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Links 13/10/2020: CodeWeavers Announces Rebrand and KClock 0.1 Released



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Chrome OS 86 Rolls Out with Linux Support for Debian GNU/Linux 10 “Buster”

        Based on the latest Google Chrome 86 web browser released last week, Chrome OS 86 adds quite a bunch of interesting changes, starting with Linux support for upgrading to the latest Debian GNU/Linux 10 “Buster” operating system series.

        If you’re using the Linux support in Chrome OS, which is still in beta stages of development, you will see a new option in Linux settings after updating to Chrome OS 86 that lets you upgrade the base system from Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” to Debian GNU/Linux 10 “Buster.”

    • Server

      • It Takes Geological Patience To Change Datacenter Storage

        Moving from an HPC center or a hyperscaler to work on enterprise software has to be a frustrating experience. In the HPC and hyperscaler world, when you need to deal with a problem, it is usually one of scale or performance – or both – and you have to solve the problem now. Like in a year or less, but sometimes you get more time to refine things. Call it 18 months, tops. The new platform – database, storage, network control, compute control, whatever it is – goes into production and months later replaces whatever was going to run out of gas just in time to save the company.

        The enterprise, into which we lump government and academic institutions, by contrast, move at a much slower pace because the risk profile is much higher. If your email or social network or media archive is down for minutes, hours, or even days, no one is going to die. But if an enterprise has an outage and either customer data is compromised or normal business is interrupted, reputation and money are on the line.

        [...]

        The first Quobyte release came in late 2014, a little more than a year after the company’s founding – see how fast these hyperscalers move? – and it was designed from the ground up to be a POSIX-compliant object storage system with file and block overlays when necessary, with triple redundancy of data running on absolutely plain vanilla X86 Linux servers.

      • PSSC Labs Announces CBeST Cluster Management Software Stack v5 Release with Red Hat Support - insideHPC

        Lake Forest, CA , Oct. 13, 2020 — PSSC Labs, a developer of high performance computing (HPC) and big data computing solutions, announces today that a new release of CBeST Cluster Management v 5.0 Software Stack will be available. The newest version of CBeST will add support for the latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux / CentOS Linux 8.0 operating system and provide enhanced support for advanced technologies from Intel, AMD and NVIDIA. CBeST will support bursting to cloud environments including Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS and Google Compute.

      • PSSC Labs Announces New CBeST Cluster Management Software Stack v5 Release

        The newest version of CBeST will add support for the latest Red Hat€® Enterprise Linux€® / CentOS Linux€® 8.0 operating system and provide enhanced support for advanced technologies from Intel€®, AMD€® and NVIDIA€®.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • A First Look At SpaceVim

        SpaceVim is a distribution of Vim inspired by Spacemacs (a distribution of Emacs). It comes with a bunch of plugins installed and configured out of the box, which makes SpaceVim easier to get into for the the new Vim user. After spending so much time recently in Doom Emacs, what will be my initial impressions of SpaceVim?

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux kernel 5.9: Most important features and how to install it

        Lately, the same holds true for Linux kernel releases. The dev team has been crankin' 'em out faster than we can install 'em.vAlthough quite the exaggeration, you get my point.

        Said point is...there's yet another new kernel release to celebrate. Huzzah.

        And that's about the extent of the rejoicing. Because, as in the case with 5.8, there really aren't any game-changing features to be found with Linux kernel 5.9... at least not for the general user. If, however, you're a hard-core IT pro, there are a few features that could have you clamoring to get the 5.9 kernel installed in your data center servers (more on this in a bit).

        Let's take a look at some of the more important features in the latest Linux kernel.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Does subgroup/wave size matter?

          This week, I had a conversation with one of my coworkers about our subgroup/wave size heuristic and, in particular, whether or not control-flow divergence should be considered as part of the choice. This lead me down a fun path of looking into the statistics of control-flow divergence and the end result is somewhat surprising: Once you get above about an 8-wide subgroup, the subgroup size doesn't matter.

          Before I get into the details, let's talk nomenclature. As you're likely aware, GPUs often execute code in groups of 1 or more invocations. In D3D terminology, these are called waves. In Vulkan and OpenGL terminology, these are called sugroups. The two terms are interchangeable and, for the rest of this post, I'll use the Vulkan/OpenGL conventions.

    • Benchmarks

    • Applications

      • Best Conky Themes for Linux in 2020 - Make Tech Easier

        Conky is a useful piece of software to display information on your Linux desktop. You can use it to display your CPU and memory usage, or to display the current weather information. It is also very customizable to fit into your desktop and wallpaper. If you are looking to spice up your config with something a little more stylish, we’ve scoured the Internet to find some of the coolest, best-looking Conky themes.

      • Mark Text vs. Typora: Best Markdown Editor For Linux? | Linux Journal

        Markdown is a widely used markup language, which is now not only used for creating documentation or notes but also for creating static websites (using Hugo or Jekyll). It is supported by major sites like GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, Stack Exchange, and Reddit.

