11.30.21

Links 1/12/2021: Tux Paint 0.9.27 and WordPress 5.9 Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 8:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Taking Stock of Librem 14 – Purism

        Like many hardware companies, Purism has taken a “Just In Time” manufacturing approach for our products including the Librem laptop line. That means that we make a bit more of a product than we think we need, and schedule the next manufacturing run so that the product arrives in our warehouse “just in time” for us to deplete the previous manufacturing run. In an ideal world that means we never run out of stock, but also never have massive inventories taking up space in our warehouse.

        Also like many hardware companies the supply chain woes of the last two years have caused us to rethink this approach. Each time it seemed like we had made enough Librem 14s to catch up to current and projected orders, delays of one kind or another created a new backlog as new orders continued to come in. We’ve decided to scrap “Just in Time” in favor of manufacturing far more Librem 14s than we currently need, and will have our shelves full of Librem 14 stock by the end of the year.

      • HPi95LX Puts Linux In Your Palm | Hackaday

        A few decades ago, palmtop computers were mostly based on MS-DOS, and while many users tried to mimic the UNIX experience, the results were mixed. Fast forward to the present and business-card-sized Linux computers modules abound. Canadian tinkerer [Rune Kyndal] decided to make his own Linux palmtop by sacrificing an old HP-95LX and replacing the guts with a Raspberry Pi Zero and a color LCD screen. We’re impressed with the rich set of features he has crammed into the limited volume of the case:

      • Linux Fu: The Ultimate Dual Boot Laptop? | Hackaday

        I must confess, that I try not to run Windows any more than absolutely necessary. But for many reasons, it is occasionally necessary. In particular, I have had several laptops that are finicky with Linux. I still usually dual boot them, but I often leave Windows on them for one reason or another. I recently bought a new Dell Inspiron and the process of dual booting it turned out to be unusually effective but did bring up a few challenges.

        If you ever wanted a proper dual-booting laptop, you’ll be interested in how this setup works. Sure, you can always repartition the drive, but the laptop has a relatively small drive and is set up very specifically to work with the BIOS diagnostics and recovery so it is always a pain to redo the drive without upsetting the factory tools.

        Since the laptop came with a 512 GB NVMe drive, I wanted to upgrade the drive anyway. So one option would have been to put a bigger drive in and then go the normal route. That was actually my intention, but I wound up going a different way.

      • LXer: Laptop Dual Boot Project Part 2

        I know some of you are wondering why go through all of this when I could just install a Linux distro along side of windows and be done with it? One reason was I had to pay it off. A financed $550 laptop takes a little while to pay off. I didn’t want to change the machine any while I owed money on it. And the idea of messing with a bone stock laptop using Linux sounded fun. The good thing now is that I have paid it off so it’s all mine to do whatever I want with.

        So, for me it came down to PCLOS, Mint, SUSE or Ubuntu to install to my laptop. I tried them all ‘live’ from USB drives and a couple of them using VirtualBox. They are all good distros and there are many articles on why one or the other is good or better for you but for me, it came down to PCLinuxOS or Mint. Having come from Windows originally I am most comfortable with a “Windows like” environment. I think both PCLOS and Mint are two versions of that I like best. I like Mint mire but what has drawn me to PCLOS is that it is the only Linux I have tried in that the backlight on my keyboard works. It may sound dumb but it makes it easier for me being able to see the keys no matter the lighting situation I’m in.

        I tried to install PCLinuxOS onto my laptop and I got a “can’t call method on first_usable_sector unblessed reference” error at the very beginning of the install process. I couldn’t get around it and aborted the install. Time to do some research. Come to find out I have a AHCI-RAID problem. I got into the BIOS and changed the SATA configuration from RAID to AHCI but in rebooting, it wouldn’t boot.

        So I went back into my BIOS and wrote down the configuration in the SATA settings. It says I am running the “Intel RST Premium with Intel Optane System Acceleration”. I have been looking that up but haven’t found much…much I understand that is. More Googling is required.

        I got back into the boot menu and changed the SATA config back to Intel’s RAID setting and it re-booted just fine. It seems that for the moment I am able to run Linux from USB ‘live’ and under VirtualBox but I am unable to install it to the HD. For those who don’t know the big difference AHCI and Raid , it is how they store the data to the hard drive.

        I’ll use a sink with water filling it for the metaphor. RAID 1 offers redundancy through mirroring, i.e., data is written identically to two drives. Think of two sinks with the same water in them. RAID 0 offers no redundancy and instead uses striping, i.e., data is split across all the drives. think of two sinks with the water split between them. Half of the data goes into one drive and the other half into another drive. This means RAID 0 offers no fault tolerance; if the drives fails, the RAID unit fails.

      • Apple car will arrive at the same time as Linux on the desktop [Ed: Nick Farrell is trolling or click-baiting GNU/Linux users, as usual]

        Years after big reveal, Tame Apple Press predicts

        Apple is unlikely to get its car vapourware on the road for at least another 20 years even if it has a “big reveal” in five years, the Tame Apple Press finally admits.

        For years the TAPs has been running stories insisting that an Apple car was a few years away, even while its Project Titan was downsized and talent left to go to real carmakers.

      • Zoom boosts security with automatic updates for Windows and macOS — but Linux users miss out [Ed: Microsoft's loyal propagandist By Sofia Wyciślik-Wilson is trolling GNU/Linux users again... Zoom itself is antithetical to security]

    • ChromeOS

      • First Look: Chromebook “extra container management” in Chrome OS 98

        Earlier this month, I covered down a new feature that’s in the works for Chrome OS that will give users a native user interface for managing Linux containers. While still a work in progress, the “extra container” management has finally made an appearance in the Canary channel of Chrome OS and we have our first look at how the feature is going to play out. Getting the feature up and running does require you to be in the very experimental Canary channel, which I do not recommend visiting unless you know what you’re doing and aren’t afraid of possibly bricking your device.
        In the Canary channel, the #crostini-multi-container flag for the container management must first be enabled, and then, the feature will appear in the Developer section of the Chrome OS settings menu. By default, users can see the “penguin” container inside the Termina VM. This houses the standard Debian framework that runs on Chrome OS when you enable Linux applications. From the menu, you can stop the default container and shut it down but you can’t delete the container. To do this, you would need to remove Linux from your system entirely via the main Developer menu.

      • Chrome OS 98 adds management of multiple Chromebook Linux containers

        Earlier this month I reported that Chrome OS was adding multiple container management to Chromebook. The last Dev Channel update has finally brought the first iteration of that feature and I do have it working. At the moment, however, I’ve only been able to add a second Linux container for Debian. Regardless, here’s how Chrome OS 98 adds management of multiple Chromebook Linux containers.

        For starters, I had to enable the following experimental flag in Chrome OS 98: chrome://flags#crostini-multi-container and restart my browser. After that, I saw the new “manage extra containers” option in my Linux settings:

        Chrome OS 98 multiple Chromebook Linux containers management
        Choosing this option brought me to the following screen, which initially had a single container, as expected. Here I could change the color of each one. I clicked the Create button, added a second Debian container, and left it the default color. The three-dot option offers ways to stop or delete a container.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • IO_uring Network Zero-Copy Send Is Boasting Mighty Speed-Ups – Phoronix

        Early patches providing for IO_uring zero-copy send support for the Linux kernel’s networking subsystem is looking extremely promising for greater throughput.

        Developer Pavel Begunkov posted the set of twelve patches today working on this zero-copy send support for IO_uring with the networking subsystem. These initial patches are marked as a “request for comments” as some items are still being sorted out with the code.

      • AMD-Pstate Driver Updated A 5th Time For Improving Ryzen Power Efficiency On Linux – Phoronix

        Sent out today was the fifth revision to AMD’s new “amd-pstate” kernel driver focused on providing enhanced CPU frequency controls for Linux systems.

        AMD’s P-State driver remains under active development for improving the Linux power efficiency for Ryzen (and EPYC) processors. AMD P-State makes use of ACPI CPPC for more informed and finer-grained frequency controls on modern (Zen 2 and newer) processors compared to what is afforded by the existing ACPI CPUFreq frequency scaling driver currently used by AMD Linux systems.

      • Intel Posts Linux Patches Bringing Up Alder Lake N Graphics – Phoronix

        With the graphics driver support for Alder Lake S-series in good shape with Linux 5.16 and the Alder Lake P-series support also coming together for upcoming ADL-based laptops, next up is the Alder Lake N enablement happening for Linux.

        Alder Lake N for low-end, low-power hardware is now coming together. Though over the existing ADL-S and ADL-P Linux support, it’s basically adding in new PCI IDs for ADL-N.

      •  Analog Devices Expands Linux Distribution with Over 1000 Device Drivers to Support the Development of High-Performance Solutions | Business Wire

        As the Linux open-source operating system marks its 30th anniversary, Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) announces the expansion of its Linux distribution by recognizing over 1000 ADI peripherals supported by in kernel Linux device drivers. Designed to enable the rapid development of embedded solutions, these open-source device drivers streamline the software development process for ADI’s customers, providing access to tested, high-quality software to create innovative solutions across a range of industries, including telecom, industrial, military, aerospace, medical, automotive, security, Internet of Things (IoT), consumer, and more. This portfolio includes products from Maxim Integrated Products, Inc., now part of Analog Devices.

      • Graphics/Zink

        • Zink Is Ending 2021 In Fantastic Shape For OpenGL Over Vulkan

          For those wondering about the state today for Zink with mainline Mesa, here are some fresh benchmarks. My last time testing Zink was in August and since then Blumenkrantz has worked on fixes for the various games reported to have issues and even more performance optimizations, making this round of testing now quite interesting.

          Using Mesa 22.0-devel as of 26 November (using the Oibaf PPA for easy reproducibility), I ran benchmarks of various OpenGL Linux games using the native OpenGL driver (RadeonSI in this case) and then again when using Zink running atop the RADV Vulkan driver. This testing was done on an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X system with AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card. The focus is on seeing how Zink compares to using RadeonSI OpenGL across a variety of Linux games.

          

        • Haiku OS Managing To Run Zink OpenGL Atop Radeon Vulkan Driver For 3D Acceleration – Phoronix

          Last month we reported on progress for porting the Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver to Haiku, the BeOS-inspired open-source operating system. Now in ending out November they not only have RADV running but also working with Gallium3D’s Zink for offering OpenGL acceleration over Vulkan.

          Haiku developer “X512″ has been the one devoted to this recent effort for getting the open-source AMD Radeon Vulkan driver running on this platform. With some modifications he has been successful in enabling the RADV driver to work on Haiku for 3D hardware acceleration.

    • Applications

      • Announcing Tux Paint version 0.9.27

        The Tux Paint development team is proud to announce version 0.9.27 of Tux Paint, which adds many new features to the popular children’s drawing program.

      • Tux Paint 0.9.27 Release Adds New Magic Tools to Make Drawing Easier Than Ever – It’s FOSS News

        Known for its simplicity and ease of use, Tux Paint is a drawing app primarily aimed at kids.

        Tux Paint has come a long way since its initial release in 2002 on Linux and is now available on many other platforms.

        The latest release of Tux Paint 0.9.27 comes just after four months of its previous release. Just like the previous one, this release is feature-rich but includes new additions and improvements.

      • OpenPrinting Releases CUPS 2.4 With AirPrint, OAuth 2.0 Support – Phoronix

        Earlier this year OpenPrinting took over development of the CUPS print server with Apple no longer interested in handling the future development of this open-source Linux/macOS/Unix/Solaris print server. Out this week is CUPS 2.4 as the first major release under the guidance of OpenPrinting.

        Apple’s work on CUPS ceased pretty much when CUPS founder Michael Sweet left Apple originally acquiring it back in 2007. Apple is no longer actively developing CUPS but has even contracted Sweet to backport important OpenPrinting CUPS fixes back to Apple’s CUPS code-base.

      • CUPS 2.4.0 Printing System Released, Check Out What’s New

        OpenPrinting project has just released CUPS 2.4.0 formed without Apple’s participation, which has since 2007.

        The Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) is a cross-platform printing solution used on many different Linux distros. Its use is very widespread, as it has become the standard print manager on the majority of popular Linux distros.

        CUPS acts as a print spooler, scheduler, print job manager, and can store information for numerous local or network printers. It is based on the Internet Printing Protocol and provides complete printing services to most PostScript and raster printers.

        At the end of 2019, Michael Sweet, the lead developer of CUPS left Apple after he joined Apple and the company purchased the source code a decade prior for this long-standing open-source printing system. As a result, Apple’s public CUPS development effectively ended and Apple now is basically interested in just maintaining CUPS 2.3 and not really developing it further.

        Therefore, OpenPrinting now controls the CUPS project moving forward with Michael Sweet being involved in the effort, and the results were not late.
        Now CUPS 2.4.0 is finally here in its production-ready state, bringing numerous security and performance improvements to make the widely used printing system more reliable and stable than ever.

      • Best Torrent Client For Linux Based Operating Systems | Itsubuntu.com

        The term “torrent” refers to file sharing through a decentralized, peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing network. Torrents are an excellent source to download large files. P2P file-sharing protocols allow users to exchange files without uploading them to the server. They transform your PC into part of a host where files are shared as it’s downloaded, so while you’re downloading files from another host, you’re likewise helping other people as they download the part of the files that you have downloaded from another host.

        In this article, we are going to discuss or list out the best torrent client for Linux-based operating systems. So, if you are a Linux user and looking for the best torrent client then you are at the right place.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Collaborate on a file using Linux diff and patch

        I edit a lot of text files. Sometimes it’s code. Other times it’s the written word for role-playing games (RPGs), programming books, or general correspondence. Sometimes it’s nice to make a change, but for my collaborator to compare my change with what they originally had written. Many people default to office suites, like LibreOffice, using comments or change tracking features. Sometimes a simpler tool makes more sense, though, and for that, you can look at programming history for tools like diff and patch, which provide standardized formatting for tracking and applying changes to shared files.

      • Best ways to destroy Microsoft Windows – blackMORE Ops

        OK, like seriously don’t do it unless you’re doing it in a practice Virtual machine or have permission to do so.. I take no responsibility for these collection of best ways to destroy Microsoft Windows!

      • Quickemu- Run Windows 11 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux in few clicks

        o you want to install Windows 10 or 11 on your Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04 LTS Linux using QEMU-KVM virtual machine? Then here is a tutorial to do that using the command terminal and Quickemu + Quickgui.

        Although we all have a simple solution that is a virtual box to run Windows 11 virtual machine, what about KVM? Some will say it is not easy to operate because of the command line but no there are few open-source GUI programs to give KVM an easy interface. However, another thing is downloading ISO images of various operating systems including Windows 10 or 11 to use with Virtualbox can be a headache. Hence, to solve all of this, there is a project called QuickEMU with a GUI interface known as QuickGUI. QickEMU uses QEMU_KVM on Linux operating system to run a virtual machine and can easily download all popular operating system Images to install including macOS. Whereas it can be operated via CLI but for ease of usage users can install QuickGUI to download, create, and manage operating systems virtual machines.

      • Steinar H. Gunderson: Commitcoin

        How do you get a git commit with an interesting commit ID (or “SHA”)? Of course, interesting is in the eye of the beholder, but let’s define it as having many repeated hex nibbles, e.g. “000” in the commit would be somewhat interesting and “8888888888888888888888888” would be very interesting. This is pretty similar to the dreaded cryptocoin mining; we have no simple way of forcing a given SHA-1 hash unless someone manages a complete second-preimage break, so we must brute-force. (And hopefully without boiling the planet in the process; we’d have to settle for a bit shorter runs than in the example above.)

        Git commit IDs are SHA-1 checksums of what they contain; the tree object (“what does the commit contain”), the parents, the commit message and some dates. Of those, let’s use the author date as the nonce (I chose to keep the committer date truthful, so as to not be accused of forging history too much). We can set up a shell script to commit with –amend, sweeping GIT_AUTHOR_DATE over the course of a day or so and having EDITOR=true in order not to have to close the editor all the time.

      • How to Install Kuma on Ubuntu 20.04 | LinuxHostSupport

        Kuma is an open source monitoring tool like “Uptime Robot” written in Nodejs. In this article, we’ll learn how to install it on Ubuntu 20.04 so we can self-host our Uptime Bot. We’ll also set up a reverse proxy on Apache with a Let’s Encrypt SSL to secure our website.

        Kuma is easy to use and upgrade, and is powerful for traffic control, observability, service discovery, etc.

      • How to Install SuiteCRM with Apache and free Let’s Encrypt SSL on Debian 11

        SuiteCTM is an open-source Customer Relationship Management solution written in PHP. It is a fully-featured and highly-extensible CRM application that runs on any operating system. It became popular when SugarCRM decided to stop the development of its community edition. It is used for creating business strategies, actions, and decisions. It is an alternate CRM solution for other commercial CRM such as SugarCRM, Salesforce, and Microsoft.

        In this post, we will show you how to install SuiteCRM with Apache and Let’s Encrypt SSL on Debian 11.

      • How to Install Rudder System Configuration and Auditing Tool on Ubuntu 20.04 – VITUX

        Rudder is an open-source and user-friendly web-based system configuration and audit tool. It helps you to manage your IT infrastructure by automating system configurations while ensuring visibility and control of your infrastructure. Two main components of Rudder are: Root server and node. Root server defines the configurations for the systems it manages. The systems managed by Rudder are known as nodes. Rudder manages the nodes using the Rudder agent which is installed on these systems.

        In today’s post, we will install the Rudder root server and agent on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. We will use two Ubuntu machines: one as the Rudder root server and the other one as the Rudder node.

        Note: You must be a root user or have sudo privileges on both machines in order to install the Rudder server and agent.

      • How to check if packages in RHEL-based Linux distributions have been patched for specific CVEs – TechRepublic

        CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) are constantly being discovered and patched. When discovered, it means a new security flaw exists in either an operating system or a piece of software and should be patched as soon as possible. Fixing the vulnerabilities, of course, is up to the developers. Patching those vulnerabilities, however, is up to the admin (or user). Thing is, you might not know if you’re using a piece of software that includes one or more CVEs.

