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Links 13/9/2021: GDB 11.1, Only 2 New Debian Developers in 2 Months



  • GNU/Linux

    • Server

      • Operator Day returns for KubeCon NA 2021

        Operators simplify everyday application management on Kubernetes. Learn how to use them, how to create them in Python, and how to evolve from configuration management to application management. We’re working to create a community-driven collection of operators for everything that’s integrated and tested everywhere.

        As the community gets together to share knowledge and push forward ideas and tech around K8s, we’ve been taking the past few KubeCon events as an opportunity to host workshops, community brainstorms, and industry leader presentations through a live, interactive virtual event – Operator Day. Operator Day KubeCon NA 2021 will be the third of its kind, with its predecessors gathering thousands of attendees and multiple Canonical speakers and guests.

    • Kernel Space

      • Still-Pending AMD PSF Control Patch To Be Retailored For KVM

        Of all the great stuff for AMD in Linux 5.15, one of the patches still not having yet been mainlined is the control support around Predictive Store Forwarding (PSF) with Zen 3 processors. It's been six months since AMD published their security whitepaper around PSF while the Linux patch has yet to be mainlined while now it seems will be updated for a reduced focus on KVM usage.

        It's been about six months already since AMD published their security analysis of Zen 3's PSF feature that could potentially lead to a side channel attack. Predictive Store Forwarding with the latest-generation Ryzen and EPYC processors allows for speculatively executing instructions based on what it thinks the result of the load will be and while the predictions should be largely accurate, there is the small possibility of incorrect CPU speculation. PSF speculation going awry would be similar to Spectre V4 / SSB.

      • Linux at 30: 5 Ways Linux has Changed Software Engineering Culture | IT Pro

        From programmer teams to app stores, Linux has had a huge impact on the software engineering model.

      • Linux 5.15 Delivers Many Features With New NTFS Driver, In-Kernel SMB3 Server, New Hardware - Phoronix

        Feature development is over on the Linux 5.15 kernel with Linux 5.15-rc1 being issued. It's now on to testing and bug fixing over the next two months before the kernel is christened as stable. Here is our original Linux 5.15 feature overview about all of the big changes in this next kernel version.

      • Linux Developers Talk Again About An Accelerator Subsystem - Or Moving Them Into The GPU/DRM Area - Phoronix

        On and off for years has been talk of an accelerator subsystem for the Linux kernel considering that for now most AI training/inference accelerator drivers end up lodged within the "char/misc" area of the kernel. That accelerator subsystem discussion has been restarted with talks of having such a subsystem or moving those drivers within the GPU/DRM subsystem space.

        Stemming from the recent controversy around Habana Labs AI driver code changes (though now at least partially addressed with publishing an open-source compiler and user-space library) and how some changes have been skirted by going through "char/misc" and facing less scrutiny than if the same changes were tried to push through the GPU/DRM tree, the discussion is once again happening about where these accelerator drivers should live within the kernel.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Zink Is Over: This Time I’m Serious.

          Look.

          I know what you’re gonna say, and maybe I did just say zink was done a week or two ago.

          I’m not saying I didn’t.

          But that was practically last year at the speed with which zink’s codebase moves and its developer community sits in my office eating cookies between Mesa builds, and it was also before I set off on my journey to make the rest of those zany Phoronix benchmark games run instead of crashing or whatever.

    • Applications

      • JamesDSP For Linux Is An Audio Effect Processor For PipeWire Or PulseAudio (Equalizer, Bass Boost, More)

        JamesDSP for Linux is an open source Qt audio effect processor for PipeWire and PulseAudio. Use it to enhance the music you listen to by adding reverberation, bass boost and other filters using a parametric or fixed band equalizer. It also allows you to write your own audio effects using the EEL2 scripting language.

        The application is designed for use with PipeWire, which the developer recommends for its lower latency when injecting audio effects, but PulseAudio is also supported (for backwards compatibility).

        It was initially released as an audio effects processor for Android, and it then ported to Linux.

      • xrdesktop for turning your desktop into a VR space had a productive Summer

        Collabora has given an update on the working going into xrdesktop, the free and open source project that turns your desktop into a VR space and allows you to layer windows on top of others.

        It's an incredibly promising project and work on it has continued recently, They even had people getting involved through the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) which produced some fun results.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • GlusterFS multiple nodes In Centos/Almalinux - Unixcop

        GlusterFS is a scalable filesystem through a network suitable for data-intensive. Tasks such as cloud storage and media streaming. GlusterFS is open-source software and can utilize standard off-the-shelf hardware. All Glusterfs document link. Check iscsi tutorial on centos8. It is cost-efficient and can be deployed on bare metal, virtual, container, and cloud environments.

        Enterprises can be scalable, performance, and available on-demand, with no vendor lock-in, across on-premise, public cloud, and hybrid environments. Gluster is used in production at thousands of organizations spanning media, healthcare, government, education, web 2.0, and financial services.

        This tutorial is intended to provide a step-by-step guide to setting up GlusterFS for the first time with the minimum degree of complexity. For this guide, it is required to use virtual machine instances.

      • Understand Cyber Security and Cryptography

        This is the third and last article in the series Understand Cyber Security and Cryptography. The hash function is used to protect data integrity. Hashing is the process of converting an input of any length into a fixed size of string or text. A message to be based on is called input. The Algorithm used to do so is called has to function. Output is called has value or digest.

        Well, how the hash is different from Encryption. Using a key or pair of keys can encrypt or decrypt messages is called encryption. But, the hash is one way you can not generate an original message back from the hash. There must be some quality in the hash function.

      • Audit user accounts for never-expiring passwords with a Bash script

        For decades, periodic password changes have been a staple of system security. The idea is that if someone gets your password, they can gain access for a limited period of time. It's usually easiest to have the system prompt them rather than relying on users to remember to change their passwords. However, regular user accounts may be set with passwords that never expire and therefore never prompt users to change them.

        The Bash script in this article lists all those regular user accounts on your system whose password is set to never expire. By regular users, I mean accounts that usually have interactive shell access and a /home directory.

      • How to Convert Ubuntu Into Regolith Linux - Make Tech Easier

        Regolith Linux isn’t your typical Linux distribution. It falls somewhere in between being a distribution and a desktop environment, as it is built on top of Ubuntu. And unlike most typical Linux distributions, Regolith doesn’t have to be installed as a standalone operating system. If you are already using Ubuntu as your operating system, then you can install Regolith on top of it for a preconfigured i3 experience.

      • How To Install PHP on Debian 11 – TecAdmin

        PHP abbreviated as “HyperText Processor”, is the open-source programming language used for Web application development. It is a scripting language, mostly used for the front end with HTML. It can be used to create e-commerce websites, manage databases, and do session monitoring.

