Hours ago:
Last week: Classifieds: Phoronix Jobs, Sponsored by AMD
He keeps doing this
Summary: As we put it last week, “Why is a large company hiring one person considered newsworthy? E-mail tip-offs from the sponsor?”
Today in the Linux Foundation’s site (first publication in a long time):
Spot the irony in this footer. What does this have to do with Linux? Nothing! As we put it in the latest Daily Links: “Linux Foundation, an openwashing marketing company and lobby of proprietary giants (Pentagon front), has resorted to mindless storytelling because its staff knows nothing about Linux (and doesn’t care for it)”
Summary: The Linux Foundation continues to post fluff in its blog (entirely unrelated to Linux [1, 2]); Just like their CoC, what they tell us isn’t even followed by themselves, so the motivations are insincere to say the least (also, they don't hire blacks)
We cover events and user groups that are running in Thailand. This article forms part of our Linux Around The World series.
This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re going to be bringing Hardware Addicts to DL. That’s right we’re going to be giving you geek chills with all the new hardware offerings in the Linux space. Then we will be discussing Darktable’s latest release and you’ll hear from a special guest as well. Plus, we have our tips/tricks and software picks. All this and more coming up right now on Destination Linux to keep those penguins marching!
There is a lot of really useful software out there but development doesn’t stop with the latest release, new patches are always being worked on and there is always work in progress but these patches shouldn’t be shipped to the user.
Zorin OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that aims to be an alternative to Windows and macOS. It is designed to be friendly and easy, using familiar desktop layouts that should make anyone that has used Windows, Mac or Linux feel right at home.
A modern alternative to the watch command, automating lights, and hacking routers, using FOSS to make installing Windows easier. Plus our thoughts on VC funding in open source, and more.
In this video, we are looking at how to install Zoom on Pop!_OS 22.04.
Let me preface this post by stating, somewhat cheekily, that I would rather not use Electron apps where possible.
[...]
And so it is with Tidal-hifi, an Electron-based (I know, I know) app that is, to my knowledge, the easiest way to stream music from TIDAL on Linux in the service’s Hi-Fi quality (hence the hi-fi name – and TIDAL? That’s the last time I’m capitalising you).
Now, ‘easiest’ is an important qualifier in the sentence you just read as there are other Tidal-supporting apps for Linux.
Today we are looking at how to install VeadoTube Mini 1.4 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.
The GNOME tweaks tool enables you to change themes. However, the challenging part could be installing and using the tool effectively.
This article guides through installing the GNOME tweaks tool in Ubuntu 22.04. It then walks you through downloading and changing themes.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install DokuWiki on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, DokuWiki is a free and open-source wiki software written in PHP. It is simple and lightweight that uses a simple file format to store its data, so it does not require any database.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the DokuWiki on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.
Install Papirus Icon Theme On Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
The Papirus Icon theme is one of the most popular icon themes available right now for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Recently, the Papirus Icon theme has been updated with more than 60 new app icons.
Papirus is a free and open-source SVG icon theme for Linux.
If you need to connect to a remote server, SSH is the best way to do it. Users who have a Chromebook can use SSH as well. Setting it up is easy and only takes a few clicks.
The virtual hosting concept is used by companies to host multiple websites using a single machine. In this tutorial, we will see how we can host two virtual hosts on an Ubuntu 22.04 system using name-based virtual hosting. We will use the Apache web server.
Oracle VirtualBox is a virtual machine software application designed to run a complete x86_64 compatible operating system within a hosting application running on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Solaris operating systems.
It’s the most common virtualization application after VMware.
Thanks to significant work in the upstream, the upcoming release of Fedora 37 will introduce support for the Raspberry Pi 4.
Fedora Linux has been available for desktops, servers, and even IoT devices. However, if you wanted to install the OS on the Raspberry Pi 4 device, you were out of luck. Until now. With the upcoming release of Fedora 37, support for the devices will might well finally become a reality. Although not official, it has become a proposed change and will be implemented if it receives approval from the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.
The reason the Raspberry Pi 4 has yet to be supported by Fedora Linux, has been the lack of accelerated graphics. However, with upstream work on the kernel and Mesa (specifically the V3D GPU for both OpenGL-ES and Vulkan), it’s now just a matter of enabling support. The one caveat is that support for Wi-Fi on the Raspberry Pi 400 is not a part of this (although testing for audio support is).
We try hard to make our products as intuitive and familiar as possible, but there will always be “advanced” options and rarely-used features. Giving users choice and control over their experience will naturally lead to features that are used less frequently or settings that only a small percentage of users will change.
So how do we decide what order and prominence to give to these lesser-used features?