        Markdown follows a simple easy-to-read and easy-to-write plain text formatting syntax. By just using non-alphabetic characters like asterisk (*), hashtag (#), backtick (`), or dash (-), you can format text as bold, italics, lists, headings, tables and so on.

        Now, to write in Markdown, you can choose any Markdown applications available for Windows, macOS, and Linux desktop. You can even use web-based in-browser Markdown editors like StackEdit. But if you’re specifically looking for the best Markdown editor for Linux desktop, I present you two Markdown editors: Mark Text and Typora.

        I’ve also tried other popular Markdown apps available for Linux platforms such as Joplin, Remarkable, ReText, and Mark My Words. But the reason I chose Mark Text and Typora is the seamless live preview features with distraction free user interface. Unlike other Markdown editors, these two do not have a dual panel (writing and preview window) interface, which is why I find both the most distinguishable applications among others.

      • Best Video Editors for Chromebooks in 2020

        Today we are looking at how to video editing on a Chromebook. For many years Chromebooks have been seen as budget devices, just to browse the web with and not really capable to do "real" work on.

        However, Google has continued to improve its operating system by bringing more applications to Chromebooks, firstly the Google Play Store, after that "Crostini" Linux apps and who knows what will be coming next.

        So about a year ago, as a Linux user since 2013 and being a System Administrator for 5 years since then (not anymore because my family and I moved to remote city and I decided to work online), that I can use my skills, and I know that I am still learning, to help the Chromebook user community to get the most out of their devices.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to install Shotcut Video Editor 20.09 on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install Shotcut Video Editor 20.09 on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

      • How to install Citra Emulator on Ubuntu 20.04 - YouTube

        In this video, we are looking at how to install Citra Emulator on Ubuntu 20.04.

      • How To Install Magento on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Magento on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Magento is one of the worlds most widely used applications for managing E-Commerce sites.

      • How to fix docker-machine: command not found error

        Using docker machine, you have tried to create a virtual machine using the command :

        docker-machine create –driver virtualbox your_vm [docker machine create vm command]

        But this returned an error : docker machine command not found

      • How to play Death Stranding on Linux

        Death Stranding is an action game developed by Kojima Productions. The game takes place in the USA, following a world-ending event that released dangerous creatures on the earth. The player plays as Sam Porter Bridges; a courier tasked with delivering supplies to colonies. In this guide, we’ll show you how to get the game working on Linux.

      • How to download and play YouTube and other videos on Linux | Network World

        Who would have imagined that there’s a Linux tool available for downloading YouTube videos? Well, there is and it works for Linux as well as for other operating systems. So, if you need to watch some of the available videos even when your internet connection is flaky or you need to be offline for a while, this tool can be especially handy.

        The tool for downloading videos is called youtube-dl. (The “dl” portion undoubtedly means “download”.) It’s very easy to use and drops webm or mp4 files onto your system. Both formats provide compressed, high-quality video files that you can watch whenever you like.

    • Wine or Emulation

      • If Robin Hood and Tux (the Linux Penguin) had a love child: A rebranded CodeWeavers.

        CodeWeavers€®, Inc., developer of CrossOverâ„¢ — a unique approach to cross-platform compatibility for macOS€®, Linux and Chrome OS€®— announced today an overhaul of its branding that reflects a more focused vision and enhanced service offerings. CodeWeavers launched an updated website (www.codeweavers.com) offering two newly branded services — PortJumpâ„¢ and ExecModeâ„¢ — alongside their OG software, CrossOver.

        “This rebrand better represents the evolution of CodeWeavers over the last 14 years,” James Ramey, President of CodeWeavers explains. “We believe Robin Hood had the right idea. There is no such thing as a closed platform. Software was meant to be liberated, and we believe we are the liberator.”

        Introducing PortJump and ExecMode

        PortJump helps app and game developers broaden their market beyond Windows users. With CodeWeavers signature CrossOver technology, no source code changes are required. This eliminates the need for clients to maintain two or more code bases, while bringing their Windows based app or game to the macOS, Linux and/or Chrome OS marketplace. ExecMode helps organizations solve their most ghastly technical challenges with our unmatched expertise and talent.

      • CodeWeavers Announces Rebrand With PortJump + ExecMode

        CodeWeavers as the main contributor to the Wine code-base and employing many of the key developers thanks to the development of their Linux and macOS CrossOver software is working on a rebrand and promotion of their consulting services.

        The two branded services being announced today are PortJump and ExecMode.

      • CodeWeavers releases CrossOver 20, big rebranding with 'PortJump and ExecMode' | GamingOnLinux

        CodeWeavers, one of the biggest sponsors of the compatibility layer Wine have announced a major rebranding along with the release of Crossover 20.

