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Links 3/8/2021: DeaDBeeF 1.8.8, CrossOver 21, AMD and Valve Hook Up for GNU/Linux Work



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Android and Linux apps can be moved between Virtual Desks in Chrome OS 92

        Ever since Chrome OS launched its Virtual Desks feature, you’ve only been able to shift chrome tabs and web apps around between them. For anyone utilizing Crostini for Linux applications or the Google Play Store for Android apps, the very experience of using desks has likely felt incomplete.

        Neither of these could previously be moved between spaces, and have remained on the primary desk as a result. This has caused clutter and frustration, even if just a little. Google’s development team is now addressing this – as of Chrome OS 92, which is rolling out now, users will finally be able to move Linux and Android apps between virtual desks at will!

    • Server

      • Most Reliable Hosting Company Sites in July 2021 [Ed: This is the first time I see GNU/Linux in all the top spots (there's usually at least one BSD in there)]

        In July 2021, dinahosting had the most reliable hosting company site: it responded to all of Netcraft’s requests, with an average connection time of 75ms. dinahosting has appeared in the top 10 table five times in 2021 so far and offers its services from Interxion and Global Switch in Madrid. Customers can choose from a range of cloud and managed solutions as well as register domain names.

        Bigstep, Webair and ServerStack appear in second, third and fourth places respectively. These sites responded to the same number of requests and were separated by average connection time. Bigstep’s bare metal cloud hosting provides the flexibility of cloud hosting without the associated overhead and performance reductions of virtualization. The bare metal offerings are available in data centres in the UK and Romania. Webair offers managed and private cloud services, storage and backup solutions from its eight facilities in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Montreal, London, Paris, Amsterdam and Singapore. ServerStack provides managed and dedicated solutions from its three data centres in North America and Amsterdam.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • The Linux Desktop That Windows 11 Wishes It Could Be

        The recent announcement of Windows 11 has a lot of Windows users excited. The previews that Microsoft has released reveal a modern and sleek operating system. But many Linux users can't help but notice that Windows 11 seems to be heavily inspired by the KDE Plasma desktop.

      • Linux overview | KDE NEON 20210729

        In this video, I am going to show an overview of KDE NEON 20210729 and some of the applications pre-installed.

    • Kernel Space

      • Mainline Linux support for the ARM Primecell PL35X NAND controller

        It has been more than 7 years since the first draft of a Linux kernel driver for the ARM Primecell PL35X NAND controller was posted on a public mailing list. Maybe because of the lack of time, each new version was delayed so much that it actually needed another iteration just to catch up with the latest internal API changes in the MTD subsystem (quite a number of them happened in the last 2-3 years). The NAND controller itself is part of an ARM Primecell Static Memory bus Controller (SMC) which increased the overall complexity. Finally, the way the commands and data are shared with the memory controller is very specific to the SMC. All these technical points probably played against Xilinx engineers, and Bootlin was contracted in 2021 to finalize the work of getting the ARM Primecell PL35X NAND controller driver in the upstream Linux kernel.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Valve and AMD buddy up to improve Steam Deck CPU performance on Linux

          Valve's Steam Deck handheld could be the start of something beautiful for Linux gamers; proof that the operating system is more than capable of running your favourite games on the go. Yet even before its launch the PC gaming handheld might be paying dividends for Linux gaming, as Valve and AMD join forces to improve CPU performance on the open-source OS.

          Valve's upcoming handheld gaming PC, the Steam Deck, is built around an AMD APU, which includes both a Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 GPU. It's a Linux-based system, powered by SteamOS 3.0, an operating system switching to use the Arch Linux distribution. That means it will only be able to run Windows games via a compatibility layer, so for that Valve has Steam Play, also known as Proton.

        • AMD Hiring For Open-Source GPU Driver Work With Mentions Of Tesla Model S, Steam Deck

          With AMD's increasing marketshare on the CPU and GPU front, scoring more data center wins, and also scoring custom design wins for Linux-based environments such as with the Tesla Model S and most recently with the Steam Deck, AMD continues hiring more Linux engineers.

