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Links 3/5/2021: Sparky 5.15, Bill Gates Divorce, Netflix Fraud



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Xinitrc, Xprofile And More, What Do They All Do

        On our Linux systems there are all of these files with X at the start of there name like xinitrc and xprofile but what are they actually used for and how do some of them which seem very similar actually differ.

      • Destination Linux 224: Linux Kernel Bans UMN & Interview with Neal Gompa of Fedora Project

        This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we are going to talk with Neal Gompa, a DevOps Engineer by day and a Linux systems aficionado and developer by night about Fedora Linux 34 as well as Fedora KDE. Then we’ll check out the latest release of the open source video editor, Kdenlive 21.04 and in our Community Feedback we’ll talk about the situation around the Linux Kernel banning the University of Minnesota from contributing. Plus we’ve also got our famous tips, tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more this week on Destination Linux. So whether you’re brand new to Linux and open source or a guru of sudo. This is the podcast for you.

      • Late Night Linux – Episode 123 – Late Night Linux

        Whether there’s any point trying out random distros, and your feedback about AMD hardware, slow phones, messaging services, cryptocurrencies, and KDE.

    • Kernel Space

      • Microsoft is working towards running Linux as ARM64 Hyper-V guest [Ed: Microsoft boosters delighted to help Microsoft hijack the word "Linux" for PR, selling proprietary software and spying]
      • Linux 5.13 To Allow Zstd Compressed Modules, Zstd Update Pending With Faster Performance

        Adding to the variety of places where the Linux kernel supports making use of Zstd compression, kernel modules moving forward can now enjoy size reductions with Zstd.

        Linux already supports optional Gzip and XZ compression of kernel modules while beginning with Linux 5.13 there is support added for Zstd. In user-space, KMOD 28 already supports dealing with Zstd-compressed modules. The compressed modules are suffixed .ko.zst.

      • IO_uring Squeezes More Performance With Linux 5.13 - Phoronix

        Merged as part of the block subsystem changes for the Linux 5.13 were the usual assortment of enhancements to the exciting IO_uring. With this next kernel there is yet even better performance out of this morning Linux I/O interface.

        The IO_uring updates for Linux 5.13 include support for multi-shot mode for POLL requests, more efficient reference counting, no longer the need to have a manager thread for each ring, and a wide variety of smaller technical fixes and improvements.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Mesa 21.x Seems To Muck Up Gamers' Trust Factor For Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - Phoronix

          Those moving to Mesa 21.x releases for the latest open-source GPU driver support on Linux are seemingly finding their Valve "Trust Factor" matchmaking system scores dropping for Counter-Strike: GO, leading to numerous upset Linux gamers with AMD Radeon GPUs.

          Back in January for Mesa 21.0 there was the CS:GO whitelisting for OpenGL threading with a focus on improving the performance for the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver with modern AMD Radeon graphics cards. Unfortunately, that appears to be lowering the Trust Factor for the game. Valve's Trust Factor is their matchmaking system in use for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for finding gamers to compete against with similar scores. Cheating and other opaque inputs go in to calculating the Trust Factor value for a particular game.

        • Wayland-Protocols 1.21 Released With XDG_Activation, Staging Replaces Unstable

          Released on Friday was a new version of Wayland-Protocols, the collection of protocol specifications for Wayland.

          With Wayland-Protocols 1.21 the XDG_Activation protocol has been introduced. This protocol is for transferring focus between top-level surfaces such as from a launcher to launchee.

    • Applications

      • BoM says issues with textmode browser lynx fixed; no mention of others

        The Australian Bureau of Meteorology says it has fixed the issues that prevented users of the textmode browser lynx from accessing its website.

        Many sight-impaired readers use lynx and other text-based browsers and a speech-to-text engine like festival to read these pages.