        For those not too clued up, here's the lowdown with a tiny bit of backstory to set the scene for you: Wine is a compatibility layer that allows you to run Windows applications and games on (up until now, see below) Linux and macOS. CodeWeavers have their own software called CrossOver which integrates Wine, plus a fancy interface and often some special patches along with direct support and CodeWeavers developers work directly on Wine which is free and open source for everyone.

        For a few years now, CodeWeavers have also been working with Valve on Steam Play Proton, the fork of Wine dedicated to gaming on Steam + Linux. Not only that, they also offer direct porting and support services to developers wanting to get their stuff onto different platforms. They've now given these services some actual names with "PortJump" and "ExecMode"

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Krita 4.4.0 Released with New Fill Layer Types & Brushes Options

          Digital painting software Krita 4.4.0 was officially release today with great new features and hundreds of bug-fixes.

          [...]

          The Krita Lime PPA maintains the latest packages for Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04.

        • How To Install Krita 4.4 on Ubuntu 20.04 / Linux Mint | askmetutorials

          Krita team announced a new version 4.4.0, it is a bugfix release and new features are added to this, all the users are requested to upgrade to this version. Krita is a free and open-source painting tool for artists, illustrators, matte and texture artists, Krita has been in development for 10 years and recently it came to live and having a good response now.

          Its interface is similar to those who worked in Photoshop or the open-source tool GIMP software and recently they have added this application in the Steam gaming platform and the steam Linux OS also.

        • KClock v0.1 released

          With the official release of Plasma 5.20 today, we tagged KClock v0.1. Being the first release of KClock, we’ve spent months tried to provide the default clock app for Plasma Mobile you’d expected.

          As of the time this post was written, one issue still exists. Even though it isn’t a problem in KClock, it’s important.

          Due to the issues about QMultiMedia, alarm ringtone won’t be played. Notification sounds for timers works as expected since it’s not played by QMediaPlayer. While this heavily affects the usability of KClock, there is nothing we can do about it. Be optimistic though, it worked before XD.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Sébastien Wilmet - Blog post - gedit crowdfunding

          The gedit text editor has a long history of development, it has been created in 1998 at the beginnings of GNOME. So it is one of the oldest GNOME application still alive and usually installed by default with Linux distributions that provide GNOME as their desktop environment.

          It is this – the fact that many Linux users know and have gedit installed – that motivates me to improve it, to make it a top notch core application. It is not an easy undertaking though, the codebase is old and large, and there are several underlying software components (libraries) that are critical for the main functioning of gedit.

          I started to contribute to gedit in 2011, and I'm now its main developer. I'm a freelance software developer, and would like to devote as much time as possible to gedit development, including the underlying libraries.

    • Distributions

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Web Browsers

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • LibreOffice Drops An Open Letter to Legacy OpenOffice, and it's huge.

          The LibreOffice board announced their take on OpenOffice via an open letter today. And it seems a big deal.

        • [LibreOffice] PDF annotations support

          In Draw, a PDF document can be opened using the PDFium library for rendering, where each page in the Draw document contains an rendered image from the PDF. This mode is useful for viewing PDFs and allows for the best fidelity. With viewing, there is also a need to review and comment and this is where PDF annotations come in as adding the support for the PDF annotations and to support a review based workflow has been one of my recent task at Collabora Productivity.

          PDF supports a wide variety of annotations, but we don't support all of them in Draw. What we do support are comments, which are similar to pop-up note annotations in PDF, so the easiest is to add those first. To be able to use pop-up notes in Draw, we need to import them. This is done at import by using PDFium after we created the PDF graphic for rendering. In Draw, we then insert this as comments and so we get the basic support for manipulating with annotations, but how to save the changes? PDF export already supports saving comments as annotations, so this mostly already works (I needed to fix some bugs and add support for saving all needed properties).

      • Education

        • Martin Dougiamas: Why Openness in Education is essential

          You probably never heard of Moodle - unless you are a student. Moodle is the worlds most widely used educational platform and it's free software available under the GNU GPL version 3. Martin Dougiamas, who originally wrote Moodle, held a talk explaining what Moodle is, what features it has, what's planned for the future and what proprietary software it competes with at the NextCloud 2020 conference that took place October 2nd to 3rd, 2020. The video is 36 minutes long and worth a watch if you want some insights into modern education systems.

        • Why Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software
      • Programming/Development

        • Excellent Free Tutorials to Learn Factor - LinuxLinks

          Factor is a dynamic stack-based programming language. It was originally conceived as an experiment to create a stack-based language practical for modern programming tasks. It was inspired by earlier stack-based languages like Forth and Joy.

          Factor programs look very different from programs in most other programming languages. At the most basic level,function calls and arithmetic use postfix syntax, rather than prefix or infix as in most programming languages. Factor provides local variables, but they are used in only a small minority of procedures because its language features allow most code to be comfortably written in a point-free style.

          Here’s our recommended free tutorials to learn Factor.

