For those unfamiliar with what NAS is, it is an abbreviation for Network Attached Storage. It is a storage solution that is affordable and can be quickly built by anyone. Furthermore, servers are pretty expensive, and for small businesses, NAS offers the perfect data storage. However, if you are familiar with Linux, chances are you already know what you are doing since Linux is mostly used by people familiar with the tech.
With that being said, we did add a few software solutions that do not require an expert level of comprehension. Plus, we also have some robust NAS apps that Linux enthusiasts might already be using, and if not, they will appreciate using it. So, without further ado, here is a list of the ten best Linux NAS Solutions that you should give a shot.
The last model is actually pretty much the same hardware as the first. But Dell has been selling Developer Edition models of select laptops that are powered by Ubuntu Linux for a number of years, and the newest version is one of the first Linux Laptops to ship with a Tiger Lake processor.
Linux marketshare for September 2020 fell dramatically on that of August, according to NetMarketShare who’ve just published their latest tracking stats.
September saw the third successive month of contraction for Linux’s share of desktop operating since posting huge leaps back in the spring.
Over the past few years, Microsoft has wholeheartedly embraced Linux and open source which is why the developer and writer Eric S. Raymond (ESR) believes that the next version of Windows could end up running entirely on Linux.
In a new blog post, ESR points to the fact that the software giant recently released its Windows System for Linux 2 (WSL2) and that it is currently porting its Edge browser to Linux as reasons why the company could one day retire the Windows kernel in favor of the Linux kernel.
The biggest news is the fact that the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop now features 11th Generation Intel Core 10nm “Tiger Lake” processors, which integrates the Intel Iris Xe graphics card for better gaming, as well as Thunderbolt 4 support for lightning fast data transfers.
Two processor options are available in this update, the 11th Generation Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor with 8MB cache and a clock speed of up to 4.2 GHz, as well as the 11th Generation Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor with 12MB cache and up to 4.7 GHz clock speed.
The Xen Cloud Platform is an open source virtualization product that provides both virtualization and cloud computing capabilities. The Xen Cloud Platform includes VM lifecycle management, resource pools, event tracking, Open vSwitch support, real-time performance monitoring and Storage XenMotion.
Similar to alternative open source virtualization products, the Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) relies on a hypervisor to perform virtualization operations in the data center. XCP enables IT administrators to consolidate server workloads, save power, increase cooling and improve management. Xen licenses XCP under the GNU General Public License, and it comes in two variants: XCP ISO for installing XCP onto admins' hosts from an ISO, and XCP toolstack packages for building an XCP-like system from specified packages distributed via admins' host OSes package manager.
When most people think of contributing to an open source project, I suspect they probably think of contributing code changes, new features, and bug fixes. As a software engineer and a long-time open source user and contributor, that's certainly what I thought. Although I have written a good quantity of documentation in different workflows, the massive size of the Kubernetes community was a new kind of "client." I just didn't know what to expect when Google asked my compatriots and me at Lion's Way to make much-needed updates to the Kubernetes Development Guide.
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One of the primary traits of the relationship between our writing and our traditional clients is that we always have one or two primary points of contact inside a company. These contacts are responsible for reviewing our writing and making sure it matches the voice of the company and targets the audience they're looking for. It can be stressful -- which is why I'm so glad that my writing partner, eagle-eyed reviewer, and bloodthirsty editor Joel handles most of the client contact.
I was surprised and delighted that all of the stress of client contact went out the window when working with the Kubernetes community.
It's been a long time since a GamingOnLinux Podcast and we're coming back, with quite a different style to what we were doing before. Technically this is 'Episode 22'.
Here are your Linux, Open Source and Privacy news for the end of september 2020! This time, we've got Geforce Now running on Linux, Microsoft Edge on our platform, tons more hardware supporting Linux, and Mozilla shutting down some more projects.
I recently switched over from Netrw to Fern.vim and then you guys started telling me about another vim file tree called coc explorer and I knew I had to give that one a try as well. They all have their limitations in some way so what you've got to do is find the one that fits you perfectly and I think this one is fairly close in that respect.
It's always great starting off a new month seeing new work on low-level kernel optimizations.
Jens Axboe, Facebook engineer and maintainer of the Linux block subsystem and lead IO_uring developer, sent out a new optimization today. The optimization is to decouple TASK_WORK TWA_SIGNAL handling from signals.
We are happy to announce a new release of the freely available cross-compilation toolchains we provide at toolchains.bootlin.com, version 2020.08-1.
The function tracer (ftrace) subsystem has become an essential part of the kernel's introspection tooling. Like many kernel subsystems, ftrace uses a ring buffer to quickly communicate events to user space; those events include a timestamp to indicate when they occurred. Until recently, the design of the ring buffer has led to the creation of inaccurate timestamps when events are generated from interrupt handlers. That problem has now been solved; read on for an in-depth discussion of how this issue came about and the form of its solution.
The discussion started out as a straightforward patch set from Thomas Gleixner making a minor change to how preemption counting is handled. The resulting discussion quickly spread out to cover a number of issues relevant to core-kernel development in surprisingly few messages; each of those topics merits a quick look, starting with how the preemption counter itself works. Sometimes a simple count turns out to not be as simple as it seems.
The kernel contains a wide variety of locking primitives; it can be hard to stay on top of all of them. So even veteran kernel developers might be forgiven for being unaware of the "seqcount latch" lock type or its use. While this lock type has existed in the kernel for several years, it is only being formalized with a proper type declaration in 5.10. So this seems like a good time to look at what these locks are and how they work.
Micron's Mpool is at the heart of their HSE Open-Source Storage Engine in providing an object storage media pool built atop block storage devices. Micron engineers are now looking at possibly having Mpool upstreamed into the mainline Linux kernel.
For those making use of the "MT76" WiFi driver for Mediatek MT76 series wireless support, the Linux 5.10 kernel should be a nice upgrade.
The MT76 Linux driver covers a wide range of Mediatek wireless ASICs and with Linux 5.10 has a number of improvements, particularly around better performance.
The third release candidate of OpenZFS 2.0 is now available for this open-source ZFS file-system implementation currently for Linux and FreeBSD platforms.
OpenZFS 2.0 is nearing its official release with support for Linux going back to old 3.10 era kernels while on FreeBSD the code can work on 12.1 through FreeBSD 13-HEAD. OpenZFS 2.0 is a huge update in mainlining the FreeBSD support, Zstd compression support, performance improvements throughout the code-base, persistent L2ARC, sequential resilvering, fast clone deletion, and a lot of other enhancements.
Mesa's Vulkan software implementation built atop LLVMpipe was developed as Vallium (Vulkan + Gallium3D) but has been renamed to Lavapipe within Mesa 20.3.
Vallium merged to mainline back in August for Mesa 20.3 as a still maturing Vulkan software implementation just like LLVMpipe is to OpenGL on CPUs. The name has always been a bit odd considering the similarities to Valium, a prescription drug for calming purposes around anxiety, muscle spasm, etc. But now ahead of the Mesa 20.3 stable release later this quarter this Vulkan software code has been renamed.