        It is available for all OS. The latest version of PHP is version 8 and in this article, we will discuss the installation of PHP on the Debian 11 Bullseye Linux system.

      • How To Install ReactJS on Debian 11 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install ReactJS on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, React is an open-source JavaScript library and used to develop front-end web applications. It allows you to make reusable components for a single-page user interface. It is developed and maintained by Facebook and a large community of developers. ReactJS can be used in the development of Web Applications or Mobile Apps.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the ReactJS on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

      • How to Install Redis Server on Rocky Linux

        Redis is a popular and open-source in-memory key-value data store. It supports various data structures such as Hash, Lists, Sets, Strings, and much more. Redis is designed to be running in the trusted environment only, it can be used as a database, cache, and message broker. Redis is extensively known for its broad support, high performance, high availability, and flexibility.

        You can install Redis as a standalone for small deployment. For large deployment, they provide additional components such as Redis Sentinel for high availability and Redis Cluster for partitioning data across multiple Redis node servers.

        In this guide, you will learn how to install Redis on Rocky Linux. For an easy installation, you will be installing Redis from the AppStream repository, but if you want to get the latest version of Redis (which means more features), you can install Redis from source by compiling it to your system.

      • How to List Unsuccessful SSH Logins on Linux

        "There is no white or black, there are only shades of gray. We can not say if it's good or bad."

        And sometimes we need to dig into the shades of gray and look for problems before they occur. One of these checks could be a search for failed SSH login attempts. Fortunately, Ubuntu comes with one solution that is simple enough but powerful enough to detect most cases where someone lets weak passwords and brute force attacks happen.

        Each attempt to login to SSH server are recorded in a file named auth.log located at /var/log/auth.log by the rsyslog daemon.

        Administrators can look through the logs to see if there are strange incoming traffic. A log file contains a lot of information in plain text but it is not easy reading all the output. We need to learn how to use grep to search through the log file and in this example we will focus on failed attempts.

      • How to Install Django Framework on Debian 11

        Django is a free and open-source web development framework written in Python. It is used for developing complex and database-driven Python applications. It comes with a set of Python scripts for creating Python projects. It can be run on any operating system that can run Python including, Windows, macOS, Linux/Unix, and Solaris. It helps developers to write less code and create a new website in a short amount of time.

        In this tutorial, I will explain how to set up Django in Python virtual environment using the PostgreSQL database on Debian 11. We will then install and configure Nginx as a reverse proxy for Django.

      • A podman tutorial for beginners – part I

        This guide explains how to build and deploy applications quickly with Podman to the cloud server of your choice. All examples in this tutorial are tested on Fedora Linux 34, but they should work on any Linux distros as long as you install the correct packages. I prefer to use Fedora when my clients use RHEL 7/8. Experimental podman packages are also available for Windows and macOS, but I have not tested those. Running containers without Docker is possible with Podman. This page is the first part of building containers with Podman, which explains installing Podman and working with images, including basic concepts of containers.

      • How to Install Webmin on CentOS 8 and Rocky Linux 8 – VITUX

        Webmin is an open-source web-based interface that simplifies the administration of Unix systems. Usually, to perform any kind of task in Linux like setting up accounts, setting up web servers, installing software, you have to manually run the commands and edit configuration files. Webmin lets you do all such tasks using a web-based interface. Using Webmin web interface, you can manage user accounts, firewalls, backups, manage software packages, create and configure virtual sites for Apache, monitor system resources graphically, configure network-related settings, and much more. It let you manage your system regardless of where you are and which browser you are using.

        In this post, we will cover how to install Webmin on CentOS, configure firewall, access the Webmin web interface and how to uninstall Webmin if you ever need to do so.

      • Bash Scripting - Variables Explained With Examples - OSTechNix

        Variables are very important concepts in any programming language you work with. Think of a variable as a container in memory that stores data of a certain type. The main purpose of variables is to store a value and access it later for processing. If you are someone from other programming languages like Java, C, C++, you may find differences in how the variable definition differs since Bash does not have a strong type system.

      • How to Install phpBB on Debian 11 with LEMP - LinuxCapable

        phpBB is one of the most extended open-source forum bulletin software on the market. With the rise of social media platforms such as Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and online chat platforms such as discord, we have seen online bulletin forum communities dwindle. Personally, as I just mentioned, they are slowly making a comeback in specific niche communities over the newer additions.

        phpBB isn’t the only option. Others such as VBulletin, Nodebb, Xenforo, and so on, but most of these are paid with mixed reviews. VBulletin used to be a powerhouse, but now it’s a shadow of its former self. Xenforo is one of the best-paid bulletin pieces of software. However, that is just my personal opinion, but I will always choose phpBB first as it’s free, open-source, and has some great 3rd party open-source developers, both new devs and ones that have been around since the start.

        In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install LEMP with the most up-to-date packages in their respective fields, along with setting up phpBB for first-time use on Debian 11 Bullseye.

      • Efficient service isolation on Alpine with VRFs – Ariadne's Space

        Over the weekend, a reader of my blog contacted me basically asking about firewalls. Firewalls themselves are boring in my opinion, so let’s talk about something Alpine can do that, as far as I know, no other distribution can easily do out of the box yet: service isolation using the base networking stack itself instead of netfilter.

      • What Linux Version Am I Running? Here's How to Find Out

        If you are new Linux user and want to know how to find what Linux version you are running, here’s how to do it by using the command line.

        There are various reasons why you might want to find which Linux distribution you are using or the OS version of your Linux system.

        When most people talk of Linux, they are usually referring to a Linux distribution, but this is not the case. Above all, the question “What Linux version am I running?” can mean two different things.

      • Linux 101: What are zombie processes?

        When you think of zombies, your mind probably travels a rather Romero-ian path. Shambling ghouls who want nothing more than to crack open your skull and dine on your thought-meat.

        But within the realm of Linux, zombies are a different creature altogether. Sort of.

        On the Linux platform, a zombie is a remaining bit of a dead process that wasn't or hasn't been properly cleaned up. A zombie is created by programs that crash or weren't adequately coded to handle the cleanup of a crash or exit.

        Technically speaking, when a process dies, the process descriptor remains in memory and becomes labeled EXIT_ZOMBIE. At this point, the parent process is notified that the child process has died with the SIGCHLD signal and the parent is supposed to execute the wait system call, which allows the parent to collect information from the now-dead process. This generally happens almost immediately. But not always.

    • Games

      • Steam has turned 18 years old and PC gaming has never been the same since

        It's truly hard to imagine just how much Valve managed to change what PC gaming is thanks to Steam. On September 12 2021, the Steam client celebrated 18 years. Steam is now old enough to buy alcohol in the UK.