        • Perl/Raku

          • [Raku] Rakudo Weekly News: 2020.41 A First Year

            About a year ago, the first Rakudo Weekly News hit the Net, shortly after the name change to Raku was officially accepted. It’s quite amazing how much has been achieved in the year since then. The extensive documentation has been updated, many (not yet all though) internals have been updated, several Raku books have been published, over 1500 Raku questions on StackOverflow, a lively /r/rakulang subreddit with more than 600 users, and a lively #rakulang Twitter feed as well!

        • Python

          • Extracting Linux System and Hardware Info Using Python | FOSS Linux

            Finding hardware and system information in Linux is a handy and interesting task. We can extract Operating System details, user details, memory details, CPU details, and much more using simple python codes on Linux. Although we can perform many of those things using terminal and bash scripting, python is way more interesting.

            As a python lover, we want every task to be done using that language, so extracting system and hardware information with python is a great task. Also, we can learn both Linux and python concurrently. This article will be quite long, so take your time to read the whole article and run each code for better understanding.

            You can copy each of the codes in a python IDE and run it. If you don’t have a python IDE or want to compare between IDE, see our guide on the top 10 IDE for Linux. By the way, I am using the VS Code as an IDE for writing code. It is open-source and easy to use. If you want to use Visual Studio Code, see our guide on installing VS code on Linux.

          • Web Scraping With Beautiful Soup and Python – Real Python

            The incredible amount of data on the Internet is a rich resource for any field of research or personal interest. To effectively harvest that data, you’ll need to become skilled at web scraping. The Python libraries requests and Beautiful Soup are powerful tools for the job. If you like to learn with hands-on examples and you have a basic understanding of Python and HTML, then this course is for you.

          • PyCoder’s Weekly: Issue #442 (Oct. 13, 2020)
  • Leftovers

    • Education

      • College and the Cheating Culture

        It isn’t a long essay, as I said, but I can’t stop thinking about it because it seems to me to sum up in its few short paragraphs everything that is wrong with contemporary American culture. The author came from a poor Hispanic background where women’s first duty was considered to be to the family and hence where women rarely went to college. The author was determined, however, to go to college and unwilling to wait until she could persuade her parents to support her in this ambition, or until she could pursue it without their support. So she purloined a copy of her parents’ tax return from “the box” where “all important papers were kept,” copied the information onto a financial aid form and practiced writing her mother’s signature until she could do it well enough to forge her mother’s signature on the form.

        As a result of this forgery, the author was awarded a full scholarship and hence “allowed” to go to college. She continued her education, she explains, until she had earned her Ph.D. Her mother never forgave her, she observes, and then adds somewhat cryptically at the end that “some crimes are greater than others.”

    • Health/Nutrition

      • “I Feel for Them”: Son of Former White House Butler Says Trump Endangered Health of Residence Staff

        Charles Allen, whose father Eugene Allen worked as a butler at the White House for 34 years, says President Trump’s reckless actions following his COVID-19 hospitalization are threatening the health of the domestic staff at the White House. “As my dad used to say, they were the little people that made it possible for the big people to do what they did,” he says. Eugene Allen, who served eight presidents, from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, died in 2010, but his life story became the basis of the 2013 film “The Butler,” starring Forest Whitaker.

      • Omnibus Collisions: Coronavirus Policing and Overreach in Victoria

        The formulation seemed an odd one: health services staff as designated officers to halt transmission perhaps, but unqualified members of the Victoria Police, along with Protective Service Officers? The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services was the proposed appointer; the appointees (“authorised officers”) would be anybody deemed to possess appropriate skills, attributes or experience. Such elevated, muscularly vested officers would have the power to detain anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19, or anyone who had been in close contact with a positive case, for a period “reasonably necessary to eliminate a serious risk to public health,” provided it was “reasonably believed” they would fail to comply with a direction of self-quarantine.

        Hennessy evaded the severe implications of such a broadly worded provision, arguing for convenience and efficiency, the two traditional hallmarks of the authoritarian mentality. The appointment power would focus upon “individuals with particular attributes, such as connection to particular communities”. “Contact tracing” would be able to take place in “a culturally safe manner.” A for any oversight limitations, these appointments would be subject to a “specific instrument” outlining specific authority and limitations authorised by the Secretary and Chief Health Officer.

      • The GOP Is Pursuing a Public Slaughter Strategy, Known to Some as ‘Herd Immunity’

        We shouldn’t be surprised. It’s simply the logical extension of conservative policies on pretty much everything for the past 90 years—policies that have killed a hell of a lot more than just 2.5 million people.

