based on the latest Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS (Bionic Beaver) release.
This means that Zorin OS 15.3 is powered by a new kernel, namely Linux 5.4 LTS, from the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) operating system series, which is also shipping with the Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS release by default.
Of course, Zorin OS 15.3 also inherits all of Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS’s updated components, such as the latest LibreOffice 6.4.6 office suite, Mozilla Firefox 80.0.1 web browser, and many others.
So, here we are in September, six months removed from the release of Zorin OS 15.2. A lot has happened since March -- a pandemic, civil unrest, and out-of-control wildfires are just a few of the things that have made this year quite stressful. Not all is bad, however, as we have football starting up this week -- a great distraction to life's stresses.
Today we also get some big news on the Linux front -- Zorin OS 15.3 is finally here. True, it is just a point release, but once again, it should be the best version of Zorin yet. While great for Linux experts, I highly recommend it to those looking to switch from the buggy and much-maligned Windows 10. Zorin OS is a stable and well-designed operating system that is reminiscent of Windows. And so, its familiarity is a great way for Windows users to comfortably experience Linux. Version 15.3 comes with LibreOffice 6.4.6, which is a great alternative to Microsoft Office.
We’re excited to launch the new, upgraded, and enhanced version of Zorin OS 15 – our most advanced and popular release ever.
Since the Zorin OS 15 was first launched in June 2019, it has been downloaded over 1.7 million times. Over 65% of these downloads came from proprietary platforms like Windows and macOS, reflecting our mission to bring the power of Linux to new people and to grow the community for the benefit of all. We’ve been working ever since to make Zorin OS 15 even more powerful, accessible, and user-friendly with updates and point releases.
There was a security issue in dhclient. We've created new ISOs for 1.2.8 for those installing from scratch.
If you are on 1.2.7, you can simply update the source from git for stable/1.2 branch and rebuild dhclient.
Today, we are launching the new SUSE One Partner Program on day one of the Digital SUSE Partner Summit 2020. Why do this, and why now? Our ecosystem is changing. Many of our partners are transforming to meet customers where they are. This transformation is being driven by the cloud, and partners who were traditionally resellers or Independent Hardware Providers or Independent Software Providers are looking for ways to wrap hardware, software, cloud infrastructure and services together to create customer-centric solutions. So we need to meet our partners where they are. That means we have simplified our many siloed programs into one, encompassing programs with a new partner relationship platform and learning system that is easier to navigate. We are modernizing the program to be organized to support customers’ digital transformations and to provide benefits to partners to drive value into their businesses. And we are evolving our co-sell programs to help accelerate value and revenue.
The leading international provider of business travel management solutions Lufthansa AirPlus Servicekarten GmbH (AirPlus) is a subsidiary of Lufthansa operating under the brand AirPlus International who participated in the SAP Innovation Awards 2020 with its enterprise-wide digital transformation project. With SAP and SUSE, AirPlus was able to become an intelligent enterprise with a completely new, modern, and cloud-based IT infrastructure and a process-oriented, agile organization.
For four years now since Fedora 25 the default GNOME Shell desktop environment has been using Wayland by default. Next spring with Fedora 34, the KDE Spin is finally planning a similar migration to use Wayland by default with the KDE Plasma desktop.
The Wayland support with Plasma and related KDE components has improved in recent times with many bugs being ironed out and other improvements now that they have a Wayland-first mentality to X11. In early 2021 with Fedora 34 the plan is to switch from using an X.Org based session by default for the Fedora KDE Spin to now using the modern Wayland session.
If you’re a developer who’s heard the phrase reactive programming, watch our video to see how you can use its guiding principles to make your application more responsive, resilient, and elastic, watc.
With the advances over the past decade in hardware, containerization, and virtualization technologies, architecture patterns like reactive systems are becoming increasingly popular for taking advantage of this improving infrastructure. Join Mary Grygleski and Grace Jansen to get hands-on as you learn how to build your own simple reactive systems.
Today Red Hat and IBM announced the launch of Red Hat Marketplace, a one-stop-shop to find, try, buy, deploy, and manage enterprise applications across an organization’s hybrid IT infrastructure, including on-premises and multicloud environments. Red Hat Marketplace gives developers a streamlined view of software that is certified to work in Kubernetes container environments and minimizes red tape for developer managers.
I’m excited for how this helps lift the burden for enterprise developers who are being asked to develop strong, secure, compliant apps in hybrid cloud environments. Being able to choose from selected products that reliably run on Red Hat OpenShift frees developers up to worry less about their guard-rails, and focus on delivering more innovative solutions.
Let’s look at some of the benefits that Red Hat Marketplace offers to developers and to partners who offer their products on the marketplace.
Johanna Koester is Director of Worldwide Developer Advocacy for IBM, where she oversees a team of dozens of developer advocates around the world. Their mission is to promote open source and cloud services. I sat down with Johanna to discuss developer relations in enterprise companies and the value of open source and empathy to developers, to developer advocates and to managers and executives.
In order to better serve our Red Hat Academy educational institutions around the world, the Red Hat Academy team has launched an enhanced learning environment on Sept. 1, 2020. With a new interface and improved user experience, students and instructors will be able to more easily navigate their courses, access supplemental learning materials, track course progress, and interact and engage with one another more effectively.
The Red Hat Academy program partners with academic institutions to offer education programs on Red Hat technologies to help students reach their academic and career potential. Red Hat Academy’s curriculum involves hands-on instruction across platform, middleware, and cloud technologies built with input from Red Hat development, support, and field consulting teams.
As enterprises increase their use of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep learning (DL), a critical question arises: How can they scale and industrialize ML development? These conversations often focus on the ML model; however, this is only one step along the way to a complete solution. To achieve in-production application and scale, model development must include a repeatable process that accounts for the critical activities that precede and follow development, including getting the model into a public-facing deployment.
This article demonstrates how to deploy, scale, and manage a deep learning model that serves up image recognition predictions using Kubermatic Kubernetes Platform.
DevNation Tech Talks are hosted by the Red Hat technologists who create our products. These sessions include real solutions plus code and sample projects to help you get started. In this talk, you’ll learn about GitOps from Ryan Cook and Burr Sutter.
The barrier to using Kubernetes and OpenShift has never been lower, but how do we manage the applications that run on these clusters? During this presentation, we provide a live demonstration of deploying a GitOps tool and then using it to manage both your applications as well as cluster resources. We will also migrate an application live across the United States on multiple clusters with zero downtime, all managed through git.
Today’s businesses are challenged with moving faster than ever before and often with less resources, both in terms of budget and personnel. The tumultuous landscape and shifting global dynamics that organizations currently face with more workforces moving remote is leading many IT departments to evaluate how they can continue to support their customers and grow their business in uncertain times.
To continue to scale, automation needs to be made a priority investment. Automation allows organizations to get the most "bang for their buck" when it comes to IT investments, and not because it will eliminate jobs, but because it will free IT staff to focus on more important business initiatives. It also can be a make or break for companies as they move to smaller in-office teams managing vast networks and infrastructure.
According to a new Forrester report commissioned by Red Hat, organizations are taking note of this, prioritizing automation initiatives over competing goals. The report, "Automation based in open source drives innovation,"1 looks at how organizations are turning to automation, where they are looking to go from here with the technology and how leadership and implementers can align their goals when it comes to implementing automation.
In the first blog post in this introductory series on RedHat OpenShift, you learned about its architecture and components. In this blog post, you will explore the OpenShift web console and command-line interface (CLI) and learn about the capabilities of the Developer and Administrator perspectives on the platform.
The new web console UI is one of the major improvements in OpenShift 4. If you used OpenShift 3, you will notice this improvement. When you first log in to the cluster, the navigation list is on the left. If you click on Administrator, that’s where you can switch the view to Developer, and you will notice how different the listed tabs are.
There are mainly two perspectives on the web console: Administrator and Developer. You can have different accounts with different permissions that are managed by the Administrator using cluster role binding or project role binding. For now, I will stick to introducing the roles of Administrator and Developer on the web console.
As poet Tuli Kupferberg said, "when patterns are broken, new worlds emerge." If there is one thing we can say for 2020, it’s that it shattered many of our old patterns and shook up how we do things. When we moved this year’s Red Hat Summit from an in-person event to an all-virtual experience, we had no idea what the outcome would be. It was brand new territory. But it’s safe to say that it was a success!
We could take the same approach with Red Hat Summit next year, it would certainly be the safer and simpler option. But that's not Red Hat. Instead of repeating what we've already done we've decided this is a good time to explore new worlds and build on our successes while also trying new things.
We're pleased to announce that Red Hat Summit 2021 will be a three-part experience that includes two virtual components in the spring and summer and a series of in-person events later in the year!
One of the most important aspects of system security is keeping systems up to date with patches. Many organizations have hundreds or thousands of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) servers in their environments, so keeping track of patches on servers can be challenging. If critical patches are missed on systems, it could result in the systems being compromised, having unscheduled downtime, or other issues.
Red Hat Insights is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that is included with your Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription. It includes several capabilities to help with various aspects of management. The Patch capability can help customers understand which advisories are applicable in their environments, and can help automate the process of patching via Ansible playbooks.
As in most IT organizations, configuration management can be complex and crosses both infrastructure and software development disciplines. Red Hat IT worked to remove much of that complexity and drive consistency by directly involving infrastructure, software, information security engineers, and enterprise architects across the organization to create a set of clearly defined standards and best practices.
But, before we get into our successes with this collaboration, it’s important to begin with a clear description of the business problems we faced, and what specific challenges we needed to address. For starters, our then-current configuration management solution, Puppet, was not what most of our team wanted to use, nor what we were recommending to customers.
Systemd developers are still hoping to introduce systemd-oomd as part of the next release.
Systemd-oomd is the effort to provide better Linux out-of-memory / low-memory handling. Systemd-oomd is being spun from Facebook's out-of-memory daemon and adapted to not only work on Linux servers but desktops as well.
