11.28.20
Posted in Site News at 7:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: We’re trying to improve the site’s availability (ensuring it can never be offline) and make it more censorship-resistant; people who adopt IPFS can make that happen while tackling the “bloated Web” and “centralised Internet” issues — all at the same time
JUST over a month ago we hooked up with data-centric security folks who had offered help with Techrights. Having faced legal threats over the years (for exposing corruption), we’re always looking for ways to avert or discourage such attempts (ideally, even if we’re forced to go offline or remove something, we want that to be outside our control, i.e. inability to comply, even if there’s a will to comply). We don’t typically just repeat what other sites say, we have many exclusive stories and we publish leaks (unseen beforehand).
Now, less than a month later, we have a pipeline for publishing the site both as text and over distributed protocols. The Techrights IPFS node over here (at home) now exceeds 50GB in traffic, just 3 weeks down the line (after introducing people to it, i.e. ‘going public’). Not bad considering how young it is. It’s always active, offering full site access. There’s no single point of failure, no HTTP, no WWW, no HTML. It’s very text-centric and thus compact, portable and so on. No bloat associated with exporting/importing images, fonts, JavaScript and so on.
Earlier today we published many pages of internal EPO material; we need to get those sorts of things backed up, as EPO management can be litigious and threatening (they tried it on us several times). Techrights is home to many other important bits of material; months ago we published old debian-private archives (1990s only); those were accessed nearly 30,000 times in this past week alone. Giving Debian better transparency 2.5 decades later can’t be a bad thing. In fact, nobody contacted us regarding removal or redaction. Those mailing lists are pretty harmless and barely even embarrassing. Due to their age, they don’t present/pose a threat to anybody’s career.
“In other words, the more people participate in this network, the more robust and censorship-resistant it’ll become. This, in turn, can attract more high-profile whistleblowers with high-profile leaks.”Now, on to the ‘beef’ of this post…
This past autumn we spent time coding and testing a bunch of stuff (at the back end for the most part). First we made everything in the site accessible in/as text. Plain text. Nice and simple. Then, we explored a number of distribution systems. At the end we went ahead of IPFS, seeing that it is decentralised and Web-agnostic (its protocols aren’t connected to the Web, unless a gateway is set up). We already have a number of devices pinning and serving the site’s pages (or objects) upon request by CID.
How can readers help? They can become nodes. The material itself isn’t sensitive (everything in it is public anyway), but it’s precarious in the sense that takedown requests can be attempted against our main servers; we want to make it very clear upfront that it’s an exercise in futility because many copies of the articles are already ‘out there’, being distributed by peer, not from a single point (of potential failure).
In other words, the more people participate in this network, the more robust and censorship-resistant it’ll become. This, in turn, can attract more high-profile whistleblowers with high-profile leaks.
An informal manual was typed up by one of us as a sort of primer for those wishing to set up their own node. It ought not be hard to achieve (by just following the series of steps). Those instructions were written for a Raspberry Pi with Debian, but the hardware and the distro ought not matter much because we use the binaries rather than repos.
“I’m going to outline a pragmatic setup that you can use to get going with IPFS on any host,” said the manual’s author. Here’s the recipe:
SUMMARY
Make user + group for IPFS. All further steps are to be performed under IPFS user’s “~/” (home directory).
Download and extract latest Go binaries available from official tarball.
Symbolic link Go binary executables, from tarball, into “~/bin“.
Download and extract latest IPFS binary available from official tarball.
Symbolic link IPFS binary executable, from tarball, into “~/bin“.
BEGIN IPFS BASIC USE GUIDE SUMMARY
What’s covered:
IPFS conceptual overview.
Help from the `ipfs` command itself.
Initialise ipfs for your IPFS user.
List pinned IPFS objects.
Add/pin IPFS objects.
Remove pinned IPFS objects.
Run garbage collector for IPFS objects.
Check IPFS stats.
Check a file’s CID without adding/pinning to IPFS.
SETUP DETAILS
Make a dedicated user and group for IPFS on your machine. This will keep things manageable, down the line. Everything should be done under the IPFS user’s home directory “~/“.