In addition to the last minute AMDGPU fixes for Linux 5.9 that include work on the RDNA2 new GPU support and promoting Navi 12 out of the experimental status, an initial batch of fixes for AMDGPU were also sent in to DRM-Next on Wednesday in addressing early fallout from the new feature code slated for Linux 5.10.
Enjoying YouTube without YouTube means you can watch and download all videos from it everywhere by alternative ways so that you don't run nonfree software or surrender your privacy. There are good news I want to share with you as there are already Invidious and CloudTube for computer users while NewPipe for phone users. They are all free libre open source software developed by community you can trust. I am happy with these solution so I want you to share my happiness as well. Enjoy!
FreeTube app is easy to install on Ubuntu computer. Download the program file (AppImage) and run it right away. You do not need complicated ways and commands at all. Here is the step by step tutorial with pictures for everyone who wants to run it. Enjoy!
Markdown is a plain text formatting syntax created by John Gruber in 2004. It’s designed to be easy-to-read and easy-to-write.
Readability is at the very heart of Markdown. It offers the advantages of plain text, provides a convenient format for writing for the web, but it’s not intended to be a replacement for HTML. Markdown is a writing format, not a publishing format. You control the display of the document; formatting words as bold or italic, adding images, and creating lists are just a few of the things we can do with Markdown. Mostly, Markdown is just regular text with a few non-alphabetic characters included, such as # or *.
Couch party game Unspottable is now confirmed to be releasing on Steam on October 22, and they recently expanded the demo again with a new level.
The idea is to have up to four people playing together either in local competitive multiplayer, or through Steam Remote Play (where only one person needs to own it) and across each level you need to pick out the other players from a crowd. It's a huge amount of fun, with each level mixing up the gameplay mechanics. Some levels have AI characters punching anyone near them, some have a big flashlight that reveals real players and much more. Genuinely good fun.
The app is called Identity and it’s built in GTK (which is always great to see) and is, in my opinion, a must-have for content makers and video editors. Using GStreamer as its media-handling backend, Identity lets you compare the quality (or play spot the differences) between multiple videos or images.
Unlike playing two videos side by side (which is how I would normally compare) both clips play at the same time, in sync, and in the same window, controlled by the same seek bar. You switch between them using on-screen tabs or keyboard shortcuts (e.g., 1 to show video one, 2 to show video two, and so on).
In this part I’ll go through the actual porting process of the libebur128 C code to Rust, the approach I’ve chosen with various examples and a few problems I was running into.
It will be rather technical. I won’t explain details about how the C code works but will only focus on the aspects that are relevant for porting to Rust, otherwise this blog post would become even longer than it already is.
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This step could’ve been skipped if all I cared about was having a C API for the ported code later, or if I wanted to work with the tests of the C library for validation and worry about calling it from Rust at a later point. In this case I had already done safe Rust bindings around the C library before, and having a Rust API made it much easier to write tests that could be used during the porting and that could be automatically run at each step.
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Also the dependency on clang makes it hard to run bindgen as part of every build, so instead I’ve made sure that the code generated by bindgen is platform independent and included it inside the repository. If you use bindgen, please try to do the same. Requiring clang for building your crate makes everything more complicated for your users, especially if they’re unfortunate enough to use Windows.
I just merged a new regex implementation for GtkSourceView’s language specifications. Previously it used GRegex (based on PCRE) and now it uses PCRE2 directly similar to what VTE did.
Not only does this get us on a more modern PCRE implementation, but it also allows us to use new features such as a JIT.
JITs are interesting in that you can trade a little bit of memory and time to generate executable code upfront for huge gains in execution time. Given that you only compile language specifications once per regex, but execute them many, many times, it’s a worthwhile feature for GtkSoureView.
Flexbox had a lot of early problems, but by mid-May 2020 where our story begins, both Firefox and Chromium had done a lot of work on improving things with this feature. WebKit, however, hadn’t caught up. Prioritizing the incredible amounts of work a web engine requires is difficult. The WebKit implementation was still passable for very many (most) cases of the core features, and it didn’t have problems that caused crashes or something that urgently demanded attention, so engineers dedicated their limited time toward other things. The net result, however, was that as this choice repeated many times, the comparative state of WebKit’s flexbox implementation had fallen behind pretty significantly.
GNOME Internet Radio Locator 3.4.0 features updated language translations, new, improved map marker palette and now as well as C-SPAN from United States Supreme Court, Congress and Senate, also includes streaming radio from Washington, United States of America; WAMU/NPR, London, United Kingdom; BBC World Service, Berlin, Germany; Radio Eins, Norway; NRK, and Paris, France; France Inter/Info/Culture, as well as 119 other radio stations from around the world with live audio streaming implemented through GStreamer.
Deepin Project Team has been released and announcement the latest version of beautiful Linux distribution, Deepin 20. This release powered by stable Debian 10.5 Buster series and supports dual Kernel. That means while installing you get to choose which Kernel you want. Deepin 20 offers you Kernel 5.4 (LTS) and Kernel 5.7 (Stable). This allows support of a wide range of hardware, graphics card while improving the stability of your desktop.
Deepin 20 has improvised the design style of Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE) and system installer. To make desktop more user-friendly and good-looking, v20 has introduced ingenious colorful icons, fresh graphics interface, natural and smooth animation effects, unique rounded-corner windows, and an exquisite multitask view.
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation.
Waterfox Classic is a free and open source web browser based on Firefox but with additional optimizations.
For third sprint in a row, the YaST Team has been focusing on enhancing both AutoYaST and the management of storage devices, together with some improvements in our development infrastructure. Let’s take a quick glance at some of the results.
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As we usually remind our readers, these blog posts only show a very small part of all the work, improvements and bug fixes we put into YaST on every sprint. So don’t forget to keep your systems updated and to stay tuned to this blog and all other openSUSE channels for more information!
Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced collaboration with Samsung to deliver 5G network solutions built on Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s most comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes platform, and will help service providers make 5G a reality across use cases, including 5G core, edge computing, IoT, machine learning and more.
Red Hat’s Quarkus framework modernizes Java software by making it cloud-native
Revolutionary open-source project helps applications consume 1/10th the memory and startup 300x faster when compared to traditional Java
Quarkus helps Java maintain its platform leader status through modern innovation designed to meet the fast-paced, ever-changing demands of today’s businesses
Inventors don’t always get the credit they deserve, even for world-changing breakthroughs.
Season 6 of Command Line Heroes tells the stories of ingenious inventors who haven’t been given their full due. These heroes did nothing less than create new industries, dazzle our imaginations, and reshaped the world as we know it.
The first episode drops October 13, 2020. Subscribe today and sign up for the newsletter to get the latest updates.
Disabling SELinux is, perhaps sadly in some ways, a time-honored tradition for users of Fedora, RHEL, and other distributions that feature the security mechanism. Over the years, SELinux has gotten easier to tolerate due to the hard work of its developers and the distributions, but there are still third-party packages that recommend or require disabling SELinux in order to function. Up until fairly recently, the kernel has supported disabling SELinux at run time, but that mechanism has been deprecated—in part due to another kernel security feature. Now Fedora is planning to eliminate the ability to disable SELinux at run time in Fedora 34, which sparked some discussion in its devel mailing list.
