Linux Storage

• Micron Working On NVMe SSD Abrupt Shutdown Support For Linux – Phoronix

  The NVMe specification provides for an abrupt shutdown mode over the normal/safe shutdown command if needing to quickly get the NVMe solid-state storage ready for powering off as quickly as possible. Currently the Linux kernel isn’t making use of the NVMe abrupt shutdown command but a proposal by Micron is looking to begin its usage.

  A patch set sent out on Monday by a Micron engineer wires up the abrupt shutdown support for NVMe SSD. The initial use-case is over platforms with a very limited back-up power supply and if knowing a power loss is imminent, to perform the abrupt shutdown of the NVMe SSD.

• Linux as a computational storage panacea? – Open Source Insider

  Linux is widely agreed to be key to the onward development of computational storage.

  As we have noted before, computational storage enables a software and hardware system to offload and alleviate constraints on existing compute, memory and storage.

  So given this proposition, how should software engineers identify, target and architect specific elements of the total processing workload to reside closer to computational storage disks (CSDs) and what role can Linux play in this process?

  The open ecosystem of open source Linux has been lauded as a key facilitating technology to creating the secure containerisation principles that express key elements of computational storage.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Pop OS 21.04 – How It Makes Your Computer More PREMIUM (COSMIC DESKTOP!)

  I used Pop!_OS 21.04 for a couple of weeks and I was thoroughly impressed with the new Cosmic desktop environment, the performance, and the overall computing experience I got from Pop OS.

• Do we have too many Linux distros, and is it really an issue?

• The Frankenstein Desktop

Benchmarks

• AMD AOCC 3.1 Compiler Performance On EPYC 7003 / Zen 3

  Last week AMD released their AOCC 3.1 compiler that is their downstream of LLVM Clang/Flang and carrying various yet-to-be-upstreamed patches for benefiting their latest processors. While just a point release, curiosity got the best of me for firing up benchmarks of this latest AMD Optimizing C/C++ Compiler release.

  [...]

  Curious about any performance impact of AOCC 3.1, I ran some benchmarks of AOCC 3.1 against the prior AOCC 3.0 release. This benchmarking was using an AMD EPYC 7543 (Zen 3) 32-core/64-thread processor from the Tyan S8036GM2NE-LE server that I have been testing out the past number of weeks. This server was running Ubuntu 21.04. While testing both AOCC releases, “-O3 -march=znver3″ were the CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS specified while running a variety of C/C++ benchmarks on this official AMD compiler.

Instructionals/Technical

• Ubuntu JPG to PDF Conversion Process (includes OCR Function) – Linux Hint

  This tutorial shows how to convert jpg and other image types to PDF, including the OCR function on Debian-based Linux distributions such as Ubuntu.

  After reading this tutorial, you’ll know how to convert images to PDF using GUI and a command-line interface. The graphical way allows you to implement the OCR function, extracting images from images to generate editable PDF files.

• How to Install and Configure Prometheus Alert Manager on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – Linux Hint

  Prometheus Alert Manager is used to send alerts via email and other web services (i.e., PagerDuty, Slack, GitLab, WeChat) depending on the alert events generated on Prometheus.
  Prometheus can generate alerts when a target is unavailable and send them to the Alert Manager, sending you an email notification to let you know that a target is down. This is just an example. Prometheus can send alerts to Alert Manager depending on any Prometheus metrics. So, the possibilities are limitless.

  In this article, I will show you how to install Prometheus Alert Manager on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. I will also show you how to configure Prometheus and Alert Manager to send you email notifications via Gmail when a Prometheus target is down (unavailable). So, let’s get started.

• How to SCP from Windows to Linux – Linux Hint

  FTP is no longer considered safe enough to be used for usage on the internet. As a result, I’m trying to demonstrate to you SCP now. SCP is indeed a system that is built on the SSH protocol. As a result, you’ll require a user with SSH right to use the server. SSH keys can be used to make SCP connections, just like they can with SSH. Because some Windows clients may control Linux computers, I’ll additionally guide you to use the free application WinSCP to transmit files from Windows to Ubuntu server using SCP in the body of this tutorial.

• How to underline text in html – Linux Hint

  Hypertext markup language (HTML) is a language that designs the front-end of any website, which can be static or dynamic. Websites that are present on the internet and are built online like Magento and WordPress also work on the basic principles of HTML. Like other programming languages, HTML also has commands known as tags, and these tags are written in angular brackets. Like any other text editor, HTML also allows adding text, images, videos, or any other item in the code. The basic content of HTML is text. Html includes many functions to apply to the text to enhance the feature of the design. Underlining the text is a basic and important feature use to design the text according to the demand and requirements of the website. If the text is underlined, it has something different to show or has a different impact on the reader. We will throw light on some of the content of underlining the text in this guide.

• How to make italics text in HTML – Linux Hint

  Hypertext markup language (HTML) is a front-end language used to design and develop a website. HTML is the basic language of all languages used to design static or dynamic web pages. Html has many functions that are required in designing. With the help of tags, commands written in angular brackets, a web page is designed. HTML allows the user to create or edit text, image, or any other element like any text editor, i.e., Microsoft Word. The contents of HTML are text, image, color, design, etc. design is a very important part as it is responsible for decorating the text. Making the text italics is one example of designing the text. This element is important in emphasizing or driving the attention of the user. Some of the examples are highlighted in this tutorial.

• Guide to MySQL Encryption in Transit and Mandatory Encryption Settings – Linux Hint

  By default, MySQL data transmission between the client and the server takes place without encryption. Unencrypted data transmission is acceptable only when the client and server are within the same network that ensures security. However, the data is at potential risk if both parties are on a separate network. The lack of encryption introduces a severe risk of data interception by man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack.

  To overcome this risk, MySQL supports encryption in transit between the client and the server via TLS/SSL protocol. The article focuses on the manual generation of SSL certificates and keys files in MySQL to configure SSL. Later, the article also focuses on enabling obligatory encryption requirements from clients.

• How to purge Wine from Linux

  If you’ve decided not to use Wine anymore on your Linux PC, you’ll probably want to know how to uninstall it and purge all Wine programs from your system. Sadly, if you’re a new user, there’s no built-in way to remove Wine from your system. Instead, you’ll have to do it manually. Here’s how.

  Note: In this guide, we’ll show you exactly how you can remove Wine. We’ll cover the “wine” package. If you installed Wine on your Linux PC with a different package, you’re on your own.

• How do you get pods in Kubectl? – Linux Hint

  A pod collects one or even more containers with common storage/network assets and a set of instructions for running them. So, in the most basic terms available, a pod is the process by which a container in Kubernetes is switched “on.” Although pods can accommodate numerous containers, it’s best to keep it to a minimum. Because pods are expanded as a whole, all containers in a pod must scale collectively, regardless of individual requirements. This results in a squander of resources. To combat this, pods should be kept as short as possible, typically containing only a main process and an interconnected helper container. However, Kubectl is a command-line tool for running Kubernetes cluster instructions. It accomplishes this by verifying your cluster’s Master Node and using API calls to explore a range of management tasks.

• How to install and use ADB and Fastboot on Ubuntu – Linux Hint

  ADB (Android Debug Bridge) and Fastboot allow us to manage Android mobile devices from the computer. After reading this tutorial, you’ll know how to install and use ADB and Fastboot to control your Android cell phone.

• How to Install Oracle Java JDK 16 on Raspberry Pi – Linux Hint

  Java Development Kit (JDK) is used to develop and test Java applications. It is used by Java developers all around the world. Recently, Oracle JDK 16 was released. A version of Oracle JDK 16 is available for Raspberry Pi as well.

  In this article, I will show you how to install Oracle JDK 16 on Raspberry Pi 4. So, let’s get started

• A Beginner’s Guide to Kickstart – Linux Hint

  When there are only one or two hosts to install, setting up Red Hat-based systems from virtual or physical media is simple. Furthermore, when a system administrator is required to set up numerous Linux computers, Kickstart can give a comparatively simple and fully automated approach. It is simple to set up countless alternative Kickstart settings, each with its configuration of deployment.

  The topmost enterprises utilize Kickstart to deploy Red Hat server images that can then be tweaked as needed. For Kickstart, an administrator needs to set it up as a web server, at least one Kickstart configuration file, and an installation media. An active DHCP server is also required so that after obtaining a valid DHCP address, new clients can find their Kickstart server and get Kickstarted. Moreover, Kickstart utilizes different installation channels such as local media and NFS, etc.

• How to Get System Information With the uname Command on Linux

  Whether you’re a developer working on a script that requires information related to the kernel or a regular user who’s just curious about their operating system, the uname command is the first choice when it comes to extracting system information.

  Although uname is fairly easy to use, for beginners, the output of the command might seem sophisticated at first. To make it easier for you, this guide demonstrates how to use uname to print basic system-related information on Linux.

• How to Build a Raspberry Pi Cloud Server with ownCloud

  Cloud storage is incredibly useful for accessing your data from any device. The downside is that you have to trust a corporation with the privacy and security of your precious documents and photos stored on remote servers.

  There is an alternative, though: you can host your files on your very own cloud server running on a computer in your home or office. One of the most popular services for achieving this is ownCloud.

  We’ll show you how to install ownCloud on a Raspberry Pi, attach external storage, and choose a suitable case.

• How to install Chrome browser on CentOS 7 or 8 Stream – Linux Shout

  Chrome Browser is the popular one but unfortunately not available by default in the base repository of CentOS 8 or 7 because it is not an open-source project. Thus, in case you want it to install on your Linux, then we have to download the RPM packages available for Chrome from its official website. Then only we will be able to use it.

• Get a list of all available Linux commands that you can use

  We’re all familiar with Linux’s command-line interface (CLI), which allows you to execute nearly any job you can think of by just typing commands into it. This is why we have such a lengthy list of commands for the various versions of Linux. We’ll go through the various techniques for showing all of the commands, functions, aliases, and keywords that your Linux terminal may run in today’s article.

• How to prevent a Linux system user from logging into the system

  The shell setting in /etc/passwd determines whether a Linux system user may log in via the shell or over SSH. If you don’t want a certain user to be able to log in, set the shell to /bin/false or /sbin/nologin.

• How To Install Audacity on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Audacity on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Audacity is an easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. Audacity in addition to allowing us to record multiple audio sources as well can allow us to post-process all types of audio, including podcasts, by adding effects such as normalization, clipping, and fading in and out. Developed by a group of volunteers as open source and offered free of charge. Amazing support community.

  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 the step-by-step installation of the Audacity open-source audio editor 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 Sysdig to Monitor System Load on Ubuntu 20.04

  Sysdig is an open-source and comprehensive activity monitoring tool for Linux. It is used to capture and analyze application logs and helps you to troubleshoot system-related issues. It displays a complete overview of CPU usage, Memory usage, Users, IO in a command-line interface. It is available for Linux, OS X, and Windows operating systems.

  In this post, we will show you how to install and use the Sysdig monitoring tool on Linux.

• How to monitor your Linux server performance with Netdata – TechRepublic

  Every data center admin understands the importance of monitoring servers. Things go wrong, and when they do, administrators need to be on top of things. That’s why every good admin is always on the lookout for a good monitoring tool. And Linux is rife with such things. Toss a stone into a pile of open-source software and you are certain to hit a monitor or twelve. And that’s a good thing, especially considering every one of those monitors approaches the task from a different perspective.

• The Draw Guide 7.1 has arrived!

  LibreOffice Draw produces anything from a quick sketch to a complex plan, and gives the means to communicate with graphics and diagrams. With a maximum page size of 300cm by 300cm, Draw is an excellent package for producing technical drawings, brochures, posters and many other documents. Draw manipulates graphical objects, group them, crop them, use objects in 3D and much more.

  “The Draw guide update is long due in the set of LibreOffice Guides and I am happy to have coordinated the effort to bring it to the community. LibreOffice Draw is a powerful vector drawing tool plenty of resources and the Guide is the most comprehensive text on the features. I hope the Draw community will thrive with this book.”

• How to Change Lock and Login Screen Wallpaper in elementary OS

  This tutorial explains the steps you need to change lock and login screen background elementary OS. This will replace the default grey background.

Games

• Godot Engine – Dev snapshot: Godot 3.4 beta 2

  It’s finally time for some extensive testing of the upcoming Godot 3.4 release, which is already quite feature-packed a mere 3 months after the 3.3 release!

  And you read correctly, this is 3.4 beta 2, even though we never had a formal beta 1 announcement on this blog. 3.4 beta 1 is available for download for comparison purposes, but since it had a major regression on C# support on Windows, I skipped its blog post…

• Assemble Entertainment release an open letter on who they “don’t want” as a customer | GamingOnLinux

  Catching up on some industry news, a statement from Assemble Entertainment’s Founder and CEO Stefan Marcinek entered our inbox recently and it’s quite a blunt one.

  Assemble Entertainment are the publisher behind quite a few titles like Ultimate ADOM – Caverns of Chaos, ENCODYA, Pizza Connection 3, Endzone, Leisure Suit Larry – Wet Dreams Dry Twice and many more. The CEO, Stefan Marcinek, previously co-founded Kalypso Media and went onto found Assemble Entertainment in 2016 so they’ve been involved in the games industry for a long time now.

• Run your own talent agency in business sim Idol Manager out now on Steam | GamingOnLinux

  Glitch Pitch and PLAYISM today released Idol Manager, a business strategy sim about conquering the entertainment industry using any means you deem necessary. It’s been in Beta for some time now with most of the game available via itch.io, however today sees the big 1.0 release with it now being on Steam too.

  “You take on the role of manager at a small (but growing!) talent agency. As you cultivate and train the newest generation of young pop stars, you’ll have to decide who to hire and who to fire, who gets promoted when things go well and who gets reprimanded when things get sour. The personal lives of these young celebrities are a part of your business, and the life of a pop star isn’t always a happy one. Their crowning personal achievements can be your greatest commercial successes, but their emotional meltdowns and PR nightmares can spell financial disaster for your company.”

• Feral no longer porting A Total War Saga: TROY to Linux, citing less demand since Proton | GamingOnLinux

  Well, the writing was on the wall for some time but this confirms it – it seems Feral Interactive aren’t likely to do more Linux ports with the official port of A Total War Saga: TROY for Linux cancelled.

  It was announced today that TROY would be finally seeing a Steam release on September 2. Feral did their usual thing on Twitter of quote-tweeting, mentioning it would be on macOS soon after the Windows release. A mention of Linux was totally absent.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KDE Plasma 5.22.4 Further Improves Plasma Wayland, Makes System Monitor Faster to Launch

    KDE Plasma 5.22.4 is packed with many improvements to make the KDE Plasma 5.22 desktop environment series more stable and reliable. First, it improves the login screen authentication on systems using systemd-homed to no longer fail when entering the wrong password.

    Second, it makes the new Plasma System Monitor app a lot more faster to launch and improves the ksystemstats daemon, which is used by the Plasma System Monitor app and other sensor widgets for sensor data, to no longer crash on launch on certain systems.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Solus 4.3 Released With Linux Kernel 5.13: See What’s New

    Solus is a modern-day Linux distro aimed at home users. It offers a cohesive desktop experience for users who are new to the Linux world. So, if you’re a starting Linux user looking for a polished system, Solus might be a good fit for you.

    The developers recently released Solus 4.3, the latest stable version of this distro. It comes with a new kernel, several desktop improvements, and support for new hardware.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • Digest of YaST Development Sprints 127 & 128

    As you all know, developing and maintaining complex software distributions like openSUSE Leap, Tumbleweed or SUSE Linux Enterprise is not an easy task. Specially since we want to ensure all of them stay independent but at the same time closely related, and since they keep evolving in new directions like Kubic, MicroOS and SLE Micro.

