Summary: Some comments on the current situation at the European Patent Office from Goran Gerasimovski, the new EPO Administrative Council delegate for North Macedonia and Social Democratic candidate for mayor of Centar (a municipality of Skopje)
Summary: António Campinos visits OSIM Director-General Ionel Muscalu in February 2014
EPO President
Summary: Later today we shall see what Romania did for Battistelli
A Quick overview of Ubuntu Kylin 21.10.
Losing your access to your user account on Linux can be really frustrating but luckily resetting that lost password is actually incredibly easy but the process slightly changes depending on the bootloader you’re using at least for the easy approach
So the normal Sunday release was spoiled by me spending more time in
airplanes without wifi, and I didn't feel like doing an evening
release while tired, so here we are, midday Monday, and with tc7 a day
later than usual.
But the delay isn't because of any kernel trouble. In fact, the worry
I had last week about a big rc6 turned out to be just a false alarm
due to timing of pulls, and rc7 looks nice and small, right in the
range of normal. Both the number of commits and the diffstat looks
fine. It's all pretty small and flat (meaning mostly small trivial
changes) with just a couple of peaks for some x86 kvm code, and some
ksmbd changes.
Nothing particularly interesting or scary stands out, and it's a
fairly eclectic mix with networking, kvm, selftests, and some core mm
stuff. With all the usual random small fixes. The appended shortlog
isn't too long to scan to get a feel for the details, but I think the
take-way here is that it all looks pretty normal, and if nothing
special happens this week, this is likely the last rc before final
5.15.
But please do give it a good testing to make sure we've shaken out any
issues. I have yet more travel coming up next week, so it would be
very convenient for me to delay the merge window if I get the excuse
to do so, but right now that looks unlikely.
Linus
The 5.15-rc7 kernel prepatch is out, rather later than would have normally been expected due to Linus’s travel schedule.
Just one week ago Linux block subsystem maintainer Jens Axboe was optimizing the kernel to get 8 million IOPS on a single CPU core. He progressed the week hitting around ~8.9M IOPS per-core and began to think he was hitting the hardware limits and running out of possible optimizations. However, this week he is kicking things off by managing to hit 10 million IOPS!
Markdown is developers’ favorite text writing language. It is so clean, simple and minimal and allows developers to focus only on the writing process itself, rather than the writing syntax or other trivial issues.
That’s why, it is essential that you use a minimal, distraction-free and clean markdown editor to write or edit your markdown files, so that you can find comfort in your long writing sessions (E.g for documentation or similar). Luckily, many open source markdown editors exist for all types of users and their use cases.
Today we’ll be seeing Mark Text; a minimal open source application for writing markdown documents.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Cinnamon on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Cinnamon is the default desktop environment of the Linux Mint distribution which offers advanced features and a traditional user experience. Cinnamon is also available as an optional desktop for other Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, OpenSUSE, etc.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the Cinnamon desktop environment on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).
In this tutorial, you will learn how to run Nexus repository behind Nginx reverse proxy. Nginx can be configure to proxy HTTP requests. In this setup, Nginx receives requests and passes it onto specified proxied server, fetches the response, and sends it back to the client.
Today we are looking at how to install Friday Night Funkin: Neo on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.
Buttercup is an advanced, open-source password vault. It encrypts your passwords with AES 256bit cryptography to keep them safe. If you’re tired of proprietary password solutions on Linux and want something open-source, you’ll love this guide.
In this tutorial, we’ll go over how to install Buttercup on Linux. We’ll also show you how to set up your password vault and generate a secure password.
Note: Buttercup is also available for iOS and Android in their respective app stores.
YouTube Music is an excellent service. But, sadly, there is no official client for Linux users to enjoy the service. Thankfully, the community has taken it upon itself to create an unofficial YouTube Music app. Here’s how to use it on your system.
AuthPass is an open-source password manager for Android, iOS, Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. It is secure and a great way to save your passwords and sensitive information. In this guide, we’ll show you how to set up AuthPass on Linux and how to use it too.
In this video, we are looking at how to install Zoom on Elementary OS 6.0.
RabbitMQ is a free, open-source and one of the most popular message broker software. It supports multiple messaging protocols and uses plugins to communicate with popular messaging solutions like MQTT. A message broker is an application that stores messages for an application. Whenever an application wants to send data to another application, the app publishes the message onto the message broker. RabbitMQ can be deployed in distributed configurations to meet high-scale, high-availability requirements.
In this post, we will show you how to install and configure RabbitMQ message broker software on Debian 11.
An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) provides the information required to launch an instance. An EC2 instance can not be launched without an AMI. We can create as many instances as we want from a single AMI when we need multiple instances with the same configuration. To create an instance we can use readily available AMI or we can create our own AMI.
To create a custom AMI we need to first launch an instance using one of the available AMIs, make the required configuration on the instance and then use that instance to create an AMI. Instances launched from this new custom AMI include the customizations that we made when we created the AMI. We can create AMIs from either running or stopped instances.
Once we create an AMI, we can either keep it private so that only we can use it, or we can share it with a specified list of AWS accounts. We can also make our custom AMI public so that the community can use it.
When you take a look at the state of Linux gaming as it was just a decade ago, and then look at it again today, the differences are almost staggering. More developers have jumped on board with native builds, while many others have ensured (or maybe not) that their titles run fine through Proton. We’re at a point now where even if a newly-launched game requires Windows, it may very well work for Linux on day one.
Whenever we think about the current state of Linux gaming, we can’t help but be reminded of our fifteen-year-old article taking a look at the top ten free Linux games. Admittedly, we had to try hard to come up with a worthwhile ten titles to promote, because developer support back then just wasn’t what it is today. Things have certainly changed, and because of that, just how seriously Linux users take gaming has become all the more evident.
Reddit user koderski, with the tag @KoderaSoftware, has provided a detailed post on bug reports. They found that even though only 5.8 per cent of sales of their game, DeltaV: Rings of Saturn, were Linux users, over 38 per cent of bug reports came from them.
They did the maths and determined that they received an average of one bug report for every 11.5 users. However, they got one report per 1.75 Linux users. They also state that only three of the bug reports were for Linux specific issues and that the rest of the bugs were affecting every player.
They said, “the thing is, the Linux community is exceptionally well trained in reporting bugs. That is just the open-source way. This 5.8 per cent of players found 38 per cent of all the bugs that affected everyone. Just like having your own 700-person strong QA team. That was not 3 per cent extra work for me, that was just free QA.”
Let’s welcome Latte Dock v0.10.3 the 3rd Official Bug Fix Release of v0.10.x branch!
With Latte 0.10.3 indicators gained the ability to specify the background corner margin. This is totally on indicator responsibility to expose or adjust properly and that is the case for Latte and Plasma Indicators that expose it from their settings. With this setting the user is now able to move tasks and applets inside the corner of backgrounds with very big roundness.
Ubuntu 21.10 brings the all-new PHP 8 and GCC 11 including full support for static analysis, greatly improving everyday developer security awareness in low-level programming.
With Gnome 40 desktop users gain dynamic workspaces and touchpad gestures. The new Firefox snap, published by Mozilla, improves security and guarantees access to both the latest and the extended support release versions of the browser. The exact same versions of the browser are available on multiple different versions of Ubuntu, simplifying enterprise developer platform management. Over the last year, the number of snaps published in the store has grown by 25%, and the snap store now serves over 10 million systems daily.
Windows developers will be delighted with out-of-the-box support for graphical applications on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which enables users to enjoy Ubuntu desktop applications without modification.
Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 706 for the week of October 17 – 23, 2021.
BrainChip has launched two “Akida Development Kits” for its self-learning, low-power “Akida NSoC” neural networking chip for edge AI. One uses the Raspberry Pi CM4 and the other a Comet Lake-S based Shuttle PC system.
BrainChip Holdings has opened pre-orders for two development kits that showcase its Akida neural networking processor (Akida NSoC). The Linux-driven, $4,995 Akida Development Kit — Raspberry Pi and Linux and Win 10 compatible $9,995 Akida Development Kit — Shuttle PC implement the Akida NSoC via a mini-PCIe module equipped with BrainChip’s AKD1000 silicon.
To pull this off, [Andy] uses a camera with a fisheye lens aimed up towards the ceiling, and the video is processed on a Raspberry Pi 3.
You could argue that the project to add a round screen to a Raspberry Pi from [YamS1] isn’t strictly necessary. After all, you could use a square display with a mask around it, giving up some screen real estate for aesthetics. However, you’d still have a square shape around the screen and there’s something eye-catching about a small round screen for a watch, an indicator, or — as in this project — a talking head.