Grab the latest Go binary you can find. Set it up in the home directory of your IPFS user. You can find the latest Go binary here. There are builds for a wide array of operating systems and CPU architectures.
Extract the tarball; look in “/bin” in the tarball for the binary executables. Right now there are two binaries, “go” and “gofmt“.
Create a symbolic link in “~/bin” for the binary executables you find in the Go tarball. You should be able to run `$ source ~/.profile` to make sure “~/bin” is in PATH, for the IPFS user.
This completes the Go setup.
Next, we tackle the IPFS setup.
Download the latest binary you can get for go-ipfs from here. This binary should be packed in a tarball.
Extract the tarball.
“go-ipfs” is the name of the binary executable. Create a symbolic link for this binary in “~/bin“. You don’t need to use the setup script provided. It’ll just mess with things that don’t need messing.
IPFS BASIC USE GUIDE
Think of IPFS as a filesystem that lives on the Internet. Each file is an IPFS object denoted by a hash called the CID (content identifier).
`ipfs --help` includes help for commands and subcommands. Always double-check with this to make sure that anything you read on the Internet about IPFS matches up to the binary you actually are using on your system.
Before you do anything with ipfs, make sure to run `ipfs init`. This will populate “~/.ipfs” for you. That’s all you need to do for initial setup.
You can “deploy” ipfs locally with `ipfs daemon`; this process will be running in the foreground and print to the terminal (probably stdout). You can just put it in the background and redirect stdout and stderr to a log file to manually monitor what it’s doing. Killing this daemon will mean your IPFS node is no longer online. Feel free to control this daemon in whichever method you choose. This guide is kept as abstract as possible to enable deployment in maximum number of environments.
Files from your host can be added to IPFS as something called IPFS objects. The ipfs command for this is, unsurprisingly, called `ipfs add`. `ipfs add path` will add the specified file or directory to IPFS.
By default, `ipfs add` “pins” objects in your local IPFS datastore. What is a “pinned object”? A pinned object is an IPFS object in your local IPFS datastore that doesn’t get garbage-collected.
`ipfs pin ls` is a good way to view your pins. `ipfs pin rm` can be used to remove pins; if you try to remove the wrong type of pin, IPFS will get mad and yell at you because it’s probably a recursive pin (you’ll see what kind of pin an IPFS object is in the output for `ipfs pin ls`); a top-level pin will probably be of type “recursive” (so you’ll need to remove that to get rid of all the pinned objects that are associated).
You can check bandwidth status with `ipfs stats bw`. Good way to keep track of your precious bandwidth. ipfs comes with some default pins. You might want to get rid of those with `ipfs pin rm` to save on bandwidth. Those pins are documentation, however, so it’s up to you if you want to keep them around or not.
Just removing a pin is not enough to ensure pin(s) are no longer is eating up your local IPFS datastore space. `ipfs repo gc` will run the garbage collector to get rid of all the unpinned IPFS objects.
The default IPFS configuration is pretty sane. You can find the default config file for IPFS in “~/.ipfs/config“; the config file is formatted in JSON. See `ipfs config --help` for further details.
Remember: always check `ipfs <command> <subcommand> --help` for definitive guidance on your binary’s implementation. `ipfs --help` should be skimmed, in full, before you do anything with IPFS; you will likely find commands to help you with what you want to do. Don’t forget that `ipfs <command> --help` and `ipfs <command> <subcommand> --help` are always available for you as well.
Consuming IPFS objects is straightforward. Just look at `ipfs get --help` and `ipfs cat --help` for instructions.
To check what a file’s CID is, without adding/pinning to ipfs, just run `ipfs add -n /path/to/file`; see `ipfs add --help` for details. This is going to be a very important operation if you want to do any automation. It helps knowing what a file’s CID will be before doing any operations live IPFS operations on it.