    Our beloved Open Build Service is the key component that makes all that possible. But some extra tools are needed in addition to OBS in order to manage the complexity of the (open)SUSE distributions. Those extra tools are hosted and developed in a GitHub repository simply called openSUSE-release-tools. For years, the development process of those tools has been highly unstructured (not to say “slightly chaotic”), with more than 60 contributors but no clear mid-term strategy. Although that is not necessarily bad, some sustained and directed development is needed to solve some of the challenges we have ahead of us and to fix some pitfalls in the current development process of the openSUSE and SUSE products and distributions.

    The YaST Team was chosen for such a task, so we will steadily take over development and maintenance of the tools in that repository. As first steps, we improved a lot the documenation. That includes extending the README file and adding new documents like an inventory of tools and a summary of the processes in which those tools are involved. We also extended and updated the automated tests and implemented an easy new check in the factory-auto bot.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Longer internships give Red Hat’s Canadian interns more time to learn and grow

    Every summer for the past ten years, the Red Hat Toronto office has hosted approximately 9-12 interns for 16-month terms. During the last 15 months, I have been a software engineering intern working on WildFly Elytron, a security framework that ships with Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. I hope to shed some light on the specifics of our internship program in Canada and perhaps steer you towards deciding whether a “red hat” would look good on you or someone you know!

  • How Ansible is breaking down cultural silos with innovation [Ed: IBM/Red Hat peddling vendor lock-in as something that "is breaking down cultural silos with innovation"]

    In any large organization, you will need cross-functional teams to build and sustain your enterprise IT environment.

    Large organizations often have teams that are isolated from one another, creating a silo that inhibits collaboration. Each silo may also have its own culture, which can make working across teams tricky. Collaboration in such a workplace might look more like just throwing something over the fence and letting someone do their part.

  • IBM z/OS V2.5 Strengthens Security, Introduces New Capabilities For Application Modernization

    IBM has announced the next-generation operating system (OS) for IBM Z, designed to accelerate client adoption of hybrid cloud and AI and drive application modernization projects. According to the company, IBM z/OS V2.5 helps deliver new capabilities across AI enablement, application modernization, resiliency, enhanced security and an improved developer experience.

  • The Linux Foundation, Prometeo, IBM, and Partners Announce New Firefighter Safety Open Source Project [Ed: Openwashing IBM]

  • The Linux Foundation, Prometeo, IBM, and Partners Announce New Firefighter Safety Open Source Project

    The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced it will host Pyrrha, created and contributed by Prometeo Platform S.L., in collaboration with IBM to help accelerate the development and deployment of firefighter safety technology around the world. In 2019, Prometeo was named the winner of the Call for Code Global Challenge and since then their technology has been further developed with updated hardware and enhanced software through work with the IBM volunteer Service Corps and leading ecosystem partners.

  • The Linux Foundation’s Latest Effort is Around Firefighter Safety [Ed: Read the comments]

    The GitHub-hosted project…

  • Linux Foundation, IBM, Samsung and Prometeo join forces for firefighter healthcare project [Ed: As expected, the sponsored puff pieces have arrived]

• Debian Family

  • Thinking about upgrading to Debian Bullseye? Watch out for changes in Exim and anything using Python 2.x

    The Debian Project has set a release date of 14 August for Debian 11, also known as Bullseye.

    Debian is an important distribution in its own right, but also influential since it is the basis for many others including Ubuntu, Mint, Devuan, Knoppix, Tails, Raspbian, Pop!_OS, SteamOS and more.

    In a post to the developer announcements mailing list, the release team said: “We plan to release on 2021-08-14.” This is a little over two years since the release of Debian 10 “Buster,” which came out 6 July 2019. The testing release is now “completely frozen” other than to “emergency bug fixes.”

    Debian 11 is based on the 5.10 Linux kernel and officially supports the same architectures as Debian 10, though this may be the last with full 32-bit i386 support.

  • Systemback

    There is a new application available for Sparkers: Systemback

Devices/Embedded

• Discontinued classroom hardware hacked for use as a handheld Linux terminal

  The Smart Response XE is a simple handheld device that was designed for use in classroom settings (teachers could send questions to students over a local wireless network and then collect responses). It was discontinued years ago, but hardware and software hackers have been picking up user devices on eBay and finding new uses for the old hardware.

  One interesting project? Hacker chmodd775 has turned the Smart Response XE into a handheld Linux terminal by giving the little device new brains, but keeping the keyboard and display.

• Classroom Surplus Becomes Linux Powerhouse

  The SMART Response XE is a handheld computer that was originally sold for use in the classroom as a terminal for pupils taking tests. It’s now cheap enough on the surplus market to have become a target for experimenters, and we’ve seen them with a variety of cool hacks. We particularly like what [chmod775] has done with it, putting a VT100 terminal emulator on the device and hiding a NanoPi Neo Air single board computer in the battery bay. Powered from a USB battery bank, it gives a fully-featured Linux terminal in the palm of the hand. We see it running an Ubuntu LTS version, and it’s clear that it’s a functional and usable device.

• Full-featured RK3566 SBC ships with custom Linux stack

  Boardcon’s “EM3566” SBC runs Linux on Rockchip’s RK3566 via a “CM3566” module with up to 8GB RAM and 32GB eMMC. Features include WiFi/BT, GbE, HDMI, MIPI-DSI and -CSI, 6x USB, SATA, M.2 for NVMe, and mini-PCIe with SIM.

  Boardcon has announced its first single board computer based on the Rockchip RK3566, following earlier Rockchip-based models such as its RK3399-powered Idea3399, RK3288-driven Idea3288, and RK1808-based EM1808. The EM3566 ships with a custom Linux stack and is designed for AI robot, smart POS machine, e-book, face recognition terminal, and business display integrated equipment deployments.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • The P-CNC Plotter is a DIY drawing machine ‘disguised as a quadruped robot’ | Arduino Blog

    In their quest to create a portable CNC plotter, Instructables user tuenhidiy combined several PVC pieces with a couple of motors to build the P-CNC Plotter. The small machine — which was designed to resemble a quadruped robot — features an Arduino Uno and a Gbrl control shield at its heart that takes incoming G-code and translates it into motor movements. The X axis consists of a single NEMA-17 stepper motor that actuates a threaded rod to slide the rest of the device along a path.

  • Present! uses an Arduino and a PIR sensor to keep you from embarrassing yourself on Zoom calls | Arduino Blog

    Teleconferencing is more popular than ever, especially with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but we have also seen an increase in embarrassing videos from people who were unaware that their cameras were still on. To address this problem, Charitha Jayaweera came up with a clever solution that he calls the “Present!” — a system that uses an Arduino Nano and HC-SR501 passive infrared sensor to detect if there is a person in front of the computer and automatically disable their camera and microphone if not.

  • Scan items from the real world into your Arduboy games with the Ardumiibo | Arduino Blog

    Inspired by a recent project involving Disney’s MagicBand technology, William Wimberly and Anthony Pallitta created an Arduboy-compatible RFID scanner they call the Ardumiibo, along with a DIY rumble pack. The Ardumiibo got its name from Nintendo’s Amiibo platform, which allows players to tap NFC-equipped figurines and see them within a game. In a similar manner, the Ardumiibo enables users to scan their NFC tags on a device built from an Arduino Leonardo board and PN532 RFID module.

    The scanning system is contained within a small 3D-printed enclosure that also has a NeoPixel ring around the top for some added flair. It connects to a Tiger Electronics handheld-style host Arduboy device via a serial cable, which allows for programs on the gaming system to simply implement the protocol for communicating with the Ardumiibo. As for the rumble pack that is integrated into the scanner, it is attached to the Arduboy over pin 2 that lets the game send pulses with the Tone commands for haptic feedback or playing small songs.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Android 12: Can your phone handle Google’s latest mobile OS? – CNET

  • When will the Galaxy A52 get the Android 12 and One UI 4.0 update?

  • How to enable themed icons in Android 12 – TechRepublic

  • OnePlus is winding down the Android 11 beta program for the OnePlus 8, 8 Pro, and 8T

  • TechCentral.ie | Ireland’s technology news resource

  • Samsung says it will get around to fixing the Galaxy S21′s Android Auto issues in September

  • LineageOS: All You Need to Know About the Most Popular Android ROM

  • OnePlus Nord 2 5G review: £399 Android is a bargain iPhone SE rival | Metro News

  • Best Android app deals of the day: Arrog, Runic Curse, more – 9to5Toys

  • 10 Best Parental Control Apps for Android to Secure Your Kids Device

  • Android 13’s dessert codename might be Tiramisu – The Verge

  • Google brings Android Data Restore Tool to the Play Store following backup overhaul

  • Google TV for Android gets new discovery features and more streaming apps – The Verge

  • New Google Bug Hunters platform unites Android, Chrome – 9to5Google

  • How to find a Wi-Fi password on Android | Laptop Mag

  • How to Create, Manage, and Disable Tab Groups in Chrome on Android

  • How to Stream Music to a HomePod With an Android phone | Digital Trends

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• F Prime: The Innovative Open-Source Software Powering NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter

  Created at NASA’s JPL, the open-source flight software called F Prime isn’t just powering humanity’s first interplanetary helicopter; it’s also powering inspiration at multiple universities.

  When NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter hovered above the Red Planet April 19 on its maiden voyage, the moment was hailed as the first instance of powered, controlled flight on another planet. Figuring out how to fly on Mars, where the air is thin but gravity is about a third of that on Earth, took years of work. Along with the challenge of developing a craft that was up to the task, the mission needed software to make the unprecedented flights possible.

  So they turned to F Prime, a reusable, multi-mission flight software framework designed for CubeSats, small spacecraft, and instruments. The software was architected by Tim Canham in 2013 as part of a technology exploration effort at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California with the aim of creating a streamlined, low-cost software development approach that would allow components written for one application to be reused easily in other applications and run on a range of processors.

• The Apache Cassandra Project Releases Apache® Cassandra™ v4.0, the Fastest, Most Scalable and Secure Cassandra Yet

  The Apache Cassandra Project released today v4.0 of Apache® Cassandra™, the Open Source, highly performant, distributed Big Data database management platform.

  “A long time coming, Cassandra 4.0 is the most thoroughly tested Cassandra yet,” said Nate McCall, Vice President of Apache Cassandra. “The latest version is faster, more scalable, and bolstered with enterprise security features, ready-for-production with unprecedented scale in the Cloud.”

• Apache Cassandra 4.0 Big Data Database Management System Released

  pache Cassandra 4.0 is finally available as the latest major feature release to this widely-used NoSQL database management system.

  Cassandra 4.0 further juices the performance with scaling operations being up to five times faster, 25% faster throughput for reads and writes, and also lower latency work. Cassandra 4.0 also has improvements to yield better consistency, better security and observability, new configuration settings, better compression support, and more.

• FSFE

  • 20 Years FSFE +++ Finland achieving Router Freedom +++ microFSFE

    Long before the first smartphone was introduced, it was evident to the FSFE’s founders that it is the people who should be in control of technology and not vice versa. In 2001, Free Software experts around Europe created the Free Software Foundation Europe.

    20 years is a long time in computing history and although technology is ever-changing, our values have been consistent. The core of our work is, in a nutshell: educating people on the nature of Free Software, highlighting its political implications, and simplifying its legal preconditions. Matthias Kirschner, President of the FSFE since 2015, explains this in his own words in a short video.

    Our work throughout the years would not have been possible without the help of our European community. Whether you have translated our news, used your voice to share our message, helped us financially, or participated in one of our public events: you have helped our cause to take a step further.

    Would you like to share your thoughts about your time with the FSFE? We are looking forward to hearing from you. Also we would love to see pictures from your activities in the past and share them with the community. Or, if you are feeling creative, you can send us a birthday video, just like the science-fiction author Cory Doctorow did. Do not miss to watch it and to find out more on how to share your throwback on our birthday page.

• FSF

  • GNU Projects

    • Funding GIMP developers for sustainable development

      GIMP has been developed as a community effort since very early on, after its original authors left the project. This begs the question of sustainability when contributors wish to stay longer while not being able to afford being penniless volunteers forever.

      We have seen skilled developers come and go for years, the latter becoming a growing concern. Contributing takes a crazy amount of time and people have family, work and other responsibilities to take care of. Thus when core team contributors are willing to be paid for making Free Software, we have decided that GIMP as a project should encourage such endeavours by putting more emphasis on their funding.

      There are currently 2 such crowdfunding projects. You can consider these crowdfundings as “official” as can be and completely endorsed by the GIMP project…

      [...]

      ZeMarmot is a Libre Art project born as an idea in 2014, launched in 2015 with production starting in 2016. In particular, it is an Open Animation short film (Creative Commons BY-SA license promoting sharing and reuse) led by the film director, Aryeom, and GIMP co-maintainer, Jehan.

      [...]

      What these donations through GNOME still cannot do is funding paid development, so if that’s what you want, please fund the developers directly as explained above. GIMP project obviously welcomes the 2 types of donation, for community needs through GNOME and for paid development through the 2 crowdfundings listed.

• Programming/Development

  • Emmanuele Bassi: Final Types

    Additionally, any derivable type can be marked as abstract; an abstract type cannot be instantiated, but you can create your own derived type which may or may not be “concrete”. Looking at the GType reference documentation, you’ll notice various macros and flags that exist to implement this functionality—including macros that were introduced to cut down the boilerplate necessary to declare and define new types.

    The G_DECLARE_* family of macros, though, introduced a new concept in the type system: a “final” type. Final types are leaf nodes in the type hierarchy: they can be instantiated, but they cannot be derived any further. GTK 4 makes used of this kind of types to nudge developers towards composition, instead of inheritance. The main problem is that the concept of a “final” type is entirely orthogonal to the type system; there’s no way to programmatically know that a type is “final”—unless you have access to the introspection data and start playing with heuristics. This means that language bindings are unable to know without human intervention if a type can actually be inherited from or not.

  • Peter Czanik: Syslog-ng 3.33: the MQTT destination

    Version 3.33 of syslog-ng introduced an MQTT destination. It uses the paho-c client library to send log messages to an MQTT broker. The current implementation supports version 3.1 and 3.1.1 of the protocol over non-encrypted connections, but this is only a first step.

  • Python

    • Matplotlib Scatter Plot in Python – Linux Hint

      The human can understand the visual more as compared to the text form. That’s why people always suggest drawing the big data graph to understand it in a very easy manner. There are different types of graphs available in the market like bar graphs, histograms, pie charts, etc. These different graphs are used according to the dataset and requirements. For example, if you have a dataset of company performance from the last 10 years, then the bar chart graph will give more information about the company’s growth. So, like that, the graph choice depends upon the dataset and requirements.

      If you are a data scientist, then sometimes you have to handle the big data. In that big data, you are processing the data, analyzing the data, and then generating the report on that. To generate the report on that, you must need some clear image of the data, and here the graphs come in place.

    • String to Hexadecimal in Python – Linux Hint

      Hexadecimal has a base of 16, and we can represent a string in hexadecimal format using the prefix 0x.

    • How to Use Textwrap Module in Python – Linux Hint

      This article will cover a guide on using the “textwrap” module in Python. As the name suggests, this module can be used to “wrap” text so that lines or sentences can be fit within the predefined length constraints. This is usually done by shortening a piece of text and moving the longer parts to the next line so that all lines adhere to the character limits. The usage of the textwrap module can be best understood through examples. Below are some code samples that illustrate the usage of the textwrap module and its methods. These code samples are tested with Python 3.9.5 on Ubuntu 21.04.

  • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

    • Full Guide to Bash Arrays

      In itself, Linux is merely an operating system kernel; the kernel is a crucial component of the operating system, which facilitates I/O devices communicating with the software used by the user. Besides, it manages memory, CPU, and protects hardware and software from malfunctioning. The interface or software part that the user uses to interact with the hardware is called Command Line Interface (CLI) or a Shell.