        In a statement sent in response to a query from iTWire, the BoM said: "The Bureau has now resolved an issue that inadvertently caused problems with the Lynx web-browser. The issue was caused with use of a tool that detects and stops screen scraping activity on the Bureau's website.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to install Opera In Ubuntu 21.04 [ Using the terminal ]
      • How To Install GlassFish on Debian 10 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install GlassFish on Debian 10. For those of you who didn’t know, GlassFish is an open-source application server and the reference implementation of Java EE. GlassFish 5 release supports the latest Java Platform: Enterprise Edition 8. It supports Enterprise JavaBeans, JPA, JavaServer Faces, JMS, RMI, JavaServer Pages, servlets, 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 GlassFish on a Debian 10 (Buster).

      • Linux Running Too Slow? Here's How to Find the Cause - Make Tech Easier

        There’s nothing more frustrating than installing Linux on your PC and the whole system still feeling sluggish. After spending money building, purchasing or upgrading a machine, you expect it to be snappy. However, that’s not always the case, and with Linux, you can do quite a bit of investigating to check out what’s wrong. Today, we show you how to find the cause of your Linux machine running too slow.

      • How to Install .NET 5 on Ubuntu Linux [Ed: Helps Microsoft monopoly]

        Want to download and install .NET 5 on your Ubuntu machine but can't figure out how? This guide will take you through the complete process of installing .NET 5 (Dotnet 5) on Ubuntu Linux 20.04 (LTS). Dotnet 5 is the latest version in the .NET Core family and it supports even more application types and platforms than its predecessor.

        Although this article will focus on installing .NET 5 on Ubuntu Linux, Dotnet 5 is also supported on other Linux distros such as CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Alpine, etc.

      • How to install Wii Funkin' on a Chromebook

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

        If you have any questions, please contact us via a YouTube comment and we would be happy to assist you!

      • Linux hdparm Command Tutorial – Linux Hint

        In Linux-type systems, the “hdparm” command tool is used to provide the interface for kernel-supported devices. It is to display the drive disk statistics and set hardware parameters and testing performance. This utility allows the user to perform DMA settings, set hardware parameters like cache settings, acoustic and power management.

        The operations of the “hdparm” command-line utility work properly with the latest kernel devices. But some of the options still support old disk drives.

      • How to install Chrome browser on Rocky Linux 8 - Linux Shout

        Chrome browser is not new to anyone, we all have used it now and then on our Desktop or smartphones. However, if you have just installed Rocky Linux to test it out and want to install Google Chrome browser in it then here are the steps to follow.

      • Use a 8×8 LED Matrix With Raspberry PI and Python

        A very simple electronic component, 8×8 Led Matrix with Raspberry PI (and Python) can display nice and simple images whose application limit is only your fantasy

        In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to setup and wire a 8×8 Led Matrix with Raspberry PI and Python, explaining code.

        8×8 LED matrix is a small display composed of 8 LED row, each one including 8 LEDs, thus forming a LED matrix (as per its name) . All its LED are usually monochromatic (only 1 colour). It appears as in following picture:

      • Finding the fingerprint of a given certificate
      • [Short Tip] Add a path entry to Nushell

        Adding a path in nushell is pretty straight forward: the configuration is done in ~/config/nu/config.toml in the [path] section.

      • How to configure and manage firewalld rules in Linux

        The firewall is essential for controlling the flow of network traffic in and out of the Linux server.

        It enables users to control incoming network traffic on host machines by defining a set of firewall rules.

        It must be enabled on production servers facing the Internet, to protect those servers from unauthorized access.

        This is one of those security features that ensures your system security at network level.

        In this guide, we’ll show you how to add, remove, enable, and disable firewalld rules & zones.

      • How to install Mattermost on Rocky Linux 8 - Linux Shout

        Mattermost enables the communication between individuals and groups. Communication can take place as a chat, video call, or normal telephone call. The exchange of data and links is also possible. Mattermost can be seen as a direct competitor of MS Teams or Slack in this regard. If you are cloud users such as AWS, Google, Azure, and others pre-built open-source images are available with them to install and deploy Mattermost on the cloud as quickly as possible. After installation, its web interface can be accessed using the browser or Mobile & Desktop Apps on Windows, Linux, and Mac, iOS, and Android.