        Do you remember what Steam originally looked like? I sure do. It was a much simpler time, with none of the fancy tricks Steam does now. There was no Steam Play, no Linux client, no macOS client, no reviews system and just — not much of anything. A few games, a couple of buttons and that was mostly it. This was long before the likes of GOG, Humble, Epic, itch.io, Origin and so on.

      • Surviving Mars gets a needed hotfix clearing up Below and Beyond | GamingOnLinux

        Below and Beyond released recently as the new expansion for Surviving Mars now that Paradox Interactive has decided to pick up development again but it has been problematic.

        Not just the DLC release but the game as a whole since the update and DLC being quite unstable. Currently sat with a Very Negative rating on Steam, Paradox and newer developer Abstraction have their work cut out for them to get it back into the positive.

      • ArmA 3, Steam & unsubscribe from deleted Workshop items
      • Linux Gaming: Veloren 0.11 Massively Multiplayer RPG Release

        The release of the computer role-playing game Veloren 0.11 , written in the Rust language and using voxel graphics, has been published. The project is being inspired by games such as Cube World, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft. Binary assemblies are built for Linux, macOS and Windows. The code is released under the GPLv3 license.

      • Ahead of Hearth & Home for Valheim, the developer has a longer fireside chat | GamingOnLinux

        Want to listen to the team from Iron Gate talk about Valheim and the upcoming Hearth & Home update that's due out on September 16? Sit a while and drink some mead.

        It's just over 30 minutes long, so perhaps a good bit of background noise for you or perhaps to learn something new about the game and what's to come. They've definitely gotten a huge amount better at interacting with the community since the original Early Access release. Who can blame them for being a caught a little off guard though? Not many go on to sell over 6 million copies in little over a month.

      • The Tuxedo Stellaris 15 - Linux Gaming Notebook Review - Invidious

        The Stellaris 15 by Tuxedo Computers is a gaming notebook with some serious power. With a choice between Intel/AMD CPUs, a powerful NVidia GPU, this notebook aims to help you get your work done and also enable you to play some games

      • Total War: WARHAMMER III delayed for all platforms until 2022 | GamingOnLinux

        Creative Assembly announced today that Total War: WARHAMMER III has been moved from late 2021 until sometime in early 2022. We know that it's coming to Linux officially too, which Feral Interactive recently confirmed (again).

        Posted on Twitter and Steam with one of those annoying text over image delay posts (at least it wasn't bright yellow like we saw with Cyberpunk), it said:

        "With nearly a decade of development on the Total War: WARHAMMER trilogy behind us, it feels surreal to see its culminating chapter so close to release. While it's tempting to rush to the finish line as it comes into view, we have made the decision to give it a little more time by moving the launch of Total War: WARHAMMER III from 2021 to early 2022.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • [FALSE] GNOME 41 Has Arrived

          The latest version of the GNOME desktop environment has been released with new functionality and plenty of improvements.

          GNOME has been evolving at a breakneck pace. And no recent release proved that more than 40, where the entire workflow was reconfigured and reworked. For those that have experienced the shift that was brought about by that major release, every update since has been nothing more than minor tweaks.

          And although GNOME 41 isn’t bringing into the picture a similar overhaul, it still adds some important improvements to the desktop.

    • Distributions

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Stuart D Gathman: How do you Fedora?

          For 35 years, Stuart worked as a System programmer for a small company where his projects included database servers, device drivers, protocol stacks, expert systems, accounting systems, aged AR/AP reports, and EDI. Currently, he is doing hourly consulting work for small businesses.

          Stuart’s childhood heroes were his Dad and George Müller. His favorite movies are “The Gods must be crazy” and “The mission”. He grew up in a pacifist denomination, so feels “The mission” movie is very relevant to him. He loves over roasted vegetables.

          Composing and performing music, Mesh networking, and refurbishing discarded computers to run Fedora Linux are some of his spare time interests as well as history, especially ancient Western and 19th century English/American.

          “Love/charity, Hope, Faith, Virtue, and knowledge” are the five qualities someone should possess, according to Stuart.

        • Fedora Community Blog: Contribute at Fedora Linux 35 GNOME 41 Test Day

          Wednesday, 2021-09-09 is the Fedora 35 Gnome Test Day! As part of changes Gnome 41 in Fedora Linux 35, we need your help to test if everything runs smoothly!

        • Sending alerts to Discord and others from syslog-ng using Apprise: blocks and Python templates

          Last year, the CentOS project announced a major shift in strategy. Until recently, CentOS Linux has been a rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) sources, each RHEL release was quickly followed by a corresponding CentOS Linux release. While CentOS 7 keeps working this way, CentOS 8 will reach its end of life by the end of this year. The CentOS project is focusing on CentOS Stream. It is a continuous stream of bug fixes and new features. Some of the users were not happy about the change, that is how Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux were born.

          As about 80% of syslog-ng Open Source Edition (OSE) installations run on CentOS and RHEL (if we do not count Kindle devices…), support for CentOS Stream and CentOS Linux alternatives is a returning question. From this blog, you can learn about CentOS Stream and CentOS Linux alternatives and how the situation is affecting syslog-ng OSE users.

        • The state of CentOS Stream: Innovation in action

          In December 2020, Red Hat announced that we would be focusing our CentOS Project engineering efforts and investments solely on CentOS Stream, an upstream open source development platform where users can develop, test and contribute to a continuously delivered distribution that tracks just ahead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Since this announcement, we’ve seen significant activity both within and around the CentOS Stream community, including the launch of several derivative operating systems and the introduction of Red Hat Enterprise Linux programs to ease the migration process for users of CentOS Linux.

        • Red Hat Innovation Awards - Advice on writing a great submission

          The nomination period for the 2022 Red Hat Innovation Awards has been extended to September 20, 2021 - which means there is still time for you to nominate your organization for innovative uses of Red Hat’s open source technology.

        • Learn about containers and Kubernetes with Red Hat Academy

          As the next generation of IT professionals prepares to enter the workforce, Red Hat is taking strides to meet them where they are. A major component of this effort is Red Hat Academy, which offers free training on the Red Hat product portfolio to tens of thousands of students per year at high schools and higher education institutions around the globe.

          Among other courses, the curriculum includes offerings on Red Hat OpenShift including Introduction to OpenShift Applications (DO101) and Red Hat OpenShift I: Containers & Kubernetes (DO180). These courses introduce students to building and managing containers for deployment on a Kubernetes cluster.

          Introduction to OpenShift Applications is a developer-focused introduction to OpenShift application building. The course walks you through production scenarios such as scaling and troubleshooting your applications. This course can also help future administrators who might be working with code as infrastructure or with automation take the next step into development.