The systemd-oomd daemon polls for OOMD-enabled cgroups to monitor and will kill based on memory pressure or swap usage. The systemd-oomd behavior is configurable via a new oomd.conf file. This daemon will only kill groups if EnableOomdKill is set as obviously not wanting to kill random processes over memory use.
The syslog-ng application is included in all major Linux distributions, and you can usually install syslog-ng from the official repositories. If the core functionality of syslog-ng meets your needs, use the package in your distribution repository (yum install syslog-ng), and you can stop reading here. However, if you want to use the features of newer syslog-ng versions (for example, sending log messages to Elasticsearch or Apache Kafka), you have to either compile syslog-ng from source, or install it from unofficial repositories. This post explains you how to do that.
For information on all platforms that could be relevant to you, check out all my blog posts about installing syslog-ng on major Linux distributions, collected in one place.
In addition, syslog-ng is also available as a Docker image. To learn more, read our tutorial about logging in Docker using syslog-ng.
IBM and its Red Hat company have opened up what they call a one-stop-shop for customers looking to build, deploy and manage hybrid-cloud applications on-premises or in multicloud environments.
With Red Hat Marketplace, enterprise customers can find and buy the tools and services they need to build cloud-native applications across public and private cloud environments through one curated repository, Red Hat executives said.
Hybrid and multicloud environments are quickly becoming a standard for global enterprises, as flexibility, freedom of choice and workload portability become necessities in successfully building and deploying applications. When public cloud providers first entered the market, many insisted that all workloads be deployed on a single public cloud. At Red Hat, we recognized early on that users wanted and needed the flexibility to operate across many different environments, from public and private clouds to virtual systems and bare metal.
Over the past eight years, Red Hat has been defining and building hybrid clouds with Red Hat OpenShift to provide operational consistency and portability across any environment. By leveraging the enterprise-grade Kubernetes and cloud-native capabilities of OpenShift, organizations can more seamlessly follow a hybrid cloud strategy and achieve the agility they need to generate impactful business results.
Tails 4.11, scheduled for September 22, will be the first version of Tails to include Tor Browser 10.0 and to support persistent settings on the Welcome Screen!
Canonical recently announced enterprise support for Kubernetes 1.19 as a precusor to the just concluded Kubecon + CloudNativeCon 2020. InfoQ caught up with Alex Chalkias, Product Manager at Canonical at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU 2020 regarding the announcement, future of Kubernetes and how Canonical is enabling it's adoption in the enterprise. Alex Chalkias talks about the long association of Canonical with Linux, Kubernetes and the cloud and how that has enabled enterprises to move from a traditional monolith in the Data Center to a more modern Cloud Native environment.
Artila’s DIN-rail mountable “Matrix-752” IoT gateway runs Linux on an i.MX6 ULL with 16GB eMMC, 2x LAN, 2x serial, USB OTG, isolated CAN and DIO, and mini-PCIe with micro-SIM.
Artila Electronics has launched a variation on the Matrix-750 introduced earlier this year. Like that model, the Matrix-752 runs Linux 4.19x on NXP’s 800MHz, Cortex-A7 based i.MX6 ULL, which is faster than the 536MHz, Cortex-A5 Microchip ATSAMA5D35 that powers many of Artila’s gateways such as the similar Matrix-710 and Matrix-713.
The company lists Windows 10, Windows 10 IoT Enterprise, Windows Embedded Standard 8, and Ubuntu 16.04 as supported operating systems.
The common way to flash OS images to SD cards used to be “dd”. But you could potentially damage your system with a wrong command, it will not do verification after writing the firmware image, and it was not available in Windows, so people had to use Win32DiskImager, and last time I check it did not do verification either.
So Etcher, now called balenaEtcher, became a popular cross-operating systems tool to flash images for Raspberry Pi and other SBCs. It’s easy to use and does verification after flashing. However, the binary is rather large at around 130 MB, and the company started to show sponsors to fund the development of the program, and this was not to the liking of everyone.
Last Friday, Arm announced the newest generation of its real-time processor series, the Cortex-R82. Most people are more familiar with the Cortex A-series of CPUs, which are used as the primary processors in devices such as smartphones and tablets, running full-fledged operating systems. The Cortex-R series, by contrast, is typically used for high-performance applications demanding "real-time" performance—meaning simple, predictable, and extremely low-latency response loops—in much simpler software stacks.
Earlier Cortex R-series processors weren't capable of running full-fledged modern operating systems, including Linux, because they utilized a simple Memory Protection Unit (MPU) rather than the more complex Memory Management Unit (MMU) needed to support functions such as virtual memory. This generally wasn't seen as a problem, since Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) workloads generally need to have much simpler, more predictable control loops.
Targeting next-generation enterprise and computational storage solutions, Arm has announced its highest performance Cortex-R processor, the Cortex-R82, featuring 64-bit support and Linux capability, and addressing up to 1TB of DRAM. The company said the processor is appropriate for solid-state drives (SSDs), hard-disk drives (HDDs) and built-in storage solutions.
Real-time embedded systems such as SSDs have historically required less then 4GB of DRAM and addressable space and have not needed to run Linux. With continually increasing storage capacities and performance requirements saturating throughput of storage host interfaces, the 4GB limit and inability to run Linux are adding complexity, and in some cases, becoming barriers.
The Cortex-R82 processor, a 64-bit processor capable of addressing up to 1TB of address space is optimized for such systems, enabling higher performance, real-time compute with more addressable space and the ability to run Linux for the next generation of computational storage devices.
Aetina’s “AN810-XNX” carrier for the Jetson Xavier NX offers GbE, HDMI, 120-pin CSI-2, 3x USB, -20 to 70ââÆ support, and 3x M.2 slots.
Aetina has launched the first carrier board we have seen for Nvidia’s Jetson Xavier NX module that provides 3x M.2 expansion slots. Certified for Microsoft Azure IoT, the AN810-XNX is designed for robotics, drones, UAVs, industrial inspection, medical imaging, and deep learning applications. (See farther below for a recap of the Linux-powered Xavier NX.)
Michelle is deeply involved in designing the virtual CTF challenge for this month’s GNU Radio Conference. Her experience includes dreaming up both in-person and virtual “Capture the Flag” style challenges that span both hardware and software. It’s fun to compete and a powerful way to learn, but how do you choose the hardware and dial-in the scope and difficulty for each part of the challenge? Join us for the chat as Michelle walks through how she builds great challenges.
Another day, another Raspberry Pi-based handheld computer. This time the developer of the YAHR.IO MK1 has created a system with a 5 inch, 800 x 480 pixel resistive touchscreen display, a tiny keyboard and touchpad, a 5,000 mAh battery, and a 3D printed case.
But the device features a modular design, which means you can swap out parts as needed.
These days many of us are turning to bicycling for fun and exercise. While some may enjoy being able to change up the resistance and pedal speed by shifting, if you would instead prefer to be in the ideal gear automatically, then Jan Oelbrandt’s Shift4Me could be just the thing you need.
The add-on device works by determining the rider’s cadence via a magnetic sensor attached next to one of the pedals. If it’s significantly slower than a set range — 60 RPM in the video below — it shifts down to decrease resistance. If higher, it upshifts.
As of late, internet privacy has fallen into jeopardy since most of the websites are giving their best shot to get your data legally. VPN apps are in high demand since they not only make it possible for you to browse the Internet anonymously but also visit the websites that are restricted in your region. With that being said, you could still question the legitimacy of the commercial VPN apps since they might even be leaking some of your data without your knowledge.
In case you also happen to think that the commercial VPN apps might not be that secure, you should know that there are a plethora of VPN apps that you can find in the open-source world. Now, unlike commercial software, these open-source VPN have all their code for the world to see. Accordingly, if you know a thing or two about coding, you’ll easily be able to tell whether the application is entirely secure or not.
Originally made for the Ludum Dare 46 Game Jam, Cubic Currency has been expanded and overhauled for a full release to have you deal a crazy new currency: dice.
The idea is that at some point in a dystopian future, a huge mega-corp named DiceCorp came along and invented a new currency with dice. You become a dice vendor, as you attempt to turn a profit in a vast, volatile, and violent market. With rent to pay, you need to make ends meet and this is how you plan to keep on going. From aliens, to tech, to cultish corporate leaders — Cubic Currency "has it all!" the developer says.
Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS), the leading provider of application development and digital experience technologies, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Chef, a global leader in DevOps and DevSecOps, providing complete infrastructure automation to build, deploy, manage and secure applications in modern multi-cloud and hybrid environments, as well as on-premises.
PeaZip is an open source file and archive manager. It's freeware and free of charge for any use. PeaZip can extract most of archive formats both from Windows and Unix worlds, ranging from mainstream 7Z, RAR, TAR and ZIP to experimental ones like PAQ/LPAQ family, currently the most powerful compressor available.
BigBlueButton is an open source video conference system that supports various audio and video formats and allows the use of integrated video-, screen- and document-sharing functions. BigBlueButton has features for multi-user whiteboards, breakout rooms, public and private chats, polling, moderation, emojis, and raise-hands. In this post, we will explain how AWS customers who are looking for a self-managed and open source software-based video conference solution can leverage AWS to build and deploy a scalable BigBlueButton setup. We’ll briefly explore the AWS services, features, and open source components integrated into the architecture, and we will explain how to use the necessary scripts and stack templates.
BigBlueButton integrates with a variety of third-party tools, such as Moodle, Sakai, Drupal, Joomla, or WordPress; however, we will stick to BigBlueButton’s native integration this post.
The Covid-19 pandemic has had many ramifications, even in the online world. Cliqz, the privacy focused search engine, shut down, and now Mozilla is the latest victim. They are laying off roughly a quarter of their workforce (250 people), having previously laid off 70 employees in January. The new focus will on more profitable services, such as Pocket, their VPN and other ventures such as their 'VR hubs'.
Specifically, Mozilla are getting rid of Servo, Mozilla's research team, their security team and their Developer Network (MDN), described as the 'essential bible for web devs' by one publication; all of these being core teams within Mozilla. Servo is practically the next generation of their flagship product.