      Linux shell is a program with an interface that takes commands from the user, interprets them, and sends them to the kernel to perform a specified operation. Command Line Interface (CLI) is the minimalist way to interact with the hardware of the system. There are tons of commands for performing various functionalities, such as making a directory, moving a directory, creating a file, deleting a file, etc.

    • Revisiting a command-line translator

      I don’t know who developer Mort Yao is (the “About Me” page on his personal website says nothing), but his command-line translate-shell program has proved to be very useful.

  • C

    • How to Use Pointers in C – Linux Hint

      In C, learning pointers is simple and enjoyable. Certain Programming language activities are easier to complete with pointers, while others, like dynamic memory allocation, seem impossible to complete without them. To be a competent C developer, it is thus beneficial to understand pointers. Within C, a pointer is a variable that holds the location of some other variable. You may do use a pointer to reference some other reference method. A pointer could be increased or decreased, indicating that it points towards the next or prior memory address. A pointer would aim to save storage and speed up processing. Let us start from the beginning. Make sure to use Ubuntu 20.04 Linux system to implement these examples below.

    • For loop in c – Linux Hint

      In the programing language, loops play an important role in conducting the programs efficiently. Manual execution requires a lot of time that causes the operating system to slow down the speed of its tasks to be performed. In this article, we will discuss using one of the commonly used loops that is for-loop.

  • C++

    • Return Array From Function C++ – Linux Hint

      Arrays are specific containers that have values of the same data type. Functions in C++ perform operations on arrays, and these arrays are then returned to the main function. There are many approaches to describe this phenomenon. In this guide, some common methods are explained:

    • Vector Resize() Function in C++ – Linux Hint

      The vector is a very useful class of C++ for creating the dynamic array. The size of the vector can be changed at any time to solve any programming problem. Many built-in functions exist in C++ for doing the different types of tasks in a vector container. The resize() function is one of them. It is used to change the size of the vector. The vector size can be increased or decreased by using this function. The uses of resize() function in C++ vector have been explained in this tutorial.

    • Vector Erase() Function in C++ – Linux Hint

      The array is used to store multiple data, and the number of elements of the array can’t be changed at the run time. This problem can be solved by using a vector that works like a dynamic array. Different functions exist in the vector class to add and remove an element from the vector. The erase() function is used to remove one or more elements from the vector at the run time that decreases the size of the vector. The uses of this function have been explained in this tutorial.

    • Vector Insert() Function in C++ – Linux Hint

      The vector is a useful container class of C++ to store the sequence of data that works as a dynamic array. The size of the vector object can be increased or decreased by adding or removing an element in the object at the run time. The insert() function is used to add one or more new elements before the specific element of the vector object by mentioning the position of that element. It will increase the size of the vector object dynamically. The different syntax and the uses of this function have been explained in this tutorial.

    • Use of Vector Pop_Back() Function in C++ – Linux Hint

      The size of the vector can be reduced by using different built-in functions of C++. The pop_back() function is one of them. It is used to remove the last element of the vector from the back and reduce the size of the vector by 1. But the last element of the vector is not removed permanently like the erase() function. The different uses of this function have been explained in this tutorial.

    • Vector Push_Back() Function in C++ – Linux Hint

      The dynamic array can be implemented by using a vector in C++. The elements can be added to the vector in different ways. The push_back() function is one of the ways to insert a new element at the end of the vector that increases the size of the vector by 1. This function is useful when one element is required to add to the vector. If the data type of the vector does not support the value passed by the argument of this function, then an exception will be generated, and no data will be inserted. The way to insert data in vector using the push_back() function has shown in this tutorial.

    • Find array size C++ – Linux Hint

      An array is a container having elements of the same data type. If we don’t know the actual size of an array, it can be determined by different methods. When we talk about the size of an array, in actual we are talking about the number of elements present in the array. Sometimes, we define the array size, and sometimes the brackets are left empty. This is an apparent size that only shows the capacity of an array to store value in it.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Security

    • Security updates for Tuesday

      Security updates have been issued by Debian (drupal7), Fedora (linux-firmware), openSUSE (qemu), Oracle (kernel and thunderbird), Red Hat (thunderbird), Scientific Linux (java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, kernel, and thunderbird), SUSE (dbus-1, libvirt, linuxptp, qemu, and slurm), and Ubuntu (aspell and mysql-5.7, mysql-8.0).

    • LemonDuck is a new crypto-mining malware targeting Windows and Linux systems [Ed: India-based publishers are still relaying Microsoft PR/BS]

    • Announcing new event focused on Building Cybersecurity into the Software Supply Chain, August 18, Virtual [Ed: Corporate-led spin on "loss of intellectual property."]

      Modern day supply chains leave greater potential for vulnerabilities, and supply chain security should be a high priority for organizations. Vulnerabilities could be catastrophic, and lead to unnecessary costs, inefficient delivery schedules and a loss of intellectual property.

      In addition, over the last few years, supply chains have increasingly been exposed as a major weak point in organizational security. While security may be top of mind within company walls, you are only as strong as your most vulnerable supplier.

Monopolies

• Patents

  • US district court patent filings set to climb above 4,000 for the year

    Data from both Unified Patents and RPX suggests that recent climbs in district court patent cases in the US are set to continue, as is the decline in PTAB filings

  • SEP Licensing Negotiation Groups — Part III: legalization of buyers’ cartels would invite group boycott and collective hold-out

    This is the final part of a trilogy on licensing negotiation groups: automotive industry cartels that would collectively negotiate standard-essential patent (SEP) licenses with major patent holders and pools. In Part I, I discussed the rich history of automotive cartels, and couldn’t help but conclude that the LNG proposal is, at best, a solution in search of a problem. Part II looked at the implications for SEP enforcement. Patentees would hardly be able to hold an individual implementer responsible for the positions taken by an LNG in negotiations, no matter how unconstructive.

Desktop/Laptop

• Microsoft’s Linux Distro: CBL-Mariner [Ed: They help promote the lie that Microsoft in fact "loves" the thing that it is attacking the EEE way. This is worse than foolish.]

  Microsoft is not the company that it used to be. Steve Ballmer, the then CEO, said in June of 2001 that “Linux is a cancer” [1]. Microsoft tried for years to thwart the open source model and attacked Linux head-on. However, Microsoft mellowed over the years and eventually admitted they were wrong. These days they embrace Linux. Microsoft’s current CEO, Satya Nadella even campaigned that [quote] “Microsoft Loves Linux” in 2015 [2].

Audiocasts/Shows

• Late Night Linux – Episode 135

  Chris Fisher from Jupiter Broadcasting joins us to discuss Syncthing, feedback about whether Silverblue is the future, and how the FOSS community might be susceptible to being exploited.

• Stop Asking How To Learn A Linux Distro

  When you’re new to Linux it can be hard to work out the kind of questions you need to ask to get yourself good answers and one of those places is once you’ve picked a distro how do you actually learn it.

• Stunning Animated Video Effects Using Free Software

  In this tutorial, I will show you how I created simple graphics in GIMP, how I animate graphics and text in Kdenlive. GIMP is a free and open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop; and Kdenlive is a free and open source video editor that is quite powerful.

• Destination Linux 236: Is Eating Our Own Holding Linux Back?

  This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re discussing a very difficult topic about toxicity, is eating our own holding Linux back? We’ll also talk about self-hosting your own VPN and Pine64’s PineTime Open Source Smartwatch. 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.

Kernel Space

• Analyze the Linux kernel with ftrace | Opensource.com

  An operating system’s kernel is one of the most elusive pieces of software out there. It’s always there running in the background from the time your system gets turned on. Every user achieves their computing work with the help of the kernel, yet they never interact with it directly. The interaction with the kernel occurs by making system calls or having those calls made on behalf of the user by various libraries or applications that they use daily.

  I’ve covered how to trace system calls in an earlier article using strace. However, with strace, your visibility is limited. It allows you to view the system calls invoked with specific parameters and, after the work gets done, see the return value or status indicating whether they passed or failed. But you had no idea what happened inside the kernel during this time. Besides just serving system calls, there’s a lot of other activity happening inside the kernel that you’re oblivious to.

• Google Continues Working On Suspend-Only Swap Spaces For Linux – Phoronix

  Google engineers and other parties are interested in being able to create swap spaces on Linux systems that would be reserved just for system suspend/hibernation purposes and not for generic swapping to disk.

  The proposed SWAP_FLAG_HIBERNATE_ONLY would reserve a swap space just for suspend-to-disk usage and not swapping regular pages. To now, generic swap ultimately needs to be enabled if just wanting to use it for system suspend, short of workarounds for turning it on/off around the suspend process.

• Linux Plumbers Conference: RISC-V Microconference Accepted into 2021 Linux Plumbers Conference

  We are pleased to announce that the RISC-V Microconference has been accepted into the 2021 Linux Plumbers Conference. The RISC-V software eco-system is gaining momentum at breakneck speed with three new Linux development platforms available this year. The new platforms bring new issues to deal with.

• Graphics Stack

  • DMA-Fence Deadline Awareness Proposed To Help Ensure GPU Drivers Render On-Time – Phoronix

    There is the phenomenon on Linux where when double-buffered rendering and missing vblanks can lead to the GPU running at a lower frequency when instead the opposite should happen so it will try to not miss vblanks in the first place. In the past there’s been talks of “boost” support in the GPU drivers or also workarounds from user-space like dynamic triple buffering, but sent out this week is a new proposal around DMA-Fence deadline awareness as another means of addressing this problem.

    DMA-Fence deadline awareness is about being able to set a desired deadline on a fence for when the waiter would like to see the fence signaled. With the use-case being pursued, the deadline would be set as the next vblank time. Over earlier approaches this deadline awareness method should work out better in the context of atomic helpers and where the display and GPU drivers are different.

  • H.264 SVC / Temporal Encoding Wired Up For AMD’s Linux Graphics Driver – Phoronix

    For those making use of Radeon GPUs for H.264 encoding on Linux, the open-source Mesa driver stack for VCN hardware has just merged support for handling H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) / temporal encoding.

    This merge request from AMD was just merged into Mesa 21.3-devel for expanding its H.264 encode capabilities with Video Core Next.

Instructionals/Technical

• Why self hosting is important

  Self hosting is about freedom, you can choose what server you want to run, which version, which features and which configuration you want. If you self host at home, You can also pick the hardware to match your needs (more Ram ? More Disk? RAID?).

  Self hosting is not a perfect solution, you have to buy the hardware, replace faulty components, do the system maintenance to keep the software part alive.

• Apache’s mod_wsgi and the Python 2 issue it creates

  If you use Apache (as we do) and have relatively casual WSGI-based applications (again, as we do), then Apache’s mod_wsgi is often the easiest way to deploy your WSGI application. Speaking as a system administrator, it’s quite appealing to not have to manage a separate configuration and a separate daemon (and I still get process separation and different UIDs). But at the moment there is a little problem, at least for people (like us) who use their Unix distribution’s provided version of Apache and mod_wsgi rather than build your own. The problem is that any given build of mod_wsgi only supports one version of (C)Python.

• Trouble with vnet and pf

  In the past, I have tried vnet jails with pf, and hit trouble. I was never able to get pf to allow the vnet traffic when having a default ‘block log all’ rule. More recently, I encountered the same problem when using byhve.

  This time, I moved byhve to another host, which is not using pf and I am writing this post to document the issue.

• How to Boot Raspberry Pi 4 / 400 From a USB SSD or Flash Drive

  By default, Raspberry Pi boots up and stores all of its programs on a microSD memory card, which has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 50 MBps on the Raspberry Pi 4 and just 25 MBps on prior models. In real-life, even the best microSD cards for Raspberry Pi get no faster than about 38 MBps in sequential writes. Using an external SSD as your main storage drive could speed things up significantly and, with a few commands and a simple firmware update, you can do just that.

  In our real-life tests of a Raspberry Pi 4 with SSD last year we got impressive performance with sequential transfer rates as high as 140 MB / 208 MBps for reading and writing. You can also use a standard USB flash drive, though we found the performance worse than a microSD card on many tasks.

• How to Run Multiple Linux Commands in One Single Command
  

  If you use Linux daily, you will know that the command line is the most powerful tool when you working with files, installing and configuring system software, and running them. It becomes even more efficient if you run two or more commands at once on the command line and save a good deal of time.

• How To Install Bluefish Editor on Linux Mint 20 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Bluefish Editor on Linux Mint 20. For those of you who didn’t know, Bluefish is free and open-source software that provides numerous capabilities to the programmers for web development by supporting multiple languages such as Java, C/C++, Python, Go, and also a very large number of scripting languages.

  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 the step-by-step installation of Bluefish’s powerful editor on a Linux Mint 20 (Ulyana).

• Check used disk space on Linux with du | Opensource.com

  No matter how much storage space you have, there’s always the possibility for it to fill up. On most personal devices, drives get filled up with photos and videos and music, but on servers, it’s not unusual for space to diminish due to data in user accounts and log files. Whether you’re in charge of managing a multi-user system or just your own laptop, you can check in on disk usage with the du command.

• How to Install NodeJS 14 / 16 & NPM on Rocky Linux 8

  Built on Chrome’s V8 engine, Node.JS is open-source, and event-driven Javascript runtime that is designed to build scalable applications and backend APIs. NodeJS is lightweight and efficient, thanks to its non-blocking I/O model and event-driven architecture. This makes it a perfect choice for handling data-intensive real-time applications. It is cross-platform and totally free to download and use.

• The basic syntax of cat command in Linux guide 2021

  cat command would be on your fingers without any restriction or hesitation if you are going to be a Linux user, In other words, you can say “cat command is most used command in Linux”. You must know the first basic syntax of cat command in Linux.

  Generally, cat utility in Linux is used to display the content of the file. I can’t stop me to use cat command at the time to peep into the file.

  It is not just used only for a single purpose to see the content of the file, but you can use the cat command to create a file in Linux. I will share the basic syntax of cat tool in Linux.

• Linux File Permission Change by chmod Command in Linux Guide 2021

  Linux file permission is a very important aspects in terms of security issues for the system administrator of Linux Operating System. Actually, chmod Command in Linux plays a greater role to keep all the files and directories of the system safe and secure so that no unauthorized person can change, modify or delete content of any files or directories. Following color coding is used to describe the content better in applying chmod command in Linux.

• How do you access the Dark Web Safely by Using these updated Tips 2021

  What do you think about the dark web? do you know anything about the Dark Web? have you heard about the dark web before? How do you access the dark web? Is it legal or illegal? lots of question comes in your mind when you think about the dark web.

  I think you have heard this word before but you don’t have a clear concept of the dark wave. why so, you are reading this article.

  before to start a talk about the dark web, I am going to have a small talk on the internet.

• How to Install cPanel & WHM on Ubuntu 20.04 – Google Cloud

  How to Install cPanel WHM on Ubuntu 20.04. Cpanel recently launched support for Ubuntu servers and you can try this on your Ubuntu 20.04. You can use the specific version 98 of cPanel for Ubuntu.

  This software is experimental and cannot be used on production environments.

  In this guide is tested on Google cloud platform with a virtual machine running Ubuntu 20.04.

• How to set up Regolith Linux 1.6

  Regolith Linux 1.6 is here and packed with new and exciting features. If you’re looking to try out a new Linux distribution, this guide is for you. Follow along as we show you how to set up Regolith Linux 1.6!

• How to install Kali Linux apps in Debian

  Are you a Debian Linux user who also loves network security and computer testing? If so, you’ll probably want to install some security tools onto your Debian Linux system. Of course, the best way to get that type of software installed is to install the Kali Linux software suite. Here’s how to do it.