        How do you uncover this information? Do you have to spend hours researching? Not really. In fact, all you need to know is the CVE you’re looking for and the piece of software it affects. With those two bits of information in hand, you can quickly discover if what’s installed on your Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based distribution contains that vulnerability.

        I’m going to show you how to do just that.

      • How to Install and Configure Nginx on Ubuntu

        Web applications have gained wide popularity over the past few years as a means of providing services to different clients. With a web application, you can reach out to a wider audience regardless of the device or operating system they are using.

        Being able to install and configure a web server is a valuable skill to have both as a web developer and software engineer. A web server is a program responsible for delivering your web content to clients over the internet or a network.

        Let’s take a look at how to install and configure the Nginx web server on Ubuntu.

      • How to install Sublime Merge on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install Sublime Merge 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.

      • How to Install OpenEMR on Ubuntu 20.04 With LAMP Stack

        OpenEMR is a popular open-source software for the healthcare industry. It offers electronic health records and medical practice management solutions. OpenEMR provides a fully integrated Workflow Management inside healthcare facilities. Any healthcare facility would be able to capture and control patient data using the following features in OpenEMR.

      • Add current user to all groups on the system except “nobody/nogroup”
      • How To Install Hyperbola KDE on a Virtual Machine

        This tutorial explains how to install Hyperbola computer operating system with KDE Plasma Desktop on a virtual machine. Let’s start!

      • How To Install Java on Fedora 35 – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Java on Fedora 35. For those of you who didn’t know, Java is a secure, stable, and well-known, general-purpose programming language and computing technology platform with many interconnected capabilities. If you want to use a Java-based tool or program in Java, you’ll need to have Java on your system.

        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 Java on a Fedora 35.

      • How To Install Nginx with Let’s Encrypt SSL on Fedora 35 – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nginx with Let’s Encrypt SSL on Fedora 35. For those of you who didn’t know, Let’s Encrypt is a non-profit Certificate Authority (CA) managed by the Internet Security Research Group. It provides free SSL certificates for your domains to secure data on the transport layer. The certificate is valid for 90 days, during which renewal can take place at any time. The offer is accompanied by an automated process designed to overcome manual creation, validation, signing, installation, and renewal of certificates for secure websites.

        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 Nginx with Let’s Encrypt SSL on a Fedora 35.

      • How to Check Supported TLS and SSL Ciphers (version) on Linux

        OpenSSL is a toolkit and a cryptography library that support the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol on Linux.

        It provides cryptographic protocols to varies applications running on Linux such as ssh, Apache (httpd), Nginx, etc.

        TLS is a cryptographic protocol used to secure network communications between the devices.

        OpenSSL configuration file is located at /etc/pki/tls/openssl.cnf, referred to as the master configuration file, which is read by the OpenSSL library.

        In this guide, we will show you how to check supported TLS and SSL ciphers (version) on opneSUSE system. The same procedure is applicable for other distribution as well.

      • How to Compile and Run your First Java Program

        Java is one of the most powerful and popular programming languages. Even with several niche languages available now, Java has retained its leading position among developers.

        If you have decided to learn Java, it’s definitely a good choice to enter the world of programming, but the question is, how to create your first piece of code?

        Let’s go through six steps of creating a Java program. We’ve also prepared bonus advice on where you can learn and practice Java.

      • How to Enable SSH on Debian 11 Bullseye Linux – Linux Shout

        Tutorial to learn the steps to install and enable SSH server in Debian 11 Bullseye Linux using command line terminal. SSH is a network protocol originally developed in 1995 by Finn Tatu Ylönen for encrypted access to other computers in an IP network.

        [...]

        SSH is the abbreviation for Secure Shell. With the help of this protocol, the user can securely establish connections with other devices, for example from a PC to a web server. SSH enables mutual authentication and encrypted data transmission so that sensitive data such as passwords or user names cannot be hacked or seen by unauthorized persons. Secure Shell offers a high level of security. It provides functions for logging in, transmitting and executing text-based commands, and for copying data. In addition to encryption, SSH offers reliable mutual authentication using certificates and public and private key procedures. A popular area of ​​application for Secure Shell is the remote maintenance of servers.

      • How to Install Brew on Ubuntu and Other Linux

        Homebrew, also known as Brew, is a command line package manager primarily created for macOS.

        Homebrew grew quite popular among macOS users as more developers created command line tools that could be easily installed with Homebrew.

        This popularity resulted in the creation of Linuxbrew, a Linux port for Homebrew. Since it is primarily Git and Ruby, and Linux and macOS are both Unix-like systems, Brew works good on both kind of operating systems.

        Linuxbrew project eventually merged with Homebrew project and now you just have one Brew project called Homebrew.

        Why am I calling it brew, instead of Homebrew? Because the command starts with brew. You’ll see it in detail in a later section.

      • How to Install Lazarus IDE in Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 21.10 | UbuntuHandbook

        This is a step by step guide shows how to install the Lazarus IDE in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.10 and their derivatives, e.g., Linux Mint, Elementary OS and more.

        Lazarus is a free Delphi compatible cross-platform IDE for rapid application development using the Free Pascal compiler. User may install the project either from Ubuntu repository or by using the official DEB packages.

      • How to Install Lazarus IDE in Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 21.10 | UbuntuHandbook

        The most popular Javascript runtime is Node.js, which uses the V8 engine to perform useful tasks such as interacting with local storage. Node.js has boosted the popularity of Javascript, which was already well-known. Previously, Javascript was only used in web browsers to create interactive web applications; however, with Node.js, we can now use Javascript to create command-line applications, as well as web applications that are designed and even backed by Javascript.

        In this article, we will not go into greater detail about Node.js and its functionality. In this article, we will learn how to install Node.js on Ubuntu Linux.

      • How to Install PuTTY on Debian 11 Bullseye – Linux Shout

        Here we learn the steps to install PuTTy on Debian 11 Bullseye using the command terminal to establish an SSH connection using the graphical user interface.

        Using PuTTY free Telnet and SSH client application on Windows, Linux, and macOS – the user can establish a connection with remote computers and systems in the network via SSH. Encrypted or unencrypted protocols can be used. Although this is a common application to use in Windows, yet still it somebody is interested the can be easily installed on Linux as well for remote system administration.

        Apart from the SSH client, PuTTy comes with a few additional command-line tools such as Plink, PSFTP, and PSCP. With the help of Plink, PuTTY can be controlled via the shell. Shell scripts can also be used. The SCP client PSCP can also be used to transfer encrypted data – PSFTP, on the other hand, is an SFTP client and thus an encrypted FTP alternative.

      • How to list all running & stopped Docker containers – Linux Shout

        Docker is the popular platform to run container virtual machines using the pre-built app images. The installation and its usage are pretty simple, yet, if you are new to it and want to know how to list all the created or stopped Docker containers to delete or manage them easily. Then here are the commands to follow.

      • How to modify the Proxmox repositories – Unixcop the Unix / Linux the admins deams

        Hello friends. When we refresh the Proxmox repositories we get an error stating that our IP address is not authorized to access a repository. Well, this repository gives us access to enterprise packages and to use it you must have a valid license. In this post, I will show you how to modify the Proxmox repositories to avoid this annoying error. We will also add another free one and have more tools available.

        So let’s get to work.

      • How to play Dead Cells on Linux

        Dead Cells is a roguelike video game inspired by Metroid and Castlevania. It was developed and published by Motion Twin. Here’s how you can play Dead Cells on your Linux PC.

      • How to reset Ubuntu password – LinuxH2O

        In this article, you will learn how to reset your Ubuntu password if you have forgotten it. The guide work on various Ubuntu versions such as Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04, 21.04, and the newer versions.

        There are times when you forget the password for your Ubuntu system, maybe not you, it could be your family member, friend, or colleague. Not just password, people sometimes also forget the username of their system. In any of these cases, you have to show off your Linux skills and resolve the issue. So in this guide, you will basically learn all the steps to reset the Ubuntu password and also identify the username.

        So let’s start.

    • Wine or Emulation

      • CrossOver 21.1.0 Release Adds GTA V Support on Linux Among Other Enhancements – It’s FOSS News

        CrossOver is a paid tool that lets you run Microsoft Windows software on Linux and Mac. In case you did not know, it is built on top of Wine and other open-source software along with their proprietary tools that make it easy to run Windows-only software.

        With the latest release, i.e., CrossOver 21.1.0, there are some significant additions for Linux and macOS users.

        Here, let me highlight the key changes in this release.

    • Games

      • Valve Posts Updated Steam Deck FAQs To Address More Community Questions – Phoronix

        Valve has provided an updated developer-focused “frequently asked questions” area stemming from community questions during the recent Steam Deck developer event.

        While the Steam Deck shipping date slipped into Q1 due to hardware supply chain issues, Valve continues making great progress on the software front and readying the ecosystem and developer partners for their much anticipated Arch Linux powered gaming handheld console.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • More about those zero-dot users – Adventures in Linux and KDE

          Yesterday’s article about KDE’s target users generated some interesting discussions about the zero-dot users. One of the most insightful comments I read was that nobody can really target zero-dot users because they operate based on memorization and habit, learning a series of cause-effect relationships: “I click/touch this picture/button, then something useful happens”–even with their smartphones! So even if GNOME and ElementaryOS might be simpler, that doesn’t really matter because it’s not much harder to memorize a random-seeming sequence of clicks or taps in a poor user interface than it is in a good one.

          I think there’s a lot of truth to this perspective. We have all known zero-dot users who became quite proficient at specific tasks; maybe they learned how to to everything they needed in MS Office, Outlook, or even Photoshop.

          The key detail is that these folks rely on the visual appearance and structure of the software remaining the same. When the software’s user interface changes–even for the better–they lose critical visual cues and reference points and they can’t find anything anymore.

        • KDE Plasma Desktop Update » PCLinuxOS

          The KDE Plasma Desktop packages have been updated to 5.23.4. This is a service release update.

        • TSDgeos’ blog: Okular PDF digital signature improvements coming “soon” thanks to NLnet

          Starting on January I will be working on a project named “Improve Okular digital signature support” that has received a grant from the NLnet foundation as part of the NGI Assure fund.

          This will allow me to work part time on Okular (in case it’s not clear I work on Okular on a “when I have time-hobby” basis right now), the planned improvements are:

          1. Support for signing unsigned signatures. I know it sounds confusing, think about it like something like the old “sign here” boxes on printed paper forms.

    • Distributions

      • 2021 hardcore list of linux distributions without elogind and other systemd parts

        This list is going to be short and there may be a sublist of distros with a medium strict standard. We shall explain what the object is, below the short list (which we hope the community will assist in making longer as we have not been able to currently review the work of every distro and fork.

      • BSD

        • What Is OpenBSD? Everything You Need to Know

          OpenBSD is no doubt one of the most secure operating systems on the internet. Here’s what you need to know about it.

          Linux fans love to tout their system’s security, but for one group of BSD developers, it doesn’t go far enough. One version of BSD, OpenBSD, claims to be one of the most secure operating systems around. Does it live up to the hype? Let’s find out.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Fugaku Retains Official #1 Spot on TOP500

          Summit, which is an IBM-built system installed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee, remains the fastest system in the United States.

        • Modernizing Enterprise Java: A cloud native guide for developers

          Looking for a quick guide to migrating and modernizing your organization’s Java-based applications? Modernizing Enterprise Java walks you through the journey. Download the free e-book today.

          Java has been one of the most popular programming language choices for developers since its release 25 years ago. It is backed by an open source ecosystem of contributors and a growing number of companies who rely on Java for their core business workloads.

        • Build lightweight and secure container images using RHEL UBI

          Deploying applications in lightweight container images has practical benefits because container images pack all of the dependencies required for your application to function properly. However, you could lose the benefits of containerization if the container images are too large, and thus take several minutes to boot up the application. In this article, I guide you through how to use Red Hat Universal Base Images (UBI) as the foundation to build lightweight and secure container images for your applications.

        • Automate dependency analytics with GitHub Actions [Ed: IBM's Red Hat boosting Microsoft's proprietary software and vendor lock-in]
        • 20 Years of Red Hat Product Security: From inception to customer experience (Part 1)

          From its inception in 2001, the Product Security team has been focused on providing Red Hat’s customers value in the form of hardened and streamlined security updates and testing across the entire product line, including managed services and, most recently, our own open source software supply chain.

          But more than that, they’ve also been essential members of the wider open source security community, helping ensure the openness and transparency of security vulnerability information, aiding in the fight against open source fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD), and being key contributors in the response to a wide array of high profile security incidents and vulnerabilities.

          So, let’s take a look at how Product Security has evolved at Red Hat over the past 20 years, and at what the future might look like.

        • Skills gap proves a growing barrier for digital transformation initiatives

          In this year’s Red Hat 2022 Global Tech Outlook report, skill-set or talent gaps emerged as the top barrier organizations believe will prevent them from achieving their digital transformation goals. This was also reflected in organizations’ non-IT funding priorities for the next 12 months.

          Red Hat develops a Global Tech Outlook report every year, and from June through August 2021, we surveyed 1,341 information technology (IT) leaders and decision makers to learn about their digital transformation journeys, their IT and non-IT funding priorities for the coming year, and the types of infrastructure they’re using to run their applications.

        • U.S. Government issues directive to prioritize fixing exploited CVEs: How Red Hat Insights can help

          In November 2021, the U.S. federal government published a Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Binding Operational Directive. This Department of Homeland Security (DHS) directive mandates federal agencies within the U.S. act to protect themselves from “…increasingly sophisticated malicious cyber campaigns that threaten the public sector, private sector, and ultimately the American people’s security and privacy.”

          The directive requires United States federal agencies to patch known, “publicly exploited” vulnerabilities. The list of these vulnerabilities is cataloged and updated by the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) (on their website) periodically.

        • Digital transformation: How to beat the challenges of a federated organization | The Enterprisers Project

          In early 2019, I started my role as business transformation executive for the Federal Reserve System, responsible for leading the digital transformation of finance, human resources, and procurement.

          As the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve is a federated organization made up of 22,000 employees across the 12 Reserve banks. Each bank is its own separate legal entity with its own board of directors, CEO, CFO, CIO, and senior HR and procurement officers.

          Over the years, technology was consolidated while processes and capabilities remained disparate, and it became increasingly challenging to deliver even basic capabilities. With over 40 disjointed, mostly homegrown legacy applications and a high degree of customization supporting proprietary business processes, the system was costly and challenging to maintain. New employees were frustrated by the poor user experience and difficulty accessing data, and collaboration and innovation were hampered.

        • Digital transformation: 4 questions CIOs should ask now | The Enterprisers Project

          One of the things CIOs have learned during the past eighteen months is that when you have the business behind you, the momentum for transformation is turbocharged. Top CIOs are capitalizing on this lesson to further integrate technology strategy with business strategy. And the first place they’re starting is with the people.

          How well are you doing on the people front of digital transformation? Here are four questions to ask yourself, based on my recent conversations with the CIOs of CarMax, Dow, and Johnson & Johnson.

        • Virtual Machine Secure Boot Database Updates Made Easy with Oracle Linux
        • IBM applauds Knative’s application to join the Cloud Native Computing Foundation

          Today, Knative applied to become an incubating project at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Today’s news is a major step in the right direction for the future of Knative.

          Knative adds the necessary components that enable Kubernetes users to more quickly deploy and manage their workloads on Kubernetes — but without the need to become Kubernetes experts. Additionally, Knative adds “serverless” runtime semantics, allowing users to reap the benefit of features such as quick load-based scaling and scaling to zero when idle.

        • 3 ways to optimize Ansible Automation Platform for scale and performance | Enable Sysadmin

          Try these settings to optimize performance with Ansible Automation Platform on a massive scale.

        • Introduction to Ansible prompts and runtime variables

          This tutorial is part of a series we dedicated to Ansible. Previously we talked about the Ansible basics, then we focused on some Ansible modules we can use to perform some very common administration tasks, and we also talked about Ansible loops. In this article, instead, we learn how to create interactive prompts we can use to ask for user input and how to pass variables at runtime.

        • MIXAL on Fedora | Adam Young’s Web Log

          The examples in The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP) are in the MIXAL programming language. In order to see these examples run, I want to install the tools on my Fedora box. They are packaged as RPMS, so this is trivial. Here are the steps to run and debug a sample program in MIXAL.

        • Fedora Contributor Annual Survey Data Set Available – Fedora Community Blog

          Over the summer of 2021, the Fedora Council held the first annual Contributor Survey. The survey received 800 complete responses, which exceeded the goal of 500. We have processed the data, which are available for download.

          Coordination of the survey was a wonderful community effort. Fedora Council member Aleksandra Fedorova proposed and led the survey effort with support from Marie Nordin (FCAIC). Many teams across the Fedora Project contributed, including: the Mindshare Committee, the Outreach Revamp Team, the Design Team, the Websites & Apps Team, and the Community Platform Engineering Team. Aleksandra and Marie presented a session at Nest with Fedora which goes further into the process and outcomes.

          Over the last couple months, the work of cleaning up the dataset has been underway. This has been a slow process as there are just a couple of people working on that regularly. An example of “cleaning” would be folks who chose “Other”, filled in “idk”, when the option “I don’t know” existed. Those answers need to be integrated in order to have a more accurate dataset. We removed fill-in answers due to the fact that some people identified themselves, intentionally or not. As we process the data, we are noting feedback to improve the survey for 2022.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Linux Mint Monthly News – November 2021

          Many thanks to all the people who support our project. Thank you very much to all of you for your help and your generous donations.

          All of our focus is on the BETA for Linux Mint 20.3. We’re planning to release it early this December. We’re finalizing translations, artwork and still making fixes and adjustments but for the most part it’s almost ready to enter QA.

          Some of the new features in 20.3 haven’t been revealed yet, but we’re so close to release, I’m not sure there’s much point in giving you a preview

          MATE 1.26 and Flatpak 1.12 were backported.