The inspiration for the project was a quote from a Google quote about teaching a monkey to recite Shakespeare. A 3D printed monkey with a video head would be hard to do well with a rectangular screen, you have to admit. Possible with a little artistry, we are sure, but the round head effect is hard to beat. Honestly, it looks more like an ape to us, but we aren’t primate experts and we think most people would get the idea.
Gamifying exercise allows people to become more motivated and participate more often in physical activities while also being distracted by doing something fun at the same time. This inspired a team of students from the Handong Global University in Pohang, South Korea to come up with a system, dubbed “Move!,” that uses a microcontroller to detect various gestures and perform certain actions in mobile games accordingly.
They started by collecting many different gesture samples from a Nano 33 BLE Sense, which is worn by a person on their wrist. This data was then used to train a TensorFlow Lite model that classifies the gesture and sends it via Bluetooth to the host phone running the app. Currently, the team’s mobile app contains three games that a player can choose from.
What makes a great team? One important factor is that you have a balanced set of skills and personalities in the team. A team which only consists of leaders won’t get much work done. A team which only consists of workers will not work into the right direction. So how can you identify the right balance and combination of people?
One answer is the Team Member Profile Test. It’s a set of questions which team members answer. They are evaluated to give a result indicating which type of team member the person is and where it lies in the spectrum of possible types.
Oleksandr Kyriukhin has released the 2021.10 version of the Rakudo Compiler, which includes all of the work of the new MoarVM dispatch mechanism. This is the culmination of more than 1.5 year work by many people, but mostly by Jonathan Worthington. A historic step forward that lays the groundwork on more efficient executing of Raku programs, and actually delivers on a number of improvements.
When we need to search for anything using shell commands then we need to define a pattern for searching. Wildcard characters are used to define the pattern for searching or matching text on string data in the bash shell. Another common use of wildcard characters is to create regular expressions. How you can use different types of wildcard characters for searching files is shown in this tutorial.
Most of the users like to use shortcuts for running commands. There are many commands in Ubuntu that we need to execute regularly. It will be very helpful for us if we can run those common commands by typing shortcut commands. Using bash aliases, Ubuntu users can easily create shortcut commands of the large commands those are used frequently. Bash aliases not only make the task easier but also save the time of the users. The user can declare alias temporary or permanently. The temporary aliases can be used as long as the session of the user exists. If the user wants to use shortcut commands every time the session starts, then he or she has to create permanent alias by using ~/.bashrc and ~/.bash_profile files. This tutorial shows how you can create and use bash aliases in Ubuntu by using some examples.
Using bash aliases, Ubuntu users can easily create shortcut commands of the large commands those are used frequently. Bash aliases not only make the task easier but also save the time of the users. The user can declare alias temporary or permanently. How to use bash aliases is explained in this article.
When you want to use multiple data using a single variable in any programming language, you have to use array variables. The list of data can be assigned and used using an array variable. Bash is a weakly typed language that does not require defining any data type for declaring the variable. Array declaration in bash is a little bit different from other standard programming languages. Two types of the array can be declared in bash. Numeric array and associative array. If the index of an array is numeric, then it is called a numeric array, and if the index of an array is a string, it is called an associative array. How you can declare a numeric array, associative array, and iterate elements of the array using for loop are described with examples in this tutorial.
Many types of commands are available in bash to show the content of a file. Most commonly used commands are ‘cat’, ‘more’, ‘less’, ‘head’ and ‘tail‘ commands. To read the entire file, ‘cat’, ‘more’, and ‘less‘ commands are used. But when the specific part of the file is required to read then ‘head‘ and ‘tail‘ commands are used to do that task.
‘head‘ command is used to read the file from the beginning and the ‘tail‘ command is used to read the file from the ending. How you can use ‘head‘ and ‘tail‘ commands with different options to read the particular portion of a file is shown in this tutorial.
You can use any existing file or create any new file to test the functions of ‘head‘ and ‘tail‘ commands. Create two text files named products.txt and employee.txt with the following content to show the use of ‘head‘ and ‘tail‘ commands.
You can iterate the sequence of numbers in bash in two ways. One is by using the seq command, and another is by specifying the range in for loop. In the seq command, the sequence starts from one, the number increments by one in each step, and print each number in each line up to the upper limit by default. If the number starts from the upper limit, then it decrements by one in each step. Normally, all numbers are interpreted as a floating-point, but if the sequence starts from an integer, the decimal integers will print. If the seq command can execute successfully, then it returns 0; otherwise, it returns any non-zero number. You can also iterate the sequence of numbers using for loop with range. Both seq command and for loop with range are shown in this tutorial by using examples.
In the seq command, the sequence starts from one, the number increments by one in each step, and print each number in each line up to the upper limit by default. If the seq command can execute successfully, then it returns 0; otherwise, it returns any non-zero number. Two ways to generate the sequence of numbers are shown with examples in this article.
Three types of loops are used in bash programming. While loop is one of them. Like other loops, a while loop is used to do repetitive tasks. This article shows how you can use a while loop in a bash script by using different examples.
just hope that this piece of mistake can at least be properly recycled.
it is time to write Seagate and Intenso angry mails and never buy from them again
this external harddisk (the USB-SATA-Adapter AND the harddisk itself) of the intenso 8tb are of catastrophic quality.
Microsoft discovers that no matter how much control it wants over .NET, an open source foundation is ultimately controlled by its community.
A decade ago, Microsoft declared that it loved open-source. In 2014, the Redmond giant went even further. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, “Microsoft loves Linux.” Few in Linux and open-source circles believed them. Years went by and as Microsoft embraced open-source projects, opened up their patents to Linux developers, and released Windows Subsystem for Linux, some finally bought that Microsoft was no longer open-source’s enemy. As Linux founder Linus Torvalds said, “I completely dismissed all the anti-Microsoft stuff.” Many open-source developers, however, never bought this. They still think of Microsoft as the Evil Empire. And, boy did they get this reinforced when Microsoft removed the forthcoming .NET 6′s Hot Reload feature from its open-source releases.
Ahead of Intel’s inaugural Intel Innovation event taking place virtually later this week, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger published an open letter to an open ecosystem.
In this open ecosystem letter, Gelsinger talks up opennness and choice, adding, “This is why I fundamentally believe in an open source bias, which powers the software-defined infrastructure that transformed the modern data center and ushered in the data-centric era.”
Citizen Lab is reporting that a New York Times journalist was hacked with the NSO Group’s spyware Pegasus, probably by the Saudis.
The world needs to do something about these cyberweapons arms manufacturers. This kind of thing isn’t enough; NSO Group is an Israeli company.
Microsoft has released a blog on NOBELIUM attacks on cloud services and other technologies. CISA urges users and administrators to review [NOBELIUM targeting delegated administrative privileges to facilitate broader attacks] and apply the necessary mitigations.
Add-ons are a powerful way to extend and customize Firefox. At Mozilla, we are committed not only to supporting WebExtensions APIs, but also ensuring the safety and reliability of the ecosystem for the long term.
In early June, we discovered add-ons that were misusing the proxy API, which is used by add-ons to control how Firefox connects to the internet. These add-ons interfered with Firefox in a way that prevented users who had installed them from downloading updates, accessing updated blocklists, and updating remotely configured content.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page are the Lewis and Clark of our generation. Just like the latter were sent by Jefferson (the same) to declare sovereignty over the entire US west coast, Google declared sovereignty over all human knowledge, with its mission statement “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. (It should be noted that Page somewhat questioned that mission but only because it was not ambitious enough, Google having “outgrown” it.)
The Lewis and Clark expedition, just like Google, had a scientific pretext, because that is what you do to colonize a world, presumably. Yet both men were military and had to receive scientific training before they left. The Corps of Discovery was made up of a few dozen enlisted men and a dozen civilians, including York an African American slave owned by Clark and sold after the expedition, with his final fate lost in history.
And just like Lewis and Clark, Google has a strong military component. For example, Google Earth was not originally built at Google but is the acquisition of a company called Keyhole which had ties with the CIA. Those ties were brought inside Google during the acquisition. Google’s increasing investment inside the military-industrial complex eventually led Google to workers organizing a revolt although it is currently unclear to me how much Google is involved in the military apparatus. Other companies, obviously, do not have such reserve, with Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty of others happily bidding on military contracts all the time.
[...]
The Internet is, if not neo-colonial, plain colonial. The US colonies had cotton fields and slaves, we have disposable cell phones and Foxconn workers. Canada has its cultural genocide, Facebook has his own genocides in Ethiopia, Myanmar, and mob violence in India. Apple is at least implicitly accepting the Uyghur genocide. And just like the slaves of the colony, those atrocities are what makes the empire run.
Facebook employees repeatedly sounded the alarm on the company’s failure to curb the spread of posts inciting violence in “at risk” countries like Ethiopia, where a civil war has raged for the past year, internal documents seen by CNN show.