Later this year the European Commission is expected to publish the Digital Services Act (DSA). These new draft laws will aim at radically transforming the regulatory environment for tech companies operating in Europe. The DSA will deal with everything from content moderation, to online advertising, to competition issues in digital markets. Today, Mozilla filed extensive comments with the Commission, to outline Mozilla’s vision for how the DSA can address structural issues facing the internet while safeguarding openness and fundamental rights.
The stakes at play for consumers and the internet ecosystem could not be higher. If developed carefully and with broad input from the internet health movement, the DSA could help create an internet experience for consumers that is defined by civil discourse, human dignity, and individual expression. In addition, it could unlock more consumer choice and consumer-facing innovation, by creating new market opportunities for small, medium, and independent companies in Europe.
GNU Radio is free and open-source software (sometimes called “libre software”), and is licensed under the GNU Public License version 3 (GPLv3). The GPL ensures that everyone has the freedom to use, modify, share, and contribute to GNU Radio.
Scientific research at the SETI Institute encompasses everything from the Big Bang and formation of stars, to planets and habitability to life and complexity -- and it is in the area of SETI science (search for extraterrestrial intelligence), or technosignature searches, that it is perhaps best known. The SETI Institute operates the ATA, a 42-dish radio telescope array designed to search for radio emissions from extraterrestrial technologies. Upgrades currently underway at the ATA will significantly increase the ATA’s receivers’ sensitivity and permit the development of a new digital signal processing system that will bring enhanced capabilities. GNU Radio on the ATA is providing a much easier path to entry for experts from industry to engage with radio telescopes without needing to learn specialized software systems.
Derek Kozel, the initial Principal Investigator for the GNU Radio project within SETI said, “The advanced hardware and complex signal processing challenges that the SETI Institute is working with present an ideal platform for GNU Radio to develop and test new features for taking advantage of cutting-edge heterogeneous computing environments.”
This collaboration between the SETI Institute and GNU Radio will enable the development of a common infrastructure for software at the ATA and possibly allow for software sharing among additional sites. Techniques from the RF industry for identifying and classifying signals have great promise in sifting through the “haystack” of human-generated radio frequency interference in search of the technosignature “needle.”
GIMP is a free image editor and paint tool. This tool is available for GNU/Linux, OS X, Windows, and other operating systems. GIMP can be used for high-quality image manipulation and for producing icons, UI components, and design mockups.
There has to be a first for everything. You may want to learn computer programming for personal reasons. Or, like many colleagues I've worked with, you might have gotten hired by a tech firm and realized that learning to program could help you better understand the customers and your environment.
In any case, programming is one of the great disciplines. It can improve the rigor of your thinking and help you appreciate the good and bad points of the software that is increasingly entwined with our everyday lives.
This article briefly lays out some possible first languages to learn, as well some other choices that I would recommend as a second language.
hi, as already indicated in that reddit post, a new bot contest was planned for next fall: it has now a planned starting date.
it would be nice to see more than ten perl lovers to join the fun, which will also permit to be seen in the loop back stats, unlike the previous contest.
For beginners who are learning object-oriented programming in Python, it is very essential to have a good grasp over class method and static method for writing more optimized and reusable code.
Also, it is very common for even experienced programmers coming from different languages to get confused between these two.
In this article, we will develop a better understanding of the class method and static methods in Python.
There are many options when it comes to creating slides for a presentation. There are straightforward ways, and generating slides directly from Jupyter is not one of them. But I was never one to do things the easy way. I also have high expectations that no other slide-generation software quite meets.
I work in what I'll call algorithmic molecular similarity, where people use an algorithm to characterize if two molecules are similar. There are many such algorithms: 2D and 3D fingerprints, maximum common substructure, edit distance, LINGO, and shape similarity are the first ones that come to mind.
There is almost no overlap between those methods and legal molecular similarity, which includes patent law and drug control law. I know little about the topic, so don't trust what I write here in a court of law! In this essay I'll mostly copy&paste some quotes regarding patent law.
Errors are inevitable when you are programming. As you write code, errors will start raising. The better you understand these errors, the easier it will be to avoid them. In this article you will learn the main python errors, how to interpret them and how they arise. For example, python nameerror name is not defined, what does this mean? You will find out by the end of this tutorial.
The goal of an error, or exception, is flagging something unexpected happened while running the code. Some of these situation arise frequently. Therefore python contains some built-in exceptions that capture the more frequent unexpected situation. Below we will go through each of those exception types and see what’s the meaning behind.
I did some volunteer work earlier this year, helping rejuvenate pipenv (a command-line tool that some people use to help handle Python packages they make and use). Here's what I did, how long it took, and how you can do the same.
Pipenv's maintainers had not released a new version since November 2018, and users were concerned (in many cases switching to competitors). In early March of this year, someone suggested that perhaps the official Python Packaging User Guide should stop recommending it. I saw that suggestion and went into the relevant Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel to nudge one of pipenv's maintainers and to ask: what do you need? What's blocking you?
My team had two weeks to make a viable product. We were a random group of people pulled together with a desire to help our local community in Frederick, Maryland. We were a student, a web designer, a former realtor turned IT support person, and a software developer.
Our mission, which was put forth by the virtual hackathon that brought us together, was to try to make a tool to help the local homeless.
In this Pandas tutorial, we are going to learn how to convert a NumPy array to a DataFrame object. Now, you may already know that it is possible to create a dataframe in a range of different ways. For example, it is possible to create a Pandas dataframe from a dictionary.
As Pandas dataframe objects already are 2-dimensional data structures, it is of course quite easy to create a dataframe from a 2-dimensional array.
In this wxPython tutorial, you will learn how to make your label flash. This is a useful way to get a user’s attention when something goes wrong.
Data applications are complex and continually evolving, often requiring collaboration across multiple teams. In order to keep everyone on the same page a high level abstraction is needed to facilitate a cross-cutting view of the data orchestration across integration, transformation, analytics, and machine learning. Dagster is an innovative new framework that leans on the power and flexibility of Python to provide an extensible interface to the complete lifecycle of data projects. In this episode Nick Schrock explains how he designed the Dagster project to allow for integration with the entire data ecosystem while providing an opinionated structure for connecting the different stages of computation. He also discusses how he is working to grow an open ecosystem around the Dagster project, and his thoughts on building a sustainable business on top of it without compromising the integrity of the community. This was a great conversation about playing the long game when building a business while providing a valuable utility to a complex problem domain.
Have you ever wondered why it’s okay for you to send your credit card information over the Internet? You may have noticed the https:// on URLs in your browser, but what is it, and how does it keep your information safe? Or perhaps you want to create a Python HTTPS application, but you’re not exactly sure what that means.
In this course, you’ll get a working knowledge of the various factors that combine to keep communications over the Internet safe. You’ll see concrete examples of how a Python HTTPS application keeps information secure.
Almost 5 months after the latest release (thank you COVID) I’m pleased and relieved to have finally packaged and pushed py3status v3.29 to PyPi and Gentoo portage!
This release comes with a lot of interesting contributions from quite a bunch of first-time contributors so I thought that I’d thank them first for a change!
AWK is one of the most powerful command in Linux. You can manage data and generate reports using the awk command. It also allows us to use logical operation, variables, print functions and many more. AWK stands for "Aho, Weinberger and Kernighan" and is mostly used for pattern scanning and processing. It searches one or more files to see if they contain lines that matches the specified pattern and then perform associated actions. It reads from a file or from its standard input and outputs to its standard output. For each line, it matches with given pattern in the given order, if matches perform the corresponding action.
After nine months of incubation with the Eclipse Foundation, Eclipse JKube 1.0.0 is finally here. This release marks the final deprecation of the great Fabric8 Maven Plugin (FMP) project. JKube is a complete replacement of FMP and includes all of the major features. Projects relying on FMP to create Apache Maven Java containers should migrate to Eclipse JKube to take full advantage of the new features, bug fixes, and upstream project maintenance described in this article.
JKube is a collection of plugins plus a standalone Java library that fit into your Maven project. If you have a Java project that needs to get deployed into Kubernetes or Red Hat OpenShift, this is the right tool for you. JKube takes care of everything related to the cluster deployment while you, as a developer, get to concentrate on implementing your application without worrying about where it needs to be deployed.
BitTorrent v2 kick-started with an effort to transition away from SHA-1 as the hash function for pieces, shortly after google announced having produced a collision. Given a new hash function would not be backwards compatible, a few other changes were proposed as well, while we were taking the compatibility hit anyway. This post describes the new features of the BitTorrent v2 protocol.
The European Commission is about to start a new legislative debate regarding Internet hosting providers – services that are hosting and make information available online. These providers have been protected since 2000 by the E-Commerce Directive, when the Internet was maybe a less complex thing to address through legislation. The rules were simple: hosting services are not liable for information they store if they stay “passive” – if they do nothing more than storing information provided by their users.
Meadows petaled turquoise.They shiver like glacial lakesEven when the sun shines.A duck could be forgiven,Then, the lack of graceIn a dry landing. The ooofff!We each to Heaven sendAt every bounce, a plea:How about a little mercy,For ducks’ sake? What the duckMust think the moment the lakeReveals itself a field of blueFlowers & a few sharp stones—.O God, where did I go wrong—
Tom Seaver is dead. Another leaf of my youth falls away. I grew up as a Yankees fan because my uncle was an announcer for the team. But I always harbored a fondness for the Mets, both in their early sixties incarnation of lovable ineptitude and their surge to an improbable world championship in 1969.
There are certain facts that critics of the college sports model have been pointing out for eons. One is that two sports—football and men’s basketball—generate most of the revenue that underwrites athletic departments and pays for coaches’ multimillion-dollar salaries. These two sports in particular are dependent on Black players and the physical punishment of Black bodies. And while these athletes produce billions of dollars in wealth, they not only do not receive any income but also have no collective bargaining rights, long-term medical care, a guaranteed scholarship, or even a seat at the table to discuss these issues.
