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Links 23/4/2021: Debian Installer Bullseye RC 1, T2 21.4 “Fully Automated”



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • University Of Minnesota Investigates Ethically Questionable Linux Kernel Research

        Yesterday we reported on a Linux kernel developer "banning" the University of Minnesota from providing patches to the kernel. However, this did not come out of the blue as some faculty and students had performed questionable research that wasted Linux kernel maintainers’ time and effort. It appears staff at UMN are now looking into the issue and have taken it quite seriously.

        In the last few months, researchers out of the University of Minnesota have been conducting computer science research, leading to multiple papers being published. One of these papers was about the feasibility of introducing vulnerabilities into open-source software, such as the Linux kernel, by sneaking them by reviewers. Effectively, this is human research in a way and likely should not have been carried out in that manner.

      • OpenZFS 2.1-rc4 Delivers Another Round Of Fixes - Phoronix

        It's looking like the OpenZFS 2.1 open-source ZFS file-system implementation for Linux and FreeBSD systems will soon be ready for release.

        OpenZFS 2.1-rc4 is out today as the latest weekly release candidate. OpenZFS 2.1's shiny new feature is dRAID / Distributed Spare RAID plus there are some other additions like the "compatibility" property for Zpool feature-sets.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Mesa Git Now Allows Building The Open-Source AMD RADV Vulkan Driver On Windows

          You may recall last year was work that got started on being able to compile the open-source Radeon "RADV" Vulkan driver on Windows. Well, this Friday the merge request finally was honored for Mesa 21.2.

          That eight month old merge request is to allow compiling the RADV Vulkan driver with ACO compiler back-end on Microsoft Windows. It doesn't yet though make RADV on Windows usable as an alternative to AMD's Radeon Software Vulkan driver for Windows.

    • Benchmarks

      • Ubuntu 21.04 Enjoys Better Performance But Still No Match To Intel's Clear Linux

        As we have been showing in a few articles already, Ubuntu 21.04 is in good shape performance-wise and generally coming ahead of Ubuntu 20.10 and 20.04 LTS. We've seen that on a number of systems in the lab, but how does this better performance out of Ubuntu 21.04 compare to say Intel's Clear Linux? Here are some benchmarks.

        Ubuntu 21.04 is in good shape performance speaking with its Linux 5.11 kernel, now using the Schedutil governor by default on supported configurations rather than ondemand/powersave, Ubuntu 21.04 has begun making use of link-time optimizations (LTO) for its package builds, and various other improvements and package upgrades that help with performance. We've been seeing this on both Intel and AMD systems so far.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to Upgrade to Ubuntu 21.04 from Ubuntu 20.10 | UbuntuHandbook

        Ubuntu 21.04 Hirsute Hippo was officially released! For Ubuntu 20.10 users, here’s how to upgrade your system to the new edition.

        Same to the previous version, Ubuntu 21.04 is a short term release with 9 month support.

      • How To Install Putty on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Putty on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Putty is the most widely used SSH and telnet client for Microsoft Windows operating systems. The Putty Linux version is a graphical terminal program that supports various network protocols including SSH, telnet, SCP, rlogin, etc.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the Putty SSH Client on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

      • How to Install Ampache Music Streaming Server on Fedora 33

        Ampache is an open-source web-based personal audio streaming application written in PHP. It allows you to host and manage your digital music collection on your server and to stream it to your computer, smartphone, tablet, or smart TV. You can use various Android and iOS applications to stream your music from your Ampache music server to your personal devices.

        This tutorial will cover how to install the Ampache application on a Fedora 33 based server and how to upload music to it for streaming.

      • How to install Postman on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or Debian Linux without snap

        Postman is one of the most popular collaboration platform tools for testing APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) available to install on Linux, Windows, and macOS. Well, APIs are interfaces between programs that the applications use to communicate with one another.

        The main area of ​​the application is testing REST APIs based on HTTP requests that can be specified and sent in Postman with associated parameters using the visual request builder.

        The basic structure focuses on the processing and validation of requests and their responses. The responses can be viewed and evaluated directly, be it graphically or via Postman’s internal programming interface using JavaScript.

      • How to limit the Download Rate for the wget Command

        Sometimes it is necessary to limit the download rate of the wget command, e.g. when you are downloading a large file over a slow internet connection.

      • Auto Disable Touchpad When Mouse Is Connected In GNOME

        In this guide, I will show you how to auto disable touchpad when mouse is connected in GNOME Linux Laptops.

        All Laptops have Touchpad, but not everyone is using it as their primary pointing device. Some users prefers Mouse over Touchpad. Because using a mouse is very convenient and much simpler than touchpad.

        Also the location of touchpad makes it prone to accidental touching while you're typing. Sometimes, my palm or wrist accidentally touches the touchpad and moves the mouse cursor while typing. I often face this nuisance and it is quite annoying when I type something important and the cursor jumps all over the screen and messes with the writing.

      • Geary Email Client 40.0 Released With A Visual Refresh, Adaptive User Interface

        Geary, a GNOME 3 email client, has been updated to version 40.0. The new release includes a visual refresh, an adaptive user interface, and more.

        Geary is an email client for the GNOME 3 desktop, written in Vala and based on WebKitGTK. The application is built around conversations, making it easy to find and follow your discussions.

      • How to check Linux OS version - 4 simple ways - LinuxTechLab

        At one point or another, we might have faced a situation where are required to check the Linux version that is installed on a Linux server. So is there a way to check what Linux version are we using? If yes then how to check the Linux OS version?

        In this tutorial, we are going to discuss just that. And we will discuss not one but 4 ways to check the Linux version that is installed on your systems.

      • Hide IDE folders in git using a global gitignore

        My solution is now to use a custom global .gitignore in my home folder, which hides those directories for me without interfering with the actual repos.

      • Portable Raspberry Pi 400

        The Raspberry Pi Foundation (raspberrypi.org) has released a new Pi, the Raspberry Pi 400. The 400 is encased inside a keyboard.

        The Raspberry Pi 400 reminds me of my first computer, a Texas Instruments 99/4a. It was a keyboard you hooked up to your television. The 400 is similar but much more powerful and better in many ways. The 400 is an upgrade from the Raspberry Pi 4 as well. Let's look at the specifications.

      • Using open-plc-utils in Linux with Powerline (HomePlug) adapters | Fitzcarraldo's Blog

        According to the open-plc-utils documentation, open-plc-utils supports INT6000, INT6300, INT6400, AR6410, QCA7000, AR7400 and AR7420 and later Powerline products from Qualcomm Atheros. ‘INT’ stands for ‘Intellon’, which was acquired by Atheros in 2009. ‘AR’ stands for ‘Atheros’, which was acquired by Qualcomm in 2011. ‘QCA’ stands for ‘Qualcomm Atheros’.

        The open-plc-utils command int6k supports legacy chipsets INT6000, INT6300 and INT6400.

        The open-plc-utils command plctool supports QCA6410, QCA7000 and QCA7420 chipsets.

      • How to add PHP support for jailed SSH users in ISPConfig 3

        Jailkit is an easy-to-use tool to create and maintain jail environments for shell users on Linux. In this guide, I will show you how to move PHP and its dependencies into the jail so that the jailed user can execute PHP scripts inside the jail on an ISPConfig server.

      • Installing other DEs in Nitrux

        During last month’s release of Nitrux, we made available a minimal ISO to let users install Nitrux and also install a different desktop environment and a selection of applications than the ones we include by default. We figured it’d be simpler to do this since we don’t have any plans to release different ISO images with different desktop environments.