          Several times this year I've noted about AMD ramping up their Linux engineering talent and even forming a "new [client] organization" within the company. Especially on the CPU side they've been hiring more Linux kernel engineers this year to focus on areas that hadn't been as much of a focus for them during their down times and not a priority until more recently when scoring big data center deals and other enterprise wins that now allow them to invest more into power management, the kernel scheduler, virtualization, etc.

        • Valve and AMD Join Forces, Developing an Improved Linux CPU Driver

          Valve and AMD are working together to develop a better CPU performance scaling driver for Linux, targeting the Steam Deck gaming console.

          It is reported that AMD is working with Valve, which develops the game sales platform Steam, to improve the CPU driver with the aim of improving performance on Linux. It is expected that this initiative will improve the performance of Valve’s handheld game console Steam Deck announced last month.

          This type of close collaboration with Valve will be required if the Steam Deck is to compete with other devices. The main reason for this development effort is that the current ACPI CPUFreq driver is “not very performance/power efficient for modern AMD platforms.” In other words, the new driver will allow the processor in the Steam Deck to quickly ramp up to a higher performance state when needed and achieve better performance per watt.

        • Radeon ROCm 4.3 Released With HMM Allocations, Many Other Improvements - Phoronix

          AMD has released ROCm 4.3 as the newest version of their Radeon Open eCosystem stack for providing open-source GPU compute and CUDA portability for their supported graphics processors under Linux. ROCm 4.3 is the biggest update we've seen for this important enterprise piece to their enterprise GPU compute stack in a while.

    • Applications

      • DeaDBeeF Audio Player 1.8.8 Now Reads WAV RIFF Tags

        DeaDBeeF audio player 1.8.8 was released as the 8th bugfix release for the 1.8 series.

        The new release introduced some new features, including reading WAV RIFF tags, handling of Disc subtitle frames in ID3v2 and APE tags, and handling samplerates higher than 192KHz to pulseaudio.

        New context menu options “Play Next” and “Play Later” are now available to choose your favorite song to play next, or set one-time play order for songs in play list. It will add marks at the beginning that indicates the sequence.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How To Install Ghost on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Ghost on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Ghost is a lightweight, open-source Content Management System (CMS) and blogging platform built with Node.js. It has full support for Markdown and provides an easy-to-use web interface for administration purposes.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of Ghost CMS 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 Download and Install Discord on Linux

        Introduced in 2015, Discord quickly became gamers' first choice of communication platform. Although it was originally developed for gamers, the versatile features of the application found their needs in other communities as well.

        Discord runs natively on all major operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. Since there are several ways of installing software on Linux, not to mention the variety of distributions available to users, it can become really complicated for a beginner to install Discord.

      • Apache Cassandra: Features and Installation

        Apache Cassandra is one of the most popular NoSQL databases. Though there are other versions of NoSQL that are available. But, why Apache Cassandra is popular? let’s have a look. Here we will see the features and installation of Apache Cassandra.

      • How to Secure Containers - A Comprehensive Guide

        Containerization is a word often thrown around when talking about cloud computing and DevOps. Popular services like Docker and Kubernetes have accelerated the use of containers for developing and shipping software. But what is containerization?

        In essence, a containerization is a form of virtualization. The software code is packaged and required dependencies and operating system libraries in an isolated space referred to as a “container.” To put it simply, whatever requirements a piece of code has, are bundled together in the form of a package that can essentially run on any infrastructure without requiring any refactoring.

    • Games

      • Linux takes 1% of Steam market share as interest in Steam Deck rises

        Valve published its monthly Steam Hardware Survey for July, and the biggest surprise came from the Linux gaming crowd. Aside from showing the usual Nvidia and Intel dominance in GPUs and CPUs usage among Steam users, there weren't many new takeaways from the latest report except Linux gaming rising to 1% in July, a first in years.

        The fact that coincides with the unveiling of the Linux-powered Steam Deck surely can't be ignored. It seems likely gamers will have started to investigate whether their Steam libraries really will be playable on Valve's new handheld gaming PC when it launches in December.