The social media giant ranks Ethiopia in its highest priority tier for countries at risk of conflict, but the documents reveal that Facebook’s moderation efforts were no match for the flood of inflammatory content on its platform.
The documents are among dozens of disclosures made to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and provided to Congress in redacted form by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s legal counsel. A consortium of 17 US news organizations, including CNN, has reviewed the redacted versions received by Congress.
The Intellectual Property and Commercial Court (hereinafter, the “Court”) rendered the judgment 110-Xing-Zhuan-Su-3 on August 19, 2021, holding that the artificial intelligence DABUS shall not be a patent inventor and upholding the decision rendered by the Intellectual Property Office (hereinafter, the “IPO”) which concluded that the invention patent application no. 108140133 entitled “Devices and Methods for Attracting Enhanced Attention” should not be accepted. The arguments rendered in the judgment reasons are provided as follows:
(1) An inventor shall be a natural person: An inventor must be a person who has made a “substantial contribution” to the technical features specified in the patent claims, and the so-called “substantial contribution” refers to the mental creation for the completion of the invention. Therefore, the inventor must be a natural person.
(2) AI is legally not a person: The artificial intelligence DABUS is not a “person” (that is, neither a legal nor a natural person) under the Taiwan law and is unable to externally convey its internal intent (for example, to designate an agent). Therefore, AI should be regarded as an “object” under the Taiwan law.
There’s been a fair amount of discussion regarding Judge Newman’s dissent in last week’s Mobility Workx case. In Mobility Workx, a divided panel of the Federal Circuit rejected a variety of constitutional challenges to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Judges Dyk and Schall, in the majority, found no merit in the due process arguments relating to PTAB fees raised by Mobility Workx (a topic I hope to discuss in more detail at a later date). But they also rejected Mobility Workx’s structural arguments regarding the Appointments Clause and the Administrative Procedure Act with respect to the institution decision.
Judge Newman, in dissent, gave credence to those arguments. In particular, she argues that the Director’s delegation of the institution decision to APJs raises a similar Appointments Clause issue to that addressed in Arthrex. But she does so based on flawed assumptions—in particular, the assumption that, post-Arthrex, the Director cannot review institution decisions by themself.
The seventh meeting of the SACEPO Working Party on Quality (19-21 October), attended virtually by 75 members from across the world, has again shown the EPO’s commitment to both quality and user engagement. The 3-day event involved an external assessment exercise with 24 Stakeholder Quality Assurance Panels (SQAPs). The initiative is part of the goal set out in the Strategic Plan (SP2023) to foster a better shared understanding of quality by comparing the perceptions of users and EPO quality management. The SQAP concept was first tested at the EPO back in October 2019, and the user feedback gathered during the inaugural 2019 panels have directly shaped the Quality Programme of the SP2023. It is the objective of the panels to build a collaborative and shared understanding of, and responsibility for, quality at the EPO.
Counsel discuss Chinese courts’ pause in granting anti-suit injunctions, and what to expect from upcoming global FRAND rate determinations
As the commencement of the Unified Patents Court looms larger, we are turning our thoughts to some of the really practical issues which need to be addressed with a degree of urgency now. We will be looking at the question of “opting out” of the UPC jurisdiction in a sequence of blog posts to follow, but we thought we would start by looking at some of the non-contentious issues which can arise as a result of the coming of the UPC and the Unitary Patent.
In this Court of Appeal decision, the court held: (i) that AI is not a person and cannot be an inventor under the 1977 Patents Act and; (ii) (Birss LJ dissenting) that Dr Thaler failed to comply with the obligations of s13(2)(a) (identifying a person as the inventor) and s13(2)(b) (indicating how the applicant derived the right to be granted a patent) in his patent application by listing DABUS (an artificial intelligence (AI) machine) as the inventor and claiming entitlement to a patent on the basis of ownership of that AI. As a result, the patent application was correctly deemed withdrawn.
Summary: ‘Solderpunk’ is back from a long hiatus; this bodes well for Geminispace, which grew fast in spite of the conspicuous absence
AS we noted 4 days ago, Gemini space had become very important to us. It’s growing very rapidly (it’s hard to correctly estimate the overall size, but crawlers/spiders see almost 4 times as many capsules this year compared to last year). Recently, some people expressed concerns about alleged stagnation or rather a lack of changes to the original specification (not that everything must change or expand over time). Then, some people asked for patience [1, 2], knowing that ‘Solderpunk’ was likely to return some time soon and finalise the specification. As of minutes ago, there is already a proposal to freeze the Gemini specification.
Well, ‘Solderpunk’ probably wants to keep it simple. And he’s back now, having just posted an update with plan for the specification:
Geminauts! Lo, I have returned. And I have come not to bring peace, but the sword. Well, not really. Sorry, couldn't resist a little drama. But I *have* come with a strong resolve to move things forward quickly, decisively, and if necessary unilaterally. I will be putting the "dictator" in BDFL (but not ignoring the "benevolent"). My thoughts are something like this: The never ending discussion (and at times heated argument) that has characterised the efforts to collectively and openly finalise the spec using this mailing list, and the associated risk of leader burnout, now feel to me like they are a larger risk/liability to the project than the prospect of making slightly suboptimal and/or unpopular decisions when wrapping things up relatively quickly and without agonising over every little detail. The sooner the spec is finalised the sooner we can spend more of our time and energy reading and writing Geminispace content. People who aren't interested in spending time and energy doing those things have no place playing a strong role in deciding how to finalise things, anyway. It's clear that any hope of unanimity in the community on exactly what Gemini should look like is long gone. There are too many people coming from too many technical backgrounds for us all to agree on what is necessary and what is extraneous. Anything resembling "design by committee" will likely result in bad compromises leaving everybody unhappy. Better to have decisive leadership with a clear vision. This will leave some unhappy. It's unfortunate, but it's inevitable. Gemini can't be everything to everybody. Despite my total lack of involvement for several months and the lack of any progress on the spec, Geminispace *itself*, which is our real goal, has neither stagnated nor shrunk. It has only gotten better. Awesome things like smol.pub have turned up. All the time there are more and more people setting up little digital homes in Geminispace, who accept and embrace Gemini as it is right now, and many of them are very happy with the status quo. They are writing truly wonderful content, and I have not come across a single thing written there yet which made me think "right now this is merely good, but it could be excellent if only Gemini supported X, Y or Z". And all of this is hosted on diverse servers and compatible with diverse clients, including clients which have not been updated in months. All of this says we have gotten the most important things right or close enough to right already, and there is no risk of catastrophically messing anything up if we simply resolve outstanding technical issues with the minimum possible change. Additional capacities in the gemtext format are not necessary. That's not just, like, my opinion, man, that's an empirical fact. Geminispace is there. It's *exactly* the kind of space I originally envisaged. I will start wrapping stuff up, via changes to what have always been the canonical versions of all relevant documents, hosted at gemini.circumlunar.space, as quickly as I can. I am not going to take the time to justify every single decision against all real or imagined objects in long posts to the mailing list or my gemlog. Maybe I will do this retrospectively some day, but for now I just want to get it done. I will act largely alone in this regard, but I'm not going to completely disregard all external input. A lot of people have put a lot of of time and care into thinking and writing about these issues both on this list and in the git trackers that sprung up once I delegated spec finalisation to Sean. I'm going to read that stuff and I'm going to be be guided by it, and I will reach out to individual people for clarification when I feel it necessary. I am genuinely thankful to all of those people for their efforts and I do not intend to be dismissive of them. If I sound angry and frustrated, I apologise. I mean, to some extent I am, but not at particular people or at the community, I'm angry and frustrated at vague abstract things like human group dynamics and viral internet hype cycles. I continue to care about this project and I care about the community that has formed around it. I acknowledge that I am far from blameless in how this year in Gemini has turned out. I hope the community still has some faith in me, and I hope everyone understands that I'm doing this because I honestly think it's for the best, and not because I want all teh [sic] power. I don't want *any* power! But nobody I know and trust enough to give the power to wants it either, and big formal multi-person decision making is not going to yield good or fast results, so, here we are. I'm not going to have time to do this *and* follow the list closely and reply to any and all questions. But I will make a genuine effort to keep the list informed as I work. Cheers, Solderpunk
As a reminder, Gemini is a new project (it only ‘feels’ old or nybrutalist) and the specification is still work in progress. Regardless, we’re an early adopter and we’re pleased to see how fast Gemini grew this past year. Having the founder back in the game (to do technical work on the specification) is icing on the cake. █
Video download link | md5sum 7e555d7cec749b7500ed9b4dca8103dd
Summary: Bulgarian politics seem to have played a big role in selecting chiefs and delegates who backed Benoît Battistelli‘s unlawful proposals, which treat workers almost like slaves and ordinary citizens as disposable ‘collaterals’
TODAY we published Part 23 of a very long series which will last over a month in total (we publish parts on a daily basis). Part 23 is about Bulgaria, which is better known than most nations in the Balkan region, partly because of its relative size. The above video places emphasis on 6 PDF files, which are preserved here permanently for reference (to accompany the text). These include English translations.