        Under the name Omnibus, Mattermost released package, a complete stack of the free messaging system, can be installed with just a few commands. In addition to Mattermost itself, the administrator can set up PostgreSQL as a database, Nginx as a proxy web server, and Certbot to issue and renew SSL certificates in no time at all. However, Omnibus is only for Debian based system and will not work on RHEL or its derivatives, hence we have to set up Mattermost on Rocky Linux step by step.

      • How To Install Flameshot on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Flameshot on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Flameshot is an open-source screenshot and annotation tool designed for Linux, macOS, and Windows systems. This apps has a varied set of markup tools available, which include Freehand drawing, Lines, Arrows, Boxes, Circles, Highlighting, Blur. Additionally, you can customize the color, size, and thickness of many of these image annotation tools.

        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 Flameshot open-source screenshot tool 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.

      • LFCS – Managing Software – Ubuntu | Linux.org

        With any Linux system, managing the system software is a major part of keeping the system working properly, Ubuntu is no exception. In my previous article, I covered this information for CentOS, this article will cover the Ubuntu side of Managing Software.

        There is a lot of information in this article, so make sure you have a fair understanding of everything as well as how it works together.

    • Games

      • Arcade top-down hack & slash Battle Axe is out now | GamingOnLinux

        Little over a year after the successful Kickstarter campaign, Battle Axe, an arcade styled hack and slash inspired by the likes of Golden Axe and Gauntlet. Created by veteran pixel artist Henk Nieborg of Bitmap Bureau and music from the legendary VGM composer Manami Matsumae.

        "For as long as you and your people can remember, your homeland of Mercia has been held in the tyrannical clutches of the malevolent sorceress, Etheldred. Some months ago, a party of mercenaries was dispatched to attempt to put a stop to Etheldred and her evil cohorts, but regrettably none of them have ever returned…"

    • Distributions

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

        • Elementary OS 6.0 Beta

          Today we are looking at Elementary OS 6.0 Beta It uses Linux Kernel 5.8, based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, and uses about 600MB of ram when idling. It is fast, lean but still in Beta as the name says (so keep it in mind).

        • Elementary OS 6.0 Beta Run Through

          In this video, we are looking at Elementary OS 6.0 Beta.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

      • Debian Family

        • Sparky 5.15

          There is a next point release of Sparky 5.15 “Nibiru” of the stable line ready to go. This release is based on Debian stable 10 “Buster”.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS moves to paid Extended Support Maintenance

          Canonical has announced that Ubuntu 16.04 LTS has reached the end of its normal support lifecycle and has now been moved onto the Extended Support Maintenance track. This allows personal users to run Ubuntu 16.04 ESM on up to three machines and for enterprise customers to pay for the continued support. Extended Support Maintenance (ESM) will last until April 2024.

          With Ubuntu 16.04 LTS reaching end of life status in April, it will no longer receive security updates, therefore, anyone still running it needs to upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. For systems in enterprise environments, this may be easier said than done so Canonical offers ESM.

          With Ubuntu 16.04 ESM, customers will be provided with security updates for high and critical CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) in the Ubuntu base OS and scale-out infrastructures such as Ceph and OpenStack. At the time of writing, only 64-bit x86 machines are supported by Canonical's ESM scheme.

        • Linux Mint’s File Transfer App is Now Available for Android

          Linux Mint’s Warpinator file transfer tool is now available for Android devices, including Chromebooks.

          The tool makes it super-easy to fling files from computer to computer over your local network, no third-party hosting required.

          A desktop app is included in Linux Mint 20 and up, and is available for other Linux distros via Flathub.

          Now Android is in the on the action thanks to the efforts of an independent developer and their work on an open source port to the popular mobile platform.

          Mint devs say the app “works very well” already, despite being a relatively young project. The Play Store description states that is “fully compatible with the original protocol and allows for easy transfer of files between Android and Linux devices”.

          “When we made Warpinator we solved a need we had within Linux Mint and made the software available for all Linux distributions, but although we wouldn’t spend the resources to make it work on other OSes […] we wanted to use simple and open technologies to make it possible for this software to be developed by others,” says Mint’s lead Clement Lefèbvre.

        • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 681
        • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 681

          Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 681 for the week of April 25 – May 1, 2021. The full version of this issue is available here.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Open Source audio editor Audacity is now part of MuseGroup

        Audacity is one of the most popular free cross-platform open source audio editors. It can be downloaded and used on Windows, Mac OS and GNU/Linux machines, and is regularly updated and quite accessible.

        Audacity, as an open source project, is maintained by a group of contributors. Anyone may download the source code of the program and compile it, or contribute code to the project.

        We have followed the development of the audio editor for years, and even published a few tutorials here on this site. Did you know that you may use Audacity to merge Mp3 or Wav files, or to generate and save white noise audio files?

        The first mention of Audacity dates back to 2008 when we published a tutorial on creating ringtones using the software and YouTube. Ringtones, at least in the original form, have faded away.

      • qBittorrent 4.3.5

        The qBittorrent project aims to provide a Free Software alternative to €µtorrent. qBittorrent is an advanced and multi-platform BitTorrent client with a nice user interface as well as a Web UI for remote control and an integrated search engine. qBittorrent aims to meet the needs of most users while using as little CPU and memory as possible. qBittorrent is a truly Open Source project, and as such, anyone can and should contribute to it.

      • Glucosio: an ads-free Libre diabetes manager for Android devices and iOS

        Diabetes is a life-altering disease, which require a daily follow-up and management discipline for patients.

        Google Play Store and Apple App Store have dozens of diabetes management applications, but they either come with a cost, populated with ads or with limited features to force the customer to buy the full package.

        Here, we offer a wonderful alternative for android which comes completely free, without ads and even is released as an open-source project under GPL V3.0 license.

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Mozilla Localization (L10N): Mozilla VPN Client: A Localization Tale

            On April 28th, Mozilla successfully launched its VPN Client in two new countries: Germany and France. While the VPN Client has been available since 2020 in several countries (U.S., U.K., Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, and Malaysia), the user interface was only available in English.

            This blog post describes the process and steps needed to make this type of product localizable within the Mozilla ecosystem.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • FSF

      • Programming/Development

        • Jussi Pakkanen: "Should we break the ABI" is the wrong question

          The ongoing battle on breaking C++'s ABI seems to be gathering steam again. In a nutshell there are two sets of people in this debate. The first set wants to break ABI to gain performance and get rid of bugs, whereas the second set of people want to preserve the ABI to keep old programs working. Both sides have dug their heels in the ground and refuse to budge.

          However debating whether the ABI should be broken or not is not really the issue. A more productive question would be "if we do the break, how do we keep both the old and new systems working at the same time during a transition period". That is the real issue. If you can create a good solution to this problem, then the original problem goes away because both sides get what they want. In other words, what you want to achieve is to be able to run a command like this:

          prog_using_old_abi | prog_using_new_abi

          and have it work transparently and reliably. It turns out that this is already possible. In fact many (most?) people are reading this blog post on a computer that already does exactly that.

        • Qt Developer Conference

          We at KDAB are pleased to announce an event we’re planning to host in Berlin this fall, September 28-30. Save the dates for KDAB’s Qt Developer Conference — a conference from Qt developers for Qt developers!

          Qt Desktop Days, May 2021 — Cancelled

          Before we tell you more about Qt Dev Con, we’d like to let you all know, or confirm what you may have already heard, that the Qt Desktop Days conference that we were planning for this month has been cancelled. This was due to the dates of the event coinciding with those of a couple of other big events. We’d like to try to give you all a better chance to attend more conferences, rather than having to miss out on one or two of them. Therefore, the desktop aspect of Qt development will be integrated into our Qt Developer Conference in the fall, instead.

        • Perl/Raku

          • Rakudo Weekly News: 2021.18 Double Comma

            Jonathan Worthington has just announced a new release of Comma (the IDE for the Raku Programming Language), both the paid version as well as the free Community Edition! With a lot of new pod related features, support for meta-class methods (handy if you’re using Red), and a nice bunch of bug fixes and other improvements.