          In the XApps, the PDF reader received proper manga support (hitting the left arrow key in manga mode now goes forward in the document), the image viewer received the ability to quickly fit to the width or the height of the displayed picture, and many of the apps received improvements for small display resolutions (hiding the menubar, not showing the toolbar in fullscreen…etc), and dark-mode support.

        • Compact edge AI boxes offer choice of Jetson Nano, TX2 NX, and Xavier NX

          All three systems ship with the Ubuntu 18.04 with Nvidia JetPack 4.5.1. They also support Advantech’s Edge AI Suite and FaceView applications, which are available on its earlier AIR systems.

        • Ubuntu Blog: Embedded systems: the advent of the Internet of Things – Part II

          This is the second part of the two-part blog series covering embedded Linux systems and the challenges brought about by the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. In Part I, we surveyed the embedded ecosystem and the role Linux plays within that space. This blog takes you on the next step in the journey, where we explore the most demanding challenges facing manufacturers of tightly embedded IoT devices.

        • CyberDog: a four legged robot revolution with Ubuntu

          Late this year, Chinese tech giant Xiaomi unveiled CyberDog: a quadrupedal, experimental, open-source robot that the firm claims will improve the robot development environment and promote the development of the robot industry. Today, Canonical dives into the specifications of this four legged robot and discover how Ubuntu is helping the device become an open source technological platform.

          Xiaomi has a clear vision for its product. As Huang Changjiang, PM at Xiaomi, explains, “CyberDog is developers’ technological partner from the future. It equips inhouse-made high-performance servo motors, high computing ability, with built-in AI for visual detection system and voice interaction system, supporting a variety of bionic motion gestures.”

        • ZeroDown® Software Targets Open Source with New Canonical Partnership

          As businesses around the world and in every major industry define and accelerate their cloud strategies, the lack of open, flexible and complete high availability has become a major concern. The ZeroDown platform, built upon Canonical’s industry-leading operating system, Ubuntu, aims at integrating into Canonical’s broader Charmed OpenStack platform with its ZeroDown Ultra High-Availability TM Software, eliminating downtime and data loss for its customers, running seamlessly through planned or unplanned downtime events.

        • Data centre networking: what is OVS? | Ubuntu

          In one of our preceding blogs, we spoke about Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and the key drivers behind it. Virtualisation is one of the fundamental aspects that characterises SDN, and has influenced the architecture of network switching in the data centre. OVS (Open vSwitch) is a fundamental component of modern and open data centre SDNs, where it aggregates all the virtual machines at the server hypervisor layer. It represents the ingress point for all the traffic exiting VMs, and can be used to forward traffic between multiple virtual network functions in the form of service chains. Let’s take a closer look in order to understand what OVS is.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Best 3 Open-source, privacy-aware, ads-free Diabetes Managers for Android

        Diabetes is a long-lasting (chronic) health condition, that occurs when blood sugar is too high. It is a life-altering disease, as it changes eating habits and exercises routine.

        Diabetes management apps are many, and they come as web-based services, standalone mobile apps, and desktop apps. However, most of them are not free, open-source, or respect patient privacy much. Therefore, we write this article.

        Diabetes management and assistant apps are classified under a PHR “Personal Health Records” apps, where the patient logs and keeps all of his private records for future analysis and use.

      • Penpot: an open-source Prototyping and design platform for teams

        Penpot is a free, open-source web-based design and prototyping application for teams. It works with open web standards as it uses SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format.

        Penpot can be installed on a remote server or the local machine with help of Docker and Docker Compose.

        With Penpot, you can quickly design a web or mobile prototype in no time.

      • FreeScout is an open-source helpdesk for teams

        FreeScout is a free, open-source web-based support and ticketing system. It is written in PHP using the Laravel framework.

        FreeScout features a responsive user interface that works on small mobile screens and tablets.

        It is an ideal solution for team, technical support, and customer support for small and medium-sized companies as well as enterprise.

        FreeScout is battle tested with hundreds of satisfied companies, it is also supported with a large community of advanced users and professionals.

        [...]

        FreeScout is released under GNU Affero General Public License v3.0.

        The GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 permits commercial use, system modification, distribution, patent use, and private use. However, it comes with a limitation for liability and warranty, and several conditions.

      • UMLet: Open-source multi-platform UML tool

        UMLet is a free, open-source UML modeling tool for developers that allows them to draw UML diagrams quickly and export them to many formats.

        The program is released as an open-source under GPL-3.0 License.

      • JetUML: Open-source UML diagramming tool for Windows, Linux, and macOS

        JetUML is a free, lightweight desktop app for building and editing UML diagrams.

        JetUML is built with Java which comes also in a small .jar package.

      • The OpenNMS Group Releases OpenNMS Minion Appliance – the Next Evolution of Distributed Monitoring
      • Monica is your own persona CRM/ Assistant solution

        Monica is a free, open-source self-hosted personal CRM solution to help you keep tracking all of your social events, activities, work information and strengthen your interaction with your family members.

        [...]

        Monica is released under Affero General Public License (AGPL) v3.0.

      • Watch Blender Plugin Make Animated PCB Traces (and More) | Hackaday

        The idea is that one begins with an image texture with a structure showing a bunch of paths (like a maze, or traces on a PCB), and that gets used as an input. The plugin then uses a path finding algorithm to determine how these paths could grow from an origin point, and stores the relevant data in the color channels of an output image. That output is further used within Blender as the parameters with which to generate the actual animation, resulting in the neat self-creating PCB seen above. That PCB isn’t just for show, by the way. It’s the PCB for [Staacks]’s smart doorbell project.

        Blender is an amazingly comprehensive tool for modeling and animation, and while we’ve covered using it to create high-quality KiCad renders, this kind of animation is really something else.

      • Weekly-ish recap — 30 November 2021

        This is more of a monthly recap, for my sins! Highlights: new releases of BlenderBIM and IfcOpenShell, Natron, LibrePCB, Shotcut, VCV Rack, Blender 3.0 is coming later this week, Krita and darktable are prepping up for a major update.

        [...]

        The most recent release of Shotcut arrived with support for markers (at long, long last). Dan has been expanding this feature ever since. There’s now a Markers dock where you can add, edit/rename, and remove markers. UX for marker color selection has been improved too, and you can now seek to previous and next markers. Also, you can now export markers as chapters. You can expect all that (and more) in the next release.

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Mozilla Performance Blog: Updates to Warm Page Load Tests

            We have recently begun the process of updating our warm page load tests to be more representative of real user behavior.

            Cold page load is defined as the first page load, just after the initial startup of the browser. Warm page load is any load of a page after the first page load, and the cache has been populated with some data for the page, i.e. the cache is “warmed up”.

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • PostgreSQL: PGConf NYC 2021 starts Thursday!

          That means registration is closing since the conference will be starting!

          The first community PostgreSQL conference in North America in many months is in New York City this Thursday and Friday! PGConf NYC is a non-profit, community-run and PostgreSQL community recognized conference being run by the United States PostgreSQL Association (PgUS).

          Don’t wait any longer to register for this great event happening right in downtown New York City!

          PGConf NYC delivers two days packed with presentations about PostgreSQL and related technologies, as well as the usual hallway and social track. PGConf NYC is being held December 2nd and 3rd, 2021 in New York City.

        • Publication of the “Transition guide to PostgreSQL”

          We’re pleased to announce an English version of the “Transition guide to PostgreSQL”. This aims to answer questions from project owners and management about implementing PostgreSQL in place of a commercial solution.

      • Content Management Systems (CMS)

        • WordPress 5.9 Beta 1

          WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 is now available for testing!

          This version of the WordPress software is under development. You don’t want to run this version on a production site. Instead, it is recommended that you run this on a test site. This will allow you to test out the new version.

        • People of WordPress: Devin Maeztri

          In this series, we share some of the inspiring stories of how WordPress and its global network of contributors can change people’s lives for the better. This month we feature a translator and campaigner who uses WordPress to highlight good causes and helps people in her area benefit from the open source platform.

      • FSF

        • Help the FSF tech team maintain email services in freedom

          The Free Software Foundation’s (FSF) tech team is a small but dedicated team of three staff. With your support, and with the help of volunteers and interns, we run hundreds of services on a few dozen physical machines in four data centers.

          We are very excited about some of the initiatives we are working on, like deploying our upcoming forge site and other new systems, expanding our physical server deployments, and a further refresh of fsf.org. In parallel, the tech team is always working to better maintain, understand, and document our existing systems. Mastering those keeps vital systems running smoothly and lays the groundwork for future improvements.

          Email is a key service we provide. Besides it being one of the FSF campaigns and licensing teams’ most important ways of communicating, we also support thousands of mailing lists for other free software projects, which send millions of emails per year. Free software is extremely capable in all aspects of email, and there continue to be innovative advancements in free software email programs that we are excited to explore and adopt.

        • Licensing/Legal

          • First Update on the Vizio lawsuit – Conservancy Blog – Software Freedom Conservancy

            Yesterday, we received from Vizio their first official response in our pending litigation against Vizio for their copyleft license violations. So, what was their response?

            Did Vizio release the source code — as the GPL and LGPL require — for the modified versions of Linux, alsa-utils, GNU bash, GNU awk, BusyBox, dmesg, findutils, dmsetup, GNU tar, mount and selinux found in their TV’s firmwares? No.

            Did Vizio propose a CCS candidate for us to review, provide them with additional feedback, so that we could help them get consumers who bought their TVs the source code they deserve? Nope.

            Did Vizio argue that we had erred, and in fact, none of those programs we list above appear in their firmware? Not that either. (Unlikely though — after all, they surely know those programs are in their firmware!)

      • Public Services/Government

        • German coalition treaty endorses “Public Money, Public Code” principle – The Document Foundation Blog

          A quick news update from Germany: the upcoming coalition government endorses free and open source software. In the coalition agreement (German), there are some key sentences on this topic, for instance…

        • Nextcloud Forms European Coalition — Begins Antitrust Actions Against Microsoft

          A European coalition formed by Nextcloud is taking antitrust action against Microsoft like it’s 1999.

          The Germany-based company behind the on-premises content collaboration platform that shares its name, has put together a coalition of 30 organizations to fight Microsoft on antitrust grounds.

          “The 90s have just called and they see that nothing has changed,” Stefane Fermigier, founder and CEO of open source software vendor Abilian — a part of the coalition — said in a statement. “Microsoft’s anti-competitive practices remain a major concern for the competitiveness of the European software and cloud industry. As it has done in the past in similar cases, the European Commission must put an end to these practices.”

      • Programming/Development

        • Daniel Aleksandersen: Closing the open redirect in the Libravatar ecosystem

          Libravatar is a decentralized open-source alternative to Gravatar – the avatar image service. Last week, I noticed an URL Redirection to Untrusted Site (‘Open Redirect’) vulnerability (CWE-601) in the Libravatar application programming interface (API) specification.

          [...]

          An attacker can use the redirect to leech off the reputation of a Libravatar server’s domain. An open redirect can be used to obscure a link’s true destination, or help a spam or phishing message to sneak past filters.

          An open redirect is a common vulnerability, but the security community tries to shut them down whenever they’re discovered. What’s making this one noteworthy is that you can auto-discover Libravatar servers using DNS service discovery (DNS-SD) by querying domains for the DNS SRV records.

          I DNS-SD queried the web’s top 5,1 million domains (Tranco list #44KX) to see how many Libravatar instances and open redirects I could find. In total, I discovered 18 instances (unique IP addresses) on 23 distinct domain names. 11 instances were vulnerable (13 domain names).

          Notably, the servers operated by academic institutions were not vulnerable. These institutions are likely running custom software solutions on top of their staff and student databases to generate the avatars.

        • Hacks Decoded: Seyi Akiwowo, Founder of Glitch

          I’m not, I don’t think I want to “keep going” anymore. I grew my organization by 50% in terms of income and more in terms of staff and diversified our income streams before we hit the two-year mark — during a pandemic! I’m ready to rest, I’m ready to sleep more, I’m ready to do work that is still great with minimum viable effort. That’s the sweet spot I’m looking for.

        • A Super Speedy Lightweight Lossless Compression Algorithm | Hackaday

          [Dominic Szablewski] was tinkering around with compressing RGB images, when he stumbled upon idea of how to make a simple lossless compression algorithm, resulting in the Quite OK Image Format, which seems to offer comparable file sizes to the PNG format but is so simple it runs up to 50 times faster for compression and up to four times faster for decompression. Implementation can be achieved with a miniscule 300 lines of C. Need a bit more detail on the real-world performance? Well [Dominic] has that covered too, with a complete set of benchmarks for your perusal.

        • HLK-W801 board features Alibaba Xuantie XT804 based MCU with WiFi 4, Bluetooth LE 4.2 – CNX Software

          But the company has a nearly identical WinnerMicro W801 microcontroller that bumps the internal flash to 2MB, and more importantly adds a 2.4 GHz radio with WiFi 4 and Bluetooth LE 4.2 connectivity, and HiLink also released the HLK-W801 board that’s nearly identical to HLK-W806, except for some extra LEDs, a USB-C port instead of a Micro USB port, and a longer form factor to make space for the PCB antenna.

        • Running the MIXAL Insertion Sort | Adam Young’s Web Log

          With the information gained in last posts investigations, I now know how to turn the smaple code of the insertion sort out of TAOCP into runnable code.

          The key insight I had was that the Accumulator was operating on the whole value it would fetch or store, and the I# registers were just used for counters. Thus, the buffer needed to be of word length elements. For MIX that means 5 characters long.

        • Russell Coker: Your Device Has Been Improved

          By “stability improved” they mean “fixed some bugs that made it unstable” and no technical person would imagine that after a certain number of such updates the number of bugs will ever reach zero and the tablet will be perfectly reliable. In fact if you should consider yourself lucky if they fix more bugs than they add. It’s not THAT uncommon for phones and tablets to be bricked (rendered unusable by software) by an update. In the past I got a Huawei Mate9 as a warranty replacement for a Nexus 6P because an update caused so many Nexus 6P phones to fail that they couldn’t be replaced with an identical phone [1].

          By “security improved” they usually mean “fixed some security flaws that were recently discovered to make it almost as secure as it was designed to be”. Note that I deliberately say “almost as secure” because it’s sometimes impossible to fix a security flaw without making significant changes to interfaces which requires more work than desired for an old product and also gives a higher probability of things going wrong. So it’s sometimes better to aim for almost as secure or alternatively just as secure but with some features disabled.

        • All change at JetBrains: Remote development, new IDE preview • The Register

          JetBrains has introduced remote development for its range of IDEs as well as previewing a new IDE called Fleet, which will form the basis for fresh tools covering all major programming languages.

          JetBrains has a core IDE used for the IntelliJ IDEA Java tool as well other IDEs such as Android Studio, the official programming environment for Google Android, PyCharm for Python, Rider for C#, and so on. The IDEs run on the Java virtual machine (JVM) and are coded using Java and Kotlin, the latter being primarily a JVM language but with options for compiling to JavaScript or native code.

        • PHP Foundation Looks to Fund Open Source Language Development

          The PHP Foundation is gearing up as a new organization to help fund and support the continued development of the open source PHP programming language.

        • Perl/Raku

          • MONKEY-SEE-NO-CROSSPRODUCT | Playing Perl 6␛b6xA Raku

            The challenge of the week is screaming: “Nest all the loops!”. I don’t like being yelled at, so I refuse to use any nested for/while/loop. The rules don’t require to put the two sub-challenges into separate files, so I won’t.

          • Excellent Free Tutorials to Learn Raku – LinuxLinks

            Raku is a member of the Perl family of programming languages. Formerly known as Perl 6, it was renamed in October 2019. Raku introduces elements of many modern and historical languages. Compatibility with Perl was not a goal, though a compatibility mode is part of the specification.

          • It’s that time of the year… again – Raku Advent Calendar

            And we’re still around and kicking new advent posts with the best, the nicest and the merely possible in the Raku realm.

            Also the 13th year in a row for this calendar, and also 6th year since what was then called Perl 6 was released. Raku is now faster, it’s already in production in a number of places, and it’s got a healthy ecosystem with lots of useful modules. Who would wish for more? Well, we wish for a dozen and a again (possibly) baker’s dozen of articles for everyone to enjoy.

        • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

          • Combinations from 2 lists: speed trials

            This post was inspired by a recently published scientific paper describing how Python was used to build a list of a million scientific names. Each name was composed of parts taken from a list, and combinations of those parts were generated.

            The result was something like a Cartesian product, about which I’ve blogged before. This time I was interested in performance: how does the time required to get a result vary with the number of combinations to be built?

        • Rust

          • 1.57.0 pre-release testing

            The 1.57.0 pre-release is ready for testing. The release is scheduled for this Thursday, December 2nd. Release notes can be found here.

  • Leftovers

    • Recycled Parts Round Out Soap Shaped Electric Car

      Hong Kong based [Handy Geng] has a knack for fitting his creations with a large percentage of recycled material. And as is exemplified by the video below the break, he also loves to mix the practical with the whimsical.

      Using parts salvaged from motor scooters, trash heaps, and likely many other sources, [Handy] has put together a small vehicle that he himself describes as looking like a bar of soap as it slips across the floor. You’ll agree when you see the independent front and rear steering at work, allowing the car’s front and rear to be driven and steered on their own. Crabbing sideways, driving diagonally, and we’re guessing spinning in place are possible.

    • Hardware

      • Two-Stage Dust Collector Recycles Blasting Media | Hackaday

        A critical element of a good blasting cabinet setup is a vacuum system that can suck out the dust, blasting media, and bits of removed material faster than it collects inside the chamber. A cyclone separator can get the job done, but since it dumps all the waste from the cabinet into one bucket, it can make reusing the blasting material a dirty job. But as [Daniel Bauen] explains in the latest Engineerable video, his two-stage dust collector is able to keep the cabinet clear while separating the used blasting material into its own container.

