07.14.22

Links 14/07/2022: Arcan 0.6.2 and T2 SDE Linux 22.6

Posted in News Roundup at 8:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Make Use Of ☛ Google Reinvigorates 295 Old PCs and Macs With Chrome OS Flex Certification

        Google has announced that it has certified a number of PCs and Macs to run Chrome OS Flex, a version of Chrome OS that runs on standard computers. The company touts the OS as a way for businesses to increase security and avoid e-waste by installing it on older computers.

        [...]

        While the company was already planning on migrating their older devices because they liked being able to reduce e-waste, the attack accelerated their adoption of the platform.

        The company was able to eliminate the problem by installing Chrome OS Flex on the affected machines.

        Standard lightweight Linux distributions can also reduce e-waste by making use of machines that no longer receive proprietary OS updates, but Chrome OS Flex offers a user-friendly solution that’s similar to the standard Chrome OS.

        If Chrome OS Flex becomes more popular, companies might opt for Chromebooks instead of Windows computers when they do upgrade their machines. This may be why Google acquired Neverware in 2020 and rebranded its CloudReady OS as Chrome OS Flex.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Video ☛ How to install Debian 11.4.0 – Invidious

        In this video, I am going to show how to install Debian 11.4.0.

      • Install Apache Guacamole as Docker Container on Ubuntu – kifarunix.com

        In this guide, we are going to learn how to install Apache Guacamole as Docker Container on Ubuntu. We are using Ubuntu 22.04. Apache Guacamole is a clientless HTML5 web based remote desktop gateway which provides remote access to servers and desktops through a web browser. It supports standard protocols like VNC, RDP, and SSH.

      • Install Guacamole as Docker Container on Rocky Linux – kifarunix.com

        In this guide, we are going to learn how to install Guacamole as Docker Container on Rocky Linux. Guacamole is a clientless HTML5 web based remote desktop gateway which provides remote access to servers and desktops through a web browser. It supports standard protocols like VNC, RDP, and SSH.

      • ID Root ☛ How To Install Odoo on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Odoo on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Odoo is a popular open-source suite of business management software tools including, for example, CRM, e-commerce, billing, accounting, manufacturing, warehouse, project management, and inventory management. The applications within Odoo are perfectly integrated with each other, allowing you to fully automate your business processes easily. Odoo Community edition is available for Ubuntu for free, but you can switch to the Enterprise edition as needed.

        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 Odoo 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.

      • ID Root ☛ How To Install Terraform on AlmaLinux 9 – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Terraform on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, Terraform is an open-source infrastructure as a code software tool that enables you to safely and predictably create, change, and improve infrastructure. Terraform is built by Hashicorp and released under Mozilla Public License. It supports public, private as well as hybrid clouds, as of now Terraform supports 145 providers, which includes popular providers like AWS, Azure cloud, GCP, Oracle cloud, and many others.

        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 Terraform on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

      • Ubuntu Handbook ☛ How to Install Sweet Home 3D 7.0 from Official Tarball in Ubuntu | UbuntuHandbook

        The free interior design application Sweet Home 3D released version 7.0 with many improvements. Here’s how to install it via the official tarball.

      • MakeTech Easier ☛ How to Make Your Android Phone Look Like a Google Pixel Without Rooting – Make Tech Easier

        Google Pixel phones run stock Android with minimal customizations as to give users the purest Android experience possible. In contrast, a lot of Android phones come with customized skin (such as MIUI, One UI, and ColorOS etc) which tend to irritate a lot of users. While you can’t change these skins without rooting, you can still make your Android phone look like a Google Pixel, with the help of a few third-party apps, widgets, and launchers. It’s pretty easy to do, so follow along in this guide to learn how.

      • Make Use Of ☛ How to Run Android Apps and Games on Linux

        Want to run Android apps on Linux? How about play Android games? Several options are available, but the one that works the best is Anbox. This is a tool that runs your favorite Android apps on Ubuntu and other Linux distros without emulation.

        Here’s how to use Anbox to run Android apps on your Linux PC today.

      • Red Hat Official ☛ How to configure disk compression in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | Enable Sysadmin

        Compression allows you to reduce the size of a file. By decreasing use of the inodes table, it means more files and folders can be stored, maximizing the space available on physical storage. In Linux, system administrators have used tools such as zip, tar, gzip, bzip2, and other open source utilities for this task.

      • ZDNet ☛ How to connect Android to the Linux desktop with KDE Connect | ZDNet

        One major benefit of using iOS is that it makes it incredibly easy to sync between your iPhone and your Mac desktops and laptops. On the other hand, Android isn’t quite so embedded into other systems (besides, of course, Google). That doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to sync Android and your desktop or laptop…especially if your desktop/laptop OS is Linux.

    • Games

      • Boiling Steam ☛ NINJA GAIDEN Σ and BlazBlue: Chronophantasma Extend Land as Steam Deck Verified Titles – Boiling Steam

        Another milestone with more Japanese games making it to the Steam Deck, with the famous NINJA GAIDEN Σ from Team Ninja and BlazBlue: Chronophantasma Extend (bless you) from Arc Systems making it as Steam Deck Verified. There’s a lot more this time around, as Valve has released more than 75 new titles in one go. We are at more than 3900 games validated (3949 games to be precise at the time of publication) on the Steam Deck – in two categories…

      • Godot Engine ☛ Godot Engine – Dev snapshot: Godot 4.0 alpha 12

        Another couple of weeks, another alpha snapshot from the development branch, this time with 4.0 alpha 12! Same deal as usual, lots of bugs fixed and more refactoring and feature work. We’re etching closer and closer to the beta stage, things are starting to fall into place!