            If you like the Comma Community Edition, consider buying the Comma Complete Edition with additional features: it will pay for further development of the free version as well as for future complete editions!

          • TPF made me wait 301 hours to learn my punishment
  • Leftovers

    • Bill Gates is getting divorced [ He tweeted ]

      After a tweet we know that mr. Bill Gates is divorcing his wife Melinda Gates.

    • Science

      • Anumeracy is bad, and I just met it

        The graph above represents the membership of an organization, from 2011 to 2021. I saw it by chance, because someone posted it online, worrying that the organization may never recover for such a steep loss. He wrote, more or less: “a 10% decrease in membership in one year! If this is confirmed, it’s a meltdown!”

    • Health/Nutrition

      • What can policymakers learn from the UK’s RECOVERY trial to improve clinical research for COVID-19 and beyond?

        In early March 2020, Oxford University scientists Martin Landray and Peter Horby recognized the crucial role well-designed clinical trials would play in combating the emerging pandemic and avoiding the mistakes of past health crises, where “everyone runs around like headless chickens with scientists and doctors acting alone, each testing different treatments in small numbers of patients; creating lots of noise, but no answers.” Landray and Horby consequently focused on four “keys” to the RECOVERY trial: size, speed, randomization, and simplicity. Without an easy way to enroll patients in a randomized trial, doctors would be left to make individual choices about experimental treatments and would not be able to generate good evidence of whether those treatments actually worked.

        Broadly speaking, RECOVERY is a “platform” trial, a clinical trial “defined by the broad goal of finding the best treatment for a disease by simultaneously investigating multiple treatments . . . [where the] focus is on the disease rather than any particular experimental therapy.” (In other instances, “platform” trials are called “master protocol trials,” “basket trials, or “umbrella trials.”)

        To achieve its aims, RECOVERY was designed to make randomizing treatments fast and simple for doctors. It is “multi-armed” with a single control, meaning that instead of inefficiently testing each intervention against its own control group, only a single control is needed to test multiple interventions. It is also “adaptive,” meaning that the trial design is modified based on interim data analyses, such as by randomizing fewer patients to less promising treatments and shutting down treatment arms that have been shown to be ineffective, such as hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir, and azithromycin. The RECOVERY trial can also add arms; for example, this fall it added aspirin, colchicine, and Regeneron’s antibody cocktail. Thus far, the trial has investigated 13 products, with positive results reported for dexamethasone and tocilizumab.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Ransomware Hits Scripps Health, Disrupting Critical Care, Online Portal

          Scripps Health in San Diego was hit by a ransomware attack over the weekend, forcing the health system into EHR downtime. Some critical care patients were diverted and the online patient portal has been taken offline, according to local news outlet San Diego Union-Tribune.

          Monday appointments were also postponed due to the cyberattack, which disrupted operations at two of Scripps’ four main hospitals and backup servers that reside in Arizona. Providers and other clinicians are leveraging paper records, as telemetry has been impacted at most care sites. Access to medical imaging also appears to be down.

          Reports say all four hospitals in Encinitas, La Jolla, San Diego, and Chula Vista were placed on emergency care diversion for stroke and heart attack patients, who were diverted to other medical centers when possible. All trauma patients were also diverted.

        • Spotify’s Redesigned Desktop App is Now Available on Linux

          Spotify announced a redesign of its desktop app at the end of March, and the revamp has finally found its way to my Linux desktop — and maybe yours, too!

          The UI rejig improves the music streaming client’s core navigation, in particular access to search. In older versions of the client the ‘search’ feature appeared and disappeared depending on the view. Now it’s in the sidebar, in all views.