• How to install Blender on Linux Lite 5.4

  In this video, we are looking at how to install Blender on Linux Lite 5.4.

• How to install MetaTrader 4 with the FxPro Broker on a Chromebook

  Today we are looking at how to install MetaTrader 4 with the FxPro Broker 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.

Games

• Nanotale RPG Moves to Linux and Mac – Gameindustry.com

  Linux and Mac players rejoice today as the next fantasy adventure in the Typing Chronicles, Nanotale, comes to their respective platforms for $19.99.

• Upcoming free to play co-op WW2 zombie shooter Projekt Z gets a Steam page and new video

  Projekt Z from 314 Arts is starting to really sound like it’s shaping up nicely and we now know a bit more about the world, their plans for monetization and more.

  Their latest developer video goes other quite a few aspects of the gameplay including character intro-missions, the customizable hub area, a new damage system, inventory management and the monetization system. We’ve been following it for a while and how they planned to fund it was a big question that they’ve answered – which will be through a Kickstarter and a Battle Pass type of system to pay and get a few extras. They did mention that all the extras will be post-launched, after the main content is done. The extra paid content will things like skins and pad mission packs.

• Get a closer look at the Steam Deck’s Trackpad and Gyroscopic controls

  The news around the Steam Deck keeps on coming in, with a new video posted up by (surprise) IGN that checks out the Steam Deck’s Trackpad and Gyroscopic controls.

  IGN of course being probably the biggest around, we don’t need to wonder why Valve has a seemingly exclusive deal with them to show off everything first. So for now, until the Steam Deck releases and our unit arrives sometime in Q1 2022, we’re mostly relying on what Valve say to IGN.

• Proton 6.13 GE-1 is out now with AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution, Resizable BAR | GamingOnLinux

  Proton GE, the community-made version of Proton with a bunch of enhancements has a new release out with Proton-6.13-GE-1 pulling in a bunch of advanced features and fixed.

  If you’re not clear on what Proton and Steam Play are, be sure to check out our constantly updated dedicated page. It’s a special compatibility layer for running Windows games and apps from Steam on Linux. Proton GE is not affiliated with Valve/Steam, it also has less quality assurance versus the official Proton but often ends up with special game fixes quicker.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KDE Plasma 5.22.4, Bugfix Release for July

    
    Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 5, versioned 5.22.4.

    Plasma 5.22 was released in June 2021 with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

    This release adds three weeks’ worth of new translations and fixes from KDE’s contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important and include…

  • GSoC 2021 KMyMoney – Post First Evals to Week 7

    I modified the code as suggested by my mentors that were related to coding conventions(according to C++, Qt and KDE).

    After adding the new members to the AlkOnlineQuoteSource constructor. I jumped into writing the unit tests. I realized that I haven’t added the new members in the function signature. After adding that, I build the files to check what all things break related to the constructor’s usage.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Peter Hutterer: libinput and hold gestures

    Thanks to the work done by Josè Expòsito, libinput 1.19 will ship with a new type of gesture: Hold Gestures. So far libinput supported swipe (moving multiple fingers in the same direction) and pinch (moving fingers towards each other or away from each other). These gestures are well-known, commonly used, and familiar to most users. For example, GNOME 40 recently has increased its use of touchpad gestures to switch between workspaces, etc. Swipe and pinch gestures require movement, it was not possible (for callers) to detect fingers on the touchpad that don’t move.

    This gap is now filled by Hold gestures. These are triggered when a user puts fingers down on the touchpad, without moving the fingers. This allows for some new interactions and we had two specific ones in mind: hold-to-click, a common interaction on older touchscreen interfaces where holding a finger in place eventually triggers the context menu. On a touchpad, a three-finger hold could zoom in, or do dictionary lookups, or kill a kitten. Whatever matches your user interface most, I guess.

    The second interaction was the ability to stop kinetic scrolling. libinput does not actually provide kinetic scrolling, it merely provides the information needed in the client to do it there: specifically, it tells the caller when a finger was lifted off a touchpad at the end of a scroll movement. It’s up to the caller (usually: the toolkit) to implement the kinetic scrolling effects. One missing piece was that while libinput provided information about lifting the fingers, it didn’t provide information about putting fingers down again later – a common way to stop scrolling on other systems.

  • Christian Hergert: Ignoring GtkTextTag when printing

    Previously, If you wanted to do this, you had to remove all your tags and then print, only to restore them afterwards. This should be a lot more convenient for people writing various GtkSourceView-based text editors. Although, I’m suspect many of them weren’t even doing this correctly to begin with, hence this PSA.

Distributions

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • The 5 things I wish I’d known before becoming a sysadmin

    For those sysadmins with a few years of experience behind you, do you ever feel like there were some things you should have known before flipping the, “I want to be a sysadmin” switch? I’m sure there are. I don’t know that it would have changed my mind or the course of my career but there are a handful of things I wish I’d known before taking the job. The five things I list in this article are the ones that I find to be the most important. You might have different ones.

  • Hybrid work: 6 more ways to enable asynchronous collaboration | The Enterprisers Project

    As IT organizations move toward a post-pandemic phase of work, it’s time for tech leaders to take what they’ve learned about managing a remote workforce to the next level and create the optimal hybrid work environment for employees.

    “The time is perfect to pivot from that and teach an organization how to make big productivity gains and great hybrid experiences through working asynchronously,” says Brian Abrahamson, CIO and associate laboratory director for communications and IT at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Lab.

    In part one of this article, IT leaders and experts offered seven ways to best support the hybrid workforce. Here are six more best practices to consider – for leaders who want to ensure continued productivity, relationship building, and more, this year and beyond.

  • IT leadership: 4 ways to find opportunities for improvement

    When you’re in a war, you’re focused only on the fight in front of you. Once that fight is over, you clean your weapons and patch your tents. Then you take care of your soldiers. You send them to college and get them training so they’re ready for whatever is next.

    That’s how we’ve operated over the past 15+ months at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. We prioritized and attacked the most important projects first, then we took a step back to strategically examine the work we did and identify opportunities for improvement.

    We’re transforming business processes and rethinking future needs.
    As we emerge from this fight, we’re looking toward the future. We’re thinking about how to create a competitive advantage for our university by leveraging all the investments we’ve made in IT from both before and during the pandemic. We’re innovating and transforming business processes and rethinking future needs.

  • Red Hat boosts Apache Kafka connectivity for Kubernetes environments with latest Red Hat Integration release

    Enterprises around the globe are reshaping their businesses to respond more quickly to the changes happening around us. Event driven architectures (EDA) are at the heart of this effort to transition processes and applications to an efficient model. To implement EDA solutions, many enterprises are turning to Apache Kafka.

    When a distributed data streaming platform such as Apache Kafka is deployed in a Kubernetes environment like Red Hat OpenShift, customers can achieve the performance, efficiency and scale they need. Red Hat has focused the latest release of Red Hat Integration on extending Apache Kafka connectivity to help customers create event-driven applications that integrate into every aspect of their businesses.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Ubuntu To Android File Transfer with Primitive FTP

    Primitive FTP is an Android app to enable your phone to transfer files from and to Ubuntu computer and other devices over wifi or USB tethering. It is very easy to setup and do. Let’s try!

  • Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) End of Life reached on July 22 2021

    This is a follow-up to the End of Life warning sent earlier this month to confirm that as of July 22, 2021, Ubuntu 20.10 is no longer supported. No more package updates will be accepted to 20.10, and it will be archived to old-releases.ubuntu.com in the coming weeks.

    The original End of Life warning follows, with upgrade instructions:

    Ubuntu announced its 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) release almost 9 months ago, on October 22, 2020, and its support period is now nearing its end. Ubuntu 20.10 will reach end of life on July 22, 2021.

  • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 693

    Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 693 for the week of July 18 – 24, 2021.

Devices/Embedded

• Industrial Android/Linux mini PC ships with optional HDMI input, DTV tuner, 4G LTE modem

  We’re seeing several companies known for their Android TV boxes switch to higher-margin industrial Android/Linux mini PCs with, for instance, Zidoo M6 mini PC powered by Rockchip RK3566 processor and designed for IoT applications, digital signage, and more.

  Geniatech APC820 is another industrial mini PC running either Android or Linux, on the older, yet more powerful Rockchip RK3399 SoC, and offering a different set of options including 4K or Full HD HDMI input, digital TV tuner, and/or a 4G LTE modem.

• Classroom Computer Brought Back to Life With Linux

  Readers of a certain age may remember the SMART Response XE, a handheld computer released for educational purposes in around 2009 but since discontinued. Currently available very cheaply as a result (we’ve seen the opportunity to buy a box of 32 units for less than $300) they are becoming good targets for experimental hacks. Ingenious hacker chmod775 has turned an XE into a fully functional Linux terminal computer, as highlighted by Hackaday.

  The idea of the SMART Response XE was that teachers could compile a test or other assessment on a host PC (a Pentium 4 was required, or an early Intel Mac) then distribute it to a fleet of XEs via IEEE 802.15.4 low-power wireless, the standard used these days in Zigbee and other home automation standards. The XE probably has more processing power than a Hue lightbulb, but its ATmega128RFA1 microcontroller and wireless transceiver unit isn’t exactly going to run Crysis.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • RISC-V Developers Continue Working On KVM Support

    Going on for more than one year now is the effort for supporting KVM virtualization with the RISC-V architecture, which is very much important for RISC-V processors to be able to eventually take lift in the server space. The KVM RISC-V enablement work is now up to its nineteenth revision but not yet clear if it’s ready for mainlining.

  • Archimedes the AI robot | HackSpace #45

  • Raspberry Pi Pico Drone PiWings Updated With Wi-Fi, New PCB

    Recently, Butani has announced a new update to the development—PiWings V2, a finished flight controller PCB with plans to offer pre-ordering for interested parties. The latest revision also comes with Wi-Fi via an ESP-12F. Ravi Butani showed us what the PiWings platform was capable of on an episode of our Raspberry Pi-themed podcast called The Pi Cast with a live demo.

  • Four versions of my drink mixing machine

    Once I moved to the UK, I left all that stuff behind. Then people from the GDG Coimbra asked me to give a talk on their GDG DevFest in 2018, and they asked for a drink mixing machine. So I build a new one. Same software as the BrazilJS version, but the hardware had a much smaller footprint to make it easier to carry on a plane and assemble at the location.

  • Behind the Scenes: Making a SparkFun Board

    Every so often we like to share what it takes to build a board from beginning to end. When our friends at QuickLogic asked us to show what it took to produce the new SparkFun QuickLogic Thing Plus FPGA board (announced and backed in March on Crowd Supply and releasing tomorrow!) we thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to put together a video showing you what happens on our production floor on a daily basis! This was a fun board to design and build, and we’re excited to share a look at the steps we take to turn a PCB into an FPGA.

  • Send text messages over ham radio with the HamMessenger | Arduino Blog

    Ham radio, or amateur radio, is a hobby enjoyed by millions of enthusiasts around the world. The FCC in the US and similar organizations in other countries provide amateur radio licenses that allow hobbyists to communicate on designated radio bands. Most ham radio operators communicate by voice, but ham radios can transmit other kinds of data. Dale Thomas built HamMessenger, which is a portable device that enables users to send text messages through their ham radios.

    If you remember the early days of the internet, you have heard for yourself that audio can carry digital data. Dial-up internet uses a modem to transmit that audio through standard phone lines. HamMessenger uses a similar methodology to encode a text message as audio. If someone listening on that frequency also has a HamMessenger device, they can decode the text message. Messages are not encrypted, so you shouldn’t use HamMessenger for sensitive information. But it’s a fun way to chat with your ham radio buddies.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Android 12 easter egg drops the cats and games in favor of a bubbly surprise | TechRadar

  • Asus rolls out Android 11 update for ROG Phone 3 | Technology

  • Lenovo Tab P11 Pro review

  • Best hidden Android shortcuts

  • Galaxy S21 Android Auto fix pushed back to September

  • [Updated] Want to disable Tab Groups in Chrome on Android? Here’s how

  • TCL 20 Pro 5G, 20S, and 20 SE Review: Capable, Cheap Android Phones | WIRED

  • Realme is developing a MagSafe rival for Android smartphones

  • Android users must update Signal to stop app sharing private photos | Express.co.uk

  • Android Earthquake Alerts System actually worked in the Philippines – Android Community

  • Marvel Future Revolution finally hits Android on August 25 | Android Central

  • Android wins global battle of the phones | T3

  • Google may have already revealed the dessert name for Android 13 “T”

  • [Update: July 27] Xiaomi Android 11 update bugs & issues tracker: Here’s the current status

  • Google Reverse Image Search: How to Search Google by Image on Android Mobile, iPhone and Laptop – MySmartPrice

  • Snapchat Dark mode for Android phones: Here’s how to get the feature

  • MediaTek is building a new premium chip for the Android tablet renaissance that probably isn’t coming

  • Realme is the first to bring magnetic wireless charging to Android – The Verge

  • Google opens up Android Auto’s beta testing program – The Verge

  • Want an Android phone with MagSafe? Realme might have what you need | TechRadar

  • How to clear an app’s cache on Android devices | KnowTechie

  • Here’s the Android 12 Easter egg with Material You clock – 9to5Google

  • Onward Mobility prepping to launch 5G BlackBerry smartphone based on Android – Neowin

  • Best Android app deals of the day: House of Da Vinci, more – 9to5Toys

  • Watching Sports on Your Android – Useful Information and Tips

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• 7 Best Free and Open Source Go Static Site Generators

  LinuxLinks, like most modern websites, is dynamic in that content is stored in a database and converted into presentation-ready HTML when readers access the site.

  While we employ built-in server caching which creates static versions of the site, we don’t generate a full, static HTML website based on raw data and a set of templates. However, sometimes a full, static HTML website is desirable. Because HTML pages are all prebuilt, they load extremely quickly in web browsers.

  There are lots of other advantages of running a full, static HTML website.

• Avoid this common open source scanning error

  Pete Townshend, legendary guitar player for British rock band The Who, is well-known for playing suspended chords. Suspended chords add musical tension to a song. For those piano players reading this who (like me) love to play in the key of C, simply play a C major chord (the notes C, E, and G) and replace the E note with either an F or a D. You are now on your way to becoming a British rock star!1

  Music is often filled with combinations of chords, like suspended chords, that provide tension, then release. Although adding tension to a musical composition is desirable, adding tension to scanning software with open source tools is certainly unwelcome.

• Web Browsers

  • cURL developers take a second shot at fixing information disclosure flaw

    Developers have taken a second stab at fixing a tricky flaw in cURL, the command-line tool and library for transferring data with URLs.

    The utility, which is popular with developers, was subject to an information disclosure bug involving interactions with Telnet servers in June.

    However, the attempted resolution of the flaw (CVE-2021-22898) failed to address an almost identical bug in the software which also presented an information disclosure, or potential data leak vulnerability in interacting with Telnet servers.

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • An Analysis of Responses to Mozilla’s Trusted Recursive Resolver Public Consultation

    In 2019, the Mozilla Corporation introduced its Trusted Recursive Resolver (TRR) programme to complement the addition of support for DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) by its Firefox browser. The TRR policy that underpins the programme “describes data collection and retention, transparency, and blocking policies and is in addition to any contractual, technical or operational requirements necessary to operate the resolver service”.

    Currently, the TRR programme only covers North America, having recently been extended to Canada, but there have been suggestions that Mozilla is keen to expand its scope to other markets.

• Education

  • Tips for running an online conference

    I think I got started running conferences in 2002 when I helped with Open Source Weekend 2003. The next year, I started BSDCan. Three years later, PGCon start. All up, I think I’ve run at least 32 conferences, two of which have been online: BSDCan 2020 and PGCon 2020.