You should now be able to independently navigate the Internet for further information on IPFS. Official, online, documentation available here. Remember to always cross-check `ipfs version` and `ipfs <command> <subcommand> --help` to ensure what you read on the Internet is applicable to the IPFS binary executable on your system. █
Image attributions: Font Awesome (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International) and IPFS project (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Today we release dozens of pages of letters and documents (internal to Europe’s second-largest institution); they all focus on the betrayal and skulduggery, crushing staff in spite of what was originally promised (and what workers actually signed up for)
THIS site does not just “dump” documents. Careful attention is paid to what’s being published and the sensitivity of the material, e.g. who can get in trouble for it. Earlier this year we published debian-private archives from almost 2.5 decades ago, noting that there was a vote to release those in the name of transparency regardless (this never happened). Those are nowadays accessed a lot (25,000 times in the past 6 days).
“All international organisations/institutions need to meet very high standards.”Over the past few months there was intense argumentation inside the EPO about labour rights, partly and not exclusively because of Coronavirus/COVID-19. We mostly stayed out of it until this month (days ago there were finally campaigns underway, mostly financially motivated). EPO salaries are high, no doubt, but they’re proportional to what should be expected from 1) international organisations (sometimes requiring travel to another country with one’s whole family, which doesn’t speak the local language) and 2) the skills/education level (many have doctoral degrees and are former scholars).
Remember: an international organisation/institution without suitable staff (and skills/experience) cannot justify its very existence. All international organisations/institutions need to meet very high standards. In the absence of such standards, or if those standards aren’t met, diplomatic immunity too can be forfeited.
Over the course of this month we’ve published here some of the more recent and even the most up-to-date documents about the EPO‘s cuts, including the Salary Adjustment [sic] Procedure (SAP). The word “Adjustment” means reduction. “The new SAP will affect everyone: younger colleagues, older colleagues and pensioners. As with the career reform, the young colleagues will be hit hardest,” the Central Staff Committee noted.
We recognise the fact that the general public or European citizens aren’t as attached or ‘in tune’ to EPO accounting/finances, so more recent documents should suffice when it comes to explaining the current situation, which is untenable (resulting in digital protests like mass-mailing; there were strike plans prior to the pandemic).
Shared today, as scheduled, is a bunch of documents (raw and original form) about financial grievances of EPO staff and pensioners. In no particular order:
There’s another relatively new document about fixed-term contracts [PDF], which were introduced by Benoît Battistelli just as he was leaving (of course António Campinos didn’t overturn that). From the recent message sent by staff representatives:
On Fixed-term contracts (Part A): A short history on fixed-term contracts at the EPO
This series of publications is intended to provide a comprehensive background on the topic of fixed-term contracts at the EPO, and to serve as a reference for links to relevant publications and documentation. The current publication, part A, deals with the history and outlines the various forms of fixed-term contracts that have been used at the EPO.
The first publication is available here.
Sincerely yours,
The Central Staff Committee
Well, parts “B” onwards (there will be four in total, A-D) are on the way, but this one starts with the basics and explains how it all started when the EPO was still able to attract the talent it needs. █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Not really a dialogue, just a box-ticking exercise to fake staff involvement
Reference: Egalitarian dialogue
Summary: Representatives of EPO staff feel like the management of the EPO is “deaf” and uncaring; there’s hardly any meaningful progress (or none whatsoever) when it comes to truly honest dialogue with real participation
The Central Staff Committee (CSC) of the EPO is trying to make life better for Europeans and for workers of the EPO. It’s obviously in the interest of staff that the EPO endures and in order for it to endure citizens of Europe need to consent to it (rebellion comes in many forms, including more ‘radical’ forms such as ‘Brexit’). As António Campinos only joined the Office a couple of years ago (immediately parachuted in as president; at least Benoît Battistelli was associated with the Council before he became the president) we don’t suppose he cares about the institution as much as examiners who worked there for 40 years (twenty times as long as he has!) and judging by what has happened since 2018 we can see he’s willing to toss it away like a tissue — much as he did in EUIPO, outsourcing some of its workforce to India (and no, it’s likely not legal, but these people are above the law).