        Republicans simply don’t believe it’s part of the job of government to provide for the “general welfare” of the American people; instead, government—in their minds—should only run the police and the military, while maintaining a stable currency so business can function. Here are some other beliefs driving Republican policies:

      • Ai-jen Poo: Trump Flouts COVID-19 Safety Rules with “Utter Disregard” for White House Domestic Staff

        President Trump’s return to the White House and defiant mask removal despite still being treated for COVID-19 has threatened the health of the mostly older, Black and Brown household staff, says domestic worker advocate Ai-jen Poo, senior adviser to Care in Action. “These are essential workers who have been keeping him and his family safe and caring for them, and he showed a complete and utter disregard for their health and safety,” she says. At least three White House housekeepers and one other member of the residence staff were recently infected, according to The New York Times. Meanwhile, thousands of domestic workers face dire consequences from the failure to pass a new coronavirus stimulus bill, and have organized to support each other in the meantime.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Security

          • Security updates for Tuesday

            Security updates have been issued by Mageia (mariadb), openSUSE (qemu and tigervnc), Oracle (kernel), Red Hat (chromium-browser and kernel), and SUSE (php5).

          • Microsoft Fixes Ping of Death Flaw in Windows | Decipher

            Microsoft has released a patch for a critical remote code execution vulnerability in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019 that can be exploited by sending one packet to a vulnerable machine.

            While the vulnerability (CVE-2020-16898) is simple to exploit and could result in a full compromise of a target machine, there are some mitigating factors, specifically the fact that it exists in the Windows IPv6 stack and not the IPv4 stack. So, disabling IPv6 if it's not in use is the quickest mitigation. There is a proof-of-concept exploit for the bug that has been shared with members of Microsoft’s Active Protection Program, but Microsoft said in its advisory that the vulnerability has not been exploited in the wild yet to its knowledge, “It results in an immediate BSOD (Blue Screen of Death), but more so, indicates the likelihood of exploitation for those who can manage to bypass Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019 mitigations. The effects of an exploit that would grant remote code execution would be widespread and highly impactful, as this type of bug could be made wormable,” Steve Povolny and Mark Bereza of McAfee Advanced Threat Research said in an analysis of the flaw.

          • Authentication Bug Opens Android Smart-TV Box to Data Theft | Threatpost

            The streaming box allows arbitrary code execution as root, paving the way to pilfering social-media tokens, passwords, messaging history and more.

            A critical bug in the Hindotech HK1 TV Box would allow root-privilege escalation thanks to improper access control. A successful exploit would allow attackers to steal social-networking account tokens, Wi-Fi passwords, cookies, saved passwords, user-location data, message history, emails, contacts and more, researchers said.

          • Lemon Duck Cryptocurrency-Mining Botnet Activity Spikes | Threatpost

            Researchers are warning of a recent dramatic uptick in the activity of the Lemon Duck cryptocurrency-mining botnet, which targets victims’ computer resources to mine the Monero virtual currency.

          • iTWire - Cisco duo find cryptocurrency-mining botnet that can hit Windows and Linux

            A cryptocurrency-mining botnet known as Lemon Duck has been displaying increased activity since the end of August, researchers from Cisco's Talos Intelligence Group say, adding that while defenders would have spotted this activity, it would not have been noticed by end users.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Is Syria's Idlib the Next Gaza Strip?
      • How can Americans support peace in Nagorno-Karabakh?

        Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a€ bloody war€ over Nagorno-Karabakh from 1988 to 1994, by the end of which at least 30,000 people had been killed and a million€ or more€ had fled or been driven out of their homes. By 1994, Armenian forces had occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts, all internationally recognized as parts of Azerbaijan. But now the war has flared up again, hundreds of people have been killed, and both sides are shelling€ civilian targets and terrorizing each other’s civilian populations.

        Nagorno-Karabakh€ has been an ethnically Armenian region for centuries. After the Persian Empire ceded this part of the Caucasus to Russia in the Treaty of Gulistan in 1813, the first census ten years later identified Nagorno-Karabakh’s population as 91% Armenian. The USSR’s decision to assign Nagorno-Karabakh to the Azerbaijan SSR in 1923, like its decision to assign Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954, was an administrative decision whose dangerous consequences only became clear when the U.S.S.R. began to disintegrate in the late 1980s.

      • Russia threatens to halt dialogue with EU amid Navalny spat
    • Environment

    • Finance

      • White House virus aid offer is panned by Pelosi, Senate GOP

        A new White House coronavirus aid offer got bad reviews from both ends of the political spectrum on Saturday.

        House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., rejected the most generous Trump administration plan to date as “one step forward, two steps back." The Republicans who control the Senate dismissed it as too expensive and a political loser for conservatives.

      • Delta posts $5.4 billion 3Q loss as pandemic hammers travel

        The summer travel season was even worse than expected for Delta Air Lines, which said Tuesday that it lost $5.4 billion in the third quarter as people hunkered down at home during the pandemic.

        Delta officials pushed back their timetable for breaking even, from year-end to next spring, as their previous expectation that COVID-19 would be contained proved too rosy. The airline's shares fell almost 3% on Tuesday.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Trump's True Legacy Is That of a Warmonger

        Behind the smoke and mirrors of Trump’s tweets and publicity stunts, he has doubled down on everything that was already wrong with America’s catastrophic militarist foreign policy.