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Privatisation/Privateering

            • Linux Foundation

        • Security

          • Security updates for Monday

            Security updates have been issued by CentOS (bind, GNOME, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, nss and nspr, xstream, and xterm), Debian (bind9 and libimage-exiftool-perl), Fedora (ansible, babel, java-11-openjdk, and java-latest-openjdk), Gentoo (chromium, clamav, firefox, git, grub, python, thunderbird, tiff, webkit-gtk, and xorg-server), Mageia (kernel, nvidia-current, nvidia390, qtbase5, and sdl2), openSUSE (Chromium, cifs-utils, cups, giflib, gsoap, libnettle, librsvg, netdata, postsrsd, samba, thunderbird, virtualbox, and webkit2gtk3), Red Hat (bind), Scientific Linux (bind), and SUSE (containerd, docker, runc and xen).

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

            • RotaJakiro Linux Backdoor Malware Escaped Detection Since 2018 As It Continued Stealing Data

              Researchers from Qihoo 360’s Network Security Research Lab (360 Netlab) have caught a new malware in the wild. Though it isn’t really a new malware, rather it successfully stayed under the radar for three years.

              Identified as RotaJakiro, the researchers have observed it serving as a backdoor malware targeting Linux devices. The backdoor mainly steals data from the infected machines, alongside installing various plugins.

              Overall, the researchers have found 4 different samples of the same malware in the wild – all with zero VirusTotal detections. However, they analyzed the latest malware variant to study RotaJakiro.

              Briefly, RotaJakiro is a unique malware in that it uses rotates encryption and exhibits different behavior for root/non-root accounts. It uses numerous encryption algorithms during its operation. For instance, it relies on AES to encrypt resource information. Whereas, it uses XOR, AES, ROTATE encrypt ion, and ZLIB compression to communicate with its C&C.

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • Netflix VP convicted for fraud

        A federal jury convicted former Netflix vice president of IT Michael Kail on 28 fraud and money laundering counts.

        Kail, who was indicted in 2018, used his position to create a "pay-to-play" scheme where he approved contracts with outside tech companies looking to do business with Netflix in exchange for taking bribes and kickbacks.

        According to the Department of Justice's press release, Kail accepted bribes or kickbacks from nine different companies totalling more than $500,000 as well as stock options.

        Netflix sued Kail after he exited the company in 2014 to take a role as Yahoo's CIO, accusing him of fraud and breaching his fiduciary duties.

        One FBI agent says that Kail "stole the opportunity to work with an industry pioneer from honest, hardworking, Silicon Valley companies".

      • NetFlix executive Michael Kail convicted of fraud, money laundering

        A federal jury has convicted a former Netflix executive on charges that he rigged agreements with smaller companies so that they would make kickbacks to him when they received payments from Netflix for new products and services.

        Michael Kail, 49, of Los Gatos, who led Netflix’s information technology operations from 2011 to 2014, created and controlled a company called Unix Mercenary LLC, which had no employees or location, for the purpose of receiving more than $500,000 plus stock options from nine companies, according to statement released Friday by the United States Attorney’s Office in San Jose.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Judge Newman Again Stands As Sole Ally To PTAB Bias Claim [Ed: Patent litigation 'industry' lobbyists still trying to brew phony 'scandals' over PTAB in order to shore up fake patents such as software patents, shielding them from scrutiny]

          The Federal Circuit on Monday considered for the second time whether Patent Trial and Appeal Board judges are financially motivated to institute patent challenges, and while the panel majority again seemed unpersuaded, Judge Pauline Newman voiced serious concern over the patent judges' bonus structure.

          The court's longest-serving judge said Article III judges like herself aren't given bonuses based on how many cases they decide and questioned why administrative patent judges should be financially rewarded for their productivity.

        • Invention of a Slave: 2021 Redux

          Tormasi is also a patentee. His U.S. Patent No. 7,324,301 covers a computer hard-drive that allows for “simultaneously and independently” reading and/or writing on different carrier surfaces within the drive.

          [...]

          Capacity to Sue: Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a plaintiff’s capacity to sue is determined “by the law of the individual’s domicile.” For Tormasi, that is New Jersey. New Jersey has a statute on point: “Every person who has reached the age of majority . . . and has the mental capacity may prosecute or defend any action in any court.” N.J. STAT. ANN. €§ 2A:15-1 (2013). However, New Jersey’s Prison Administrative Code sets forth regulations that prohibit prisoners from “operating a business … without the approval of the Administrator” N.J. ADMIN. CODE €§ 10A:4-4.1. Tormasi does not have the Adminstrator’s approval. The courts found that this non-statutory administrative rule was sufficient to limit the state statute — superseding his right to file a lawsuit in his personal capacity. It seems to me that rule eliminating a party’s right to file a civil lawsuit probably should have been a bit more direct.

