Desktop/Laptop

• My 10-year-old HP Pavilion doesn’t boot modern distros anymore

  I like round-number milestones. Especially if they allow one to showcase nice things. For example, sometime ago, I managed to revitalize my fairly ancient LG laptop by installing MX Linux on it. This restored a great deal of speed and nimbleness to the system, allowing it to remain modern and relevant for a bit longer.

  Now that my HP machine has reached its double-digit age, I thought of upgrading its Linux system. At the moment, the machine dual-boots Windows 7 (indeed, relax) and Kubuntu 20.04. Things work reasonably well. Spec-wise, the 2010 laptop comes with a first-gen i5 processor, 4 GB of RAM, 7,200rpm hard disk, and Nvidia graphics. Technically, not bad at all, even today. Well, I decided to try some modern distro flavors, to see what gives.

  [...]

  Trawling through the online forums, I’ve found a few other mentions of similar problems. Of course, almost every legacy system issue is rather unique, so I can’t draw any concrete conclusions here. But it does feel like Linux is leaving old stuff behind. ‘Tis a paradox really. On one hand, Linux is well-known for being able to run (and pride itself for being able to do so) on ancient, low-end hardware. On the other hand, providing and maintaining support for an infinite amount of ancient systems is difficult.

  And if you do recall my older content, I had a somewhat similar problem on my T42 laptop. Back when it had its tenth birthday, I booted it up after a long pause, and tried using Linux on it yet again. And I had problems finding Linux drivers for its ATI card – Windows drivers were easily and readily available. The problems aren’t identical, but they are definitely indicative. Oh well. I may continue testing and playing with the old HP Pavilion, but I might not be able to really show you how well it carries into modern age. Hopefully, you found something useful in this wee sad article.

Server

• ZimaBoard is a hackable single-board server with Intel Apollo Lake (crowdfunding)

  Folks have been using inexpensive single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi to create DIY home servers for about as long as inexpensive SBCs have been a thing. But the ZimaBoard is one of the first I’ve seen that’s custom made to be used as a DIY, hackable server.

  The ZimaBoard is a small, fanless computer powered by a 6-watt Intel Apollo Lake processor with support for hard drives and SSDs.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Adding Your Cringe Stickers To Matrix

  Unlike discord, Matrix doesn’t make you pay to use your own custom emotes or stickers, you just need to go and host them yourself. Luckily doing so is surprisignly [sic] easy and can be done for free.

• FLOSS Weekly 613: EteSync and Etebase – Tom Hacohen, EteSync and Etebase

  Etebase is a set of client libraries and a server for building end-to-end encrypted applications. Tom Hacohen, who previously appeared on FLOSS Weekly episode 524 to talk about securely syncing contacts, calendars, tasks and notes with his product EteSync, is back to talk about his new baby: Etebase. This is a great discussion as more and more consumers and users are interested in encryption and securing their private information across all platforms they use today.

Kernel Space

• Linux on the Apple M1 takes another step closer with Ubuntu working thanks to Corellium

  ARM virtualization company Corellium has managed to get Ubuntu Linux running on the next-generation Apple M1.

  The news comes from Corellium CEO, Chris Wade, who mentioned on Twitter how “Linux is now completely usable on the Mac mini M1. Booting from USB a full Ubuntu desktop (rpi). Network works via a USB c dongle. Update includes support for USB, I2C, DART. We will push changes to our GitHub and a tutorial later today.”.

  Impressive speedy work, and a separate project to the recently revealed Asahi Linux which is also aiming to do the same thing. Two heads are better than one, as they say. The Corellium team mentioned on Twitter they full back the Asahi project too, so it’s wonderful to see true cooperation.

  Right now this effort doesn’t appear to have full GPU acceleration so it’s doing software rendering, making it less suitable for a daily driver but work is ongoing towards that. Eventually everything will be in place, and it’s taking far less time than I personally expected to see it running on such brand new hardware from Apple.

• Linux now ‘completely usable’ on M1 Mac mini

  The initial announcement came with a warning that the “very early” beta was for “advanced users only”, and that USB support and a more complete release was on the way.

  As Wade has now noted, users can now boot from USB to a full Ubuntu desktop.

• Security researchers have ported Ubuntu Linux for Apple Silicon M1 hardware

  Corellium’s CTO Chris Wade on Wednesday tweeted two photos of Ubuntu’s Groovy Gorilla running on the Mac Mini M1, adding that it was “completely usable” after booting from a ‘live’ USB drive.

• The Maple Tree, A Modern Data Structure for a Complex Problem

  The Linux Memory Management layer supports the very common technique of virtual memory. Linux splits blocks of virtual memory into areas specified by the c structure vm_area_struct. Each vm_area_struct contain information associated with mapped memory and are used to find the associated pages of memory which contain the actual information. Virtual memory areas (VMAs) could be the contents of a file on disk, the memory that contains the program, or even the memory the program uses during execution. Literally everything that is run on Linux uses vm_area_struct for memory mapping. This vital area of the kernel needs to be quick and avoid contention whenever possible.

• Dbus-Broker 26 Released For High Performance D-Bus

  With the BUS1 in-kernel IPC not panning out and not seeing any major code work in nearly two years, the user-space based, D-Bus compatible DBus-Broker remains the performant and current option for those looking at something faster and more reliable than D-Bus itself.

• Graphics Stack

  • Vulkan Wayland Compositors Are Nearing Reality – Phoronix

    One of the last pieces of the puzzle for supporting an entirely Vulkan-based Wayland compositor is coming together with a new extension that looks like it will be merged soon and there already being work pending against Sway/WLROOTS to make use of the Vulkan path.

    The VK_EXT_physical_device_drm extension to Vulkan has been in the works for a number of months and is for allowing the mapping of Vulkan physical devices and DRM nodes. VK_EXT_physical_device_drm allows for querying DRM properties for physical devices and in turn matching the with DRM nodes on Linux systems.

  • Mesa’s R600 Driver Nears Feature Complete NIR Support For Radeon HD 5000/6000 Series – Phoronix

    For those still making use of pre-GCN AMD graphics cards supported by the R600 Gallium3D driver (namely the Radeon HD 5000/6000 series), the open-source “R600g” Gallium3D driver now has nearly feature complete NIR support.

    Gert Wollny has been near single handedly working on NIR support for the R600g driver to make use of this modern graphics driver intermediate representation as an alternative to the long-standing Gallium3D TGSI IR.

Applications

• Support for Istio 1.7 ends on February 19th, 2021

  According to Istio’s support policy, LTS releases like 1.7 are supported for three months after the next LTS release. Since 1.8 was released on November 19th, support for 1.7 will end on February 19th, 2021.

  At that point we will stop back-porting fixes for security issues and critical bugs to 1.7, so we encourage you to upgrade to the latest version of Istio (1.8.2). If you don’t do this you may put yourself in the position of having to do a major upgrade on a short timeframe to pick up a critical fix.

• VLC 3.0.12 Vetinari – VideoLAN

• VLC Media Player 3.0.12 Released with Apple Silicon Support

  The VideoLAN team announced the release of VLC 3.0.12 as the thirteenth version of the “Vetinari” branch.

  The new release features native support for Apple Silicon hardware, the M1 processor in new versions of the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini.

• Deskreen Makes Any Device With A Web Browser A Second Screen For Your Computer

  Deskreen is a new free and open source application that can be used to make any device (in the same WiFi / LAN network) with a web browser, a second screen for your computer. The tool runs on Linux, Windows and macOS.

  With Deskreen you can use a phone, tablet (no matter if they use Android, iOS, etc.), smart TV and any other device that has a screen and a web browser (without needing any plugins; it needs JavaScript to be enabled), as a second screen via WiFi or LAN.

Instructionals/Technical

• Essential Guide: How to Install Docker on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Beginners Guide)

  Docker is a combo of ‘platform as a service’ products and services which use OS virtualisation to provide software in packages called containers.

  Containers contain everything an app, tool or service needs to run, including all libraries, dependencies, and configuration files. Containers are also isolated from each other (and the underlying host system), but can communicate through pre-defined channels.

• Demux, mux and cut MP4 in ffmpeg

  Sometimes video and audio needs to be separated into individual files (aka demuxed). This can be handy when some audio artifacts need to be removed (e.g. noise or buzz) from the audio track (aka stream). This can be done easily…

• Oracle Linux 8: Containers made easy with short training videos

  Container technology provides a means for developers and system administrators to build and package applications together with libraries, binaries, and configuration files so they can run independently from the host operating system and kernel version. You can run the same container application, unchanged, on laptops, data center virtual machines, and on a cloud environment.

• Fix for 2createpackages in woofQ

  WoofQ is the build system for EasyOS. It has scripts ’0setup’, ’1download’, ’2createpackages’ and ’3buildeasydistro’, that are run in that order. The script ’2createpackages’ splits each input package into _EXE, _DEV, _DOC and _NLS components.

  Recently, when compiling LibreOffice in EasyOS on the Pi4, the configure step reported that the system boost libraries cannot be used, as some header files were missing. So, I had to use the internal boost, which does make the final LibreOffice PET bigger than it could have been.

• How to Install and Remove Packages in Arch Linux

  Want to install packages on Arch Linux but do not know how? A lot of people face this problem when they first migrate from Debian-based distributions to Arch. However, you can easily manage packages on your Arch-based system using package managers.

  Pacman is the default package manager that comes pre-installed in every Arch distribution. But still, there’s a need for other package managers as Pacman doesn’t support packages from the Arch User Repository.

• How to Manage Systemd Services with Systemctl on Linux

  Systemd a standard process for managing start-up services in Linux operating systems. It is used for controlling which programs run when the Linux system boots up. It is a system manager and has become the new standard for Linux operating systems. Systemd allows you to create a custom systemd service to run and manage any process. In this tutorial, we will explain how to manage services with systemd on Linux.

• How to install Synfig Studio on Linux Mint 20.1 – YouTube

  In this video, we are looking at how to install Synfig Studio on Linux Mint 20.1.

• How to install Ubuntu Unity Remix 20.10 – YouTube

  In this video, I am going to show how to install Ubuntu Unity Remix 20.10.

• How to Exclude a Directory While Finding Files in Linux

  In Linux, the find command is used to search for files or folders from the command line. It is a complex command and has a large number of options, arguments, and modes.

  The most common use of the find command is to search for files using either a regular expression or the complete filename(s) to be searched.

• How to Copy Files with Specific File Extension Recursively

  In Linux, the command ‘cp‘, which standards for ‘Copy‘ is used to copy files and folders to another folder. It is available by default in Linux as part of the GNU Coreutils set of tools.

  The most basic use of the cp command is to specify the files to be copied as the arguments and to specify the target folder as the last argument.

• How to Copy Large Number of Files in Linux

  We use the cp command in Linux to copy files and directories from one directory to another. It can be simply used to copy a few files or directories, or it can be used with the ‘-r’ argument (which stands for ‘recursive‘) to copy a directory and the whole directory tree structure underneath it.

• What is /dev/null in Linux

  The ‘/dev‘ directory in Linux and Unix based systems contains files corresponding to devices attached to the system. For example, as seen in the screenshot below, the CD drive is accessed using ‘cdrom‘, DVD drive with ‘dvd‘, hard drives are accessed using ‘sda1‘, ‘sda2‘, etc.

  All these files communicate with the Linux system through the respective files in ‘/dev‘. The input/output processing of the devices takes place through these files. This is due to an important feature of the filesystem in Linux: everything is either a file or a directory.

• What is ‘> /dev/null 2>&1’ in Linux

  /dev/null is a pseudo-device file in Linux, which is used to discard output coming from programs, especially the ones executed on the command line. This file behaves like a sink, i.e. a target file which can be written, however as soon as any stream of data is written to this file, it is immediately deleted.

  This is useful to get rid of the output that is not required by the user. Programs and processes can generate output logs of huge length, and it gets messy at times to analyze the log.

• Learn the main Linux OS components

  Evolved from Unix, Linux provides users with a low-cost, secure way to manage their data center infrastructure. Due to its open source architecture, Linux can be tricky to learn and requires command-line interface knowledge as well as the expectation of inconsistent documentation.

  In short, Linux is an OS. But Linux has some features and licensing options that set it apart from Microsoft and Apple OSes. To understand what Linux can do, it helps to understand the different Linux OS components and associated lingo.

• How to Redirect Output to /dev/null in Linux

  In Linux, programs are very commonly accessed using the command line and the output, as such, is displayed on the terminal screen. The output consists of two parts: STDOUT (Standard Output), which contains information logs and success messages, and STDERR (Standard Error), which contains error messages.

  Many times, the output contains a lot of information that is not relevant, and which unnecessarily utilizes system resources. In the case of complex automation scripts especially, where there are a lot of programs being run one after the other, the displayed log is huge.

• How to Move Large Number of Files in Linux

  To move files from one directory to another, the ‘mv‘ command is used in Linux. This command is available in Linux by default and can be used to move files as well as directories.

• How to Limit the Depth of Recursive File Listing in Linux

  In this article, you will learn how to list file directory structure and limit the depth of recursive file display in Linux.

• How to Find Top Running Processes by Memory Usage

  We will use the top command-line tool, which is a task manager in Unix and Linux systems that shows all the details about running processes with memory usage.

• How to Extract Email Addresses from Text File in Linux

  In this article, you will learn how to extract Email addresses from a text file in Linux, using the handy command-line tool Grep.

• How to Change Your Linux Password

  You’ve heard it before: change your password regularly. That can sometimes seem like a pain, but fortunately, changing your Linux password is easy. Today we’ll show you how to change the current user’s password, other users’ passwords, and the superuser password with a few simple commands.

• How To Generate Random Numbers in Unix

  It is very easy to generate random numbers in Unix. Easiest way is to use the variable $RANDOM.

  Every time if you echo $RANDOM, you would get a new number between 0 and 32767.

• How To Find IP Address In Linux – OSTechNix

  This guide will walk you through the steps to check or find IP address in Linux using ip and hostname commands from command line interface.

• How to Update Node.js to the Latest Version – LinuxBuz

  Node.js is an open-source and cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment used to run JavaScript code on the server-side. It is primarily used for non-blocking, event-driven servers, traditional web sites and back-end API services.

  You already know how to install Node.js and NPM using three different ways. If your application is running on the Node.js server then I would recommend updating Node.js version regularly to improve the security. There are several ways you can update your Node.js version in Linux system.

• How to Uninstall Applications from Ubuntu [Beginner's Guide]

  Don’t use a certain application anymore? Remove it.

  In fact, removing programs is one of the easiest ways to free up disk space on Ubuntu and keep your system clean.

  In this beginner’s tutorial, I’ll show you various ways of uninstalling software from Ubuntu.

• How to Install and Configure Apache Web Server on Debian 10

  Apache server is one of the most popular and open source web servers that is developed and maintained by Apache Software Foundation. Apache is by far the most commonly used Web Server application in Linux operating systems, but it can be used on nearly all OS platforms Windows, MAC OS, OS/2, etc. It enables the developers to publish their content over the internet

  In this article, we will explain how to install and configure the Apache webserver on Debian 10 OS.