SELinux is a Linux Security Module (LSM) for enforcing mandatory access control (MAC) rules. But the "module" part of the LSM name has been a misnomer since a 2007 change to make the interface static and remove the option to load LSMs at run time. So kernels are built with a list of supported LSMs, and they can be enabled or disabled at boot time using kernel command-line options. Certain architectures had bootloaders that made it difficult for users to add parameters to the command line, though, so the SELinux developers added a way to disable it at run time. The need for that functionality has faded, and removing it will allow another kernel hardening feature to be used.
The post-init read-only memory feature provides a way to mark certain kernel data structures as read-only after the kernel has initialized them. The idea is that various data structures are prime targets for kernel exploits; function-pointer structures, like those used by the LSM hooks, are of particular interest. So the LSM hooks were protected that way. However, that hardening is only enabled if the ability to disable SELinux at run time is not present in the kernel. The presence of the SELinux feature is governed by the CONFIG_SECURITY_SELINUX_DISABLE kernel build option.
In order to get that hardening feature, Ben Cotton posted a proposal for Fedora 34 to remove the support for disabling SELinux at run time. The proposal is owned by Petr Lautrbach and Ondrej Mosnacek; it would migrate users to the selinux=0 command-line option if they are currently disabling SELinux via the SELINUX=disabled setting in /etc/selinux/config. The proposal, which has been updated on the Fedora wiki based on feedback, would not change the ability to switch SELinux between enforcing and permissive modes at run time using setenforce
The 5.6 kernel deprecated the run-time-disable feature for SELinux. The kernel currently prints a message to that effect, but there are plans to make using it even more painful by sleeping for five seconds when it is used. It may get even more obnoxious over time; eventually the plan is to remove it altogether. Red Hat distributions (Fedora, CentOS, RHEL) are the only known users of the feature at this point, so once they have all moved away, the feature can be removed from the kernel. RHEL and CentOS systems will stick around for a lot longer than Fedora systems, since it is only supported for a bit over year. But Red Hat will just continue to maintain the feature in the RHEL/CentOS kernels; removing the run-time disable from Fedora presumably means that the next RHEL/CentOS major release will no longer support it either.
Autonomous driving is movie-level science fiction poised to become our everyday reality. To remain competitive and relevant, manufacturers are employing the latest autonomous capabilities and partnering to develop self-driving vehicles. There is no shortage of investor or consumer enthusiasm.
Self-driving vehicles bask in the media spotlight, so it’s easy to overlook how hard automotive IT teams are working to transform the underlying infrastructure and processes needed to create that reality. The goal is to both support autonomous driving capabilities and, perhaps more importantly, improve their organizational agility, security, data focus, and ultimately, innovation.
The 9th monthly Sparky project and donate report of 2020:
● Linux kernel updated up to version 5.8.12 & 5.9-rc5 ● added to repos: Browsh, Ciano, Brackets, Cherrytree ● Sparky 2020.09 of the rolling line released
Do not configure Mailman to replace the mail domains in From: headers. Instead, try out my small new program which can make your Mailman transparent, so that DKIM signatures survive.
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DKIM is a new anti-spoofing mechanism for Internet email, intended to help fight spam. DKIM, paired with the DMARC policy system, has been remarkably successful at stemming the flood of joe-job spams. As usually deployed, DKIM works like this:
When a message is originally sent, the author's MUA sends it to the MTA for their From: domain for outward delivery. The From: domain mailserver calculates a cryptographic signature of the message, and puts the signature in the headers of the message.
Obviously not the whole message can be signed, since at the very least additional headers need to be added in transit, and sometimes headers need to be modified too. The signing MTA gets to decide what parts of the message are covered by the signature: they nominate the header fields that are covered by the signature, and specify how to handle the body.
A recipient MTA looks up the public key for the From: domain in the DNS, and checks the signature. If the signature doesn't match, depending on policy (originator's policy, in the DNS, and recipient's policy of course), typically the message will be treated as spam.
Here is my transparent report for my work on the Debian Long Term Support (LTS) and Debian Extended Long Term Support (ELTS), which extend the security support for past Debian releases, as a paid contributor.
In September, the monthly sponsored hours were split evenly among contributors depending on their max availability - I was assigned 19.75h for LTS (out of my 30 max; all done) and 20h for ELTS (out of my 20 max; all done).
I’m attempting to step down from the Outreach team, which is more work than I thought it would be. I had a very complicated relationship with the Outreach team. When no one else was there to take on making sure we did GSoC and Outreachy, I stepped up. It wasn’t really what I wanted to be doing, but it’s important. I’m glad to have more time to focus on other things that feel more aligned with what I’m trying to work on right now.
As the Linux Mint team is progressing to release the first point version of Linux Mint 20 series, its founder and project leader Clement Lefebvre has finally revealed the codename for Linux Mint 20.1 as “Ulyssa”. He has also announced that Mint 20.1 will most probably arrive in mid-December (just before Christmas).
Until you wait for its beta release to test Linux Mint 20.1, Clement has also shared some great news regarding the new updates and features that you’ll get in Mint 20.1.
First, packaging of open source Chromium web browser and its updates directly through the official Mint repositories. As the team noticed delays between the official release and the version available in Linux distros, it has now decided to set up their own packaging and build Chromium package based on upstream code, along with some patches from Debian and Ubuntu as well.
Ok, now I have decided to switch to Linux but here comes the first question. Which distro will satisfy my needs both in terms of GUI and other aspects? Linux is not something new to me since I have been working with RHEL based distros in my work for the past 4 years with the command-line.
I know RHEL based distros are good for enterprises but not for personalized desktop environments, at least that’s what I am thinking till now. So I started my research to find the distro that should be easy for me to use and at the same time should have good community support if in case I ran into some problem. Among many Linux distros, I drilled down my list to 4 flavors.
Linux Mint is on a mission to make sure you get your to-dos done!
The Ubuntu-based distro is scouting feedback on a new “Sticky Notes” app that’s being built as a side project within the Linux Mint community. The app is designed for Linux Mint though will presumably work elsewhere, just like Mint’s new Warpinator tool does.
Although in early development the app already looks the part. Visually it resembles a cross between the GNOME To-Do app Ubuntu ships with, and macOS’s long-surviving ‘Stickies’ tool.
Development on Ubuntu 20.10 kicked off earlier this year, shortly after the launch of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa), but since it’s not a long-term supported (LTS) series, there aren’t any major new features and enhancements to be expected in the upcoming release.
The biggest things you already know about them. Ubuntu 20.10 will be shipping with the latest and greatest Linux 5.8 kernel series, which, of course, brings better hardware support, as well as the latest and greatest GNOME 3.38 desktop environment, which I took for a first look this week.
Ubuntu 20.10 is due for its official release on 22 October while the beta serves as the prime opportunity for testing it to avoid any last minute snafus. Ubuntu 20.10 is riding high atop the stable Linux 5.8 kernel, migrated to the GCC 10 compiler this cycle, Active Directory support was added to the installer, continued work on the opt-in ZFS root file-system support, restricting access to dmesg, and on the desktop side is rounded out by the recently released GNOME 3.38 that has many improvements in its own right.