      • What History Tells Us About Trump’s Implosion and Biden’s Opportunity

        A few weeks after the November 2016 election, I called Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek to get his reaction to Donald Trump’s astonishing victory. Earlier that year I had read Skowronek’s landmark 1993 work, The Politics Presidents Make, which spans American presidential history, tracing the roughly 40–60 year cycles of what he calls “political time.” First, a transformative or “reconstructive” president inaugurates a new regime (most recently, FDR and Ronald Reagan), that is succeeded by an alternating cast of regime-supporting “affiliates” (for FDR, Harry Truman and JFK/Lyndon Johnson; for Reagan, the Bushes) and “preemptive” regime-challengers (Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon; Bill Clinton, Barack Obama) who suggest an outline of something new, before the regime finally proves incapable of responding to new problems and collapses under the helpless watch of a “disjunctive” president, an ambivalent adherent of the party’s original orthodoxy (Jimmy Carter; Trump?).

      • Social Media Demonization Is Another Moral Panic

        It’s nothing new to hear the rich put the responsibility on the poor. Poor people carry society forward and people get rich not from good ideas but from exploitation. Work gets a dollar, ordering others to do work makes a million. However, why should we fall into this romantic idea when it comes to work? The rich are lazy, but we all want to be. It’s fun.

        I hesitate to talk about populism these days as guys like Thomas Frank wag their finger at liberalism, make God-awful jokes and repeat ad nauseam that populism is Trumpism or even worse that Trumpism and socialism have something in common and that is poverty or stupidity but Frank doesn’t know the difference.

      • Fascism: Now You See It, Now You Don’t!

        Whereas democracy is the common term used to describe this country, we learn that fascism only occurred once in history, in one place, and that it was defeated by the aforementioned democracy.

        The expansiveness and elasticity of the notion of democracy could not contrast more starkly with the narrowness and rigidity of the concept of fascism. After all, we are told that democracy was born some 2500 years ago and that it is a defining feature of European civilization, and even one of its unique cultural contributions to world history. Fascism, by contrast, purportedly erupted in Western Europe in the interwar period as an aberrant anomaly, temporarily interrupting the progressive march of history, right after a war had been fought to make the world ‘safe for democracy.’ Once a second world war destroyed it, or so the narrative goes, the forces of good then set about taming its evil ‘totalitarian’ twin in the East in the name of democratic globalization.

      • Lindsey Graham’s Desperation Is Getting Deadly

        When Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham refused to take a Covid test last week, before a scheduled debate with surging Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison, his motives were obvious. The health of his Senate colleagues be damned: Graham wasn’t willing to risk a positive test that could delay Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation, which begins Monday.

      • WATCH LIVE: Protesters Block Entrance of Senate Building as First Barrett Confirmation Hearing Begins

        "We're mobilizing all those who believe in freedom, equality, and justice to engage in direct action to put pressure on both key Senate Republicans as well as Democrats to ensure that this confirmation is delayed."

      • Episode 111 – Third Party Candidates and the Scholars' Strike with Professor Marie Drennan - Along The Line Podcast

        On today’s episode, Nicholas Baham II (Dr. Dreadlocks), Janice Domingo, and Nolan Higdon discuss the 3rd party candidates running for the presidency and the scholar strike with San Francisco State University’s Assistant Professor Marie Drennan.€  Along The Line is a non-profit, education-based podcast that provides listeners with context and analysis about various critical and contemporary issues and topics. Hosted by Dr. Nolan Higdon, Dr. Dreadl

      • Trump is Waging War on Us, We Ignore It at Our Peril

        Tweeting from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center while battling the coronavirus, Trump posted a message to Twitter recruiting loyal soldiers. His post featured a photo of himself and the words, “Fight for President Trump!” It was linked to a page called “ArmyforTrump.com.” Trump’s campaign for reelection launched that website in March 2020 and sent out fundraising emails to “PATRIOTS ONLY,” telling them they would “make an excellent addition to the Trump Army.” Taking the theme of war even further, the campaign promised to send out camouflage hats with Trump’s campaign slogan in exchange for donations, saying, “The President wants YOU and every other member of our exclusive Trump Army to have something to identify yourselves with,” just as soldiers might sport identifying insignia or uniforms. And, according to the campaign message, Trump’s supporters are expected to be “the President’s first line of defense when it comes to fighting off the liberal MOB.”

        If such language were not disturbing enough, it is important to note that Trump has at his beck and call any number of loyal armed right-wing groups ready for actual combat on his behalf. During his first debate with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, Trump hesitated only once during the entire 90 minutes, and that was when moderator Chris Wallace asked him to unequivocally denounce white supremacy. When Wallace named the group Proud Boys, Trump first said they should “stand back,” but then simply couldn’t resist adding, “and stand by,” which by any definition is a signal to be ready in case their help is needed. The fact that Trump felt comfortable and familiar enough with the Proud Boys to issue commands ought to be deeply disturbing considering that the group is comprised of white supremacist, misogynist, and well-armed men.