      • How to Change Cursor Size on Ubuntu Desktop

        #Nitrux is not just #KDE anymore https://nxos.org/tutorial/installing-other-des-in-nitrux/

      • How to clear Bash history on Linux

        The bash history is a log file that contains all commands that the user executed on the Linux shell. When you use the "arrow up" key on our keyboard, then Bash will look up the previous command from that file and display it on the screen, ready to be executed again.

      • How to set a VNC password

        The Linux TigerVNC Server provides a command to set a new password.

      • How to kill an OpenVZ Container

        This guide shows you how to kill an unresponsive OpenVZ container in case the normal stop procedure fails. Killing the container will not delete any files or remove the container, it just kills all processes so that you can start or restart the container again when it gets stuck.

        I will use container ID 101 in all commands, please replace that ID with the ID of the container that you like to kill.

      • How to install TagScanner on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux - Linux Shout

        TagScanner, a freeware program, is only available for Windows 10/8/7/ to easily edit metadata information of audio or music files. However, that doesn’t mean we cannot install and use Tagscanner on Linux systems such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and others, yes we can using Wine.

        You can get TagScanner for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. It is one of the popular tools to edit audio file metadata and available to download free of cost from official or third-party websites.

        Let’s see the steps involve to run Tagscanner on Linux systems.

    • Games

      • Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is delightfully silly short adventure and a must play | GamingOnLinux

        Love your short action-adventure games that have the feel of classic Zelda? Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion hits the spot and as a bonus it's completely hilarious.

      • Jetboard Joust looks frantic and hilarious plus it's coming to Linux

        Jetboard Joust, an arcade-style shoot 'em up blended with the hardcore tactical elements found in a lot of modern roguelikes and it's coming along to Linux in May.

        [...]

        "An intense, arcade-style, 'bullet hell' SHMUP/STG in which you must master a vast array of ridiculous weaponry in order to defeat a race of evil aliens who are intent on abducting innocent civilians and turning them into mutants. Jetboard Joust blends the spirit and intensity of 1980s arcade coin-op SMHUPs with the replayability and tactical elements of hardcore modern roguelikes. Don't expect a story. Do expect frantic, fluid, fast-paced 60fps action, big guns, and explosions!" — BitBull Ltd

      • Proton Experimental gets upgraded, Forza Horizon 4 playable and Origin Overlay works

        Valve and their partners CodeWeavers have upgraded Proton Experimental, the special testing version of Proton where the latest special updates come in with some big stuff.

        This is a totally separate version to the normal Proton releases, which you can select for specific games just like you would normally. Right click -> Properties -> Compatibility and select Proton Experimental from the drop-down box.

      • Barotrauma gets a colossal update to improve almost every part of the game | GamingOnLinux

        Barotrauma, the sci-fi submarine sim I lovingly call a suffering simulator has just had massive Embrace the Abyss upgrade while in Early Access making it better than ever.

        One of the problems has been how tough it is to get into, so they've introduced a new player experience focused on easing people into it a bit more. There's now a hint system, text highlighting for mission descriptions, player-controlled characters get automatically assigned an appropriate order when the game starts to guide the player on what they should do and more tweaks.

      • Piepacker is a new online multiplayer platform for retro gaming

        Another attempt to bring back the glory days of retro games and local multiplayer is here with Piepacker, a browser-based platform for playing the classics with your friends.

        Browsers nowadays are ridiculously powerful and feature-filled, so much so that now various streaming services let you play entire AAA games in a browser tab. More and more of this will come, and in some ways it's probably the eventual future (like it or not).

        [...]

        They claim that will also work fine on Linux.

      • Civilization VI has a final free update 'of the season' hinting at more | GamingOnLinux

        The final free update to Civilization VI is now live although the team appears to be hinting that more may be on the way now the New Frontier Pass is finished.

        With the New Frontier Pass the team at Firaxis released a bunch of DLC, with free updates in between. They initially said this update was the last but now their wording is clearly different. They've mentioned it's the "final free update of the season", with season being an interesting word to stick in there hinting that a second pass may come.

      • Jackbox Games have a huge sale, pick up Quiplash FREE and Drawful 2 going international

        In the mood to party? Jackbox Games have what you need with a big Weekend Party Sale going on Steam and you can get a free game for a few days too.

        First up it's Free Game Friday! Head over to the Steam page for Quiplash and grab yourself a free game as it's 100% off. What is it? A quick-fire game about answering questions with ridiculous answers for 3-8 players.

        Another bit of good news, and something many gamers have been asking for, is that more of their games are going international! Drawful 2 will be getting a free upgrade on May 6 which will include localizations for French, Italian, German and Castilian Spanish.

        [...]

        Save big on their individual games and their party packs, all of which have full Linux support so they're worth taking a look at!

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • KDE Gear 21.04 Software Suite Released

          KDE Gear 21.04 provides many improvements and new features for your favorite KDE applications, including updates to the Dolphin file manager, Kate advanced text editor, and Kontact personal information manager.

        • Maui Weekly Report 10

          Today, we bring you a new report on the Maui Project’s progress.

          A few weeks away from the next stable release of MauiKit and the Maui apps, we want to share some of the new features, bug fixes, and changes coming to the next stable release.

          To follow the Maui Project’s development or to say hi, you can join us on Telegram: https://t.me/mauiproject.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Getting Fractal up to speed

          Fractal is a popular Matrix chat client for the GNOME desktop which has been in development since 2017. Fractal was designed to work well for collaboration in large groups, such as free software projects. However, there are still two main areas where it would benefit from improvements: its performance and maintainability are limited, and it lacks some important features such as end-to-end encryption (E2EE).

          Adding E2EE will increase the confidence that users have in the privacy of their conversations, making it nearly impossible for their conversations to be accessed by others. Because E2EE aims to prevent the service provider from being able to decrypt the messages, because the encryption keys are stored only on the end-user’s device. The direct consequence of this is that some work is delegated to the client. Some of this functionality is the same for each and every Matrix client, and includes technical components that could easily be implemented in the wrong way (especially the various encryption and security features). Most security researchers agree that redoing this work is a bad idea as it can lead to vulnerabilities. More generally, reimplementing the same functionality for each client doesn’t make much sense. On the other hand, sharing it with others allows projects that use it to contribute their expertise and polish it together instead of competing on a multitude of implementations. That shared work is called an SDK and could be considered the future “engine” of Fractal.

          When Fractal was created, there was no existing code that we could rely on. We had to implement ourselves bits of the Matrix protocol in Fractal, at a low level. In the meantime, the Matrix Foundation has kickstarted matrix-rust-sdk, a library to channel the Matrix community efforts into a common, efficient library. This library, still in development for now, will allow us to drop a lot of our own code.

    • Distributions

      • T2 SDE 21.4 Released With This Linux Distribution Supporting 15 CPU Architectures

        The T2 Linux distribution, or "System Development Environment" (SDE) as it refers to itself, is up to version 21.4 and with it is now supporting fifteen different CPU architectures for this barebones Linux-based operating system.

        T2 SDE 21.4 supports building for the architectures of x86-64, x86, arm64, arm, riscv64, riscv, ppc64le, ppc64-32, ppc sparc64, mips64, mipsel, hppa, m68k, alpha, and ia64... Granted, your mileage may vary and some of the architectures may have little to no active users.

      • T2 21.4 "Fully Automated"

        Today the T2 Project released version 21.4, with the largest amount of pre- and cross-compiled set of architectures so far! A total of 15 architectures: x86-64, x86, arm64, arm, riscv64, riscv, ppc64le, ppc64-32, ppc sparc64, mips64, mipsel, hppa, m68k, alpha and ia64! As usually most packages are up-to-date, with 1294 change-sets, 1179 updates, and 120 fixes, including Linux 5.11.16, GCC 10.3, LLVM/Clang 12, as well as the latest version of Rust, X.org, Mesa, KDE and GNOME 40!