• How to Install Spotify on Linux Distributions

  Spotify is a free music streaming service that offers additional premium content at a minimal subscription fee. It’s a widely successful music service with several million users and millions of songs at your fingertips. With Spotify, you can listen to your favorite artists, the latest hits, exclusives, and new discoveries on the go. Spotify is available on Windows, macOS, Linux (Debian), along with Android, iOS, and Windows Phone smartphones and tablets.

  We will learn in this article how to install Spotify on the latest version of Ubuntu, Mint, and Fedora.

• How to Install SOGo on Ubuntu 20.04 | LinuxHostSupport

  SOGo is a free and open-source collaborative software with a focus on simplicity and scalability. It provides an AJAX-based Web interface and supports multiple native clients through the use of standard protocols such as CalDAV, CardDAV, and GroupDAV, as well as Microsoft ActiveSync. It also offers address book management, calendaring, and Web-mail clients along with resource sharing and permission handling.

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install SOGo on an Ubuntu 20.04 based virtual private server.

• How to Install LXD / LXC on Ubuntu – buildVirtual

  Learn how to install LXD on a Ubuntu Linux system, including how to install and initialise LXD manually, use –preseed and how to script the lxd install

• How to install iTunes on Linux such as Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – Linux Shout

  iTunes for Linux systems doesn’t sound realistic because officially it is available only for Windows and macOS. However, using Wine on Ubuntu and other Linux, is absolutely possible just like any other native Linux application.

  Those who are using Apple devices can understand the value of the iTunes application on their systems. It let you not only listen to music available on your iPhone, PC, and other devices but also let access various other things such as Radio, iTunes Store, and more. Once logged in with Apple ID, in addition to managing, playing, and downloading music tracks, the iTunes app also enables direct access to the music streaming service of Apple Music.

• How to set up tlog on Linux hosts for terminal logging | Enable Sysadmin

  Enhance your system security with tlog, a terminal logging utility.

• How to update your server from Ubuntu 18.04 to Ubuntu 20.04 | LinuxCloudVPS Blog

  Upgrading your Ubuntu version from one version to the latest version is one of the best features of Ubuntu. It is always recommended to upgrade your current Ubuntu version regularly in order to benefits from the latest security patches. You will get several benefit including, the latest software, new security patches and upgraded technology with a new version.

  As of now, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is the latest Ubuntu version and you will keep getting updates and support till April 2025.

  Before starting any upgrade process, it is a good idea to backup any important files, system settings, and critical content for precaution. Also remember, you cannot downgrade it. You cannot go back to Ubuntu 18.04 without reinstalling it.

• How to use whiptail to create more user-friendly interactive scripts | Enable Sysadmin

  Do you script in bash? If so, you can provide your users with a more robust and simple TUI for entering information into scripts.

• Install Krita 4.4.2 In Ubuntu / Linux Mint | Tips On UNIX

  Krita is a free and open-source painting tool for artists and also known as a Photoshop alternative software, Krita has been in development for 10+ years and recently it came to life and having a good response now.

  This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install Krita 4.4.2 in Ubuntu 20.10, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 18.04 and Linux Mint 20.1, and older versions.

  The latest version of Krita is 4.4.2 and announced with over 300 changes with new features also.

• Install VLC 3.0.12 In Ubuntu / LinuxMint / OpenSUSE | Tips On UNIX

  This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install VLC in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10, Ubuntu 18.04 and LinuxMint 20.1.

  VLC is a free and open-source cross-platform multimedia player and it is one of the best media player for Linux used by millions of peoples to play multimedia files such as DVD, VCD, MP4, MKV, Mp3, and various formats.

  VLC released the thirteenth version of “Vetinari” branch 3.0.12.

Wine or Emulation

• To get a major boost, running Windows apps on Linux is what comes next

  The v6 has been recently released with all major improvements needed. And named Wine, the popular layer of compatibility for running Windows apps on Linux. Undoubtedly, this going to be the first major release by the project in this year 2021. And all happen with following Wine’s schedule of making one major release every year with improvements and fresh updates.

  Wine can’t be listed among emulators as what the previous version is said as. It is a compatibility layer designed to allow games and apps to run on non-native environments like Linux, and originally was for only Microsoft.

  All Linux users with Wine will be allowed to easily access more than 27000 Windows apps and games on Linux. This apps also includes popular ones such as Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office. After year’s worth of development that saw over around 8300 changes this Wine 6.0 came up. And all these is been shared by Alexandre Julliard the person who created this in the release announcement.

Games

• Valve have multiple games in development they will announce says Gabe Newell

  Gabe Newell of Valve Software (Steam) recently spoke to 1 NEWS in New Zealand about everything that has been going on and teased a few fun details. For those who didn’t know, Newell has been staying in New Zealand since early 2020 and decided to stay after a holiday when COVID-19 got much worse.

  Newell continues to talk very highly of New Zealand, even somewhat jokingly mentioning that some Valve staffers appear to strongly want to move their work over there now too. Newell mentioned why there’s no reason other game companies couldn’t move to New Zealand, and joked how they’re a producer of “not-stupidium” seemingly referring to how well New Zealand has dealt with COVID-19.

  [...]

  Nice to see they continue to keep Linux in their sights for games too with all their recent games (Artifact, Underlords and Half-Life: Alyx) all having Linux builds, although Alyx is not directly mentioned on the store page for Linux it is available.

• Vietnam joins Civilization VI in the next DLC for the New Frontier Pass on January 28

  Firaxis has confirmed the next DLC that forms part of the New Frontier Pass for Civilization VI will be releasing on January 28. Here’s some highlights of what’s to come.

  While the full details are yet to be released, Firaxis did a developer update video to tease some of it. There’s going to be a new civilization with Vietnam joining the world, two new leaders for existing civilizations (China and Mongolia), a new “Monopolies and Corporations” game mode with expanded economic options which sounds really quite interesting.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Krita 4.4.2 Released With Over 300 Changes And Some New Features – It’s FOSS News

    Krita is one of the best open-source paint applications available for Linux. With their latest 4.4.2 release, it should get more exciting for all the users across multiple platforms.

    In their official announcement, they mention it as a “bugfix release” but do not let that fool you. It is indeed a significant release with over 300 changes and some new key feature additions to let you make the most out of it.

  • Krita 4.4.2 Released with Mesh Gradients, Mesh Transform, New Gradient Fill Layer | UbuntuHandbook

    Krita, free open-source painting program, released version 4.4.2 yesterday with some key new features though it’s mainly a bug-fix release.

    Krita 4.4.2 comes with over 300 changes.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Nasah Kuma: My Journey to GJS’ Backtrace “full” Option

    My outreachy internship has definitely taught me a lot of things including writing blog posts, reporting tasks, expressing myself and of course improving as a developer. When we developed a project timeline before submitting the final application weeks back, my mentor and I underestimated some of the issues because there were some hidden difficulties we only found out later.

    Initially, my timeline was set to using the first week to understand the inner workings of the debugger, using week 2-4 on the backtrace full command, using week 5-7 to display the current line of the source code when displaying the current frame in the debugger and the task for week 8-13 were still to be decided upon by my mentor and I within the course of the internship.

  • Sergio Villar Senin: Flexbox Cats (a.k.a fixing images in flexbox)

    In my previous post I discussed my most recent contributions to flexbox code in WebKit mainly targeted at reducing the number of interoperability issues among the most popular browsers. The ultimate goal was of course to make the life of web developers easier. It got quite some attention (I loved Alan Stearns’ description of the post) so I decided to write another one, this time focused in the changes I recently landed in WebKit (Safari’s engine) to improve the handling of elements with aspect ratio inside flexbox, a.k.a make images work inside flexbox. Some of them have been already released in the Safari 118 Tech Preview so it’s now possible to help test them and provide early feedback.

  • GNOME Software Jailbreak

    As many users have noticed, you cannot install all the software you want on your computer via gnome-software. This restriction has been imposed by the developers…

Distributions

• The Linux Setup – Leah Neukirchen, Void Linux

  I found Leah through a fascinating tweet where she charted out her IRC activity over the past 10 years. Leah’s setup is just as interesting, mostly in that there’s no desktop environment. Leah also helps maintain Void Linux, which is a rolling release built from scratch. It’s a little too hardcore for me, but it seems pretty beloved on Reddit. So this setup is technical and intense, but also a lot of fun.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

  • Flashpeak Slimjet browser updated to 29.0.1.0 » PCLinuxOS

    Slimjet is built on top of the Chromium open-source project on which Google Chrome is also based. It enjoys the same speed and reliablity provided by the underlying blink engine as Google Chrome. However, many additional features and options have been added in Slimjet to make it more powerful, intelligent and customizable than Chrome. In addition to that, Slimjet DOES NOT send any usage statistics back to Google’s server like Google Chrome, which is a growing concern for many Chrome users due to the ubiquitous presence and reach of the advertising empire.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • Accessing the Public Cloud Update Infrastructure via a Proxy

    SUSE provides public cloud customers with PAYG (Pay-As-You-Go) images on AWS, Azure, and GCP. Instances created from these images connect to a managed update infrastructure. So if you need to update your instances with the latest software updates or install that needed package using zypper, usually you can be assured that the underlying repositories are there with no further hassles. There are exceptions, though. Instances configured to utilize a proxy server or traverse firewalls, NAT gateways, proxies, security rules, Zscalar, or other security and network devices may run into problems. The purpose of this post is to address some of the more commonly occurring configuration issues seen with public cloud environments.

  • How SUSE builds its Enterprise Linux distribution – PART 5 | SUSE Communities

    This is the fifth blog of a series that provides insight into SUSE Linux Enterprise product development. You will get a first-hand overview of SUSE, the SLE products, what the engineering team does to tackle the challenges coming from the increasing pace of open source projects, and the new requirements from our customers, partners and business-related constraints.

    [...]

    Based on our joint schedule, openSUSE Leap and SLE have a predictable release time frame: a release every 12 months and a 6 months support overlap for the former and new release, thus when the time is ready a snapshot of openSUSE Tumbleweed is made and both openSUSE and SLE will use this snapshot to create our next distributions versions.
    With this picture, we are not talking about our distribution per se yet, it’s only a pool of packages sources that we will use to build our respective distribution. But before going into how it’s built, note that it’s a simplified view because of course, there is always some back and forth between for instance openSUSE Leap/SLE and openSUSE Tumbleweed; it’s not just a one-way sync because during the development phase of our distributions, bugs are found and of course fixes are submitted back to Factory so openSUSE Tumbleweed also receives fixes from the process. For the sake of simplifying the picture we did not add these contributions as arrows.
    Also at SUSE, Open source is in our genes so we have always contributed to openSUSE but, since 2017, our SUSE Release Team had enforce a rule called “Factory First Policy“, which force code submissions for SLE to be pushed to Factory first before it lands in SLE. This is a continuation of the “Upstream First” principle on the distribution level. It reduces maintenance effort and leverages the community.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Red Hat Seeks to Soothe CentOS Linux Users

    Red Hat rolled out updates to its CentOS Stream platform targeted at alleviating support issues tied to the new Linux platform that is set to supersede its long-standing CentOS Linux project.

    The CentOS Stream platform will include “no- and low-cost” programs that will allow individual Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) subscriptions to run on up to 16 systems in a production environment. This includes the ability to run these RHEL systems on major public cloud environments like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This option will be available by Feb. 1, 2021.

    Red Hat is now also making it possible to add development teams to its Red Hat Developer program by using a team member’s existing RHEL subscription. This will allow RHEL to be deployed using Red Hat’s Cloud Access program on top of those major cloud providers.

  • Red Hat Launches New RHEL Programs

    Red Hat has announced two new programs for RHEL: no-cost RHEL for small production workloads and no-cost RHEL for customer development teams.

    The terms of the no-cost RHEL program formerly limited its use to single-machine developers. Red Hat has now expanded the terms of the program so that the Individual Developer subscription for RHEL can be used in production for up to 16 systems.

  • New Year, new Red Hat Enterprise Linux programs: Easier ways to access RHEL

    On December 8, 2020, Red Hat announced a major change to the enterprise Linux ecosystem: Red Hat will begin shifting our work from CentOS Linux to CentOS Stream on December 31, 2021. We and the CentOS Project governing board believe that CentOS Stream represents the best way to further drive Linux innovation. It will give everyone in the broader ecosystem community, including open source developers, hardware and software creators, individual contributors, and systems administrators, a closer connection to the development of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform.

    When we announced our intent to transition to CentOS Stream, we did so with a plan to create new programs to address use cases traditionally served by CentOS Linux. Since then, we have gathered feedback from the broad, diverse, and vocal CentOS Linux user base and the CentOS Project community. Some had specific technical questions about deployment needs and components, while others wondered what their options were for already- or soon-to-be deployed systems. We’ve been listening. We know that CentOS Linux was fulfilling a wide variety of important roles.

    We made this change because we felt that the Linux development models of the past 10+ years needed to keep pace with the evolving IT world. We recognize the disruption that this has caused for some of you. Making hard choices for the future isn’t new to Red Hat. The introduction of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the deprecation of Red Hat Linux two decades ago caused similar reactions. Just as in the past, we’re committed to making the RHEL ecosystem work for as broad a community as we can, whether it’s individuals or organizations seeking to run a stable Linux backend; community projects maintaining large CI/Build systems; open source developers looking toward “what’s next;” educational institutions, hardware, and software vendors looking to bundle solutions; or enterprises needing a rock-solid production platform.

  • Install RHEL 8.3 for free production use in a VM

    In January 2021, Red Hat announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be used at no cost for up to 16 production servers. In this article, I want to provide step-by-step instructions on how to install RHEL 8.3 in a VM.

    First off, download the official and updated QCOW2 image named rhel-8.3-x86_64-kvm.qcow2 (the name will likely change later as RHEL moves to higher versions). Creating an account on the Red Hat Portal is free, there is an integration with 3rd party authorization services like GitHub, Twitter or Facebook, however for successful host registration username and password needs to be created.

    To use RHEL in a cloud environment like Amazon, Azure or OpenStack, simply upload the image and start it. It’s cloud-init ready, make sure to seed the instance with data like usernames, passwords and/or ssh-keys. Note that root account is locked, there is no way to log in without seeding initial information.

  • CentOS Is Gone — But RHEL Is Now Free For Up To 16 Production Servers

  • Rocky Linux Making Progress Towards Their First Release In Q2 As A Free RHEL Alternative

    If Red Hat’s new no-cost offering for up to 16 production systems for RHEL doesn’t fit your requirements and are evaluating alternatives to CentOS 8 that will be EOL’ed this year, Rocky Linux remains one of the leading contenders and is on track for its inaugural release in Q2 of this year.

    Rocky Linux and CloudLinux’s AlmaLinux appear to be the two main contenders (along with existing players like Oracle Linux) coming out of last month’s announcement that CentOS 8 will be EOL’ed at the end of 2021.

  • Madeline Peck: January Blog Post (New Year New Bloggin!)

    Today I actually also attended the super low key design team video chat, which involved a brain storm session for Fedora 35 that was exciting!

• Debian Family

  • Bug#971515: marked as done (kubernetes: excessive vendoring (private libraries))

    This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
    If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
    Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.
    