“Research into these matters generally contributes to the perception, back by reasonably good evidence and plausible explanations, that the Bulgarian patent system is very political/politicised and not necessarily focused on technicalities, laws etc.”Bulgarian politics do not receive much media coverage in “the West” (Western Europe, north America) or maybe it’s just neglected by English-speaking media. So it’s important to make such information more widely accessible, also in the language sense.
Research into these matters generally contributes to the perception, back by reasonably good evidence and plausible explanations, that the Bulgarian patent system is very political/politicised and not necessarily focused on technicalities, laws etc. In other words, it’s a lot like today’s EPO, so we can expect Bulgarian delegates to back autocrats and two-faced politicians, including António Campinos the imposter (pretending to be an expert in science without having had any experience). █
Series parts:
Head of the Bulgarian delegation in June 2013: Kamen Veselinov
Summary: Today we examine the role of Bulgaria in Benoît Battistelli‘s liberticidal regime at the EPO (as well as under António Campinos, from 2018 to present) with particular focus on political machinations
In this part the focus is on the Bulgarian delegation, which in June 2013 was headed by Kamen Veselinov, Director-General of the Bulgarian Patent Office (BPO).
Some time after he had played his part in rubber-stamping Battistelli’s “Strike Regulations”, Veselinov was relieved of his position as head of the BPO in March 2014.
“Some time after he had played his part in rubber-stamping Battistelli’s “Strike Regulations”, Veselinov was relieved of his position as head of the BPO in March 2014.”According to a bulletin [PDF] published by ipbulgaria.bg, Veselinov held the position without the required professional experience and under his leadership “the office was brought to a severe crisis” and “as a result of his mismanagement, Bulgaria is on the US Special 301 blacklist”.
Veselinov was replaced by Tanya Naydenova, a graduate in law from the Mikhail Lomonosov Moscow State University who headed the BPO between March and December 2014.
Tanya Naydenova headed the BPO for a brief period between March and December 2014.
But it turned out that Veselinov had only been temporarily ousted. He was reinstated when Boyko Borisov took over as Prime Minister in November 2014.
Veselinov and his political patron, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.
This meant that Veselinov was able to revisit his old buddies on the EPO’s Administrative Council in Munich at the March 2015 meeting and he could rejoin them in rubber-stamping further dubious proposals tabled by Battistelli. He continued to serve as director of the BPO until the summer of 2016 when he retired at the ripe old age of 70.
Temporarily ousted, Veselinov (left) was reinstated after Boyko Borisov came to power towards the end of 2014. He continued to serve as head of the BPO until the summer of 2016 when he was replaced by Petko Nikolov (right), chairman of the national anti-trust authority.
Veselinov’s successor [PDF] as head of the BPO was Petko Nikolov who was born in 1958 in Botevgrad in western Bulgaria. According to the Bulgarian media, Nikolov graduated in law from Sofia University, has a master’s degree in finance from the University of Veliko Tarnovo, as well as a specialization in criminal law from the University of Sofia. He also has a doctorate in economics.
“But it turned out that Veselinov had only been temporarily ousted.”Nikolov initially worked as an attorney until 2001 when he entered politics as a member of the National Movement for Stability and Progress (NDSV), originally known as the “National Movement Simeon II”. The NDSV is a liberal, populist political party created as the personal political vehicle of Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the deposed heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Bulgaria who succeeded in making a post-communist political comeback as Prime Minister between 2001 and 2005.
Nikolov’s first important public sector appointment was as chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Privatization Agency in 2001, under the “Sakskoburggotski government” – or so-called “Tsar’s cabinet” – presided over by Simeon von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. According to media reports, Nikolov obtained his position on the Supervisory Board “as part of the quota of the Simeon II National Movement”.
Petko Nikolov’s original political patron, Simeon von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
In 2003, Nikolov’s career took another leap forward when he was appointed chairman of the Commission for Protection of Competition (CPC), a position which he held for nearly 13 years [PDF], somehow managing to survive six different governments. In the turbulent and unstable world of Bulgarian politics that is no small achievement.
“In 2003, Nikolov’s career took another leap forward when he was appointed chairman of the Commission for Protection of Competition (CPC), a position which he held for nearly 13 years, somehow managing to survive six different governments.”Nikolov’s second term as head of the CPC had officially expired in October 2015 and a legislative amendment earlier that year prevented him from serving a further consecutive term. Nevertheless, due to political wrangling over his successor, he remained in charge of the antitrust authority on a caretaker basis until the summer of 2016.
Before he was replaced at the CPC, rumours began circulating that “out of gratitude for the work done, GERB [the political party of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov] would provide him with a new appetizing position”.
“His previous track record as chairman of the anti-trust authority CPC also came in for criticism.”His subsequent appointment as head of the BPO attracted a lot of critical comment in Bulgaria where it was reported that he had been parachuted into the position directly by Prime Minister Boyko Borisov without an open competition. [PDF]
His previous track record as chairman of the anti-trust authority CPC also came in for criticism. This criticism centred around claims that Nikolov had been more than favourable to the Bulgarian politician, media mogul [PDF], and oligarch Delyan Peevski in resolving cases which affected Peevski’s interests.
Peevski – nicknamed “Shishi” or “Potbelly” in Bulgaria – is a highly controversial figure who was recently sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury which described him in the following terms:
“Delyan Slavchev Peevski (Peevski) is an oligarch who previously served as a Bulgarian MP and media mogul and has regularly engaged in corruption, using influence peddling and bribes to protect himself from public scrutiny and exert control over key institutions and sectors in Bulgarian society.”
Nikolov’s appointment as head of the BPO in 2016 attracted critical comment in Bulgaria.
From left to right: Petko Nikolov, Bulgarian PM Boyko Borisov and oligarch Delyan Peevski.
“Given his political allegiance to the monarchistically flavoured NDSV and his reputed subservience to homegrown oligarchs like Peevski, it’s hardly surprising that when it came to EPO affairs, Nikolov followed in the footsteps of his predecessor Veselinov and turned out to be another uncritical “facilitator” of the tyrant Battistelli and his vicious assault on the rights of EPO staff.”Given his political allegiance to the monarchistically flavoured NDSV and his reputed subservience to homegrown oligarchs like Peevski, it’s hardly surprising that when it came to EPO affairs, Nikolov followed in the footsteps of his predecessor Veselinov and turned out to be another uncritical “facilitator” of the tyrant Battistelli and his vicious assault on the rights of EPO staff.
In return, Battistelli did his best to cultivate the goodwill of his Bulgarian vassals. In November 2017 (warning: epo.org link), he dispatched his faithful lieutenant Raimund Lutz to deputise for him at the 27th Patent Information Conference which took place in Sofia.
From l. to r.: David Sukalinski (BPO), EPO Vice-President Lutz, Ofelia Kirkoryan-Tsonkova (BPO), Petko Nikolov (BPO), and Deputy Minister for Economic Affairs, Lachezar Borosov (November 2017).
In March 2018, as his EPO presidency was drawing to a close, Battistelli paid his respects to his Bulgarian allies by turning up in person as a guest speaker at a conference on “IP” hosted in Sofia (warning: epo.org link) where he met with Nikolov and various government ministers, including the Deputy Minister for Economic Affairs, Lachezar Borisov.
From l. to r.: Battistelli with Lachezar Borisov and Petko Nikolov (March 2018).
More recently, in June 2021, sources in Bulgaria reported that Nikolov had been replaced [PDF] by Vladya Borisova [PDF] following a decision issued by the caretaker government of Stefan Yanev.
“More recently, in June 2021, sources in Bulgaria reported that Nikolov had been replaced by Vladya Borisova following a decision issued by the caretaker government of Stefan Yanev.”No reasons were given for Nikolov’s departure, but it seems that he was “purged” due to his close connections to previous government led by Boyko Borisov. That government had fallen into disfavour and triggered widespread public protests which lasted from July 2020 until April 2021, when Borisov and his cabinet finally resigned at the end of their four-year term.
The new head of the Bulgarian Patent Office, Vladya Borisova.
Prior to her current appointment, the new head of the Bulgarian Patent Office, Vladya Borisova, was a professor at the Institute of Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer (IIPTT) in Sofia.