      • Reviews

        • Manjaro 21.0 Ornara Review: Arch Linux for the Masses

          Manjaro just dropped the latest version of its beginner-friendly Arch-based distro – Manjaro 21.0 Ornara, and we are hyped. Over the years, the distro has attracted many users by delivering an easy-to-use, intuitive user experience that’s backed by the power of Arch Linux. And now, with their latest Ornara update, the distro just got even more user-friendly and perfect for everyday use.

          The last time we covered a Manjaro release was when Manjaro 19.0 Kyria came out but didn’t cover a proper in-depth review. We did, however, cover a thorough review of Manjaro Architect, but it’s a CLI net-installer and not ideal for beginners and regular users who need a GUI for their workflow.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • ARM, APM, AIOps: Deciphering the IT operations management alphabet soup

          This week at the AIOps & Integration Digital Developer Conference, Turbonomic’s technology evangelist, Eric Wright, spoke about strengthening your ARM (Application Resource Management) with AIOps.

          To learn more about the value AIOps brings to organizations and how ITOps engineers and developers can take advantage of the technology, John Meegan, product manager at IBM Automation Ecosystem, sat down with Eric to learn more.

        • Adam Young: Unifying Audio with Pipewire

          My musical interactions with Linux are not the most complex in the world, but they ain’t trivial. The complexity of the Linux audio landscape has been a stumbling block so far. Pipewire has just gotten me past that.

          The title of this article implies that you need to do something other than install Pipewire. So far, this is not true. On my system, at least, it Just works.

        • Fedora 35 Proposal Would Allow More Packages To Be Built Using LLVM Clang

          Right now Fedora Linux predominantly uses GCC as the default system compiler except for cases where the upstream project only supports LLVM/Clang. But moving forward packagers working on Fedora could decide to switch to using LLVM Clang for building a given package where it is worthwhile.

          Jeff Law as well as Tom Stellard, who is the current LLVM release manager and employed by Red Hat, have laid out a compiler policy change for Fedora 35. The proposal is to allow packagers to choose to build their package(s) with Clang even where the upstream project supports GCC. At the same time, the proposal would allow for packages to be built with GCC even if the upstream project does not support the GNU Compiler Collection. The decision over the compiler to use for a given package would basically be left up to the packager to use their technical judgment.

        • How government might benefit from edge computing

          Edge computing has the potential to enable more efficient, more insightful, and more cost-effective management of a range of public services. But adoption of edge computing technologies by government organizations has been a long time coming. Now, having seen the value it delivers in other sectors, is a good time for government departments to consider the advantages of edge computing for themselves. In this post, we’ll share a few ways edge computing has impacted industries like manufacturing and possible use cases in the public sector.

      • Debian Family

        • Debian Installer Bullseye RC 1 release
          The Debian Installer team[1] is pleased to announce the first
          release candidate of the installer for Debian 11 "Bullseye".
          
          

          Improvements in this release ============================

          * base-installer: - Re-add the removed is_ports_architecture() function - it's used by other packages and library.sh looks like a fair central place for it to be (#979193). * brltty: - Update udev rules. - Make sure the hardening flags are used in the udeb build. * choose-mirror: - Update Mirrors.masterlist. * debian-archive-keyring: - Add bullseye keys, remove jessie keys. * debian-cd: - Shorten "ppc64el" to "p64el" in the volume ID. - Include eatmydata deb for the installer to use offline (#986772). * debian-installer: - Build in libinput instead of evdev driver for the graphical installer. This should improve support for touchpads in particular. - Bump Linux kernel ABI to 5.10.0-6. - Add wireless-regdb-udeb to all Linux arch images (#979104). - Correct keyword for bootloader arguments in netboot/xen/debian.cfg example file (#904131). - Update debian-internals manual to current development state. - Update minimum disk and memory sizes. * debian-installer-utils: - list-devices-linux: Support partitions on USB UAS devices. * espeakup: - Carry over the alsa mixer levels into the installed system. * grub-installer: - Make sure that efivarfs is loaded and the efivars pseudofs is mounted when needed. * grub2: - Add support for SBAT. - grub-install: Fix inverted test for NLS enabled when copying locales (#979754). * installation-report: - bugscript: do not include template in script output (#980929). * libdebian-installer: - Remove the arbitrary limitation on maximum line length in Packages and Sources files (#971946). * libinih: - Add libinih1-udeb for Debian Installer (#981864). * libinput: - Drop libwacom support from the udeb. * libmd: - Add a udeb package needed by libbsd. * libwacom: - Drop the udeb, libinput no longer needs it. * linux: - Add bonding driver to the nic-modules udeb. - Remove efivars from the efi-modules udeb. - arm64: Fix i2c-mv64xxx module name. * localechooser: - Disable Kabyle for the text-based installer, as switching keyboard fails there (#973455). - Correct Kabyle locale definition in languagelist to its real naming. * lowmem: - Delete graphical terminal related files when memory is low (#977490). - 5lowmem: Rename to 05lowmem so that rescue actually overrides it (#870574). - S15lowmem: Update minimum memory sizes. * nano: - Compile the udeb with --without-included-regex to make binaries substantially smaller. * netcfg: - Update testcases to work with current Check API (#980607). - Satisfy GCC pedantry for strncpy() calls. * os-prober: - Probe Microsoft OS on arm64. * partman-btrfs: - Add minimal subvolume support for / (#964818). * partman-efi: - Make sure that efivarfs is loaded and the efivars pseudofs is mounted when needed. * rootskel: - Use /dev/tty0 as a console even if it's not in /proc/consoles. - Do not remove the font when bterm is not started (#977466). * rootskel-gtk: - Switch to Homeworld theme for Debian 11 by Juliette Taka. * user-setup: - Allow underscore in username of first account (#977214).

          Hardware support changes ========================

          * debian-installer: - arm64: Add support for puma-rk3399. - arm64: Update to use u-boot-install-sunxi. - armhf: Make hd-media and netboot sdcard images start at offset 32768, for compatibility with rockchip platforms. - arm64, armhf: Update SD-card-images sizes for netboot, netboot-gtk and hd-media. * flash-kernel: - Add support for Orange Pi One Plus (#981328). - Add support for ROCK Pi 4 (A,B,C). - Add support for Banana Pi BPI-M2-Ultra (#982089). - Add support for Banana Pi BPI-M3 (#981561). - Fix missing ESPRESSObin variants (#969518). - Fix several DTB-Id entries that incorrectly referenced the .dts instead of .dtb file.

          Localization status ===================

          * 78 languages are supported in this release.

          Known bugs in this release ==========================

          * Broken rescue mode with the graphical installer (#987377). * amdgpu firmware required for many AMD graphic cards.

          See the errata[2] for details and a full list of known issues.

          Feedback for this release =========================

          We need your help to find bugs and further improve the installer, so please try it. Installation images, and everything else you will need are available at our web site[3].

          Thanks ======

          The Debian Installer team thanks everybody who has contributed to this release.

          1. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Team 2. https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata 3. https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer

        • Debian Installer 11 "Bullseye" RC1 Released

          The installer for the forthcoming Debian 11.0 "Bullseye release is now up to its release candidate phase for testing.

          The Debian Installer team on Friday released their first release candidate of the Debian 11 "Bullseye" installer. With this users can help in testing the installer and the Debian 11 state itself.