    (NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this
    message is talking about, this may indicate a serious mail system
    misconfiguration somewhere. Please contact owner@bugs.debian.org
    immediately.)
    
    

  • The Debian tech committee allows Kubernetes vendoring

    Back in October, LWN looked at a conversation within the Debian project regarding whether it was permissible to ship Kubernetes bundled with some 200 dependencies. The Debian technical committee has finally come to a conclusion on this matter: this bundling is acceptable and the maintainer will not be required to make changes

  • Kentaro Hayashi: fabre.debian.net is sponsored by FOSSHOST

    Today, we are pleased to announce that fabre.debian.net has migrated to FOSSHOST

    FOSSHOST provides us a VPS instance which is located at OSU Open Source Lab. It improves a lack of enough server resources then service availability especially.

  • Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, December 2020

    A Debian LTS logo Like each month, have a look at the work funded by Freexian’s Debian LTS offering.

    Debian project funding

    In December, we put aside 2100 EUR to fund Debian projects. The first project proposal (a tracker.debian.org improvement for the security team) was received and quickly approved by the paid contributors, then we opened a request for bids and the bid winner was announced today (it was easy, we had only one candidate). Hopefully this first project will be completed until our next report.

    We’re looking forward to receive more projects from various Debian teams! Learn more about the rationale behind this initiative in this article.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Linux Mint 20.1 is a desktop anyone can love

    I’m glad Linux Mint exists. That’s a strange statement, coming from someone who has never opted to make it their default desktop distribution. I’ve never been a fan of Cinnamon or Mate, and I’ve always thought Xfce was a solid desktop, but just not for me.

    Even though I’m not terribly keen on the offered desktops for Linux Mint, I still believe it to be a fantastic distribution. Why is that? One reason is that it’s most ardent fans are almost Apple-like in their fanaticism. From my perspective, that’s a good thing. Linux has long needed a desktop distribution which elicited that much excitement from the user base. Once upon a time, that title would have been bestowed upon Ubuntu. Alas, a few bad choices along the way and the rabid fanbase isn’t quite so rabid.

Devices/Embedded

• Renesas adds to RZ/G2 line with three Cortex-A55 SoCs

  Renesas unveiled three low-end “RZ/G2L” members of its RZ/G2 family of Linux-driven IoT SoCs with single or dual -A55 cores plus a Mali-G31, Cortex-M33, and up to dual GbE support. There is also a SMARC module and dev kit.

  Renesas’ RZ/G2 line of industrial-focused system-on-chips include the hexa-core RZ/GM and octa-core RZ-G2H, both with mixtures of Cortex-A57 and -A53 cores and 4K support, as well as two dual-core models: a Cortex-A53 based RZ/G2E with HD video and a Cortex-A57-equipped RZ/G2N with 4K. Instead of filling in the middle of the Linux-focused product line with some quad-core models, the Japanese chipmaker has instead come back with three new low-end models, featuring single or dual-core Cortex-A55 cores.

• Renesas RZ/G2L MPUs Feature Cortex-A55 & Cortex-M33 Cores for AI Applications

  Renesas Electronics Corporation announced RZ/G2L MPUs, allowing enhanced processing for an extensive variety of AI applications. The RZ/G2L group of 64-bit MPUs includes three new MPU models featuring Arm Cortex-A55, and an optional Cortex-M33 core. These are RZ/G2L, RZ/G2LC, and RZ/G2UL MPUs. The Cortex-A55 CPU core typically delivers approximately 20 percent improved processing performance compared with the previous Cortex-A53 core, and according to Renesas, is around six times faster in “essential processing for AI applications”.

• Fanless embedded PC supports industrial GRE Tiger Lake CPUs

  Avalue’s fanless, rugged “EMS-TGL” embedded PC runs Linux or Win 10 on embedded versions of Intel’s 11th Gen ULP3 Core CPUs with up to 64GB DDR4-3200, 3x M.2, 1GbE and 2.5GbE ports, and optional “IET” expansion.

  Avalue, which recently launched a pair of NUC-APL mini-PCs based on Intel’s Apollo Lake, announced a larger, but similarly fanless embedded computer with Intel’s 10nm, 11th Gen “Tiger Lake” ULP3 processors. The rugged EMS-TGL runs Linux and Win 10 and supports applications including digital signage, smart retail, and computer vision.

• If LG stops making smartphones, who will push the boundaries with weird devices like the LG Wing and LG Rollable? – Liliputing

  Meanwhile, folks who are still interested in weird phones might have to look to smaller companies like F(x)Tec, Planet Computers, Pine64, and Purism, which have developed phones with features like built-in keyboards, support for GNU/Linux distributions and other free and open source operating systems, and physical kill switches for wireless, mic, and camera functions, among other things.

• MicroMod modular ecosystem offers M.2 microcontrollers cards and carrier boards

  MicroMod is a modular interface ecosystem for quick embedded development and prototyping. MicroMod comes with two components, that is a microcontroller “processor board” and a carrier board. PC industry’s M.2 connector is the interface between these two components. The carrier boards are for the usage of various peripherals and the processor board act as the brain of the application system.

• Odroid Go Goes Super – Boiling Steam

  Odroid continues to move beyond the simple realm of Single Board Computers (SBCs) to become and more and more credible player as a portable consoles manufacturer. After introducing the Odroid Go and the Odroid Go Advance (that both cow_killer and I reviewed), they have announced at the end of December 2020 that they were going to release yet another version, the Odroid Go Super.

• Use Raspberry PI as FM Radio transmitter – peppe8o

  As usual, I suggest adding from now to your favourite ecommerce shopping chart all needed hardware, so that at the end you will be able to evaluate overall costs and decide if continuing with the project or removing them from shopping chart. So, hardware will be only:

  - Raspberry PI Zero W (including proper power supply or using a smartphone micro usb charger with at least 3A) or newer Raspberry PI Board

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Arduino Blog » Homemade machine puts a new spin on winding yarn

    If you’ve ever wanted to wind balls of yarn, then look no further than this automated machine from Mr Innovative. The YouTuber’s DIY device is powered by an Arduino Nano and an A4988 stepper driver, spinning up a round conglomeration of yarn via a NEMA17 motor and a timing belt.

    The ball is wound on an offset spindle, which is mechanically controlled to pitch back and forth and spin itself as the overall assembly rotates, producing an interesting geometric pattern.

  • Little Bee is an affordable, open hardware current & magnetic field probe (Crowdfunding)

    Little Bee is an affordable, open-source hardware, and high-performance current probe and magnetic field probe designed to debug and analyze electronic devices at a much lower cost than existing solutions such as Migsic CP2100B or I-prober 520. This type of tool is especially important for power electronics, which has become ever more important with electric vehicles, alternative energy solutions, and high-efficiency power supplies.

  • Arduino Blog » James Bruton demonstrates the Coanda effect with an Arduino-controlled rig

    The Coanda effect, as you may or may not know, is what causes flowing air to follow a convex surface. In his latest video, James Bruton shows how the concept can used as a sort of inverted ping pong ball waterfall or staircase.

    His 3D-printed rig pushes balls up from one fan stage to another, employing curved ducts to guide the lightweight orbs on their journey.

    The fan speeds are regulated with an Arduino Uno and motor driver, and the Arduino also dictates how fast a feeder mechanism inputs balls via a second driver module. While the setup doesn’t work every time, it’s still an interesting demonstration of this natural phenomenon, and could likely be perfected with a bit more tinkering.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Xiaomi Android 11 update tracker: Mi & Redmi devices received beta/stable

  • TCL will update its 2019 & 2020 Android TVs to Android 11

  • rlaxx TV launches on Amazon Fire TV and Android TV

  • Verimatrix Releases Advanced Code Protection Service for Android Application Bundles

  • Does Your Android Phone Need Antivirus or Malware Protection?

  • MediaTek’s new high-end Android 5G chipsets aim to squeeze out Snapdragon

  • Best Android app deals of the day: hocus 2, FineScanner AI Pro, Fait, more

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Open Sesame: How Open Source technologies turbocharge enterprises

  Open source, a revolutionary idea for ICT innovations, also makes sense for business. The key is its adoption to an organisation’s culture and budget
  If one were to make an internet search for the very active Information Technology and Communication (ICT) areas of innovation, the usual suspects likely to show up are intelligent machines like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Deep Learning (DL); human-machine interactions like bots, augmented realities, voice and gesture-enabled interfaces; ubiquitous computing like resilient cloud and quantum computing; and autonomous machines that include the like of drones and self-driving vehicles.

  Compared to the pace of development a couple of decades ago, today all these areas continue to develop at extremely high velocities. A deep dive into any of the technical areas will show up a common thread: open source.

• Valetudo is a cloud-free web interface for robot vacuum cleaners

  Once you’ve done the update the Xiaomi app will not work anymore, and you’d only access the robot vacuum cleaner via its web interface which, in most cases, comes with the same features as the mobile app minus cloud connectivity. However, if you change your mind, you can simply factory reset the device to remove Valetudo and continue with the Xiaomi app, at least on Roborock models.

• Well you look different: Apache CloudStack 4.15 lands with new UI, improved access control • DEVCLASS

  Apache CloudStack (CS), the Apache Software Foundation’s cloud infrastructure project, has pushed out new long term support version 4.15, providing users with a new UI, various VMware-related improvements and a way to define role based users in projects.

  The software was originally developed in 2008 at what soon became Cloud.com, a start-up that was bought by Citrix in 2011. The infrastructure as a service platform was accepted into the Apache Incubator in 2012 and graduated its process in 2013. Customers include Verizon, TomTom, SAP, Huawei, Disney, Cloudera, BT, Autodesk, and Apple.

• Daniel Stenberg: bye bye svn.haxx.se

  When the Subversion project started in the early year 2000, I was there. I joined the project and participated in the early days of its development as I really believed in creating an “improved CVS” and I thought I could contribute to it.

  While I was involved with the project, I noticed the lack of a decent mailing list archive for the discussions and set one up under the name svn.haxx.se as a service for myself and for the entire community. I had the server and the means to do it, so why not?

  After some years I drifted away from the project. It was doing excellently and I was never any significant contributor. Then git and some of the other distributed version control systems came along and in my mind they truly showed the world how version control should be done…

  The mailing list archive however I left, and I had even added more subversion related lists to it over time. It kept chugging along without me having to do much. Mails flew in, got archived and were made available for the world to search for and link to. Today it has over 390,000 emails archived from over twenty years of rather active open source development on multiple mailing lists. It is fascinating that no less than 46 persons have written more than a thousand emails each on those lists during these two decades.

• Daniel Stenberg: everything.curl.dev

  The online version of the curl book “everything curl” has been moved to the address shown in the title:

  everything.curl.dev

  This, after I did a very unscientific and highly self-selective poll on twitter on January 18 2020…

• Web Browsers

  • Brave Browser Adds Native Support for Decentralized IPFS Protocol

    Even though Brave browser was caught up in some controversies last year, it looks like they managed to become the first major web browser to add support for InterPlantetary File System (IPFS) protocol with the help of Protocol Labs.

    This support was introduced with v1.19.86 release.

    In case you didn’t know, IPFS is a peer to peer protocol that lets you store and share files. You can safely assume it as something similar to the BitTorrent protocol with some technical differences.

    Just because it is totally a decentralized system to store and share files, it can be quite effective to fight censorship by big tech and the government.

  • Chromium

    • Google muzzles all Chromium browsers on 15 March 2021

      What is the relevance I hear you ask.
      Well, I provide Chromium packages for Slackware, both 32bit and 64bit versions. These chromium packages are built on our native Slackware platform, as opposed to the official Google Chrome binaries which are compiled on an older Ubuntu probably, for maximum compatibility across Linux distros where these binaries are used. One unique quality of my Chromium packages for Slackware is that I provide them for 32bit Slackware. Google ceased providing official 32bit binaries long ago.

      In my Slackware Chromium builds, I disable some of the more intrusive Google features. An example: listening all the time to someone saying “OK Google” and sending the follow-up voice clip to Google Search.

      And I create a Chromium package which is actually usable enough that people prefer it over Google’s own Chrome binaries, The reason for this usefulness is the fact that I enable access to Google’s cloud sync platform through my personal so-called “Google API key“. In Chromium for Slackware, you can logon to your Google account, sync your preferences, bookmarks, history, passwords etc to and from your cloud storage on Google’s platform. Your Chromium browser on Slackware is able to use Google’s location services and offer localized content; it uses Google’s translation engine, etcetera. All that is possible because I formally requested and was granted access to these Google services through their APIs within the context of providing them through a Chromium package for Slackware.

      The API key, combined with my ID and passphrase that allow your Chromium browser to access all these Google services are embedded in the binary – they are added during compilation. They are my key, and they are distributed and used with written permission from the Chromium team.

      These API keys are usually meant to be used by software developers when testing their programs which they base on Chromium code. Every time a Chromium browser I compiled talks to Google through their Cloud Service APIs, a counter increases on my API key. Usage of the API keys for developers is rate-limited, which means if an API key is used too frequently, you hit a limit and you’ll get an error response instead of a search result. So I made a deal with the Google Chromium team to be recognized as a real product with real users and an increased API usage frequency. Because I get billed for every access to the APIs which exceeds my allotted quota and I am generous but not crazy.
      I know that several derivative distributions re-use my Chromium binary packages (without giving credit) and hence tax the usage quota on my Google Cloud account, but I cover this through donations, thank you my friends, and no thanks to the leeches of those distros.

  • Mozilla

    • Extensions in Firefox for Android Update

      Starting with Firefox 85, which will be released January 25, 2021, Firefox for Android users will be able to install supported Recommended Extensions directly from addons.mozilla.org (AMO). Previously, extensions for mobile devices could only be installed from the Add-ons Manager, which caused some confusion for people accustomed to the desktop installation flow. We hope this update provides a smoother installation experience for mobile users.

      As a quick note, we plan to enable the installation buttons on AMO during our regularly scheduled site update on Thursday, January 21. These buttons will only work if you are using a pre-release version of Firefox for Android until version 85 is released on Tuesday, January 25.

      This wraps up our initial plans to enable extension support for Firefox for Android. In the upcoming months, we’ll continue to work on optimizing add-on performance on mobile. As a reminder, you can use an override setting to install other extensions listed on AMO on Firefox for Android Nightly.

    • Extensions in Firefox for Android Update | Mozilla Add-ons Blog

      Starting with Firefox 85, which will be released January 25, 2021, Firefox for Android users will be able to install supported Recommended Extensions directly from addons.mozilla.org (AMO). Previously, extensions for mobile devices could only be installed from the Add-ons Manager, which caused some confusion for people accustomed to the desktop installation flow. We hope this update provides a smoother installation experience for mobile users.

      As a quick note, we plan to enable the installation buttons on AMO during our regularly scheduled site update on Thursday, January 21. These buttons will only work if you are using a pre-release version of Firefox for Android until version 85 is released on Tuesday, January 25.

    • Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

      The release of Apple Silicon-based Macs at the end of last year generated a flurry of news coverage and some surprises at the machine’s performance. This post details some background information on the experience of porting Firefox to run natively on these CPUs.

      We’ll start with some background on the Mac transition and give an overview of Firefox internals that needed to know about the new architecture, before moving on to the concept of Universal Binaries.