On its website the IIPTT describes itself as “a unit of the University of National and World Economy for research in the field of intellectual property”.
“Prior to her current appointment, the new head of the Bulgarian Patent Office, Vladya Borisova, was a professor at the Institute of Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer (IIPTT) in Sofia.”The University of National and World Economy (UNWE), which was originally established in 1920 as the Free University of Political and Economic Sciences, claims to be the largest and oldest institute for higher economic studies in Bulgaria and Southeastern Europe. During the communist era it was known as the Karl Marx Higher Institute of Economics and it was given its present post-communist name in 1990.
Bust of former “patron” Karl Marx on the UNWE grounds in Sofia.
It remains to be seen what contribution, if any, Borisova will manage to make to EPO affairs.
Maybe she will surprise us all and make a stand for the rights of EPO staff. But don’t hold your breath on that.
“Maybe she will surprise us all and make a stand for the rights of EPO staff. But don’t hold your breath on that.”In the present era of unfettered globalised capitalism, the subject of workers’ rights seems to be an unfashionable topic of discussion, whether at the UNWE in Sofia or at the EPO in Munich. One wonders what the UNWE’s former “patron” Karl Marx would have made of it all…
In the next part we will turn our attention to the delegation representing Bulgaria’s northern neighbour, Romania. █
The fourth generation of Star Labs’ StarLite Linux laptop series is here, bringing an 11-inch true matte ARC display with an anti-reflective coating and Full HD (1920×1080) resolution, Type II anodized aluminum chassis with a fanless design, a redesigned glass trackpad, a contoured heat plate, and a 2MP webcam.
Under the hood, the StarLite Mk IV laptop features an Intel Pentium Silver N5030 processor with Intel HD graphics and up to 3.1GHz clock speeds, 8GB 2400MHz RAM, as well as up to 1TB SSD storage with up to 560MB/s sequential read speed and 540MB/s sequential write speed.
While Linux 5.15 isn’t even making its debut for another week or two, there is already a lot to look forward to when it comes to Linux 5.16. Here is a look at some of the new features expected for the 5.16 cycle.
Thanks to closely monitoring the many “-next” branches and mailing lists, here is a look at material currently queued and on-deck for Linux 5.16 barring any last minute issues or objections from Linus Torvalds once the 5.16 merge window opens in early November. Of course, stay tuned to Phoronix during the Linux 5.16 merge window for details on other interesting merges and other drama that may ensue followed by benchmarks of the new kernel.
The SIDO is a large event dedicated to IoT, AI, robotics in Paris, and it takes place next to the Open Source Experience event, which as the name suggest is dedicated to all things related to open-source. For Bootlin whose activity is precisely at the junction between embedded systems/IoT and open-source, being present at this combined event made complete sense.The SIDO is a large event dedicated to IoT, AI, robotics in Paris, and it takes place next to the Open Source Experience event, which as the name suggest is dedicated to all things related to open-source. For Bootlin whose activity is precisely at the junction between embedded systems/IoT and open-source, being present at this combined event made complete sense.
A screenshot app is a basic yet important utility that everyone turns out to every once in a while. Although most Linux distros are capable of capturing screenshots by default, having a powerful screenshot app can extend those functionalities even further.
In this article, we will take a look at Shutter, a free and open-source screenshot program for Linux. We will discuss how you can install Shutter on your system, along with a brief guide on using the tool.
Free Unity Hub Editor can easily be downloaded & installed on Ubuntu 20.04 Linux using its APP Image, here we let you know how?
Although Unity Engine supports the Linux system for a very long time now, however the same was not true for the Unity editor, a GUI interface for it. Using Unity Editor developers can create various cross-platform games 2D or 3D content or games with the help of tools it offers for a wide range of devices.
Apart from Windows & macOS, Linux users can also download the Unity editor from the official website in a normal way, performing a similar process to Win or macOS users. Yet, here we are to make sure you won’t get stuck somewhere while starting with Unity Editor on Ubuntu or any other Linux system.
For many people coming for the first time into Debian-based Linux distros, package management may seem convoluted. Some tutorials tell you to use “apt,” others “apt-get,” and some really old or specific ones use “aptitude.” It’s high time to get down to the absolute minutiae and explain the “why, where, what, and how” of the strange and somewhat divided world in this little corner of the Linux universe.
With Windows 11 having been recently released, I decided to refresh my dual-boot video for Ubuntu. In this video, I’ll go over the process of setting up a dual-boot between Windows 11 and Ubuntu, so that way by the end of the video you’ll have both platforms set up and ready to go.
Most users won’t be needing tools like these, but if you’re a bit of a power user, then having the ability to measure the real power consumption rate of your mobile computer (laptop, notebook etc) under Ubuntu Linux can be quite useful.
For instance, let’s say that you recently upgraded your Kernel (a part of your operating system that communicates directly with the hardware), and the developers claimed that it will enhance the power consumption, then after the upgrade, how can you know if it has really decreased the power usage or not?
So if you had some sort of a tool that can measure the power consumption of your laptop, then you can use it before and after the upgrade, and then compare the results later and it should do the trick, right?
Most modern Linux Desktop systems such as Linux Mint come with an Nvidia driver pre-installed in the Nouveau open-source graphics device driver for Nvidia video cards. For the most part, this is acceptable; however, if you are using your Linux system for graphical design or gaming, you may get better drivers.
Historically, the Nouveau proprietary drivers are slower than Nvidia’s proprietary drivers, along with lacking the newest features, software technology, and support for the latest graphics card hardware. In most situations, upgrading your Nvidia Drivers using the following guide is more beneficial than not doing it. In some cases, you may see some substantial improvements overall.
The following tutorial will teach you how to install the latest bleeding-edge Nvidia Beta Graphic drivers for Linux Mint 20.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install a setup NTP server and client on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, NTP (stands for network time protocol) is used to synchronize the system clock of the client system with the clock of the server. The NTP server has features that allow synchronization between two systems with an accuracy of one nanosecond so that the two systems can communicate easily. System time applies not only to the user but also to the computer itself. In fact, time stamps make it easy to communicate between two or more computers and provide network services properly, as well as optimizing the network card.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the configure NTP server and client on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
In this 4-article mobile web development series, we will walk you through setting up Netbeans as an IDE (also known as Integrated Development Environment) in Ubuntu to start developing mobile-friendly and responsive HTML5 web applications.
Keras is an open-source software library that provides a Python interface for artificial neural networks. Keras acts as an interface for the TensorFlow library.
It is a neural network library based on the Python programming language designed to simplify machine-learning applications. Keras runs on top of frameworks such as TensorFlow.
So In this guide, we will show you how to install Keras on Ubuntu systems.
In this guide, we are going to explore how to install Postman Client on Debian 11.
Postman is an application used for API testing. Postman is the Complete API Development Environment with Integrated Tools for Every Stage of the API Lifecycle. It is an HTTP client that provides a graphical user interface through which you can tests HTTP requests while obtain different types of responses. Postman allows us to build, test and modify the API.
Postman can run PUT, PATCH, DELETE, and various other request methods as well, and also has utilities to help with developing APIs. Free and paid versions are available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and also as a Chrome app.
balenaEtcher (commonly referred to and formerly known as Etcher) is a free and open-source utility used for writing image files such as .iso and .img files, as well as zipped folders onto storage media to create live SD cards and USB flash drives.
Etcher is primarily used through a graphical user interface. Additionally, there is a command line interface available which is under active development.
Etcher is a good choice even for those who are not particularly tech-savvy.
balenaEtcher is a free and open-source utility used for writing image files such as .iso and .img files, as well as zipped folders onto storage media to create live SD cards and USB flash drives.
Etcher is primarily used through a graphical user interface. Additionally, there is a command line interface available which is under active development.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Etcher on Ubuntu with two methods.
I have Debian and Ubuntu running on two separate Raspberry Pi 4 8GB. As these are not your usual Raspbian OS, they didn’t come with vcgencmd binaries. Understandably, I received the following error when I tried to measure temperature on my Raspberry Pi 4.
`tr` is a very useful UNIX command. It is used to transform strings or delete characters from the string. Various types of transformation can be done by using this command, such as searching and replacing text, transforming string from uppercase to lowercase or vice versa, removing repeated characters from the string, etc. The command can be used for some complicated transformations also. The different uses of the `tr` command have shown in this tutorial.
Get ready for the punchline! Soupmaster Games announced recently their intent to support Linux with Big Boy Boxing and there’s now a demo available on Steam for you to try out.
“Experience the singleplayer action-boss-rush game with pixel-perfect retro aesthetics and inspiration from classic titles like ‘Punch-Out!!’, and recent indie hits like ‘Cuphead’.
Successfully funded on Kickstarter the horror game throwback Alisa is out after suffering a few minor release delays and so far it’s looking pretty good.