        Sweclockers suggests the last time Linux saw a spike remotely this close was a 2% market share jump when Valve announced Proton, a compatibility layer that allows Windows games to run on Linux, back in 2018. As impressive as Proton's first outing was, it still struggled to deliver as compelling a gaming experience as either native Linux ports, or gaming on a Windows OS. We haven't found evidence of that 2% spike ourselves, which could mean it tapered off real quick.

        For context, Linux gaming has historically sat below 1%, according to the folks at gamingonlinux who have been tracking market share of the open source OS for a good few years now. They estimate that over 1.2 million active Linux users are currently on Steam, and the trend seems to be moving upward.

      • Relax with the new Lazy Galaxy 2, a mix of an RTS with an idle game

        Lazy Galaxy 2 blends together two rather different genres you don't often see together. Mixing an idle / clicker game with real-time strategy its pretty interesting.

      • Top 10 New Games To Enjoy With Proton Since July 2021

        We are back with our usual monthly update! Boiling Steam looks at the latest data dumps from ProtonDB to give you a quick list of new games that work (pretty much?) perfectly with Proton since July 2021 – all of them work out of the box or well enough with tweaks...

      • CodeWeavers Releases CrossOver 21 - Rebased On Wine 6.0 - Phoronix

        With CrossOver 21.0 the software has been re-based against Wine 6.0 that in turn provides "thousands of improvements", including the initial Vulkan back-end work around WineD3D. CrossOver 21.0 also delivers on Xbox and PlayStation controller improvements under macOS, dark mode support on macOS, and various Microsoft Office 2016 and Office 365 fixes for running on Linux. CrossOver 21.0 also provides faster start-up times under Linux and Chrome OS.

    • Distributions

      • Reviews

        • Solus OS Review

          Although Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Mint have made great strides regarding user-friendliness, they’ve sometimes had difficulty convincing the majority of users of other operating systems to drop the way they currently do things and adapt to something new. Solus OS is a new Linux operating system that isn’t based on anything. It’s a fresh take on Linux with a message: less is more. No hassling with settings or choices. Everything is taken care of for you ahead of time.

          [...]

          After more than five years in development, Solus OS has come a long way from its early beginnings and kept to its promise of becoming an operating system for the “everyman.” Adding a plethora of applications to its software repository, it’s become accommodating for even the most veteran of power users, while at the same time retaining the ability to appeal to a less “nerdy” demographic.

          It does what you expect, looks after you, and curates your experience so that you don’t have to fumble around. If you are looking around for a stylish Linux distro, you should also check out Deepin Linux.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • IBM Semeru Runtimes Bring Flexibility To Java Developers, Hybrid Cloud Deployments

          IBM has announced the availability of IBM Semeru Runtimes that enables developers to create and run Java applications in hybrid cloud environments from the cloud to data centers in stable, no-cost environments.

        • Open Practice Library basics: Showcasing and improving

          The Open Practice Library is a repository of open practices and principles used during engagements by Red Hat's Open Innovation Labs. In the previous post in this series, we discussed how to plan and execute a sprint/iteration. In this post, we will talk about showcasing our work and continuously improving.

        • FlashGrid announces support for RHEL 8 and Oracle Linux 8

          FlashGrid Inc. has announced RHEL 8 and Oracle Linux 8 operating systems support with its newly released FlashGrid Cluster version 21.06.

          Enterprise customers use FlashGrid engineered cloud systems with Linux OS for running mission-critical Oracle databases, including clustered Oracle RAC databases, in AWS, Azure, and GCP clouds. The databases typically stay in production for multiple years with non-stop 365x24x7 operation. Minimizing any disruptive changes that might affect database uptime is important in such environments.

        • Now Available: SQL Server 2019 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 in AWS Marketplace [Ed: Red Hat says get Microsoft proprietary software]
      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Ubuntu Blog: UbuntuOnAir update

          It’s been a couple of months since we restarted UbuntuOnAir. We had a few ideas, and lots of aspirations, but we wanted to be realistic and work our way up. You can read about why we brought it back and why we didn’t use the more mainstream channel “Celebrate Ubuntu” elsewhere. Here I talk about some of the things we’ve done, some of the lessons we’ve learnt, and what’s next. If at any point you become curious and want to watch the videos head to ubuntuonair.com and scroll through.

          [...]