The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the Beta release of the Ubuntu 20.10 Desktop, Server, and Cloud products.
20.10, codenamed "Groovy Gorilla", continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.
This Beta release includes images from not only the Ubuntu Desktop, Server, and Cloud products, but also the Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, UbuntuKylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu flavours.
The Beta images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper image build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of 20.10 that should be representative of the features intended to ship with the final release expected on October 22nd, 2020.
Ubuntu, Ubuntu Server, Cloud Images: Groovy Beta includes updated versions of most of our core set of packages, including a current 5.8 kernel, and much more.
To upgrade to Ubuntu 20.10 Beta from Ubuntu 20.04, follow these instructions:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GroovyUpgrades
The Ubuntu 20.10 Beta images can be downloaded at:
http://releases.ubuntu.com/20.10/ (Ubuntu and Ubuntu Server on x86)
This Ubuntu Server image features the next generation Subiquity server installer, bringing the comfortable live session and speedy install of the Ubuntu Desktop to server users at last.
Additional images can be found at the following links:
http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/daily/server/groovy/current/ (Cloud Images) http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/20.10/beta/ (Non-x86)
As fixes will be included in new images between now and release, any daily cloud image from today or later (i.e. a serial of 20200930 or higher) should be considered a Beta image. Bugs found should be filed against the appropriate packages or, failing that, the cloud-images project in Launchpad.
The full release notes for Ubuntu 20.10 Beta can be found at:
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/groovy-gorilla-release-notes
Kubuntu: Kubuntu is the KDE based flavour of Ubuntu. It uses the Plasma desktop and includes a wide selection of tools from the KDE project.
The Beta images can be downloaded at: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/20.10/beta/
Lubuntu: Lubuntu is a flavor of Ubuntu which uses the Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment (LXQt). The project’s goal is to provide a lightweight yet functional Linux distribution based on a rock-solid Ubuntu base.
The Beta images can be downloaded at: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/20.10/beta/
Ubuntu Budgie: Ubuntu Budgie is community developed desktop, integrating Budgie Desktop Environment with Ubuntu at its core.
The Beta images can be downloaded at: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-budgie/releases/20.10/beta/
UbuntuKylin: UbuntuKylin is a flavor of Ubuntu that is more suitable for Chinese users.
The Beta images can be downloaded at: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntukylin/releases/20.10/beta/
Ubuntu MATE: Ubuntu MATE is a flavor of Ubuntu featuring the MATE desktop environment.
The Beta images can be downloaded at: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mate/releases/20.10/beta/
Ubuntu Studio: Ubuntu Studio is a flavor of Ubuntu that provides a full range of multimedia content creation applications for each key workflow: audio, graphics, video, photography and publishing.
The Beta images can be downloaded at: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/20.10/beta/
Xubuntu: Xubuntu is a flavor of Ubuntu that comes with Xfce, which is a stable, light and configurable desktop environment.
The Beta images can be downloaded at: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/20.10/beta/
Regular daily images for Ubuntu, and all flavours, can be found at: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com
Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for clients, servers and clouds, with a fast and easy installation and regular releases. A tightly-integrated selection of excellent applications is included, and an incredible variety of add-on software is just a few clicks away.
Professional technical support is available from Canonical Limited and hundreds of other companies around the world. For more information about support, visit https://ubuntu.com/support
If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at: https://ubuntu.com/community/participate
Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions really help us to improve this and future releases of Ubuntu. Instructions can be found at: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs
You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this beta release on our website, IRC channel and wiki.
To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu's very low volume announcement list at:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce
On behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team, Ã Âukasz 'sil2100' Zemczak
With the final Ubuntu 20.10 release fast approaching it’s time to get testing — yes, its beta release time!
Developers and non-developers alike can download the new Ubuntu 20.10 beta to try out all of Groovy’s proposed changes (which we recap below) ahead of the final stable release due later this month.
This is the only beta release planned for the Groovy development cycle (though a release candidate will arrive in few weeks time) but if you do install it you can upgrade to Ubuntu 20.10 final later this month.
The Librem AweSIM is the latest string in the social-purpose company’s bow. It costs $99 a month. For this price buyers get a new sim, a new phone number, and unlimited talk, texts, and data (including over 5G where available) that works with the Librem 5 phone.
And since the cellular account is registered under Purism’s name rather than yours it could provide you with an additional later of privacy protection from nefarious carrier tactics.
Purism say the plan can be cancelled at any time too, meaning you won’t be locked into a 12 or 24-month contract.
Kontron announced a Linux-friendly “COMe-cTL6” COM Express Compact Type 6 module and “VX3060” VPX blade with Intel’s 11th Gen Tiger Lake CPUs. A 3.5-inch SBC is in the works.
GUI toolkit for Linux from Microchip Technology enhances 32bit microprocessor capabilities for low- and mid-range- resolution graphical displays
Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and interactive touchscreen displays provide intuitive user experiences in applications from robotic and machine controls to medical user interfaces, automotive instrumentation and home and building automation systems.
We previously covered Charmed Labs PIXY2 computer vision camera based on an NXP LPC4330 microcontrollers that worked with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and other development boards.
The company is now back with a fully integrated more powerful solution with Vizy AI camera featuring a Raspberry Pi 4 SBC with up to 8GB RAM.
Stealth is a Canadian company that specializes in rugged displays, computers, and other ruggedized electronics for the industrial, defense, and marine markets. The company published a press release for a new rugged fanless mini PC equipped with a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce graphics card, and older Intel 6th and 7th Generation Core i5, i7 & Xeon processors.
The growing complexity in embedded systems has accelerated the need for scalability and flexibility in today’s software development environments. This is especially true for the development of automotive embedded systems, where the Renesas RH850 MCUs are used. IAR Systems’ build tools for Linux streamlines the building and testing processes, making it possible for organizations to optimize resources when it comes to the time developers spend in their projects, as well as to manage and utilize licenses and servers in an optimal way. With the integrated static analysis tool C-STAT, developers can ensure code quality throughout the development and testing process. C-STAT proves code alignment with industry standards like MISRA C:2012, MISRA C++:2008 and MISRA C:2004, and also detects defects, bugs, and security vulnerabilities as defined by CERT C and the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE).
Over the years, Bootlin has grown a significant expertise in U-Boot and Linux support for flash memory devices. Thanks to this expertise, we have recently been in charge of rewriting and upstreaming a driver for the Arasan NAND controller, which is used in a number of Xilinx Zynq SoCs. It turned out that supporting this NAND controller had some interesting challenges to handle its ECC engine peculiarities. In this blog post, we would like to give some background about ECC issues with NAND flash devices, and then dive into the specific issues that we encountered with the Arasan NAND controller, and how we solved them.
Not only are mosquitoes extremely annoying, they can also carry deadly diseases like malaria, yellow fever, dengue, and the Zika virus. In order to prevent epidemics, Pranav Agarwal has developed the Solar Scare Mosquito — a solar-powered repellent device that allows the insects to lay their larvae at dusk and dawn, then produces intermittent ripples during the day to prevent the offspring from breathing at the surface of standing water.