        • [EasyOS] Fix for Easy .img file mimetype

          Documentation for EasyOS states that you can left-click on an EasyOS .img file, for example 'easy-2.7.1-amd64.img', and it will then open up, and you can then copy out the files 'vmlinuz', 'initrd' and 'easy.sfs'.

        • An accidental bootsplash

          The Helsinki Debconf ended up behitting it was unlikely to break any other hardware that the firmware had ing an extremely strange event, involving me having to explain to Mark Shuttleworth what the physics of a bomb exploding on a bus were, many people being traumatised by the whole sauna situation, and the whole unfortunate water balloon incident, but it also involved Sladen spending a bunch of time trying to produce an SVG of a London bus as a D-Bus logo and not really writing our hypothetical userland bootsplash program, so on the last night, fueled by Koff that we'd bought by just collecting all the discarded empty bottles and returning them for the deposits, I started writing one.

          [...]

          But by now it was obvious that the future was having the kernel manage graphics support, both in terms of native programming and in supporting suspend/resume. Plymouth is much more fully featured than Usplash ever was, but relies on functionality that simply didn't exist when we started this adventure. There's certainly an argument that we'd have been better off making reasonable kernel modesetting support happen faster, but at this point I had literally no idea how to write decent kernel code and everyone should be happy I kept this to userland.

          Anyway. The moral of all of this is that sometimes history works out such that you write some software that a huge number of people run without any idea of who you are, and also that this can happen without you having any fucking idea what you're doing.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Things to do after installing Ubuntu Desktop

          After installing the current Ubuntu desktop version, there are several things that you need to do. There are a variety of updated packages that the user needs to install. This will aid in smooth operation and improved security. This article will focus on the main things you have to do after installing the current Ubuntu desktop version.

          Ubuntu is an easy-to-use operating system, and thus is its customization. If you are new to Ubuntu, follow the steps above after a successful installation. This will help you get the best out of your Ubuntu Operating system.

        • Ubuntu Kylin 21.04 overview | know what you want, offer what you need.

          In this video, I am going to show an overview of Ubuntu Kylin 21.04 and some of the applications pre-installed.

        • Download Ubuntu 21.04 Hirsute Hippo All Flavors With Torrents, Mirrors, And Checksums

          Ubuntu 21.04 finally released at 22 April 2021. Codenamed Hirsute Hippo, as usual it releases as Desktop, Server, and IoT editions alongside its seven Official Flavors from Kubuntu to Ubuntu Budgie. It will be supported in nine month until Januari 2022 so you can get software & security updates to that date. You can download them all by clicks below including the torrents, mirrors, and checksums as well so you can verify before using it. Happy downloading!

        • Ubuntu 21.04 “Hirsute Hippo” Released

          Today Canonical has released its latest version of the operating system, Ubuntu 21.04. Ubuntu 21.04 codenamed “Hirsute Hippo” packs with some cool new features and a lot of improvements over its predecessor Ubuntu 20.10.

          Before users upgrade the current Ubuntu installation to Hirsute Hippo, it is important to note that Ubuntu 21.04 is a short-term support release. It’ll receive updates for 9 months, i.e. until January 2022.

        • Ubuntu 21.04 is here [Ed: Seems like a mere copy of the original]

          Canonical has released Ubuntu 21.04 with native Microsoft Active Directory integration, Wayland graphics by default, and a Flutter application development SDK. Separately, Canonical and Microsoft announced performance optimisation and joint support for Microsoft SQL Server on Ubuntu.

          “Native Active Directory integration and certified Microsoft SQL Server on Ubuntu are top priorities for our enterprise customers.” said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical. “For developers and innovators, Ubuntu 21.04 delivers Wayland and Flutter for smoother graphics and clean, beautiful, design-led cross platform development.”

          “Canonical’s desktop solutions are cost-effective, easy to manage at scale, and simple to integrate with enterprise systems. For our 100,000 police officers, Ubuntu is user friendly, reliable, and delivers the requisite privacy and security without additional third-party solutions. Ubuntu is our operating system of choice” said Lt-Colonel Stéphane Dumond, French Gendarmerie Nationale.

        • What’s New in Ubuntu MATE 21.04

          It is a system that controls the action, layout, behaviour of the panel indicator area that is also known as your system tray. You can now change settings of Ayatana Indicators from Control Center.

          A new printer indication has been added and RedShift has been removed to maintain stability.

          [...]

          Users will now have access to GTK 2.x, 3.x, 4.x light and dark themes collectively. You can also use Suru icons along with some new icons.

          LibreOffice will have a new Yaru MATE icon theming applied by default. Font contrast has been improved as well. As a result of this, you will find it easier to read tiny texts and/or reading from a distance.

          Websites will now maintain the Dark Mode, if selected, at an Operating System level. To get dark theme in websites along with the rest of your system, just enable the Yaru MATE Dark theme.

          Windows manager themes for Macro, Metacity, Compiz now have SVG icons. What this means is that if you have a large screen, the icons won’t look pixelated, that’s a subtle but useful addition!

        • Linux Release Roundup #21.17: Ubuntu 21.04, VirtualBox 6.1.20, Firefox 88, and More New Releases - It's FOSS News

          Ubuntu 21.04 Released

          Ubuntu’s latest stable release 21.04 Hiruste Hippo has finally arrived. It may not be a huge release but is exciting in terms of various new feature additions.

          You can refer our release coverage to know more about it.

          Ubuntu 21.04 Flavours Released

          Along with the GNOME edition, official flavours like Kubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, and others have also released their 21.04 upgrade available.

          You can check out their official website to learn more about it.

        • Ubuntu 21.04 Hirsuite Hippo release now available to download

          Canonical has today released their new Ubuntu 21.04 Linux operating system which comes equipped with native Microsoft Active Directory integration, Wayland graphics by default, and a Flutter application development SDK. Ubuntu 21.04 uses Wayland by default, a significant leap forward in security. Firefox, OBS Studio and many applications built with Electron and Flutter take advantage of Wayland automatically, for smoother graphics and better fractional scaling. “Flutter SDK snap build integration makes it easy to publish your multi-platform Flutter app for one-click install by millions of Linux desktop users.”

          Ubuntu 21.04 also adds the ability to configure system settings from an AD domain controller. Using a Group Policy Client, system administrators can specify security policies on all connected clients, such as password policies and user access control, and Desktop environment settings, such as login screen, background and favourite apps.

        • 10 Things to do After Installing Ubuntu 21.04 Hirsute Hippo

          Ubuntu 21.04 is released a while back, and I am sure you are enjoying your time with Hippo! So, here's a list of 10 things to do after installing Ubuntu 21.04.

        • Ubuntu Desktop Team is Live Streaming on YouTube at 3PM UTC

          At 3 PM (UTC) on Friday the 23rd of April the Ubuntu desktop team is going live on YouTube to host an online and interactive “Indaba” — that’s a South African word for “a conference or consultation between people”.

          The live stream will feature members of the Ubuntu Desktop Team who work at Canonical, as well as faces from the wider Ubuntu community. A member of the Yaru theme team will be special guest for the first of these (hopefully regular) streams.

          You can watch the event live on YouTube via the Ubuntu on Air YouTube channel, and ask the team questions via Ubuntu Discourse (ahead or time) or during the stream (by typing in the live chat box that will be on the YouTube video page).