“Alisa is a classic late-90s style horror-themed action adventure game set in a fantasy universe inspired on the 1920s. You play as an Elite Royal Agent called Alisa. While she is chasing a wanted criminal, she ends up in an old Victorian mansion. She tries to find a way out while being haunted by materialized/mechanized doll-like humanoids. Can you survive the Dollhouse?”
I’m not saying the Steam Deck is destined to fail, I’m saying “if it DOES fail, this is how.”
Yes, there’s another Corpse Party that’s now been released. It can be a little confusing, as there’s been a few but this is the latest from XSEED Games titled Corpse Party (2021).
Something of a cult classic that was originally released in 1996, that spawned a few remakes for different platforms and some extra games that mixed in elements of a prequel and sequel. The Windows version landed in 2016, with it then coming to Linux in late 2017.
After more than 2 years of development, the new major Battle for Wesnoth 1.16.0 was finally available to download.
With Wesnoth 1.15.x development releases, it introduced new campaign: Wings of Victory, an Intermediate level Drake campaign with 11 scenarios. A new new single player or coop survival scenario, Isle of Mists is added.
The add-on World Conquest II (now called World Conquest) has translations support. And users now has ability to add translated titles and descriptions to add-ons.
It has overhauled the Dunefolk to improve balance against the six Default factions. Most of the Dunefolk faction’s units have new and-or updated animations. There is also a new unit called falconer, which is a branch in the skirmisher line.
Here’s some news that Linux users and supporters would probably really like. Kodera Software, a game developer for an indie title called ΔV: Rings of Saturn, has posted some interesting findings about bug reporting in the game.
The title has been in early access for a couple of years and the developer has noted that about 38% of all the bugs found in its title came from the Linux Community. This is despite just 700 copies out of the total 12,000 units sold being based on Linux, which is just 5.8% of the entire userbase for ΔV: Rings of Saturn. As such, Kodera praises the typical Linux gamer by saying they report back 650% more bugs.
KDE Developer, Nate Graham, announced last week that KDE Plasma would be receiving fingerprint reader support in the upcoming 5.24 release. The added support has been a work in progress for some time, but Devin Lin (the primary developer on the feature) finally merged it into 5.24.
As of now, the fingerprint reader support will allow you to enroll and unenroll fingerprints. Any enrolled fingerprint can then be used to unlock the screen, provide authentication for an app, and authenticate for sudo usage.
The developers have created a user-friendly GUI for onboarding fingerprints, which can be found in System Settings, but will (obviously) require either a built-in or external fingerprint reader to use. The one caveat is finding an external fingerprint reader that is fully supporte
The team at KDE are producing upgrades for Plasma very quickly, with another weekly update out from developer Nate Graham with some major new bits being hooked up.
In preparation for the next Plasma release, a fingerprint manager has been added so that Plasma will support fingerprint authentication in the next version. This expanded support allows you to use your fingers for passworded operations like using sudo, unlocking the screen and more.
Perhaps the bigger one though is initial support for NVIDIA’s new GBM (Generic Buffer Manager) backend, which arrived in the recent NVIDIA Beta 495.29.05 driver. This means that eventually when it’s stable in NVIDIA drivers, along with a new Plasma release, that KDE should default to it for NVIDIA giving a much improved Wayland session experience. They still have some quirks to work out but it’s getting there now.
Once again time has passed, and another update on Oculus Rift support feels due! As always, it feels like I’ve been busy with work and not found enough time for Rift CV1 hacking. Nevertheless, looking back over the history since I last wrote, there’s quite a lot to tell!
Based on Slackware64-current.
Keeping up with the Slackware 15.0 prep
Large code update arox (the Rox-Filer fork Absolute uses as a file manager/image viewer)
Red Hat Insights is a managed service that continuously analyzes platforms and applications to help enterprises manage hybrid cloud environments. Included with Red Hat subscriptions, Insights uses predictive analytics and deep domain expertise to reduce complex operational tasks from hours to minutes, including identifying security and performance risks, tracking licenses, and managing costs.
The Red Hat Insights team has been developing Advisor recommendations for many years and the focus has been on proactive recommendations to help customers achieve optimal operational experience.
At the same time, we’ve also seen a “gap” between the Advisor recommendations that we’ve provided and other recommendations that could really help our customers but in a different manner. To close this gap, Red Hat Insights now provides a new category of recommendations which are called “Red Hat disabled recommendations.”
AlmaLinux’s community manager Jack Aboutboul announced the ELevate project, which is their initiative to allow users to upgrade or migrate between any RHEL-based distro.
The project includes software and methods for migrating CentOS 7 deployments to AlmaLinux 8 without needing to do a lot of heavy lifting and shifting.
But there’s an even better part. Actually, ELevate capabilities aren’t confined only to CentOS to AlmaLinux moves, but can be used with all migrations between different RHEL-based distributions, such as CentOS 7 to AlmaLinux 8, Rocky Linux 8, or Oracle Linux 8. This will allow maintainers and users alike make migrations smooth and easy.
Automation was already on the strategic roadmap of many organizations, but the last couple of years sped up the journey.
“The reality is that the pandemic required organizations to accelerate digital pivots and rapidly automate their businesses,” says Thomas Phelps, CIO of Laserfiche. “Even people-centric processes that were touted as customer-experience differentiators have now been displaced by chatbots, unattended airline check-in kiosks, and self-service checkout lines.”
IT is both piloting company-wide journeys and undergoing its own internal automation transformation: From help desks to infrastructure operations to software testing and security, multiple tasks and processes that once required manual effort are now or will soon be automated.
While many IBM i shops have a lot of their core applications on that platform, there are lots of shops that deploy Windows Server for adjacent databases and applications and in other cases some shops have AIX or Linux as well. Windows Server doesn’t run on Power iron, of course, which we have always thought was a shame and still is almost two decades since Windows had a brief showing on Power before Microsoft and IBM pulled the plug.
But the important thing, here in 2021, is that customers have alternatives if they need certain applications and they want to run them on Power, which is why AIX and Linux support are important for the health and wealth of the Power Systems platform. With IBM owning Red Hat now, we talk quite a bit more about Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the OpenShift container platform that lays on top of it then we do other non-IBM i operating systems. But SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is still important, and obviously so is continued enhancements to IBM’s AIX platform.
Ubuntu Budgie is an official Ubuntu flavour. Budgie gets its name from the desktop environment it uses, the Budgie Desktop environment. Ubuntu Budgie, which was published as an unofficial Ubuntu flavour in 2016, was swiftly adopted by Ubuntu, which released Ubuntu Budgie 17.04 as the first official Ubuntu flavour in 2017. In this article, I will discuss the key features of Ubuntu Budgie as well as who/why it should be used.
If you’ve ever wondered why there are so many Ubuntu flavors, and why each one claims to be distinct despite using the same basic operating system, keep reading to discover out. In this article, I will discuss why Ubuntu has gained popularity that makes other communities follow it or base their ideas on top of it.
The release of OpenStack Charms 21.10 brings native support for OpenStack Xena in Charmed OpenStack. This latest version of OpenStack comes with initial support for SmartNICs in Nova and further improvements around Neutron Open Virtual Network (OVN) driver integration.
In order to further simplify the job of the cloud operations teams, the OpenStack Charms 21.10 release offers improved day-2 automation, including additional charm actions and better upgrade experience, and new operations documentation. Charmed OpenStack users will also benefit from a wider choice of Cinder storage backends.
Canonical is once again proud to be a sponsor of the Nvidia GTC event! Happening virtually on November 8-11, the conference will feature a wide variety of sessions on AI, computer graphics, data science, and more.
Kontron’s “Pi-Tron CM3+” controller SBC is based on the Raspberry Pi CM3+ and offers 2x LAN, 2x USB, 2x COM, 2x DIO, CAN, micro-HDMI, MIPI DSI/CSI, 40-pin GPIO, and CODESYS support.
Since Kontron acquired PiXtend’s line of Raspberry Pi based controllers a year ago, we have been waiting for some new Pi-based products from the German embedded computing firm. Kontron has now delivered with the Baseboard BL Pi-Tron CM3+, a sandwich-style SBC built around the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+ (CM3+).
IAR Systems®, the future-proof supplier of software tools and services for embedded development, today announced that its build tools for RISC-V supporting deployment in Linux-based frameworks have been certified by TÜV SÜD for functional safety development. The certification has been performed according to the requirements of IEC 61508, the international umbrella standard for functional safety, as well as ISO 26262, which is used for automotive safety-related systems. In addition, the certification covers the international standards IEC 62304 for medical software, IEC 60730 for Household Appliances, ISO 13849 and IEC 62061 for Machinery Control Systems, IEC 61511 for Process Industry, ISO 25119 for Agriculture and Forestry, and the European railway standards EN 50128 and EN 50657.