For the past few months, I’ve been running a handful of SSH Honeypots on some cloud providers, including Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, and NameCheap. As opposed to more complicated honeypots looking at attacker behavior, I decided to do something simple and was only interested in where they were coming from, what tools might be in use, and what credentials they are attempting to use to authenticate. My dataset includes 929,554 attempted logins over a period of a little more than 3 months.
If you’re looking for a big surprise, I’ll go ahead and let you down easy: my analysis hasn’t located any new botnets or clusters of attackers. But it’s been a fascinating project nonetheless.
We recently noted how the Space X launch of low orbit broadband satellites is not only creating light pollution for astronomers and scientists, but captured U.S. regulators, eager to try and justify rampant deregulation, haven't been willing to do anything about it. While Space X's Starlink platform will create some much needed broadband competition for rural users, the usual capacity constraints of satellite broadband mean it won't be a major disruption to incumbent broadband providers. Experts say it will be painfully disruptive to scientific study and research, however:
Many factors affect the longevity of electronic equipment. One of the most ubiquitous sources of failure is heat. In fact, the heat generated by devices as they perform their assigned tasks is the very heat that shortens their electronic lives.
When I worked at IBM in Boca Raton at the dawn of the PC era, I was part of a group that was responsible for the maintainability of computers and other hardware of all types. One task was to ensure that equipment broke very infrequently and that, when it did, it was easy to repair. I learned some interesting things about the effects of heat on the life of computers while I was there.
Let's go back to the light bulb because it is an easily visible, if somewhat infrequent example.
Every time a light bulb is turned on, an electric current surges into the filament and heats its surface very rapidly from room temperature to about 4,600€° F (the exact temperature depends upon the wattage of the bulb and the ambient temperature). This thermal shock causes stress by vaporizing the filament's metal and the rapid expansion of the metal caused by the heating. When a light bulb is turned off, the thermal shock is repeated, though less severely, during the cooling phase as the filament shrinks. The more times a bulb is cycled on and off, the more the effects of this thermal shock accumulate.
The primary effect of thermal shock is that some small parts of the filament—usually due to minute manufacturing variances—tend to become hotter than other parts. This causes the metal at those points to vaporize faster, making the filament even weaker at that point and more susceptible to rapid overheating in subsequent power-on cycles. Eventually, the last of the metal vaporizes when the bulb is turned on, and the filament dies in a very bright flash. The electrical circuitry in computers is much like the filament in a light bulb. Repeated heating and cooling cycles damage the computer's internal electronic components just as the light bulb's filament was damaged over time. Over many years of testing, researchers have discovered that more damage is done by repeated power on and off cycles than by leaving the devices on all the time.
Once upon a time, a full 17 years before I became a parent, this was my favorite commercial: That classic mid-90s Staples back-to-school ad with the bitter kids watching their jubilant Dad stock up on pens and notebooks to the sound of “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” You don’t need to have kids to appreciate the humor, and once you do have kids, it’s some genuinely funny stuff. The look on the little girl’s face could crack a granite countertop.
Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos are two peas in a pod committed to€ avoiding accountability for themselves€ but determined to destroy public services.
The teacher was fairly certain the gun was a toy, according to local news station KDVR. But instead of checking with the parents to assuage any doubts, the school went straight to the cops.
The University of Michigan Graduate Employee Organization will go on strike Tuesday as classes begin on campus, citing concerns over COVID-19 safety and policing on campus.
"It is simply remarkable and beyond dangerous that President Trump has so politicized the vaccine process to the point that drug corporations—the€ least trusted industry in America—are now the messengers on vaccine safety."
Will Trump pull the single-payer card?
"Senate Republicans appear dead set on another bill which doesn't come close to addressing the problems and is headed nowhere."
"Everyone must understand that by taking care of our planet we are not only saving ecosystems, but also lives, especially the ones who are the most vulnerable."
The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the glaring contradictions in American higher education. State research universities are preparing to decrease services in light of anticipated budget shortfalls as small liberal arts colleges teeter on the brink of financial ruin. Meanwhile, Ivy League and other rich universities have refused to dip into their massive endowments and have instead chosen to pursue austerity while increasing tuition—and increasing debt—for their students.
After President Donald Trump on Monday suggested a Covid-19 vaccine could be fully developed and put to market “before a very special day” — apparently referring to the November 3 presidential election — Sen. Bernie Sanders warned that Trump’s ongoing politicization of the vaccine process threatens to undermine public trust and safety.
The Sturgis, South Dakota, motorcycle rally that took place early last month is a coronavirus “superspreading event” that will likely result in more than $12 billion in public health care costs, according to researchers who documented the annual event.
Shutting down the agency's task force "won't make Covid-19 go away," one healthcare worker said.€
The Great, Great Fall
"A lack of funding for emergency relief and the complications created by the coronavirus scourge have now pushed some of the world's neediest populations closer to famine conditions."
For over a month now, Nisha Yadav has walked that extra mile for her family’s rations. Their neighbourhood kirana store won’t sell them any groceries. “Ever since Papa was hospitalised, Rajanwala [the grocery store owner] doesn’t let us into his shop,” she says.
A confrontation is brewing in rural Italy over who should get to determine the needs of the most marginalised among the approximately 550,000 foreigners – including 150,000 undocumented migrants – working in the country’s key agricultural sector. Growing tensions between aid workers and union organisers in the Apulia region highlight the divide over whether poor living conditions in dozens of informal settlements across the country should be viewed as part of Italy’s so-called “migration emergency” or as the product of rampant labour exploitation in a highly profitable industry. On one side, aid workers and local officials say the informal settlements housing the migrant workers should be brought under institutional control. Dismal conditions in the settlements – where running water is often scarce and improvised electrical lines sometimes spark fires – have led to over 1,500 deaths since 2014, according to one estimate.
The UN will temporarily step in to help Palestinians who need medical treatment outside Gaza leave the enclave, in a change that could help thousands of patients who have been unable to access much-needed care due to the combined impact of COVID-19 and an ongoing dispute between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Nickolay Mladenov, the UN’s special representative for the Middle East, tweeted the news on 7 September, announcing that a “temporary arrangement” to be managed by the World Health Organization had been agreed. According to a UN update published the following day, the WHO will take over the process of facilitating travel permits, which Palestinian residents of Gaza and the West Bank require if they need to travel for medical care either to Israel or occupied East Jerusalem, and those in Gaza need for the West Bank.
For over 10 years I have been identifying and testing a number of exploits in cellular protocols that leverage what I refer to as “pre-authentication message”. In parallel, I have been witnessing the rise of a number of excellent academic teams doing outstanding research in this area and identifying further security issues in cellular protocols, mst of which are root-caused by pre-authentication messages.
The Federal Trade Commission has been investigating Intuit and its marketing of TurboTax products, following ProPublica’s reporting that the Silicon Valley company deceived tax filers into paying when they could have filed for free.
The FTC probe, run out of the commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, centers on whether Intuit violated the law against unfair and deceptive practices in commerce. One focus of the investigation is whether TurboTax marketing misdirected customers who were eligible to file their taxes for free into paid products.
Before plunking down your cold hard credit card number, however, there are many questions to ask. Can you trust the company? What are the speeds like? Is there a desktop app and is it easy to use? How many country locations are there, and can you still watch Netflix while connected?
The Magecart threat group has dominated headlines for its use of malicious JavaScript code, which is injected into e-commerce websites to exfiltrate customer payment card data. But new research points to a growing industry on underground forums where so-called “sniffers” are being advertised, sold and regularly updated.
In the fiscal second quarter, Slack reported revenue jumped 49% to $215.9 million, beating analysts’ projections of $209.2 million. Excluding some items, the company broke even, while analysts, on average, estimated a loss of 3 cents.
Epic Games sued Apple in August, after the company’s hit game Fortnite was removed from the iOS App Store over the implementation of an unauthorized payment system. The complaint, filed August 13th, alleges that Apple is violating antitrust law, using its total control over iOS to extract a commission for all software that passes through the App Store.
Apple’s filing comes in response to an exhaustive motion for a preliminary injunction, filed by Epic over the weekend. Tuesday’s filing lays out a range of defenses against that motion. Among other claims, Apple maintains there were legitimate business justifications for all of the actions it undertook, which would undercut a broader antitrust claim. “At all times, [Apple’s] conduct was reasonable and ... its actions were undertaken in good faith to advance legitimate business interests and had the effect of promoting, encouraging, and increasing competition,” the complaint reads.
Electric Coin Co.(ECC) is spearheading a new open source license, called Transitive Grace Period Public License (TGPPL), which allows anyone to commercially support and improve software while ensuring that all improvements are open source after a set period of time.
[...]
Open-source software licenses follow the Free Software Foundation’s “Four Freedoms of Free Software” and the Open Source Initiative’s “Open Source Definition.”
The Linux Foundation has announced the intent to form the new LF Climate Finance Foundation (LFCF), a new initiative aimed at addressing climate risk and opportunity.
There are many business reasons to use open source software. Many of today’s most significant business breakthroughs, including big data, machine learning, cloud computing, Internet of Things, and streaming analytics, sprang from open source software innovations. Open source software often comes into an organization as the backbone of many essential devices, programs, platforms, and tools such as robotics, sensors, the Internet of Things (IoT), automotive telematics, and autonomous driving, edge computing, and big data computing. Open source software code is working on many smartphones, laptops, servers, databases, and cloud infrastructures and services. Developers build most applications by leveraging frameworks like Node. js or pulling in libraries that have been tested and proven in many production use cases. To use almost any of these things is to use open source software in one form or another, and often in combination.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (grunt), Fedora (ansible and geary), openSUSE (firefox, gettext-runtime, python-Flask-Cors, and thunderbird), Oracle (firefox and thunderbird), Red Hat (.NET Core 3.1), SUSE (kernel and libjpeg-turbo), and Ubuntu (gnutls28 and libx11).