A finalist in this year’s Hackaday Prize, Agarwal is currently developing the second version of the platform that will be able to sense mosquito presence via a built-in microphone, and even help determine the sex and type of the pest by its wingbeat frequency.
The PinePhone is one of the first smartphones designed specifically for open source software enthusiasts. It’s an affordable phone with a starting price of $150 that ships with a GNU/Linux distribution pre-installed, but which can also boot from a microSD card if you want to try a different operating system (or 13) before deciding whether to flash it to internal storage.
It’s not a particularly powerful phone, and the software available for it is very much a work in progress. But there are a lot of developers and early adopters working to help make Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS, Arch, Manjaro, openSUSE, Sailfish OS, Mobian, and other open source operating systems feel at home on smartphones like the PinePhone (and its much pricier cousin/competitor, the Purism Librem 5).
It is a pretty rare event to see a nearly 21-year-old bug be addressed—many projects are nowhere near that old for one thing—but that is just what has occurred for the Mozilla Thunderbird email application. An enhancement request filed at the end of 1999 asked for a plugin to support email encryption, but it has mostly languished since. The Enigmail plugin did come along to fill the gap by providing OpenPGP support using GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG), but was never part of Thunderbird. As part of Thunderbird 78, though, OpenPGP is now fully supported within the mail user agent (MUA).
The enhancement request actually asked for Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) support; PGP is, of course, the progenitor of OpenPGP. The standards effort that resulted in OpenPGP started in 1997. Back in 1999, PGP was the only real choice for email encryption, though the initial version of GnuPG had been released a few months before the request.
Early on, the main concerns expressed in the bug tracker were about the legality of shipping cryptographic code. The US government's attempts to restrict the export of cryptographic systems, known as the "crypto wars", were still fresh in the minds of many. It was not entirely clear that adding "munitions-grade crypto" to a MUA like Thunderbird was legal or wise. Early in 2000, the US revised its export-control regulations, which removed that particular concern.
There was work done toward adding support for OpenPGP and Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME), which is another email encryption standard, over 2000 and 2001, but the code never actually landed. Thunderbird (called "mailnews" in those days) was in fire-fighting mode; fixing bugs and getting basic functionality working took precedence over new features like encryption. There was also a need to design a reasonable plugin mechanism.
Eventually, Enigmail showed up, which took some of the pressure off the Mozilla developers. Enigmail could be used on all of the supported platforms for Thunderbird to encrypt and decrypt PGP-style email (either inline or PGP/MIME) using GnuPG. Its initial maintainer, Ramalingam Saravanan, updated the bug with new information about Enigmail several times.
In the bug, multiple people suggested that Enigmail be incorporated into Thunderbird and the Enigmail developers were not opposed. In 2003, Patrick Brunschwig, who was a new maintainer for the plugin, said that doing so would help in getting rid of some of the "hacks" that were done to make Enigmail work with Thunderbird. But nothing like that ever happened.
In 2018, we launched Firefox Extension Workshop, a site for Firefox-specific extension development documentation. The site was originally built using the Ruby-based static site generator Jekyll. We had initially selected Jekyll for this project because we wanted to make it easy for editors to update the site using Markdown, a lightweight markup language.
Once the site had been created and more documentation was added, the build times started to grow. Every time we made a change to the site and wanted to test it locally, it would take ten minutes or longer for the site to build. The builds took so long that we needed to increase the default time limit for CircleCI, our continuous integration and continuous delivery service, because builds were failing when they ran past ten minutes with no output.
For the last several years, Mozilla has participated in the Google Summer of Code and Outreachy internship programs. Both programs offer paid three-month internship opportunities to students or other industry newcomers to work on a programming project with an open source organization. This year, we were joined by Lisa Chan and Atique Ahmed Ziad, from Outreachy and Google Summer of Code, respectively.
With mentorship from addons.mozilla.org (AMO) engineers Bob Silverberg and Andrew Williamson, Lisa built a Homepage Curation Tool to help our editorial staff easily make changes to the AMO homepage. Atique was mentored by Firefox engineers Luca Greco and Rob Wu, and senior add-on admin reviewer Andreas Wagner, and he developed a privileged extension for Firefox that monitors the activity of other installed extensions. This prototype is the starting point of a new feature that will help extension developers, add-on developers, and Firefox engineers investigate bugs in extensions or in the browser’s WebExtensions APIs.
It’s noisy out there. We are inundated with sensational headlines every minute, of every day. You almost could make a full-time job of sorting the fun, interesting or useful memes, feeds and reels from those that should be trashed. It’s hard to know what to pay attention to, and where to put your energy. With so much noise, chaos and division, it seems that one of the only things we all have in common is relying on the internet to help us navigate everything that’s happening in the world, and in our lives.
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You probably don’t know the name Mozilla. You might know Firefox. But we’ve been here, fighting for a better internet, for almost twenty years. We’re a non-profit backed organization that exists for the sole purpose of protecting the internet. Our products, like the Firefox browser, are designed with your privacy in mind. We’re here to prove that you can have an ethical tech business that works to make the internet a better place for all of us. We stand for people, not profit.
But we can’t fight this fight alone. Big tech has gotten too big. We need you. We need people who understand what it is to be part of something larger than themselves. People who love the internet and appreciate its magic. People who are looking for a company they can support because we are all on the same side.
We celebrate our community of translators, which is providing LibreOffice in 119 different languages (with other 26 hopefully becoming available in the future), more than any other software, fulfilling one of the most important objectives of The Document Foundation: “to support the preservation of mother tongues by encouraging all peoples to translate, document, support, and promote our office productivity tools in their native language”. Today, there are over 4 billion people in the world who can use LibreOffice in their native language, and this is an achievement which deserves a recognition.
Javier Sepúlveda will give a talk in Spanish about GNU Taler at Valencia at an event organized by the GNU/Linux group from Valencia, which is a public organization supported by the Valencia City Hall to promote urban innovation and entrepreneurship.
binutils-2.35.1 bison-3.7.2 dico-2.10 gama-2.10 global-6.6.5 gnuastro-0.13 gnunet-0.13.3 gnupg-2.2.23 gnu-pw-mgr-2.7.2 grep-3.5 parallel-20200922 pspp-1.4.1
Software Freedom Conservancy, the only organization actively engaged in General Public License (GPL) enforcement and compliance work for Linux, announces today a new strategy toward improving compliance and the freedom of users of devices that contain Linux-based systems. The new work has received an initial grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC).
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We take this holistic approach because compliance is not an end in itself, but rather a lever to help people advance technology for themselves and the world. Bradley Kuhn, Conservancy’s Policy Fellow and Hacker-in-Residence remarked: “GPL enforcement began as merely an education process more than twenty years ago. We all had hoped that industry-wide awareness of copyleft’s essential role in spreading software freedom would yield widespread, spontaneous compliance. We were simply wrong about that. Today, we observe almost universal failure in compliance throughout the (so-called) Internet of Things (IoT) market. Only unrelenting enforcement that holds companies accountable can change this abysmal reality. ARDC, a visionary grant-maker, recognizes the value of systemic enforcement that utilizes the legal system to regain software freedom. That process also catalyzes community-led projects to build liberated firmware for many devices.”