          Students who are interested in learning more about the underlying OpenShift infrastructure and have strong Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA)-level skills should start with Red Hat OpenShift I: Containers & Kubernetes (DO180).

        • Let’s talk about industry scoring systems

          When it comes to electronics, sustainability rating systems measure a company’s or product’s performance against established benchmarks in categories such as environmental impact, production, ethics, working conditions, use and disposal of devices and procurement. They usually examine specific topics like repairability, sustainability, environmental footprint or social impact programs. In fact, we are sometimes consulted by such rating organisations to help shape what is assessed.

          These rating systems are useful for both businesses and consumers. The focus areas defined by such systems are relevant points of guidance for any company trying to move in a more sustainable direction, and ratings help consumers make informed decisions.

        • Surprise! It's IBM i Technology Refresh Time [Ed: 'News' sites about IBM, sponsored by IBM]

          IBM surprised the midrange world last week by announcing Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4, which became generally available on Friday. The fall TRs, which typically are announced in October, brought support for the new Power10-based Power E1080 server in addition to a slew of enhancements to the operating system and surrounding IBM i products.

          The big piece of news with the new TRs – IBM i TR 7.3 TR11 and 7.4 TR5 – is support for servers based on IBM’s speedy new Power10 processor, which is the first Power chip based on its 7 nanometer process. Companies that want to use one of the new Power10 servers – starting with the high-end Power E1080, which is slated to ship later this month – will have to run 7.3 TR11 or 7.4 TR5. Midrange and entry-level Power10 models, which are expected to be announced later this year and into 2021, will also need one of these two operating systems.

          But IBM packed a lot more goodies into these TRs (its fourth TR refresh during the COVID pandemic) that will interest the bulk of IBM i shops (that is, the 99.9 percent of us who aren’t immediately adopting the big new enterprise-class machine). We’ll give you a general overview of these goodies in this story, to be followed with more detailed stories on specific items.

      • Debian Family

        • New Debian Developers and Maintainers (July and August 2021)



          The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

          Aloïs Micard (creekorful) Sophie Brun (sophieb)

          The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

          Douglas Andrew Torrance Marcel Fourné Marcos Talau Sebastian Geiger

          Congratulations!

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • You Can Still Get Ubuntu 16.04 Security Updates, Here’s How

          I didn’t, not until today when a reader mailed in to tell me that Canonical offers free Ubuntu Advantage for Infrastructure accounts for personal use on up-to 3 machines (active Ubuntu members can use it on up to 50 machines).

          A gratis Ubuntu Advantage for Infrastructure account includes a couple of things but the most notable is …Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) for EOL releases.

        • Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS Special Being Prepared To Deal With Unbootable Media

          While Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS shipped one year ago as the last planned point release to the "Bionic Beaver", an emergency issue is leading to Ubuntu 18.04.6 now being prepared.

          Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS is coming as an unscheduled point release. While Ubuntu 20.04 is out as the latest and greatest long-term support release, Ubuntu 18.04.6 is coming since the existing 18.04 installation media has broke. Due to key revocations, existing Ubuntu 18.04 installation media is having issues and thus Canonical has decided to spin Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS to offer up bootable media for anyone still making use of this LTS-1 platform.

        • Ubuntu Touch OTA-19 Is Slated for Release on September 17th, Now Ready for Testing

          Still based on the Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) operating system series, Ubuntu Touch OTA-19 is slated for release this Friday on September 17th, 2021, packed with some minor improvements to the App framework, compatibility with QtWebEngine apps, as well as keyboard improvements in the messaging app.

          For Halium 5.1 and 7.1 devices, the Ubuntu Touch OTA-19 update promises access to gyroscope and magnetic field sensors, along with an initial and very basic implementation of a compass.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Revolt: An Open-Source Alternative to Discord

        Discord is a feature-rich collaboration platform primarily tailored for gamers. Even though you can use Discord on Linux with no issues, it is still a proprietary solution.

        You can choose to use Element as an open-source solution collaboration platform, but it is not a replacement.

        But, Revolt is an impressive Discord alternative that is open-source.

        Let me highlight what you can expect with Revolt and if it can be a replacement for Discord on Linux.

      • Revolt project develops an open source alternative to the Discord platform
      • Standing on the shoulders of programmers: the power of free and open-source software

        Free and open-source software is growing to be a powerful tool in academic research, helping scientists to collaborate better and work smarter. Achintya Rao investigates how such software is being used in physics research, and its role in the wider open-science movement

        [...]

        Free and open-source software (FOSS) allows users to inspect the code, modify it and redistribute it with few or no restrictions. The “free” in FOSS thus refers to these freedoms, not to monetary cost. This makes FOSS particularly powerful in research, enabling collaboration between scientists working on code that they have modified, and today it is seen as an integral part of the wider open-science movement.

      • Dolibarr: An Open-Source ERP and CRM Solution For Business

        Dolibarr is an open-source ERP and CRM system written with PHP, you can use it as an ERP, CRM or as inventory management system comes to make the management of inventory and warehouse easy.

      • 18 Open-source Free SEO tools to improve your site performance

        Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for getting your website know, and ranked in search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex.

        Webmasters and website admins should keep their websites in shape in-order to have their website pages indexed and parsed successfully by search engine bots.

        SEO practice required a lot of time and does not get the results instantly as many may expect. It needs a constant website monitoring, scanning, fixing, and improvements.

      • Open-Source Tool of the Month: Uptycs Addresses Modern Cloud-Nati.

        To better understand the modern cloud-native attack surface and what is required to close security and observability gaps across cloud-native infrastructure, LinuxSecurity researchers had the privilege of speaking with Ryan Mack, Director of Engineering at Uptycs, a leading open source cloud-native security analytics provider, to discuss the challenges organizations face and how to enhance and simplify cloud-native security and observability for the enterprise.

      • Enterprise Open Source Summit: A Business Perspective on Open Source

        Open source solutions are becoming increasingly popular in all areas of business as an important part of a digital strategy to build an open and secure info-communication environment in today’s organizations.

        However, the successful use of open source solutions in organizations is subject to certain conditions. Solutions must meet the requirements for use in large organizations, integrate with existing info-communication infrastructure and provide continuity of business processes in organizations.

        We are pleased to invite everyone to participate in the Enterprise Open Source Summit, a virtual event focused on transition strategies and the subsequent successful use of Open Source solutions in the corporate environment.

        The summit will be held on November 10th, under the aegis of Canonical, creator of the most popular among developers of Open Source operating system Ubuntu and environments OpenStack and Kubernetes. The event will feature presentations by industry leaders in Open Source solutions – Canonical, Nextcloud, Collabora, Linbit, OpenNebula and Factor Group.