          We’ve done other things too, not as much as I’d have liked, but some. We’ve done a ‘gaming’ stream, a tutorial about making tutorials, and a chat with the engineers behind Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi. They were all one-offs but with the potential to become a series/playlist with return appearances.

          There’s a sizable difference in the engagement figures with these videos though. The Raspberry Pi video did significantly better, both in terms of views and general engagement. We tracked this down to three factors; consistency, relevancy, and marketing.

          The consistency factor is inferred since the other videos we do have are all part of a consistent series and these are not. The relevancy factor is really unavoidable, from my work on Ubuntu on Raspberry previously I know that if you put ‘Raspberry Pi’ in a headline it’s going to do well. And marketing. In the beginning, we promoted the videos more openly. That isn’t to say we don’t still, but we have more things to promote now so it feels like the traffic to the videos is cannibalizing itself. Some food for thought.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • Tiger Lake-H module claims to be first with PCIe Gen4 x16

        Adlink’s rugged, Linux-ready “Express-TL” COM Express Basic Type 6 module features up to octa-core Tiger Lake-H CPUs with up to 128GB DDR4, optional NVMe, quad 4K displays, 2.5GbE and GbE, 4x USB 3.2 Gen2, and PCIe Gen4 x16.

        Adlink announced the second embedded board we have seen based on Intel’s new hexa- and octa-core H-series additions to its dual- and quad-core 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors. The Express-TL follows TQ’s TQMx110EB, which similarly deploys Tiger Lake-H on the 125 x 95mm COM Express Basic Type 6 form factor. TQ may be the first to market — it was previously listed as “coming soon,” but has now changed to “new.” The Express-TL is “preliminary.”

      • Congatec COM-HPC & COM Express Xeon modules target high-end IoT gateways, medical edge applications - CNX Software

        Yesterday, we wrote about ADLink Express-TL COM Express Basic Size Type 6 module powered by the latest Intel Tiger Lake-H Xeon, Core, and Celeron processors designed for high-end industrial & embedded systems.

        But as one would expect more such modules are coming to market, and Congatec announced both COM-HPC and COM Express CPU modules based on Intel Tiger Lake-H processors with target applications include high-end IoT gateways and medical edge applications. Let’s check out both conga-HPC/cTLH COM-HPC Client Size B modules (120mm x 120mm), as well as the conga-TS570 COM Express Basic Type 6 modules (125mm x 95mm).

        [...]

        congatec offers support for Microsoft Windows 10, Windows 10 IoT Enterprise, Linux, the Yocto Project, and RTS Hypervisor.

      • Pico-ITX board and compact system set sail on Elkhart Lake

        Vecow’s “EPCB-1000” Pico-ITX SBC runs Linux or Win 10 on Intel’s dual-core Atom x6211E with up to 32GB DDR4, SATA, DP, 2x GbE, 2x USB 3.1, and 2x M.2 with SIM. The SBC also powers a “PCB-1000” box PC.

        Vecow announced the Pico-ITX form-factor EPCB-1000 board and compact PCB-1000 embedded system along with a larger, more feature rich SPC-6000 system that similarly runs Linux or Win 10 on Intel’s Elkhart Lake processors. We already reported on the SPC-6000 shortly after Vecow announced the system back in Sep. 2020. We don’t see any changes except that the case is colored blue.

      • Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Gains Native SATA Support

        Raspberry Pi OS now has SATA support built into the kernel. Before you rush to tear the hard drive from your PC and hook it up to your Pi, there’s a catch: you’ll need a Compute Module 4 instead of the standard 4B or 400 models. And for now you can’t boot from it. YouTuber and Jeff Geerling, who is responsible in part for the addition, has an insightful blog post on the matter, and a video essay embedded below.

      • Open Hardware/Modding

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • The Institute for Computing in Research Announces Portland Cohort

        Exposure to mentors, communities and the varied academic disciplines is a great opportunity for these budding scientists. Bridging the gap between programs like Outreachy (another member project of Conservancy's, Outreachy, which provides internships to historically underrepresented groups in technology), Google Summer of Code and other open source internship options with the academic programs like Research Experience for Undergraduates, the ICR is filling a vital role in connecting FOSS and the academy. Showing students computing tools used in industry and the workflows and day to day experiences of academics doing research. Typically these kind of positions are unpaid and not everyone has the luxury of working unpaid for a summer. It's this kind of equitable thinking that makes the ICR standout to us and why we are pleased to work with them.