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Rosy Wolfe, ARDC’s Executive Director commented: “GPL enforcement is notoriously difficult, and yet it is necessary to deter self-serving actors who want the benefits of community software but won’t follow the rules. Thus Conservancy’s efforts in this arena are critical, and we are honored to support them in this work.”
The holy grail of computer languages is to write code once and have it deploy effortlessly everywhere. Java likes to take credit for the idea, but UCSD P-Code was way before that and you could argue that mainframes had I/O abstraction like Fortran unit numbers even earlier. More modern efforts include Qt, GTK, and other things. Naturally, all of these fall short in some way. Now Google enters the fray with Flutter.
Flutter isn’t new, but in the past, it only handled Android and iOS. Now it can target desktop platforms and can even produce JavaScript. We haven’t played with the system enough to say how successful it is, but you can try it in your browser if you want some first-hand experience.
When you need a unified way to install CRuby and alternative Ruby implementations these days, it comes down to ruby-build and ruby-install. Is there a difference?
Back in April was the provisional release of OpenCL 3.0 with making CL 2.x features optional while adding async DMA extensions and more. Today the finalized version of OpenCL 3.0 has been released plus also introducing an official Khronos OpenCL SDK.
Following yesterday's release of the finalized OpenCL 3.0 specification, open-source Intel developers have released OpenCL Intercept Layer 3.0.
The Intel OpenCL Intercept Layer is one of the company's efforts around helping to improve debugging and analyzing of OpenCL application performance. This cross-platform layer intercepts the OpenCL API calls through the OpenCL ICD loader to analyze/debug CL applications.
I've not spent too much time using RR, but I like what I see. The program uses the familiar, robust fundamentals from gdb, which means you don't need to re-learn Linux troubleshooting from scratch. On top of that, it adds a layer of powerful flexibility, allowing you to minimize the time pressure that is often associated with IT problems - like software crashing. You can record and replay at your own convenience. This also means you're more likely to find the issue, especially if you're dealing with complicated, long executions of tasks.
Hopefully, you will find this short tutorial useful. In a world where there are ten chefs to every meal, and fifty redundant Linux tools to every need, it's nice to see software that offers meaningful extra functionality rather than a rehash of the same old. Well, you now have another utility in your arsenal, which also means one less excuse for not being able to resolve those pesky software problems quickly enough. That's how it works, no.
It’s no secret we’re evolving in a world that’s highly tech-driven. And given the global pandemic, this is probably the best time to pick up a new skill and learn programming.
While many are often intimidated by programming, opting for a practice-based approach can actively steepen the learning curve. Plus, this is definitely a skill worth investing your time and energy in, given that the IT sector has not been severely hit by the pandemic compared to other industries.
How Do I Learn Programming in 2020?
After all my years of programming and teaching people how to code, I’ve learned a few things. Most of us think that if you are going to achieve any success as a learner you should dedicate as much time, commitment, and perseverance as possible, and that’s all you need. Honestly, that’s not totally correct. At the end of the day, anyone can learn how to program. It all boils down to the right approach to learning.
Rest assured, in this article I will navigate you through some tips and hints based on my own experiences and struggles. I hope you’ll enjoy it!
In my last post, a meta issue for modules: bug tracking, I had noticed a problem with the bug tracking link for a module and discussed that problem. In the comments, one person said he preferred rt.cpan.org. I began thinking about where to have bugs tracked for my modules. Since I have not published one yet, this is something I would like to know. I would like to know the good and bad and ugly of the various systems to make a more educated choice on issue tracking before my first release.
In this issue of Wing Tips we revisit how to use multiple concurrent selections in Wing's editor. These can be used to replace all occurrences of some text or to apply the same edits to any number of selections, for example surround them all with quotes or remove common surrounding characters. Multiple selections can be created from the keyboard, from the mouse, or by using commands that select all occurrences of some text found within a selected code.
Python 3.9.0rc2 was released on September 17, with the final version scheduled for October 5, roughly a year after the release of Python 3.8. Python 3.9 will come with new operators for dictionary unions, a new parser, two string operations meant to eliminate some longstanding confusion, as well as improved time-zone handling and type hinting. Developers may need to do some porting for code coming from Python 3.8 or earlier, as the new release has removed several previously-deprecated features still lingering from Python 2.7.
Python 3.9 marks the start of a new release cadence. Up until now, Python has done releases on an 18-month cycle. Starting with Python 3.9, the language has shifted to an annual release cycle as defined by PEP 602 ("Annual Release Cycle for Python").
A table provided by the project shows how Python performance has changed in a number of areas since Python 3.4. It is interesting to note that Python 3.9 is worse than 3.8 on almost every benchmark in that table, though it does perform generally better than 3.7. That said, it is claimed that several Python constructs such as range, tuple, list, and dict will see improved performance in Python 3.9, though no specific performance benchmarks are given. The boost is credited to the language making more use of a fast-calling protocol for CPython that is described in PEP 590 ("Vectorcall: a fast calling protocol for CPython").
We are now on the home straight leading up to the 5.8 release. However, there will be some more changes over the next few weeks.
In this episode, I integrated the bandit static analysis tool to do automated security checking of my code before each commit. We talked about pre-commit and how to add in a new hook. After finishing that tool addition, we got deep into Django while removing some messages inserted by django-allauth on sign up.
We began by talking about what the bandit tool does and how it works. Once I explained bandit, I focused on the bandit documentation to see how to add the tool. We found the pre-commit config hook in the bandit README docs.
In the previous two essays I showed how to search chembl_27.fps to find records with similar fingerprints to a query fingerprint, then how to implement a nearest-neighbor search and replace Tanimoto similarity with cosine similarity. The final program took about 5 seconds.
In this essay I'll show how to increase the search performance by shifting more of the work to a load step. This sort of precomputation can be useful if the load step is done once, with the extra overhead shared over multiple searches.
In yesterday's essay I changed the scan-based Tanimoto search to an in-memory search and showed that after a start-up cost of about 5 seconds I was able to do about 2 searches per second of the 1.9 million ChEMBL fingerprints.
I ended by pointing out how chemfp was over 100x faster.
Hi folks. I've uploaded a fast-paced, seven part intro to python for developers who already know at least one other turing complete, imperative programming language, to youtube. I hope people find it useful.
The PHP team is pleased to announce the eighth testing release of PHP 8.0.0, Release Candidate 1.
At this time, we're not planning to adjust the GA date, however this may change during the course of the RC cycle. The updated release schedule can, as always, be found on the PHP Wiki page about the PHP 8.0.
The first release candidate of the big PHP 8.0 is now available for testing.
PHP 8.0 is continuing to enhance the performance with the introduction of the PHP JIT and other optimizations as a big upgrade over PHP 7.x and now an insanely different beast from the sluggish days of PHP 5.x. PHP 8.0 also brings the JSON support into PHP core rather than an optional extension, improves the PHP GD imaging library, cryptographic message syntax support within PHP OpenSSL, PHP Zip improvements, and countless other enhancements. The PHP language now supports union types, the nullsafe operator, attributes, match expressions, and more.