The RedCommander tool solves a major challenge for red teams around the installation and operationalization of infrastructure by combining automation scripts and other tools into a deployable package.
RedCommander is a series of Ansible Playbooks that automate the tedious tasks required to stand up covert command and control channels during a red team exercise. This open source tool is intended to be a stepping stone for more advanced configurations during red team assessments.
Once an operator spins up several servers and configures redirectors, they can leverage RedCommander to modify and monitor their command and control servers for blue team investigations by way of RedELK. The result provides the operator with a full-spectrum overview of a Red Team exercise while simultaneously centralizing logs for Indicators of Compromise (IOC) analysis.
This is just a "warn your brothers" post for those who use Cloudflare Bot Management, and have customers which use MITM boxes to break up TLS 1.3 connections.
Be aware that right now some heuristic rules in the Cloudflare Bot Management score TLS 1.3 requests made by some MITM boxes with 1 - which equals "we're 99.99% sure that this is none human browser traffic". While technically correct - the TLS connection hitting the Cloudflare Edge node is not established by a browser - that does not help your customer if you block those requests. If you do something like blocking requests with a BM score of 1 at the Cloudflare Edge, you might want to reconsider that at the moment and sent a captcha challenge instead. While that is not a lot nicer, and still pisses people off, you might find a balance there between protecting yourself and still having some customers.
Researchers at Columbia University have released Crylogger, an open source analysis tool for identifying cryptographic vulnerabilities in Android apps.
According to the recent paper, titled “Crylogger: Detecting Crypto Misuses Dynamically,” the researchers analyzed “1780 popular Android apps downloaded from the Google Play Store to show that Crylogger can detect crypto misuses on thousands of apps dynamically and automatically.”
Security updates have been issued by Debian (imagemagick, lemonldap-ng, and zeromq3), Fedora (ark, cryptsetup, gnutls, kernel, kernel-headers, and kernel-tools), openSUSE (firefox, kernel, and thunderbird), Red Hat (cloud-init, go-toolset:rhel8, libcroco, librepo, php:7.3, postgresql:10, and thunderbird), SUSE (firefox and go1.14), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.3, linux-aws-5.4, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-azure-5.4, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gke-4.15, linux-gke-5.0, linux-gke-5.3, linux-hwe, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-kvm, linux-oem, linux-oem-osp1, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux-raspi2, linux-raspi2-5.3, linux-snapdragon and xorg-server, xorg-server-hwe-16.04, xorg-server-hwe-18.04).
Keyfactor, the leader in crypto-agility solutions, today announced the release of SSH Key Manager for Keyfactor Command, its complete certificate lifecycle automation and PKI as-a-Service platform. The solution replaces manual management methods, automating access and distribution of SSH (Secure Shell) keys across machines, applications and devices within the enterprise.
In a recent attack, cybercrime group TeamTNT relied on a legitimate tool to avoid deploying malicious code on compromised cloud infrastructure and still have a good grip on it.
They used an opensource tool specifically created to monitor and control cloud environments with Docker and Kubernetes installations, thus reducing their footprint on the breached server.
TeamTNT has been caught using the genuine Weave Scope Docker and Kubernetes tool as an effective backdoor to target servers
The government doesn't always get what it wants. A novel twist on mass surveillance -- the so-called "reverse" warrant -- is becoming more popular now that law enforcement has realized Google maintains a stockpile of cell location data.
Since this COVID-19€ crisis began people have looked to technology to assist in contact tracing and notification. Technology will never be a silver bullet to solve a deeply human crisis, even if it might assist. No app will work absent widespread testing with human follow up. Smartphones are not in the hands of everyone, so app-based COVID-19 assistance can reinforce or exacerbate existing social inequalities.€
De-centralized Bluetooth proximity tracking is the most promising approach so far to automated COVID-19 exposure notification. Most prominently, back in April, Apple and Google unveiled a Bluetooth exposure notification API for detecting whether you were in proximity to someone with COVID-19, and sending you a notice. €
Ring's camera/doorbells may as well be branded with local law enforcement agency logos. Since Amazon acquired the company, Ring has cornered the law enforcement-adjacent market for home security products, partnering with hundreds of agencies to get Ring's products into the hands of residents. A lot of this flows directly through police departments, which can get them almost for free as long as they push citizens towards using Ring's snitch app, Neighbors, and allow Ring to handle the PR work.
This Wednesday, the Portland City Council will hear from residents, businesses, and civil society as they consider banning government use of face recognition technology within the city.Over 150 Portland-area business owners, technologists, workers, and residents have signed our About Face petition calling for an end to government use of face surveillance. This week, a coalition of local and national civil society organizations led by Electronic Frontier Alliance (EFA) members PDX Privacy and Portland's Techno-Activism Third Mondays delivered that petition to the council, noting that "even if the technology someday functions flawlessly, automated surveillance and collection of biometric data will still violate our personal privacy and conflict with the City's own privacy principles."€
Among the rumors of who might take over TikTok (which the Trump administration is forcing ByteDance to sell) was the surprise entrant of Walmart. While we're still waiting for the official decision, a report last week noted that the White House stepped in to tell Walmart that couldn't happen if Walmart was to be the lead buyer:
‘The Path of the Shadows’ tells the real-life story of Professor Carlos Mauricio and his harrowing experiences during the civil war in El Salvador. Having freshly returned to his home country after studying in Mexico, the film relates Professor Mauricio’s increasing harassment by Salvadoran government agents. Events rapidly escalate, culminating in his abduction in the middle of the afternoon by one of the infamous government death squads. The professor is ‘disappeared’, taken away for interrogation as the military attempt to get him to confess to being a Cuban-trained spy and Salvadoran FMLN rebel. If he refuses, torture awaits him and all those he cares about.
The ongoing U.S. “war on terror” has forcibly displaced as many as 59 million people from just eight countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia since 2001, according to a new report published Tuesday by Brown University’s Costs of War Project.
Many politicians, media pundits and commentators, along with the mainstream cultural apparatuses, are decrying property destruction produced by protesters in the face of unrelenting police assaults on unarmed Black people. Their critical focus has been not only on the broken windows, burning cars and alleged “looting” of stores, but also on the so-called violent tendencies of the “left” and anarchists who serve as stand-ins for the thousands of peaceful protesters who have taken to the streets.
Critics note the president has increased military spending to record levels while fulfilling his promise to "bomb the shit" out of militants—and their families.€
The scorching desert sun streams through narrow slats in the tiny window. A mouse scurries across the cracked concrete floor, the scuttling of its tiny feet drowned out by the sound of distant voices speaking in Arabic. Their chatter is in a western Libyan dialect distinctive from the eastern dialect favored in Benghazi. Somewhere off in the distance, beyond the shimmering desert horizon, is Tripoli, the jewel of Africa now reduced to perpetual war.
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"We need a reckoning. We can't simply move on."
Janine Jackson interviewed IPS’s Phyllis Bennis about foreign policy visions for the August 28, 2020, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
"It took me a long time to understand that I am not the guilty one. The only culprits are the Islamist terrorists. The Kouachis and those who helped them," she told the court.
Thirteen men and a woman went on trial Wednesday in the 2015 attacks against the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper and a kosher supermarket in Paris that marked the beginning of a wave of violence by the Islamic State group in Europe.
Seventeen people and all three gunmen died during the three days of attacks in January 2015. Later that year, a separate network of French and Belgian fighters for Islamic State struck Paris again, this time killing 130 people in attacks at the Bataclan concert hall, the national stadium, and in bars and restaurants.
Those on trial in France’s terrorism court are accused of buying weapons, cars, and helping with logistics in the January 2015 attacks. Most say they thought they were helping plan an ordinary crime. Three, including the only woman accused, are being tried in absentia after leaving to join Islamic State.
Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, the two brothers who carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack, died in a shootout with the police north of Paris two days later. A third attacker, Amédy Coulibaly, killed a police officer in a Parisian suburb and four Jewish hostages at a kosher supermarket before dying himself when the police stormed the building.
With all the central assailants dead, the current trial will be more cathartic than revelatory for a country forced by the events to reckon with the threat of homegrown terrorism, permanently altering its balance between security and civil liberty.
“The question of drug gangs enforcing curfews has gotten a lot of press, but I don’t necessarily feel that this is warranted,” said Edmund Ruge, editor of RioOnWatch, which organizes community-based reporting in the city’s favelas. The lack of state governance in these slum areas allows gangs to encroach, but “it’s really the civil society groups who are really taking the lead in spreading awareness campaigns and getting food and hygiene baskets out,” he said.
Felia Allum was equally skeptical. “They are not Robin Hood. They are not charity cases,” she says. “I haven’t had any confirmation that’s been happening. They are interested in territorial control, they are interested in making money; power and profit are their main objectives. And, every little helps.”
So why bother? Glenny suggested that, predatory as these groups are, they also “depend on a degree of support from the community.” A PR disaster is bad for business, after all, even if your business is already against the law.
A spokesperson for CAL FIRE called the news "unnerving," noting that "September and October are historically our worst months for fires."
Feeling too hot? Then turn the thermostat down and cool your home âËâ a good start to cooling the planet.
World powers must pull together and retool their economies for a green future or humanity is “doomed,” UN chief Antonio Guterres has warned, telling AFP that failure to control the coronavirus pandemic illustrates the danger of disunity.
We need millions of union jobs that are good for both workers and the climate.
Amazon Day, a day of celebration for over 100 years on September 5th has passed. Amazon Day commemorates the year 1850 creation of the Province of Amazonas, encompassing 60% of Brazil and extending into Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela, and French Guyana.
Environmentalists have decried the administration's attempts to expand drilling and fracking as "breathtakingly vicious."€
The question was put by interviewer Kay Burley on Britain’s Sky News network to UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock. “Is Tony Abbott the right kind of person to represent us – even if he’s a homophobic misogynist?” Hancock, while preferring to focus on the former Australia Prime Minister’s expertise in trade, also performed something of a distancing act. “I think the best thing to say is that I am totally focused on the coronavirus crisis and the future of the NHS and social care.”