        • Supreme Court offers Hope on Eligibility Case [Ed: Dennis Crouch, who is admittedly funded by the patent lobby (e.g. those working to undermine patent quality and cancel Section 101), is at it again]

          The Supreme Court today called for the views of the Solicitor General (CVSG) in this important patent eligibility case. “The Acting Solicitor General is invited to file a brief in this case expressing the views of the United States.”

          In a pair of briefs filed in 2019, then Solicitor General Noel Francisco argued that the Court should hear a new eligibility case to clarify its precedent: “the Court’s recent decisions have fostered uncertainty concerning those substantive Section 101 standards.”

        • USPTO hiring hundreds of new patent examiners [Ed: Dennis Crouch reaffirms his longstanding position as USPTO mouthpiece. He moreover gets funded by litigation giants that push for software patents, patents on nature etc.]

          The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is seeking soon-to-be graduates and professionals with backgrounds in graphic design/art, as well as engineers with backgrounds in biomedical, computer, electrical, and mechanical engineering to apply for hundreds of entry-level patent examiner positions in Alexandria, Virginia.

        • Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe launches patent practice with Hengeler counsel [Ed: What on Earth is this? JUVE is once again doing ads in 'article' clothing....]
        • Software Patents

          • Shopify joins the Open Invention Network Linux patent protection group | ZDNet [Ed: IBM-led front group that, along with other companies, seeks to basically legitimise software patents]

            Shopify is a leading global e-commerce company. Its software tools are used by 1.7-million real businesses in more than 175 countries to start, grow, market, and manage retail businesses. Shopify, like so many other companies, owes its success to open-source software.

            "At Shopify, we've built our platform on Ruby on Rails. We view open-source software as a key foundation for our business," said Robert Guay, Shopify senior counsel of intellectual property. "By joining the Open Invention Network, we have committed to patent non-aggression in core Linux and adjacent open-source software. We believe that this commitment will promote innovation and help enable entrepreneurs and developers to build on open source foundations without focusing on the threat of litigation. We strongly encourage all forward-looking e-commerce platforms, retailers, and other companies to do the same."

            With more than 1.58 million websites running on Shopify's software, the company is a business-to-business powerhouse. Indeed, it's Canada's largest publicly traded company.

            That's in no small part because, as Keith Bergelt, OIN's CEO, observed: "Shopify's platform provides not only the tools to build an online store, but also a full suite of merchant solutions, including payment processing through Shopify Payments and loans through Shopify Capital, among others. Ecommerce platforms, fintech, and financial services companies should all take note of Shopify's growth and leadership, which has been built upon open-source software going back to its launch."

          • $1,500 Awarded for 21st Century Garage prior art

            Unified is pleased to announce the PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winner, Preeti Dua, who received a cash prize of $1,500 for her prior art submission for U.S. Patent 6,526,460. The ‘460 patent, formerly owned by Intellectual Ventures, is owned by 21st Century Garage, LLC, an NPE. The '460 patent generally relates to a vehicle communications system, in particular for a motor vehicle, having a plurality of equipment units for transmitting, receiving, acquiring and/or processing data for executing applications.