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

          The PostgreSQL trademark policy is modeled after policies implemented by other major open source projects and is designed to be flexible and in the spirit of open source software. This policy is in place to ensure that the PostgreSQL trademarks are not used in ways that may confuse people and to help protect and grow the community brand. Uses of the trademark that are outside of fair use are permitted only through a trademark license issued by PGCAC.

          There are additional registered trademarks that use the "PostgreSQL" wordmark but are not used to assume the PostgreSQL brand identity or used to make representations of being the PostgreSQL community. Some of these trademarks were registered prior to the updated PostgreSQL trademark policy; PGCAC has and continues to work with these organizations to ensure trademark compliance.

          The PostgreSQL Core Team set up the trademark holdings and policies similar to other aspects of the PostgreSQL project. Through decentralization and fair checks and balances, the trademarks are protected from scenarios such as lack of support or a takeover from a hostile entity. Additionally, it is essential that the trademarks are properly used and defended, otherwise there is a risk that they may be deemed invalid or abandoned by the issuing trademark offices.

        • PostgreSQL Weekly News - September 12, 2021

          pg_dumpbinary 2.5, a program used to dump a PostgreSQL database in binary format, released.

          pgBadger v11.6, a PostgreSQL log analyzer and graph tool written in Perl, released.

          [pgagroal 1.3.0, a high-performance protocol-native connection pool for PostgreSQL, released

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • Document searching and indexing export - Part 3

          In the part 1 we looked into indexing XML export, and in the part 2 into rendering a search result as an image. In this part we will glue together both parts with an indexing search engine (Solr) into a full solution for searching and introduce a "proof of concept" application for searching of documents.

          [...]

          Solr has a extensive API for querying/searching, but for our needs we just need a small subset of those. Searching is done by sending a HTTP GET to Solr server. For example with the following URL in browser:

          http://localhost:8983/solr/documents/select?q=content:Lorem*

          "documents" in the URL is the name of the collection (where we put our index data), "q" parameter is the query string, "content" is the field we want to search in (we put the paragraphs text in "content" field) and "Lorem*" is the expression we want to search for.

      • CMS

        • The 11 Best WordPress Plug-Ins for Supercharging Your Website

          WordPress is so much more than a blogging tool. This flexible, easy-to-set-up web publishing platform has served as the foundation for more than 64 million websites since its launch more than a decade ago. Its popularity has spawned an incredibly rich plug-in ecosystem that helps webmasters improve their sites in many ways. From search engine optimization (SEO), to article enhancement, to comments management, you'll find an amazing number of ways to trick out your WordPress installation's base functionality, whether you're hosting your own website or using a managed WordPress hosting service.

        • Acquia buys Widen

          Acquia, the Boston software firm that powers online content for businesses, announced on Wednesday that it has acquired Widen, a company that helps brands manage marketing online. Dries Buytaert, co-founder and chief technology officer of Acquia, said his company has “long been an established leader in managing textual website content.” Now, Acquia is looking to expand into video and audio content, as well as product information management. Acquia was founded in 2007 as a way to commercialize Drupal, an open source content management system also founded by Buytaert. As a “software-as-a-service” company, Acquia makes Drupal — a free product — enticing to paying customers by offering additional products and support services. Businesses use Acquia to build and operate websites, apps, and other digital products. Mike Sullivan, president and CEO of Acquia, wrote in a blog post that the deal is Acquia’s “fourth and largest acquisition in the past two years,” but he did not disclose a purchase price. Sullivan said the company will “immediately invest in accelerated development” of Widen’s technology, which will soon allow Acquia to add videos, charts, PDFs, memes, and social images to content. Wilden is also a leader in product information management, allowing businesses to track metrics such as the size or color of a product, or enhance marketing with digital features such as demonstration videos. Sullivan said about 700 organizations use Widen, including New Balance, Crayola, and sports retailer Fanatics. The two companies already have “numerous joint customers,” according to Buytaert. Acquia raised roughly $200 million before it was bought in 2019 for $1 billion by investment firm Vista Equity Partners, according to Pitchbook. The company has hired 500 people so far this year and has plans to “continue this rapid pace,” Sullivan said. — ANISSA GARDIZY

      • FSFE

        • Demand for transparent CovPass apps in EU +++ Dutch gain Router Freedom

          In our August-September Newsletter, we celebrate the right of using a custom router in the Netherlands. We explain why every app that tackles the spread of Covid-19 has to be Free Software. We share the news of our vibrant community, following up what happened in the summertime and what lies ahead of us.

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • GDB 11.1 released!
                        GDB 11.1 released!
            
            

            Release 11.1 of GDB, the GNU Debugger, is now available. GDB is a source-level debugger for Ada, C, C++, Fortran, Go, Rust, and many other languages. GDB can target (i.e., debug programs running on) more than a dozen different processor architectures, and GDB itself can run on most popular GNU/Linux, Unix and Microsoft Windows variants. GDB is free (libre) software.

            You can download GDB from the GNU FTP server in the directory:

            ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gdb

            The vital stats:

            Size md5sum Name 22MiB 257cb0f67927f79acf636d8c01e19990 gdb-11.1.tar.xz 37MiB eb6596d83bdccea06caa6d49d923e119 gdb-11.1.tar.gz

            There is a web page for GDB at:

            https://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/

            That page includes information about GDB mailing lists (an announcement mailing list, developers discussion lists, etc.), details on how to access GDB's source repository, locations for development snapshots, preformatted documentation, and links to related information around the net. We will put errata notes and host-specific tips for this release on-line as any problems come up. All mailing lists archives are also browsable via the web.

      • Public Services/Government

        • Open source matters, and it's about more than just free software

          Open-source software is not only a global pool of free code available for creative programmers to build upon: take it to the geo-political level, and it is also a tool that countries can leverage to achieve independence from the growing monopoly of foreign tech giants.

          That's according to a new report commissioned by the EU and carried out by non-profit organization OpenForum Europe, which found that the impact that open source could have on the bloc's digital independence is such that the technology can be seen as a "public good".

      • Programming/Development

        • Joachim Breitner: A Candid explainer: Language integration

          Now for something completely different: How does Candid interact with the various host languages, i.e. the actual programming languages that you write your services and clients in?

        • Introduction to the QML CMake API

          When Qt 6 migrated to CMake, we also wanted to provide a nicer experience for setting up QML projects. With the initial Qt 6.0 release, we did however only provide some tech preview API, which did not do much more than what was available in qmake since Qt 5.15.

        • Translation Sadness

          Qt comes with translations for many things; applications can organize their translations into catalogs. To display a text, Qt applications will typically use the tr() function to look up a source-text and return a translation in the current language. For instance, tr("OK") will return the translation of “OK”.

          Translations have a context, which in the case of a naive call to tr() is generally the class name performing the call. This gives the translations at least the opportunity to change the way “OK” is translated in the context of classes MyFancyWidget or MyAwkwardDialog.