      We’ll then explain how DRM/EME works on the new platform, talk about our experience with macOS Big Sur, and discuss various updater problems we had to deal with. We’ll conclude with the release and an overview of various other improvements that are in the pipeline.

• FSF

  • GNU Projects

    • 17 Free Design Tools for 2021

      GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a cross-platform tool for quality image creation and manipulation and advanced photo retouching. GIMP provides features to produce icons, graphical design elements, and art for user interface components and mockups. Price: Free.

    • Adding translations to Guix’ website

      As part of GNU, Guix aims to bring freedom to computer users all over the world, no matter the languages they (prefer to) speak. For example, Guix users asking for help can expect an answer even if they do so in languages other than English.

      We also offer translated software for people more comfortable with a language other than English. Thanks to many people who contribute translations, GNU Guix and the packages it distributes can be used in various languages, which we value greatly. We are happy to announce that Guix’ website can now be translated in the same manner. If you want to get a glimpse on how the translation process works, first from a translator’s, then from a programmer’s perspective, read on.

      The process for translators is kept simple. Like lots of other free software packages, Guix uses GNU Gettext for its translations, with which translatable strings are extracted from the source code to so-called PO files. If this is new to you, the magic behind the translation process is best understood by taking a look at one of them. Download a PO file for your language at the Fedora Weblate instance.

      Even though PO files are text files, changes should not be made with a text editor but with PO editing software. Weblate integrates PO editing functionality. Alternatively, translators can use any of various free-software tools for filling in translations, of which Poedit is one example, and (after logging in) upload the changed file. There also is a special PO editing mode for users of GNU Emacs. Over time translators find out what software they are happy with and what features they need.

      Help with translations is much appreciated. Since Guix integrates with the wider free software ecosystem, if you intend to become a translator, it is worth taking a look at the styleguides and the work of other translators. You will find some at your language’s team at the Translation Project (TP).

  • Licensing/Legal

    • Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

      Shay Banon first announced that Elastic would move its Apache 2.0-licensed source code in Elasticsearch and Kibana to be dual licensed under Server Side Public License (SSPL) and the Elastic License. “To be clear, our distributions starting with 7.11 will be provided only under the Elastic License, which does not have any copyleft aspects. If you are building Elasticsearch and/or Kibana from source, you may choose between SSPL and the Elastic License to govern your use of the source code.”

      In another post Banon added some clarification. “SSPL, a copyleft license based on GPL, aims to provide many of the freedoms of open source, though it is not an OSI approved license and is not considered open source.”

• Programming/Development

  • What Is a Software Developer?

    Software developers are highly sought-after tech professionals, and the demand for their skills is continually increasing. In this Life in Tech article, we’ll provide a general look at the various duties and requirements associated with the role of software developer.

    Let’s start with a basic description before getting into the nuances and specifics. Briefly, then, software developers conceive, design, and build computer programs, says ComputerScience.org. To accomplish this, they identify user needs, write and test new software, and maintain and improve it as needed. Software developers occupy crucial roles in a variety of industries, including tech, entertainment, manufacturing, finance, and government.

  • Steinar H. Gunderson: How others program

    How do others program? I realized today that I’ve never actually seen it; in more than 30 years of coding, I’ve never really watched someone else write nontrivial code over a long period of time. I only see people’s finished patches—and I know that the patches I send out for review sure doesn’t look much like the code I initially wrote. (There are exceptions for small bugfixes and the likes, of course.)

  • Sensible integer scale for Gonum Plot

    Over the years, I found myself multiple times using Gonum Plot. I do find it as a very good and easy to use plotting tool for Go.

    The problem I found myself, over and over, dealing with is the tickers scale. If you know before-hand the values that can be expected to be created by the application, it is very straightforward, but the majority of times, this is not the case. I often find myself creating a plotting application on data that track events that have not yet happened and cannot predict their range.

    To solve the issue, I create a package that has a struct that implements the Ticker interface and provides tickers that are usually sensible. Since this struct only works for integer scales, I called it sit, which stands for “Sensible Int Ticks”.

  • Learn JavaScript by writing a guessing game | Opensource.com

    It’s pretty safe to say that most of the modern web would not exist without JavaScript. It’s one of the three standard web technologies (along with HTML and CSS) and allows anyone to create much of the interactive, dynamic content we have come to expect in our experiences with the World Wide Web. From frameworks like React to data visualization libraries like D3, it’s hard to imagine the web without it.

    There’s a lot to learn, and a great way to begin learning this popular language is by writing a simple application to become familiar with some concepts. Recently, some Opensource.com correspondents have written about how to learn their favorite language by writing a simple guessing game, so that’s a great place to start!

  • Getting your 3D ready for Qt 6

    As was previously discussed, since the 6.0.0 release of Qt, Qt 3D no longer ships as a pre-compiled module. If you need to use it on your projects, try out the new features, or just see your existing application is ready for the next chapter of Qt’s life, you need to compile Qt 3D from source.

    In order to do this, you can do it the traditional way ([cq]make …; make; make install) or use the Conan-based system that is being pioneered with the latest version of the MaintenanceTool.

  • Qt Open-Source Downloads Temporarily Offline Due To Severe Hardware Failure

    Several readers have expressed concerned that Qt open-source downloads have disappeared but The Qt Company has now commented it’s only a temporary issue due to a “severe hardware failure” in the cloud.

    Qt’s open-source online installer and offline packages are not currently working for the open-source options but the commercial downloads are working. While that may raise concerns given Qt’s increasing commercial focus, The Qt Company posted to their blog that this interruption around open-source package downloads is due to a reported major hardware problem at their cloud provider.

  • Efficient custom shapes in QtQuick with Rust

    Fortunally, the Qt API provides multiple ways to implement custom shapes, that depending on the needs might be enough.

    There is the Canvas API using the same API as the canvas API on the web but in QML. It’s easy to use but very slow and I wouldn’t recommend it.

    Instead of the Canvas API, from the QML side, there is the QtQuick Shapes module. This module allows creating more complex shapes directly from the QML with a straightforward declarative API. In many cases, this is good enough for the application developer but this module doesn’t offer a public C++ API.

    If you need more controls, using C++ will be required to implement custom QQuickItem. Unfortunately drawing on the GPU using QQuickItem is more complex than the QPainter API. You can’t just use commands like drawRect, but will need to convert all your shapes in triangles first. This involves a lot of maths like it can be seen in the example from the official documentation or from the KDAB tutorial (Efficient custom shapes in Qt Quick).

    A QPainer way is also available with QQuickPaintedItem, but it is slow because it renders your shape in a textured rectangle in the Scene Graph.

  • Perl/Raku

    • Roles, h’uh, what are they good for? | Jesse Shy

      What is a role? Put simply, roles are a form of code reuse. Often, the term shared behavior is used. Roles are said to be consumed and the methods ( including attribute accessors ) are flattened into the consuming class.

      One of the major benefits of roles is they attempt to solve the diamond problem encountered in multi-inheritance by requiring developers to resolve name collisions manually that arise in multi-inheritance. Don’t be fooled however, roles are a form of multi-inheritance.

      I often see roles being used in ways they shouldn’t be. Let’s look at the mis-use of roles, then see an example of shared behavior.

      I’m using that word inheritance a lot for a reason, one of the two ways I see roles most often misused is to hide an inheritance nightmare.

      “Look ma, no multi-inheritance support, no problem. I’ll just throw stuff in roles and glum them on wherever I really want to use inheritance. It all sounds fancy, but I am just lumping stuff into a class cause I don’t really understand OO principals.”

  • Python

    • Building your own Network Monitor with PyShark – Linux Hint

      Many tools for network analysis have existed for quite some time. Under Linux, for example, these are Wireshark, tcpdump, nload, iftop, iptraf, nethogs, bmon, tcptrack as well as speedometer and ettercap. For a detailed description of them, you may have a look at Silver Moon’s comparison [1].

      So, why not use an existing tool, and write your own one, instead? Reasons I see are a better understanding of TCP/IP network protocols, learning how to code properly, or implementing just the specific feature you need for your use case because the existing tools do not give you what you actually need. Furthermore, speed and load improvements to your application/system can also play a role that motivates you to move more in this direction.

      In the wild, there exist quite several Python libraries for network processing and analysis. For low-level programming, the socket library [2] is the key. High-level protocol-based libraries are httplib, ftplib, imaplib, and smtplib. In order to monitor network ports and the packet stream competitive candidates, are python-nmap [3], dpkt [4], and PyShark [5] are used. For both monitoring and changing the packet stream, the scapy library [6] is widely in use.

      In this article, we will have a look at the PyShark library and monitor which packages arrive at a specific network interface. As you will see below, working with PyShark is straightforward. The documentation on the project website will help you for the first steps — with it, you will achieve a usable result very quickly. However, when it comes to the nitty-gritty, more knowledge is necessary.

      PyShark can do a lot more than it seems at first sight, and unfortunately, at the time of this writing, the existing documentation does not cover that in full. This makes it unnecessarily difficult and provides a good reason to look deeper under the bonnet.

  • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

    • Spreadsheet annoyance no. 3: quotes have priority

      In an earlier post I complained about spreadsheet programs: Excel, LibreOffice Calc and Gnumeric. All of them confuse non-dates with dates, and automatically interpret certain number strings with 2 colons as [h]:mm:ss. Grrr.

  • Rust

    • Changes to the Rustdoc team

      Recently, there have been a lot of improvements in rustdoc. It was possible thanks to our new contributors. In light of these recent contributions, a few changes were made in the rustdoc team.

    • Rustdoc performance improvements

      @jyn514 noticed a while ago that most of the work in Rustdoc is duplicated: there are actually three different abstract syntax trees (ASTs)! One for doctree, one for clean, and one is the original HIR used by the compiler. Rustdoc was spending quite a lot of time converting between them. Most of the speed improvements have come from getting rid of parts of the AST altogether.

  • Java

    • Why and How to Use Optional in Java |

      The Optional object type in Java was introduced with version 8 of Java. It is used when we want to express that a value might not be known (yet) or it’s not applicable at this moment. Before Java 8 developers might have been tempted to return a null value in this case.

    • GraalVM 21.0 Released With Experimental JVM On Truffle – Phoronix

      Oracle on Tuesday released GraalVM 21.0 as the latest version of their Java VM/JDK that also supports other languages and modes of execution.

      One of the notable additions with GraalVM 21.0 is supporting Java on Truffle, as an example JVM implementation using the Truffle interpreter. GraalVM’s Truffle framework is an open-source library for writing programming language interpreters. With Java on Truffle, it’s of the same nature as the likes of JavaScript, Ruby, Python, and R within the GraalVM ecosystem. Java on Truffle allows for improved isolation from the host JVM, run Java bytecode in a separate context from the JVM, running in the context of a native image but with dynamically loaded bytecode allowed, and other Truffle framework features. More details about the Java on Truffle implementation via the GraalVM manual.

Standards/Consortia

• Marcin ‘hrw’ Juszkiewicz: Standards are boring

  Standards are boring. Satisfied users may not want to migrate to other boards the market tries to sell them.

  So Arm market is flooded with piles of small board computers (SBC). Often they are compliant to standards only when it comes to connectors.

  But our hardware is not standard

  It is not a matter of ‘let produce UEFI ready hardware’ but rather ‘let write EDK2 firmware for boards we already have’.

  Look at Raspberry/Pi then. It is shitty hardware but got popular. And group of people wrote UEFI firmware for it. Probably without vendor support even.

  [...]

  At the end you will have SBSA compliant hardware running SBBR compliant firmware.

  Congratulations, your board is SystemReady SR compliant. Your marketing team may write that you are on same list as Ampere with their Altra server.

  Users buy your hardware and can install whatever BSD, Linux distribution they want. Some will experiment with Microsoft Windows. Others may work on porting Haiku or other exotic operating system.

  But none of them will have to think “how to get this shit running”. And they will tell friends that your device is as boring as it should be when it comes to running OS on it == more sales.

Why keeping a journal improves productivity

In previous years, this annual series covered individual apps. This year, we are looking at all-in-one solutions in addition to strategies to help in 2021. Welcome to day 10 of 21 Days of Productivity in 2021.

When I was in primary school in the days before the commercial internet, teachers would often give my class an assignment to keep a journal. Sometimes it was targeted at something particular, like a specifically formatted list of bugs and descriptions or a weekly news article summary for a civics class.

Health/Nutrition

• Self-care trends from around the world, from Nelson Mandela’s one-people philosophy to cow cuddling and taking a hay bath

  It’s been a tough and stressful year for many of us, and we are all in need of some care and attention

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users and my head is spinning

    Microsoft Teams isn’t just there to make employees’ lives easier. It’s also there to give bosses data about so many things.

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • Privatisation/Privateering

      • Linux Foundation

        • Linux Foundation, Blacks In Technology Announce Up To $100,000 In Training & Certification

          The Linux Foundation and The Blacks In Technology Foundation have joined hands to launch a new scholarship program to help more Black individuals get started with an IT career.

          Blacks in Technology will award 50 scholarships per quarter to promising individuals. The Linux Foundation will provide each of these recipients with a voucher to register for any Linux Foundation administered certification exam at no charge, such as the Linux Foundation Certified IT Associate, Certified Kubernetes Administrator, Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator and more.

        • Linux Foundation Launches New Open Source Best Practices Program

          The Linux Foundation has announced the availability of a new training program designed to introduce open source best practices.

          The course, called Open Source Management & Strategy, includes seven modules designed to help executives, managers, software developers and engineers “understand and articulate the basic concepts for building effective open source practices within their organization,” according to the Foundation’s press release.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Wednesday

      Security updates have been issued by Fedora (coturn, dovecot, glibc, and sudo), Mageia (openldap and resource-agents), openSUSE (dnsmasq, python-jupyter_notebook, viewvc, and vlc), Oracle (dnsmasq and xstream), SUSE (perl-Convert-ASN1, postgresql, postgresql13, and xstream), and Ubuntu (nvidia-graphics-drivers-418-server, nvidia-graphics-drivers-450-server, pillow, pyxdg, and thunderbird).

    • BeyondTrust Privilege Management for Unix & Linux Grows Q4 Revenue 83% YoY by Securing Cloud Infrastructure [Ed: They always love talking about "Clown Computing" instead of servers (which is what they really allude to)]

    • Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

      • Dangerous new malware targets unpatched Linux machines [Ed: This is not a "Linux" issue and it's nothing to do even with stuff that's installed on top of (GNU/)Linux, unless a negligent system administrator is lousy at patching]

        According to a report from Check Point Research (CPR), the malware variant, named FreakOut, specifically targets Linux devices that run unpatched versions of certain software.

      • ‘FreakOut’ Botnet Targets Unpatched Linux Systems [Ed: Same as above]

      • Fileless Malware on Linux: Anatomy of an Attack

        Fileless malware is a growing concern for Linux administrators. Linux is considered a very secure OS by design – and rightfully so. With its robust privilege system and the “many eyes” of the open-source community scrutinizing the increasingly popular OS’s code for security vulnerabilities, Linux users are generally much safer than their Windows-using counterparts. That being said, sound administration and the implementation of security best practices can help prevent fileless malware attacks and other dangerous modern exploits that threaten Linux systems.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Roundup of Secure Messengers with Off-The-Grid Capabilities (Distributed/Mesh Messengers)

        Amid all the conversation about Signal, and the debate over decentralization, one thing has often not been raised: all of these things require an Internet connection.