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Hacks.Mozilla.Org: How MDN’s autocomplete search works [Ed: Mozilla is already being outsourced to Microsoft proprietary software with NSA-connected keyloggers]

            The code for all of this is in the Yari repo which is the project that builds and previews all of the MDN content. To find the exact code, click into the client/src/search.tsx source code and you’ll find all the code for lazy-loading, searching, preloading, and displaying autocomplete searches.

      • CMS

        • 11 Popular Free And Open Source WordPress CMS alternatives in 2021

          So you want to create a website or blog but would rather avoid WordPress? WordPress is very powerful and scalable, it’s also pretty complicated for beginners.

          What is WordPress?

          WordPress is just a software that you use to build your own website or blog and publish it on the Internet it is also called a content management system or CMS.

          because WordPress is an open source software meaning that there is thousands of software engineers out there that are working on it every day to make it better and better.

          There are plenty of good alternatives available in the market. We will show you the three best non-WordPress options that are, most importantly also easy to use!

          [...]

          The main reason why we add Drupal on top of this list is: It has thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power an endless variety of websites.

          Drupal is the open-source CMS of choice for some of the world’s leading technology companies, marketers, developers, Agencies. It was written in PHP language and distributed under GPL ("GNU General Public License").

          With Drupal, you can build community web portals, Discussion sites, corporate websites, intranet applications, personal websites or blogs, Aficionado sites, E-commerce applications, Resource directories, Social Networking sites.

        • The Month in WordPress: July 2021

          WordPress is global in reach and open source in nature. And you would assume that what allows the software to be used by anyone would also enable it to be built by anyone. After all, your location doesn’t matter, and who employs you also doesn’t matter. And your relative social standing certainly shouldn’t matter. As long as you can communicate with the others contributing to the project, there should be no obstacle to your participation.

      • Programming/Development

        • Getting started with wxWidgets on Linux

          Interested in developing a graphical user interface application for Linux, but not sure where to start? As a first step you select a fitting graphical user interface (GUI) library, followed by a programming language to develop your application in. wxWidgets is such a GUI library for C++. It’s also cross-platform and even offers bindings for other programming languages. This article helps you getting started with developing a GUI application using wxWidgets on Linux.

          [...]

          Once you selected the GUI library, your next step is to select the programming language for developing your GUI application. wxWidgets is a C++ library, so C++ is an obvious choice. However, bindings exist for other programming languages, making it possible to use those as well. For example Python, Ruby and Perl.

          The goal of this article is getting you started with wxWidgets on Linux. The focus lies on getting the development environment setup on your Linux system. Then together, we’ll create a Hello World! type GUI application in C++. You can use the resulting application as a starting point for developing your own GUI application. As whip-cream on top, I’ll also show you how you can build your wxWidgets based GUI application with the help of CMake.

        • Beatriz Martins de Carvalho: Mid-point: I got halfway through my internship and what do I do now?

          Finally today the part 4 of my Outreachy Saga came out, the mid-point was on 5/7/21 and as you can see I'm really late, this week had the theme: “Modifying Expectations”.

          But why did it take me so long to post? First, I had to internalize the topic a lot, because in my head I thought that when I reached this point, I would have achieved all the goals I had proposed at the beginning of the internship, but when the mid-point arrived, it seemed to me that I didn't have done anything and that my internship was going to end, as I didn't fulfill expectations.

        • Perl/Raku

        • Python

          • Supply Chain Flaws Found in Python Package Repository

            Administrators overseeing the Python Package Index (PyPI) in recent days found themselves responding to vulnerabilities found in the repository of open source software, the latest security problems to hit the Python community.

            Most recently, the PyPI group sent out fixes for three vulnerabilities that were discovered by security researcher RyotaK and published on his blog. Two of the vulnerabilities could be used by bad actors to delete documentation or roles within the software package. The third flaw was found in a GitHub Actions workflow within the PyPI repository that, if exploited, could allow a hacker to write permission against the repository and launch malicious code on pypi.org.