          This event is part of a wider initiative by Canonical to reengage and reenergise the community around the

        • Ubuntu 21.04 makes a play for the enterprise desktop

          I love Ubuntu Linux. If you're reading this chances are you're fond of Ubuntu too. Besides hardcore Linux desktop fans, Ubuntu's also a hit with serious artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) developers. But you know where Ubuntu hasn't had much luck in finding users? In the corporate world where Windows still rules supreme. One reason for that is most enterprises rely on Microsoft Active Directory (AD) to manage users and connect them with network resources. With the just-released Ubuntu 21.04, aka Hirsute Hippo, that could change.

        • Fintech AI/ML on Ubuntu

          The financial services (FS) industry is going through a period of change and disruption. Technology innovation has provided the means for financial institutions to reimagine the way in which they operate and interact with their customers, employees and the wider ecosystem. One significant area of development is the utilisation of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) which has the potential to positively transform the FS sector.

          [...]

          Ubuntu is the data professionals and software developers’ choice of Linux distro and is also the most popular operating system on public clouds. Ubuntu provides the platform to power fintech AI/ML – from developing AI/ML models on high-end Ubuntu workstations, to training those models on public clouds with hardware acceleration to deploying them to cloud, edge and IoT.

        • Better snap metadata handling coming your way soon

          Open the Snap Store, click on any application you like – you will now see a page full of useful tidbits – screenshots and videos, application description, last update, license, contact data, and other information. The data shown here is often the first impression the user gets about the software, and can be a deciding factor in whether they want to install and use the application.

          Keeping application metadata accurate and up to date is no small task, and requires attention from the publishers. Today, some parts of the metadata update process are less than ideal, and can introduce management overhead. In today’s article, we’d like to talk about an important feature change, which will streamline metadata handling, and make the snap publication process more robust.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • The Apache News Round-up: week ending 23 April 2021
      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • What Is an Open Source Community Manager?

          Building and sustaining the many elements of a successful open source community strategy involves various attributes and abilities, says Florian Effenberger. He notes that the role of community manager may also include board or committee membership, which requires additional leadership skills and effective communication to ensure success.

        • LibreOffice flyers for schools and universities – Help us to hand them out!

          Our New Generation project is encouraging new – and especially younger – people to join the LibreOffice community, improve the software, and gain valuable skills.

      • FSF

        • Comment on the open letter to "remove RMS", based on the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines
          Hello everyone,
          
          

          I wrote this, just put it up on my personal website:

          "Comment on the open letter to "remove RMS", based on the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines"

          https://eliasrudberg.se/rms/

          If you think it's useful, please help spread the link around to hopefully reach some of the people who signed the open letter.

          Best regards, Elias
        • Comment on the open letter to "remove RMS", based on the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines

          I think under normal circumstances we all see the wisdom in the above, in general. However, there are parts of the open letter that could be interpreted as personal attacks, depending on the mindset of the reader. One such part of the letter is the following sentence: "He has shown himself to be misogynist, ableist, and transphobic, among other serious accusations of impropriety."

          There is a risk that the phrasing in that part of the open letter can be interpreted as assigning those labels (misogynist, ableist, transphobic) to the person, as part of his identity, rather than criticizing specific statements or actions.

          The advice in the communications guidelines to "go out of your way to show that you are criticizing a statement, not a person", does not seem to have been followed here. Assuming that the statements in the open letter are based on statements and actions, it should be possible to reformulate that part of the letter to make it more clear that the letter is criticizing certain things RMS has said and done, and reduce the personal focus.

        • GNU Projects

          • Let's Try Guix

            This is my note as a beginner on using Guix in my computing. Because this is a beginner article, it'll be fun, as we'll also find something similar to checkpoints as we find at video games here. Now let's go!

            That's how I try GNU Guix! There are of course many things uncovered in this simple article such as how to repackage installed software and advanced things like containerization. However, I wish Let's Try Guix can give other people a picture in how a normal Ubuntu Desktop user take benefits from it. See you next time!

      • Programming/Development

        • Thomas Goirand: Puppet and OS detection



          As you may know, Puppet uses “facter” to get facts about the machine it is about to configure. That’s fine, and a nice concept. One can later use variables in a puppet manifest to do different things depending on what facter tells. For example, the operating system name … oh no! This thing is really stupid … Here’s the code one has to do to be compatible with puppet from version 3 up to 5...

        • Colin King: C Ternary operator gotcha (type conversions)

          The C ternary operator expr1 ? expr2 : expr3 has a subtle side note described in K&R 2nd edition, page 52, section 2.11:

          "If expr2 and expr3 are of different types, the type of the result is determined by the conversion rules discussed earlier in the chapter".

          This refers to page 44, section 2.7 "Type Conversions". It's worth reading a few times along with section A6.5 "Arithmetic Conversions".

  • Leftovers

    • A Robeson-Influenced Prayer and Birthday Greeting from England

      The venue was the Oakland City Hall, and the occasion the grand opening, on what would have been Paul Robeson’s 110 th€ birthday – April 9, 2008 – of an exhibit by the Bay Area Paul Robeson Centennial Committee, on Robeson. I had just arrived from Irvine, CA, where I had given my first-ever US performance of my one-man play, Call Mr. Robeson, and was due to reprise it the following day. I was staying with people I had never met, but who nonetheless willingly welcomed my pianist and me into their home, because a mutual friend in Liverpool had told them I was coming over to tell Robeson’s story. A choir sang South African freedom songs. I performed an extract from the play. I shook the hand of Ron Dellums, then Mayor of Oakland, heard him speak, and would learn only later that he was a very distinguished politician – a former congressman who, among other things, had been instrumental in getting the US government to reluctantly issue sanctions against Apartheid South Africa, hastening that regime’s demise.

      I was introduced to active members of the ILWU longshoremen’s union, which had proudly made Robeson an honorary member. These men told me they had not only organised boycotts of South African ships, refusing to load and unload them, but also supported the dockers’ struggle in Liverpool.

    • Science

      • In Our Hurry to Conquer Nature and Death, We Have Made a New Religion of Science

        Imagine a world that is not a sphere moving through space like our own planet, but more like a vast sheet of paper inhabited by conscious, flat geometric shapes. These shape-people can move forwards and backwards, and they can turn left and right. But they have no sense of up or down. The very idea of a tree, or a well, or a mountain makes no sense to them because they lack the concepts and experiences of height and depth. They cannot imagine, let alone describe, objects familiar to us.

        In this two-dimensional world, the closest scientists can come to comprehending a third dimension are the baffling gaps in measurements that register on their most sophisticated equipment. They sense the shadows cast by a larger universe outside Flatland. The best brains infer that there must be more to the universe than can be observed but they have no way of knowing what it is they don’t know.

    • Health/Nutrition

      • COVID-19 Outbreaks Continue to Spread in California Workplaces

        Outbreaks are defined as three or more cases of COVID-19 at a worksite within a 14-day period. This new data was documented by CDPH between March 1 and April 5, and posted online on April 14.

        This is an average of over 35 new workplace outbreaks and almost 490 new workplace infections per day.

      • 'Blood of Innocents on Its Hands': Modi Government Blamed as India Faces Horrific Covid Surge

        "Once the first wave subsided, the government almost declared victory over Covid-19. The country's been caught unprepared."

        India's health ministry on Thursday reported a global pandemic record of 314,835 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours as the South Asian country is ravaged by a catastrophic wave of infections that is overwhelming already-strained medical facilities, leading to severe shortages of oxygen, hospital beds, and other critical supplies.