        [...]

        “Blogs” have a way to reblog (even a built-in RSS reader to facilitate that), but framed a different way, they are broadcast messages. They could, for instance, be useful for a “send help” message to everyone (assuming that people haven’t all shut off notifications of blogs due to others using them different ways).

        Briar’s how it works page has an illustration specifically of how blogs are distributed. I’m unclear on some of the details, and to what extent this applies to other kinds of messages, but one thing that you can notice from this is that a person A could write a broadcast message without Internet access, person B could receive it via Bluetooth or whatever, and then when person B gets Internet access again, the post could be distributed more widely. However, it doesn’t appear that Briar is really a full mesh, since only known contacts in the distribution path for the message would repeat it.

        There are some downsides to Briar. One is that, since an account is fully localized to a device, one must have a separate account for each device. That can lead to contacts having to pick a specific device to send a message to. There is an online indicator, which may help, but it’s definitely not the kind of seamless experience you get from Internet-only messengers. Also, it doesn’t support migrating to a new phone, live voice/video calls, or attachments, but attachments are in the works.

Defence/Aggression

• China Slaps Sanctions On 28 Trump Administration Officials, Including Mike Pompeo

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Molly de Blanc: Inauguration Pie

  How can I put four years into a pie? I’m thinking of Inauguration Day 2017 through to today, Inauguration Day 2021. In truth things started back in 2015, when Donald Trump announced his run for the United States’ presidency, and I don’t know how long things will continue past the moment when President-Elect Joe Biden becomes President Joe Biden.

  For the United States, it’s been a hell of a time. For the world, it’d been even worse. Every generation thinks that they lived through more than anyone else, that they had it worse. I had a Boomer tell me that the existential stress of COVID is nothing compared to the Vietnam War. I’m sure when we are living through a global water crisis, I’ll tell the kids that we had it bad too. Everyday I listen to the radio and read Twitter, aware that the current state of endless wars – wars against terrorism and drugs, organized crime and famine, climate change and racism – is global, and not limited to just what’s happening to and around me. That makes it feel worse and bigger and I wonder if earlier generations can really grasp how big that is.

  [...]

  So I will put my hope into this pie. I put my pain and anger into the dough. I will put my tears and helplessness and bitterness into the filling. I will cover it sweetness and the delicate hope I’ve spun out of sugar. Soon I will bake it and share it with the three other people I see because the most important thing about surviving these past years, these past months and weeks and days, is that we did it together. We will commiserate on what we’ve overcome, and we will share our hope and the sweetness of the moment, as the spun sugar dissolves on our tongues. There is so much we have left to do, so much we must do. We will be angry in the future, we may be angry later today, but until then, we have pie.

Monopolies

• Patents

  • District court 2020 rankings: top plaintiffs, defendants and firms | Managing Intellectual Property [Ed: "Google was the most sued business" according to site funded for propaganda of litigation profiteers]

    WSOU Investments filed the most cases, Google was the most sued business, and Rabicoff Law and Fish & Richardson were the busiest firms, according to new data

  • New (Temporary) USPTO Leadership

    Note, I’m calling these folks “ACTING ____” because it is simpler and makes sense. BUT, the “acting” title is a term of art defined within the US Code. To avoid some of the legal requirements associated with being an “acting director,” the temporary leadership is using the longer title of someone “Performing the functions and duties of ____”

    Acting Director – Drew Hirshfeld.

  • Software Patents

    • $3,000 for Cedar Lane Technologies Prior Art

      On January 20, 2021, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $3,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 8,165,867. This patent is owed by Cedar Lane Technologies, Inc., an NPE. The ’867 patent relates to wirelessly controlling an electronic device with another electronic device in real time. The ’867 patent has been asserted against D-Link, Disney, Dish Network, Comcast, LG, iHeart Media, ViacomCBS, TCL Communication, and SiriusXM.

Linux at Home: Digital Music Production with Linux

We are told by our governments that in the current crisis the single most important action we can take is to stay at home and minimise the amount of contact with others. The new variants of Covid-19 are much more transmissible than the virus’s previous version. The advice to stay safe is therefore even more important. It’s only with everyone abiding by the law can we protect our health services and save lives.

In this series, we look at a range of home activities where Linux can play its part, making the most of our time at home, keeping active and engaged. The change of lifestyle enforced by Covid-19 is an opportunity to expand our horizons, and spend more time on activities we have neglected in the past.

Server

• Help safeguard your Linux server from attack with this REST API

  CrowdSec is an open source cybersecurity detection system meant to identify aggressive behaviors and prevent them from accessing systems. Its user-friendly design offers a low technical barrier of entry with a significant boost to security.

  A modern behavior detection system written in Go, CrowdSec combines the philosophy of Fail2ban with Grok patterns and YAML grammar to analyze logs for a modern, decoupled approach for securing the cloud, containers, and virtual machine (VM) infrastructures. Once detected, a threat can be mitigated with bouncers (block, 403, captcha, and so on), and blocked internet protocol addresses (IPs) are shared among all users to improve everyone’s security further.

Audiocasts/Shows

• mintCast 352.5 – One Night with Ulyssa

  In our Innards section, we talk about the first 24 hours with Linux Mint 20.1

  And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Kernel Space

• Initial Patches Posted For Bringing Up The Linux Kernel On Apple Silicon M1 Hardware

  Following a very active past couple of days, developers from security startup Corellium have followed through on their word so far of publishing the Apple Silicon patches to the Linux kernel mailing list for possible upstreaming in the future that allow the Linux kernel to boot with Apple M1 hardware.

  Corellium developers sent out their first set of seven patches under a “request for comments” flag this morning. These are the minimal changes needed for getting Linux to boot on the current Apple M1 ARM-based hardware.

• Ubuntu Now Runs on Apple Silicon, Devs Say It’s ‘Completely Usable’

  Developers at ARM virtualisation company Corellium have managed to get Ubuntu 20.04 up and running on the new Apple Silicon Mac Mini.

  And we’re not talking ‘it boots and prints a load of text’ running here. No, this is the full Ubuntu desktop experience — and it’s already being described as “completely usable”!

• Linux is now ‘fully usable’ on Apple Silicon M1 Macs

  Security researchers at Corellium have ported a version of Linux to the Apple Silicon M1 chip that will ultimately be released under an open-source license.

  The Linux version is a full Ubuntu desktop operating system booted from a USB, according to Corellium Chief Technology Officer Chris Wade. Although details are scarce, he said that Linux is now “completely usable” on Apple Silicon machines.

Applications

• VirtualBox 6.1.18 Released with Full Support for Linux Kernel 5.10 LTS

  VirtualBox 6.0.18 comes about three months after VirtualBox 6.1.16 and it’s the first release to introduce full support for the latest and greatest Linux 5.10 LTS kernel series, which is available for both Linux host and guests.

  Of course, this means that you’ll be able to run GNU/Linux distributions powered by the Linux 5.10 LTS kernel as a virtual machine inside VirtualBox, as well as to install VirtualBox on a GNU/Linux system running Linux kernel 5.10 LTS.

• Starting Element Messenger Web, Desktop and Phone

  Element (formerly Riot.im) is a modern all in one messenger for everyone. Featuring basic chat to file sharing as well as video conferencing, it is designed for users of web, GNU/Linux, Windows, MacOS, plus also Android and iOS. In this regard, Element is a great alternative to WhatsApp or Telegram. This basic tutorial will show you, after introducing it (see here and here), how to use it on Ubuntu and your phone. Let’s go!

Instructionals/Technical

• How to Set Up Btrfs RAID – Linux Hint

  Btrfs is a modern Copy-on-Write (CoW) filesystem with built-in RAID support. So, you do not need any third-party tools to create software RAIDs on a Btrfs filesystem.
  The Btrfs filesystem keeps the filesystem metadata and data separately. You can use different RAID levels for the data and metadata at the same time. This is a major advantage of the Btrfs filesystem.

  This article shows you how to set up Btrfs RAIDs in the RAID-0, RAID-1, RAID-1C3, RAID-1C4, RAID-10, RAID-5, and RAID-6 configurations.

• How to Co-author Documents in Linux with ONLYOFFICE Docs

  Document collaboration as the practice of multiple people working simultaneously on a single document is really important in today’s technologically advanced age. Using document collaboration tools, users can view, edit, and work simultaneously on a document without sending emailing attachments to each other all day. Document collaboration is sometimes called co-authoring. Real-time document co-authoring is not possible without special software.

Games

• YoYo Games developer of GameMaker Studio sold for $10M

  Game Maker and later GameMaker Studio is a very popular game engine with indie developers and YoYo Games just recently sold it off and it appears they did so at a loss.

  Originally created by Mark Overmars, who later teamed up with YoYo Games who have carried it on since 2007. Later in 2015 the YoYo Games studio was acquired by Playtech for around $16.4 million dollars.

  [...]

  For game developers, the game engine you rely on suddenly changing hands with no prior notice and no announcement a week later must be a little frightening. Games often take multiple years to create, so for developers well into the thick of using GameMaker Studio hopefully the result will be a good one. Perhaps though, the time is ripe to check out Godot Engine since it’s free and open source.

• Aveliana is a beautiful upcoming infiltration-action game mixing 2D and 2.5D styles | GamingOnLinux

  TheFrenchDev have announced Aveliana, what they’re calling an infiltration-action-adventure game that mixes together 2D and 2.5D to create a unique looking style.

  “Embrace Aveliana’s quest to bring back someone she has lost! The game takes place alternatively in an isometric or a 2D point of view and is fast-paced. Guide her through arduous paths watched by monsters, follow the trace of a mysterious fox, and find the powerful artifacts she is looking for at the core of wonderful temples. Will you stealth your way to victory? Seek a forgotten path on the edge of a cliff? Or stand and fight against your enemies? The choice is yours!”

  [...]

  We spoke with the developer behind the project, who clearly stated to us in a message how Linux will be fully supported. In fact, even their early rough work-in-progress demo on Game Jolt has a Linux build available. It’s being built with the Unity game engine, which for the most part has good cross-platform support for games like this.

• Play the charming co-op construction game Unrailed! free for a few days plus big sale

  Unrailed! from Daedalic Entertainment and Indoor Astronaut released back in September 2020 and now you have a chance to play for free to end your week. Don’t pass up on it either from now until January 25 you can download and play the full game on Steam, and there’s a 50% discount if you decide you like it enough to keep it.

  What do you actually do in Unrailed! and is it fun? You and up to three others need to keep a train going for as long as possible, by constantly building a track. It’s pure chaos once it gets going and an absolute riot to play with friends. Plenty of communication breakdowns, shouting and laughing all bundled in together. The train will get faster as you go too, plus you can upgrade it with new carriages and all sorts.

• Valve and others fined by the European Commission for ‘geo-blocking’

  The European Commission just announced that they’ve now issued formal fines against Valve, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax for breaching their antitrust rules. An investigation that has been going on for some time now since early 2017, and certainly not the first fine Valve has dealt with for breaking some rules here.

  What’s the deal? The EU say that Valve and the others restricted cross-border sales on the basis of their location inside the European Economic Area (‘EEA’). To put it simply: Valve allowed certain developers and publishers to block keys being redeemed in one country, that were purchased in another (where it might have been cheaper). Out of all those named, Valve is the only company that did not cooperate with their investigation and so they got slapped a lot harder.

  [...]

  For a company as big as Valve (and the likes of ZeniMax), they won’t be losing any sleep over fines that for them will most likely be a drop in the ocean. Valve especially, as the Steam store pretty much prints money for them.

• The 25 Best Games for Linux and Steam Machines

• Linux Games 40 Linux Games That You Must Play in 2021

  It has been 3 years since we compiled a list of games for Unix-like operating systems in The 25 Best Games for Linux and Steam Machines. We are now in 2021 and these games are bound to keep you glued to your computers for a while. So, listed in nor particular order, here are the best 40 games to play on your Linux machine this 2021.

Distributions

• Gentoo Family

  • A farewell to Sabayon Linux

    After a hiatus of ten months in the blog posts on the Sabayon Linux Website, a couple of posts on 20 November 2020 announced that the distribution was switching its base distribution from Gentoo Linux to Funtoo Linux (‘Sabayon and Funtoo Linux Merge Projects’), and that the distribution was rebranding (‘Sabayon project is rebranding to MocaccinoOS’) and moving to a completely different package manager named ‘Luet’. A new Website and forum for MocaccinoOS were started, and the Sabayon Linux forums and Wiki are no more.

    Although my first experience of Linux was Ubuntu in 2006, it was Sabayon Linux in early 2007 that turned me into a full-time Linux enthusiast and got me interested in the Portage package manager and Gentoo Linux, which I have been using as my main OS for many years now. My interest in Sabayon Linux waned when it moved to a binary package manager (‘Entropy’), and later when it switched from OpenRC to systemd.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Red Hat introduces free RHEL for small production workloads and development teams

    When Red Hat announced it was switching up CentOS Linux from a stable Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clone to a rolling Linux distribution, which would become the next minor RHEL update, many CentOS users were upset. Now, to appease some of those users, Red Hat is introducing no-cost RHEL for small production workloads and no-cost RHEL for customer development teams.

  • Red Hat Announces No-Cost RHEL For Small Production Environments

    Following the announcement at the end of last year that CentOS 8 will be ending and instead focusing on CentOS Stream as the future upstream to RHEL, there have been many concerned by the absence of CentOS 8 past this year. In trying to fill that void, Red Hat announced today they will be making Red Hat Enterprise Linux free for small production deployments.

    Red Hat has announced an expanded developer program where now the individual RHEL Developer subscription is supported for production environments up to 16 systems. Previously the program allowed free RHEL access only for “development” purposes but can now be used in production up to that 16 system limit.

  • Red Hat introduces new no-cost RHEL option

    As you know, Red Hat recently announced that CentOS Linux 8, as a rebuild of RHEL 8, will end in 2021. CentOS Stream continues after that date, serving as the upstream (development) branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The news met with a strong reaction from the open-source community and CentOS users. Today, Red Hat released a new option where RHEL developer subscriptions can now be used in production environments. The developers and team can have up to 16 systems. In other words, it is a no-cost RHEL that small groups and developers can use to build packages and in production environments.
    [continue reading…]

  • Red Hat expands no-cost RHEL options

    Red Hat has announced a new set of options meant to attract current CentOS users who are unhappy with the shift to CentOS Stream.

  • CentOS is gone—but RHEL is now free for up to 16 production servers

    Last month, Red Hat caused a lot of consternation in the enthusiast and small business Linux world when it announced the discontinuation of CentOS Linux.
    Long-standing tradition—and ambiguity in Red Hat’s posted terms—led users to believe that CentOS 8 would be available until 2029, just like the RHEL 8 it was based on. Red Hat’s early termination of CentOS 8 in 2021 cut eight of those 10 years away, leaving thousands of users stranded.