One method to help decide where (and how prominently) a control or interaction should be placed, is to classify interactions into one of three types:
Not too much to highlight this week, but there are some nice podcasts to listen too and some videos to watch!
There is a lot going on in Q2 but we also accomplished many things too! I hope you’re able to celebrate what you’ve contributed and let’s move forward to Q3 with renewed energy and excitement!
Over the last few weeks, we challenged you to help us reach our goal of $67,000. It was an ambitious number, more ambitious than we have had before, but we know we can make it. In fact, we know we can stretch it. As of today, we have raised just over $64,000 ($64,065 to be precise) since the beginning of this spring’s appeal, which began just three weeks ago. That’s just $3,000 below our goal! So we ask your attention and help for just a few more days to reach our new spring goal of $70,000 by July 18.
Suppose you go to your weekly MyTown market. The market runs Saturday and Sunday, and vendors set up booths to sell locally made products and locally grown and produced food. On Saturday, you buy some delicious almond milk from a local vendor — called Al’s Awesome Almond Milk. You realize that Al’s Awesome would make an excellent frozen dessert, so you make your new frozen dessert, which you name Betty’s Best Almond Frozen Dessert. You get a booth for Sunday for yourself, and you sell some, but not as much as you’d like.
The next week, you realize you might sell more if you call it Al’s Awesome Almond Frozen Dessert instead of your own name. Folks at the market know Al, but not you. So you change the name. Is this a morally and legally acceptable thing to do?
This is a question primarily regarding trademarks. We spend a lot of time in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community talking about copyrights and patents, but another common area of legal issues that face FOSS projects (in addition to copyright and patent) is trademark.
In fact, FOSS projects probably don’t spend enough time thinking about their trademark. Nearly ten years ago, Pam Chestek — a lawyer and expert in trademark law as it relates to FOSS and board member of OSI — gave an excellent talk at FOSDEM (2013), wherein she explored how FOSS projects can use trademarks better and to ensure rights of consumers — particularly when dealing with bad actors. Our own Executive Director, Karen Sandler, had also spoken about this issue as well. These older talks, in turn, spawned an ongoing conversation that continues to this day in FOSS policy circles.
Specifically, last week, we learned that the Microsoft Store was changing their policies, ostensibly to deal with folks (probably some of whom are unscrupulous) rebuilding binaries for well-known FOSS projects and uploading them to the Microsoft Store. Yet, this is a longstanding issue in FOSS policy. FOSS experts in this area would have been happy to share what’s been learned over the last ten years of studying this issue.
The problem Microsoft faces here is the same problem that the MyTown market folks face if you show up trying to sell Al’s Awesome Almond Frozen Dessert. The store/market can set rules that you will no longer be able to sell if you are found to infringe the trademark of another seller.
Back when machines only had one or two CPUs (still the case for embedded devices) the OS Kernel was responsible for making sure that the machine coule process more than one instruction “path” at a time. I started coding back on the Commodore 64, and there it was easy to lock up the machine: just run a program that does nothing. I’d have to look back at the Old Programmer’s Guide, but I am pretty sure that a program had to voluntarily give up the CPU if you wanted any form of multi-tasking.
The alternative is called “preemptive multitasking” where the hardware provides a mechanism that can call a controller function to switch tasks. The task running on the CPU is paused, the state is saved, and the controller function decides what to do next.
I don’t think that the above is especially hacky, and don’t expect changes to Gnus to break any of it. Implementing the above for your own notmuch setup should get you something close enough to notmuch.el that you can take advantage of Gnus’ unique features without giving up too much of notmuch’s special features. However, it’s quite a bit of work, and you need to be good at Emacs Lisp. I’d suggest reading lots of the Gnus manual and determining for sure that you’ll benefit from what it can do before considering switching away from notmuch.el.
Reading through the Gnus manual, it’s been amazing to observe the extent to which I’d been trying to recreate Gnus in my init.el, quite oblivious that everything was already implemented for me so close to hand. Moreover, I used Gnus ten years ago when I was new to Emacs, so I should have known! I think that back then I didn’t really understand the idea that Gnus for mail is about reading mail like news, and so I didn’t use any of the features, back then, that more recently I’ve been unknowingly reimplementing.
After a perilous drive up a steep, narrow, winding road from Lake Geneva we arrived at an attractive Alpine village (Villars-sur-Ollon) to meet with fellow Perl Mongers in a small restaurant. There followed much talk and a little clandestine drinking of exotic spirits including Swiss whisky. The following morning walking to the conference venue there was an amazing view of mountain ranges. On arrival I failed to operate the Nespresso machine which I later found was due to it simply being off. Clearly software engineers should never try to use hardware. At least after an evening of drinking.