    This article was planned before the conferences were held. There have been requests to share what we did, why, and how it went.

    This is still the first draft, and for the most part is a brain dump of everything I can remember.

    In general, I will refer to BSDCan, but unless otherwise noted, such references can also be to PGCon.

  • Open Fest 2021 is back! Free your agenda for 14 and 15 of August when the biggest open source event in Bulgaria will take place in Sofia.

    Open fest 2021 will be provided in normal face to face format in the open space – the King Boris garden – “Maimunarnika” where up to 1200 people can be hosted.

• Programming/Development

  • Connecting Node.js applications to Red Hat OpenShift Streams with Service Binding

    Apache Kafka is a vital piece of infrastructure for teams adopting an event-driven architecture. By connecting applications with minimal coupling, event-driven architecture lets teams create distributed, fault-tolerant applications using the runtimes most appropriate for the specific task and team. However, managing infrastructure and Kafka clusters is a complex and time-consuming task. A managed Kafka service such as Red Hat OpenShift Streams for Apache Kafka allows teams to focus on delivering applications, while Red Hat takes care of their Kafka infrastructure.

    Once your Kafka infrastructure is in place, you’ll want to start developing applications using your preferred runtimes. This article focuses on Node.js, which has become one of the most popular runtimes for cloud-native application development. Integrating Node.js applications with their organization’s broader event-driven architecture based on Kafka is critical for developers.

    This article demonstrates how to connect and authenticate your Node.js applications to OpenShift Streams for Apache Kafka using the Service Binding Specification for Kubernetes. The Service Binding spec says that it “aims to create a Kubernetes-wide specification for communicating service secrets to applications in an automated way.” Figure 1 shows a high-level overview of the interactions between the components in this specification. Don’t worry if you’re not yet familiar with these components or concepts; this article walks you through each step.

  • $2 MXCHIP EMC3080 WiFi and Bluetooth LE IoT module integrates Cortex-M33 MCU – CNX Software

    There are some discrepancies between the information on Seeed Studio and MXCHIP’s product page, notably with the former claiming Bluetooth 5.0 supports but I’d assume it would be without long-range nor higher bandwidth (2 Mbps) support in any cases.

    There aren’t any software development resources that I could find on either website, but the datasheet reads…

  • GitLab’s New Open Source Tool Will Detect Malicious Code – It’s FOSS News

    There are several open-source tools available for security researchers. Now, GitLab has introduced a new one to the arsenal that lets you detect malicious code in dependencies.

    The tool is also known as “Package Hunter” and is an important addition that could help secure every type of software.

  • Hotspot: How const Can Improve Performance

    Some time ago, I noticed that a unit test was quite slow, using 100% CPU for a number of seconds at one point in the test.

    I used perf and KDAB’s Hotspot to record and examine where the CPU cycles were spent in that unit test, and I quickly noticed that a lot of time was spent in QFileSystemEntry::fileName(), an internal method in Qt that’s called when listing directories with QDir.

  • Hacking is the opposite of marketing

    Building maximally general technology, and then adding a final layer of interface, marketing, and narrative that makes it all seem specific, is part of the challenge of making things people will buy.

  • Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppFarmHash 0.0.1: New CRAN Package

    A new package RcppFarmHash is now on CRAN in an inaugural version 0.0.1.

    RcppFarmHash wraps the Google FarmHash family of hash functions (written by Geoff Pike and contributors) that are used for example by Google BigQuery for the FARM_FINGERPRINT.

    The package was prepared and uploaded yesterday afternoon, and to my surprise already on CRAN this (early) morning when I got up. So here is another #ThankYouCRAN for very smoothing operations.

  • Rust

    • Rust 1.54.0 pre-release testing

      The 1.54.0 pre-release is ready for testing. The release is scheduled for this Thursday, July 29th. Release notes can be found here.

Except by Balloon Summer of 2021

Yes, it’s been two years since my last physical, Dr. Li. With the pandemic, public transportation the way it is, and being retired, I just ballooned.

Grew fat that is: ballooning is on my bucket list— imagine over the Grand Canyon or even Queens. You must have had it rough, add being Chinese.

The Cornerstone

Find out what a historian thinks about the New Deal, and you will quickly find out what they think about the virtues and failures of the liberal state writ large. For Arthur Schlesinger Jr., how Franklin D. Roosevelt responded to the worst downturn in US history “was a matter of seeing whether a representative democracy could conquer economic collapse,” and the aggressive actions he took restored Americans’ faith in that system. For Howard Zinn, on the other hand, the gush of new federal programs merely ended up reinforcing the shaky grip of the reigning capitalist order. When the New Deal ended, he argued, “the rich still controlled the nation’s wealth” and “the same system that had brought depression and crisis…remained.” Recently, the conservative writer Amity Shlaes dismissed the very notion that FDR and his allies were either liberal heroes or repairers of a damaged status quo. Instead, she blasted the longest-serving president in US history for caring “little for constitutional niceties” and ramming through policies that were “often inspired by socialist or fascist models abroad.”2

The Futile Search for Rarified Experience

At one time I would have said that today’s humans are without a doubt better off than at any other time in human history, but today I am feeling skeptical about the human enterprise, particularly as it relates to our treatment of the nonhuman world.

Today I feel like we have failed.

Opinion | That Right There Is Where He Was Hung: Slipping Free of the Shame To Say His Name, Now More Than Ever

The Rescue of the New York Public Library

“Look! Books! The Tired Old Mid-Manhattan Library Gets a Crisp New Identity.” This Curbed headline, for a glowing piece by Justin Davidson, referred to a new circulating library in central Manhattan, renamed the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library. Davidson celebrated the light-filled atrium, elegant staircase, rooftop terrace, and innovative children’s area. A famously decrepit and malodorous building has been utterly transformed.1

He’s Heavy, He’s My Brother

I’d divide the world into those who laugh and those who don’t.  Foibles would be welcomed, reification, beyond the telling moment of the joke, would be banned.  You wouldn’t need to tell a joke, although a place at the mike will be reserved, but merely able to laugh at a joke.  What the better comedians do best is remind us that none of us really knows a goddamn thing about it all works.  We live in a world of contradictions, hot air balloons that fat cats make their escape with when no one’s looking, and systems of ideals so soon fraught with incomprehension as to be entirely inchoate when pushed into practice.  We need to laugh to adequately express the human condition that hasn’t changed in millennia. Even DJ Trump, for all his blusto-criminality, stood up to a roasting for the ages.

I’d raise the status of the former slave elements. The laughing American Jew and the ribald cotton pickin’ Slave legacy types would be elevated to the top of the heap.  If we had to start over again, and it’s looking more and more like we’ll have to, I’m recruiting the Lenny Bruces and Richard Pryors, the stand-up Woody Allens and Spike Lees (when he’s in a funny mood), and Key and Peele, who, as byproducts of white/black parents, are deliciously familiar with the whole damn flim-flam of being someone other than who you are and laughing your ass off about it. Advent calendars would contain punchlines for jokes you waited a year to complete )imagine the yuck, if a home run was hit). Future presidential and Congressional elections would be decided by laugh-offs. We would punch the electoral college mascot in the face.

Education

• Outsourcing online learning is selling students short

  In recent years, many US universities have transferred their online learning to contractors with increasing frequency, positioning them as “partners”. They manage everything from enrolment to graduation and certification and provide the web-based learning platforms that encompass all audio, video and text components, whether asynchronous, in real time or both. The results are worrisome.

Health/Nutrition

• 300+ Civil Society Groups Counter-Mobilize Against UN Food Systems Summit

  Characterizing this week’s United Nations Food Systems Pre-Summit as a corporate-friendly affair, a coalition of more than 300 civil society and Indigenous peoples’ organizations—representing over 380 million agricultural workers and other food justice advocates—has launched a parallel gathering to advance “a radical, human rights-based and agroecological transformation of food systems.”

  The People’s Counter-Mobilization to Transform Corporate Food Systems began on Sunday with a virtual rally that featured the voices of small-scale food producers.

• Sex Workers and COVID-19: Resisting the Pandemic and Criminalization

  Although in Latin America many countries do not have legislation criminalizing sex work, the lack of a legal framework in this regard lends itself to all kinds of abuses. According to an investigation published by the Network of Women Sex Workers of Latin America and the Caribbean, “the application of laws is interpretative and discretionary,” resulting in recurrent violations of the rights of workers, including arbitrary detention; torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment; discrimination in access to health care; and unequal treatment within judicial systems.

  Multilateral organizations have called for inclusive responses to cushion the impact of COVID-19. Such policies should not neglect the workers who are criminalized, such as sex workers. There is nothing inclusive about the policies that states have adopted. “If we have something to celebrate about the pandemic,” Orellano tells me, “it is that it made it clear—to ourselves—that the only way out of this type of context is to strengthen unionization.”

• Opinion | The Olympic Event We Need: A Race To See Where People Live the Longest

  In pandemics, people die. They die in incredibly frightful numbers. That may be why so few media commentators greeted this week’s biggest news story — the release of the latest stats on U.S. life expectancy — with anything much more than a shrug.

• ‘A Race Against Time’: Doctors Without Borders Implores Rich Nations to Stop Stalling Patent Waiver

  Ahead of a crucial World Trade Organization meeting on Tuesday, the global humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders said it is imperative that rich countries stop stonewalling negotiations over a temporary patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines as the ultra-contagious Delta variant ravages poor and under-protected regions.

  “Pharmaceutical corporations’ business-as-usual approach is intolerable.”—Dr. Tom Ellman, Doctors Without Borders

• Florida Accounts for 1 in 5 New COVID Cases as DeSantis Sells Anti-Fauci Shirts

• DeSantis Under Fire as Florida Now Accounts for 1 in 5 New US Covid Cases

  The state of Florida now accounts for one in five new coronavirus infections in the United States, making it the nation’s most alarming hot spot as the highly transmissible Delta strain rips through undervaccinated communities and drives a surge in hospitalizations.

  According to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Florida has recorded 73,181 new Covid-19 cases over the past week, the most in the country. Florida also logged the most coronavirus deaths of any U.S. state in the last seven days—319—and hospitalizations are spiking, prompting dire warnings from physicians and calls for public safety measures to stop the spread.

• Epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves: “3 Things Biden Can Do Right Now to Stop COVID and Save Lives”

  Six months into the Biden administration, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage across the United States and around the world, driven by the highly contagious Delta variant. Meanwhile, as vaccinations stall in the United States, much of the world is still “desperate” for COVID-19 vaccines, says Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves. “We should be exporting vaccines rather than sitting on them and hoarding them,” he says. “If we don’t stop the virus all around the world, we’re not going to stop it anywhere.”

• James Lyons-Weiler whines about his “vaxxed/unvaxxed” study retraction

  It is always amusing to me to see the reaction of antivaccine quacks and pseudoscientists when their attempts at achieving some measure of scientific credibility for their ideas in the form of getting their papers published in bottom-feeding (albeit ostensibly “peer-reviewed”) journals ends up biting them in the hindquarters. For example, it happened with Anthony Mawson and his risibly incompetent “vaxxed/unvaxxed” study, which, after a history of disappearing and reappearing, was retracted, much to the sadness of antivaxxers, only to reappear again (I’m guessing after Mawson’s check finally cleared). I was thinking this as I was informed that former actual scientist turned antivaxxer James Lyons-Weiler, who co-authored an equally bad “vaxxed/unvaxxed” study with antivax pediatrician Dr. Paul Thomas (whose license was suspended in December), is very unhappy that it, too, has been retracted—and retracted by MDPI, which is not exactly known for publishing what one would call the best journals.

• Anti-abortion lawyers are finally being honest about what they want from the Supreme Court

  Anti-abortion lawyers, in other words, are finally being honest about their ultimate goal. Rather than asking the Court to place some arcane and nonsensical limit on Roe and Casey, while simultaneously pretending that these two cases remain good law, Mississippi just asked the Court to eliminate the right to an abortion altogether.

• Marlboro Maker CEO Says The Company Plans To Stop Selling Smokes In The U.K.

  Tobacco giant Philip Morris International says it will stop selling cigarettes in the United Kingdom within the next decade — including the company’s iconic Marlboro brand.

• Health record company pays hospitals that use its algorithms

  Like many other groups that build health algorithms, Epic doesn’t publicly share details of how the algorithms are built. Researchers at hospitals that use Epic are able to scrutinize the tools, but any investigations are challenging: they can’t disclose proprietary information and may worry about complicating their employer’s relationships with the company if they publish negative results, Stat News reported.

  The studies that have been done on the algorithms show that they often don’t work as well as advertised. One analysis of the sepsis algorithm, which Epic says works 76 percent of the time, found it was only right 63 percent of the time.

• Epic’s AI algorithms, shielded from scrutiny by a corporate firewall, are delivering inaccurate information on seriously ill patients

  Several artificial intelligence algorithms developed by Epic Systems, the nation’s largest electronic health record vendor, are delivering inaccurate or irrelevant information to hospitals about the care of seriously ill patients, contrasting sharply with the company’s published claims, a STAT investigation found.

• WHO/Europe releases report on mechanisms for improving transparency of markets for medicines, vaccines and health products

  Two years after World Health Assembly Resolution 72.8 was agreed on improving the transparency of markets for medicines, vaccines and other health products, WHO/Europe has released a report identifying and summarizing the current evidence on the implementation of transparency measures in the WHO European Region. This follows intense debate over the roles and responsibilities of the public and private sectors in the development of vaccines for COVID-19.

  The review identified 2 mechanisms in place to improve the transparency of markets – price transparency and greater transparency of research and development costs. The review highlights the importance of transparency, among other recommendations such as price and cost monitoring. It also explains that the public interest should be considered when countries are deciding whether to enter into pricing-related confidentiality agreements with pharmaceutical companies.

  The report is part of the Health Evidence Network synthesis report series and was written by researchers from Medicines Law and Policy,

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Microsoft warns attack could compromise Windows domain controllers and servers

    Microsoft has acknowledged a newly-discovered version of an attack on a long-vulnerable Windows single sign-on protocol called NTLM — short for New Technology LAN Manager — that is still used in the operating system as a backup to the newer Kerberos authentication protocol.

  • PlugwalkJoe Does the Perp Walk

    One day after last summer’s mass-hack of Twitter, KrebsOnSecurity wrote that 22-year-old British citizen Joseph “PlugwalkJoe” O’Connor appeared to have been involved in the incident. When the U.S. Justice Department last week announced O’Connor’s arrest and indictment, his alleged role in the Twitter compromise was well covered in the media.

  • South Africa Port Operator Declares Force Majeure Over Cyber Attack

    Transnet SOC Ltd., South Africa’s state-owned ports and freight-rail company, declared force majeure at the country’s key container terminals after disruptions caused by a cyber attack five days ago.

  • [Cr]ackers spreading malware through Discord: Report

    Leading cybersecurity firm Sophos on Monday warned users that popular chat platform Discord is being used by [cr]ackers for spreading malware.

    The firm said that the findings are based on analysis of more than 1,800 malicious files detected by Sophos telemetry on the Discord Content Management Network (CDN).

  • ‘Holy moly!’: Inside Texas’ fight against a ransomware hack [iophk: Windows TCO]

    Texas communities struggled for days with disruptions to core government services as workers in small cities and towns endured a cascade of frustrations brought on by the sophisticated cyberattack, according to thousands of pages of documents reviewed by The Associated Press and interviews with people involved in the response. The AP also learned new details about the attack’s scope and victims, including an Air Force base where access to a law enforcement database was interrupted, and a city forced to operate its water-supply system manually.