      • Giving Flip Dots The Oil Treatment To Shut Them Up | Hackaday

        Flip dot displays are awesome — too bad it’s so hard to find large panels to play around with, but that’s for another article. [Pierre Muth] has been working to find different and interesting things to do with these flip dots, and he recently explored how you can flip them very very gently.

        Now you likely remember [Pierre’s] work from earlier this year where he was pushing the speed of the displays as high as possible. Using a capacitor discharge trick he made it to 30 fps, which absolutely stunning work. This time around he attempted to do something equally impressive by micro-stepping the dots. It’s a bonkers idea and unfortunately didn’t work. It seems the dots are engineered for two steady states and you just can’t get very good performance with the in-between states.

      • Amazon Announces C7g AWS Instances Coming Powered By Graviton3 – Phoronix

        Amazon Web Services today shared that C7g instances are coming powered by Graviton3, their next-gen in-house AArch64 processors.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Privatisation/Privateering

            • Linux Foundation

              • New Linux Foundation Project Accelerates Collaboration on Container Systems Between Enterprise and HPC Environments

                The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced it will host the Apptainer project. Formerly the Singularity project, Apptainer is the most widely used container system for High-Performance (HPC) computing and is one of the container systems uniquely suited for both enterprise and HPC use cases. It is designed to execute applications at bare-metal performance while being secure, portable and completely reproducible.

              • New Linux Foundation Project Accelerates Collaboration on Container Systems Between Enterprise and High-Performance Computing Environments

                The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced it will host the Apptainer project. Formerly the Singularity project, Apptainer is the most widely used container system for High-Performance (HPC) computing and is one of the container systems uniquely suited for both enterprise and HPC use cases. It is designed to execute applications at bare-metal performance while being secure, portable and completely reproducible.

                “The Apptainer project has had massive growth and needs a neutral home with proven open source governance to support its next development and adoption phase,” said Gregory Kurtzer, CEO of CIQ and Founder and Project Lead of Singularity/Apptainer. “The Linux Foundation is the natural host for Apptainer, where it can also collaborate with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Open Container Initiative, OpenHPC and other projects to expand its ecosystem.”

              • New Quantum Intermediate Representation Alliance Serves as Common Interface for Quantum Computing Development [Ed: 'Linux' 'Foundation' letting Microsoft become its forefront speaker]

                he Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the new QIR Alliance, a joint effort to establish an intermediate representation with the goal to facilitate interoperability within the quantum ecosystem and provide a representation suitable for current and future heterogenous quantum processors. Founding members include Honeywell, Microsoft, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Quantum Circuits Inc. and Rigetti Computing.

              • Linux Foundation launches quantum computing alliance to drive interoperability [Ed: Microsoft employees speak for the ‘Linux’ Foundation now; it’s sold, it is compromised]

                The Linux Foundation has announced a new joint effort to help facilitate interoperability within the quantum computing ecosystem.

                Dubbed Quantum Intermediate Representation (QIR), the alliance is part of the Linux Foundation’s efforts to promote the development and use of open standards.

              • Linux Foundation: Defending the Global Software Supply Chain from Cyberattacks in 2021 [Ed: With partners like these, as show, it can be presumed also a selective back doors alliance with NSA ties]

                Attackers are increasingly targeting software supply chains (the processes, repositories, and toolchains used for developing and delivering software). The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, ENISA, estimated in “Threat Landscape for Supply Chain Attacks” that there would be four times as many software supply chain attacks in 2021 as compared to 2020. The report states due to “…more robust security protection that [many] organizations have put in place [today], attackers successfully shifted towards suppliers.”

                Governments around the world have noted and responded to this growing risk to the software supply chain. In May 2021, the US released an Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity to enhance software supply chain security, including providing software purchasers with a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM). Similar efforts are underway around the world.

                In 2021, our communities rose to the challenge of providing tools and best practices for the security hardening of the global software supply chains. Our efforts included launching Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) as a funded project, expanding Let’s Encrypt — the world’s largest certificate authority, ensuring the ISO standardization of SPDX as the SBOM standard, directing funds to identify and fix vulnerabilities in critical open source software, and building new training curriculum to improve secure coding practices.

              • Linux Foundation Launches New Quantum Intermediate Representation Alliance [Ed: In Spamnil's site (LF-funded fluff)]

                The Linux Foundation has announced the new QIR Alliance, a joint effort to establish an intermediate representation with the goal to facilitate interoperability within the quantum ecosystem and provide a representation suitable for current and future heterogenous quantum processors.

        • Security

          • New HP MFP vulnerabilities show why you should update and isolate printers | CSO Online

            Security researchers have published details about two serious vulnerabilities that impact over 150 different HP multifunction printer models with FutureSmart firmware going back at least nine years. The attack vectors associated with the flaws and their impact serve as a reminder that printers can pose significant security risks to enterprise networks if not properly secured, updated and segmented.

            “For one, the vulnerabilities date back to at least 2013 and affect a large number of HP products released,” researchers from security firm F-Secure, who found the flaws, said in their report. “HP is a large company that sells products all over the world. Many companies are likely using these vulnerable devices. To make matters worse, many organizations don’t treat printers like other types of endpoints. That means IT and security teams forget about these devices’ basic security hygiene, such as installing updates.”

            Exploiting one of the vulnerabilities requires physical access and can be done through physical ports that are exposed on its communications board. A skilled attacker with physical access to a vulnerable MFP would need around five minutes to perform the attack and deploy a stealthy implant that could take full control of the device and exfiltrate potentially sensitive information.

            The second vulnerability is even more dangerous because it’s located in the firmware’s font parsing code and essentially allows anyone who can print a specifically crafted file to execute malicious code on the vulnerable MFPs. The vulnerability is wormable and exploitation can be achieved in seconds through multiple remote attack vectors, including by users visiting malicious websites.

          • Security updates for Tuesday [LWN.net]

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (samba), Fedora (kernel), openSUSE (netcdf and tor), SUSE (netcdf and python-Pygments), and Ubuntu (imagemagick).

          • Nasty Windows 10 vulnerability gets a patch, but not from Microsoft

            Cybersecurity researchers have released an unofficial patch for a bug in Windows 10, originally reported to Microsoft in October 2020, which later research revealed could take the form of a local privilege vulnerability as well.

          • RedHat: RHSA-2021-4848:07 Moderate: Migration Toolkit for Containers (MTC)
          • Inside Intel’s Secret Warehouse in Costa Rica

            Chip maker is stockpiling legacy technology for security research, plans to expand facility to house 6,000 pieces of equipment

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Over 100 civil society groups call for changes to EU AI Act

        A total of 114 civil society organisations have signed an open letter calling on European institutions to amend the forthcoming Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) so that it properly protects fundamental human rights and addresses the structural impacts of artificial intelligence (AI).

        The European Commission’s proposed AIA was published in April 2021 and sought to create a risk-based, market-led approach to regulating AI by establishing self-assessments, transparency procedures and various technical standards.

        Digital civil rights experts and organisations have previously told Computer Weekly that although the regulation is a step in the right direction, it will ultimately fail to protect people’s fundamental rights and mitigate the technology’s worst abuses because it does not address the fundamental power imbalances between tech firms and those who are subject to their systems.

      • The EU needs an Artificial Intelligence Act that protects fundamental rights

        Access Now and over 110 civil society organisations have laid out proposals to make sure the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act addresses the real-world impacts of the use of artificial intelligence (AI), places fundamental rights protection front-and-centre, and maintains a broad definition of AI systems.

        “Access Now’s priority is not to have an EU law on AI, but to have one that is an effective instrument to protect people’s rights,” said Fanny Hidvégi, Europe Policy Manager at Access Now. “We’ve laid out the steps needed to boost the proposed regulation’s human rights standards, and are looking forward to working with the Council and Parliament to guarantee they are achieved.”

        Access Now and AlgorithmWatch rang the alarm bell last week when information leaked suggesting the European Council is planning on drastically narrowing the definition of AI systems, potentially excluding many technologies that impact human rights. The AI Act needs to be amended, but those amendments must increase protections for fundamental rights, not water them down.

    • Monopolies

[Meme] EPO Administrative Council Believing EPO-Bribed ‘Media’ (IAM Still Shilling and Lying for Cash)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 3:04 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Same as always:

IAM lies

And again yesterday:

iam-epo-bribed

I don't see nuthin' wrong

Summary: IAM continues to do what brings money from EPO management and Team UPC, never mind if it is being disputed by the patent examiners themselves

The EPO’s Mythical “Gap” Has Been Found and It’s Bonuses for People Who Use Pure Fiction to Steal From Patent Examiners

Posted in Europe, Finance, Patents at 2:51 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum daa6c4b14f45f1292dcf04348028c109

Summary: The phony president who has the audacity to claim there’s a budget gap (see above) is issuing millions of euros for his enablers to enjoy; weeks ahead of the next meeting of national delegates the Central Staff Committee (CSC) tells them: “Events show that the delegations’ concerns about functional allowances have materialised. The lack of transparency and inflation of the budget envelope gives rise to the suspicion that high management is pursuing a policy of self-service at the expense of EPO staff, which is difficult to reconcile with the Office’s claimed cost-saving policy, and to the detriment of the whole Organisation.”

The Central Staff Committee (CSC) of the EPO has sent António Campinos a copy of a letter about the same sort of thing we saw in the Benoît Battistelli days. The abusers take all the money, gamble with cash reserves illegally, and then give themselves bonuses for these illegal acts.

Talking about spitting in your staff’s face…

The letter to the Chairman (of the Administrative Council) and heads of national delegations is dated 4 days ago. EPO staff has been notified that “[t]he Central Staff Committee (CSC) has sent this letter to the AC secretariat, with a request to distribute it to the Heads of Delegations. Since 2015, the budget envelope for functional allowances has inflated from 400.000€ to 2.370.000€.”

Remember similar things happened half a decade ago under Battistelli. We covered that at the time. Campinos continues to prove he’s no better than Battistelli and since both of them bribe and defang the media we no longer see these issues aired in the media.

“The EPO is basically being robbed, exploiting the immunity by which managers plunder everybody else with impunity.”The CSC continues: “While the number of team managers and heads of department has increased in recent years, their functional allowance remains frozen since 2018 at 360€ per month regardless of grade. At the same time, from 2014 to 2021, the number of managers in the Management Advisory Committee (MAC) increased from 8 to 30, and such members are eligible for a functional allowance of up to two months’ salary per year at the discretion of the President.”

“In addition to the financial aspects, functional allowances can also have a deleterious effect on the functioning of the MAC and thus on the governance of the Organisation. The MAC is the President’s advisory body and it advises him on strategic or other important decisions. Most of its members (27 out of 30) are however under the direct authority of the President and functional allowances have accounted for a significant part of their remuneration since 2017. These circumstances can weaken the MAC as an advisory body, which is expected to provide high-quality and objective advice in these areas of strategic importance.

“Events show that the delegations’ concerns about functional allowances have materialised. The lack of transparency and inflation of the budget envelope gives rise to the suspicion that high management is pursuing a policy of self-service at the expense of EPO staff, which is difficult to reconcile with the Office’s claimed cost-saving policy, and to the detriment of the whole Organisation.”

So there’s no lack of money, it’s just badly allocated. The EPO is wasting money on stock market gambling (losing as much as 100 million euros per year in past years) while insisting it cannot pay staff — i.e. people who do all the work — as it did all along and as EPC standards generally demand (for talent attraction and retention).

We’re reproducing the whole letter below as HTML:

European Patent Office
80298 Munich
Germany

Central Staff Committee
Comité central du personnel
Zentraler Personalausschuss

centralSTCOM@epo.org

Reference: sc21140cl

Date: 26/11/2021

To the Chairman and
the Heads of Delegation of the
Administrative Council of the
European Patent Organisation

OPEN LETTER

Functional allowances at the EPO

Dear Mr Chairman,
Dear Heads of Delegation,

After seven years of implementation, the New Career System (CA/D 10/14) is still a concern in terms of transparency for staff and proper consultation is still lacking. This year, for the first time, the budget for functional allowances was not even submitted to the General Consultative Committee (GCC) and the budget envelope was simply disclosed in an announcement published on the Intranet on 15 October 2021. The details concerning the distribution and entitlement remain undisclosed. The Office also carried out a harmonisation reform without discussing it with the staff representation and without providing any details or basis for it. From the limited data available, the Central Staff Committee observes a trend towards less transparency and a continuous increase in the budget envelope.

Back in 2014 when functional allowances were introduced, they were limited to a maximum of two steps1 per month of the relevant grade and applicable to employees in job groups 4, 5 and 6 called upon to perform additional duties or involving specific demands (Article 12(2) ServRegs)2. At the time, the Office explained3 that they would be used for rewarding managerial responsibilities not otherwise rewarded (e.g. heads of

_________________
1In 2014, the functional allowance of team leaders (e.g. for examiners) was set at 1,5 step in their grade per month, and thus below the maximum.
2 CA/84/14, page 20/40, “New Career System”
3 CA/84/14, par. 30

department, team leaders), temporary extension of duties and specific constraints. Delegations expressed4 concerns about the lack of certainty on the entitlement5 and that a functional allowance would be difficult to withdraw even if the responsibilities end. They also saw a risk of inflation of the budget envelope. From 2015 to 2016, the budget envelope increased from 400.0006 € to 900.000 €7.

In 2017, the Office proposed8 to extend functional allowances to job groups 1, 2 and 3 in order to open entitlement to managers9 and to increase the ceiling in view of a manager’s salary to two monthly basic salaries per year (namely around a 6-fold increase for higher grades). Delegations expressed10 concerns that this extension corresponds to 17% of yearly salary i.e. up to 35.000 € – 40.000 € for the higher job groups. The staff representation warned that a beneficiary could earn in practice a salary of an employee in a higher job group, i.e. one Principal Director becoming a Vice-President in terms of salary, under the exclusive authority and discretion of the President and without involvement of the Council.11 From 2017 to 2021, the budget envelope continued to increase from 1.400.000 €12 to 2.370.000 €13.

While the number of team managers and heads of department has increased in recent years, their functional allowance remains frozen since 2018 at 360€ per month regardless of grade. At the same time, from 2014 to 2021, the number of managers holding the specific function of advising the President in the Management Advisory Committee (MAC) increased from 8 to 30, and such members are eligible for a functional allowance of up to two months’ salary per year at the discretion of the President.

_____________
4 CA/89/14 e, par. 17 & 22, “Draft minutes of the 110th meeting of the BFC” (20 November 2014)
5 CA/96/14 e, par. 73, “Draft minutes of the 110th meeting of the BFC” (10/11 December 2014)
6 GCC/DOC 12/2015
7 GCC/DOC 16/2017
8 CA/24/17 e, “Periodical review of the Service Regulations”
9 CA/36/17 e, par. 102, “Draft minutes of the 151st meeting of the AC” (15/16 March 2017)
10 CA/36/17 e, par. 103 and 105
11 CA/36/17, par. 114
12 GCC/DOC 16/2017
13 Intranet announcement of 15 October 2021

From a governance point of view, functional allowances can also have a deleterious effect on the functioning of the MAC. The President is assisted by the three Vice-Presidents14, who are appointed by the Administrative Council. On the other hand, the MAC is the President’s advisory body and it advises him on strategic or other important decisions15. Most of its members (27) are however under the direct authority of the President and functional allowances have accounted for a significant part of their remuneration since 2017. These circumstances can weaken the MAC as an advisory body, which is expected to provide high-quality and objective advice in these areas of strategic importance.

Events show that the delegations’ concerns on functional allowances have materialised. The lack of transparency and inflation of the budget envelope gives rise to the suspicion that high management is pursuing a policy of self-service at the expense of EPO staff, which is difficult to reconcile with the Office’s claimed cost-saving policy, and to the detriment of the whole Organisation.

The Central Staff Committee calls on the delegations to exercise their supervisory role over the Office to bring it to the proper standards of consultation and transparency.

Yours sincerely,

Alain Dumont
Chairman of the Central Staff Committee

cc.: President of the EPO
_____________

14Article 10(3) EPC
15 See the Terms of Reference of the MAC

Maybe we’ll follow up on this soon, maybe as a video tomorrow. Either way, it seems clear nothing is changing for the better. The EPO is basically being robbed, exploiting the immunity by which managers plunder everybody else with impunity. █

Video: Making the Internet a Better Place for People, Not Megacorporations

Posted in Free/Libre Software, Standard at 2:16 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum 9b3296013dc70bcae4b1413d80f71328

Summary: Following that earlier list of suggested improvements for a freedom-respecting Internet, here’s a video and outline

THE Web has become very spammy because it was gradually taken over by the marketing industry. The news industry barely exists anymore. This afternoon in Daily Links we showed how IAM had in effect become a mouthpiece of EPO management, after bribes from Benoît Battistelli. It never said anything negative about António Campinos as if it’s a taboo subject. But that’s not even a technical issue but an editorial issue.

“We hope to put out there some pointers not just for us but also for others to follow.”On the technical side, e.g. a lack of consistent experience and accessibility for blind people, the Internet as a whole got worse. There was no quality control, except by corporations which judged quality from their own narrow (self-serving) perspective.

In the video above I go through the list posted earlier and I elaborate a bit on the spot. It’s perfectly possible we’ll put it in the wiki and collaboratively improve/expand it some time in the near future. We hope to put out there some pointers not just for us but also for others to follow. █

Links 30/11/2021: KDE Plasma 5.23.4, 4MLinux 38.0, Long GitHub Downtime, and Microsoft’s CEO Selling Away Shares

Posted in News Roundup at 12:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

  • GNU/Linux

    • Applications

      • Best Torrent Client For Linux Based Operating Systems

        The term “torrent” refers to file sharing through a decentralized, peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing network. Torrents are an excellent source to download large files. P2P file-sharing protocols allow users to exchange files without uploading them to the server. They transform your PC into part of a host where files are shared as it’s downloaded, so while you’re downloading files from another host, you’re likewise helping other people as they download the part of the files that you have downloaded from another host.

        In this article, we are going to discuss or list out the best torrent client for Linux-based operating systems. So, if you are a Linux user and looking for the best torrent client then you are at the right place.