    As of February 1, 2021, Red Hat will make RHEL available at no cost for small-production workloads—with “small” defined as 16 systems or fewer. This access to no-cost production RHEL is by way of the newly expanded Red Hat Developer Subscription program, and it comes with no strings—in Red Hat’s words, “this isn’t a sales program, and no sales representative will follow up.”

  • Getting to know Kyeong Sang Kim, Red Hat general manager for Korea

    We’re delighted to welcome Kyeong Sang Kim to Red Hat as a general manager for Korea. In the new role, he will be responsible for Red Hat’s business operations in the country.

    Kyeong Sang is an expert in the field of IT consulting, supporting numerous business innovation projects for more than 25 years. Prior to joining Red Hat, Kyeong Sang served as the CEO of SICC (Ssangyong Information & Communications Corp), where he successfully led the company’s digital transformation to the cloud. He has also held several other leadership roles at global companies, including Accenture.

    We caught up with Kyeong Sang to find out more about his interest in open source and Red Hat, and his insights on leadership.

Devices/Embedded

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Samsung Galaxy M31 receiving Android 11-based One UI 3.0 stable update

  • LG V60 ThinQ will soon receive the Android 11 system update

  • OnePlus 7 and 7T series get Android 11 with OxygenOS Open Beta 1

  • Sony seeding stable Android 11 to Xperia 5 II

  • OPPO’s ColorOS is now the best Android Skin

  • The Best Portable Chargers for iPhone and Android Smartphones

  • 16 Best Photoshop alternatives of Android and iOS

  • How to download Free Fire OB26 Advance server for Android Devices

  • TCL 10L’s promised Android 10 update is rolling out in select countries

  • Astro Slide 5G slider phone specs and shipping date get finalized

  • TCL 10L Starts Receiving Android 11 Stable Update

  • OnePlus 7 Android 11 (HydrogenOS 11) beta took away AOD

  • Some Sony Xperia fans treated to a surprise Android 11 update: check your phone now

  • Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro Android 11 stable update re-released in Europe; Redmi K30i 5G bags it too (Download links inside)

  • The LG V60 ThinQ is on the verge of receiving Android 11 for the first time

  • Nearby Share may let you share your WiFi password on Android 12

  • What is an Android TV? | Smart TV vs. Android TV

  • How to Change or Replace Your Android’s Home Screen App

  • Nest products, Android Auto, get SmartThings integration

  • Frollo brings open banking to Android in Australia with new budgeting app

  • PUBG Mobile Update India 20 January, 2021: Download APK Files for Android Users Through VPN in India

  • Future Android versions could let you share Wi-Fi passwords via Nearby Share

  • 5 Of The Highest-Grossing Android Games Of 2020 And How They Made Money

  • Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra First Look: Best Android Phone Of 2021?

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Web Browsers

  • Chromium

    • Chrome Releases: Stable Channel Update for Desktop

      The Chrome team is delighted to announce the promotion of Chrome 88 to the stable channel for Windows, Mac and Linux. This will roll out over the coming days/weeks.

      Chrome 88.0.4324.96 contains a number of fixes and improvements — a list of changes is available in the log. Watch out for upcoming Chrome and Chromium blog posts about new features and big efforts delivered in 88

    • Chrome 88 Released With Security Fixes, Adobe Flash Removed – Phoronix

      Google has released Chrome 88 as the latest stable version of their cross-platform web browser.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • LibreOffice 7.1 RC2 Is Available For Testing

    LibreOffice 7.1 will be released as final at the beginning of February, 2021 ( Check the Release Plan for more information ) being LibreOffice 7.1 RC2 the fourth pre-release since the development of version 7.1 started at the end of May, 2020. Since the previous release, LibreOffice 7.1 RC1, 87 commits have been submitted to the code repository and 64 bugs have been fixed. Check the release notes to find the new features included in LibreOffice 7.1.

  • LibreOffice 7.1 RC2 Up For Testing This Open-Source Office Suite

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Access/Content

    • Free Access To Academic Papers For Everyone In India: Government Proposes ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ Approach As Part Of Major Shift To Openness

      Techdirt has been following the important copyright case in India that is about how people in that country can access academic journals. Currently, many turn to “shadow libraries” like Sci-Hub and Libgen, because they cannot afford the often hefty frees that academic publishers charge to access papers. If a new “Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy” (pdf), just released as a draft by the Government of India, comes to fruition, people may not need to:

• Programming/Development

  • Problem with Open-source Downloads

    Open-source downloads not working currently due to disk system failure at our cloud service provider.

Trump’s Facts-Optional Assault On Chinese Tech Continues With Blocking Of Xiaomi

All of these statements can be true:

When the Painting Has Really Begun

Critics are not required to be right, merely (as Donald Judd said of artworks) interesting. But part of what makes criticism of new art potentially interesting is that it is, in part, a gaze into the future. Remember Clement Greenberg in The Nation in 1946 predicting of Jackson Pollock’s work, “In the course of time, this ugliness will become a new standard of beauty,” and two years later, venturing that one of the same artist’s paintings “will in the future blossom and swell into a superior magnificence; for the present it is almost too dazzling to be looked at indoors.” Most criticism, of course, doesn’t make its wagers on the future so explicitly, nor should it. Greenberg only unsheathed his crystal ball during those rare moments of highest intensity of feeling, and we should follow that example. Yet still our judgements remain hostages to fortune.

Health/Nutrition

• In Historic First, Biden Picks Trans Woman, Dr. Rachel Levine, to Help Lead HHS

• Government Mistakes Provided the Breeding Ground for the Mutant Virus, Which it is Now Using as an Alibi for Its Failures

  The new virus mutated during the second wave of the epidemic with the first case becoming known in September, though the danger it posed only became clear in December. The renewed epidemic in late summer was centered on Thanet and Swale, both on the north Kent coast, and was particularly severe in their most deprived districts.

  Government scientists expressed alarm at the steep and unexpected increase in coronavirus cases in Kent, despite the November lockdown. “This variant became of interest because there was an investigation of the increasing case numbers in Kent in early December, despite the national lockdown,” said Professor Peter Horby, the chairman of the government’s New and Emerging and Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG).

• Flint Residents Still Sick as Former Michigan Gov. Faces “Willful Neglect” Charges in Water Scandal

  Former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and eight other former officials were charged last Thursday in a sweeping criminal investigation into the Flint water crisis. Snyder faces two charges of willful neglect of duty, a misdemeanor. In 2014, Flint’s unelected emergency manager, appointed by then-Governor Snyder, switched the city’s water supply to the Flint River as a cost-saving measure. The move has been linked to at least 12 deaths from an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease and widespread lead poisoning in residents, including children, in the majority-Black city. “It is really important that many of those elected, including the governor, are held to a higher standard,” responds Congressmember Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. She says some children face ongoing side effects from the water crisis, such as learning disabilities, and many residents remain sick and in need of support for their care.

• Michigan Ex-Governor Charged With “Willful Neglect” in Flint Water Scandal

• US Reaches Grim Milestone of 400K COVID Deaths Days Before Trump Leaves Office

• U.S. Rep. Tlaib: “Israel Is a Racist State That Would Deny Palestinians Like My Grandmother a Vaccine”

  Israel has been hailed as having the world’s most vaccinated population, but Palestinians are not included. Human Rights Watch and others have called on Israeli authorities to provide COVID-19 vaccines to the more than 4.5 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. “Israel is a racist state,” responds Congressmember Rashida Talib of Michigan, who is Palestinian American and one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress and says her Palestinian grandmother was denied access to a vaccine. “I hope my colleagues, I hope our country, sees what the Palestinians have been trying to tell us for a very long time. … You can see it with the distribution of the vaccine.”

• When Medicare Helped Kill Jim Crow

  John Holloman was expecting to be disappointed, but he did not expect to be stood up. Dr. John L.S. “Mike” Holloman Jr. was both the president-elect of the National Medical Association, a professional group of Black doctors founded in 1895 in reaction to segregation within the American Medical Association, and the chair of the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR). Informally known as the medical wing of the civil rights movement, the MCHR was a group of physicians and health care workers dedicated to ending segregation and the substandard care Black people faced in the United States. Copyright © 2021 by Mike Konczal. Adapted from Freedom from the Market by Mike Konczal. Published by The New Press. Reprinted here with permission.

• How Operation Warp Speed Created Vaccination Chaos

  Hospitals and clinics across the country are canceling vaccine appointments because the Trump administration tells states how many doses they’ll receive only one week at a time, making it all but impossible to plan a comprehensive vaccination campaign.

  The decision to go week by week was made by Operation Warp Speed’s chief operating officer, Gen. Gustave Perna, because he didn’t want to count on supplies before they were ready. Overly optimistic production forecasts turned out to be a major disappointment in the rollout of the H1N1 vaccine more than a decade ago, also leading to canceled appointments and widespread frustrations with the government’s messaging.

Defence/Aggression

• Opinion | About Suffering: A Massacre of the Innocents in Yemen

  The United Nations estimates the war has already caused 233,000 deaths, including 131,000 deaths from indirect causes such as lack of food, health services and infrastructure.

• Capitol Insurrection Highlights Increasing Radicalization of Right-Wing White Police Officers

  At least 28 law enforcement officers from across the United States attended the Trump rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6 that led to the attack on the U.S. Capitol, with some even boasting on social media about taking part in the riot that left five people dead. BuzzFeed News investigative reporter Albert Samaha says off-duty police officers’ involvement in the insurrection reflects a growing problem of right-wing radicalization in police ranks — a problem Black officers say has gone unaddressed by higher-ups. Samaha says that while “white supremacist ideology in law enforcement is as old as law enforcement in the U.S.” there was a marked change in tone and attitudes among police officers following the 2014 Ferguson uprising against police brutality. He says that Donald Trump’s loud support for police against claims of misconduct and systemic violence gave officers new license to express bigoted and extremist views. “The top came off, and the rhetoric suddenly became acceptable within locker rooms,” he says.

• New Charges Derail COVID Release for Hacker Who Aided ISIS

  A hacker serving a 20-year sentence for stealing personal data on 1,300 U.S. military and government employees and giving it to an Islamic State hacker group in 2015 has been charged once again with fraud and identity theft. The new charges have derailed plans to deport him under compassionate release because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• “Sense of Entitlement”: Rioters Faced Few Consequences Invading State Capitols. No Wonder They Turned to the U.S. Capitol Next.

  The gallery in the Idaho House was restricted to limited seating on the first day of a special session in late August. Lawmakers wanted space to socially distance as they considered issues related to the pandemic and the November election.

  But maskless protesters shoved their way past Idaho State Police troopers and security guards, broke through a glass door and demanded entry. They were confronted by House Speaker Scott Bedke, a Republican. He decided to let them in and fill the gallery.

• Biden Can’t Lose Sight of the Nuclear Crisis

  At Wednesday’s inauguration, President-elect Joe Biden is likely to address the “four historic crises” he has repeatedly identified as confronting our country: a global pandemic, a severe recession, climate change and systemic racism. Yet even as so many challenges compete for our attention, we can’t afford to lose sight of a fifth crisis: the continued danger of nuclear annihilation.

• Trump’s Support Of Cops Pays Off: Multiple Police Officers Under Investigation For Illegal Invasion Of The Capitol Building

  At the beginning of his term, President Trump promised he’d turn regular America into police-loving America:

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Following the money Alexey Navalny’s boldest investigation yet describes a vast network of shell companies and frontmen working to build and sustain Vladimir Putin’s supposed seaside getaway

  Before Alexey Navalny flew home to Moscow and surrendered himself to Russia’s legal system, the anti-corruption activist lit the fuse on what is perhaps his biggest, boldest investigation yet. Navalny’s 14,000-word report (also a two-hour video) about Vladimir Putin’s supposed “palace” in Gelendzhik on the Black Sea coast is packed with drone footage and colorful images, including artistic visualizations of the mansion’s interior. On social networks and in the news media, the investigation immediately attracted significant attention for its detailed descriptions of the residence’s opulence and endless renovations. Navalny says outright that Putin’s apparent obsession with luxury borders on “mental illness.” But Navalny’s investigation also painstakingly chronicles the ownership and management schemes used to disguise how Russia’s long-time president allegedly came to be in possession of the country’s most valuable private home.

• Navalny’s team releases investigation into Putin’s 100-billion ruble ‘palace’ in Gelendzhik

  Following the arrest of opposition figure Alexey Navalny, his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) has released a new investigation about a “palace” built for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Gelendzhik — a resort town on the Black Sea.

• Putin’s palace Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation investigates the Russian president’s billion-dollar residence on the Black Sea

  Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation has released a bombshell investigation into a $1.35-billion residence built for Russian President Vladimir Putin near a resort town on the Black Sea. Navalny’s team published the report the day after the opposition figure was put in pre-trial detention at Moscow’s notorious Matrosskaya Tishina prison. In addition to sharing the building’s floor plan and visualizations of the interiors, the anti-corruption activists recount the history of the construction project and dig into how it was financed by companies connected to members of Putin’s inner circle. “Meduza” sums up the highlights from the investigation.

• Trump Reportedly Abandoned Pardons For Snowden And Assange

  The following was originally published as part of The Dissenter newsletter.Although several long shot campaigns were mounted, President Donald Trump did not pardon any whistleblowers who were indicted or prosecuted under the United States Espionage Act. He also declined to pardon the only journalist ever to be indicted under the World War I-era law.WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden were not offered clemency because Trump “did not want to anger Senate Republicans who will soon determine whether he’s convicted during his Senate trial.”“Multiple GOP lawmakers had sent messages through aides that they felt strongly about not granting clemency to Assange or Snowden,” according to CNN.NSA whistleblower Reality Winner, who was the first to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act under Trump, and former CIA officer John Kiriakou pursued pardons. They were effectively denied as well.On January 17, the New York Times reported that an associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani told Kiriakou a pardon would cost him $2 million.

  “I laughed. Two million bucks—are you out of your mind?” Kiriakou told the Times. “Even if I had two million bucks, I wouldn’t spend it to recover a $700,000 pension.”

Environment

• The New Humanitarian | Rethinking Humanitarianism podcast: Aid’s climate challenge

  What kind of rethink is necessary for the way aid agencies work in the face of climate change?

• Native Activists File Suit After Trump Officials Hand Sacred Land to Foreign Mining Firm

  The land swap deal between the U.S. government and British-Australian corporate mining giant Rio Tinto and its subsidiary, Resolution Copper, went into effect last week. But, the true Native owners of the land are not about to give up a battle they have been fighting for centuries.

• Science warns world of ‘ghastly’ future ahead

  Take all the dire warnings and assessments that scientists have made. Add them up. Their answer? A ghastly future ahead.

• Energy

  • ‘Major Win for the Planet’: Federal Court Strikes Down Trump Coal Power Plant Rule

    “This decision frees up the new Biden administration to begin working immediately on the science-based greenhouse pollution rules we desperately need to make up for lost time.”

• Wildlife/Nature

  • Reform the Bureau of Land Management: Biden Must Succeed Where Obama Failed

Finance

• ‘Smartest Thing We Can Do Is Act Big’: Yellen Bolsters Demand for Biden to Enact Bold FDR-Style Agenda

  “Instead of feel-good talk of unification,” said journalist John Nichols, “FDR called out the Wall Street speculators, the bankers, and their conservative apologists.”