          • BCS Software reexamination request granted

            On April 30, 2021, the USPTO granted Unified's request for ex parte reexamination, finding substantial new questions of patentability on all challenged claims on U.S. Patent 7,302,612, owned by BCS Software LLC. The '612 patent relates to a high-level operational support framework for monitoring, assessing, and managing the health of applications (or components/objects) in a distributed computing environment. The ‘612 patent has been asserted against Hewlett Packard, Elster Solutions (Honeywell), Landis+Gyr, and Itron.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Comparing U.E.F.I. to B.I.O.S. (Bloat and Insecurity to K.I.S.S.)
By Sami Tikkanen
New 'Slides' From Stallman Support (stallmansupport.org) Site
"In celebration of RMS's birthday, we've been playing a bit. We extracted some quotes from the various articles, comments, letters, writings, etc. and put them in the form of a slideshow in the home page."
Thailand: GNU/Linux Up to 6% of Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
Desktop Operating System Market Share Thailand
António Campinos is Still 'The Fucking President' (in His Own Words) After a Fake 'Election' in 2022 (He Bribed All the Voters to Keep His Seat)
António Campinos and the Administrative Council, whose delegates he clearly bribed with EPO budget in exchange for votes
Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Sainsbury’s Epic Downtime Seems to be Microsoft's Fault and Might Even Constitute a Data Breach (Legal Liability)
one of Britain's largest groceries (and beyond) chains
 
People Don't Just Kill Themselves (Same for Other Animals)
And recent reports about Boeing whistleblower John Barnett
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 18, 2024
Suicide Cluster Cover-up tactics & Debian exposed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/03/2024: A Society That Lost Focus and Abandoning Social Control Media
Links for the day
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE: Plagiarism & Child labour in YH4F
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linux Foundation Boasting About Being Connected to Bill Gates
Examples of boasting about the association
Alexandre Oliva's Article on Monstering Cults
"I'm told an earlier draft version of this post got published elsewhere. Please consider this IMHO improved version instead."
[Meme] 'Russian' Elections in Munich (Bavaria, Germany)
fake elections
Sainsbury's to Techrights: Yes, Our Web Site Broke Down, But We Cannot Say Which Part or Why
Windows TCO?
Plagiarism: Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich) & Debian Developer list hacking
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2024: Putin Cements Power
Links for the day
Flashback 2003: Debian has always had a toxic culture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
[Meme] You Know You're Winning the Argument When...
EPO management starts cursing at everybody (which is what's happening)
Catspaw With Attitude
The posts "they" complain about merely point out the facts about this harassment and doxing
'Clown Computing' Businesses Are Waning and the Same Will Happen to 'G.A.I.' Businesses (the 'Hey Hi' Fame)
decrease in "HEY HI" (AI) hype
Free Software Needs Watchdogs, Too
Gentle lapdogs prevent self-regulation and transparency
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 18/03/2024: LLM Inference and Can We Survive Technology?
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 17, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, March 17, 2024
Links 17/03/2024: Microsoft Windows Shoves Ads Into Third-Party Software, More Countries Explore TikTok Ban
Links for the day
Molly Russell suicide & Debian Frans Pop, Lucy Wayland, social media deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Our Plans for Spring
Later this year we turn 18 and a few months from now our IRC community turns 16
Open Invention Network (OIN) Fails to Explain If Linux is Safe From Microsoft's Software Patent Royalties (Charges)
Keith Bergelt has not replied to queries on this very important matter
RedHat.com, Brought to You by Microsoft Staff
This is totally normal, right?
USPTO Corruption: People Who Don't Use Microsoft Will Be Penalised ~$400 for Each Patent Filing
Not joking!
The Hobbyists of Mozilla, Where the CEO is a Bigger Liability Than All Liabilities Combined
the hobbyist in chief earns much more than colleagues, to say the least; the number quadrupled in a matter of years
Jim Zemlin Says Linux Foundation Should Combat Fraud Together With the Gates Foundation. Maybe They Should Start With Jim's Wife.
There's a class action lawsuit for securities fraud
Not About Linux at All!
nobody bothers with the site anymore; it's marketing, and now even Linux
Links 17/03/2024: Abuses Against Human Rights, Tesla Settlement (and Crash)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 16, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, March 16, 2024
Under Taliban, GNU/Linux Share Nearly Doubled in Afghanistan, Windows Sank From About 90% to 68.5%
Suffice to say, we're not meaning to imply Taliban is "good"
Debian aggression: woman asked about her profession
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 17/03/2024: Winter Can't Hurt Us Anymore and Playstation Plus
Links for the day