  • Chat logs show how Egregor, an $80 million ransomware gang, handled negotiations with little mercy [iophk: Windows TCO]

    Egregor has since disappeared, following an international sting in February. Now, though, more than 100 pages of Egregor negotiation transcripts — obtained and analyzed by IBM Security X-Force and its partner company Cylera, and reviewed by CyberScoop — shed light on the oft-opaque structure of a ransomware operation. The discussion records also demonstrate how victims proved most effective at convincing their extortionists to reduce the amount demanded to decrypt their systems, with one medical organization turning a $15 million ransom into a $2 million payment.

  • Paul E. Mc Kenney: Confessions of a Recovering Proprietary Programmer, Part XVIII: Preventing Involuntary Generosity

    I recently learned that all that is required for someone to take out a loan in some random USA citizen’s name is that citizen’s full name, postal address, email address, date of birth, and social security number. If you are above a certain age, all of these are for all intents and purposes a matter of public record. If you are younger, then your social security number is of course supposed to be secret—and it will be, right up to that data breach that makes it available to all the wrong people.

    This sort of thing can of course be a bit annoying to our involuntarily generous USA citizen. Fortunately, there are quite a few things you can do, although I will not try to reproduce the entirety of the volumes of good advice that are available out there. Especially given that laws, processes, and procedures are all subject to change.

  • Security

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Pegasus Rides Again: the NSO Group, Spyware and Human Rights

        The NSO Group was one such provider.  It sees its mission was a noble thing, marketing itself as a creator of “technology that helps government agencies prevent and investigate terrorism and crime to save thousands of lives around the globe.”

        The company also emphasises their mission to target those “terrorists” and “criminals” who have gone dark.  “The world’s most dangerous offenders communicate using technology designed to shield their communications, while government intelligence and law-enforcement agencies struggle to collect evidence and intelligence on their activities.”  The group insists that its “products help government intelligence and law-enforcement agencies use technology to meet the challenges of encryption to prevent and investigate terror and crime.”

      • NSO Group Attempting To Distance Itself From Damaging Leak By Offering Up Contradictory Statements And ‘Nothing To Fear’ Platitudes

        This truly is a pleasure to observe. Israeli malware merchant NSO Group — the purveyor of powerful spyware capable of turning a target’s phone into a spy agency’s plaything — is playing a whole lot of defense after leaked data seen by a number of journalists and activists appears to confirm that NSO’s customers are targeting… activists and journalists. (And world leaders, religious leaders, NGO employees, and friends and relatives of all of the above…)

      • Opinion | The Privacy Debate Reveals How Big Tech’s “Transparency and User Control” Arguments Fall Flat

        If you’ve been following the Capitol Hill hearings about algorithms and automated decision-making, then you’ve probably heard technology companies talk about how they offer or want to offer “transparency and user control” to consumers. Companies like Facebook and Twitter propose sharing information on how their algorithms work with the public, as well as enabling users to tweak these algorithms to change their experience on digital platforms. They argue that users are less susceptible to manipulation if they can control how a digital platform’s algorithm delivers content to them. While this seems persuasive, this kind of regulatory regime poses significant dangers. It cannot address harms like discrimination, loss of economic opportunity for content creators, or radicalization of users. Luckily, we’ve already had this conversation on privacy — and can choose not to make the same mistakes twice.

      • 27 Groups Urge Congress to Close FBI ‘Backdoor Search’ Loophole

        Over two dozen advocacy groups on Monday sent a letter urging members of Congress to back a measure that, if enacted, would close the so-called “backdoor search” loophole that allows warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens’ data by government agencies including the FBI and CIA.

        “Right before its August recess, Congress might finally slam the FBI’s warrantless backdoor in their faces.”—Fight for the Future

      • Review: Why Facebook can never fix itself

        Frenkel and Kang argue that Facebook’s problems today are not the product of a company that lost its way. Instead they are part of its very design, built atop Zuckerberg’s narrow worldview, the careless privacy culture he cultivated, and the staggering ambitions he chased with Sandberg.

      • Safe delivery or security risk? Amazon wants your building key.

        But the Amazon program, first announced in 2018, may stir security and privacy concerns as it gains traction. The company said that it does background checks on delivery people and that they can unlock doors only when they have a package in hand to scan. But tenants may not know that Amazon drivers have access to their building’s front doors, since Amazon leaves it up to the building to notify them.

      • Netherlands hits TikTok with €750,000 fine for child privacy violations

        The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) imposed a 750,000 euro fine on social media platform TikTok for violating the privacy of Dutch children. The company was reprimanded because between May 2018 and July 2020 the privacy statement was only available in English. TikTok has objected to the fine.

        According to the AP, it must be clear to all users what happens with their personal data. “By not offering their privacy statement in Dutch, TikTok failed to provide an adequate explanation of how the app collects, processes and uses personal data,” AP said in a statement. The AP said it cannot be assumed that young children in the Netherlands are able to understand English.

      • OpenBSD full Tor setup

        If for some reasons you want to block all your traffic except traffic going through Tor, here is how to proceed on OpenBSD.

        The setup is simple and consists at installing Tor, running the service and configure the firewall to block every requests that doesn’t come from the user _tor used by Tor daemon.

      • Confidentiality

        • Dead Drops and Security Through Obscurity

          There’s massive confusion in the security community around Security Through Obscurity.

          In general, most people know it’s bad, but they can’t say exactly why. And because of this, people tend to think the “Obscurity” in “Security Through Obscurity” equates to secrecy, meaning if you hide anything, it’s Security Through Obscurity.

          This is incorrect, and Dead Drops are a great example.

        • Preventing Data Exfiltration with eBPF

          Consider a service invoking webhooks. It will be running with limited data access but must be able to communicate with the entire Internet. Contrast that to an SSH session that’s been opened for troubleshooting purposes. It will have access to the entire machine but does not egress to an arbitrary IP.

Defence/Aggression

• Is Sen. Ed Markey a War Hawk in Progressive Clothing? His Latest China Gambit Points to Yes

  Last year during Massachusetts’ heated Democratic Senate Primary, incumbent Senator Ed Markey categorized his 2003 vote for the War in Iraq as a “mistake.” Now after winning re-election with the support of youth activist constituents like Calla Walsh and groups like Massachusetts Peace Action, Sunrise, 350MA, Western Mass CODEPINK, and more, Senator Markey has made another mistake in advancing the militaristic anti-China Strategic Competition Act out of committee and through the Senate as part of the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021.

  Those who supported Markey’s campaign are paying heed to this inconsistency though: a coalition including youth activists, CODEPINK, and Massachusetts Peace Action rallied and delivered a letter with over 2,700 signatures to the Senator this past Thursday, July 22, demanding that he honor his campaign promises to prioritize cutting the bloated Pentagon budget and addressing the increasingly-worsening climate crisis. Calla Walsh expressed her disappointment and hopes for her Senator, stating, “The Pentagon is one of the world’s biggest polluters, and Senator Markey’s support for increasing military spending in the Asia-Pacific region is completely antithetical to the principles of the Green New Deal. As one of the young organizers who helped re-elect him, I hope Senator Markey stands against this imperialist aggression and stays true to his campaign values of justice, sustainability, and progressivism.”

• Policing “Hate” Supposedly Protects People — But It Really Fuels More Violence

• Opinion | July 27th Isn’t Just Another Day

  July 27, 2021 marks the 68th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice Agreement, a battlefield truce that temporarily halted combat during the Korean War. That pause continues to define the state of relations between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) to this day. Absent a peace agreement the armistice maintains a tenuous hold on mutual U.S.– North Korean hostilities that erupt periodically as in Trump’s 2017 threats of “fire and fury” over the North’s nuclear program.

• Opinion | America’s (Likely) Violent Future

  A little over a year ago I wrote an essay titled The United States: An Obituary. It was the tail end of the Trump regime and the early days of the novel coronavirus pandemic; dread was in the air, and I thought it was a good moment to look back on my country’s troubled history and assess its prospects. The title pretty much summed up my thoughts at the time.

• Police Union Gives ‘Officer Of The Year’ Award To A Cop Who Spent Last Year Suspended

  If you’d like some more anecdotal evidence about the useless and general disconnectedness of police unions, have I got something for you. We all know police unions take the worst aspects of policing and amplify them. We know they fearlessly defend even the worst officers from lawsuits, firings, and public criticism. We know they’re the main barricade to true accountability, having tied up most cities in protracted legal language that allows cops to do all they can to avoid being fired and, in the off-chance they do get canned, get their jobs back via the arbitration process.

• Why Are Public Defenders Backing a Major Assault on Gun Control?

  In its next term, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a controversial Second Amendment case that is poised to blow a hole in what remaining gun regulations we have in our violent nation. The case, called New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Corlett, attacks the authority of states to issue and require licenses for ownership and carrying of firearms. The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association argues that the state’s licensing laws—which require gun owners to show “proper cause” before carrying a concealed weapon outside their home—violate the constitutional protections the Supreme Court has given to ammosexuals.

• Syrian insurgents guilty of ‘red line’ 2013 sarin chemical attack, study finds

• Like JFK, Biden Has Good Reason to Be Wary of the Military

  While some hopeful progressives continue to fantasize about Joe Biden as the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson, another, more disturbing historical analogy might be relevant. Biden is the first president since John F. Kennedy to face an active threat from right-wing extremism in the military, defined broadly to include veterans as well as current soldiers.

• Tech groups urge Congress to ‘dig deeper’ on Facebook role in Capitol [insurrection]

  The groups are sending the report, composed of publicly available information and the groups’ previous findings of how Facebook was used ahead of the riot, to House and Senate leadership offices, as well as members of the House select committee formed to investigate the attack.

  “These facts lead to an obvious conclusion: Facebook bears significant responsibility for the events that transpired on January 6th. The Select Committee should use their investigatory powers to dig deeper on what happened on the platform leading up to the insurrection, including behind the scenes to determine who knew what and when, in order to make sure the entity is held accountable for their role in the insurrection,” the report states.

• Mapping the advance of the Taliban in Afghanistan

  Research from the BBC Afghan service shows the militants now have a strong presence across the country, including in the north and north-east and central provinces like Ghazni and Maidan Wardak. They are also closing in on major cities such as Kunduz, Herat, Kandahar and Lashkar Gah.

• Albanian people smuggling: Officers arrest seven in raids

  The National Crime Agency (NCA) said the alleged ringleader of the network was among those detained.

  Deputy director Andrea Wilson said people smuggling saw migrants “exploited for profit by criminals who have no regard for human life.”

• The Jakarta Post: New deal, old approach over West Papua

  This “new deal” is not likely to end violence in the resource-rich provinces, which stems in large part from Jakarta’s refusal to settle past human rights abuses there.

• Islamic State Resilient as Ever in Iraq, Syria

  The assessment is one of the key findings in a report released by the United Nation’s sanctions monitoring team, which warns that despite setbacks, IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is poised to be a problem for some time to come in Iraq and in neighboring Syria, as well.

  “The group has evolved into an entrenched insurgency, exploiting weaknesses in local security to find safe havens and targeting forces engaged in counter-ISIL operations,” according to the report released Friday, which was based on member state intelligence.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Media Unions Are Challenging the Use of NDAs

  On May 19, members of the Daily Beast union set a new standard for the media industry by ratifying a contract that eliminates the use of nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) in cases of workplace harassment. The provision is the first of its kind to be formally included in a collective bargaining agreement. This comes after years of grassroots organizing by the #MeToo movement, which was catalyzed by media reports breaking a culture of silence surrounding sexual harassment and assault against women.

• German police use drone to combat social benefit fraud

  Along with Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia is one of the pioneers in the use of police drones. Now an unmanned aircraft is being used to track organised fraudulent benefits to the disfavor of the job centre

• Read drone whistleblower Daniel Hale’s riveting letter to judge describing why he ‘came to violate the espionage act’

• “Committing the Truth”: Whistleblower Daniel Hale to Be Sentenced Tuesday for Drone Program Leaks

  At a sentencing hearing Tuesday, whistleblower Daniel Hale faces at least nine years in prison for leaking classified information about the U.S. drone and targeted assassination program. During his time in the Air Force from 2009 to 2013, Hale worked with the National Security Agency and the Joint Special Operations Task Force at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where he helped identify targets for assassination. He later worked as a contractor for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. In March, Hale pleaded guilty to one count of violating the World War I-era Espionage Act for leaking documents exposing the drone program. “This has been an odyssey that has occupied most of the better part of his adult life for basically committing the truth,” says Jesselyn Radack, an attorney for Daniel Hale. “The U.S. has never contested any of Daniel’s disclosures,” Radack adds. We also speak with Noor Mir, Daniel Hale’s close friend and part of his support team, who describes him as a compassionate person willing to make sacrifices to do the right thing. “I know that when he’s out, he will remain committed to ending suffering in all forms,” Mir says.

• Daniel Hale explains his motives ahead of sentencing

  Charged with five counts under the Espionage Act and facing 50 years in prison, Hale plead guilty to one count under the Act with the hopes of a much lower sentence. The United States has requested 7-9 years in prison for Hale, which would be the longest-ever sentence for a federal whistleblower by far.

• Drone war whistleblower Daniel Hale remains steadfast as federal prosecutors demand nine-year sentence

  Given that the US military itself is known to have collaborated with various Islamic fundamentalist militia groups, this particular aspect of the federal government’s sentencing memorandum shows the desperation of the DoJ and the military-intelligence state to successfully bring an Espionage Act case against a whistleblower.

  Numerous attempts have been made by the DoJ to punish harshly those who have leaked or published classified information, including Reality Winner and Terry Albury, who both served limited sentences after reaching plea agreements, and deterring future exposures. There is also, of course, the ongoing case of WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange, who has also been charged with Espionage Act violations and is being held in London’s Belmarsh Prison while facing extradition to the US to face them.

  Similar claims have been made by the US government that the material published by WikiLeaks exposing war crimes—as well as the details about the mass electronic spying on the public by former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden—“endanger national security” and “threaten the lives of servicemen.” However, as in Hale’s case, no evidence of harm or death to US programs or people has ever been presented to prove the assertion.

Environment

• How bad is space tourism for the environment? And other space travel questions, answered.

  The emissions of a flight to space can be worse than those of a typical airplane flight because just a few people hop aboard one of these flights, so the emissions per passenger are much higher. That pollution could become much worse if space tourism becomes more popular. Virgin Galactic alone eventually aims to launch 400 of these flights annually.

  “The carbon footprint of launching yourself into space in one of these rockets is incredibly high, close to about 100 times higher than if you took a long-haul flight,” Eloise Marais, a physical geography professor at the University College London, told Recode. “It’s incredibly problematic if we want to be environmentally conscious and consider our carbon footprint.”

• Coastal Landfills Are No Match for Rising Seas

  Leaking landfills that pollute wetlands, whether they hold incinerator ash known to be contaminated with the highly toxic chemical dioxin or rotting garbage and miscellaneous wastes, are the last thing that already-stressed sea life needs as it confronts a host of other environmental stressors and crises, including rising water temperatures, depleted oxygen levels, ocean acidification, and a withering food chain. In this way, the story of the Wheelabrator landfill and the Rumney Marsh it abuts is sadly not unique.

  “There are maybe 100,000 landfills across the US, half of them along the coasts and typically located in places which couldn’t be used for anything else, because they are low-lying, water-soaked, or flood-prone,” says Noah Sachs, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law in Virginia, where he heads its Center for Environmental Studies. “When the water comes in, it will uncover and release all that waste and the industrial wastes of whatever companies were around during the life of the local landfill.”

• Climate Crisis Will Bring More Record-Smashing Heat Waves in Coming Decades, Study Says

  The deadly heat waves recorded in Canada and the United States’ Pacific Northwest in recent weeks are likely to become increasingly frequent in the coming decades, according to research published Monday by scientists in Switzerland. 