      • In Maldah: "Nobody Leaves Out of Choice"
      • The Ecological Toll of Disposable COVID Masks and Gloves

        The demand for PPE has put some countries on a war footing, to give governments sweeping wartime authorities to control the economy and compel private businesses to join national fights against the pandemic. “Our national plan launches a full-scale war-time effort to address the supply shortages by ramping up production and protective equipment, syringes, needles, you name it,” said President Joe Biden in January. Even the inventor of the lifesaving N95 mask favored by front-line medical workers, Dr. Peter Tsai, said that countries should stockpile PPE as if they were on a war footing. “Weapons are not profitable,” he said in August. “But they need to have the weapons and then they don’t use them for 10 or 20 years. You need to see this kind of PPE as military weapons.” A majority of U.S. states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have instituted “mask mandates” requiring people to wear face coverings in public to limit the spread of COVID-19.

        But while these “weapons” that fight coronavirus have proved to be lifesaving for humans, an increasing number of non-human animals are finding them to be a brand-new, and often deadly, threat that has suddenly littered their natural habitat. One main problem is that face masks and latex gloves are disposable, and people often do not dispose of them properly. How many times have you seen a used mask or glove lying on the street or stuck in a bush or floating in a waterway? Welcome to the world’s new pollution problem. (As if the scourge of plastic waste weren’t enough of an issue for the global ecosystem.)

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Biden’s Drone Wars

        We saw this bait and switch tactic before in President Biden’s earlier announcement about ending U.S support for the long, miserable war in Yemen. In his first major foreign policy address, on February 4, President Biden announced “we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen,” the war waged by Saudi Arabia and its allies since 2015, the war he called “a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.” Biden declared “This war has to end.”

        As with last week’s announcement that the U.S. war in Afghanistan would end, “clarification” came the following day. On February 5 th, the Biden administration dispelled the impression that the U.S. was getting out of the business of killing Yemenis completely and the State Department issued a statement, saying “Importantly, this does not apply to offensive operations against either ISIS or AQAP.” In other words, whatever happens in regard to the war waged by the Saudis, the war that the U.S. has been waging in Yemen since 2002, under the guise of the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by congress authorizing the use of the U.S. Armed Forces against those responsible for the September 11 attacks, will continue indefinitely, despite the fact that neither ISIS nor Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula existed in 2001. These other “offensive operations” by the U.S. that will continue unabated in Yemen include drone strikes, cruise missile attacks and special forces raids.

      • Québec City: 20 Years Since The Storming of the Wall

        A phrase I would learn, or perhaps steal, from an internet-based friend (in meta irony) shortly after I returned to BC summed up the totality of my lessons from Québec City:

        “The revolution lives and breathes, it does not come out of books.” Heading into the convergence, I had read and devoured every book I could on the subjects of the day, mainly corporate globalization and debates around pacifism vs militant tactics. When I gathered myself up and got on the bus in Calgary, my youthful confidence in our historic mission had me announce myself to the entire bus, along with where I was heading, expecting to find other travelers to talk, chat, perhaps gossip but definitely debate strategy with for the next 2 + days.

      • Biden’s Anti-China Ambitions

        While predicting an immediate boom in the U.S. economy “that could easily run into 2023,” Dimon had grimmer news on the future as well. “China’s leaders believe that America is in decline,” he wrote in his annual letter to the company’s shareholders. While the U.S. had faced tough times in the past, he added, today “the Chinese see an America that is losing ground in technology, infrastructure, and education — a nation torn and crippled by politics, as well as racial and income inequality — and a country unable to coordinate government policies (fiscal, monetary, industrial, regulatory) in any coherent way to accomplish national goals.” He was forthright enough to say, “Unfortunately, recently, there is a lot of truth to this.”

        As for China, Dimon could also have added, its government possesses at least two powerful levers in areas where the United States is likely to prove vulnerable: dominant control of container ports worldwide and the supplies of rare earth metals critical not just to the information-technology sector but also to the production of electric and hybrid cars, jet fighters, and missile guidance systems. And that’s only a partial list of the areas where China is poised to become dominant in the foreseeable future. Here’s a likely scenario.

      • ‘A path towards destroying relations’: Czech Republic to limit Russian Embassy staff in Prague amid escalating diplomatic tensions

        On Thursday, April 22, the Czech Republic announced plans to limit the number of Russian Embassy staff in Prague to match the size of the Czech Embassy in Moscow. This comes amid escalating diplomatic tensions between the two countries, over Russia’s alleged involvement in a deadly explosion at a Czech arms depot in 2014. The diplomatic spat has resulted in tit-for-tat expulsions impacting dozens of embassy employees. The Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman has warned that Prague’s actions are threatening to “destroy relations” and that a response from the Kremlin “won’t be long to come.”

      • Russian defense minister announces withdrawal of troops from Ukrainian border

        Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu has ordered troops involved in military exercises near the border with Ukraine to return to their places of permanent deployment by May 1, reports the Russian state news agency TASS.€ 

      • American ambassador leaves Moscow for consultations in Washington

        The U.S. Ambassador to Russia, John Sullivan, left Moscow on the morning of Thursday, April 22. He’s returning to Washington for consultations with the new White House administration, a week after the Russian government recommended he leave the country.

      • A Biden-Putin Summit: Jaw-Jaw is Better than War-War

        Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Russian chess legend and political exile Garry Kasparov denounces the idea: “A summit? With a killer? In one stroke, Mr. Biden gave Mr. Putin exactly what he craves, equal status with the president of the United States.”

        Kasparov is mistaken. Putin already enjoys that equal status. He€  rules a country spanning two continents, with a population of 150 million. He commands a nuclear arsenal rivaling that of the US, and armed forces of similar size but with a seemingly much better 21st century record of accomplishing their objectives instead of getting bogged down in decades-long “counter-insurgency” and “nation-building” quagmires ending in embarrassing defeats.

    • Environment

      • Many creatures of the deep face a stifling future

        The oceans will go on warming and rising for five centuries. Some creatures of the deep will have less room to breathe.

      • Critics Call Biden Financing Plan a 'Missed Opportunity to End a Harmful US Climate Legacy Abroad'

        Campaigners urged the administration to clearly and swiftly commit to ending all public finance for fossil fuels.

        While marking Earth Day with his long-awaited Leaders Summit on Climate to discuss how countries plan to meet the goals of the Paris agreement, U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday released an International Climate Finance Plan that disappointed some progressive campaigners.

      • Opinion | Big Banks Are Fueling the Climate Emergency

        The only "green" the big banks are interested in is your hard earned money.

        Every Earth Day, your inbox becomes inundated with corporate messaging about sustainability and vague pledges from brands to protect our planet. Usually, the emails are instructional: "Cut your carbon footprint with our new product!" What we don't hear so much about is how financial institutions are poisoning the planet.

      • On Earth Day, Climate Justice Alliance Calls on US to Embrace 'Real Solutions' to Planetary Emergency

        The environmental justice collective says the focus on "promoting market-based approaches and unproven techno-fixes" will only cause more harm.

        As the world marks Earth Day and U.S. President Joe Biden€ hosts€ global leaders at his virtual climate summit, a leading advocacy group on Thursday urged his administration to eschew "market-based approaches and techno-fixes" and instead pursue "real solutions" to the planetary emergency.€ 

      • Biden Opens Climate Summit With Pledge to Cut US Emissions in Half by 2030

        President Joe Biden on Thursday has pledged to cut carbon emissions from the U.S. to half of what they were in 2005 by the end of this decade. His announcement came on the first day of a virtual climate summit hosted by Biden.

    • Finance

      • Will a Recovery Really End Structural Inequality?