      • Will Today's Millennials Ever Live in a More Equal USA?

        The latest edition of this Survey series has just appeared, complete with the most comprehensive, up-to-date info we now have available on who has wealth in the United States and who doesn’t.

        In that who-doesn’t category go the households of the nation’s millennials, those Americans born between the early 1980s and 1996 or so.

      • Trump, Plato, and the Wizard of Oz

        Trump desperately needs to avoid another withering exposure that another debate would cement. That is why, true to the coward that he is, he’s hiding from it.€ 

      • The Nuclearization of American Diplomacy

        Talking tough and carrying a radioactive stick.

      • “Loser” Pence Bullies Fabrications Through Debate Time Rules

        Again and again, Pence blew through the two minute, one minute, and 30-second limits so he could extend his fabrications and phony promises. Again and again, moderator Susan Page of€ USA Today€ would say “Thank you” five or six times to get Pence to stop each infraction. Pence also interrupted Harris in mid-sentence, against the rules.

        This boorishness should have been anticipated by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). The CPD has put on presidential debates since its creation by the Republican and Democratic Parties in 1984 to replace the League of Women Voters when they couldn’t control the League’s independence (See€ No Debate€ by George Farah and his website,€ opendebates.org€ ).

      • What Comes Next is Up to Us

        This may be the legacy of Donald Trump, our first corkscrew-in-chief: He has popped the cork on who we are and reality, so it seems, is gushing uncontrollably like never before. Trump, with his defiance of political correctness and the norms of the status quo, not to mention his desire to be the American Mussolini — unchallenged in his leadership either by election results or medical consensus — has created much of the chaos on his own. But the bulk of the chaos is simply America the Terrible emerging from the shadows: our real history suddenly visible.

        I apologize for the following lyrics, but with the American empire possibly on the verge of collapse, I felt the need to begin writing a shadow version of “America the Beautiful”: “O terrible for brutal cops, for presidential lies, for racist actions endlessly, beneath the smoke-filled skies. America, America, God’s sick and tired of thee. Coronavirus, that’s your crown, from sea to shining sea.”

      • Florida's Chaotic 2018 Midterms Could Portend What's to Come in November

        As the nation prepares for an election that President Donald Trump has already suggested he will contest, Florida’s 2018 midterms provide a window into the political gamesmanship, bureaucratic errors and misinformation campaigns that may ensue.

      • It's Time to Unpack the Court

        Mitch McConnell has been packing the federal courts for six years now, and, as a result, the nation is calling out for rebalancing.

      • Protesters Block the Entrance to Senate Building During First Barrett Hearing

        Dozens of demonstrators blocked the entrance to the Hart Senate Office Building Monday morning to protest the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee’s decision to hold the first confirmation hearing for President Donald Trump’s right-wing Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett with less than a month to go before the pivotal November election.

      • Indigenous Children Could Be in Danger With an Amy Coney Barrett Nomination

        President Donald Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, is raising red flags for supporters of a federal law designed to preserve Native American families and culture.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Anti-censorship team report: September 2020

        Tor's anti-censorship team writes monthly reports to keep the world updated on its progress. This blog post summarizes the anti-censorship work we got done in September 2020. Let us know if you have any questions or feedback!

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

      • Julian Assange faces the ‘trial of the century’: 10 reasons why it threatens freedom of speech
      • The Tortured Trial of Julian Assange

        What Julian Assange and his organization€ Wikileaks€ have revealed for the whole world to see is the systematic devastation of peoples, of lands, and perennial military pollution of planet earth. The main perpetrator is the most powerful and self-declared “greatest democratic nation” in the world, the United States of America—accompanied by its European and Commonwealth vassal states, plus proxy allies in the Middle East and Zionist Israel.

        The villainous perpetrators are the prosecutors. The truth-telling hero is their prisoner.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • It's Past Time to Abolish Columbus Day and Establish Indigenous Peoples' Day in the United States

        The holiday is a monument to white supremacy, and it’s time we abolished it.

      • O’odham Land Defenders Lead Indigenous Resistance to Trump’s Border Wall Amid Militarized Crackdown

        As 14 states and more than 130 cities across the U.S. celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day in place of Columbus Day, we go to Arizona, where Indigenous communities are leading resistance against the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall near a sacred spring inside the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. People’s “lives have been so severely impacted by not only this border wall, but the complete militarization of our homelands due to this irrational fear of folks on the other side, which are our relatives,” says Nellie Jo David, an O’odham water and land defender. This campaign of nonviolent protests comes as a federal appeals court issued an order Friday to halt the border wall construction in Arizona, along with Texas, New Mexico and California.