Allwinner D1s (aka F133) is a cost-down version of Allwinner D1 RISC-V processor introduced earlier this year together with a Linux capable development board, with the main difference being the integrated 64MB DDR2.
Besides the built-in RAM, Allwinner D1s comes with many of the same features as D1 RISC-V SoC, but loses HDMI output and the HiFi 4 audio DSP, and Allwinner made some tweaks to the IOs with one less I2S audio interface, and general-purpose ADC.
Hardkernel has launched a number of popular Arm SBC’s with the ODROID family over the years, but the Smart Power 3 is a different type of product, as the ESP32-based smart power meter can help embedded systems engineers optimize their hardware and software power consumption and/or check for spurious power peaks during boot up or shutdowns.
In the past, we’ve reviewed relatively expansive tools like Qoitech Otii Arc or gone the DIY route, but at $45, Hardkernel offers a power monitoring solution that’s both inexpensive and easy to use, albeit with fewer features than Qoitech’s device.
The cane uses a Raspi 4 with camera to detect objects, and a 2-D LIDAR to measure the distance to those objects. There’s a GPS and a 9-DOF IMU to find the position and orientation of the user. Their paper is open, too, and it comes with a BOM and build instructions. Be sure to check it out in action after the break.
We have relaunched our Reuse and Recycle Program. There are a lot of resources in your old smartphones and we want to make sure we make the most out of them, all the while keeping the environmental impact low and your benefits high. While the old program allowed people to send in their old phones to be reused or recycled, the new program will offer incentives to our community, such as a true market value for their products based on make, model and condition. There’s more to it, of course, but we can’t give away everything in the first paragraph. So read on to learn more about our new and improved Reuse and Recycle Program.
The issues
We have talked about electronic waste being one of the fastest-growing waste streams on the planet – in 2019 a striking 53.6 Mt of e-waste was created with European citizens contributing around 16kg per person. Globally only 17% of electronic waste (or e-waste) is documented to be collected for recycling, leaving roughly 83% of e-waste undocumented and ending up in shoe boxes or landfills – materials worth around USD 56 billion get lost every year. Additionally, it is estimated that 7-20% of e-waste is set up to be illegally exported, ending up in countries with limited resources and recycling infrastructure – often developing countries – causing enormous health and environmental problems.
About a week ago the Apache Software Foundation, home of the Apache Web Server, Hadoop, OpenOffice, and over 350 other open source software projects, announced the end of the line for its system of mirror sites for delivering its software to users, From now on, the foundation will be using a content delivery network instead.
Most users of open source software, especially those who have downloaded Linux distributions, will be familiar with download mirroring sites, usually just called “mirrors,” which rose to prominence in the 1990s as the internet became the preferred way to distribute software.
We’re wrapping up another great week with the following activities from the Apache community…
Adobe is a large multinational computer software company with over 22,000 employees. Its flagship products include Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, XD, Acrobat DC, and the Portable Document Format (PDF). The products are wrapped up and marketed as the Creative Cloud, a subscription-only way of accessing more than 20 desktop and mobile apps and services for photography, design, video, web, UX, and more
We are long-standing admirers of Adobe’s products. They develop many high quality proprietary programs. It’s true there are security and privacy concerns in relation to some of their products. And there’s considerable criticism attached to their pricing practices. But the real issue is Adobe Creative Cloud does not support Linux. And there’s no prospect of support forthcoming.
What if you are looking to move away from Adobe and embark on a new world of online freedom, where you are not tracked, monetised and attached to Adobe’s ecosystem. We only recommend free and open source alternatives. Our recommended software don’t necessarily replicate every feature of their Adobe counterparts but they offer sufficient functionality for many tasks.
“Some scripts I’d written in 2012 are still working on SUSE. I’ve written scripts like automatically switching the DNS servers, because if I need to connect to Wi-Fi on a German train, for example, these things still work, even though the network stack has changed again. There is a consistency in the SUSE architecture, which is something I highly appreciate.” Teja Philipp, Founder, Mr Beam.
[...]
By embracing SUSE Linux, Mr Beam has enjoyed much faster time to market than others in the laser cutter industry.
DiamanteDesk is an enterprise ticketing support system and help desk solution. It aims to meet all the features that the business needs.
The aim from it is to help businesses and companies to improve customer service.
With it, you can send e-mails, private messages via Facebook. It has the ability to customize software according to your own business logic and add features that get your needs. It has the ability to resolve all queries
[...]
The community edition is released under the Open Software License (OSL 3.0).
The project code is released as an open-source under Apache 2.0 License.
Although you can purchase a compiled packed version from Apple and Google Android App Store, you can download the code, compile it and run it on your machine for free.
GNOME.Asia Summit will take place virtually from November 20th – 21st, 2021. It is the featured annual GNOME conference in Asia, focusing primarily on the GNOME desktop, but also covering applications and platform development tools. The Summit brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a forum for users, developers, foundation leaders, governments, and businesses to discuss the present technology and future developments.
When it’s time to take your application online, there are several decisions to make. Today I would like to talk about application preloading and explain why I prefer preloading applications in production.
But first things first. What’s is preloading anyway?
Preloading the application is a process of loading up all application files and dependencies to virtual memory. If it would be a game, this might be a difference between loading just first two levels of the game versus loading the game as a whole. What’s not loaded at first will be loaded later from the disk when required.
The opposite of preloading is lazy loading. Lazy loading saves us some memory at first and as a side product makes the boot process faster which might be a decent optimization for large applications.
Following the recent RISC-V Bitmanip work in Binutils, the GCC 12 compiler has now landed preliminary support for the RISC-V ISA’s bit manipulation extension.
RISC-V’s Bitmanip is a collection of several component extensions intended to help cater the open-source processor ISA for better efficiency that can result in code size reduction, better performance, and reduced energy consumption.
As Meson gets more and more popular, the number of regressions also grows. This is an unvoidable fact of life. To minimize this effort we publish release candidates before the actual releases. Unfortunately not many people use these so many issues are not found until after the release (as happened with 0.60.0).
For this reason we’d like to ask more people to test these rcs on their systems. It’s fairly straightforward.
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If you have some different setup that has a full CI run (hopefully something smaller than a full Debian archive rebuild) then doing that with the rc version would be the best test.
Over the past several years, Rust has gained a passionate following among programmers. Tech trends come and go, so it can be difficult to separate excitement just because something is new versus excitement over the merits of a technology, but I think Rust is a truly well-designed language. It aims to help developers build reliable and efficient software, and it was designed for that purpose from the ground up. There are key features you’ll hear about Rust, and in this article, I demonstrate that many of these features are exactly why Rust also happens to be great for embedded systems.
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Using Rust for your embedded development gives you all the features of Rust without the need to sacrifice flexibility or stability.
Refuelling was handled by lowering a hook via a winch down to a fuel truck that would trail the plane on a straight stretch of road, usually twice a day. The winch would then pull up a fuel hose from the truck, which would be used to fill the belly tank in around three minutes. The same system was used to regularly pull up food, oil and other supplies like towels and water for shaving and bathing.
Initial attempts faced issues. The plane had been fitted with a brand-new engine from Continental Motors Corp., fitted with an alcohol injection system at Timm’s insistence, despite the protests of lead mechanic Irv Kuenzi. The aim was to reduce carbon build-up over the long duration flight, but the engine suffered burnt exhaust valves which curtailed the third attempt. After the first three flights, the plane had never stayed aloft longer than 17 days.
Other hurdles came up, too. Timm wasn’t getting along with his co-pilot, and pilots Jim Heth and Bill Burkhart had just set a record of their own. The duo had managed to fly their own Cessna 172 for a full 50 days, landing on September 21 1958. It was clear changes were needed.
Ah, the humble neon lamp. The familiar warm orange glow has graced the decks of many a DIY timepiece, sometimes in a purely indicating duty, and sometimes forming a memory element in place of a more conventional semiconductor device. Capable of many other tricks such as the ability to protect RF circuits from HV transients, its negative resistance operating region after it illuminates gives us usable hysteresis which can used to form a switching element and the way the pair of electrodes are arranged give it the ability to indicate whether a voltage source is AC or DC. Now, due to some recent research by [Johan Carlsson] and the team at Princeton University, the humble NE-2 tube has a new trick up its sleeve: acoustic transduction.
There was certainly no shortage of unique computers on display at the 2021 Vintage Computer Festival East; that’s sort of the point. But even with the InfoAge Science and History Museum packed to the rafters with weird and wonderful computing devices stretching back to the very beginning of the digital age, Alastair Hewitt’s Novasaur was still something of an oddity.