The world needs development policies that serve people and planet first, not policies that focus on economic growth at all costs.€
Trying to keep up with the stunningly inappropriate remarks of Donald Trump can sometimes seem a full-time job. Just this past week, for instance, we’ve seen the president seem to encourage voters in North Carolina to vote twice, once by mail and once by person, a felony under state law.
This is the second part of the work that attempts to find a recipe towards financial independence - a stage where you no longer need to work to support yourself.
In the previous article, we tried to formulate the problem of personal finance through a system of ordinary differential equations (ODE), which we later solved numerically using python. Given a set of input parameters, our numerical model was able to determine your financial condition - .
In this article, we bring it to the next stage. We add randomness to the equation to account for life’s unpredictability. This time, we want to find out to what degree your financial success is really in your hands?
We will begin this journey by revisiting the math and add some random contributions. Then, we move into simulating some hypothetical scenarios using the so-called Monte Carlo method. Finally, we will use our augmented model to predict your chances with the help of the world’s historical data.
The solution is not found in mere redistribution of income. It is found in redistributing power.€
Three days a week I give out free lunches to homeless€ people in Portland, Oregon. I have four locations I go to, three encampments, and the last one is located in Old Town Portland, which is home to several hundred€ people. They set up their tents and makeshift shelters along the sidewalks and side streets.
Four Latin American countries have called to postpone the election of the president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), scheduled for September 12 and 13. Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica and Mexico proposed suspending the election until March 2021 to prevent Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser for Latin America, the Cuban-American Mauricio Claver-Carone, from taking the powerful regional post.
“Thru-hiking” long distances has exploded over the past decade. In addition to the millions of people who hike parts of the Appalachian Trail (AT) every year, those managing and surveying it report that the number of hikers heading north for the trail’s entirety (around 2,200 miles) increased 155 percent from 2010 to 2017. The two other premier long-distance trails in the United States, the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and the Continental Divide Trail (CDT), have seen similar increases.
[...]
I witnessed this historical growth personally, as my family, from 2011 to 2015, dedicated our summers to completing as much as we could of the three trails. We were already experienced backpackers and wilderness travelers. We knew how to travel light and keep our base weight down, by sawing the handle off a toothbrush, for instance. Still, there were experiences that were unique to thru-hiking, the most obvious being tramping for longer distances than we were used to. We learned how to navigate through snow. We survived wicked storms, camped in “tree holes” (a circle at the base of a tree that had dry ground even after a blizzard), crossed snow-gorged creeks that came up to our waists, and glissaded down 400-foot pitches, controlling our speed as best as we could with ice axes. Even with all these challenges, or maybe because of them, we came to love long-distance hiking, exhilarated by the natural beauty we saw.
As we trekked, we began to notice something of a subculture. We met fellow hikers with trail names like Wag Daddy, Hikes-a-lot, Hike-aholic, Optimist, Swami, Insane Dwayne, Mouse, and Cloud Walker. There was an ethic of providing one another information about trail conditions and sharing supplies. (Indeed, one guy saved us by giving us all of his chocolate-covered raisins when we ran out of food in the deep backcountry.) I’m more of a loner when it comes to backpacking. But I did enjoy the numerous encounters and conversations found on the trail, especially those that didn’t involve gear.
What surprised me most was how many working-class adults we ran into. I was expecting an exclusively young and wealthy crowd. But some of our favorite hikers were an industrial painter, a truck driver, an alligator-farm worker, and a clerk at an outdoor store. It’s not that expensive to do a thru-hike—once you’ve got your equipment, you’re left with buying food, after you’ve hitchhiked to the nearest town.
But there was a certain type we ran into over and over: middle-class white twentysomething male, confused about what he’s going to do with his life. I found myself listening to these young men confess their family problems and directionless drift—all of which was material for their forthcoming memoirs, or so they proclaimed. Sometimes but not too often, they might pull themselves out of their little world to ask me a question. Sometimes I’d tell them about the large books I had packed: Tolstoy, London, and Joyce (much to my wife’s chagrin, as she was a devoted weight-slasher). But more often, I’d stand up and put on my best mock-pandering tone and blurt, “I’m thinking about what you’re standing on right now: a quintessential work of democratic socialism!” I’d follow that up with an admonition to get out of their little universe and give glory to their predecessors who first imagined a long trail like the one we were standing on. I’d ask them to think about the politics of preserving long trails. If they engaged my spiel, I’d press them on the right to leisure (many of these young people never held a job) or the meaning of public lands or what’s really meant by socialism in today’s parlance. (This was the Obama years, when you still had to explain why Obamacare was not socialist.) Some drew back and I’d apologize, explaining that I’m a historian, I can’t help it. Or something to that effect, hopefully avoiding condescension.
Losing one election to Trump is unlucky; losing two in a row may be saying something about the national character.
Thirteen years ago, in summer 2007, I wrote a memo for the future president of the United States.
President Donald Trump is alleging that Democratic Party leaders in a number of states across the country are purposely hurting their own economies in order to make him look bad on the issue in the months running up to the general election.
Americans must choose whether they want a leader who promises only to drive us apart or one who offers the possibility of bringing us together.
Election officials are working to make sure voters are not disenfranchised in November after an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots have been rejected in primary elections so far this year.
His transmission seems to be slipping, at least one of his cylinders is misfiring, the brakes are not grabbing and the stability of the “very stable genius” appears to be wobbling. Why? Did he really have “mini-strokes” in November?
It was conduced in Belarus, and 37% that were surveyed said Yes, and 18% stated Not Ready. The rest are undecided. The scope for the poll included over 500,000 people. It should be noted that the poll was completely anonymous. The population of Belarus is over 9 million people.
These results signal the significance of how the people feel in the country. Clearly, Belarusian nationals are angry and fed up with what is going on in the country. The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, managed to completely upset the people.
Not only he did he falsify the presidential election results, he also jailed his opposing candidates. Hence, automatically making them ineligible to run in the election. Interestingly, during Maidan in Ukraine in 2014, the opposition groups also called themselves self-defense units.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko reportedly confessed to a Russian state reporter that “maybe” he’s “overstayed his welcome” as the country’s leader, VGTRK correspondent Evgeny Rozhkov revealed in an appearance on the Rossiya 1 € television network on Tuesday.€
Ivan Kravtsov, the executive secretary of the Belarusian opposition’s Coordination Council, and Anton Rodnenkov, the group’s press secretary, gave a press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday, where they accused the Belarusian authorities of trying to use them to help expel opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova (Maryia Kalesnikava) from the country.
Maria Kolesnikova (Maryia Kalesnikava), one of the leaders of the Belarusian opposition, was arrested at the border with Ukraine on the morning of September 8, says the Belarusian State Border Committee. State officials say Kolesnikova and two other members of the Belarusian opposition’s Coordination Council, Anton Rodnenkov and Ivan Kravtsov, drove between Belarusian and Ukrainian border checkpoints. After noticing a border guard officer, claims the State Border Committee, the car sped up suddenly and left Belarusian territory after “shoving” Kolesnikova from the vehicle. Ukraine’s border service says Rodnenkov and Kravtsov arrived at the Ukrainian checkpoint, where border control officers started inspecting them. The Belarusian State Border Committee says these two men were arrested, but Ukrainian officials deny this.
Young George could not deny he felled that tree. His moral code would certainly forbid it. In such a situation, Trump would say, “I cannot tell a lie: Obama did it.”
Alexey Navalny’s branch in Novosibirsk has reported an attack on its office, which is also the campaign headquarters for the opposition coalition “Novosibirsk 2020.”€
On Monday, September 7, Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny was brought out of his medically induced coma. He remains in intensive care at the Charité Hospital in Berlin, where he is receiving treatment for poisoning from an organophosphate (OP) nerve agent from the “Novichok” group. Meanwhile, the Kremlin continues to deny the very fact that Navalny was poisoned, citing the results of tests conducted in Russia. On the other hand, “Meduza” has discovered that the doctors who treated Navalny in Omsk immediately suspected that his symptoms were from nerve agent poisoning — but establishing a diagnosis was made difficult€ because his range of symptoms was not fully consistent with the effects of organophosphate poisoning (some symptoms seemed to be missing, while others were atypical). Chemical weapons experts who spoke with Meduza believe that poisoning from Novichok-type nerve agents may well have blurred the clinical picture.
Iván Velásquez is a Colombian prosecutor who headed the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala from 2013 to 2019, a powerful U.N.-backed commission formed to investigate corruption in the country and supported by the Obama administration. But Velásquez and other investigators were expelled from the country after the Trump administration agreed to withdraw support for the commission in apparent exchange for Guatemala’s support of Trump’s immigration and Middle East policies. The details of that quid pro quo between President Trump and Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales are detailed in a new investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. We speak with reporters Aaron Glantz and Anayansi Diaz-Cortes.
I don’t really know what to make of historian H. Bruce Franklin’s recent essay published in CounterPunch in early August, except to say that he’s rightly worked up about Trump and where he feels the USA is headed now. But to say, as Bruce says that “the fascists won World War II” is mind boggling. Yes, the U.S. saw to it that German corporations that thrived under the Nazis continued to thrive after 1945. This isn’t news. Books like€ The New Germany and the Old Nazis€ by Tet Harens Tetens made the point nearly 60 years ago, and my dear friend Cedric Belfrage, who co-founded€ The National Guardian€ in 1948, described precisely the alliance of American capitalism and German fascism after the end of WWII in€ Seeds of Destruction: the Truth about the U.S. Occupation of Germany€ (1954).
“[W]e currently have an inferno of political violence to which the president of the United States adds fuel,” Jennifer Rubin thunders from her bully pulpit at the Washington Post. “[I]t is time for bipartisan voices, local and state leaders, police and other first responders, civic and religious leaders, and all responsible media outlets to try to quench the flames of violence.”
Progressive groups see the need to push a new administration to make a positive contribution to the well-being of people throughout the hemisphere.