Recent research from Accenture and Girls Who Code showed that half of women who go into tech drop out by the age of 35.
The “Resetting Tech Culture” report said that women “have actually fallen further behind at the very moment when tech roles are surging and vital to the U.S. economy and its continued leadership around the globe. Unbelievably, the proportion of women to men in tech roles has declined over the past 35 years.” Additionally, the report said:
Google and Facebook have selected the Zephyr Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) as one of the key technologies that will be used to build their next generation of infrastructure and products. They will collaborate with other Platinum members of The Zephyrâ⢠Project, an open source project at the Linux Foundation that builds a safe, secure and flexible RTOS for the Internet of Things (IoT) in space-constrained devices, including Intel, Nordic Semiconductor, NXP and Oticon to ensure IoT security and critical safety challenges
Linux 5.10 is set to bring a major rework to the Spectre mitigation handling for the 64-bit ARM architecture.
Arm Linux developers have been working on "Ghostbusters" as a major rework to the ARM64 mitigation code around Spectre Variant Two and Spectre Variant Four.
The Apple T2 security chip has finally been jailbroken! Here’s all you need to know about it.
... Linux-based machines, such as routers with ill-configured SSH service.
Today we are joining with organizations from across the world that have endorsed the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP)’s International Day of Action on U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). The International Day of Action on AFRICOM aims to raise the public’s awareness about the U.S. military’s existence in Africa, and how the presence of U.S. forces exacerbates violence and instability throughout the continent.
Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins noted, “The US military is in Africa to protect US-based global corporations and banks with interests in oil, minerals, cheap labor, and illegitimate debt collection. The US is not there to protect the people in America or in Africa. The real security threat that Americans and Africans share is the climate crisis. The US should disband AFRICOM and offer aid in a Global Green New Deal to help Africa leap out the destructive 19th century fossil-fuel age into a sustainable 21st century solar age. Africa needs reparations for centuries of slavery, colonization, and today’s neocolonial exploitation, not more outside military intervention. The most effective way for the US to promote peace and prosperity in Africa and the world is with aid, not arms.”
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The United States always had its hand in the exploitation of Africa, but it has never been widely regarded as a colonizer. This country benefits from its inaccurate reputation as a benevolent justice-loving democratic nation. However, the United States has played a leading role in maintaining an imperialist grip on Africa.
Green Party Vice Presidential candidate Angela Walker expressed, “I cannot fight for the liberation of Black people inside the United States without acknowledging the oppression of African peoples under U.S. imperialism. The same capitalist forces that seek to deny the right of self-determination to Africans are the same forces that murder Black Americans with impunity. On this day, the Hawkins-Walker campaign and I personally are proud to stand with the Black Alliance for Peace in calling for the end of AFRICOM. We add our voices to demand the complete withdrawal of US forces from Africa, the demilitarization of the African continent, and the closure of US bases around the world. We amplify the demand that the Congressional Black Caucus oppose AFRICOM and conduct hearings on AFRICOM’s impact on the African continent, with full participation of members of US and African civil society. There is no liberation for Black people on US soil without an end to the oppression of Africans throughout the Diaspora.”
Putting a number to this is interesting, but what’s more important at this point—since everyone agrees on the importance of innovation—is figuring out where innovation comes from. For example, do big multinational corporations produce most of our innovation from their well-oiled R&D teams, or are small, scrappy startups responsible for most of it? I would personally like to believe in the scrappy startups, but there’s a fair amount of evidence suggesting that large firms in concentrated industries produce a considerable amount of innovation too (for example, see here, here, and here).
The Green Party of New Jersey is excited to welcome the Original Green New Dealer to the Garden State. Howie Hawkins. Howie was the first candidate to run on a fully developed Green New Deal in 2010, combining an Economic Bill of Rights that focused on jobs, income, housing, health care, and education with 100% clean energy by 2030 in order to reconstruct the economy for economic justice and climate safety. He is also one of the original Greens in the United States, having participated in the first national meeting to organize a US Green Party in St. Paul, Minnesota in August 1984. In July. he was nominated to be the 2020 Presidential candidate for the Green Party.
Meet Howie in person at a safe, socially distanced outdoor Meet & Greet in Garwood, New Jersey on Friday, October 2nd at 7 p.m. Howie will talk about his historic Left Unity campaign and his vision for tackling problems that the Democrats and the Republicans won’t touch – from re-building the economy from the economic crash brought on by the coronavirus to tackling the environmental crisis looming from climate change, Howie will talk about his Ecosocialist Green New Deal and how it presents real solutions that can’t wait.
This chapter explores the interplay of intellectual property and social justice. Part I constructs a philosophical framework for thinking about the many cross-currents between intellectual property and social justice. Part II distinguishes between the internal, largely utilitarian analysis of particular modes of intellectual property protection and the external interplay of intellectual property systems and broader social justice concerns. Part III examines the macro interplay of intellectual property and inequality, gender and racial inclusion, and global justice challenges, highlighting complexities, tensions, and paradoxes. The chapter considers how intellectual property law and policy can be seen not just as an engine of economic progress, but also as an engine of human and cultural flourishing, dignitary values, access, inclusion, and empowerment.
Patent law’s doctrine of ineligible subject matter is widely agreed to be in a bad state of repair. Even those welcoming the Supreme Court’s return to express subject-matter bars have been left disoriented by the Court’s pronouncements in this area. Which subject matter is ineligible, why it is ineligible, and how it might become eligible have all remained enshrouded in mystery. The nub of the problem, this Article contends, is two-fold. First, from its 19th century origins to the present, courts grappling with ineligibility doctrine have remained in the grip of a series of “physicalist” misconceptions of the object of patent rights, and hence of the subject matter claimed in the patents at issue. In a nutshell, courts have not fully internalized that the object of patent rights is always and only an intangible space of “knowledge of” something, and never some “thing” itself. As a result, they have failed to characterize accurately the content of the ineligible subject matter categories, much less specify why they are ineligible. Removing these physicalist errors dissipates much of the fog in this area. In its wake emerges a second distinct theme of ineligibility case law: the intimation by the courts of a set of embryonic “functionality” concerns, which seek to restrict patents to zones of applied rather than basic knowledge. But these concerns have remained inchoate, owing to their entanglement in a physicalist web. Reconstructing eligibility doctrine requires, then, extricating incipient functionality concerns from the physicalist thicket, developing their independent basis, and, finally, properly following through on their doctrinal implications. Doing so yields three large gains. First, it provides a unified account of this body of law, something scholars have despaired of realizing. Second, it cures each of the three defects marring the existing doctrinal framework. Finally, it fully reintegrates the common law of ineligibility with the statutory and constitutional framework of patent law.
The Epic Games v. Apple preliminary injunction hearing took place this morning (Pacific Time) before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District of California. The first and longest part--during which the court discussed with counsel for both parties the likelihood of success on the merits--was particularly key. In fact, Cravath's Katherine Forrest, one of two attorneys who argued for Epic, acknowledged that an injunction would not issue in this case unless the court agrees with Epic on its likelihood of prevailing on the merits.