“It’s obviously in the interest of staff that the EPO endures and in order for it to endure citizens of Europe need to consent to it (rebellion comes in many forms, including more ‘radical’ forms such as ‘Brexit’).”“In this paper,” CSC wrote earlier this year, “we consider that VP1’s apparent good intentions came to nothing – neither in the planning nor in the legal framework of the Office, such as in Circular No. 366. The promise of improvements in respect of the target-setting exercise turned out to be mere lip service – more a manipulation exercise than a genuine interest in taking staff feedback into account.”
Here’s the full take-down, which gives some praises to Stephen Rowan (Wales/UK):
sc20004cp – 0.2.1/1.3.3
Target setting approach in DG1 for 2020 – Bottom up?
Introduction
On 3 December 2019 VP1 published the DG1 operational plan for 2020 containing the criteria to be applied for setting production targets for next year in DG1.
Mr Rowan calls the so-called “bottom-up planning” an important part of the process, implicitly acknowledging that targets imposed upon staff were sometimes too ambitious in the past.
Staff Representatives in the Working Group on Performance Management (WGPM) repeatedly asked for a proper bottom-up approach to planning.
Bottom up approach
However, observing the results of the current bottom-up approach, as shown in the 2020 operational plan, raises doubts as to its success. When seeing the obscure and arbitrary way in which line managers have implemented the bottom-up process, the scattered results do not come as a surprise. An obscure correction process then apparently happened in the “discussions with the teams” (or rather their managers). The outcome was mixed with a number of other factors (stock levels, timeliness goals, recruitment, resources and SP2023). This resulted (“hey presto!”) in a compliance target of 407k and a target for excellence of 419k, surprisingly close to the target of 2018 (417k). Taking into account the steadily shrinking examiner workforce (not considering a possible further drain due to the 17 measures), it does not look much like the result of any real bottom-up exercise.
VP1’s Communiqué further claims that this target was “suggested by the bottom up plan”. The outcome is however perceived in the Directorates and Teams as more of a “kick in the bottom” than a bottom-up exercise.
Last but not least, some directors are already imposing higher targets than those derived from this pretend bottom-up exercise, citing upper managerial requirements.
Guidelines vs stated intent
Furthermore, one of the last safeguards protecting staff from arbitrarily top-down imposed-upon targets, which is that managers and staff collaboratively agree upon the contribution of individual staff members1, has disappeared in the new version of Circular No. 366 (Guidelines on Performance Management), approved in the GCC on 19 December 2019.
In the meetings of the WGPM that took place last year senior management was essentially deaf to the proposals from Staff Representatives. Mr Rowan, however, appeared to be seriously listening to the CSC’s input, and willing to implement a bottom-up approach while listening to the concerns of staff regarding planning. Nevertheless, and despite our best efforts, one of the last safeguards for staff was removed from Circular No. 366.
Conclusion
VP1’s apparent good intentions came to nothing – neither in the planning nor in the legal framework of the Office, such as in Circular No. 366. The promise of improvements in respect of the target-setting exercise turned out to be mere lip service – more a manipulation exercise than a genuine interest in taking staff feedback into account.
We fear the further devastating effects that this 2020 target, in combination with the New Career System, will have on staff engagement, motivation and health, building on the damage already done since 2015 when the New Career System was implemented.
We also fear the impact that the process will have on the work of the shrinking population of Formalities Officers.
The Central Staff Committee
_______
1 Circular 366, previously valid version, section I. AIM AND SCOPE: “Performance development is the process by which managers and staff collaboratively agree upon the contribution to be made by individual staff members.”
Mr Rowan would not be the first Brit who, according to staff representatives we had heard from, showed genuine interest in listening to staff. We wrote about this before. But he probably lacks the influence and clout needed to really turn things around, so whatever goodwill may be there, it’ll get overridden by colleagues/superiors. █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The survey would later show that only 3% of staff trusts António Campinos and 0% trusts the Council (which is supposed to oversee Dictator Campinos)
Opposites attract?