Sometimes it seems like we live in a huge loony bin where things make no sense.
The GOP has officially embraced a continuation of Trump's policies, reaffirming its support for a president whose idea of "law and order" is a recipe for more violence.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-New York), the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, announced late on Monday that a formal investigation would commence into Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, after reports over the weekend detailed how he may have been involved in an illegal scheme to raise funds for Republican candidates for office.
House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney said the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors should immediately suspend DeJoy as the probe moves forward.
"We need less Wall Street in the next administration and more working class representation."
If you need some low-cost entertainment, ask a person raised in the era of Google Maps to figure out how to get to somewhere without technology. It illustrates what we all know: Even those of us old enough to remember the world of paper atlases and “calling for directions” have become hopelessly dependent on those colored lines and disembodied voices to tell us where to go.
"Everybody wants a vaccine, but we want to make sure that that vaccine is safe. We don't want to see that vaccine put on the market for political reasons."
Electionland is a collaborative project to report on voting problems with local and national newsrooms around the country.
We will be on the lookout for any problems that prevent people from voting — such as mail ballot delivery problems, changed voting locations, long lines, registration problems, purged voter rolls, broken machines and voter intimidation. You can help us. To let us know how your voting experience goes, here’s how to sign up and get in touch.
Trump knows he has to distract the nation from the pandemic he has failed to control – leaving more than 188,000 Americans dead as of September 8, tens of millions jobless, and at least 30 million reportedly hungry.So he’s mounting a tried-and-true law and order campaign.At the Republican National Convention, Trump said: “Your vote will decide whether we protect law-abiding Americans, or whether we give free rein to violent anarchists, agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens.”He’s right. But the anarchists, agitators, and criminals threatening Americans are not those protesting police violence. They are the highly armed and racist right-wing vigilantes, along with the conspiracy theorists and shady criminals Trump has repeatedly encouraged and surrounded himself with.Take for example, the white gun-toting 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who has been charged with killing two people and wounding a third during Black Lives Matter protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin – and who, perhaps not coincidentally, occupied a front-row seat at a Trump rally in Des Moines last January. Despite the fact Rittenhouse has been charged with murder, Trump defends him, claiming he was acting in self-defense, that “they very violently attacked him.”Or consider the pro-Trump caravan that drove into Portland, Oregon, including the neo-fascist Proud Boys – shooting Black Lives Matter protesters with pepper spray and paintballs and driving into crowds. Someone wearing the hat of a far-right group called Patriot Prayer was shot dead. Trump’s reaction? Rather than condemn the violence, he tweeted “GREAT PATRIOTS!” in support of the pro-Trump agitators, and “big backlash going on in Portland cannot be unexpected. The people of Portland won’t put up with no safety any longer.” He also retweeted a claim that “this coup attempt is led by a well funded network of anarchists trying to take down the President.”
India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said in a statement that the decision would ensure the safety, security, and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace. Some mobile apps on Android and iOS were stealing users' data and transferring it outside India, it claimed.
China's commerce industry spokesman Gao Feng condemned the decision, and asked India to "correct their mistakes."
But another of his legacies is undeniable: Before the classic-rock- and jazz-loving Bill Clinton and the hip-hop-friendly Obama, Carter was the first American president with even a remote connection to rock and roll. Although he hadn’t grown up with the music, which didn’t exist during his teen years, the politician understood its impact and reach, as well as the big business it had become by the Seventies. (The topic is explored in director Mary Wharton’s Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President, which has its “virtual” premiere on Sept. 9th.) And in a manner that was both sincere and shrewd, he aligned himself with rock in ways no previous candidate or president had. Carter’s term paved the way for Oval Office visits by the likes of Beyoncé and Kid Rock, benefit concerts by indie and pop acts, and, for a fleeting moment, a White House record collection that would earn the begrudging admiration of even the biggest music snob.
This may not be a groundbreaking concept, but Wharton's film explores how music reflects society, and how Carter's efforts as a civil rights leader made him an appealing candidate who used soft power — music — to win hearts and minds.
Russia’s state censor, Roskomnadzor, has accused YouTube of censorship after the video-sharing service added a warning to Alexander Rogatkin’s new documentary film about the 2004 Beslan school siege. Viewers must now verify their age before watching the video and confirm that they wish to access content “identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate or offensive to some audiences.”
Content moderation, whether over social or intellectual property issues, is impossible to do well. It just is. The scale of content platforms means that automated systems have to do most of this work and those automated systems are always completely rife with avenues for error and abuse. While this goes for takedowns and copyright strikes, it is also the case for demonetization practices for the big players like YouTube.
I'm still perplexed by Trumpian folks insisting that the President is a supporter of free speech (or the Constitution). It's quite clear that he's been a huge supporter of censorship over the years. The latest example is, perhaps, the most bizarre (while also being totally par for the course with regards to this President). For unclear reasons, the President has retweeted someone with fewer than 200 followers, who posted a picture of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in traditional Russian soldier garb... while complaining that Twitter won't take that image down, while it has "taken down" manipulated media from his supporters.
The companies Unilever Russia, Mars, Inc., Magnit, and Yandex Lavka have all pulled their advertisements from the YouTube show “Comment Out” after a guest on the show was asked to make offensive social media posts about the ongoing protests in Belarus and Khabarovsk.€
The Online Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Act would modify Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act by conditioning the protection on whether content decisions are "objectively reasonable," while also limiting the things platforms can act on.
Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which has come under increased scrutiny since President Trump targeted it in an executive order in May, gives internet companies immunity from lawsuits for content posted on their sites by third parties and allows them to make "good faith" efforts to moderate content.
French President Emmanuel Macron told an audience gathered to witness a naturalization ceremony that “To be French is to defend the right to laugh, jest, mock and caricature, of which Voltaire maintained that it is the source of all other rights.”
There is not an American politician on the left who would dare utter such apostasy. There are many young people who think they should have the right not to allow anyone to hurt their feelings — First Amendment be damned. Some believe it should be illegal to mock anyone’s race or ethnic heritage, their sexual orientation, or the sex they’ve chosen for themselves. White males? Well, no one much cares if their feelings are hurt or not.
Macron was speaking at the Pantheon, where, 150 years ago, the Third Republic was founded. Today, he used the occasion to blast Islamic extremism. The trial of more than a dozen accused accomplices in the bloody 2015 Charlie Hebo massacre began on Friday, so the contrast with a fundamentalist religion that will kill you for mocking the prophet was clear.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s legal team spent the second morning of a major extradition hearing focusing a magistrate court judge’s attention on United States torture and war crimes that Assange helped to expose.Defense attorney Mark Summers called Clive Stafford Smith, a human rights attorney who has represented prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, to the witness stand. He was asked about human rights cases he pursued, which were bolstered by revelations in documents WikiLeaks published.For example, Stafford Smith told Judge Vanessa Baraitser that U.S. State Department cables helped those impacted by U.S. drone killings in Pakistan. It contributed to “court findings that US drone strikes are criminal offenses and that criminal proceedings should be initiated against senior U.S. officials involved in such strikes. ”A high court in Pakistan ruled “drone strikes carried out by the CIA and U.S. authorities were a ‘blatant violation of basic human rights’ including ‘a blatant breach of the absolute right to life’ and ‘a war crime,'” Stafford Smith declared in a statement to the court. Due to the decision, drone strikes that caused many “innocent deaths” stopped “very rapidly.” None were reported in 2019.The defense had Stafford Smith testify in order to persuade the court that Assange “disclosed U.S. involvement in criminal activity.” Specifically, these were “public interest disclosures” of war crimes and torture. Some of the publications are currently the subject of a criminal investigation into the CIA that is before the International Criminal Court (ICC).In other words, the prosecution against Assange is retaliation for bringing increased scrutiny to U.S. actions throughout the world. But James Lewis, the lawyer representing the Crown Prosecution Authority on behalf of the U.S. government, was irritated by the defense’s focus on documents that exposed torture and war crimes. Lewis insisted the U.S. government only charged Assange with documents that revealed the names of informants, and none of the materials Stafford Smith was asked about mattered in the extradition case.At one point, Stafford Smith contended Lewis was “wrong about the way in which cases are prosecuted” in the United States.
Over the past year, numerous foreign reporters working for Western news organisations have been forced to leave China, mostly due to their work permits being revoked or not renewed.
The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China said on Monday a record 17 foreign journalists were expelled from the country in the first half of 2020.
The departures come amid worsening diplomatic ties between China and the United States and its allies over issues ranging from trade to technology and democratic rights in Hong Kong, with Washington and Beijing engaging in a tit-for-tat over journalist credentials.
See our€ report from Day 1€ of these proceedings here. Yesterday, the judge rejected the defense’s request to proceed without the new allegations in the U.S.’s extremely late superseding indictment, then rejected the defense’s request for more time to prepare to deal with these new allegations. Professor Mark Feldstein began his testimony on investigative journalism. Likely to testify today are journalists Patrick Cockburn and Nicolas Hager, and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.
Six hundred and ninety miles of the Transcontinental Railroad were laid by Chinese immigrants. Many of them were drawn to California by the gold rush of the late 1840s, but a scant decade later, the land had been depleted of riches, and they arrived instead to encounter unfriendly locals who distrusted foreign faces. The construction of the Central Pacific Railroad, the segment of the Transcontinental Railroad that stretched from Sacramento to Utah’s Promontory Summit, began in 1863, and white foremen quickly recruited Chinese immigrants looking for work to do the most physically demanding labor, compensating them at a fraction of the pay that whites received. By 1867, Chinese immigrants made up about 90 percent of the Central Pacific’s labor force. Historians estimate that at least 1,200 died in the construction of the railroad—approximately two Chinese men for every mile of track they laid.
In a celebrity trial that has attracted major attention in Russia, the actor Mikhail Efremov was sentenced to eight years in prison on September 8 for his role in a deadly traffic collision earlier this summer.
Will European politics bury the human rights laws it once created?