          So a catalog will basically be a table, helping to look up string in context to produce a translation.

          [...]

          My remaining sadness is that Qt is almost there, and documentation says that it should all work, and that in the end I need to pull off some stupid hack to provide the right display of a 2-character string (2 glyphs in Simplified Chinese, 5 in Turkish). At least it’s documented, and the next time someone files an issue that there’s a missing translation I have a handle on what kind of code to add.

        • opensource.com: What was your first programming language?

          My first ever programming language was BASIC in the early eighties. One of my relatives bought a C64 for their kids to get started with learning computers. They only used it for gaming, and I was also invited. But they also had a book about BASIC, and I was curious and gave it a try. I wrote some short code, I did not even know how to save it, but it was exciting to see that the computer does what I say to it. This means that I was not paid to learn it, and it was not my choice. It was the language available to me. Obviously, when I got my first computer a few years later, an XT compatible box, I first wrote some code in GW-BASIC, the dialect of BASIC available with DOS.

        • Programming languages: Python is on the verge of another big step forward

          Tiobe, a software testing company, bases its rankings on searches for programming languages on popular websites and search engines. The Tiobe index is updated monthly, and it doesn't align with other language popularity rankings. For example, the electrical engineering magazine IEEE Spectrum has ranked Python as the most popular language since at least 2020, followed by Java, C, and JavaScript, while developer analyst RedMonk has JavaScript in top place, followed by Python and Java, and places C at tenth.

        • Perl/Raku

          • Rakudo Weekly News: 2021.37 Receding

            This week not a lot happened, so it seemed. It feels a bit like the waters receding from the beach, just minutes before the tsunami is going to hit.

  • Leftovers

    • Science

    • Health/Nutrition

      • Stephen Michael Kellat: Mid-September Seasonal Update

        The situation locally is starting to get a bit out of control. It is very hard to conduct a political campaign with the coronavirus situation in our local hospitals getting bad to the point that we are seeing overload intensive care units in one part of the state. The arguments over the use of the law to deal with the pandemic are simply overwhelming.

      • Tea Party Patriots Are Behind Pro-Trump Doctors Grifting Off of Fake Covid Cures – Sludge

        Documents obtained by CMD show that the Tea Party Patriots Foundation was the fiscal sponsor of the organization behind America's Frontline Doctors, which spread lies about Covid-19 and is scamming customers looking for vaccine alternatives.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Pseudo-Open Source

        • Security

          • Disclosing CVE-2021-40823 and CVE-2021-40824: E2EE vulnerability in multiple Matrix clients
          • CISA's Annual National Cybersecurity Summit
          • Linux Implementation of Cobalt Strike Beacon Targeting Organizations Worldwide

            The as-yet undetected version of the penetration testing tool — codenamed "Vermilion Strike" — marks one of the rare Linux ports, which has been traditionally a Windows-based red team tool heavily repurposed by adversaries to mount an array of targeted attacks. Cobalt Strike bills itself as a "threat emulation software," with Beacon being the payload engineered to model an advanced actor and duplicate their post-exploitation actions.

          • Security updates for Monday

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (qemu and thunderbird), Fedora (chromium, firefox, and mosquitto), openSUSE (apache2-mod_auth_openidc, gifsicle, openssl-1_1, php7-pear, and wireshark), Oracle (oswatcher), Red Hat (cyrus-imapd, firefox, and thunderbird), SUSE (apache2-mod_auth_openidc, compat-openssl098, php7-pear, and wireshark), and Ubuntu (git and linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-dell300x, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-snapdragon).

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Pegasus Scandal: it's been two months with no investigation! #SaveOurPrivacy

              In light of the revelations related to NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware made in July 2021, the Government of West Bengal has instituted a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the issue. Responding to the Public Notice calling for statements, we have sent across a submission to the Commission.

            • Ireland fails to enforce EU law against Big Tech [Ed: When Ireland is so complicity in tax evasion by a company like Microsoft will it bother investigating its privacy crimes?]
            • The State of Consumer Data Privacy Laws in the US (And Why It Matters)

              With more of the things people buy being internet-connected, more of our reviews and recommendations at Wirecutter are including lengthy sections detailing the privacy and security features of such products, everything from smart thermostats to fitness trackers. As the data these devices collect is sold and shared—and hacked—deciding what risks you’re comfortable with is a necessary part of making an informed choice. And those risks vary widely, in part because there’s no single, comprehensive federal law regulating how most companies collect, store, or share customer data.

              Most of the data economy underpinning common products and services is invisible to shoppers. As your data gets passed around between countless third parties, there aren’t just more companies profiting from your data, but also more possibilities for your data to be leaked or breached in a way that causes real harm. In just the past year, we’ve seen a news outlet use pseudonymous app data, allegedly leaked from an advertiser associated with the dating app Grindr, to out a priest. We’ve read about the US government buying location data from a prayer app. Researchers have found opioid-addiction treatment apps sharing sensitive data. And T-Mobile recently suffered a data breach that affected at least 40 million people, some who had never even had a T-Mobile account.

            • Apple delays plans to scan iPhones for child abuse [Ed: Loaded headline. It's not about children. They hash and scan all files. In due course the scope would expand.]


            • Confidentiality

              • Overengineering A Smart Doorbell [Ed: Let doorbells be doorbells, quit trying to make them "smart" (which usually enables spying on non-consenting parties)]

                Fresh from the mediaeval splendour of the Belgian city of Gent, we bring you more from the Newline hacker conference organised by Hackerspace Gent. [Victor Sonck] works at the top of his house, and thus needed a doorbell notifier. His solution was unexpected, and as he admits over engineered, using machine learning on an audio stream from a microphone to detect the doorbell’s sound.

              • IoT Devices See More Than 1.5bn Cyberattacks so Far This Year [Ed: 'Smart'. Or "Kaspersky" 'security' trying to sell more of its dodgy software/malware with inflated numbers, conflating attempts with breach]

                Kaspersky research showed that Internet of Things devices are more vulnerable than ever with attacks increasing by more than 100%.

              • Lincoln Laboratory honored for transfer of security-enhancing technologies [Ed: When MIT isn't busy protecting and covering up for high-profile pedophiles it's attacking people's privacy, framing that as "security"]

                The first technology, Forensic Video Exploitation and Analysis (FOVEA), is a suite of analytic tools that makes it significantly easier for investigators to review surveillance video footage. The second technology, Keylime, is a software architecture designed to increase the security and privacy of data and services in the cloud. Both technologies have transitioned to commercial use via license or open-source access.