      • It’s Time for Italian Americans to Give Up on Columbus

        On June 9 in Richmond, Va.—two weeks into the protests following the police killing of George Floyd—demonstrators gathered at a statue of Christopher Columbus in the city’s Near West End. After a march of about 1,000 people, led by Indigenous activists in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, protesters threw ropes across the statue, pulled it down, rolled it 200 yards, and threw it into a nearby lake.

      • The New Humanitarian | Greece must reform its failed asylum policies now

        As European countries negotiate a new Pact on Asylum and Migration, “no more Morias” has become a rallying cry: The scorched camp is a palpable symbol of Greek and EU policy failures. The Pact aims to improve “solidarity” and better distribute responsibility for asylum seekers among EU states. But that in itself is not a solution to the humanitarian crises and human rights violations occurring at and within the EU’s borders. For there truly to be no more Morias, the EU as a whole must recommit to its fundamental values. But Greece cannot wait for an agreement to fulfill the obligations it already has to protect those seeking safety. This means ending illegal pushbacks and other abuses at the country’s borders – abuses that the Greek government denies are taking place and is failing to investigate – and ensuring access to fair asylum procedures. It also means ending the neglect of refugees whose statuses have already been recognised.

      • Protesters knock down Roosevelt, Lincoln statues in Portland

        Protesters in Portland overturned statues of former Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln and vandalized the Oregon Historical Society in a declaration of “rage” toward Columbus Day.

        Protest organizers dubbed the event "Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage,” in response to Monday's federal holiday named after 15th-century Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, a polarizing figure who Native American advocates have said spurred centuries of genocide against indigenous populations in the Americas.

      • Facebook bans Holocaust denial, distortion post
    • Monopolies

      • Flood of antitrust class actions over app distribution spills over to state court: Beverage v. Apple pending in Superior Court of California

        That is a state court. I haven't obtained the complaint yet, but it's obvious that this must be a case raising Unfair Competition Law (UCL) issues. State UCL and federal antitrust law (Sherman Act) have some overlaps.

        Epic Games and other plaintiffs in federal court have brought state UCL claims in addition to claims under federal antitrust law. Federal courts can rule on state law claims under the diversity jurisdiction rule (28 U.S.C. ۤ 1332), which applies since Epic Games v. Apple involves companies from two different states (California and North Carolina) and is undoubtedly about more than $75K, in addition to the factual overlap between Epic's Sherman Act and UCL claims (supplemental jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. ۤ 1367).

        Both Apple and Epic have reserved the right to file a motion to relate that Beverage case with the set of federal lawsuits in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers's court. Also, a court can take the initiative to relate cases (sua sponte).

      • Epic Games insists on conducting discovery of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook's emails: 3.6 million Apple documents are not enough

        On Friday, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California granted Epic Games' motion for a preliminary injunction against Apple only with respect to its developer account for Unreal Engine, but it's still up to Epic itself to #FreeFortnite, though Epic's aggressive attitude makes a Ninth Circuit decision likely to be inevitable before the iOS version of Fortnite will return to the App Store.

      • Patents

        • Interesting Case on Admissibility of Expert Testimony in Bench Trials: A Circuit Split

          I serve on occasion as an expert witness in patent-related trials, on inequitable conduct and the standard of care in malpractice. Of interest to me for that reason and because I still do lawyering work is UGI Sunbury LLC v. A Permanent Easement for 1.757 Acres (here) a 2019 Third Circuit decision holding that the same standard under Daubert/Kumho Tire governing admissibility of expert testimony in jury trials applies to bench trials where the trial court is the fact-finder. Specifically, while the court recognized trial courts have discretion as to how to admit expert testimony and use it, the court cannot admit unreliable expert testimony in the first instance, even when it is a bench trial. This presents a circuit split (note 4 of the opinion collects some of the contrary opinions).

        • Software Patents

          • Open Invention Network Announces Continued Expansion of its Open Source Patent Non-Aggression Zone

            Open Invention Network (OIN), the largest patent non-aggression community in history, announced today that it has further reduced patent risk associated with core Linux and adjacent open source code through the measured expansion of the scope of its Linux System Definition. To keep pace with innovation and safeguard broad-based adoption of open source code, Open Invention Network periodically revises its Linux System coverage to include core code drawn from the growing number of important open source projects.

            [...]

            This, the eighth such update in OIN’s history, continues OIN’s well-established policy of applying a conservative, consensus-driven and community-informed approach to the addition of core open source functionality to the Linux System definition.

            Open to all, OIN’s community practices patent non-aggression in core Linux and adjacent open source technologies by cross-licensing Linux System patents to one another on a royalty-free basis. Patents owned by Open Invention Network are similarly licensed royalty-free to any organization that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux System.



Recent Techrights' Posts

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Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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People Who Cover Suicide Aren't Suicidal
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