• “Brazil is Broken”: Bolsonaro, COVID, and the Looming Return to Austerity

• Companies Pause Their PAC Donations Even as They Fight Democracy Reforms

• ‘Right on Schedule’: Hours Before Biden Inauguration, GOP Backers of Tax Cuts for the Rich Resume Cynical Deficit-Mongering

  “With a Democrat about to become president, Republicans are now pretending to care about deficits and debts again. Let’s not pretend to believe them this time.”

• ‘Subsidizing the Spread of Covid’: Report Shows Corporate Landlords Received Public Funding Yet Still Kicked Out Tenants

  “Giving ‘Covid relief’ to those most likely to evict is like giving money to stop climate change to oil barons—it makes the problem worse.”

• New Hampshire’s Homeless Fight For Shelter Despite Forceful Encampment Evictions

  Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Manchester, New Hampshire’s unhoused population and local community organizers have struggled with state and local officials to secure housing and resources for the unhoused during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

  Following the November 20 forceful eviction of an encampment by state officials and unwillingness from people in power to support new housing solutions, homeless people and organizers alike are struggling to resolve the lack of access.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• How Does Someone Like Lauren Boebert Get Elected?

  Early Monday came word that an inauguration rehearsal ended abruptly with the evacuation of the US Capitol’s west front, after reports of a nearby fire led security officials to fear a replay of the deadly January 6 riot. The alarm was for nothing, in traditional security terms, anyway: A nearby homeless encampment (sadly, there are many in the nation’s capital) went up in flames, causing the billowing black smoke that rose ominously behind the scene.

• Ahistorical 1776 Report Issued by Trump Denounced as ‘Racist Garbage’ and ‘Most On-Brand Thing Possible’

  “Releasing the 1776 Commission report on MLK Day is the Trump administration reaffirming its commitment to racism above all else.”

• Reaching His Peak

• Opinion | The Rubble of Empire: A Fine Time To Begin Thinking About What Might Be Built in Its Place

  Doctrines of disaster and dreams of security as the Biden years begin.

• Opinion | ‘It Is Like Satire’: Prince Charles’ Terra Carta Is a Manifesto for the Status Quo

  The ecological crisis demands we protect the Rights of Nature from being watered down.

• After Four Years, Accountability is Long Overdue

  Even as a candidate, he repeatedly encouraged violence calling on his supporters to “knock the crap” out of protesters, like in the good old days, even telling police “don’t be too nice”. So on January 6th, the day he promised would be “wild”, it was inevitable that when he enjoined his supporters to march on the Capitol to “stop the steal” they followed his not so subtle bidding, to fight and show strength, with violence

  The ugly side of human nature was on display in his “Save America March”, as rioters carrying Trump flags attacked the Capitol, some carrying zip-ties planned to take and possibly execute Congressional hostages. They smashed their way into and looted Congressional offices. Carrying “Back the Blue” flags they beat police officers (one of whom later died) with US flags, pipes and fire extinguishers. Trump’s mob of white supremacists chanted “Our House” and did what the Confederate army in four years of war failed to do, bring the Confederate battle flag into the US Capitol, indicating this riot was also an open demand to continue Americas legacy of systemic racism.

• Opinion | Don’t Let President Biden ‘Make Us the Dupes of Our Hopes’

  More than being a time of hope—or fatalism—the inauguration of President Joe Biden should be a time of skeptical realism and determination.

• Opinion | Biden’s Inauguration Gives Us New Hope, but the Movement for Justice Must Continue to Build on Its Own Agenda

  There should be no reluctance to work with Biden to help pass critical reforms, but at the same time, the pressure for outside must continue to build for there to be any hope of change.

• Hold on to That Fear

  This letter is about that nauseating, trembling fear you felt when the hate exploded at you on January 6. Please don’t forget it. Journal about it before it fades. Tolerate the nightmares. Keep pen and paper on your nightstand to record what woke you from screaming fits. Don’t block it out. Don’t let it go.

  If you can bank those emotions you had as you huddled together and hoped the doors would hold, that day may turn out to be a blessing for you…and even better for our republic. In fact, it may just be the thing that saves our republic if that is still possible.

• As Senate Reconvenes, Why Isn’t Chamber Immediately Moving to Convict Trump for ‘Inciting Deadly Attack on Our Country’?

  “If the Senate trial was a right-wing judicial confirmation, Trump would have been convicted already.”

• Opinion | Biden Must Drive a Stake Through the Heart of Dead-End “Centrism”

  There is no middle ground between lies and facts. There is no halfway point between civil discourse and violence. There is no midrange between democracy and fascism.

• Senate Democrats Prove ‘Democracy Reform Is a Top Priority’ by Putting ‘For the People Act’ First

  “From a violent insurrection at the Capitol to the countless attempts to silence the vote of millions of Americans, attacks on our democracy have come in many forms,” said incoming Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

• As Guatemalan Forces Beat Back Migrant Caravan, Biden Urged to Reverse Trump Policies of ‘Cruelty and Coercion’

  “The answer is not to continue doing more of the same but to envision a new direction that respects the political and economic self-determination and dignity of our Central American neighbors.”

• Warnock, Ossoff Officially Certified as Winners in Georgia Senate Runoffs

• Must Our Billionaires Remain Politically Immortal?

  The great roulette wheel in the sky has most certainly stopped turning for casino king Adelson. He expired earlier this week at age 87. But Adelson’s $33-billion fortune will live on — and distort our nation’s political life for years to come.

  How many years? We can’t, of course, see the future. But we can see how the past impacts our present. Consider, for instance, the current impactful political presence of Timothy Mellon.

• Trigger Finger for Armageddon: Trump and the Thermonuclear Monarchy

  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is certainly of the view that Trump and nuclear weapons are not good matches, suggesting her own form of strategic deplatforming.  “This morning,” she writes in her letter to Democratic colleagues in the House, “I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.”  She persists with the theme of mental instability, worried about a man she is convinced has gone crackers.  “The situation of this unhinged president could be more dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy.”

  DePaul University’s Ken Butigan also dabbles in a bit of comparative fancy in worrying that Trump has already engaged in his own version of a “first-strike on the US Capitol on Jan. 6,” having used “what amounted to well-understood ‘launch codes.’”  What was there to stop him “initiating an infinitely more destructive first-strike on a host of nations that have been in his administration’s cross-hairs for four years?”

• From Reconciliation to a ‘Nuclear Strike on the Filibuster’: Progressive Memo Details Steps Biden Can Take to Defeat GOP Obstruction

  “Biden was elected with a mandate to break gridlock and deliver results. He should use it.”

• America and the Mob

  Even as the United States fashioned an army, a constabulary, and an evolving rule of law, the mob continued to define what it meant to be an American. It policed the slave economy. It helped push the borders westward. It formed the shock troops that rolled back Reconstruction. A twentieth-century version of this mob rampaged during the long Red Summer violence that stretched from 1917 to 1923. It mobilized against the civil rights movement. And during the Trump era, it has reared its ugly head in Charlottesville, Portland, and last week on Capitol Hill.

  America is motherhood, apple pie…and the mob.

• Opinion | Trump’s Batty Garden of Heroes: Whitney Houston, Samuel Adams, Alex Trebek, Kobe Bryant, Johnny Appleseed and 200-Plus More Who’ve Done An Amazing Job

• Trump’s ‘March on Rome’

  Radical journalist John Pilger, for instance, tweeted that “the made-for-media theatrics on Capitol Hill were not an attempted ‘coup’. Coups are what the CIA stages all over the world. Neither was ‘democracy’ in peril. What democracy?”1 Jacobin magazine, the unofficial outlet for Democratic Socialists of America, announced that, appearances notwithstanding, the takeover was a defeat for the ultra-right in the face of growing ruling class unity.2

  Over at Sidecar, a blog site recently unveiled by the New Left Review, the editors airily dismissed the “hysteria over the Capitol Hill occupation”. “Yesterday’s ‘sacrileges’ in our temple of democracy – oh, poor defiled city on the hill, etc – constituted an ‘insurrection’ only in the sense of dark comedy,” wrote Mike Davis, a member of NLR’s editorial committee:

• Trump May be on Trial, But the System that Produced Him will be Acquitted

  On one side, Trump’s endless stoking of political grievances – and claims that November’s presidential election was “stolen” from him – spilled over last week into a mob storming the US Capitol. They did so in the forlorn hope of disrupting the certification process of the electoral college vote, which formally declared his opponent, Joe Biden, the winner.

  On the other side, the Democratic party instituted a second, unprecedented impeachment process this week, in the slightly less forlorn hope that Trump leaves office disgraced and humiliated, foreclosing any possibility he can run again in 2024.

• By ‘Force and Fraud’: Is This the End of the US Democracy Doctrine?

  Rumsfeld further alleged that “the idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic.” But the US’ top military chief was being dishonest. Writing in Mother Jones, Miles E. Johnson responded to Rumsfeld’s claim by quoting some of his previous statements where he, repeatedly, cited democracy as the main reason behind the US invasion, a war that was one of the most destructive since Vietnam.

  Certainly, it was not Rumsfeld alone who brazenly promoted the democracy pretense. Indeed, ‘democracy’ was the buzzword, parroted by thousands of Americans: in government, the military, mainstream media, and the numerous think-tanks that dotted the intellectual and political landscape of Washington.

• Opinion | It Is Biden’s Historic Task to Reverse Reagan’s—and Trump’s—Reckless Radicalism

  Reagan’s failed radicalism has now run its course, and the United States, while culturally as divided as ever, is at an economic and environmental precipice.

• 10 Bold Moves Biden Can Make Without Congress

  Even with control of the Senate, Democrats’ slim majority means that Republicans can still obstruct Biden’s policy agenda at every turn. Biden can and must wield his presidential powers through Executive Orders and regulations. The problems America is facing demand it. 

• Opinion | Biden Must Go Beyond Simply Ending Trump’s Barbaric Border Policies—We Need Deeper Change

  An open letter to President-Elect Biden on Central America policy.

• A Nation Wracked With Illness and Strife Says Good Riddance to Trump Presidency

• A Slanted Narrative on Slanted Journalism

  Attkisson argues that we live in an Orwellian news environment: The major media outlets carefully filter information to make sure that journalists only present the “correct” view to their audience. Attkisson says reporters are so aware of this condition that they name it The Narrative.

  I wanted to see who Attkisson reveals as the formulator of The Narrative, since she asserts there is a “Big Brother constantly revising ‘facts’ to fit the government’s ever-changing story.” In this book from Attkisson, a five-time Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author, I was expecting a deep dive into the corporate world to find the culprits. It turns out, Attkisson says, it’s the liberals — not the billionaires.

• Trump’s Snubbing of Biden’s Inauguration Ceremony Is a Rarity in US History

• FBI Vetting Leads to Removal of 12 National Guard Members From Inauguration Duty

• McConnell Admits Trump “Provoked” Jan. 6 Amid Rising GOP Support for Impeachment

• Chomsky: Coup Attempt Hit Closer to Centers of Power Than Hitler’s 1923 Putsch

• Insurrection at the Capitol

  His boastful speeches peppered with streams of lies convinced me the man was shallow. He certainly did not take democracy seriously. He acted as if he thought the country was his, merely for looting. His election and the anti-democratic and ecocidal policies of his administration confirmed my misgivings. Trump is impunity.

  I kept asking why Americans voted for him. Trump made clear he only cared for Trump.

• What Should Go in the Trump Time Capsule?

  If you had to select a few objects to embody the Trump administration — especially, the ways in which its business intersected with the Trump family business — what would you pick? That’s the question posed by the final episode of “Trump, Inc.,” the podcast collaboration between ProPublica and WNYC.

• Time for Biden to Dial Down the Lincoln and Dial Up the FDR

  Joe Biden has been on the campaign trail for more than 50 years. Now, after decades of speculation, several false starts, and three formal bids for the presidency, he will finally assume the nation’s highest office. To a greater extent than anyone on the American political stage, he has anticipated and prepared for the job he will take up on Wednesday. As such, Biden understands that the address he delivers after being sworn in as the 46th president must be not just the best of his career but one of the best in the 232 years since the first inauguration.

• Farewell to a Monster

Censorship/Free Speech

• As Beijing Continues To Creep Into Hong Kong, Internet Censorship Begins

  As we’ve written about recently, Beijing’s creep into Hong Kong control has turned into nearly a dash as of late. What started with July’s new “national security” law that allowed the mainland to meddle in Hong Kong’s affairs led to arrests of media members in July, the expulsion and arrest of pro-democracy politicians in November, and then expanded arrests of members of the public who have said the wrong things in January.

• New OCC Rule Is a Win in the Fight Against Financial Censorship

  For years, financial intermediaries have engaged in financial censorship, shutting down accounts in order to censor legal speech. For example, banks have refused to serve entire industries on the basis of political disagreement, and other financial intermediaries have cut off access to financial services for independent booksellers, social networks, and whistleblower websites, even when these websites are engaged in First Amendment-protected speech. 

  Banks have refused to serve entire industries on the basis of political disagreement

  For the organizations losing access to financial services, this censorship can disrupt operations and, in some cases, have existential consequences. For that reason, financial censorship can affect free expression. As just one example, in Backpage.com, LLC v. Dart, a county sheriff embarked on a campaign to crush a website by demanding that payment processors prohibit the use of their credit cards to purchase ads on the site. The Seventh Circuit court of appeals held that the sheriff’s conduct violated the First Amendment and noted that the sheriff had attacked the website “not by litigation but instead by suffocation, depriving the company of ad revenues by scaring off its payments-service providers.” As EFF explained in our amicus brief in that case, “[like] access to Internet connectivity, access to the financial system is a necessary precondition for the operations of nearly every other Internet intermediary, including content hosts and platforms. The structure of the electronic payment economy . . . make these payment systems a natural choke point for controlling online content.” In that case, the Seventh Circuit analogized shutting down financial services to “killing a person by cutting off his oxygen supply rather than by shooting him.” 

• Twitter and YouTube Banned Steve Bannon. Apple Still Gives Him Millions of Listeners.

  Late at night on Jan. 5, the day before President Donald Trump was scheduled to deliver a defiant speech before thousands of his most dedicated supporters, his former adviser Steve Bannon was podcasting from his studio near Capitol Hill. He had been on the air several times a day for weeks, hyping the narrative that this was the moment that patriots could stand up and pull out a Trump win.

  “It’s all converging, and now we’re on the point of attack tomorrow. It’s going to kick off, it’s going to be very dramatic,” Bannon said in his fluent patter, on a day that would see four of his “War Room” shows posted online, up from his usual two or three. “It’s going to be quite extraordinarily different. And all I can say is strap in. You have made this happen and tomorrow it’s game day.”

Civil Rights/Policing

• MLK: “Loving Your Enemies” Message for a Political System Based on Hate

  It’s been a liberal mantra for the last four or five years that “Love Trumps Hate”. I’ve always thought that, but it’s become phony. Since the rise of Trump, the “progressive” mantra has been to demonize Trump and his supporters. Recent chapter was “progressives” yucking it up over Trump supporter having a heart attack at the Capitol after they went to town on the false story that he tasered his balls. Very high minded. Pure schadenfreude wrapped in virtual signaling.