          • How to Create an executable from a Python program

            Applications or scripts developed with the Python language can be converted into executables for the Windows operating system. In this way, they can be usedwithout having to install Python and are thus made available to as many people as possible. It is possible to perform this conversion with different modules created for this purpose. To use one of these modules, you must of course have previously installed Python on your machine.

          • Wanna use your Nvidia GPU for acceleration but put off by CUDA? OpenAI has a Python-based alternative

            If you’ve always wanted to program your Nvidia GPU to accelerate machine learning, image processing, and other workloads, but find Nv's CUDA too daunting or too much of a faff to learn, you’re in luck.

            OpenAI late last month released Triton, a Python-based environment that tries to help developers write and compile code to run on your Nvidia GPU much more easily without having to grapple with CUDA.

            The San Francisco upstart has been using Triton to optimize their software so that their machine-learning algorithms run more efficiently on specialized hardware. Building state-of-the-art models is costly, developers have to be able to train and tweak their performance quickly, which requires writing custom GPU kernels.

        • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

          • Visualising data as a PGM image

            An ASCII PGM file ("Portable Gray Map") is a simple text file that encodes a grayscale image. The image below is "face.pgm" and shows a scanning electron micrograph of the face of a tiny Australian millipede:

          • Linux Essentials - awk

            In this episode of Linux Essentials, we take a look at the awk command. With awk, you can leverage its power for the "manipulation of data files, text retrieval and processing, and for prototyping and experimenting with algorithms". In this particular video, we'll cover the basics of awk to get you started.

        • Rust

          • The Rust Programming Language Blog: The push for GATs stabilization

            The biggest reason for this decision is that there's still a bit of design and implementation work to actually make this usable. And while this is a nice feature, adding this in the future would be a backward-compatible change. We feel that it's better to get most of GATs stabilized and then come back and try to tackle this later than to block GATs for even longer. Also, GATs without object safety are still very powerful, so we don't lose much by defering this.

  • Leftovers

    • Hardware

      • Shipping costs from China are going through the roof - CNX Software

        Since the beginning of the year, we’ve had a worldwide chip shortage that increased the price of components, followed by long lead times. My Twitter feed is often filled with complaints of expensive components (e.g. STM32 being 10 times more expensive), and ever-increasing lead times of up to two years.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Privatisation/Privateering

            • Linux Foundation

              • EdgeXFoundry Rolls Out Second Major Release, Taking Developers to Ireland [Ed: Did Linux Foundation pay for this puff piece? Probably. And more on the way. Linux Foundation as a PR agency.]

                EdgeX Foundry, a project under the LF Edge umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation, has introduced a second major release with advances in API sets, message-based communications, and simplified and more secure interfaces.

              • EdgeX Foundry Releases the Most Modern, Secure, and Production-Ready Open Source IoT Framework

                EdgeX Foundry, a project under the LF Edge umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation, today announced it’s Ireland release. Focused on edge/IoT solutions, EdgeX Foundry’s second major release overhauls API sets, removes technical debt, provides more message-based communications, and simplifies and secures interface for adopters and developers, making the platform significantly easier to use and more reliable.

                “As a leading stage 3 project under LF Edge, the EdgeX Ireland release has expanded use cases across retail, building automation, smart cities, process control, and manufacturing,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge & IoT, at the Linux Foundation. “It’s a key to standardizing IoT frameworks across market verticals.”

        • Security

          • Security updates for Tuesday

            Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (chromium, nodejs, nodejs-lts-erbium, and nodejs-lts-fermium), Debian (pyxdg, shiro, and vlc), openSUSE (qemu), Oracle (lasso), Red Hat (glibc, lasso, rh-php73-php, rh-varnish6-varnish, and varnish:6), Scientific Linux (lasso), SUSE (dbus-1, lasso, python-Pillow, and qemu), and Ubuntu (exiv2, gnutls28, and qpdf).