        The Times piece notes that “job gains” as well as retail sales are up while jobless claims are down. It singles out the upswing in sales of “big-ticket items” like cars and “discretionary sales” like clothing and accessories as well as increases in restaurant and bar sales and airline reservations.€  It reports that the Conference Board found “consumer confidence in March recorded its biggest one-month gain in nearly a decade …”€  Yet, in a cautionary aside buried in the piece, it warns, “but if the economy appears to be on the upswing, the recovery is still fragile.”

        The unasked or even implied question in the Times article is whether a possible “boom on the horizon” will address the deepening economic and social inequality – structural inequality — that the coronavirus pandemic has only make both more visible and worse?

      • Greed and the European Super League

        The apotheosis of this has arrived in the form of a proposed breakaway European Super League.€  Like a mafia-styled cartel, twelve of Europe’s elite football clubs have banded together to create their own, sealed competition.€  The English contribution will be Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham, Chelsea and Arsenal.€  Juventus, AC Milan and Inter provide the Italian contingent; Barcelona, Real Madrid and Athletico Bilbao supply the Spanish element.€  To these will be added three as yet unconfirmed founding members and five annual qualification spots. The competition itself will feature two small leagues of ten clubs each, with the highest finishers facing each other in an elimination phase to eventually reach a deciding final in May.

        The decision reeks of smoky, backroom secrecy, and promises to supplant the UEFA Champions League.€  Initial infrastructure payments between the clubs will be 3.5 billion euros, followed by 10 billion euros for an initial period of commitment.€  As with any such decisions made in the stratosphere of corrupt, gold crazed management, the foot soldiers, front line workers and fans are merely incidental.€  In some cases, not even coaches were consulted.€ Liverpool’s Jürgen Klopp was left dumbfounded. “I heard for the first time about it yesterday,” he told Sky Sports.€  “We are not involved in any process, not me or the players.”

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Opinion | John Boehner: The Man of the House Never Did Man Up

        Beneath his blustering pretense of candor, the former Republican House Speaker is as craven and self-serving as ever.

        Since we’re talking about the Republican Party and its descent into an authoritarian leader cult, we might as well invoke Godwin’s Law straightaway. Suppose you were conversing with a German in the early postwar years, and the man said that he supported Hitler’s policies, in fact he voted for him in 1933? And suppose he said the only thing that tore it for him was Hitler’s personal conduct, and how the Führer “abused the loyalty and trust” of supporters like himself?

      • 'If You Want to Save the USPS,' Says Watchdog, 'Fire Louis DeJoy'

        "The entire board and then Mr. DeJoy should be handed their walking papers," said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.). "Their unquestioning support for this postmaster general is unacceptable."

        Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington on Thursday reiterated its call for the ouster of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, the Republican megadonor€ accused of attempting to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service last year as millions of Americans relied on the agency to participate in the presidential election.€ 

      • Opinion | Can Formula 1 Star Lewis Hamilton Send a Message to the Saudi Government?

        His willingness to speak out comes at an opportune time, as 2021 is the first year that Formula 1 will go to Saudi Arabia.

        For human rights advocates who also enjoy the sport of car racing, a great opportunity awaits us. Lewis Hamilton, the only Black driver in the history of Formula 1 racing, has been bravely and consistently supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. In the wake of the protests against the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Hamilton started to call Formula 1 out for its lack of diversity, even saying he would trade his 7th world championship for more diversity in the sport. Accused of bringing politics into the sporting world, he refused to back down, saying that his support for Black Lives Matter was a matter of supporting basic human rights.

      • Voting Rights Advocates Demand Senate Pass DC Statehood Bill After Historic House Vote

        When the House voted on the issue in 1993, a majority of Democrats€ joined€ the Republicans in rejecting the bill.€ 

        Voting rights advocates urged the U.S. Senate on Thursday to pass legislation establishing statehood for Washington, D.C., after the House's historic vote in favor of the move.€ 

      • Opinion | Biden's Appeasement of Hawks and Neocons Is Crippling His Diplomacy

        For a president who promised a new era of American diplomacy, this has been a dreadful start.

        President Biden took office promising a new era of American international leadership and diplomacy. But with a few exceptions, he has so far allowed self-serving foreign allies, hawkish U.S. interest groups and his own imperial delusions to undermine diplomacy and stoke the fires of war.

      • To Push for 'Big and Bold' Agenda, Bowman to Deliver Progressive Response to Biden's Congressional Address

        "It's important for us as progressives to continue to push and continue to organize," said the New York congressman.€ 

        The Working Families Party announced Thursday that Rep. Jamaal Bowman will deliver a progressive response to President Joe Biden's first address to a joint session of Congress next week—a departure from tradition aimed at giving voice to the millions of Americans who want to push the president to fight harder for working people and the common good.

      • WATCH LIVE: Biden White House Hosts Earth Day Summit on Climate Emergency

        "Our clean energy plan will create millions of good-paying union jobs, ensure our economic competitiveness, and improve the health and security of communities across America," Biden said in a declaration ahead of the 40-nation online gathering.

        Forty leaders from the world's top greenhouse gas-polluting nations where hosted by the Biden administration on Thursday for an all-virtual summit to discuss the global climate emergency and the pathways—including individual emission reduction goals—that governments must take to stave off the worst impacts of global warming and runaway destruction of the planet's natural systems.

      • Opinion | We Must Call Out Our Naked Emperors on the Climate Emergency

        Why nobody should be fooled by the gaps between pledges and real action.

        Greta Thunberg was just 15 when she began her weekly protests outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm in August 2018, unable to fathom why no one was talking about the gravity of the climate crisis we're facing. Since then, the 18-year-old activist has sparked a global movement that has seen millions of people take to the streets, making her one of the most recognizable faces of the environmental cause worldwide.€ 

      • Opinion | It's Not Too Late to Reverse Course on the Climate Crisis

        We can act now with proven tools to cut greenhouse gas emissions and store vastly more carbon in plants and the earth.

        Life on our fast-heating planet faces an existential threat. This we know. We're now on track for the worst-case melting of polar glaciers and the resulting sea rise. During the last 15 years, temperatures in the Arctic have reached levels not predicted for another 70 years.

      • Greta Thunberg Says Humanity Must Not Be Fooled by 'Bullsh*t' Climate Targets of World Leaders

        The Swedish campaigner says insufficient goals and empty rhetoric represent the "biggest elephant there's even been in any room."

        Just before U.S. President Joe Biden's two-day virtual€ summit on the climate crisis got underway, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg on Thursday shared a video message calling out the "bullshit" of world leaders who she says are failing to take the steps necessary to confront the planetary emergency.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Detroit PD Detective Sued For His (Second) Bogus Arrest Predicated On Questionable Facial Recognition Searches

        On January 9, 2020, facial recognition tech finally got around to doing exactly the thing critics had been warning was inevitable: it got the wrong person arrested.

      • Pulling Down the World’s Walls: A Conversation With Harsha Walia

        The border is not a place. Whether we are talking about the US-Mexico border, the Dominican Republic–Haitian border, the Line of Control dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan, or the scores of other militarized, fortified, patrolled, or even electrified borders throughout the world, these demarcations function neither as simple geographic markers nor as geopolitical organizing tools. They don’t even really function as barriers, as walls are easily breached, climbed over, dug under, or—through visa overstays or by levying an asylum claim—avoided altogether. “The border,” as author Harsha Walia puts it in her new book, Border and Rule, “is less about a politics of movement per se and is better understood as a key method of imperial state formation, hierarchical social ordering, labor control, and xenophobic nationalism.”