  In fact, US politics, both “conservative” and “liberal” is dominated by hatred. It’s the glue of the system. People don’t vote for Trump as much as they vote against Biden and the rest of “the swamp”; people don’t vote for Biden as much as they vote against Trump. Such a hate fueled system is exactly the opposite of what Jesus and his follower King preached.

• Meduza demands Alexey Navalny’s immediate release from prison

  Alexey Navalny returned to Russia last weekend, despite the near certainty that he would be arrested upon arrival in Moscow and probably thrown in prison.

• Alexey Navalny’s wife Yulia says she’s under police surveillance

  Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of jailed Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny, says she’s being followed by the police. She stated this in a Instagram post that included a photo of a vehicle (pictured below), which, according to Navalnaya, has been parked near her home for the past day.

• ‘His cell looks decent’ ‘Meduza’ talks to a human rights monitor who visited Navalny in prison

  Opposition figure Alexey Navalny was taken into custody immediately upon returning to Russia from Germany, and then placed under arrest for 30 days at Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina remand prison. Human rights activist Alexey Melnikov, the executive secretary of Moscow’s Public Monitoring Commission, was the first person to visit Navalny in his cell. In conversation with “Meduza,” Melnikov describes the conditions at the prison and the rules governing Navalny’s detention.

• Alexey Navalny issues statement from Moscow prison

  Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny has written a statement from Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison, where he is currently being held in pre-trial detention. Navalny published his statement in a post on Instagram on Tuesday, January 19.

• ‘The Kremlin isn’t afraid’ Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov fields questions about Alexey Navalny’s arrest

  The day after Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny was taken into custody upon returning to Moscow from Germany, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov cancelled his daily press briefing. But this didn’t save him from a barrage of questions about Navalny when he came back to work on Tuesday, January 19. Here’s how he answered journalists’ questions about Navalny’s case, his calls for protests, and the international backlash over his arrest.

• Russian officials investigate the cop who allegedly leaked the flight data used to identify Navalny’s FSB poisoners

  A senior police officer from Samara is reportedly suspected of leaking the flight records mentioned in recent investigative reporting that tied members of Russia’s Federal Security Service to a plot against opposition figure Alexey Navalny, sources told the news outlet RBC. Detectives apparently studied queries submitted to the “Rozysk Magistral” (Search Highway) database and identified Lieutenant Kirill Chuprov. RBC’s sources did not say where Chuprov supposedly sold these data.

• Illinois Legislature Sends Massive Police Reform Bill To The Governor’s Desk

  A serious set of police reforms has passed through the Illinois legislature and is headed to the governor’s desk. You can tell it’s a good set of reforms because the police union hates it.

• Alliance Between Vigilantes and Law Enforcement: A US Tradition

  In 1938, Seth Wheeler Jr. wrote a brief article about the American Protective League (APL)—a short-lived organization of citizen volunteers who helped federal agencies root out radicals—for The Military Engineer magazine. By then, the violent, nativist wave that crested with the first Red Scare and the US entrance into World War I had broken and receded. The APL itself had dissolved. But Wheeler, the former chief of the league’s Albany division, wanted to remind the public of the organization’s historic importance.

• The Not-So-Strange Death of Right Populism | Dissent Magazine

  A string of pseudo-populist conservative movements have reverted to the same agenda of tax cuts and deregulation. Why should we expect anything different?

  [...]

  Those who took up the banner post-2016 were more swaggering. Soon after the election, Trump’s strategist Steve Bannon was calling for a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill and tax increases on the rich. “If we deliver,” he crowed, “we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years.” (Aspirations were quickly lowered: when Trump managed to crack 20 percent of the combined Black and Hispanic vote four years later, right populists triumphantly declared themselves the party of the multiracial working class.) Bannon, to his credit, seems to have understood from the beginning that it was all a grift; he is currently awaiting trial for allegedly scamming donors hoping to fund Trump’s border wall. Yet many others continued to foretell the coming victory of right populism in apparent sincerity. The British political scientist Matthew Goodwin’s verdict on Boris Johnson’s electoral victory came to be widely cited: “it is much easier for the Right to move Left on economics than it is for the Left to move Right on culture.”
  Whatever its validity abroad, in an American context such confidence displayed a willful naïveté. It has been obvious for decades that many voters are both socially conservative and economically progressive, and that a Republican Party less rapaciously plutocratic in its policies would have a much easier time winning majority support. And yet the promised move left on economics never comes; the recent history of American conservatism includes a series of pseudo-populist movements (the Gingrich Revolution and Tea Party before MAGA) that unfailingly revert to the same donor-friendly agenda of tax cuts and deregulation. Rather than searching for the sources of this pattern, right populists have mostly been content to assume that this time things will be different.
  To no great surprise, Trump didn’t move left on economics. Workers did benefit from the hot economy of his first three years in office, which MAGA ideologists spun as proof of the president’s unique business acumen (much as Third Way ideologists had once taken the 1990s economic boom as proof of the virtues of Clintonism). But instead of an infrastructure bill, there was a massive corporate tax cut; instead of a family leave plan, there was a failed attempt to strip healthcare from tens of millions of people. Up and down the federal bureaucracy, a familiar cast of industry shills set to work dismantling labor rights and environmental protections. Trump’s most durable accomplishment was the rubber-stamping of scores of Federalist Society judges, each one a devoted steward of the interests of capital.

• The New Humanitarian | Ten humanitarian crises and trends to watch in 2021

  Our aim is to offer a forward-looking view of current and emerging issues that are likely to drive new humanitarian needs. While we point to some geographically specific crises, we also look at cross-cutting trends, from growing food insecurity to faltering peace deals.

  This list is informed by our reporting from humanitarian hotspots around the globe — more than 70 countries in 2020 — and our editors’ research and discussions with analysts, aid workers, and those affected by conflict and disasters.

  Here’s why the crises and trends listed below (in random order, as this is not a ranked list) have our attention — and should demand yours.

Monopolies

• ‘A Terrible Idea’: Biden Warned Against Picking Big Tech Lawyers to Lead DOJ Antitrust Division

  “Bringing in anybody from Big Tech to a leadership role in antitrust is a political, policy, and managerial disaster.”

• Parler Attempting to Come Back Online, Still Insisting The Site’s Motivation Is ‘Privacy’ Despite Leaking Details On All Its Users

  Last week, I explained my thoughts on why the Parler takedown from AWS didn’t bother me that much — considering that there were many other cloud and webhosting solutions out there. Yet Parler has quickly discovered that many other providers aren’t interested in hosting the company’s cesspool of garbage content either. As I pointed out, at some point, some element of that has to be on Parler for attracting such an audience of garbage-spewers. Either way, we figured the site would eventually be back up, and now it appears that it’s on its way. The site put up a holding page with a few “Parlezs” (their version of tweets) from its execs and lead cheerleaders.

• Big Tech Critics Alarmed at Direction of Biden Antitrust Personnel

• Patents

  • EPO and CIPO make their PPH fast-track programme permanent

    The EPO and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) have announced that the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) programme between the two offices became permanent on 6 January 2021.

    The offices have agreed to extend the agreement, following the completion of a pilot programme, which started in January 2015.

    “We are very pleased to announce the continuation of the PPH with CIPO as a permanent service to our users,” said EPO President António Campinos. “This is another milestone in our co-operation, which is aimed at improving the environment for innovation and streamlining the conditions for expedited prosecution at the two offices. We believe it will further promote cross-filing of patents in Europe and Canada, improve market access and bilateral trade, and benefit users of the patent system in both regions.”

    [...]

    The PPH pilot generated over 200 requests at the EPO by 30 September 2020, and more than 1 400 at the CIPO by 31 March 2020.

  • All Hands on Deck: Ensuring Innovation, Not Just Patents, From All

    As the Iancu era at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office comes to a close, one of the USPTO’s initiatives has focused on promoting diversity in patenting. The newly established National Council on Expanding American Innovation, and the associated USPTO request for comments on a national strategy for expanding innovation, focus on having under-represented groups more involved in creating patentable inventions.

    That’s a laudable goal. But we shouldn’t be aiming just to have more under-represented groups receive patents. More patents doesn’t necessarily mean more innovation, it just means more patents. Instead, we need to ensure that those groups are both provided the support to innovate and that their innovation is recognized.

    To do that, we have to change how we talk about innovation. In a recent article, Prof. Anjali Vats notes that the “stories that people tell about invention in the U.S. continue to focus on white men – the Benjamin Franklins, Thomas Edisons and Elon Musks – without affording women and people of color the same larger-than-life status.” Often, those stories focus on lone individuals, not teams. Those failures lead to barriers to innovation by under-represented groups whose contributions may not fit that model.

    As one example, many—including USPTO Director Iancu—like to lionize Thomas Edison as the prototypical heroic inventor. They point to him as a role model. But Edison is a perfect example of the problems with the “heroic inventor” story. Edison employed a large staff who did much of the work of his inventions—without those “muckers”, he’d have gotten much less done. And of course, Edison was neither the inventor of electric light nor the inventor of a practical light bulb. Alessandro Volta, the namesake of the word “voltage”, generated light from electricity 80 years before Edison did. Humphrey Davy invented the electric arc light, which was in wide use in the 1800s, although it was impractical for home lighting.

    [...]

    Instead of focusing on promoting patenting activity and lionizing heroic inventor stories, let’s try to promote innovation and recognize forms of innovation that don’t fit neatly into the patent framework. Collaborative research, open-source and open-science models, and other such forms of innovation are at least as important as patents—let’s give them at least as much priority.

  • The UPC and Democracy

    Today (20 January 2021) seems to be a perfect day to celebrate democracy and the rule of law.

    I will therefore not keep you up for too long, but just wanted to make a short personal comment and a call to all of us discussing the UPCA and the latest events in Germany regarding the ratification process and the two new constitutional complaints. I am perfectly aware that this is perhaps the most controversial current topic in the European IP Community, with passions running high both among the supporters and the opposers of the UPC Agreement. There is a wide spectrum of voices, one part arguing that there is absolutely no need of any Unified Patent Court in Europe, another supporting the view that a supranational Patent Court may be desirable in principle but take issue with its implementation currently provided in the UPCA and a third vocal group that seems to be prepared to happily welcome any kind of UPC, be it with or without the UK, Poland, Spain, Hungary etc. Fortunately, we have freedom of speech in Europe, and everybody is entitled to his or her own views and to make them known to others.

    What I would urge people, though, is some degree of rhetoric deescalation when we are discussing this matter.

    Some comments on this and other IP blogs seem to be trying to paint the Federal Constitutional Court’s decision to ask for another deferral of the UPCA ratification in the darkest possible colors, as if it were an assault on democracy itself. On the respected JuVe blog, an opinion has just appeared under the headline: “A drawn-out UPC process would damage democracy”. It urges the FCC to decide on this matter quickly.

    Why the haste? The article provides essentially two reasons. The first one is, however, hmm… how shall I put it politely? … hearsay…

    [...]

    A pillar of our democratic state is the Rule of Law, which requires and presupposes independent judges. This can at times be inconvenient and can sometimes take painfully long. But if and when our highest Court were accused of acting against the “will of the people” (and against the “majority of the business community”, if the FCC came to the “wrong” conclusion, horribile dictu) or when the speed of a decision on the UPC is stylized as “damaging democracy”, we are entering dangerous territory and start using the language of those whose very intent is to undermine these valued democratic institutions.

    So let’s celebrate democracy today. Whether or not the UPC will come, and whenever, it will not be the end of democracy in Europe.

  • UK High Court appoints James Mellor as IP-specialist judge

    The High Court has appointed its second new IP-specialist judge. Today, former 8 New Square barrister James Mellor (59) joins the UK’s judicial bench in the Chancery Division.

    Mellor joins alongside another recent appointment, Richard Meade, who is also an 8 New Square alumnus. The appointments of both Mellor and Meade have helped close the gap created through various promotions and retirements of the UK’s patent judges.

    [...]

    The UK High Court appointments of James Mellor and Richard Meade are not the only recent update to the UK courts.

    At the end of July 2020, the UK judiciary announced two new additions to the Court of Appeal’s judicial bench. From October 2020, specialist IP judge Colin Birss joined from the High Court alongside fellow Chancery Division judge, Christopher Nugee. The latter also has experience in IP matters.

    With Mellor’s appointment, the UK judiciary has filled all vacancies. At the High Court in particular, for a while it appeared there might be bottlenecks and thus delays in patent disputes. The courts have now solved the problem. For the UK, this an important step in times of the coronavirus pandemic, and given the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union.

  • Inauguration Day

    The Federal Circuit and Supreme Court are both closed today. Although inauguration day is not a nationwide federal holiday, it is a holiday for non-essential federal employees who work in the Washington DC Area.

  • Pinsent Masons and MS Digitalprint win invalidity action on sealing technology [Ed: Well, these people don't mind the EPO issuing lots of garbage patents if they profit from billing to toss them out, too]

    The Federal Patent Court in Munich has nullified the patent of MB Digitalprint’s competitor, Winwall. EP 2 562 002 protects a procedure whereby double-coated composite aluminium sheets are painted several times in different finishes, which seals them. The sheets allow for customised wall design for all kinds of walls.

    Furthermore, the process ensures the sheets are water-repellent. The sheets are therefore used in wet rooms such as bathrooms, or in outdoor areas such as building façades.

  • The Crown Jewels of UK patent cases [Ed: Referring to patent litigation by patent trolls as “Crown Jewels” (to lawsuits fanatics and profiteers maybe)]

    Unwired Planet vs. Huawei, Conversant vs. Huawei and ZTE or Regeneron vs. Kymab. Over the past year, the UK Supreme Court handed down decision on these three important patent cases. Despite the coronavirus pandemic, numerous patent cases kept the UK High Court and the Court of Appeal in London very busy.

    In particular, cases involving mobile phone patents and pharmaceuticals have dominated events in the UK patent courts. But, in other matters, the landmark Dabus decision of the High Court looks far into the future. In October, the court rejected an appeal on AI inventorship in the debate around the AI system. But now the High Court has granted permission for the parties to appeal under CPR 52.6(1)(b). This is on the basis that the principle at stake is an important one.

    [...]

    The two current market leaders among UK solicitor firms, Bristows and Powell Gilbert, are particularly well-represented as counsel in the major cases of 2020 and 2021. Allen & Overy has an equally strong presence in these proceedings.

    According to JUVE Patent’s UK ranking 2021, Allen & Overy, together with Bird & Bird, EIP, Herbert Smith Freehills and Hogan Lovells, belongs to the group of five litigation teams that are close on the heels of the two leading boutiques.

    Just a little over two years after entering the London patent market, US firm Kirkland & Ellis is also very present in the current UK top cases. If the team of young partners around senior partner Nicola Dagg manages to establish itself still further, the London team – bolstered by a strong US practice – will in the long-term be able to challenge the top London firms for market leadership.

• Trademarks

  • The impossible task: CJEU appeals becoming extinct

    The CJEU has set a near impossible bar for meeting grounds for appeal in trademark cases, counsel say, who are split on the impact of the changes