          • Qualys Collaborates with Red Hat to Enhance Security for Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS and Red Hat OpenShift

            Teaming with Red Hat, Qualys is offering a unique approach providing a containerized Qualys Cloud Agent that extends security to the operating system. The Cloud Agent for Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS on OpenShift combined with the Qualys solution for Container Security provides continuous discovery of packages and vulnerabilities for the complete Red Hat OpenShift stack. Built on the Qualys Cloud Platform, Qualys' solution seamlessly integrates with customers' vulnerability management workflows, reporting and metrics to help reduce risk.

          • Google Calls On Companies To Devote More Engineers To Upstream Linux, Toolchains [Ed: Is this some kind of a sick joke? Google put weakened encryption inside Linux, in effect an NSA back door, before it was compelled to remove it many months later. Google doesn't value real security but US "national security" (empire).]

            Longtime kernel developer Kees Cook of the Google Security Team published a post on Google's Security Blog today effectively calling for more organizations to devote a greater number of engineers to the upstream Linux kernel in order to improve open-source security.

            In addition to Google backing the Rust initiative for the Linux kernel, they also acknowledge there is a manpower issue.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • I have heard what the Federal Circuit has to say on motions to transfer, says WDTX's Albright [Ed: The megaphone of EPO criminals, IAM, gives a platform to another person who has perverse concept of justice. IAM: we support crime. Pretty stunning how much of the self-described "legal" media and "law" firms basically support crime, promote corruption, cover up injustices, and look to trick/undermine those who do the correct/just/right/true thing.]

          US District Judge Alan Albright’s Waco court in the Western District of Texas is the US’s busiest patent litigation venue. It is also the most controversial. In an exclusive IAM interview, the judge explains how he has responded to recent CAFC criticisms and discusses plenty more besides

        • Federal Circuit to Judge Albright: You Get An F [Ed: Corrupt judge in Texas, who treats the court like a private for-profit business, gets much-needed scrutiny]

          In yet another mandamus order directed to the Western District of Texas, the Federal Circuit has once again explained to Judge Albright that his analysis of transfer motions is incorrect and ordered him to send a case elsewhere. It’s worth reading the entire order in In re Hulu, but if you don’t have time, I can sum it up for you: Judge Albright got pretty much everything important wrong.

          Yet again, the Federal Circuit found that Judge Albright “clearly abused [his] discretion” in denying transfer. Of the factors that are weighed when determining a motion to transfer, Judge Albright found that two factors slightly favored transfer, three factors weighed against transfer, and three factors didn’t apply.

          The Federal Circuit disagreed. Of the three factors Judge Albright found to weigh against transfer, the Federal Circuit found one to be neutral—and the other two to actually weigh in favor of transfer. And of the factors that slightly favored transfer, the Federal Circuit suggested that the analysis employed by Judge Albright was incorrect and that the factor might better be understood as significantly favoring transfer.

          Judge Albright has joked about how he “may get guidance from the people that grade my papers at some point that that’s not the right approach.” And this is yet another instance of that kind of guidance. But this order isn’t his graders saying he got it a little bit wrong and marking him for a B. This is having every reason you relied upon to deny a transfer marked “incorrect”—it’s your graders telling you you failed completely.

        • Recent Developments in Artificial Intelligence and IP Law: South Africa Grants World’s First Patent for AI-Created Invention [Ed: It's safe to say that in addition to the blunder over COVID-19 monopolies the patent system is self-discrediting at this stage; not they grant patents to bots!]

          On July 28, the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission of South Africa granted the world’s first patent on an invention created by an artificial intelligence (“AI”) inventor. This development marks an important milestone in what will certainly be a significant battle for legal recognition of such inventions in the United States and other countries.

          “Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience” aka “DABUS” is an AI developed by Missouri physicist Stephen Thaler. The recently-issued patent is directed to a food container based on fractal geometry. The patent application was filed on September 17, 2019 under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. [1] Under the heading of “inventor”, the application identifies DABUS and states “The invention was autonomously generated by an artificial intelligence." [2]

        • Recent Developments in Artificial Intelligence and IP Law: South Africa Grants World’s First Patent for AI-Created Invention [Ed: Litigation 'industry' delighted that more junk patents can be granted to bots in some places because it means more litigation (between bots)]

          On July 28, the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission of South Africa granted the world’s first patent on an invention created by an artificial intelligence (“AI”) inventor. This development marks an important milestone in what will certainly be a significant battle for legal recognition of such inventions in the United States and other countries.