      • What is Apache Cassandra | Introduction To Cassandra

        In this article, we are going to learn about NoSQL concepts in high level as it’s family plays vital role in the BigData market. We will also discuss what is Cassandra which is the market leading NoSQL DB, Cassandra architecture, key components and and its use cases in detail.

        In this article, we have gone through the overview of NoSQL database concepts and basic architecture of Cassandra. We will walk through the installation of Cassandra in upcoming articles.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to install Extreme Tuxracer on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install Extreme Tuxracer 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.

      • How To Install Google Cloud SDK on Linux Mint 20 – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Google Cloud SDK on Linux Mint 20. For those of you who didn’t know, Google Cloud SDK (Software Development Kit) provides a set of tools that are used to manage resources hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Good Cloud SDK presents a number of important command-line tools such as gcloud, gsutil and bq that enable effective management of applications and other resources in the Google Cloud

        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 a Google Cloud SDK on a Linux Mint 20 (Ulyana).

      • Shortcuts for adding multiple lines of text to files on Linux | Network World

        There are a number of ways to add text to files on Linux systems without having to open an editor, such as the echo and printf commands. On the other hand, when you need to add A LOT of text, the technique you use can make the job tedious or a piece of cake.

        This post describes some of the commands you can use and the problems and benefits you can expect.

    • Games

      • Party-based RPG Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness sees a huge update

        After entering Early Access in August, and then releasing a Linux native version in October, Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness just got a nice big upgrade for all players.

        “Explore a land plagued by war, pestilence and mysterious abductions, and uncover the hidden legacy of your birth. Recruit powerful allies to your cause; achieve your goals through sorcery, stealth, a silver tongue or brute force; and discover the truth of the Black Geyser.

        Developed by a small indie team and inspired by cRPG classics like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale, Black Geyser features challenging real time tactical combat with pause, deep lore and memorable companions, all set in a sprawling, unique fantasy world.”

      • Valve puts up official developer FAQ for the Steam Deck | GamingOnLinux

        With the Steamworks Virtual Conference: Steam Deck over now, Valve has put up their own official set of answers to various common questions.

        Plenty of it we’ve already covered and explained in previous articles like native versus Proton, and expanded details on what we learned from the conference. Still, it’s always good to have a few reminders for people that missed it.

      • Developing A Game Engine with Perl | Shawn [blogs.perl.org]

        To most in the know, coding a game engine with Perl would be a surprise. I’ve certainly been asked, “Why Perl?”. You see, unlike C++, C#, Java and others, which are well established languages in game engine design, Perl is not (well) known for it’s role in the development of games. Especially not as a game engine language. You are much more likely to see Perl managing the network infrastructure for the gaming industry then you are to see it powering your favourite video games.

      • NordicTrack Patches Out ‘God Mode’ In Treadmills That Allowed Users To Watch Anything On Its Display

        If you are a console gamer of a certain age, you will remember the bullshit Sony pulled when it patched its PS3 systems to remove useful features it had used as selling points for the console to begin with. Essentially, the PS3 had a feature that allowed you to install another operating system on it. This was used by hobbyists, companies, and the US Military alike to creatively use PS3s for purposes other than that for which they were built, such as research supercomputers and creating homebrew PS3 games. Sony later decided that those features could also be used for piracy or other nefarious actions and so patched it out. Sell the console with a feature, remove it later after the purchase… and then get sued in a class action, as it turned out.

      • GOG to go through some reorganization after suffering losses | GamingOnLinux

        While Steam continues to do well with it being the most popular games store, it seems CD PROJEKT Group’s store GOG is really starting to struggle.

        CD PROJEKT recently released their latest financial results, along with a call with investors that went over how the whole business is doing. It’s not all bad news for them, since they saw overall 38% more sales revenue compared to the third quarter of last year. On the GOG side though, it posted increasing losses and so it’s going to be restructured.

      • GOverlay for editing MangoHud gets a new Steam Deck friendly UI | GamingOnLinux

        GOverlay is an application that helps to manage Linux gaming tools like the MangoHud performance overlay, the Vulkan post-processing layer vkBasalt and the video capture tool ReplaySorcery.

        Over time GOverlay has supported an increasing amount of options, and the UI ended up pretty cluttered and confusing – not to mention it needing a lot of monitor space. GOverlay release 0.7 goes a long way towards fixing that, with a new tabbed interface to spread things out a bit.

      • Ubisoft suggest posting on their forum for Proton support in Rainbow Six Siege | GamingOnLinux

        Now that getting games that use BattlEye for anti-cheat working on Linux (either native or through Proton) is much easier, an Ubisoft rep suggests people post in their forum to show demand for it.

        In response to a post on their official forum asking about Ubisoft hooking it all up, the rep mentioned they can pass the feedback onto developers and that hopefully “other players will reply here in favor of Proton support and the development team may then look to implement it”. It’s not exactly much and a pretty bog-standard response but it’s a reply nonetheless and isn’t being ignored.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • KDE developer suggests Plasma needs to be simpler by default

          KDE developer Nate Graham, the same person who recently said they may become the “Windows or Android” of the FOSS world is back again with more thoughts – this time about keeping it simple.

          The Plasma desktop is pretty darn powerful, that’s for sure and it has a massive amount of customization options for practically every little thing. For many people this is great, however it can also have a detrimental affect on the experience by new users and users less comfortable with computing. So what’s the answer? Graham thinks they need to keep things simpler out of the box.

        • Who is the target user?

          As a teenager, I played a lot of Vampire the Masquerade (VtM)–a tabletop role-playing game. One of the skills in which your character could become experienced was Computers, with ability measured from 0 to 5 dots…

          This little table has stayed with me over time. As simple and crude as it is, I think it provides a reasonable measurement scale that can be used to guide software development: you need to decide how many dots in Computers a user must have before they can use your software, which helps you organize the user interface and prioritize features.

          My sense is that currently most Linux-based software targets people with three dots in Computers or more, but is often usable for people with two dots. My wife is a solidly two-dot user who is happily using KDE Neon as her distro.

        • A Call For KDE To Fully Embrace Simplicity By Default, Appeal To More Novice Users
        • KDE Plasma 5.23.4, Bugfix Release for November

          Tuesday, 30 November 2021. Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 5, versioned 5.23.4.

          Plasma 5.23 was released in October 2021 with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

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

        • KDE Plasma 5.23.4 Update Brings Back the Touchpad Applet, Fixes More Bugs

          KDE Plasma 5.23.4 is here three weeks after the KDE Plasma 5.23.3 update and it restores the Touchpad applet that was previously available in the Plasma 5.22 series. The applet is now available as a read-only status notifier that only shows when your laptop’s touchpad has been disabled.

          This point release also improves the Plasma Wayland session to allow users to run XWayland apps as a different user, improves the Media Frame applet to display images from folders that contain unusual characters like backticks in their names, and improves the notification about critical battery level to automatically disappear when you connect your laptop to its charger.

    • Distributions

      • elementary OS 6 Intros a Simpler Alt Tab Experience

        A recent update replaced the distro’s flashy (in both senses of the word) alt + tab experience with a simpler version. The new approach is more akin to the sort of switchers found in other Linux desktop environments and other desktop operating systems.

        To better illustrate the change here’s a gif that shows what window switching looked like in elementary OS 6 previously…

      • New Releases

        • OSMC’s November update is here with Kodi 19.3 – OSMC

          At the end of the Summer, we released our largest update ever delivering a new version of Kodi, an improved video stack, support for new Raspberry Pi models and a large number of improvements and fixes.

          Since then, we’ve been working hard to deliver another significant update. This update also features Kodi v19.3 which has a number of bug fixes. One of the more significant changes in Kodi v19.3 includes a fix which improves the playback of videos which have high-bitrate TrueHD tracks. This would previously result in drop-outs when playing back some titles with HD audio passthrough enabled.

        • elementary OS 6 Updates for November, 2021 ⋅ elementary Blog

          This past week was Thanksgiving in the US, which for my family means decorating for the holidays is in full swing. In a similar vein, we’ve spent some extra time over the past month focusing on both visual and functional polish to make sure elementary OS 6 looks as good and works as well as it can—read on for the details!

        • 4MLinux 38.0 Released with New Apps, Basic Support for 32-bit Apps, and a Games Pack

          Coming four months after 4MLinux 37.0, the 4MLinux 38.0 release is here to introduce basic support for 32-bit apps, as well as a new downloadable extension called 4MLinux GamePack that includes a big collection of classic Linux games, which you can download from here.

          It also comes with several new pre-installed apps, including the Audacity audio editor, Musique audio player, GQmpeg music player, Minitube player for YouTube, wxCam webcam app, xmp CLI module player, as well as the GRUB2 bootloader.

        • 4MLinux Releases: 4MLinux 38.0 STABLE released.

          The status of the 4MLinux 38.0 series has been changed to STABLE. Edit your documents with LibreOffice 7.2.3.2 and GNOME Office (AbiWord 3.0.5, GIMP 2.10.28, Gnumeric 1.12.50), share your files using DropBox 133.4.4089, surf the Internet with Firefox 94.02 and Chromium 93.0.4577.82, send emails via Thunderbird 91.3.2, enjoy your music collection with Audacious 4.1, watch your favorite videos with VLC 3.0.16 and mpv 0.33.1, play games powered by Mesa 21.1.6 and Wine 6.19. You can also setup the 4MLinux LAMP Server (Linux 5.10.79, Apache 2.4.51, MariaDB 10.6.4, PHP 5.6.40 and PHP 7.4.25). Perl 5.32.1, Python 2.7.18, and Python 3.9.4 are also available.

      • Debian Family

      • AWS

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Raspberry Pi 4 PLC Industrial controller targets IIoT applications

        I’ve just noticed Boot&Work Corp was now offering an “Industrial Shields” branded PLC industrial computer powered by Raspberry Pi 4 SBC. We previously covered the company in 2017 at a time when they provided Arduino-based PLC modules optionally controlled with 10.1-inch panel PCs based on ARM Linux SBCs such as Raspberry Pi or Banana Pi.

        The “Raspberry Pi PLC Industrial Controller” is offered with either optoisolated outputs or relay outputs, and optional GPRS connectivity. The Linux PLC is equipped with up to 36 digital inputs, 16 analog inputs, 8 analog outputs, and 6 interrupts, as well as communication interfaces such as CAN bus, up to 2x Ethernet ports, dual RS-485, WiFi, and Bluetooth.

      • Programming/Development

        • Responsively App Is A Browser For Fast Responsive Web Development (Free And Open Source)

          The application had its first public release back in March 2020, and is already quite popular, but I’ve only recently stumbled upon it and thought I’d share it with you.

          Main Responsively App features…

          The application also includes a live CSS editor, touch mode, design mode that allows users to edit HTML directly without dev tools, network speed emulation options, zoom, disable SSL validation, and support for various protocols (file://, ftp://, etc.), and much, much more.

          Using Responsively App, you also get network proxy support, light and dark themes and shortcut keys.

        • Musings on the OWASP Top 10

          The recently released OWASP Top 10 – a summary of the primary attack vectors used by ne’er-do-wells has taken a somewhat different approach than in previous years. As the report states, “This instalment of the Top 10 is more data-driven than ever but not blindly data-driven. We selected eight of the ten categories from contributed data and two categories from the Top 10 community survey at a high level. We do this for a fundamental reason, looking at the contributed data is looking into the past. AppSec researchers take time to find new vulnerabilities and new ways to test for them. It takes time to integrate these tests into tools and processes. By the time we can reliably test a weakness at scale, years have likely passed. To balance that view, we use an community survey to ask application security and development experts on the front lines what they see as essential weaknesses that the data may not show yet.”

        • Spatial AI And CV Hack Chat | Hackaday

          A lot of what we take for granted these days existed only in the realm of science fiction not all that long ago. And perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the field of machine vision. The little bounding box that pops up around everyone’s face when you go to take a picture with your cell phone is a perfect example; it seems so trivial now, but just think about what’s involved in putting that little yellow box on the screen, and how it would not have been plausible just 20 years ago.

  • Leftovers

    • Giving Josephine Baker a Hero’s Grave Won’t Bury the Truth…

      As a student in Paris in the fall of 1990, my lodgings were the envy of my peers—even if the means by which I came about them were not. While fellow language students from my university in Edinburgh were stuck in soulless suburbs, I was ensconced in Rue des Fossés Saint-Jacques, a short walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg and around the corner from the Panthéon.1

    • Hardware

      • Scrolling Name Badge Is Sure To Break The Ice | Hackaday

        The badge runs on an ATtiny45 and uses three 8×8 ultra-bright LED matrices for scrolling [Madison]’s name. It’s powered by a tiny LiPo battery that is boosted to 5 V. This build really shows off a number of skills, especially design. We love the look of this badge, from the pink silkscreen to the the typography. One of the hardest things about design is finding fonts that work well together, and we think [Madison] chose wisely. Be sure to check it out in action after the break.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • Opinion | Omicron Shows Corporate Media Critics of China’s Zero-Covid Strategy Are Way Off the Mark

        As the new Omicron variant of Covid-19 threatens to eviscerate the false sense of security that political elites in many rich countries have felt since vaccines were rolled out at the beginning of the year, critics of China’s zero-Covid strategy may want to carefully reflect on why they have been so quick to dismiss Beijing’s stringent containment measures.

      • Opinion | Omicron: Vaccine Nationalism Is Prolonging the Pandemic

        The United Kingdom and wealthy European nations are in a panic. Unsurprisingly, hoarding huge swaths of the global vaccine supply has enabled the emergence of dangerous new variants of COVID-19. And once again, rich countries are punishing the victims of global vaccine inequality by slamming shut the borders to anyone from southern African nations.

      • WHO Chief Urges Pandemic Treaty to Avoid Another ‘Crisis of Sharing and Solidarity’

        As the World Health Organization warned of a “very high” global risk posed by the Omicron variant of Covid-19, representatives from the body’s 194 member states gathered in Geneva to forge a treaty aimed at preparing the world for the next pandemic—with public health officials warning that the emergence of Omicron should push governments to embrace global solidarity to avoid another disastrous public health crisis.

        “Vaccine equity is not charity; it’s in every country’s best interests. No country can vaccinate its way out of the Covid-19 pandemic alone.”

      • Ireland’s two-tier health insurance system
      • Unnecessary and Complicated Transfers Are Spreading COVID in Federal Prisons
      • Capitalism Must Not Dictate Our Response to Omicron Variant
      • They Knew Industrial Pollution Was Ruining the Neighborhood’s Air. If Only Regulators Had Listened.

        The white ranch house in Pascagoula, Mississippi, was supposed to be Barbara Weckesser’s retirement plan. In 2010, it was getting harder for the real estate agent and her husband to climb the stairs of their home on Dauphin Island, Alabama. She imagined a quiet existence of gardening and puttering around her porch. The Cherokee Forest subdivision seemed like just the place to do it. Rabbits wandered the lawns among the dozens of modest homes built in the 1960s and ’70s; families stayed put for decades. The ranch was a fixer-upper, so the couple tackled it together, installing drywall and hanging up new doors and cabinets.

      • Health Justice Advocates Say Vaccine Equity, Not “Racist” Travel Bans, Will Stop the Omicron Variant

        We go to Cape Town, South Africa, to speak with a leading health justice advocate about how scientists in the country have identified a new Omicron coronavirus variant, and the World Health Organization warns it could be more transmissible than previous variants. Against the advice of the WHO, several countries have closed their borders to foreign travelers. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa criticized the travel bans and called on wealthy nations to help poorer nations gain greater access to COVID vaccines. The bans are “actually quite racist,” says Fatima Hassan, founder and director of Health Justice Initiative. “We need to urgently … vaccinate as many people in Africa as possible.”

      • India’s Farmers Win on Many Fronts, Media Fails on All
      • Leonard C. Goodman lays down antivax tropes to argue against vaccinating children

        I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I spent three years at the University of Chicago in the late 1990s, which is why I’m familiar with The Chicago Reader. It’s one of those free alternative weekly newspapers that most large cities have. (In Detroit it’s the Metro Times.) Of course, things change, and I haven’t lived in Chicago for over 20 years. I do, however, frequently visit because I have family there and Chicago is a popular site for medical meetings; so I have read the Reader from time to time, although not recently. (Thanks to the pandemic, I haven’t visited Chicago since the summer of 2019, and I don’t often read the Reader online.) Even so, I never would have expected what a reader sent me, an article by a criminal defense attorney named Leonard C. Goodman entitled Vaxxing our kids. Let’s just say that if Mr. Goodman claims not to be “antivax,” he sure does have a funny way of showing it, given that he credulously parrots a lot of COVID-19 antivaccine tropes, producing a very high density of antivaccine misinformation for a relatively short article.

      • Dental care too expensive for almost half of the population

        Triinu Võlli would see all medical bills presented to the Health Insurance Fund and not the patients. While the benefits scheme has brought some clients to visit the dentist, dentists have noticed that a “some for all” approach still leaves some people aside.

      • South Dakota’s Governor Succeeds in Blocking Voter-Approved Marijuana Legalization

        The court’s 4–1 decision does not affect Measure 26, which authorizes medical use of marijuana and passed with support from 70 percent of voters last November. But unless the state legislature independently implements the policy embodied in Amendment A, the ruling means supporters of broader legalization will have to try again next year with an initiative that addresses the court’s legal objections.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Microsoft’s GitHub back online after two-hour outage

          Microsoft-owned open-source developer platform GitHub is back online after experiencing a more than two-hour-long outage, affecting thousands or potentially millions of developers that rely on its many services.

          GitHub started experiencing issues at around 3.45 p.m. ET on Saturday, with Git operations, API requests, GitHub actions, packages, pages, and pull requests all affected, reports The Verge.

        • Security

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Apple Sues NSO Group For Targeting IPhone Users With Powerful Exploits

              NSO Group’s year from hell continues. Apple is now suing the Israeli exploit hawker for hacking its customers’ iPhones — customers who include not only the supposed terrorists and dangerous criminals NSO claims its customers target with malware, but also journalists, activists, lawyers, ex-wives, religious leaders, US citizens, and government officials NSO claims its customers don’t target.