After a police officer in Kenosha, Wis., grabbed 29-year-old Jacob Blake’s T-shirt and fired seven shots into his back on August 23, Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes tweeted, “Last night, Jacob Blake was shot in the back seven times in front of his children. This wasn’t an accident. The officer’s deadly actions attempted to take a person’s life in broad daylight. Like many of you, the video is burned into my mind like all the past videos just like it.”
On August 21, Khabarovsk regional official Andrey Petrov uploaded a video to YouTube with an address to his neighbors throughout the region, suggesting that those protesting the arrest of former Governor Sergey Furgal abandon demonstrations in favor of an ultimatum to Moscow. The conditions Petrov proposed soon cost him his job: either the capital returns Furgal to Khabarovsk for trial, forgives the region’s debts, and allocates an additional 100 billion rubles ($1.3 billion) in “punitive damages,” or Khabarovsk declares the creation of the Khabarovsk Democratic Republic within the Russian Federation. “Sit there and manage whomever you want, if you’re not going to listen to the people,” Petrov said in his video. After it went up on YouTube, acting Governor Mikhail Degtyarev fired Petrov from his position as deputy head of the regional forestry management, calling him a “kook” and describing his comments as “pure extremism.” Meduza special correspondent Anastasia Yakoreva spoke to Petrov about his work in the government, the reasons he shared such a controversial video online, and what’s happened since.
Two months. That’s how long it took for white Americans’ support of Black Lives Matter—which climbed to an unprecedented peak in June after the brutal police murder of George Floyd—to tumble back toward preprotest levels. Over the same period, surveys show, declining numbers of white respondents cited anti-Black racism as a “big problem” in American society. An NPR/Ipsos poll from late August found white people are the racial group least likely to report taking even the most minor “actions to better understand racial issues in America” since protests began sweeping the country. Just half of white Americans concede “racism is built into the American economy, government, and educational systems.” And 49 percent believe America has already done enough “to give Black Americans equal rights with white Americans.”
Covid-19 turns "every cell and cage into a potential death chamber," organizers say.€
Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson welcome back Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law to discuss their new book, Prison By Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences Of Popular Reforms, on the Beyond Prisons podcast.
The book provides a comprehensive and thought-provoking critical analysis of popular reforms to policing and incarceration, such as electronic monitoring, diversion courts, so-called sex worker rescue programs, and a lot more. Importantly, it explores not only how these reforms fail to promote safety, but how they actually increase the size and scope of policing and incarceration.
Filmmaker Yoruba Richen, director of The New York Times documentary The Killing of Breonna Taylor, says the 26-year-old EMT’s killing was not just a devastating blow to her friends and family, but a “loss of the entire community.” Police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, fatally shot Taylor during a raid on her home in March, part of a botched drug investigation. Richen says that in visiting Louisville and speaking with Taylor’s loved ones, she “personally felt the trauma that we endure as African American people” as a result of police killings.
Filmmaker Yoruba Richen, director of The New York Times documentary “The Killing of Breonna Taylor,” says the 26-year-old EMT’s killing was not just a devastating blow to her friends and family, but a “loss of the entire community.” Police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, fatally shot Taylor during a raid on her home in March, part of a botched drug investigation. Richen says that in visiting Louisville and speaking with Taylor’s loved ones, she “personally felt the trauma that we endure as African American people” as a result of police killings.
Months after the police killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, new details have emerged about the final moments of the 26-year-old EMT’s life and the police raid that brought it to a violent end, as detailed in a New York Times documentary that includes dozens of interviews and a review of more than 1,200 new photos of the crime scene. Taylor, whom police shot five times in her own home on March 13, has since become a household name and rallying point in the national movement for racial justice. The police officers responsible for her death have not been charged. We speak with Yoruba Richen, director and producer of “The Killing of Breonna Taylor,” who says the case exposes the systemic violence at the heart of U.S. policing.
It is fascinating to watch commentators trying to explain the continuing solid support for Trump among a significant portion of the electorate. They cite an endless list of Trumpian sins, enumerating just about every possible policy and personal evil. Their outrage, but more significantly, their bafflement knows no bounds. They know they hate Trump with a passion but are at a loss to understand or explain how anyone could actually vote for Trump. They are truly at wit’s end.
A lot of stuff that looks like science but hasn't actually been subjected to the rigors of the scientific process has been used by the government to wrongly deprive people of their freedom. As time moves forward, more and more of the forensic science used by law enforcement has been exposed as junk -- complicated-looking mumbo-jumbo that should have been laughed out of the crime lab years ago.
In Nigeria, over the past 20 years, 100,000 Christians have been killed.... Nigeria is becoming the "biggest killing ground of Christians in the world".
Nigeria, already the most populous African country, could have a population of about 800 million people in the year 2100, according to a study by The Lancet, and could become the ninth-largest economy in the world.
Once a small collection of loosely organised groups, the humanitarian system has seen staggering expansion over the last couple of decades. Today, a multi-billion-dollar industry operates around the globe, employing hundreds of thousands of people and pumping out reams of reports and information.
We ploughed through 25 years of data to show just how much the sector has changed. Here’s our breakdown of how things looked then and now.
As reported on Kluwer Patent Blog, the Supreme Court of England and Wales issued a key decision in the Case of Huawei and ZTE vs Conversant and Unwired Planet. Both lawsuits pertain to standard essential patents and seek to resolve how address international commercial activity from a legal perspective. The cases offer a wealth of insights on the complex interplay between standards and patents. Given the brevity of this opinion, I am unable to comment on all of these.
Of interest to me is that the Supreme Court confirmed that the Courts of England and Wales are the appropriate Forum to deal with extraterritorial IP and are in a position to set corresponding FRAND rates. I leave all other issues unaddressed.
The Court justified its position, among other factors, with reference to the Forum Non Conveniens Doctrine. This, in spite of the fact that in the Conversant case neither Huawei nor ZTE consented to having the English Courts decide on the matter. Their exposure to the British markets and IP system is minimal; an argument which the Court dismissed.
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For me, both the Forum Conveniens doctrine and the subsequent anti-suit injunctions, remain a symbol of the difficulty a ‘United’ Kingdom is facing. I doubt that their application to SEPs will be of help.
Last week’s decision risks that different Courts around the world could block each other. As anti-suit injunctions trigger anti-anti-suit injunctions and so on, this could result in quite some burden for the technology community. Perhaps, to circumvent this dilemma, an injured party may think it is best to race to Court, which does however also not present itself as a desirable solution. This could bring along fierce competition between various Courts.
There is no easy fix to international economic integration. Perhaps it would be the least complicated, to continue the existing practice of enforcing SEPs in a few key jurisdictions. Going forward, one may want to think how to enhance the coordination mechanisms between the world’s Courts.
On September 3, 2020, Unified filed opposition proceedings against EP 3 113 493 B1, owned by Velos Media, LLC. The ‘493 patent is generally related to decoding image data to generate quantized transform coefficients using certain sized matrices. This filing is a part of Unified’s ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone.
Thousands of patents claims have been cancelled by the PTAB in inter partes review proceedings. These are cases where a third party was willing to pay hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars to cancel a set of claims. A good number of those patents would have been enforced by a district court. In fact, a good number of those patents have been enforced in Federal Court.
Personal Audio, LLC v. CBS Corporation (Supreme Court 2020) again builds a montage of competing patent tribunals — a district court that enforces and an administrative court that undermines. This case adds an important third tribunal to the story — the jury. The disappointing climax is usually the same — spent on the Federal Circuit who sides with the administration.
In this case, the jury sided with Personal Audio — finding the asserted claims of its US8112504 both valid and infringed. (Verdict excerpt below from September 2014). The jury awarded $1.3 million.
[...]
Here, the patentee argues against estoppel because (1) the PTAB judges were unconstitionally appointed (via Arthrex); and (2) the PTAB determination overturns a prior jury’s finding of facts in a case protected by the 7th Amendment Right to Trial.
The trouble – as usual – is that the claims are pretty bad: Personal Audio’s patent claims a system for distributing “a series of episodes represented by media files via the Internet.” The new portion appears to be updating a compilation file of currently available episodes. The list of new episodes (and their links) are downloaded by a client computer that can then use the links to request the actual media files.
It seems like only yesterday [to this Kat at least] that the registration (and later withdrawal) of the 'Sussex Royal' trade mark was being discussed (see Katposts here and here). Along the lines of this, the UKIPO saw a similarly regal trade mark application opposed by the Lord Chamberlain, on behalf of Her Majesty The Queen. The trade mark, which featured the words ‘THE ROYAL BUTLER’, was refused trade mark registration on the basis of sections 3(5) and 4(1)(d) of the Trade Marks Act 1994 (TMA), which addresses specially protected emblems. Let’s see what happened.
One of the alleged key members of piracy group SPARKS has pleaded not guilty to US Government charges that he was involved in a conspiracy that cost movie companies tens of millions of dollars. Jonatan Correa, aka 'Raid', has been granted bail on a $75,000 bond with a number of conditions attached.
The latest IP Crime and Enforcement Report, published by the UK Government, signals a wide variety of ongoing and emerging piracy threats. Pirate IPTV services remain a growing problem that could become worse with the rollout of 5G, it reads. There are also concerns about the use of cryptocurrencies and the growth of stream-rippers.
Supporting the worldwide teaching of these vital skills will help build a more equal society, but the COVID-19 crisis has disrupted education in nearly every country.
While Guilbeault is expected to hand new powers to the CRTC to establish new Internet regulations and mandated payments, there is a far better approach available to the government if it remains convinced that more financial support is needed for these sectors. Rather than adopt the Internet subsidy model that runs major policy and political risks, it should ensure that the technology companies pay their fair share of taxes that will go into general revenues. There needs to be an international consensus on how to do so, but there is considerable momentum behind a fairer allocation of the tax revenues from large technology company earnings. If the government wants to use some of those revenues in cultural or media support, it is free to do so without invoking the CRTC to establish cross-subsidies that will hurt both consumers and access to information and content online.