Judge Gonzalez Rogers, who asked counsel for both parties tough questions, appeared at least hesitant--if not very reluctant--to conclude at this early stage of proceeding that Epic was on the road to victory. That doesn't mean she thinks Epic is likely to lose. It's just that under the current circumstances the court would have to reach a conclusion based on a limited amount of briefing. What's in the record now is almost nothing compared to what will be available at trial time (i.e., in July 2021).
Among the three most powerful members of the current European Commission, EU commissioner Thierry Breton (Twitter profile) is "Monsieur Non" with respect to enforcing EU competition law against standard-essential patent (SEP) abuser Nokia. He and his cabinet are the ones who adamantly oppose what would not only be right from an antitrust perspective but also benefit Europe's economy at large, from small Internet of Things startups to car makers.
For the EU, it should be a no-brainer to require SEP holders to extend exhaustive component-level SEP licenses to component makers. The enforcement priorities of the Commission's Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP) appear to pursue only one principle: protectionism. By letting Nokia and its partners in crime (the Avanci gang) get away with what they're doing (they've already obtained two Germany-wide patent injunctions against Daimler and are seeking many more), while coming up with novel and at times even absurd theories of harm concerning American companies, the Commission is systematically destroying the reputation as a competition regulator that it worked so hard to build in earlier decades. But Mr. Breton doesn't care.
In Khan v. Hemosphere, Inc., the Federal Circuit disagreed with my analysis of the rule. In particular, the court held that the Khans were sufficiently “on notice of [defendants’] intent to seek sanctions” based upon a series of letters sent to the Khans indicating that a sanctions-motion was coming. Thus, although the Khans were not served with “the motion” they were sufficiently on notice.
Khan Petition for Rehearing: In their petition, the Khans argue that the Federal Circuit’s “conclusion that warning letters of the type at issue here can take the place of the ‘motion’ required by Rule 11(c)(2) breaks sharply with the text of the Rule, and with every other Court of Appeals to consider the issue—including the Seventh Circuit.” Here, the 7th Circuit is important because this case arose in Illinois and the regional circuit’s law should apply to this non-patent related issue.
Optis Wireless Technology, LLC et al filed a complaint against Tesla Inc. for patent infringement on Sunday in the Eastern District of Texas alleging that defendant Tesla has infringed the asserted patents by using cellular connectivity in its vehicles.
The patents-in-suit are United States Patent Nos. 8,149,727 (the ’727 patent); 8,199,792 (the ’792 patent); 8,223,863 (the ’863 patent); 8,254,335 (the ’335 patent); and 8,320,319 (the ’319 patent). The plaintiffs asserted that these patents “are necessary to practice the 3GPP LTE cellular technical specification,” which Tesla purportedly did not have a license to use. Furthermore, the plaintiffs stated that they have tried to reach a licensing agreement with Tesla, but were unable to do so. The plaintiffs claimed that the “(c)ellular technologies 3rd Generation Partnership Project (‘3GPP’) has enabled companies, including Tesla with no history in the wireless communication development, to sell products such as electrical vehicles equipped with integrated cellular connectivity.” The 3GPP “produces technical specifications that define cellular technologies.”
Recent figures published by Chinese media outlets show that companies in China have filed for over half of all global blockchain patents.
According to a report titled “2020 Blockchain Industry Development”, Chinese companies have applied for 4,435 blockchain patents following Chinese president Xi Jinping’s endorsement of the industry. The study was jointly compiled by Tsinghua University, Peking University, and China Institute of Communications.
During a committee session in October 2019, President Xi called for the country to accelerate its adoption of blockchain technologies as a core for innovation.
According to the study, tech giant Alibaba Group had applied for the highest number of blockchain patents in 2020 at a whopping 200 patents. That is 10x more than the number filed by IBM during the same period.
Major multinational companies have also shown immense interest in filing blockchain patents in China. Cointelegraph reported a study that suggested 35 multinationals including Microsoft, Walmart, Mastercard, Sony, and Intel had applied for a total of 212 blockchain patents as of March 2020.
Sonos has filed another patent lawsuit against Google, alleging that the search giant is infringing five wireless audio patents across the entire line of Nest and Chromecast products. The move comes on the eve of Google’s fall hardware event on September 30th, where it is expected to announce a new Chromecast and Nest smart speaker alongside new Pixel phones.
Sonos filed its first patent lawsuits against Google in January in California federal court and with the International Trade Commission; the federal case has been put on hold while the ITC reaches a decision on whether to block Google’s allegedly infringing products from market. The new case is filed only in the federal court for the Western District of Texas — an emerging patent lawsuit hotspot — and represents a more aggressive approach from Sonos.
“We think it’s important to show the depth and breadth of Google’s copying,” says Eddie Lazarus, Sonos’ chief legal officer. “We showed them claim charts on 100 patents that we claimed they were infringing, all to no avail.”
In In the Matter of Gitler (Proc. No. D2019-48), a patent lawyer was suspended for 90 days by Virginia on May 8, 2019. The District of Columbia and New York also suspended the practitioner. The practitioner notified the OED of his Virginia suspension on May 29, 2019, and, while agreeing reciprocal suspension by the USPTO was proper, requested it be ordered nunc pro tunc — so it would have run with the Virginia suspension. The OED declined that request.
Significantly, the OED took a very technical and literal reading of the provisions governing nunc pro tunc orders.
First, the rule requires practitioners to withdraw from pending cases. He had told his clients he was not representing them but his name was still associated with a customer number and so they were handling the matters. The OED stated this did not excuse his failure to withdraw.
On October 1, 2020, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 6,931,382, owned by Kioba Processing, LLC, an IP Investments affiliate and well-known NPE. The ’382 patent is generally directed to blocking and unblocking payment instruments, and it has been asserted against Discover and American Express.
On October 1, 2020, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 9,757,066, owned by Fat Statz, LLC, an NPE. The ’066 patent is generally directed to a behavioral management system that tracks biometric data from a plurality of users and allows users to filter the data to compare themselves to others in similar demographics. The ‘066 patent was asserted against Samsung in early 2020.
On October 1, 2020, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 9,449,484, owned by Richman Technology Corp, an NPE. The ’484 patent is generally related to security hardware and real-time security monitoring software systems . The ‘484 patent has been asserted against security system makers such as ADT, Assa Abloy, Skylink Technologies, Google, and others.
On October 1, 2020, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 7,756,507, owned by Monarch Networking Solutions LLC, an NPE and an Acacia Research entity. The ‘507 patent is generally directed to device-based dual-factor authentication using one-time passwords. The ‘507 patent is currently being asserted against Cisco, Meraki, and Duo Security.
Last week ago, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation issued a far-reaching decision on authorship and proof thereof. It is said that the deposit of a work in the Register of the Russian Authors' Society does not in itself confirm the right of authorship and does not constitute a guarantee of authorship. While the plaintiff referred to the register of the Russian Authors' Society, the defendants referred to the register of the World Intellectual Property Organization, where other authors are indicated. Three judicial instances felt that this did not refute the presumption of authorship, and thus the plaintiff was found to have successfully proved his exclusive rights. The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation took, however, a different position on this dispute.