            • Yuval Noah Harari: Lessons from a year of Covid

              Both Israel and the UK have subsequently been in the forefront of rolling out the vaccines, but their early misjudgments cost them dearly. In Britain, the pandemic has claimed the lives of 120,000 people, placing it sixth in the world in average mortality rates. Meanwhile, Israel has the seventh highest average confirmed case rate, and to counter the disaster it resorted to a “vaccines for data” deal with the American corporation Pfizer. Pfizer agreed to provide Israel with enough vaccines for the entire population, in exchange for huge amounts of valuable data, raising concerns about privacy and data monopoly, and demonstrating that citizens’ data is now one of the most valuable state assets.

            • China’s Twitter-like Weibo plans $547 million Hong Kong listing

              US-listed Chinese microblogging platform Weibo is seeking to raise up to $547 million in a share offer in Hong Kong, documents showed Monday, the latest China tech company to list closer to home as tensions with the United States rise.

              Several US-listed Chinese tech firms such as Alibaba have held initial public offerings in Hong Kong over the past two years as the United States has stepped up scrutiny of Chinese companies.

            • Is “KAX17” performing de-anonymization Attacks against Tor Users?

              As middle and exit relays are frequently changed the likelihood to use KAX17′s relays increases with tor usage over time. We have no evidence, that they are actually performing de-anonymization attacks, but they are in a position to do so and the fact that someone runs such a large network fraction of relays “doing things” that ordinary relays can not do (intentionally vague), is enough to ring all kinds of alarm bells.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • The NRA Could be Winning its Long Game Even as it Appears to be in Dire Straits

        On the one hand, more states are allowing Americans to carry weapons in public without permits, and the gun-rights movement could be on the verge of a major Supreme Court victory. On the other, the National Rifle Association, which advocates on behalf of gun owners, faces an existential crisisthat’s mostly due to the NRA’s own missteps.

        As a political scientist who has studied gun politics and policy for over 30 years, I’m confident that there is no precedent for this contradictory situation. Moreover, there’s no reason to believe that the NRA’s problems will influence how the courts treat gun-rights cases.

      • ‘For the Sake of Peace,’ Anti-War Groups Demand Biden Return to Nuclear Deal With Iran

        As negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear program convened in Vienna on Monday, more than three years after the U.S. walked away from an international agreement, anti-war groups called on the Biden administration “to choose the proven path of peace” and re-enter the pact for the benefit of Iranians, Americans, and the global population.

        “We’ve delayed long enough,” said Sara Haghdoosti, deputy director of the U.S.-based Win Without War. “For the sake of peace, for the sake of prosperity, for the security of people in Iran and the United States alike, it’s time to put differences aside and return to the Iran nuclear deal.”

      • Lying NYPD Officers Cost Prosecutors Sixty More Criminal Convictions

        Fighting crimes is easier when it’s not being done by criminals. A bunch of cases are being tossed in New York City because misbehaving NYPD officers left their dirty handprints all over them.

      • Iran Says US Must Lift ‘Tyrannical and Illegal’ Sanctions to Return to Nuclear Deal

        With Iran, China, European powers, and the U.S. set to resume nuclear talks in Vienna on Monday, Iranian negotiators made clear that the Biden administration must lift crippling economic sanctions if it hopes to return to the multilateral deal that former President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018.

        “The Islamic Republic of Iran has entered the talks with a strong will and elaborate preparations in order to ensure the removal of unlawful and cruel sanctions,” Ali Baqeri-Kani, Iranian deputy foreign minister for political affairs and the nation’s lead negotiator in Vienna, said Monday in an interview with the IRIB News Agency.

      • BLM Co-Founder Alicia Garza: Ahmaud Arbery Should Still Be With Us; Biden Must Condemn Vigilantes

        After a Georgia jury reached a verdict of “guilty” in the closely watched trial of three white men who chased and fatally shot 25-year-old unarmed Black man Ahmaud Arbery, many activists and racial justice advocates following the case have expressed some relief in hearing the conviction. We speak with Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, who says while it might feel important that the murders were held accountable for their actions, “justice would be that Ahmaud Arbery would still be with us today.” Garza also discusses the broader context of other trials of white supremacists, like Kyle Rittenhouse, and the role the federal government can play. “Unfortunately, I think the Biden-Harris administration could have been a lot stronger in their condemnation of this kind of behavior and activity,” says Garza. “But what we saw was actually more of a milquetoast response, which is especially concerning in this political context of white nationalism and a rise in vigilantism.”

      • Placing “Guardrails” on the US-China Nuclear Competition

        With the United States and China both speeding up the acquisition of new nuclear weapons, some analysts predicted that Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping would discuss limits on those munitions during their virtual summit on November 15. However, they barely touched on the matter, agreeing only that both sides should take steps to prevent the unintended escalation of future crises. As Biden told Xi during their three-hour exchange, the two sides need “commonsense guardrails to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict.” Yet no plans were made for negotiations leading to the adoption of such measures, so the US-China arms race will only gain further momentum.

      • Mosul, Destroyed by War, Waits to be Rebuilt While the Hunt for Hidden ISIS Treasure Goes On

        “A month ago, workers removing rubble from the ruins near my house found black plastic bags full of bank notes,” said Khalid, a 32-year-old resident of west Mosul, where the destruction is at its worst. “That is why reconstruction stopped temporarily.” The two workers who found the cash told him that the bags were splashed with mud and scorched by fire, but that the bank notes inside were undamaged.

        Khalid says that six months earlier $1.6m (£1.2m), along with gold and silver coins and ingots, were found by building workers excavating a bombed-out house. “Money and gold coins were found hidden in barrels and plastic bags buried three metres underground,” he said.

      • Democrats Push to Remove Boebert From Committees After Islamophobic Comments
      • Omar Hangs Up After Boebert Uses Call to Double Down on ‘Outright Bigotry and Hate’

        Congresswoman Ilhan Omar confirmed Monday that she promptly ended a call with Rep. Lauren Boebert because the Colorado Republican refused to publicly apologize for her recent remarks about the Minnesota Democrat and instead clung to her Islamophobic rhetoric.

        “Spewing this hate is as racist as it is dangerous.”

      • Where the Taliban Rule

        The Taliban’s own embrace of the media in recent years — placing opinion pieces in The New York Times and a cuddly representative in Doha during talks with the U.S. government — while no more self-serving than any other government’s, extends as far as it can benefit the group’s cause but not to independent outlets inside Afghanistan that threaten to challenge it.

      • British F-35 crashed into sea after failing to take off, leaked video reveals

        Given that the aircraft went down in about 1.24 miles of water, it is likely the search area on the sea bed will be a circle of about four miles in diameter. Royal Navy ships are remaining in the area to deter anyone else trying to recover the jet.

        However, defence sources said while the jet would have a locator device on board, the military would not want to activate this amid concerns it could alert rivals to its precise location.

      • With new Omicron variant looming, Republicans are now bribing people to avoid vaccination

        As Axios reported Monday morning, the concerted efforts to keep shots from going in arms have escalated in red states, with Republican politicians now openly bribing constituents not to get vaccinated. “Republican officials around the country are testing a creative mechanism to build loyalty with unvaccinated Americans while undermining Biden administration mandates: unemployment benefits,” the short piece explains. “Florida, Iowa, Kansas and Tennessee have changed their unemployment insurance rules to allow workers who are fired or quit over vaccine mandates to receive benefits.”

      • GOP courts anti-vaxxers with jobless aid

        The backdrop: On Sept. 8, President Biden announced a new rule requiring businesses with more than 100 employees to implement vaccine mandates, affecting roughly 80 million private-sector workers, as well as millions of federal workers and contractors.

      • Taliban and 9/11 Families Fight for Billions in Frozen Afghan Funds – The New York Times

        Nearly 20 years ago, about 150 family members of Sept. 11 victims sought a measure of justice for their losses by suing a list of targets like Al Qaeda and the Taliban. A decade later, a court found the defendants liable by default and ordered them to pay damages now worth about $7 billion.

        But with no way to collect it, the judgment seemed symbolic.

        Today, however, the Taliban are back in control of Afghanistan. The group’s leaders say their country’s central bank account at the Federal Reserve in New York, in which the former government accumulated about $7 billion from foreign aid and other sources, is rightfully theirs. And that in turn has raised a question: If the money is the Taliban’s, shouldn’t the plaintiffs in the Sept. 11 lawsuit be entitled to seize it?

        High-level officials in the Biden administration are now debating the answer to that question, which presents a complex knot of national security, legal, diplomatic and political problems — the latest example of how thorny issues stemming from the terrorist attacks remain unresolved more than two decades later.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Environment

      • At COP 26, A Bigger, Stronger Climate Movement Made Its Mark

        This column is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration cofounded by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

      • Opinion | Rich Nations’ COP26 Failures Are Modern Colonialism at Its Worst

        The refusal of the United States and fellow rich nations to compensate developing countries for the devastation wrought by air pollution and climate change smacks of a kind of modern colonialism at its worst.

      • Cyber Monday Report Reveals Climate-Wrecking Supply Chain of US Retail Giants

        As shoppers scoured the internet for holiday deals on Cyber Monday, a pair of environmental groups published a report that exposes the planet-heating maritime shipping practices of four major global retailers: Amazon, IKEA, Target, and Walmart.

        “Pandemic-fueled demand increases, record-breaking profits, and the supply chain crisis reveal the current maritime shipping system is ripe for transformation.”

      • New Research Finds Climate Emergency the ‘Overwhelming Factor’ Behind Australian Bushfires

        New research finds “a robust and multi-evidence link” between the climate crisis and Australia’s trend of worsening wildfires.

        “We need to be ready for more Black Summers—and worse.”

      • Shell Slammed for Plan to Blast South African Coastline for Oil and Gas During Whale Season

        Environmentalists responded with outrage to reports that oil giant Shell plans to spend the next several months conducting underwater explosions to search for deep-sea oil and gas reserves off South Africa’s coastline—a move that threatens to worsen the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis, undermine the livelihoods of fishers, and harm marine life.

        “Shell’s project has been allowed by our government, as if the threat of global heating from burning more and more fossil fuels doesn’t exist.”

      • Energy

        • Is the new crypto bill the end of the tunnel for crypto-trade in India?

          After a long-drawn debate regarding regulating cryptocurrency, the much-awaited “Banning of Cryptocurrency & Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2019″ draft was introduced in the Indian Parliament on 24th November, 2021.

          The legislation is a brief, a 17-pager draft with a slightly concerning title – with it being named “Banning of Cryptocurrency”, it, needless to say, dismayed many experts and crypto[currency]-enthusiasts.

          What does this draft Bill say?

        • Work set to begin on cross-border Finland to Sweden rail line

          The project will electrify the Laurila-Tornio-Haparanda section of the network, thereby opening up a cross-border rail connection between Finland and Sweden.

          Haparanda station reopened for passenger trains in March this year after a 29-year break, offering connections to long-distance trains in the south of Sweden.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • Behind the Science: How Do We Know How Many Shark Species Are at Risk?
        • Sen. Tester’s Wilderness Act Doesn’t Go Far Enough

          Paid pollsters with their surveys tell us it is a good thing. Businessmen looking for government handouts tell us the same fairy tale.  Yard signs in the well-healed, “smart” parts of university towns – “donor-class” neighborhoods — reinforce this narrow-minded, virtue-signaling, herd mentality. Tester’s collaborators pontificate, regurgitate.  It must be so. But is it so?

          “Stakeholders” (vested financial interests) proclaim their alleged “…love our mountains, valleys, rivers, fish, wildlife, and everything else available on our public lands.”  The difference between “love” and “available” is the difference between loving one’s spouse infinitely and loving a young beauty rented from an escort service for a one-night stand. Or if it is love, it is the kind that sentimentalizes desire and calls it love, where love is reduced to pity and an unconscious desire for exploitation.

        • Scientists peered into an octopus’ brain — and were astonished at what they saw

          Among the smartest animals on Earth, octopuses are unique for being utterly weird in their evolutionary path to developing those smarts. Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith has called the octopus the closest thing to an alien that we might encounter on Earth, and their bizarre anatomy speaks to this: An octopus’ mind isn’t concentrated in its head but spread throughout its body. Their tentacles are packed with neurons that endow each one with a hyperaware sense of touch, as well as the ability to smell and taste. Marine biologists have remarked that each tentacle sometimes seems like it has a mind of its own. Every octopus is a tactile thinker, constantly manipulating its surroundings with a body so soft it almost seems liquid.

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • The Political Marriage of Todd Gitlin and Bill Kristol
      • Opinion | These So-Called “Moderate Centrists” Are Nothing But Corporate Extremists

        Long ago, in a United States that now seems far, far away, the coming-to-America story of Saule Omarova would be hailed as a stirring endorsement of our nation as a beacon for democracy seekers. Born in 1966 under the Communist dictatorship of the USSR, and raised under her Kazakh grandmother who’d lost the rest of her family to Stalinist purges, she grew up with a passion for Pink Floyd and political dissent that caused her to stay here in the U.S. after the Soviet regime collapsed while she was a grad student in Wisconsin.

      • Paperwork Keeps People Poor

        Months of negotiations over the Democrats’ agenda in Congress keep boiling down to one thing: What will Joe Manchin agree to? Since his vote is necessary to pass the party’s Build Back Better package, which includes funding on climate change, health care, housing, and caregiving, the conservative West Virginia senator has been calling many of the shots.

      • ‘Triumph for Democracy’: Socialist Candidate Takes Commanding Lead in Honduran Election

        Leftist presidential candidate Xiomara Castro took a decisive lead in Honduras’ election on Sunday, setting her up to defeat the right-wing incumbent party’s candidate—though progressive observers stressed the need to remain vigilant as ballots continue to be counted and reactionary forces ramp up misinformation following an apparently unsuccessful attempt to suppress voting.

        “Xiomara Castro’s likely victory is a testament to the will of the Honduran people to have their voices heard and their votes counted.”

      • How Steve Bannon Has Exploited Google Ads to Monetize Extremism

        Almost a year ago, Google took a major step to ensure that its ubiquitous online ad network didn’t put money in the pocket of Steve Bannon, the indicted former adviser to Donald Trump. The company kicked Bannon off YouTube, which Google owns, after he called for the beheading of Anthony Fauci and urged Trump supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6 to try to overturn the presidential election results.

        Google also confirmed to ProPublica that it has at times blocked ads from appearing on Bannon’s War Room website alongside individual articles that violate Google’s rules.

      • Matthew McConaughey Says He Won’t Run for Governor of Texas Next Year
      • Trump May Win in 2024 If Democrats Keep Derailing Their Own Agenda
      • Facebook (Again) Tells Law Enforcement That Setting Up Fake Accounts Violates Its Terms Of Use

        Law enforcement agencies routinely engage in surveillance of social media accounts. Some of this is accomplished with third-party tools that use keywords and geofences to give cops info that may be relevant to investigations. These tools also give cops a lot of garbage data that law enforcement is free to sift through for officers’ own entertainment or to bypass constitutional protections surrounding speech and warrantless searches.

      • The Republicans Have Become the Party of Organized Violence

        On November 12, while promoting his new book, Betrayal, ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl released an audio recording of a conversation with Donald Trump. Responding to a question about the Capitol rioters who’d chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” Trump said those words were just “common sense,” given the fraudulence of the 2020 election. Two days later, Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso, who ran as a moderate but has since swung to the right, was asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos about Trump’s comment. Despite repeated prodding, Barrasso kept dodging the issue, emphasizing the need to move on and suggesting that there had been voting irregularities in the 2020 election that merited further investigation.

      • Now He Tells Us: David Brooks Suggests That the Republican Party Has Embraced Fascism

        These US Rightist “intellectuals” have in fact manufactured a “Left” that they can hate. It has almost nothing to do with any historical Left but is a convenient label for their fascistic attacks. It seems tailored to take advantage of some of the more divisive ideas of the Democrats, especially their “identity politics.” (More on this below). David Brooks points none of this out.

        Brooks’ focus is on the fact that these current younger “conservatives” have abandoned any idea that political differences can or should be worked out with rational or practical assessment of policies. What once might have been seen in our two-party system as political disagreements about how best to serve the American people, have been turned into irreconcilable antagonisms that cannot be compromised. Brooks quotes their spokesperson, Rachel Bovard: “Woke elites – increasingly the mainstream left of this country – do not want what we want. What they want is to destroy us.” Who are these “woke elites”? They are a “totalitarian cult of billionaires and bureaucrats….” Thus, the Right’s target is constructed for broad appeal to a mass of generally poorly informed individuals. Anyone who is concerned with racism and police murder, and who might have considered the long history of these tools of rule is “woke.” Billionaires and bureaucrats – who doesn’t abhor these people? Yet there is no mention that their new leader, Donald Trump, is an authoritarian billionaire who fits this bill, and has constructed a cult around himself.

      • Microsoft CEO Nadella sells off nearly $300 million in shares of the company

        Nadella disclosed the sale in an SEC filing.

        “Satya sold approximately 840,000 shares of his holdings of Microsoft stock for personal financial planning and diversification reasons. He is committed to the continued success of the company and his holdings significantly exceed the holding requirements set by the Microsoft Board of Directors,” a Microsoft spokesman said in a written statement to the Journal.

      • Ex-Pentagon chief says Defence Department censoring ‘tumultuous’ details of Trump presidency

        The former head of the Pentagon has sued the Department of Defence, accusing the government of blocking the publication of a new book revealing the “tumultuous” consequences of Donald Trump’s presidency.

        Mark Esper filed a lawsuit against his former employer for allegedly blocking the release of large swathes in his upcoming memoir, A Sacred Oath.

      • Digital group says govt troll move will not decrease hate online

        The Australian arm of a global initiative working to counter digital threats to democracy says the Federal Government’s proposed new rules to expose online trolls will not solve the problem on online hate on social media.