              • Digital exposure tools: Design for privacy, efficacy, and equity

                Use of smartphone-based digital contact- tracing apps has shown promise in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. But such apps can reveal very personal information; thus, their use raises important societal questions, not just during the current pandemic but as we learn and prepare for other inevitable outbreaks ahead. Can privacy-protective versions of such apps work? Are they efficacious? Because the apps influence who is notified of exposure and who gets tested—and possibly treated—we need to consider the apps in the context of health care equity. Exposure-notification apps are predicated on the assumption that if someone is informed of exposure, they will follow instructions to isolate. Such an expectation fails to take into account that isolation—and sometimes even seeking care when ill—is much harder for some populations than others. If apps are to work for all, and not make this worse for disadvantaged populations, there needs to be basic social infrastructure that supports testing, contact tracing, and isolation. When severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) reached Singapore in spring 2020, the nation instituted a centralized contact-tracing app in which identifiers linked to the user were shared with nearby phones running the app. If a person was diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2, the collected identifiers would be communicated to the Ministry of Health, which would use them to do contact tracing (1). Such proximity information—who is near whom for how long—is very revelatory. It can expose a journalist’s source or the existence of an extramarital affair. Singapore had originally committed to the data being used solely for tracking SARS-CoV-2 exposures, but in January 2021, the government changed its policy, permitting the use of app data in criminal investigations.

              • Tamil Nadu announces Health ID for people, experts urge caution

                Be it government or private entities, whenever public data is collected it is vulnerable to breach and raise privacy concerns, says the President of Free Software Foundation Tamil Nadu (FSFTN).

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Voices from Tigray: ongoing internet shutdown tearing families, communities, businesses apart

        Since the start of the Tigray conflict in November 2020, warring parties in Ethiopia have used internet and telecommunication shutdowns as a weapon to control and censor information. The Tigray region has been in the dark for over 300 consecutive days, with both broadband and mobile internet shut off.

        This region-wide blackout is not only making it difficult for journalists and human rights defenders to document and uncover heinous crimes against civilians — including mass rape and sexual violence, mass murder, and abuse of refugees committed by Ethiopian and Eritrean troops and the Amhara militia — but it’s also tearing families, communities, and businesses apart during already challenging times.

        First-hand stories from those impacted by the current shutdown in Tigray, gathered through Access Now’s Shutdown Stories Project, highlight how the blackout is making it extremely hard for people to connect with their families, sustain their livelihoods, and maintain their mental health. Below we share survivors’ stories, and provide insight as to how you can support our global #KeepItOn campaign in the fight against internet shutdowns. For safety reasons, contributors in this blog post are identified by their first names or pseudonyms, while some are anonymous.

    • Environment

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • He founded the Internet Archive with a utopian vision. That hasn't changed, but the internet has

        Inside his library, Brewster Kahle is dancing. He smiles as he sways on the spot, an antique Victrola filling the foyer of the building, a former church, with the scratchy jazz tunes of yesteryear.

        He lifts the needle and the music stops, but just for now. Soon his staff will convert the aging record to a string of ones and zeroes that will live forever in cyberspace. This is the Internet Archive, and that is why Kahle, and it, are here: To make available for free, online, every bit of digital or physical information that exists.

        To walk with Kahle through his columned temple of knowledge in San Francisco’s Richmond District is to understand the scale of what he and his staff, which now numbers more than 100, have been hard at work for almost 25 years. In a loading area stacks of donated books await their turn on a specialized scanning machine where, shrouded behind a black curtain, a technician painstakingly copies endless pages.

      • Bipartisan Social Media Platform Developed By Students Launch Beta Version - Grit Daily News

        Perspective, a new bipartisan social media platform designed to promote bipartisan conversation, has launched its early beta version.

        The platform was envisioned by Samuel W. Wolfson High students, a high school in Jacksonville, to change how individuals with different political views engage in online conversations. Perspective has already assembled a team of experienced software developers, mentors, and a board of directors.

    • Monopolies

      • FOSS Patents: App developers must know that any alleged ambiguity in the Epic Games v. Apple injunction favors Apple, not them: there won't be IAP alternatives, not even in WebView

        This is a follow-up to my previous post on this topic: "No, the Epic v. Apple injunction absolutely positively DOESN'T allow developers to incorporate 'buttons' for alternative IN-APP payment mechanisms".

        The original version of that post said Daring Fireball's John Gruber was "right for the wrong reasons." He did state reasons on Twitter that didn't convince me because it sounded like Apple's app review practices were going to inform the interpretation of the Epic v. Apple injunction. But John also referred at some point to Apple telling him that the ruling is unambiguous, such as in this tweet, though I disagree with the pages referenced there as that's the Sherman Act--not California UCL--analysis.

        It's regrettable (to put it mildly) that The Verge's Nilay Patel just keeps digging himself an ever bigger hole instead of acting responsibly and admitting his error. The man is actually a lawyer by training (and journalist by vocation), so it shouldn't be hard for him to figure out that his analysis was fundamentally flawed because he focused myopically on the wording of the injunction while ignoring the underlying Rule 52 order.

        [...]

        I am a developer, and a complainant against Apple in another App Store context. I wish I had better news for the wider developer community. But someone has to counter all that disinformation out there. It hurts me to see people fantasizing and theorizing about out-of-this-world crap that's simply not going to help anyone.

      • Conference Report: UIC Law Thinking Internationally about IP and ADR - What Every Lawyer & Corporate Counsel Should Know [Ed: IPOS and WIPO (now run by IPOS person) misuse propaganda terms like "IP"]

        Back on August 19, 2021, the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law’s Center for Intellectual Property (“IP”), Information, and Privacy Law, the IP Office of Singapore (IPOS), and the World IP Organization’s (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Center co-organized a seminar on the intersection of intellectual property and alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”) from a global perspective.

        [...]

        One option available to courts is to explicitly and strongly encourage mediation. Another is to consider the strategic value of court opinions. For example, Judge Holderman recounted his overseeing the In re Innovatio IP Ventures, LLC Patent Litigation. Specifically, the parties moved for partial summary judgment on essentiality, which allowed the parties to pursue mediation presuming for the sake of mediation both validity and infringement. Had Judge Holderman ruled on either validity or infringement, it would have taken a significantly longer time and would have all but decided the case one way or the other. Instead, the parties were able to set the mediation stage and tailor a unique resolution to the facts and industry.