Wendy’s stall was piled high with swag including new Bailador (Perl 6 dancer like framework) stickers, a Shadowcat booklet about Perl 6 and the new O’Reilly “Thinking in Perl 6″. Unfortunately she had sold out of Moritz’s book “Perl 6 Fundamentals” (although there was a sample display copy present). Thankfully later that morning I discovered I had a £3 credit on Google Play Books so I bought the ebook on my phone.
Occam’s razor, also known as Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS), is a sound principle. Larry says it this way ~ “make the easy things easy and the hard things possible”.
The rustup working group is happy to announce the release of rustup version 1.25.0. Rustup is the recommended tool to install Rust, a programming language that is empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.
Like many of the folks in open source, the LF’s Kenny Paul is a huge fan of building things out of LEGO. For Kenny however, it goes a bit beyond just opening a box and following the instruction book. In fact, he rarely ever builds anything from a kit, instead building highly complex and detailed models entirely from his imagination. Yes, for you LEGO Movie fans, Kenny is a Master Builder.
Intezer Labs security researchers have identified a sophisticated new malware that targets Linux devices. Dubbed OrBit, the malware can gain persistence quickly, evade detection and hide its presence in network activity by manipulating logs.
In reinforcement learning literature there is something known as the credit assignment problem. In simplified terms it comes down to the fact that it is hard to assign credit to activities of artificial agents in order to provide them with a good reward signal for their actions. Obvious examples are games like chess. Creating a software agent that plays chess is somewhat tricky because it is hard to assign a score to all the intermediate moves in a game that end in a checkmate. When playing chess the signal is whether the game is won or lost but it is very hard to tell which actions were the ones that were responsible for the winning move. Human players are able to analyze games and pinpoint the positions that determine the fate of the winner and loser but it’s not clear how to do this for artificial software agents.
Day 2 of the Old Computer Challenge, 60 minutes of Internet per day. Yesterday I said it was easy. I changed my mind.
[...]
I think my parents switched their Internet subscription from RTC to DSL around 2005, 17 years ago, it was a revolution for us because not only it was multiple time faster (up to 16 kB/s !) but it was unlimited in time! Since then, I only had unlimited Internet (no time, no quota), and it became natural to me to expect to have Internet all the time.
Because of this, it’s really hard for me to just think about tracking my Internet time. There are many devices in my home connected to the Internet and I just don’t think about it when I use them, I noticed I was checking emails or XMPP on my phone, I turned its Wi-Fi on in the morning and forgot about it then.
There are high chances I used more than my quota yesterday because of my phone, but I also forgot to stop the time accounting script. (It had a bug preventing it to stop correctly for my defense). And then I noticed I was totally out of time yesterday evening, I had to plan a trip for today which involved looking at some addresses and maps, despite I have a local OpenStreetMap database it’s rarely enough to prepare a trip when you go somewhere the first time, and that you know you will be short on time to figure things out on the spot.
It’s embarrassing to say but all my life I’ve had some belief in the paranormal as well as subjects relating to it like UFOs and Sasquatch.
Now mind you I don’t believe all of it, most of it is bunk, but I can’t in good faith believe that thousands of people for hundreds of years have just been misidentifying normal things as paranormal phenomena. Maybe I’m naive, but then again I’ve had my own few unexplainable experiences so maybe I’m just delusional.
For some reason, sed wasn’t matching my string variable against another text body which contained the same text. Turns out there were control characters from another encoding type at the end of the string: M-BM-.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.
Video download link | md5sum 0acca0c533ebc939b368157fa64bf4dc
3 Ongoing Series
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: Very busy month so far; we’re working on 3 series and doing technical tasks at the same time, but I might soon be able to focus on the site full time
THE meme we’ve just published was today’s last post. We’re very busy with site development and also some research regarding Microsoft, pertaining mostly to GitHub.
We also expect to release a lot of material about the EPO (it started today). It’ll be a very eventful year for the EPO’s management and Team UPC. Readers can meanwhile read some comments here.
Bear with us while we improve the back end of the site. This may take a while. We make it future-proof. █
Hakuna matony. Have no worries; the “f***ing lion” has diplomatic immunity and bribery budget for the EPO’s Administrative Council.
Summary: The European Patent Office (EPO) has tossed away the EPC (while obviously pretending the exact opposite), so it violates the law every day and nobody holds it accountable for it
This past Friday we mentioned [1, 2] that the European Patent Office (EPO) was condemned again — less than a week ago — by judges at the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation (ILOAT); now let’s look more closely…
Series parts:
The judgments of the 134th Session of the ILOAT were delivered on 6 July 2022. Registrar Dražen Petrović (I.) and President of the Tribunal Michael Moore (r.)