  Researchers at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich said they conducted their study by examining the rate of global heating rather than the amount of heating recorded, and found that heat waves which break previous records by huge margins, as recent ones have, happen “during periods of accelerated climate warming,” as ABC News reported.

• House Dems Ask ExxonMobil Lobbyist to Testify About Climate Misinformation

  Three weeks after the publication of secret footage showing current and former ExxonMobil lobbyists boasting about their access to U.S. lawmakers and their work to thwart attempts to combat the climate emergency, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Monday asked one of the men in the video to testify about Big Oil’s efforts to “mislead the global public and members of Congress about the dangers of fossil fuels and their role in causing global climate change.”

  Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Environment Subcommittee Chair Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) sent the letter (pdf) to Keith McCoy, ExxonMobil’s senior director of federal relations, noting that the lobbyist was “secretly recorded during a video interview with a reporter at Greenpeace U.K., which was aired by Channel 4 News in the United Kingdom on June 30, 2021.”

• Opinion | 100 Days Before COP26: The Transformative Solutions We Need in November

  100 days from now, the central point of climate politics will be Glasgow as the UK hosts the 26th Conference of Parties or COP26 under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. These negotiations are the most important climate talks on the climate emergency since COP21 in Paris in 2015, when almost every nation on earth signed a legally binding treaty called the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global temperature rises to 1.5°C.

• Opinion | It’s Time for an Urgent Intervention in the Food System Ruining Our Climate

  Wildfires, heatwaves, hurricanes and droughts: the deadly impacts of climate change are becoming more intense and devastating. While the transition to a real, renewable energy system is imperative to a livable climate future, it’s just as urgent to address the destructive impacts of our industrial food system. The current system is highly concentrated and exploitative, and it’s driving climate change and water shortages.

• As Climate Emergency Batters World, Scientists Meet to Finalize Key Report Ahead of COP26

  Amid an ongoing wave of extreme weather disasters and ahead of a major United Nations climate conference this fall, top scientists from nearly 200 countries began meeting Monday to finalize a landmark report detailing how the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency is already wreaking havoc around the globe and what society must do to avert its most catastrophic consequences.

  “The decisions nations make in the next few months will likely determine whether we will or will not ultimately limit global temperature rise at 1.5°C.”—Patricia Espinosa, U.N.

• Energy

  • UK’s £27bn Roadbuilding Plan Ruled Legal Following Challenge from Campaigners

    Campaigners have vowed to lodge an appeal after losing their bid to halt the UK’s “largest ever” roadbuilding plan on climate grounds.

    In a judgment made on Monday, the High Court ruled that the government had acted lawfully in producing the £27.4 billion second Road Investment Strategy (RIS2).

    Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts

  • First Scottish ‘Climate Camp’ in Decade Planned at Mossmorran Chemical Plant

    Scottish climate activists are preparing to protest this weekend at the Mossmorran petrochemical complex, the country’s third largest carbon emitter, in what they say will be Scotland’s first “Climate Camp” since 2009.

    The two-day camp in Fife follows years of community campaigns against flaring and pollution at the plants, which are operated by oil giants ExxonMobil and Shell. The plants released a combined 930,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2019, according to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). 

    Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts

  • House Committee Seeks Interview with Exxon Lobbyist Caught On Tape

    A congressional committee is requesting an interview with the ExxonMobil lobbyist who was revealed by an undercover Greenpeace investigation in June admitting that the company has misled the public on climate change and continues to use lobbying tactics to prevent climate action.

    On July 26, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform sent a letter to Keith McCoy, a senior director in Exxon’s Washington DC government affairs team, requesting his voluntary appearance before the committee for an in person on-the-record interview on August 9. The letter, signed by Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Environment Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), cites the Greenpeace investigation.

    Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts

  • Report: Data-driven method for unsupervised electricity consumption characterisation at district level and beyond

    [...] Nowadays, dynamic measured data from the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), especially in electricity consumption, combined with location-based data, like weather, cadastre, social or economic conditions, should be available for a significant part of the building stocks in Europe. Combinedly, this enormous set of data contains the characteristics of how buildings and their occupants consume energy.In this document, a bottom-up electricity characterisation methodology of the building stock at the local level is presented. [...]

  • The Fisherwomen, Chevron and the Leaking Pipe

    The world is moving on from fossil fuels. After decades of extraction, major oil companies are gradually leaving the Niger Delta altogether or going offshore — but, environmentalists said, often without decommissioning their aging infrastructure, which is done to restore the environment and prevent pollutants from leaching.

    “They are moving out and leaving all the mess behind,” said Celestine AkpoBari, a prominent environmentalist. “They are happy to sell the liability to whoever wants to buy, and run away.”

    The fisherwomen didn’t want Chevron out. They could barely imagine life without Chevron. The company extracts oil in partnership with Nigeria’s federal government, which is heavily dependent on oil revenue. The government and the oil companies were seen as almost synonymous — sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent — doling out crumbs of the national cake, or not. But not something that could be gotten rid of.

    The women just wanted the company to stop the pipe from leaking, to investigate — which could lead to compensation — and some sacks of cassava or rice to tide them over until they could fish again.

• Wildlife/Nature

  • Links From the Brink: Trump Revoked, Confused Cougars and Wombat Butts

Finance

• Inflation as People Experience It and as Economists Measure It

• How Unemployment Insurance Fraud Exploded During the Pandemic

  A Bronx man allegedly received $1.5 million in just ten months. A California real estate broker raked in more than $500,000 within half a year. A Nigerian government official is accused of pocketing over $350,000 in less than six weeks. 

  What they all had in common, according to federal prosecutors, was participation in what may turn out to be the biggest fraud wave in U.S. history: filing bogus claims for unemployment insurance benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic. (The broker has pleaded guilty, while the Bronx man and Nigerian official have pleaded not guilty.)

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The Big Lie Promises to Be a Centerpiece of the GOP’s 2022 Election Strategy

• Greenwald Predictably Misrepresents MAGA

  It is not worth going through the conversation point by point, because as always Greenwald is vaguely correct on certain topics—‘I don’t trust the intelligence community, and therefore, I’m generally opposed to empowering them’; ‘[the] US government, when it intervenes, brings instability, not stability’—but in a narrow, non-additive, and ultimately useless way.

  What is most troubling about this interview is his insistence on ascribing a coherence to ‘America First’ that simply does not exist. ‘Ultimately, the way you put America first is by looking inward, focusing on the welfare of your own citizens, and then protecting your borders and your country from attack. Anything beyond that seems inconsistent with that worldview,’ he says.

• Cheney and Kinzinger Are Bad — But I Hope They Bring the Fire on 1/6 Committee

• ‘Radical terrorists from Chechnya’! Billionaire Arkady Rotenberg’s divorce is uglier than his ex-wife realized, it turns out

  Last week, Russian billionaire Arkady Rotenberg’s ex-wife Natalia reported that “radical terrorists from Chechnya” seized her villa in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat (a charming little corner of the French Riviera). Officials in the area confirmed to a local newspaper that her police report is real. Natalia Rotenberg announced the incident in an Instagram post on July 15, saying, “On July 10, radical terrorists from Chechnya captured my villa in France. They kicked out my guards, seized the home, smashed and replaced the locks, and established a base there.” She also shared several videos recorded on the villa’s premises. Meduza breaks down how the Rotenbergs’ divorce got ugly.

• Senator Klobuchar Proposes An Unconstitutional Law That Would Kill Legions Of People If Trump Were Still President

  This bill is so bad it was worth a second post.

• Trump Calls Republicans “Weak Fools and Losers” for Negotiating Infrastructure

• Republicans Jeopardize Monday’s Infrastructure Deadline With More Demands

• Michigan Republicans Awarded Themselves COVID Money Meant for Frontline Workers

• Human Progress

  Modern democracy arose because America’s radical founders renounced the divine right of kings and took up arms against England and George III. They created government of the people, with no aristocracy.

  Slavery ended because radical abolitionists hammered the entrenched institution until the horrible Civil War wiped it out.

• Tech company anti-terrorism initiative will increase its focus on far-right groups

  GIFCT — launched in 2017 by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube — maintains a database of terrorist content that helps member companies find it for review or removal. That database initially included material from a United Nations-designated list of sanctioned groups, which meant it focused heavily on Islamist extremist organizations like the Taliban and Islamic State, with exceptions around specific far-right incidents like the 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand shooting.

• Facebook and tech giants to target attacker manifestos, far-right militias in database

  Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.

  Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos – often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence – and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.

Misinformation/Disinformation

• Deep Fake Politics- Historiography of the Cold War, the Clandestine State, and Political Economy of US Hegemony with Aaron Good – The Project Censored Show

• Naturopath Sues Twitter After It Bans Her Account For Spreading Medical Misinformation

  We recently discussed the case of a man who thought Facebook owed him $10 million per day in damages for moderating his posts in which he deployed the n-word. According to this person, Facebook violated about half of the Constitutional amendments when it decided — as a private company — that it would not serve as the plaintiff’s bullhorn while he shouted racist terms in a crowded social media platform.

• Anti-Vaxxers Countermeasures Show Why It’s Not So Simple To Just ‘Delete’ Anti-Vax Misinfo On Social Media

  It’s not a new thing that those without any experience in content moderation assume that it’s somehow “easy” to just find and delete misinformation and disinformation online — but it’s often stunning how little they’ve thought through how all of this plays out. As the White House has stupidly been using its bully pulpit to pressure Facebook into deleting anti-vax misinformation, and elected officials are threatening legislation they must know is unconstitutional, none of them seem to recognize that it’s not that easy.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Russia’s censorship agency blocks Alexey Navalny’s website

  Russia’s federal censorship agency (Roskomnadzor) has blocked opposition politician Alexey Navalny’s official website, navalny.com, Team Navalny reported on Telegram on Monday, July 26. While some users can still access the site from Russia, others cannot. 

• Streisand Effect Still Works: Vancouver Roofing Company Hit With Negative Reviews After Suing Over A Negative Review

  Last week, KGW8 had an incredible story about how a couple in Vancouver, Washington were sued after leaving a 1-star review for Executive Roof Services (ERS). The defendants in the lawsuit, Autumn Knepper and Adam Marsh, were (reasonably!) annoyed about the treatment they received from the firm after their landlord had asked ERS to check out the roof to the house, after the couple found it leaking. The experience they had with ERS was not great:

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

• Jailed journalist Ivan Safronov interrogated as witness in felony case against his lawyer

  Former journalist Ivan Safronov, who has been in pretrial detention for more than a year, has been questioned as a witness in the criminal case against his lawyer — prominent human rights attorney Ivan Pavlov.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Say Your Prayers, Conservatives! Prison Abolitionists Are Reclaiming Faith.

• Why Trade Policies are a Matter of Racial Equity

• Opposition politician Violetta Grudina announces hunger strike following forced hospitalization in Murmansk

  Following her involuntary hospitalization in Murmansk on July 14, opposition politician Violetta Grudina has announced a hunger strike. In particular, Grudina is protesting the medical institution’s failure to deliver paperwork to election officials that’s necessary for her nomination for a spot on the ballot in the upcoming City Council elections.

• Advocates Condemn Biden Plan to Send 4,000 Inmates Back to Prison After Pandemic

  Legal advocates are calling on the Biden administration to reverse a plan to return thousands of federal inmates to prison once the coronavirus pandemic ends, after the incarcerated people will have spent months if not years at home with their families in home confinement.

  “While granting clemency to these individuals…won’t change the fact that the United States is the world’s leading incarcerator, it would be a powerful signal that the administration is prioritizing criminal legal system reform.”—Christopher W. Adams, NACDL

• Summer 2021

• Going solo The ‘solitary picket’ was once a key method of public protest in Russia. Here’s how the authorities did away with it.

  For many years, solitary pickets have been a cornerstone of public protest in Russia. Whereas protest rallies have long required official permission, holding a solo demonstration was, at one time, a legal way to publicly express one’s discontent. Though the authorities began working to close this loophole following major protests in 2012, the crackdown on individual picketers reached its peak in 2020. Under the guise of combating the spread of COVID-19, the Russian authorities were able to effectively ban not only public gatherings, but also single-person pickets. Meduza breaks down how they did it here.

• We’d Better Control Machines Before They Control Us

  My reverie was interrupted by a toll booth. It was empty, as were all the other booths at this particular toll plaza. Most cars zipped through with E-Z passes, as one automated device seamlessly communicated with another. Unfortunately, our rental car didn’t have one.

  So I prepared to pay by credit card, but the booth lacked a credit-card reader.

• How Do We Prepare for an AI Future?

  My wife and I were recently driving in Virginia, amazed yet again that the GPS technology on our phones could guide us through a thicket of highways, around road accidents, and toward our precise destination. The artificial intelligence (AI) behind the soothing voice telling us where to turn has replaced passenger-seat navigators, maps, even traffic updates on the radio. How on earth did we survive before this technology arrived in our lives? We survived, of course, but were quite literally lost some of the time.

• Civil Rights Leader, Educator Bob Moses Dies at 86

• Tributes Pour in for Civil Rights Activist Bob Moses, Dead at 86

  Tributes to civil rights champion Bob Moses—the American educator and activist who as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and other groups played a crucial role in the Civil Rights Movement’s most consequential era—poured in following his death Sunday in Florida at the age of 86.

  “Bob Moses was a Founding Father of the America we have not yet become.”—Waleed Shahid,Justice Democrats

• Remembering Civil Rights Icon Bob Moses: Organized SNCC, Miss. Freedom Summer & Algebra Project

  We remember the life of Bob Moses, the civil rights leader who left his job as a New York City high school teacher to register Black voters in Mississippi in the 1960s, facing down horrific violence and intimidation to become one of the icons of the movement. He died Sunday at age 86. Moses spent his later years as an advocate for improved math education, teaching thousands of students across the United States through the Algebra Project, the nonprofit he founded. Moses spoke to Democracy Now! in 2009, on the first day of the Obama presidency, recalling the 1964 fight for Black representation within the Democratic Party, the struggle against Jim Crow in the South and his passion for education. “In our country, I think we run sharecropper education,” Moses said, warning that unequal educational opportunities would continue racial disparities in the country. “We need a constitutional amendment, something which simply says every child in the country is a child of the country and is entitled to a quality public school education.”

• Remembering Bob Moses, 1935–2021

  After the 1963 March on Washington in August and the church bombing in Birmingham in September, I knew that at that particular moment what I, then a college student, needed to learn would not come in a college course. Later that fall, I attended a meeting in Harlem where three young men, Ivanhoe Donaldson, Charles Cobb, and Bob Moses, were describing their programs in Mississippi and their plan to invite college students to join them in the summer of 1964. They were staffers with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). As they concluded the talk, I made my way to the front of the room and asked Bob whether I could help. He “hired” me on the spot, and a few weeks later, after a long bus ride, I was glued to a typewriter at the Freedom Summer office in Jackson, Miss.

• Donziger Slams Criminal Contempt Ruling as ‘Message of Intimidation’ to Human Rights Lawyers

  Human rights lawyer Steven Donziger said Monday that he is a victim of an “obvious travesty of justice” and vowed to appeal after a judge found him guilty on six counts of criminal contempt of court.

  “The decision marks a sad day for the rule of law, for our democracy, and for our planet.”—Steven Donziger

• Cities That Reduced Arrests For Minor Offenses Also Saw Fewer Police Shootings

  There has been, in other words, a shift away from “broken windows” policing, or the debunked idea that aggressive policing of minor crimes deters more serious crimes. But what has this shift meant for crime more generally and for reports of police violence?