      • Govt promises new rules to force online firms to unmask trolls

        The Federal Government will put in place new rules to force technology companies to identify anonymous online trolls, or be exposed to the risk of defamation payouts.

      • India-born Parag Agrawal replaces Jack Dorsey as Twitter CEO

        Agrawal, an IIT-Bombay and Stanford University alumnus, was the chief technology officer of Twitter before the elevation that caught investors by surprise. Twitter stock went up by as much as 10% with the news in opening trade. The two most powerful people at Twitter will now be India-born—the other being Vijaya Gadde, its policy and safety lead director.

      • Twitter’s Jack Dorsey Steps Down From C.E.O. Role

        Jack Dorsey is stepping down as chief executive of Twitter, the social media site he co-founded in 2006 and guided through the tumultuous years of the Trump administration.

        Twitter announced Mr. Dorsey’s departure on Monday. He is being replaced by Parag Agrawal, the company’s current chief technology officer. Mr. Dorsey’s plans were first reported by CNBC. A Twitter spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

      • Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey to leave social media company

        Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is going to leave the company and is stepping down as chief executive office (CEO) of the social media platform, he announced on Monday. He will be succeeded by Twitter’s current chief technology officer (CTO), Parag Agrawal.

      • New Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is central to Jack Dorsey’s plans to revamp social media

        Agrawal has been Jack Dorsey’s closest partner in thinking about the future of the Twitter platform and decentralizing social media, a former company executive told CNBC.

      • The dangers of anarchy in space

        I can’t think of a more dramatic illustration of how reckless actions in space put all at grave risk than Russia’s recent anti-satellite (ASAT) test blowing up one of its own defunct satellites and creating a cloud of more than 1,500 pieces of space debris.

        Even small pieces of debris, when traveling at some 17,000 miles per hour, can cause horrific damage to satellites, disrupting the space infrastructure that is the nervous system of modern life. Moscow’s test forced astronauts (including its own cosmonauts) on board the International Space Station (ISS) to take emergency safety measures for fear of collision. Moscow’s test followed a similarly dangerous Chinese ASAT test in 2007, and a U.S. ASAT test (though designed to minimize debris) in 2008.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Frances Haugen will testify before Congress again this week

        House Democrats announced that Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen will testify before Congress a second time on Wednesday to discuss possible legislative changes to tech’s controversial legal liability shield, Section 230.

        The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on communications and technology will hold the upcoming hearing to discuss what Democrats are referring to as “targeted reforms” to Section 230. Several committee members have already introduced bills that would create carve-outs in the law that would make big tech companies like Facebook and Google legally liable for algorithms that amplify content that leads to offline violence.

      • Communist Party cancel culture targets internet celebrities

        There appear to be two targets. The first is a business model with 4.9trn ($767bn) of annual revenues, the fan economy, that has sprung up around internet celebrities, fan groups and streaming platforms. In the most recent set of rules, issued in late November, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said that brand campaigns featuring celebrities will be allowed to show advertisements only in designated ad spaces. And from now on, China’s huge fan groups, often with millions of fans apiece, are to come under close monitoring by the authorities.

      • An introduction to Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s new CEO

        Agrawal isn’t the most well-known of names either inside or outside of Twitter. He’s been with the company for over a decade, though, working his way up from an engineer to become its top executive (and a close friend of Dorsey’s). Agrawal first started at Twitter back in October 2011 with a focus on ad products, and he became the first recipient of the company’s “Distinguished Engineer” title. He was later appointed chief technology officer in October 2017, during which time he’s jumped in to address high-profile problems (like a large-scale password security issue) and take on some of the company’s bolder initiatives (like decentralization). But despite that long tenure, Agrawal, who is 37, hasn’t spent much time in the public eye — something that will immediately change with his new role.

      • ‘Could offend students’: Canada school board cancels book club event with Yazidi Nobel laureate

        The event was supposed to carry discussion on two books in presence of their authors — Marie Henein’s ‘Nothing But the Truth: A Memoir‘ and Nadia Murad’s ‘The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State‘.

        The board said it has withdrawn support to hold the October event with Henein, the daughter of Egyptian immigrants and one of Canada’s most prominent lawyers, because her book was “problematic” as she “defended” former CBC host Jian Ghomeshi when he was accused of sexual assault.

        For Murad’s event, which was to be held in February 2022, the board said the book written by her could “promote Islamophobia” and “offend” their Muslim students.

        Murad, a Yazidi human rights activist, was 19 when she was taken as a sex slave in 2014 by the Islamic State militants who invaded her village in northern Iraq.

      • Disney+ appears to censor episode of The Simpsons in Hong Kong referencing Tiananmen Massacre

        Online video streaming service Disney+ appears to have censored an episode of The Simpsons in Hong Kong which references the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre.

        The 12th episode of the 16th season was first broadcast in 2005 and sees the family visit China, where the cartoon family visits the mummified body of ex-leader Mao Zedong. The newly-launched Disney+ platform skips from episode 11 to 13.

      • Disney+ Drops ‘Simpsons’ Episode in Hong Kong Because of Tiananmen Square Joke

        The 16th season of the iconic Fox animated show jumps from episode 11 to 13 when viewers in the city browse the flagship Disney streaming service. The missing episode 12, first broadcast in 2005, happens to be the one where Homer takes his family to China, where they visit Tiananmen Square and come across a placard that reads: “On this site, in 1989, nothing happened.”

        It appears the episode has suffered precisely the kind of the censorship it was written to ridicule.

      • Disney+ Omits ‘The Simpsons’ Tiananmen Episode in Hong Kong

        In the missing episode, “Goo Goo Gai Pan,” the cartoon family visits the Beijing square where a character confronts a line of tanks — a reference to the famous Tank Man photograph — and a sign reads “Tien An Men Square: on this site, in 1989, nothing happened.”

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

      • When The FBI Shows Up At Your Door About Your Reporting, That’s Intimidation

        Having the government show up at your door to ask some questions about your reporting can be extremely unnerving. Zack Whittaker, the top notch cybersecurity reporter for TechCrunch got to experience the fun of that when the FBI showed up at his door over a year after he had published a story about a hacker dumping thousands of Mexican embassy documents from Guatemala after the Mexican embassy left the data exposed online.

      • China surveillance of journalists to use ‘traffic-light’ system

        Documents seen by BBC News describe a system that classifies journalists into a “traffic-light” system – green, amber and red.

        Journalists in the “red” category would be “dealt with accordingly”, they say.

        The Henan Public Security Bureau has not responded to a request for comment.

        The documents, discovered by the surveillance analyst firm IPVM, also outline plans to surveil other “people of concern”, including foreign students and migrant women.

        Human Rights Watch said: “This is not a government that needs more power to track more people… especially those who might be trying to peacefully hold it accountable.”

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Calls Grow to Drop Murder Charges Against Black Teen Chrystul Kizer in Kenosha
      • Off to the Solomon Islands: Australia’s Civilizers Get Busy

        In the Solomon Islands, Australian interventionism was originally cloaked in shining dress, justified as humanitarian and utterly noble.  By the time some 2,000 troops, police officers and support personnel, mostly Australian, were deployed in 2003, the country had already mounted regional interventions in Bougainville in Papua New Guinea (1997) and East Timor, the latter as part of a UN-mandated mission.

        The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) was given a rhetorical flourish of preventing a “failed state” while easing Australian anxieties in a region marked by a supposed “arc of instability”.  In a conscious nod to making sure the mission would be seen benevolently, the PR pen pushers came up with the pidgin named Operation Helpem Fren.

      • A Place of Freedom

        Upon its publication in 1975, Gayl Jones’s literary debut, Corregidora, was met with great acclaim. Jones’s mentor and teacher, the poet Michael Harper, had introduced her work to his friend, the editor and novelist Toni Morrison, who published Corregidora and also Jones’s second novel, Eva’s Man, the following year. Still in her mid-20s, Jones was immediately heralded for her genius by readers as diverse as James Baldwin and the New York Times critic Raymond Sokolov. Part of what drew them was what Sokolov referred to as her “nonchalance” and “ease” of style, which served as her fiction’s “consummate deception.” Writing with a clarity and matter-of-factness that quietly understated her work’s difficulty, Jones often relayed moments of intense brutality with a kind of quotidian ordinariness.

      • In An Even Marginally Healthy Society

        He understood perfectly! All forms of encompassing, emphatic, and egalitarian justice certainly are the most reasonable things of all. And, as such, they always have within themselves the possibility of being understood and lived by people in just this way. Yet, there are so many deeply sedimented socio-historical, socio-economic, and socio-existential structures that keep some people from the exclamation of my nephew that day. A realized egalitarian and equitable social formation that has maximized justice and goodness to the fullest extent possible by our very imperfect species that will always be entwined with social antagonisms, would truly be the most reasonable social formation of all—civilizationally, historically, and anthropologically.

        I have, subsequent to the moment when my nephew made his exclamation, taken pleasure in narrating this episode because there was something special in what he said and how he said it and it immediately linked his statement with another extremely resonant statement, the one in which Kwame Ture in his book, Ready For Revolution: The Life And Struggles Of Stokely Carmichael, described the Freedom Rides of l961 (at 19 years of age Ture—Stokely Carmichael at the time—was the youngest of the Freedom Riders): “The plan, however, was simplicity itself. In any sane, even half-civilized society it would have been completely innocuous, hardly worth a second thought or meriting any comment at all. CORE would be sending an integrated team–black and white together–from the nation’s capital to New Orleans on public transportation. That’s all. Except, of course, that they would sit randomly on the buses in integrated pairs and in the stations they would use waiting room facilities casually, ignoring the white/colored signs. What could be less harmless…in any even marginally healthy society?”

      • Europe’s War on Woke

        Paris—On my 32nd birthday, I agreed to appear on Répliques, a popular show on the France Culture radio channel hosted by the illustrious Alain Finkielkraut. Now 72 and a household name in France, Finkielkraut is a public intellectual of the variety that exists only on the Left Bank: a child of 1968 who now wears Loro Piana blazers and rails against “la cancel culture.” The other guest that day—January 9, less than 72 hours after the US Capitol insurrection—was Pascal Bruckner, 72, another well-known French writer who’d just published “The Almost Perfect Culprit: The Construction of the White Scapegoat,” his latest of many essays on this theme. Happy birthday to me.1

      • Self-Defense? After Rittenhouse, Calls to Drop Murder Charges Against Black Teen Chrystul Kizer

        Since Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted under claims of self-defense for fatally shooting two people and wounding a third during racial justice protests last year in Kenosha, Wisconsin, another case in the city is drawing new national attention. Human rights advocates are calling for charges to be dropped in the case of Chrystul Kizer, who faces homicide and other charges for killing her white sex trafficker in 2018 after he drugged her and tried to rape her when she was just 17-years-old. Court records show police knew Randall Volar had a history of sexually abusing underage Black girls. Although the court initially ruled Kizer could not use a self-defense argument, an appellate court reversed the decision and the Wisconsin Supreme Court will now consider the ruling. “It has huge ramifications for her, but it also has a huge potential impact for other victims of trafficking,” says reporter Anne Branigin. “We have a very clear case where we are not receiving the same support, the same outcry from folks who got behind Kyle Rittenhouse to defend this young Black woman,” says Wisconsin state representative David Bowen. “She was trying to defend herself to get out of the sex trafficking she was being abused with.”

      • Cornel West Moments of Interruption
      • Digital ID expert says reducing cyber crime will need new thinking

        H. Daniel Elbaum, chairman and joint chief executive of VeroGuard, said the Joint Policing Cybercrime Co-ordination Centre, announced by the Federal Government on Monday, was a welcome initiative.

        But, he added, PwC modelling had estimated the direct costs to business from cyber incidents to be about $10.1 billion annually, with projections of a total GDP loss of $114.9 billion by 2031.

      • He stole a rug and a car. Why did he spend 25 years bouncing between prison and parole?

        In America, a person under supervision – either as an alternative to prison (probation) or a condition of their release from one (parole) – can face as many as 30 rules that range from vague to “bizarrely specific”, according to a 2017 law-review article by a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). These provisions include observing a curfew, refraining from being around guns or anything that looks like a gun, disclosing monthly bank-account statements, avoiding other people with criminal records (including family members), not having more than $100 cash in your wallet, keeping a job, supporting one’s family, getting approval to use knives at work from a parole agent and carrying those knives only while at work or travelling to and from work.

        The net effect of these rules is a “nearly impossible burden”, the ACLU lawyer wrote. People have to navigate the narrow strait between “the Scylla of failure to check in and the Charybdis of unemployment”. More pointedly, as civil-rights scholar Michelle Alexander wrote: “Today a criminal freed from prison has scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a freed slave or a black person living ‘free’ in Mississippi at the height of Jim Crow.”

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Monopolies

      • What’s at Stake at WTO

        One would think that every global institution, and particularly one whose rules govern trade in vaccines, medicines, and other medical products necessary to end COVID-19, would be doing everything in its power to contribute towards ending this horrendous pandemic.

        Unfortunately, we are talking about the WTO, where the protection of billionaires’ intellectual property monopolies, intended to reduce supply and increase prices, are sacrosanct. Developing countries introduced a proposal to waive certain provisions of the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in order to ensure vaccines, treatments, diagnostics, and medical products necessary for the treatment and containment of the COVID-19 pandemic are accessible to all. More than a year after its introduction, members have still not agreed to start negotiations on the waiver.

      • Patents

        • Africa: patenting against the clock [Ed: This fluff from Inventa International mentions the PACE program of EPO, which is likely illegal; after it was exposed in the media the EPO engaged in creative revisionism to make it seem acceptable, but it’s just more of the usual corruption]

          Considering this background, several patent offices offer to the applicant legal provisions that are configurated to provide a faster prosecution of a patent application. There are several embodiments of accelerated examination procedures, wherein the simplest ones comprise a mere request by an applicant for an accelerated examination for a specific patent application, as the PACE programme, established by the European Patent Office (EPO).

        • EPO voted best for patent quality once more [Ed: IAM will continue to receive bribes from the EPO as long as it helps perpetuate lies like these; it is a propaganda mill/PR industry]
        • Strategic patent countries: evidence from EPO oppositions [Ed: Bad metrics which want us to assume litigation is the goal, not science]

          IP-savvy organisations not only file their own patents but also keep close tabs on the competition. Tony Afram and Gianluca Tarasconi at ipQuants reveal exclusive statistics on EPO oppositions, which provide invaluable insight into which countries are making the most of this data

          Companies that file the the highest number of patent applications are often singled out as being exceptionally innovative. In fact, even rankings that purport to classify countries based on their innovation power usually include the patent filing activity of applicants originating from each country as a proxy for innovative activity.

          However, filing activity alone fails to tell the full story. A true corporate patent strategy needs not only to align with business objectives, but also to monitor patent activity and occasionally take action against third-party patents.

        • Patents: key updates and developments for in-house teams [Ed: Unable to make money, Lexology increasing experiments with paywalls; EPO is now shamelessly extending an illegal practice, which it rigged courts to approve]

          The German Patent Court rejects inventorship for machines, the UK updates it guidance on UK-China Cooperation on IP, and Brazil and Japan renew the Patent Protection Highway – plus other key updates.

          [...]

          On 24 November 2021, the European Patent Office (EPO) announced that its pilot project for conducting oral proceedings in opposition by…

        • EPO: Enlarged Board endorses video hearings in appeal proceedings [Ed: Convenient revisionism “Sponsored by By Jakob Pade Frederiksen”; this was an astounding act of EPO corruption and court-rigging]

          On October 28 2021, the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) issued its reasons for decision G 1/21 on the legality of the conduct of oral proceedings in the form of a videoconference (ViCo). The decision lays down that during a general emergency impairing the parties’ possibilities to attend in-person oral proceedings at the EPO premises, the conduct of oral proceedings before the boards of appeal by way of ViCo is compatible with the European Patent Convention even without the consent of all parties to the proceedings. The decision is specifically concerned with oral proceedings at the appeal stage only and is therefore not immediately applicable to oral proceedings at the first instance.

        • EPO revokes key Intellectual Ventures mobile phone patent [Ed: EPO admits it was granting fake patents to Microsoft patent trolls]

          After three days of hearings, the EPO Opposition Division around chairman Thomas Pieper revoked a patent owned by Intellectual Ventures. At least one ground for opposition was held as the company prejudicing the maintenance of European patent EP 21 46 439, after Art. 101(2) EPC.

          Specifically, the patent specification contained further elements not included in the original application. In the past, the EPO has applied this strictly as grounds for revocation. Now this approach has brought down the 20-year-old Intellectual Ventures patent. The parties did not discuss novelty and inventive step during the hearing.

        • Benchmarking the IP5 [Ed: IAM, bribed by the EPO, once again spreads propaganda about EPO patent “quality”]

          Once again, the EPO has taken the crown as the patent office with the best reputation for quality among IAM readers. More than a quarter of respondents describe its output as ‘excellent’ placing it well ahead of the pack (the JPO comes closest with just 14%). Only a miniscule percentage of survey takers told us that EPO quality was ‘poor or adequate’.

        • Benefits and Considerations for Patent Prosecution under Patent Prosecution Highway in the U.S., Europe, China, and Singapore [Ed: When litigation zealots' agenda matters more than actual due process or examination of patents]

          Patent Prosecution Highway or PPH is a set of initiatives promulgated by participating patent offices around the world to accelerate patent prosecution in countries of the participating patent offices. PPH allows the participating patent offices to share information and to benefit from work performed by other participating patent offices, and thereby reducing examination workload and improving quality of patents.

          Under PPH, prosecution of a patent application previously filed with a participating patent office can be fast-tracked in another participating patent office if the patent application meets certain requirements. This article provides a brief overview of benefits of filing patent applications under PPH and requirements by which the patent applications must satisfy in order to participate in PPH.