In fact, unless you knew what it was ahead of time, you might not even recognize it as a computer. Certainly not a contemporary one, anyway. There’s nothing inside its Polycase ZN-40 enclosure that looks like a modern CPU, a bank of RAM, or a storage device. Those experienced with vintage machines would likely recognize the tight rows of Advanced Schottky TTL chips as the makings of some sort of computer that predates the 8-bit microprocessor, but its single 200 mm x 125 mm (8 in x 5 in) board seems far too small when compared to the 1970s machines that would have utilized such technology. So what is it?
Inspired by projects such as the Gigatron, Alastair describes the Novasaur as a “full-featured personal computer” built using pre-1980 components. In his design, 22 individual ICs stand in for the computer’s CPU, and another 12 are responsible for a graphics subsystem that can push text and bitmapped images out over VGA at up to 416 x 240. It has 512 K RAM, 256 K ROM, and is able to emulate the Intel 8080 fast enough to run CP/M and even play some early 80s PC games.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (faad2 and mailman), Fedora (java-11-openjdk, libzapojit, nodejs, python-reportlab, vim, and watchdog), Mageia (ansible, docker-containerd, flatpak, tomcat, and virtualbox), openSUSE (containerd, docker, runc), Oracle (firefox and thunderbird), Red Hat (xstream), Scientific Linux (xstream), SUSE (cairo and containerd, docker, runc), and Ubuntu (apport and mysql-5.7, mysql-8.0).
The security of the OS you deploy is a key determinant of your security online, but is by no means a sure safeguard against malware, rootkits and other attacks. Effective security is dependent upon defense in depth, and other factors including the implementation of security best practices and smart online behavior play a central role in your digital security posture. That being said, choosing a secure OS is of utmost importance, as the OS is the most critical piece of software running on your computer, and Linux is an excellent choice as it has the potential to be highly secure – arguably more so than its proprietary counterparts – due to its open-source code, strict user privilege model, diversity and relatively small user base.
As we rapidly transition to an increasingly digital society, data protection is a greater concern than ever before. Encryption is one of the most effective and widely used methods of securing senstive information from unauthorized parties. In this article, we’ll introduce you to eight open-source file and disk encrytion tools we love to help you safeguard critical data and protect your privacy online.
The researchers noted the LightBasin managed to spread the infection via compromised eDNS servers from one telecom company to another via SSH
Citing a previous Intercept investigation, the Bolivian government said it has evidence of a plan to kill Luis Arce, a protégé of Evo Morales.
Access Now denounces the imposition of internet shutdowns in Sudan today, October 25, 2021, as military forces seize control of the government in a military coup.
In a televised news conference, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan declared a state of emergency in the country, seized control of the government, and dissolved the Sovereign Council , Sudan’s transitional government which included both civilian and military members.
Earlier this morning, the Ministry of Culture and Information stated on Facebook that the military has arrested Sudan’s Prime Minister, Abdalla Hamdok, and multiple other government officials and is now detaining them in an unknown location.
Shortly after reports of the military coup hit the media waves, the Sudanese authorities began shutting down access to the internet and telecommunication services. Data from Google Transparency reports and Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) shows a significant dip in traffic of internet connectivity at about 3:00 am UTC. The shutdown is affecting both fixed and mobile internet connectivity across the country on all major internet service providers.
Google (including YouTube), Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Twitter have released their reports in compliance with Rule 4(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 for the month of August. The reports highlight some interesting facts and figures, and, again, a massive number of automated takedowns. You can read our analysis of the previous reports here and here, where we discussed the issue of non-publication of data on governmental removal orders.
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The reports lack true transparency as the significant social media intermediaries (SSMIs) have been opaque about the process/algorithms followed by them for proactive takedown of content. Facebook and Instagram state that they use “machine learning technology that automatically identifies content” that might violate their standards, Google uses “automated detection process”, and Twitter claims to use “a combination of technology and other purpose-built internal propriety tools”. WhatsApp has released a white paper discussing its abuse detection process in detail and disclosing how they use machine learning. While WhatsApp has made an attempt to explain how it proactively takes down content, the lack of human intervention in terms of monitoring the kind of content that is taken down is problematic.
Patent clashes between major Japanese corporates are almost unheard of, so that makes Nippon Steel’s recently launched action against Toyota in Tokyo one to watch
Notably, however, nowhere in its Reply does Broad does say that it is the case that they had reduced to practice dual-molecule guide RNA CRISPR embodiments in eukaryotic cells prior to the priority dates asserted by ToolGen and granted by the Board in the Interference Declaration herein. While conception and a description of such embodiments in some instances might be sufficient (i.e., it is not the case that a party in an interference must show actual reduction to practice), Broad itself has argued, extensively, that the complicated nature of performing CRISPR successfully in eukaryotic cells makes this a case for a “simultaneous conception and reduction to practice” standard (at least as applied to CVC or ToolGen; see “Broad Files Priority Motion in CRISPR Interference” and “Broad Files Opposition to ToolGen Substantive Preliminary Motion No. 1″). The Cong et al. reference discloses such successes, and as Broad has previously argued the submission date of this paper antedates ToolGen’s earliest priority date in this interference. That may be enough for the Board to conclude that Broad had an earlier invention date for the dual-molecule guide RNA CRISPR species in eukaryotic cells; the question then would be whether the Board will excise claims to eukaryotic CRISPR generic for guide RNA configuration but that would effectively leave Broad in a position to preclude ToolGen (or CVC) from practicing sgRNA-comprising eukaryotic CRISPR embodiments. This outcome would be analogous to the outcome of Interference No. 105,048, where CVC was deemed entitled to claims generic as to cell type while Broad was entitled to eukaryotic CRISPR embodiments (see “Regents of the University of California v. Broad Institute, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2018)”).
Briefing on the parties’ Preliminary Motions being completed, the Board will hold a final hearing sometime within the next several months.
The Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf specified the requirements for a bank guarantee as a security for enforcement of a preliminary injunction (decision of June 25 2020, docket no. I-2 U 51/19).
In the underlying case, the injunction plaintiff first obtained a temporary injunction for patent infringement against the injunction opponent before the Düsseldorf Regional Court, the enforcement of which, as usual in such cases, is dependent on the provision of a security.
As expected, the Board of Appeal in T 116/18 has now referred to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) questions on the use of post-filed evidence to establish plausibility for an invention. The referral (G2/12) is confirmed in the Board of Appeal’s decision in T 116/18 and is also summarised in an EPO press release (here). The Board of Appeal decision makes for an interesting read, as it explores the legal basis (or lack of) for plausibility in the case law and the EPC itself. The Board of Appeal goes so far as to quote the view of Sir Robin Jacob that deriving the plausibility requirement from the EPC strains the meaning of words to breaking point. G2/21 will be closely watched by many, given the potential ramifications of the EBA’s answer on the required evidence threshold for patent validity.
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The Board of Appeal noted that in all the decisions requiring the higher bar of ab initio plausibility (including Warner Lambert), plausibility was denied. By contrast, in all of the cited decisions in the ab initio implausibility line, plausibility was acknowledged. This difference highlights the implications that a EBA decision in this referral may have on the requirements for patentability and how broadly an invention may be claimed based on the data provided in the application as filed.
The Board of Appeal in the referring decision appeared to disagree with the “no plausibility” line of case law, noting that it would permit armchair inventors to claim whatever they thought that it might be possible to prove later (r. 13.7.1). On the other hand, the Board of Appeal also appeared uncomfortable with denying patentees the option of reformulating the objective technical problem to be solved in view of the closest prior art, in view of “decades of case law” permitting this (r. 13.7.2). However, if it is acknowledged that the objective technical problem to be solved may be reformulated, the Board of Appeal in the referring decision agreed that an undue burden would be placed on the patentee to plausibly demonstrate, at the filing date, the technical effect of the invention in view of all possible closest prior art.
CIPA is holding a webinar to discuss the Mercer Review at 12:30, on 29 October 2021 (Friday). Sign-up for the webinar here.
The Mercer Review was recently published in here. The Review included a list of recommendations to improve training and examination (IPKat). Many of these recommendations were welcome, particularly the recommendations to improve access to the profession, continue the use of online examinations, and potentially align with the eEQE system, and to change to a limited open-book format.
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The panel for the webinar consists of contributors to the review, including Chris Mercer himself, as well as Vicki Salmon, Parminder Lally (CIPA Council), Lindsay Pike (Honorary Secretary of the CIPA Informals) and Lee Davies (CIPA CEO). Despite what might be assumed from this panel, the Review was conducted independently of CIPA governance. It will be interesting to hear how the panel envisages implementation of the Mercer Reviews recommendations.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Guest Editorial Team
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