  Only 27 percent of the nation’s law enforcement agencies report data on police shootings to the FBI’s National Use-of-Force Data Collection program, and no agency-level data from this program has been made public. But the data that is available suggests that in cities where there were reductions in low-level arrests, there were also reductions in police shootings.

  Searching open data portals, internal affairs publications and media databases, I obtained data on fatal and nonfatal police shootings from 2013 to 2019 in 86 of America’s 100 largest cities.2 These cities reported a decline from 749 police shootings in 2013 to 464 shootings in 2019, a 38 percent decrease over this period.

• A Grandfather Died in ‘Swatting’ Over His Twitter Handle, Officials Say

  When the police responded to the false report, they ordered Mr. Herring to climb over the tall cattle gate around his property, according to his family. He offered to open the gate door, but they refused to let him do so, likely because they feared a bomb would go off, said Mr. Herring’s son-in-law Greg Hooge.

  Too big to climb over, Mr. Herring struggled to squeeze his large frame under the fence, which had an opening of about one foot above the ground, Mr. Hooge said.

  He collapsed soon after he stood back up, Mr. Hooge said. Mr. Herring’s relatives said they had asked for copies of police reports and any body camera footage taken by the authorities on the night of April 27. They said those requests had been denied.

• The West Cannot Ignore Violence Against Nigerian Christians

  Another speaker at the conference, Catholic priest Fr. Joseph Fidelis from Maiduguri, Nigeria—the epicenter of Boko Haram and Islamic State violence—portrayed his never-ending responsibilities ministering to traumatized victims. Over many years, hundreds of raped, mutilated and burned victims have managed to survive violent attacks on Christian farms, schools and villages. Their numbers are increasing and their lives are shattered. Fr. Fidelis warns that religious persecution in Nigeria is a “time bomb waiting to explode.”

  Meanwhile, Boko Haram is not the only bad actor in Nigeria. More than 100 farming communities in Nigeria’s southern Kaduna region have been displaced over the last five years in land-grabbing campaigns allegedly perpetrated by radical Fulani herdsmen. During the summit, Religion News Service reported that at least 33 people died with four churches and hundreds of homes burned down in a new attack in Kaduna.

• China’s Xi visits Tibet amid rising controls over religion

  China has in recent years stepped up controls over Buddhist monasteries and expanded education in the Chinese rather than Tibetan language. Critics of such policies are routinely detained and can receive long prison terms, especially if they have been convicted of association with the 86-year-old Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since fleeing Tibet during an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

• Tibet’s exiled leader accuses China of cultural destruction

  Chinese troops occupied Tibet in 1950 and later annexed it. The 1959 Tibetan uprising saw violent clashes between Tibetan residents and Chinese forces. The 14th Dalai Lama fled to neighboring India after the failed uprising against Chinese rule.

  The Dalai Lama, the supreme Tibetan Buddhist leader, established a government-in-exile in India. There are at present more than 10,000 Tibetans living in Dharamsala alone, and an estimated 160,000 Tibetan exiles around the world.

• P!nk offers to pay bikini fine for Norway beach handball team

  The European Handball Federation (EHF) ordered the team to cough up 1,500 euros ($1,768) after they wore shorts instead of the regulation swimwear in their bronze-medal match loss to Spain in Varna, Bulgaria.

  P!nk, a three-time Grammy Award winner, said on Twitter she would cover the fine, berating the organization and encouraging the players to carry on covering up.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Akamai Edge DNS goes down, takes a chunk of the internet with it

  Akamai’s Edge DNS service went down on Thursday morning, US West Coast time, knocking over its customers’ websites as it fell.

  As of 0909 PDT (1609 UTC), the status page of Akamai – which sites around the world rely upon to deliver content among other services – said, “We are aware of an emerging issue with the Edge DNS service.”

• BT tries to crack cyber crime, grabs stake in Safe Security • The Register

  BT is looking to cash in on ever-growing global concerns over digital crime, and has confirmed making a multi million pound investment in US-based cyber risk management firm Safe Security.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Netflix Finally Faces Competition, Tries To Pretend Otherwise

  Netflix had a pretty good run there for a long while. Thanks to low prices and an innovative streaming system, the company simply hoovered up streaming video subscribers as the cable TV industry stumbled around in the dark, busy pretending the cord cutting phenomenon either wasn’t real or would end once Millennials started procreating. As a result, there was a big long window where Netflix’s only real competitor was a bunch of fairly terrible “me too” half assed offerings from the traditional broadcast and cable sector.

Monopolies

• Is This the WTO Waiver End Game?

  As reported by Reuters* on Wednesday (see “South African firm to help make Pfizer/BioNTech COVID vaccine”), Pfizer and BioNTech, manufacturers and developers of an mRNA-based vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, have agreed to help the South African drug maker Biovac Institute produce about 100 million doses per year of its vaccine, specifically to be targeted to African nations.

  [...]

  Perhaps also relevant is the World Health Organization’s establishment of a consortium (including Biovac) to be a “tech transfer hub” aimed at “giv[ing] poor and middle-income countries the knowledge and licences to produce COVID-19 vaccines.

  This is not the first South African company to make such a deal; Aspen has a similar agreement with Johnson & Johnson for its more conventional adenovirus-based COVID-19 vaccine. This is also not the first vaccine-related partnering agreement between Pfizer and Biovac, who in 2015 agreed to collaborate on Pfizer’s pneumonia vaccine Prevnar; distribution of the vaccine has been delayed in South Africa due to regulatory approval requirements.

• Patents

  • EPO and City of Munich nurture future leaders and innovators at global summit [Ed: Why does the city of Munich tolerate so many EPO crimes? Money of course. Shame on Bavaria, shame on Germany, and let's hope for arrests some time in the future.]

    The EPO and the City of Munich engaged with future leaders and entrepreneurs at the One Young World Summit from 22 – 25 July, where delegates attended a series of speeches, panels, networking events and workshops. As part of the event, the Office held an interactive workshop to introduce young innovators to the patent system and highlight its role in driving progress, creating jobs, and supporting the economy. In addition to the breakout session, the EPO hosted a digital exhibition booth to promote topics such as the Young Inventors prize, EPO Data Hub app, and Espacenet.

  • Balancing quality and cost: A strategy for European patents [Ed: The patent maximalists (profiteers) never met a patent they did not like and crimes at the EPO do not bother them either if it's good for the litigation 'industry']

    The right of priority can cause issues for overseas applicants to the EP system. We have previously covered the ‘whole applicants’ requirement of the European Patent Office (EPO) in that respect. Another key requirement is that the priority application and the subsequent EP application are for the ‘same invention’ (A87, EPC). The EPO takes a strict approach to this, requiring that any claimed feature and any claimed combination be disclosed in the priority application. If it is not, the risk of losing the priority is high – and, if disclosure of the invention has taken place in the interim period, the EP application could also be refused on the basis of that prior art (A54, EPC).

  • AMDT Mini-Rail Fixator Awarded Patent Protection in Both the US and Europe

    AMDT Holdings, Inc., which develops disruptive products to address existing and emerging needs in the extremity market, is pleased to announce that its AMDT Mini-Rail Fixator has been awarded US patents (10,299,832 and 11,006,976) and European patent (3422972). Additional patents are pending in both the US and abroad.

  • DoJ antitrust chief is ‘less radical choice’ than SEP owners feared [Ed: What what patent radicals are calling "radical"]

    Counsel aren’t sure how former Paul Weiss partner Jonathan Kanter will approach patent antitrust law, but have breathed a sigh of relief nonetheless

  • Vallon Pharma secures new European patent for ADAIR [Ed: What is the likelihood that the Vallon patent is actually valid, seeing that nowadays EPO grants loads of fake patents?]

  • Siemens IP chief on German reforms, 5G, and patent pools [Ed: Patent cartels euphemised as "pools" (which basically serve to exclude so many and harm the people who pay bills)]

  • China’s “overly broad” junk patent dragnet could snare legitimate filings [Ed: On patents as instrument of tax evasion in more countries than people care to realise or keep abreast of]

    IPO wants a carveout for companies that don’t benefit from Chinese IP subsidies or tax breaks, which would come as a relief to foreign filers.

  • Patent case: Rohde & Schwarz GmbH & Co. KG, EPO {Ed: there is no “fair trial” at EPO! Fair trials and legal enforcement at the EPO are out of the question from managers’ point of view; because they’d risk arrest if the law was properly enforced.]

    A change in the composition of the Examining Division is legally allowed. This does not jeopardize the right to be heard and to a fair trial.

    The ‘equality of arms’ is not hampered by the introduction in a late stage of examination and in particular during the oral proceedings before the Examining Division, of new prior art on the subject of common general knowledge for use in Art. 114 EPC.

  • Delhi IP division welcome but beset with challenges: sources [Ed: There is no such thing as "IP", but the propaganda mill of aggressive lawyers and trolls calls itself (and other things) "IP"; it's not even property!]

    With an IP division now set up at the Delhi High Court, sources call for exclusive benches and comprehensive rules to encourage a smooth transition

  • Trade Secrets Pre Patenting

    Although trade secrets are independently important, they are play a key temporal role in the patenting process. The touchstone of invention is when the inventors have a full mental conception of the invention, including how to make and use the invention. But, there is typically a months-long process of moving from conception to a filed patent application. During that time the invention is typically kept secret in order to avoid losing patent rights due to early disclosure. And, even after the patent application is filed, applicants often keep the invention secret for as long as possible in order to maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Thus, the first public knowledge of an invention is quite often at the publication date 18-months after filing.

    General rights of privacy allow a person to keep secret information without intrusion by the government or by wrongful acts by third parties. Trade secrecy rights are an extension of these general privacy and began as common law. These rights were further developed and codified in the various states, especially with the Uniform Law (UTSA) movement that gained traction in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2016, the U.S. Government enacted the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) that created a federal cause of action.

  • New Perspective on Specific Personal Jurisdiction in Patent DJ Venue [Ed: When courts become like corporations the patent trolls start "shopping" for judges and venues; this makes the whole patent system seem like a laughing stock]

    The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit concluded that the minimum contacts or purposeful availment test for specific personal jurisdiction was satisfied where a patent owner sent multiple infringement notice letters and other communications to a resident of California who then filed for declaratory judgment of non-infringement in federal district court in California. Trimble Inc. v. PerDiemCo LLC, Case No. 19-2164 (Fed. Cir. May 12, 2021) (Dyk, J.)

  • FOSS Patents: SEP Licensing Negotiation Groups — Part II: justice delayed is justice denied when unwilling licensees can hide behind a consensus-building effort

    This is the second part of a trilogy on licensing negotiation groups (LNGs): automotive industry cartels that would collectively negotiate standard-essential patent (SEP) licenses with major patent holders and pools. In the first part, I outlined some of the issues and cautioned against a false symmetry between patent pools and buyers’ cartels named LNGs.

    There isn’t any such thing as a conventional supply-and-demand mechanism in SEP licensing. For example, patent holders can’t reduce output: if they abandoned some of their patents, they’d just reduce the value of a portfolio. By contrast, if the likes of Continental, Dunlop, Bridgestone and Firestone ganged up on car makers, they could drive up the price–which is why competition authorities wouldn’t allow such a cartel.

    [...]

    In SEP licensing, there is no demand without the prospect of losing infringement cases and, if it comes to worst, being enjoined. Apple’s 2019 policy statement on FRAND-pledged SEPs is instructive. It postulates that “[b]oth SEP licensors and licensees should negotiate transparently and willingly based on an exchange of relevant information.” Apple is a net licensee, but has acquired a sizable SEP portfolio (from Intel in no small part). There’s probably no smartphone maker who negotiates SEP licenses as hard as Apple. Still, Apple stresses symmetry with respect to the willingness to reach an agreement.

    That symmetry is merely consistent with the guidance the European Court of Justice provided in Huawei v. ZTE, and the way it is now applied by the German courts after Sisvel v. Haier I & II. Unwilling licensees incur the risk of SEP injunctions. Otherwise there isn’t sufficient deterrence in certain jurisdictions, and infringement would be profitable.

    Licensing negotiation groups don’t mix with Huawei v. ZTE and Sisvel v. Haier. How can a court of law identify an individual company’s unwillingness to take a license on FRAND terms if it can hide behind its LNG?

  • Benteler takes patent licence from Faurecia after long dispute

    Faurecia Intérieur Industrie, based in Nanterre, France, manufactures dashboards, center consoles and door panels for car interiors. It owns two patent families, EP 2 499 038 and EP 2 542 462, both of which concern dashboard crossmembers. Competitor Benteler supplies structural parts to the automotive industry, including VW for its MQB (Modular Transverse Toolkit) platform.

    However, Faurecia considered both patent families infringed by Benteler’s products, with the parties fighting in several European courts since 2019.

    In Spain (case ID: 1588/2020-3) and the Czech Republic (case ID: 41 Cm 45/2019), the French manufacturer sued for patent infringement. In Germany, the defendant pre-empted the patent owner and filed for a negative declaratory action at the Regional Court Düsseldorf (case ID: 4a O 30/20). Benteler wanted the court to clarify that the company did not infringe the patents in Germany. The hearing was scheduled to take place in October 2021.

  • Software Patents

    • WSOU patent determined to be likely invalid

      On July 23, 2021, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 8,179,960, currently owned by WSOU Investments, LLC. The IPR was filed as part of Unified’s ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone. The ‘960 patent was formerly owned by Alcatel-Lucent USA, Inc. (Nokia Corporation) and has been asserted against ZTE. WSOU Investments, LLC is run by Craig Etchegoyen, formerly of Uniloc.

    • Is it really easier to get your software patents granted in the U.S.? [Ed: Getting software patents is one thing; successfully enforcing those fake patents in a patent court is another. Patents like these are a waste of money.]

      In this article, we compare the requirements to obtain patents in the U.S. and Europe in the context of computer-implemented inventions such as simulation methods and artificial intelligence (AI). In particular, we look at how patent eligibility and inventiveness are assessed on both sides of the pond, and we show that although the USPTO and EPO have different assessment approaches, the end result is often very similar. We also provide some tips that could help you to obtain quick, detailed feedback on your computer-implemented inventions that could inform your global patent filing strategy.

• Trademarks

  • Is ‘MOCCA’ in class 30 generic in China?

    What does the term ‘MOCCA’ evoke in your mind, a kind of coffee or a specific brand? This Kat randomly asked this question to her friends currently at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition Munich. Most of them regarded ‘MOCCA’ as a kind of coffee instead of a specific brand except one Italian colleague who also saw ‘MOCCA (almost phonetically identical to ‘Moka’)’ as referring to the Moka Pot (Italian wiki page for that here). The diverged answers could be interpreted as showing different opinions on where the term is standing on the slope of trade mark genericide (certainly the slope will not be as smooth, or even could have a U-turn; the image below is a simplified schematic).

  • Trademark rejections: top obstacles counsel must overcome [Ed: Trademark maximalists want a USPTO that’s just rubber-stamping everything

    Private practice and in-house lawyers reveal their strategies for fighting failure to function and consumer confusion rejections at the USPTO

• Copyrights

  • Registrar Suspends Domain of Popular Torrent Site YTS

    YTS.mx, one of the most popular torrent sites, has lost control over its domain name which is no longer resolving. Domain registrar Gandi put the domain on ‘clientHold,’ a status code that’s generally reserved for legal or administrative issues. The YTS status page still lists the Mexican TLD as the site’s home but unless the issues are resolved, this is likely to change.

  • Broadcaster Offers Pirates ‘Free’ Legal TV Box in Exchange For Giving Up Illegal Streams

    TV pirates in Singapore are being offered an interesting deal in an effort to discourage them from consuming content via illegal sources. Owners of piracy-configured devices can hand them over to telecoms company StarHub for destruction and in return receive a free legal device with Ultra HD 4K support. Of course, there are some strings attached.