      • Patents

        • Challenges and Issues in Promoting 'Eco-Patenting: A Techno-Legal Weapon to Mitigate Climate Change' [Ed: This is greenwashing; patents won't tackle climate change but exacerbate it by issuing monopolies on potential solutions, limiting their adoption]

          This paper aims to analyze the matter concerning the challenges and issues in promoting “Eco-Patenting: A techno-legal weapon to mitigate climate change”. The paper broadly covers and attempts to answer the prominent questions like, what encourages green technology transfer? What is the impact of green technology on climate change? Does IP law inhibit technology transfer? What role do patents play in encouraging green technology innovation? How can compulsory licensing be used in green technology? Further, it also discusses the requirement of the de-blocking provisions and the generous experimental use clause in patent laws for encouraging improvements and know-how transfer in green technology. Furthermore, the paper elaborates on the importance of invoking compulsory licensing provisions in developing countries for ESTs in light of public health and welfare. Also, the paper mentions the use of the proposed “modified” international exhaustion principle to maintain a balance between the interest of innovators and public needs. The author proposes to build an environment in developing countries like India that can resolve the issues of climate change using the model of Eco-patenting without prejudicing the rights and interests of innovators. [enter Abstract Body]

        • Tesla obtains patent on its wild idea to use lasers as windshield wipers

          Tesla has actually managed to obtain a patent on its wild idea to use lasers to clean debris off of vehicles.

          We are basically talking about using laser beams as windshield wipers.

          About two years ago, we reported on Tesla working on a technology to use laser beams to automatically clean debris off cars.

          We discovered the idea through a patent application filed by the company.

        • China Patent Linkage System [Ed: Linking a bunch of very low-quality patents will make jobs for unproductive people without improving anything in society]

          Starting in July of this year, China initiated a patent registration platform that bears some similarity to the generic drug framework under the Hatch-Waxman Act in the U.S. The purpose of this alert is to describe this new Patent Linkage System in China and to compare it to the corresponding generic drug framework in the U.S.

        • Patent Office ‘in Neutral’ as It Awaits Biden’s Pick to Lead It

          The lack of a permanent U.S. Patent and Trademark Office director has left attorneys guessing about how the agency will tackle some high-profile policy questions.

          The patent office has been grappling with issues such as review of Patent and Trial Appeal Board decisions and how its examiners should determine if certain inventions are eligible for patents. Progress on those issues is largely stalled until a new director is in place.

          It’s a waiting game for attorneys because the agency official temporarily performing the director’s duties, Drew Hirshfeld, isn’t setting policy in some areas while the office awaits a U.S. Senate-confirmed director.

          “Everything has been kept in neutral and just cruising along,” said Joseph Matal, a Haynes and Boone LLP partner who temporarily led the agency early in the Trump administration. “It’s surprising that we’ve all had to wait that long, but I don’t see the agency’s interim leadership as having any choice.”

        • Arbutus rises 15% on Apparent Patent Fight Win with Moderna [Ed: While millions of people die these greedy companies fight over patents]
        • Stealth BioTherapeutics Strengthens IP Portfolio with Issuance of U.S. Patents Covering Elamipretide for Barth Syndrome
        • A Million Inventions Lost: Abandoned Provisional Applications [Ed: Dennis Crouch is funded by the patent litigation industry, so he's promoting the same old lies that each patent is an invention and there are millions of inventions. Cheap scholarly facade for overzealous lawyers.]

          US provisional patent applications continue to be popular, with about 170,000 filed each year since 2013. After filing a provisional, the applicant then has one-year to move the case to a non-provisional or PCT application, and eventually toward patent issuance.

          [...]

          There is a good amount of talk about patent grant rate — what percentage of patent applications eventually end up as issued patents. In general though, I have never seen any grant rate calculation take these abandonment numbers into account.

        • License CRISPR patents for free toshare gene editing globally [Ed: Those patents ought not exist in the first place; do not license them, abolish them instead (life and nature are not inventions)]

          Universities hold the majority of CRISPR patents. They are in a strong position to ensure that the technology is widely shared for education and research.

        • The Hit Parade of Patent Infringement Damages in Europe: France is Great (Again) [Ed: Team UPC is cheering for patent litigation in France]

          My eminent colleague Pierre Véron, who needs no introduction here, is the author of a recent survey on the ranking of European jurisdictions in terms of damages awarded over the period 2000-2019 [1]The full version was published in English in Festschrift for President Meier-Beck in the journal GRUR (GRUR 2/2021)., which particularly caught my attention and of which I will make a brief summary in my own way here.

          First and foremost, I would like to thank Pierre Véron, for such great work of course, but also for giving me permission to report its results, while entrusting me with the accompanying graphics, so that I can reproduce some of them here.

          I must admit that the results of the study may be surprising, since they are so at odds with the idea that we generally have of European Courts. To me it seems, more especially, to complete the interviews Part I and Part II of French Judges that we had recently carried out, to undo certain untruths about the French system. Thus, I will deliberately adopt a “French bias” hereafter (which some will not fail to criticize); but after all I will just assume my role of French referent of the Blog.

      • Trademarks

      • Copyrights

        • China Aims to Amend E-Commerce Law With Heightened Ramifications for Counterfeit Sales - The Fashion Law

          China regulators are looking to bolster its e-commerce law amid a larger crackdown on big tech. On Tuesday, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation released a draft version to amend the national e-commerce law, subject to a period of public comment, which includes new penalties for e-commerce operators, such as Alibaba and JD.com should they fail to address intellectual property violations on their platforms, adding the potential revocation of companies’ business licenses to the existing ability of the SAMR to slap bad actors with steep fines.

          In addition to having the authority to levy monetary penalties of up to 2 million yuan ($309,400) on service providers that are found to have engaged in “less serious” intellectual property infringements, the proposed new rules seek to bolster the ramifications of wrongdoing by revoking the necessary licenses “if the platforms fail to take necessary measures against vendors who infringe intellectual property rights,” and also by extending the window of time that “an individual merchant’s business can be restricted while infringement claims are settled” to 20 business days, Reuters reports. Currently, the time frame is 15 business days.

        • Around the IP Blogs

          The CREATe blog continued with posts from their 21 for 2021 project. In this series, the blog's authors offer answers to 21 topical copyright questions for the 21st century. Last week’s post is dedicated to performers’ rights. It reviews the basic issues on the topic, then elaborates on the importance of performers’ rights for creative industries and the main debates and developments in the area.

        • Copyright Evidence Portal: Introducing the 21 for 2021 Project [Ed: Make copyright law more lenient for sharing and reciprocity to crush monopolies that "lobby" (bribe) 'our' politicians]

          The question of what should count as evidence for the purposes of public policy has been at the heart of CREATe’s work since we were established in 2012 (as the “Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy”, funded by three research councils AHRC, EPSRC and ESRC).

        • Literacy Platform Simbi Adopts the Annual Copyright License for Curriculum & Instruction From CCC

          CCC, a leader in advancing copyright, accelerating knowledge, and powering innovation, announces Simbi, the Canada-based reading platform for kids, has adopted the Annual Copyright License for Curriculum & Instruction to streamline their permissions process in using copyrighted content.



Recent Techrights' Posts

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