        Sites of so much violence, contention, media frenzy, and fanaticism, the walls and all the dog-whistling rhetoric do not, in the end, protect or preserve. What borders do, Walia suggests, is theatrically deflect attention from whatever rot, hatred, or suffering is happening between the walls themselves, obscuring the source of a political shake-up. Walls, and immigration enforcement more generally, also make it easier for politicians to scapegoat migrants for all of the wants and woes of the native populace. And as barriers—whether physical or legal—they serve to mark limits to both empathy and solidarity.

      • Why is AFL-CIO So Worried€ About Its Vermont Affiliate?

        Now nearing retirement as AFL-CIO president, Trumka was part of a “New Voice” slate that challenged old guard officials for control of the organization in 1995, via its first contested election in a century. New Voice candidates promised to work with state and local AFL-CIO councils to make labor’s political action and workplace solidarity more effective. Among the reforms they implemented was hiring more staff to promote picketing and protests by union members under attack by hostile employers. At the national level, New Voice also pledged to get tough on Democrats who received labor backing but then failed to support worker’s struggles.

        Two years ago, a group of local union activists launched a similar reform campaign, called “Vermont AFL-CIO United!.” They were frustrated with their own labor council’s lack of militancy and creativity, plus its inability to aid new organizing, contract campaigns, or strikes. In a rare contested election, the Vermont reformers called for greater rank-and-file activism, within AFL-CIO affiliated unions and other Vermont labor organizations which represent state employees and teachers. In the fall of 2019, fourteen United slate candidates were elected to the Vermont AFL-CIO executive board, including all the top officer jobs (which are volunteer positions). Since then, the labor council has pursued a€  new agenda, which stresses internal democracy and transparency, social and environmental justice, and ending rubber-stamp endorsements of unreliable Democrats.

      • Fritz Mondale and Decency

        Back in 1976, Jimmy Carter’s consigliere, Charlie Kirbo, was delegated to vet the president-elect’s choices for the vice presidency. The short list included Senators John Glenn, Walter Mondale, and Joe Biden. But after interviewing Mondale, Kirbo told Carter, “Governor, I thought I could get rid of that fellah, but I didn’t, and I don’t think I will.” Kirbo’s South Georgia political instincts made him a little leery of the Minnesotan’s stark liberal credentials. But he couldn’t resist Mondale’s plain, transparent decency. Neither could Carter.

        Carter’s partnership with Mondale became a perfect match of Northern and Southern populism. Both politicians were intelligent, affable, and unpretentious. They liked each other. One November day soon after the 1976 election, Carter and Mondale were about to walk over to the White House to pay a courtesy call on President Gerald Ford when Carter quietly asked Fritz, “What’s it like?”

    • Monopolies

      • Big Pharma's 'Appalling' $26 Billion in Shareholder Payouts Could Fund Vaccines for All of Africa: Report

        "Instead of creating new vaccine billionaires, we need to be vaccinating billions in developing countries."

        Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca—three of the world's top coronavirus vaccine manufacturers—have paid out a combined $26 billion in dividends and stock buybacks to their shareholders over the past year, a sum that could fully fund the cost of inoculating Africa's entire 1.3 billion-person population.

      • Patents

        • Conversant and Daimler end connected cars dispute

          The settlement between NPE Conversant and Daimler apparently came into effect last week. Several sources close to the disputing parties confirmed the latest development. At the end of last week, Conversant and Daimler withdrew most of the suits before the German patent courts and the European Patent Office. Further details of the agreement are so far unknown.

          JUVE Patent is also unaware whether the settlement includes all of Daimler’s suppliers. Numerous suppliers supported Daimler in the dispute with NPE Conversant, such as Continental, Bosch, Burry and TomTom. However, it is already known that Huawei, and Samsung-owned Harman Becker, has already reached a separate settlement with Conversant. Both are tier 2 suppliers of Daimler. These settlements ended a large part of Conversant’s claims.

          Meanwhile, Continental also confirmed a licence to the Conversant SEPs. Continental has ended its legal proceedings with Conversant.

          In 2019, Conversant sued Daimler at the Regional Court Munich for infringement of four standard essentials patents (SEPs), all of which protect mobile communications standards such as LTE (case IDs: 21 O 11384/19, 21 O 17752/19, 21 O 17753/19, 7 O 17751/19).

        • Inventors Will No Longer Be Notified By The EPO About Their Designation [Ed: This gives the false impression that the European Patent Convention (EPC) is obeyed rather than routinely broken by the corrupt the European Patent Office (EPO)]

          Since the first European Patent Convention (EPC) came into force in the seventies, the European Patent Office (EPO) has been informing any designated inventor of a European patent application of the data about his or her designation and the bibliographic data of the patent application. The bibliographic data are the patent application number and date of filing, the date, State and file number of any priority application, the name of the applicant, the title of the invention, and the Contracting States designated.

          [...]

          Interestingly, the amendment to the EPC law has been introduced within the context of a joint initiative among EPO member states aimed at defining common practices. The designation of the inventor is one of the first two common practices which have been adopted so far by EPO member states in the Administrative Council. The other common practice adopted so far relates to the examination of the unity of invention. Although these common practices are intended to be implemented on a voluntary basis, they can contribute to aligning administrative practices between the EPO and the IP national offices of the EPC member states more closely and may therefore be generally welcomed by users.

        • Germany cleans up in European patent litigation

          According to statistics on European litigation exclusively revealed by Managing IP this week, German courts have been wiping up European patent litigation since 2015.

          The data, provided by Darts-IP, shows that Germany took in 3,692 cases between 2015 and 2019, compared to 673 in Italy, 503 in France, 492 in the Netherlands and 430 in the UK, the next four most popular countries for European patent litigation.

          German courts also featured the most frequently in the list of the top 10 most popular European courts for patent cases, with the Düsseldorf Regional Court coming in first place, the Munich Regional Court third, the Mannheim Regional Court fourth and the Hamburg Regional Court ninth.

          Sources speculated that German courts might be particularly popular because of the bifurcated system, which allows patent owners to secure injunctions before courts have an opportunity to examine patent validity.

          Click here to read the full analysis – including patent case statistics for the UK, Italy, France and the Netherlands.

        • 'No Hiding Behind COVAX Anymore': Critics Say Delivery Shortfall Shows Dire Need for Vaccine Patent Waiver

          "Rich countries need to support an intellectual property waiver for Covid-19 vaccines and force Big Pharma to share their vaccine blueprints with the world."

          A new analysis released Thursday shows that the global vaccine initiative COVAX has delivered just one in five of the Oxford/AstraZeneca doses it said would arrive in struggling countries by next month, a shortfall that progressive campaigners cited as further evidence of the need to more aggressively combat vaccine inequities by suspending patent protections.

      • Trademarks

        • ‘Peppa Pig’ has for the first time been recognised as a well-known trade mark in China

          ‘Peppa Pig’ is a British preschool animated television series whose charm has extended well beyond the UK and gained millions of fans. China is no exception. There, Peppa Pig is known as 小猪佩奇.

          In April 2019, Entertainment One UK Limited (‘E-One UK’, owner of Peppa Pig) spotted a product, the so-called ‘Creative Cartoon Peppa Pig LED Table Lamp’, on the Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo (see an IPKat post on Pinduoduo here). The seller was an individual, Chen Jianguang (Chen).

      • Copyrights

        • Thanks Copyright Culture: Web Comic '8-Bit Theater' Releases Book With No Pictures Out Of Fear

          We tend to talk about many of the nuanced and intricate problems with our current copyright culture, but the 10,000 foot view of the problem is essentially that copyright tends to make culture disappear. It can do this in lots of ways, but one of the least recognized of them is simply that with a culture of copyright maximilism, many content producers simply don't release the content they want to release it out of fear of the reprisal that has been seen in other cases.



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