Summary: Battistelli’s cabal, which covers up a lot of fraud and corruption, is attempting to prevent the staff from expressing an opinion (for insiders and perhaps outsiders to assess) because things are really bad and autocratic measures are seen as necessary to keep the lid on issues/abuses
Oh, Mr. António Campinos! You used to exploit your father’s name to pretend to be some sort of populist. But you’re just another Benoît Battistelli and staff didn’t take longer than a year to understand that. So after about a year at the Office (EPO) the staff representatives wanted to carry out a survey which they had carried out successfully for almost a decade. Here’s what the pseudo-populist Campinos did, as per a publication from almost a year ago:
Central Staff Committee
Munich 17.01.2020
sc20006cp – 0.2.1/4.6
CSC is prevented from organising the 4th Technologia Staff Survey
We already published our disappointment on this topic on 4 October 2019. Following a more recent exchange of letters/emails with the President, we had hoped that the President could possibly change his mind and finally give green light to the organisation of the survey by the CSC in house.
During the last meeting of the GCC on 19 December 2019, the President refused to provide any reassurance, and even stated that there was no need for such a survey. On this matter Mr Campinos is regrettably walking in the footsteps of Mr Battistelli. We are – again – strongly disappointed.
Our intention was originally to organise the Technologia survey early 2019. We decided to postpone it to avoid interfering with the Staff Engagement Survey, which the President had organised at that time. We are now one year later and cannot afford to waste more time. The Technologia Staff Survey concentrates on work-related psychosocial risks, which remain a blind spot in the Staff Engagement Survey. It is absolutely necessary to get a clear picture of the situation of EPO staff with respect to such risks. We are therefore now turning to SUEPO, hoping they will accept taking up the baton once more and running the fourth edition of the Technologia Staff Survey on their own behalf.
Your Central Staff Committee
So you see? Nothing is changing at the EPO. Not the union activity, not staff representation, not free speech (the Office still blocks Techrights) and not dialogue with staff. Campinos is wasting several more years, merely perpetuating Battistelli’s corruption and abuse. Senior staff meanwhile retires (sometimes prematurely, ahead of schedule) with nobody suitable to fill the gap. The Office will perish until or unless the Council “drains the swamp”, so to speak, ousting the entire management and replacing it with competent individuals rather than a cabal. █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“The EPO is an organization in a severe crisis, due to the destructive actions of the Battistelli Administration, and the inertia of the current one in mending what was broken. The dismal state of the recruitment process is yet another indicator pointing, like all indicators, in this very same direction.”
Summary: One third of EPO recruits are ‘locals’ (Germans), 0.2% are Swiss, 1% Scandinavian; the EPO as an employer became unattractive and it’s unable to attract the staff it needs (as was projected and planned when the EPC was agreed upon)
THE António Campinos-led EPO is a disaster. Their ‘news’ section is all fluff and noise, which boils down to little but dumb photo ops (showing that Team Campinos is unable to comply with social distancing regulations).
“Europeans need to know what’s going on, in ‘their name’ so to speak, inside the EPO.”Looking behind the curtain, we’re seeing the staff representation repeatedly warning about the demise of the EPO — contrary to what Campinos and his loyalists love to claim. A year ago, staff representatives released a paper on this subject, stating:
In this paper, we consider that the recruitment process at the EPO today, especially for examiner posts, is not fit for the purpose of carrying out this task.
The EPO wants to recruit examiners with technically-suited profiles, who are able to work in our official languages – yet at the same time reduces exactly the evaluation of those components to below the bare minimum.
On top, potential candidates are kept far away from their actual future working environment and colleagues, and cannot evaluate us as a future employer – and so they can only rely on what they find online, a picture that has become severely tainted in the last few years.
We have decided to publish this paper in full; Europeans need to know what’s going on, in ‘their name’ so to speak, inside the EPO.
Central Staff Committee
Munich, 04.12.2019
sc19177cp – 0.2.1/1.3.3
Examiner Recruitment – Not fit for purpose
EPO – Quo vadis?
Dear colleagues,
One of the most important human resources functions in any organization is the process of recruiting and selecting the right staff. For the EPO the definition of “right” is crucial, as the bulk of our recruitment is focused on Patent Examiners needing highly specialized technical and language skills.