Summary: A short four-part mini-series reporting on the outcome of the 134th Session of the ILOAT and the implications for the EPO‘s dysfunctional justice system
The 134th Session of the ILOAT, was held from 25 April to 27 May 2022 and the judgments adopted during the session were delivered in public on 6 July 2022 by a video recording (Invidious link).
Around 19 of the cases settled by the Tribunal during this session related to complaints filed by EPO staff. As usual, the majority of these complaints were dismissed on various formalistic grounds.
However in two cases, EPO staff members won significant legal victories as reported recently on the Kluwer Patent Blog.
However, these victories were bittersweet ones that once again highlighted the inadequacy of the system of legal protection available to EPO staff and, more generally, to employees of international organisations.
The ILOAT judgments in question are nos. 4550 [PDF] and 4551. [PDF]
“In both cases the Tribunal found in favour of the complainants and ruled that the actions of EPO bosses had violated the fundamental right of staff to freedom of association.”Judgment no. 4550 relates to the premature termination of the complainant’s appointment as member of the Internal Appeals Committee in April 2014 on the basis of CA/D 2/14 (Benoît Battistelli’s so-called “Social Democracy”).
Judgment no. 4551 relates to a ban on the use of mass e-mails by EPO staff representatives which was imposed by Battistelli’s “Croatian bulldog”, the notorious union-buster Željko Topić, via a communiqué issued on 31 May 2013.
In both cases the Tribunal found in favour of the complainants and ruled that the actions of EPO bosses had violated the fundamental right of staff to freedom of association. However, the Tribunal displayed extraordinary and inexplicable leniency with regard to the financial sanctions imposed on the EPO for these breaches of fundamental rights.
In this mini-series we will look at these two judgments in more detail and examine their wider implications for the EPO’s notoriously dysfunctional internal justice system. █
Summary: New EPO series due for release soon; be ready to witness how European software patents are pushed in clear violation of the EPC among many other things (and more importantly why)
SO António Campinos, the EPO‘s corrupt dictator, got reappointed just like his original appointer Benoît Battistelli. Is this diversity? The EPO is run like the Mafia, so this was expected. Everyone predicted this outcome and lubrication of delegates with bribes neither caught the media’s attention nor was it investigated by anybody. The quasi-formal term “organised crime” neatly described today’s EPO management.
New EPO series is in the pipeline and due for release soon.
“The series will then proceed to explore how Team Campinos is gearing up to take action on this front as indicated by some recent personnel changes (connected with the EPO-wide “reorganisation” that took place in April of this year).”This will be a 12-part series which starts off by taking a look at the EPO’s “grant bubble” that currently seems to be in the process of deflating.
It will go on to explain why this development represents a potential problem for certain “vested interests” and why EPO management has strong motives for trying to prop up the “bubble”.
The series will then proceed to explore how Team Campinos is gearing up to take action on this front as indicated by some recent personnel changes (connected with the EPO-wide “reorganisation” that took place in April of this year).
“The series should of particular interest to readers of Techrights because there are definite signs that EPO management is planning a concerted effort to push for an increase in the (currently relatively low) “grant rate” of the ICT sector (in simple terms: more “software patents”… or the many buzzwords, e.g. 4IR, AI, CII).”The analysis will include an in-depth look at some of the main protagonists in this affair, in particular the new "Chief Operating Officer Operations".
The series should of particular interest to readers of Techrights because there are definite signs that EPO management is planning a concerted effort to push for an increase in the (currently relatively low) “grant rate” of the ICT sector (in simple terms: more “software patents”… or the many buzzwords, e.g. 4IR, AI, CII).
Further details to follow shortly … █
The interface of the new CMS is a lot simpler but also faster to use
Summary: We’ve been busy behind the scenes; here are some of the latest site changes or developments
TODAY we’ve posted no articles yet, but that does not mean we’re not busy.
At the moment we work on a number of important, high-profile stories (EPO and Microsoft still the focus).
“We might not be vocal and prolific while doing essential work on the back end, but we’ll try to keep Daily Links coming as frequently as before.”In addition to that we’re working on a new CMS, developed ‘from scratch’ to lessen server load* and increase security.
This morning we made some further changes that will utilise NewsWaffle to make more links/news in IRC accessible over Gemini protocol.
We might not be vocal and prolific while doing essential work on the back end, but we’ll try to keep Daily Links coming as frequently as before. █
____
*With an SQLite database used only for management of existing nodes but never for delivery of pages.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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