        • 2.5 Million Nurses Demand UN Probe Into Rich Countries Blocking Patent Waivers
        • ‘That’s for Them to Decide’: UK Secretary Rebuked for Claiming Vaccine Patent Waiver Won’t Be ‘Helpful’ to Global Poor

          As 200 million workers on Monday demanded rich nations drop their continued opposition to a proposed waiver of intellectual property protections on coronavirus vaccines at the World Trade Organization, U.K. Health Secretary Sajid Javid faced sharp criticism for asserting that lifting such rules would not “be helpful” because it would disincentivize the industry from creating life-saving medicines in the future.

          “The health secretary can side with Big Pharma billionaires or he can put public health first, he can’t do both.”

        • 2.5 Million Nurses Demand UN Probe Into ‘Covid-19 Criminals’ Blocking Patent Waiver

          More than two million nurses from 28 countries across the globe filed a complaint Monday calling on the United Nations to investigate the rich countries that are blocking a proposed patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines, an appeal that came as public health experts raced to understand the newly detected Omicron variant.

          “Continued opposition to the TRIPS waiver is resulting in the violation of human rights of peoples across the world.”

        • Our Patent Review System is Ten Years Old. It’s Time to Make It Stronger.

          Thousands of patents get issued each year that never should have been issued in the first place. This is a particular problem in software, which is a bad fit for the patent system. That’s why it’s so critical that we have a robust patent review system. It gives companies that get threatened over patents the opportunity to get a second, more in-depth review of a patent—without spending the millions of dollars that a jury trial can cost. 

          Our patent review system is ten years old now, and unfortunately patent trolls and other aggressive patent holders have learned to game the system. Unfortunately, the USPTO has let them get away with it. A recently introduced bill, the Restoring the America Invents Act (S. 2891) will close some of the loopholes that patent owners have used to dodge or weaken reviews. 

          Congress recognized the need for such a system when it passed the 2011 America Invents Act, and created a review system called “inter partes review,” or IPR. The IPR process lets a particular department of the patent office, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), hold a quasi-judicial process in which they take a second look to decide if a patent really should have been granted in the first place. 

        • Software Patents

          • Software Patent Eligibility Practice At The EPO [Ed: Software patents are not legal, but patent litigation companies are celebrating criminals who took over the EPO and now compel examiners to grant such illegal patents, giving them tips in how to dodge the law and get away with it]

            In common with many patent offices around the world, some inventions that are implemented in software may be patented before the EPO.

            In this chapter, we explore software patentability covering why only some software inventions are patentable before the EPO, the requirements for an invention to be patentable and how patent practice before the EPO with respect to software inventions may evolve in the future.

            [...]

            EPO tests

            At the EPO, every patent application is also examined with respect to novelty and inventive step, among other requirements. The EPO’s inventive step requirement corresponds to the USPTO’s requirement for non-obviousness. However, the inventive step requirement differs in some aspects from the non-obviousness requirement.

            The first hurdle to overcome before the EPO is also a form of eligibility test, but one with a relatively low bar, only excluding subject matter that is entirely devoid of any technical character. A claim that includes any technical means is said to clear the first hurdle to be considered as an invention. This test is often referred to as the ‘any hardware’ or ‘any technical means’ approach. This determination is made without reference to the prior art. Therefore, a first step to considering whether a claim is likely to be patentable before the EPO is to assess whether the claim recites a technical entity, particularly hardware. In practice it can be surprising how many claims, particularly method claims, can be found at the initial prosecution stage, which on close inspection do not actually refer to any hardware whatsoever. One relatively easy way of ensuring that the first hurdle is cleared can be to recite “a computer implemented method”. In other words, if any hardware (eg, a computer, storage or microprocessor, among other things) is mentioned in the claim, it will pass the first hurdle.

            At the second hurdle, the requirement for an inventive step over the prior art is examined. The examination for inventive step is simultaneously subject to a limitation that only aspects of the claimed invention that are technical can be considered. In other words, any matter in the claim that is not considered technical cannot give rise to an inventive step over the prior art. Therefore, at the EPO, the test whether the claimed subject matter fulfils the requirement of ‘technicality’ is assessed simultaneously with the evaluation of whether the subject matter of the patent application has an inventive step.

            Problem-solution approach

            The EPO has developed a special process for assessing inventive step, known as the ‘problem-solution approach. The problem-solution approach was modified by the EPO for assessing ‘computer implemented inventions’ (CIIs), which is the term used by the EPO for inventions that are usually realised by means of software and are colloquially called ‘software patents’.

            Under the modified problem-solution approach, features of the claim under examination are assessed as to whether they contribute to the solution of a technical problem. Only features of the claimed invention are considered that provide such a technical contribution. In some ‘mixed type’ inventions, being a mix of technical and non-technical claim elements, features can be considered that are non-technical, such as pure software steps, but only if they are said provide a contribution to the formulation of the technical problem solved by the invention.

            CII case law

            During its existence, the EPO has twice reviewed its case law relating to CIIs in the form of decisions of its Enlarged Board of Appeal. The first decision (G 03/08) from 2010 contains an overview of previous case law on CIIs, which confirmed the two-hurdle test and made no changes to the EPO’s approach going forward.

            The second decision of the Enlarged Board (G 01/19) was issued in 2021 and concerns the patenting of computer-aided simulations. On the one hand, the principles of the first decision were confirmed and, on the other hand, specific comments were made on the legal problems that arise when patenting computer-aided simulations.

            Computer-implemented simulations use a numerical model that is fed with input data and in turn produces data as an output indicative of the result of the simulation. Therefore, only data is processed without directly influencing the physical world. In this sense, a computer-implemented simulation could be considered a purely mathematical process. Mathematical methods as such are excluded from patentability and it could be concluded that computer-implemented simulations are, in principle, not patentable.

            In this decision, however, the Enlarged Board of Appeal came to a different conclusion and stated that computer-implemented simulations are not fundamentally excluded from patentability. Instead computer-implemented simulations can be patented if they relate to a technical invention according to the above principles.

      • Copyrights

        • MPA Seeks Person to Investigate Online Pirates & Their Technical Infrastructure

          Whether they supply content, technical infrastructure or even coding skills, those involved with the online distribution of pirated movies or TV shows can expect to get noticed by the Motion Picture Association. How the Hollywood group goes about its investigations isn’t public knowledge but for one talented individual, becoming a member of the team is now on the horizon.

        • Cheat Seller AimJunkies Accuses Destiny 2 Creator Bungie of “Sharp Practices”

          Earlier this year, game developer Bungie filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against AimJunkies.com, which offered a popular ‘Destiny 2 Hacks’ suite. Soon after, the parties began negotiating a potential settlement deal. To AimJunkies’ surprise, however, Bungie sneakily went ‘behind its back’ by requesting the court to enter a default.

A Concise Manifesto For Freedom-Respecting Internet

Posted in Free/Libre Software, Standard at 10:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The NON-Manifesto Manifesto, or a number of key points to consider

The Wall
No more paywalls, artificial obstructions, and planned obsolescence

Summary: An informal list of considerations to make when reshaping the Internet to better serve people, not a few corporations that are mostly military contractors subsidised by the American taxpayers

  • All protocols should be secure by design; back doors, however “well-meant”, invalidate them and forbid their use in any shape or form
  • The Internet should be divided into protocols, each of which excels at one single thing
  • Pages should be treated as pages, not an as assembly of computer programs (tying them together on a canvas)
  • Pages should be made accessible to all, including blind people
  • Protocols and implementations should be Free (libre) software
  • A protocol is admitted and accepted only if many parties implement and deploy instances of it
  • Centralisation disqualifies oneself (e.g. one site monopolising a protocol)
  • Monoculture disqualifies oneself (e.g. one application monopolising a protocol)
  • Protocols and implementations must conform to a “least complex” attitude/principle; simplicity is to be favoured over supposed power, for the betterment and advancement of a true technical diversity
  • Anonymous access (e.g. Tor or unlogged sessions) should be permitted; in some countries it’s a matter of life or death
  • DNS should be considered not mandatory; there’s a broad range of alternatives to it and they should be actively encouraged
  • Geo-blocking is not permitted; it facilitates racism, which has no room in society
  • Parties that implement DRM should be shunned and led to failure, setting an example for anyone else wishing to follow their lead
  • Participation in military (including spy agencies’) programs subjects oneself to greater scrutiny, suspicion, and even prejudiced rejection
  • File and transmission neutrality should be presumed benign and desirable; it’s a violation of human rights to presume any user is a law-breaker
  • Censorship, including bans, should be considered a “last resort” subject to very strict standards and regarded as a highly exceptional circumstance; there are ways to repel unwanted people/views without outright bans
  • Copyright law should be dealt with as a potential barrier to preservation; when a last remaining copy online is no longer available online, it should be perfectly lawful for a party with an offline copy to upload it somewhere
  • Throttling or traffic-shaping should be advisory only; people can be encouraged, not forced, to limit or change their usage/utility of the network; this should be done transparently, not covertly, and not by network operators with a financial stake in the outcome (or business partners with a stake)
  • Any expansion of existing protocols should be done with diligence and care, taking into account compatibility with old devices, environmental factors, and a balance between advancement and this planet’s natural limits
  • Standards bodies dominated by large corporations (vendor capture) can be ignored and disregarded

Freenode.net Becomes a ‘Reddit Clone’ and Freenode IRC is Back to Old Configurations After Flushing Down Decades’ Worth of User/Channel Data and Locking/Shutting Out Longtime Users

Posted in Free/Libre Software at 8:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum 8c867b7e71ba4c385076f14ad8a10079

Video errata: At least a couple of times I said “last year” when referring to earlier this year; that’s what happens when there’s a lack of preparation and no scripting/editing.

Summary: Freenode is having another go; after “chits” and “jobs” (among many other ideas) have clearly failed, and following the change of daemon (resulting in massive loss of data and even security issues associated with impersonation) as well as pointless rebrand as “Joseon”, the domain Freenode.net becomes something completely different and the IRC network reopens to all

THE year 2021 has been craaaaaaazy for IRC. What a wild ride! IRC used to be uneventful; for decades it was “just there” with barely anything changing…

Recently, as we noted here 10 days ago, IRC grew in terms of the number of known (to netsplit.de) networks, based on some threshold/criterion (apparently about 50 simultaneous users). Based on this page, things have improved since then (89 or 90 new networks, not 88 as before), but Freenode remains unlisted because it shut out anonymous connections/sessions.

Freenode at netsplit.deSee the image on the right. Andreas of netsplit.de seems to have gotten fed up with Andrew Lee and cut off the network (writing it off as “legacy”) some time around August or earlier.

Well, not many have noticed it, but last week Freenode became accessible to everyone again. Also, aside from some server names here and there, the “Joseon” branding got abandoned. For many like myself who forgot to change IRC configurations it became apparent that Freenode had sprung back to life and that connections could be made again unconditionally (except for limits like connections per IP address). Many like myself left it in the background, perhaps unaware, and therefore reconnected silently some time after 4:25PM on some arbitrary day last week. Within half an hour CrystalMath announced this in our IRC networks and over in my IRC client (XChat) I saw:

* VLIST=b WATCH=32 WHOX :are supported by this server
* There are 7 users and 2478 invisible on 16 servers
* 6 :operator(s) online
* 47 :unknown connections
* 6029 :channels formed
* I have 1023 clients and 1 servers
* Current local users: 1023  Max: 1023
* Current global users: 2485  Max: 2485
* *.freenode.net message of the day
*   Hello, World!
*  
*   Welcome to the
[...]

So it had about 2,000 registered users (before opening up Freenode to everyone, once again). Then there was an influx or returning IRC clients, such as mine, perhaps oblivious to what had actually happened.

CrystalMath, who has long maintained contacts at/within the new Freenode, told us that someone called “epony” had left. Apparently this person was advising Andrew Lee to limit network access; once that influence was gone the network reopened. I show some of the scrollback in the video above.

Within a few days there were already 6,000 users online and now it’s over 10,000:

[11:36] [Users] There are 11 users and 10098 invisible on 16 servers
[11:36] [Users] 6 operator(s) online
[11:36] [Users] 33 unknown connections
[11:36] [Users] 13053 channels formed
[11:36] [Users] I have 4008 clients and 1 servers
[11:36] [Users] Current users on sunshine.freenode.net: 4008  Max: 4015.
[11:36] [Users] Current users on the network: 10109  Max: 10137


[11:37] [MOTD] Message of the day:
[11:37] [MOTD]   Hello, World!
[11:37] [MOTD]  
[11:37] [MOTD]   Welcome to the
[11:37] [MOTD]           __                               _
[11:37] [MOTD]          / _|_ __ ___  ___ _ __   ___   __| | ___
[11:37] [MOTD]         | |_| '__/ _ \/ _ \ '_ \ / _ \ / _` |/ _ \
[11:37] [MOTD]         |  _| | |  __/  __/ | | | (_) | (_| |  __/
[11:37] [MOTD]         |_| |_|  \___|\___|_| |_|\___/ \__,_|\___|
[11:37] [MOTD]                                    AUTONOMOUS ZONE
[11:37] [MOTD]  
[11:37] [MOTD]   Connect to us on:
[11:37] [MOTD]  
[11:37] [MOTD]   Hostname: irc.freenode.net / chat.freenode.net
[11:37] [MOTD]   Plaintext: 6660-6669
[11:37] [MOTD]   TLS/SSL: 6697,7000,7070
[11:37] [MOTD]   Webchat: https://webchat.freenode.net
[11:37] [MOTD]  
[11:37] [MOTD]   By connecting to freenode you indicate that you have read and accept our
[11:37] [MOTD]   policies and guidelines as set out on https://freenode.net and agree to
[11:37] [MOTD]   be scanned for an open proxy.
[11:37] [MOTD]  
[11:37] [MOTD]   If you are looking for assistance, please try:
[11:37] [MOTD]  
[11:37] [MOTD]   #help                    - Help with general IRC and Services.
[11:37] [MOTD]   #chanhelp                - Help with channels and channel services.
[11:37] [MOTD]   #IRC                     - Help with the IRC.com by freenode app.
[11:37] [MOTD]  
[11:37] [MOTD]   Checkout some of our communities and services:
[11:37] [MOTD]  
[11:37] [MOTD]   #freenode-bbs            - BBS [https://bbs.freenode.net/]
[11:37] [MOTD]   #freenode-bbs-discussion - BBS Discussion
[11:37] [MOTD]   #freenode-jobs           - Jobs [https://jobs.freenode.net/]
[11:37] [MOTD]   #freenode                - Chat about freenode.
[11:37] [MOTD]   #anonchan                - Chat anonymously.
[11:37] [MOTD]  
[11:37] [MOTD]   Type /join #<channel>
[11:37] [MOTD]  
[11:37] [MOTD]   Thank you for using freenode!
[11:37] [MOTD] End of message of the day

Freenode: We think we're RedditBut this is where it gets really weird. About 10 minutes before recording the video someone brought up (in IRC) the bizarre turn taken by the Freenode.net domain (for World Wide Web or HTTPS). I spontaneously show the changes in the video above; it seems to be in an experimental state, Lee is clearly involved in this (posting as “root”, as usual), and it’s already going in a direction that’s guaranteed to alienate most of the ordinary (traditional, old timers) tenants of the network. It’s not about software, it’s already kind of edgy, and it’s not too clear what target audience they have in mind.

Perhaps there’s a new “business plan”. Freenode becomes just a social control network, which happens to have an IRC network ‘on the side’… with integration to come. █

Jack Dorsey’s Decision is a Wake-up Call: Social Control Media is Just a Toxic Bubble

Posted in Deception at 7:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum de4b7461663b0f628ad09b1e6e8d2c47)

Summary: The state of the World Wide Web (reliability, preservation, accessibility, compatibility etc.) was worsened a lot more than a decade ago; with social control media that’s nowadays just a pile of JavaScript programs we’re basically seeing the Web gradually turning into another Adobe Flash (but this time they tell us it’s a “standard”), exacerbating an already-oversized ‘bubble economy’ where companies operate at a loss while claiming to be worth hundreds of billions (USD) and generally serve imperialistic objectives by means of manipulation like surveillance, selective curation, and censorship

THE traffic one gets in Twitter is rapidly decreasing, based not only on my own experience (as alluded to in the video above) but also the experiences of friends whom I regularly speak to. Some of them only get about 10% the “engagement” they got 5-10 years ago. Social control media is in general a bit of a bubble; it was a thing back in the days, but people shift over to things like TikTok at YouTube’s expense, looking for a new experience (under Alphabet it became like television, there’s no “You” in YouTube) and Facebook keeps buying companies in an effort to stay relevant. Jack Dorsey’s departure from his leadership role isn’t due to some scandal; it is likely based on what he’s seeing and not telling shareholders. It’s not often that we see founders leaving their ‘baby’ (see “India-born Parag Agrawal replaces Jack Dorsey as Twitter CEO“; “Twitter’s Jack Dorsey Steps Down From C.E.O. Role“; “Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey to leave social media company“; “New Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is central to Jack Dorsey’s plans to revamp social media“) unless that baby has slim chances of surviving.

“The media rarely discusses those sorts of issues because it has a stake in the status quo.”As we’ll note in the next batch of Daily Links (outline above), Twitter’s founder and chief is stepping down. Most of Twitter’s history was just endless losses and lawsuits, including a lawsuit from shareholders (over Twitter faking its popularity). In recent years Twitter raised money from criminals in exchange for reputation laundering and it had actually made a bit of money for a few years by giving a platform to extremists who spread hate and misinformation.

Regardless of factors like audience size, we’re increasingly refocusing and shifting emphasis to self-hosting (IRC, videos, textual publication etc.) while adopting simpler protocols. Twitter became JavaScript-only about a year ago (almost as bad as having a Flash site) and YouTube did the same around the same time if not earlier. From Web pages they’ve moved to “web” “apps” and from social they’ve moved to social control. This isn’t what the open Web was about or what the World Wide Web was originally for (when a British scientist based in Switzerland wanted to share his papers over the Internet).

The media rarely discusses those sorts of issues because it has a stake in the status quo. Any shift or change is very expensive to those who are accustomed to being the centre of attention. █

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