We consider that the recruitment process at the EPO today, especially for examiner posts is simply not fit for the purpose of carrying out this task.
The current process is as follows: With HR in the driving seat and carrying out the pre-selection, the DG1 managers are essentially told who to interview with minimal input from their side. For potential Examiners, technical and language knowledge assessment is now limited to a single 45-minute Skype interview with a Senior Expert, often together with a Team Manager. This is the only occasion when staff are able to briefly meet their potential new colleague. Follow-up Skype interviews are exceptional, and only planned following a reasoned request. Face-to-face technical interviews – which used to form the backbone of our recruitment process – are a big “no-no” today.
Successful candidates are then invited to one of our recruitment events, where the hiring manager is present. However, the HR partner is still in the driver’s seat.
Staff Representatives, which used to be participating throughout the entire process, are now “optional” – read: we have not been invited anymore since staff were recruited under the 5-year contracts.
It seems that the EPO wants to recruit examiners with technically-suited profiles, who are able to work in our official languages – yet at the same time reduces exactly the evaluation of those components to below the bare minimum.
The procedure has become entirely opaque, there is no independent oversight ensuring fairness to both candidates and the Office.
By limiting the effort and involvement of examiners – the future colleagues, coaches, team members of a new recruit – in the recruitment process, the Office saves money in the short term. Yet what is the cost when we then encounter more problems during the probation year? Not only have we been paying our new recruits salary, removal expenses etc., we also organised training courses, and had one or more coaches at their disposal. On top, we have also potentially burdened them with the financial and human cost of having to move their lives, families and career for an unsuccessful experience.
Something else the Administration continues to overlook: Recruitment is a bi-directional process. Candidates are evaluating us just as we evaluate them. Do they feel at home with us? Is this the job they want? Is this the place they want to transfer their lives to, and to do so for a 5-year contract? The Examiners we seek are highly experienced and qualified, often with a PhD, they are internationally mobile, and are able to work in multiple languages. They already have a job or could quite easily get one. If we want to recruit the top candidates, we should positively stand out. Yet, potential recruits do not get to see our ‘normal working environment’. They do not get to see what our job actually consists of, they do not get to sit down and talk with an examiner, to see a patent application up close, they do not get the chance to sniff the social environment.
By keeping the candidates far away from their actual future working environment and colleagues, we deprive them from this all-important element in their evaluation of us – and so they can only rely on what they find online, a picture that has become severely tainted in the last few years.
No wonder the number of candidates for examiner posts is dwindling1, now less than one third of what we had just 3 years ago.
No wonder we see a lot of candidates drop out somewhere along the recruitment process – something which virtually did not exist a few years ago.
No wonder we see one in three, sometimes more, examiner job offers being refused, the 5-year contract prominently featuring as the main reason why.
No wonder we are mainly limited to recruiting young, fresh from university or PhD, and local to the places of employment.
Today, we are in a situation of overcapacity in many technical areas, so recruitment of examiners can function at a minimal level. But soon we will inevitably need to ramp up recruitment again, with much larger cohorts leaving on retirement.
To repeat, the recruitment process for examiners we have today is not fit for purpose – and the offer we make to the candidates is subpar, to put it mildly2.
The EPO is an organization in a severe crisis, due to the destructive actions of the Battistelli Administration, and the inertia of the current one in mending what was broken. The dismal state of the recruitment process is yet another indicator pointing, like all indicators, in this very same direction.
Your Staff Committee
_____
1 See the 2018 Social Report – table 12 on page 19
2 It is telling that from the last 1000 new recruits since 2014 only 11 were Scandinavian, 2 from Switzerland – yet 1 in 3 from Germany.
The Microsoft-EPO relationship reaffirmed in “technical and language knowledge assessment is now limited to a single 45-minute Skype interview”; so candidates must have a Microsoft (US) account? █
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Summary: Microsoft loves Linux, they say; but as Microsoft’s former VP James Allchin put it: “If you’re going to kill someone there isn’t much reason to get all worked up about it and angry — you just pull the trigger [...] We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger.”
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