          “Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience” aka “DABUS” is an AI developed by Missouri physicist Stephen Thaler. The recently-issued patent is directed to a food container based on fractal geometry. The patent application was filed on September 17, 2019 under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. [1] Under the heading of “inventor”, the application identifies DABUS and states “The invention was autonomously generated by an artificial intelligence." [2]

        • Venue Games – What is Victoria’s Secret?

          Andra sued Victoria’s Secret for infringing its US Pat. 8,078,498 covering a lingerie virtual showroom. Actually, Andra sued L Brands Inc (LBI), the parent company, as well as Victoria Secret Stores LLC (Stores) which operates the physical retail stores; Victoria’s Secret Direct Brand Management, LLC (Direct), which manages the internet activities (including in-store direct online and returns from the stores); and Victoria’s Secret Stores Brand Management, Inc. (Brand) which creates the apparel products. At the time of the lawsuit*, these companies were all directly linked together in a tight corporate subsidiary structure under LBI. Still, each defendant gets to raise the defense of improper venue.

        • PTAB

          • $10,000 for prior art on all 5 patents asserted by Invincible IP, an IP Edge entity,
          • PTAB Strategies and Insights - July 2021: Arthrex: One Month Later [Ed: Fake patents, such as software patents, can still be squashed more easily then before without having to pay much, e.g. court fees]

            Following the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Arthrex, the Federal Circuit issued requests for briefing regarding the decision’s impact in pending PTAB appeals in which an Appointments Clause challenge had been raised. Those briefs have now been filed and the parties are awaiting action from the court of appeals. Here we provide a brief overview of the types of arguments we have seen from the parties and of likely next steps.

            Responses from Patent Owner-Appellants who raised Appointments Clause challenges generally fall into two categories. The first category consists of responses that affirmatively waive the appellant’s right to relief under Arthrex and request that the Federal Circuit decide the appeal on the merits.[1] The second category consistent of responses that request a remand so that the patent owner can have the opportunity to request Director review.[2] At least one appellant proposed a hybrid approach under which the Federal Circuit would address the merits of the appeal first and then—if the merits are decided adversely to the appellant—remand the case to the PTAB to allow the appellant to ask for Director review.[3] In that case, the Federal Circuit responded with an order instructing the appellant to choose between (i) requesting a limited remand and (ii) waiving its right to seek Director review.[4]

      • Copyrights

        • Book review: Harnessing Public Research for Innovation in the 21st Century [Ed: If it is publicly-funded research, thwn it should be free and exempt from all monopolies, including patents]

          Previous Guest Kat Rosie Burbidge, Intellectual Property Partner at Gunnercooke LLP and author of European Fashion Law, returns with a review of Harnessing Public Research for Innovation in the 21st Century An International Assessment of Knowledge Transfer Policies, edited by Anthony Arundel (UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University and University of Tasmania), Suma Athreye (Essex Business School, London), and Sacha Wunsch-Vincent (World Intellectual Property Organization). Here is what Rosie has to say about the book:

          It is a pleasure to review Harnessing Public Research for Innovation in the 21st Century, edited by Anthony Arundel, UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University and University of Tasmania, Suma Athreye, Essex Business School, London and Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, World Intellectual Property Organization.

          Public research and the important issue of how to foster “innovation” are popular concerns for governments and industry alike. This book enables a holistic overview of different innovation practices. By comparing different issues and strategies on an international basis, the common trends and best practices can be more readily identified and questions such as which subsidies produce the greatest economic value can be considered.

          [...]

          However, as they also note, in the context of public research, it “may produce a lot of inventions, but no significant innovations”. This observation ties in with one common issue throughout the book, and with measuring innovation more generally, is that the focus is on the number and type of patent filings which can be a poor proxy for genuine innovation. That is not to say that this data and the associated analysis is not helpful but that it is much harder to get accurate and bias free information regarding other rights, particularly trade secrets which, by their nature, are not widely shared.



Recent Techrights' Posts

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