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • Arcan ☛ Arcan 0.6.2 – It’s all connected | Arcan

        This release should put us at about half way through the planned work for the networking focus set of releases (0.6.x), a scope roughly defined by the article on (A12: Advancing network transparency on the desktop) and the one on (Arcan as OS design). Alas, it is also the single most difficult and time consuming part left on the entire roadmap.

        Before dipping into the major additions and changes, I will break form a little and dwell on what is going on and why.

        From the (set of design principles) that we follow; number four “Make State mobile“, five “No State left behind” and six “Privacy fights back” are at the center of attention here.

        The idea is to get a protocol which replaces mDNS (local service discovery), SSH (interactive textual shell), X11/VNC/RDP (interactive graphical shell), RTSP (streaming multimedia), HTTP (networked application retrieval and state synchronisation) and a few other lesser knowns, and we are nearly there feature wise.

        This is “less” effort than one might think as so much code is needlessly repeated again and again by not leveraging the many bits the designs of these protocols have in common, justified only by legacy and history and not technical and architectural merit.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • 9to5Linux ☛ GNOME 42.3 Released with Screenshot UI Fixes, Better Flatpak Support, and More

          
          GNOME 42.3 update is here with a bunch of changes for the GNOME Shell fixing the new screenshot UI introduced in GNOME 42, the OSD colors with the light stylesheet, taking of screenshots when XDG directories are disabled, and on-screen keyboard

          GNOME Shell, which was updated up to version 42.3.1, also received improvements for High Contrast stylesheet and the Belgian on-screen keyboard layout. In addition, the Activities Overview was improved to automatically hide after using the “Show Details” option from the app context menu.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Barry Kauler ☛ EasyOS: First test of Limine installer

      As have posted about recently, I’m creating an installer for the Limine bootloader.
      Today, tested it on a PC with UEFI firmware.

      [...]

      One good thing, the installation of Limine can be removed simply by removing /EFI/limine. Though, it would be good to also use ‘efibootmgr’ to remove the entry.

      I will test installing to a legacy-BIOS computer soon. However, Limine has a serious limitation; it cannot boot Windows if Windows is on the same drive that Limine is installed. Older computers may only have one drive, and requiring installing a second drive on which to install Limine might be asking too much. An old laptop might not even support a second drive.

    • Reviews

      • Dedoimedo ☛ OpenSUSE Leap 15.4 – The return of the old Gecko?

        With my distro-testing mana running low, I am being quite sparing and careful in choosing which new releases to sample and write about. So far this spring-summer season, I’ve only really touched Kubuntu and Fedora, and both were sort of average, at the end of the day. Well, it is time for a fresh round of testing, and I’ve decided to go for openSUSE. Leap 15.4, to be more precise, yes.

        OpenSUSE has always held a special spot in my heart, as SUSE 9.2 (or so) was my first distro. And it was a brilliant Linux player until about version 12 or so. Since, things haven’t been that brilliant. But ever anew, my hope kind of flares up, and I wonder if openSUSE can recapture the majesty of its golden era, and perhaps take the whole of the stagnating Linux desktop up with it. Begin, we shall.

    • New Releases

      • T2 22.6 “Résistance”

        Today T2 SDE Linux 22.6 was released. A major milestone update to ship full support for 24 CPU architectures, variants, and C libraries. Of course all the architectures, including: alpha, arc, arm, arm64, avr32, hppa, ia64, m68k, mipsel, mips64, nios2, ppc, ppc64-32, ppc64le, riscv, riscv64, s390x, sparc64, superh x86, x86-64 and x32 can be rolling release updated thru the scripted build system from source – optimized to the native system.

        The 22.6 release received updates across the board, with latest stable Linux kernel 5.17.15, GCC12, LLVM/Clang 14 and the latest of KDE, GNOME and much more.

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • Linuxiac ☛ Rocky Linux 9.0 (Blue Onyx) Is Here with 10 Years of Support

        Rocky Linux 9.0 is generally available for download now, with important security improvements and an updated package base.

        After Red Hat released a stable version of its enterprise Linux distribution RHEL 9.0 two months ago, the business Linux market expected it to be followed by releases from the other “big three” players – AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, and Oracle Linux.

        All three distributions are based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and provide 1:1 binary compatibility with it. Recently, AlmaLinux 9.0 and Oracle Linux 9.0 have already released their RHEL 9-based versions, and today Rocky Linux 9.0 completes the cycle. So let’s see what it brings us.

      • Rocky Linux 9.0 Available Now | Rocky Linux

        We are pleased to announce the general availability of Rocky Linux 9.0. Release notes are available in the Rocky Linux Documentation – these notes contain important information including known bugs and comprehensive details about changes in this version.

      • LWN ☛ Rocky Linux 9.0 released

        Version 9.0 of Rocky Linux, a Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone, has been released. There are a lot of changes, of course; see the release notes for an overview.

      • Venture Beat ☛ Rocky Linux 9 brings security enhancements and better performance for enterprise users | VentureBeat

        Rocky Linux 9 became generally available today, providing users of the open-source operating system with a series of security and performance updates.

        Rocky Linux is based on the CentOS Linux operating system that is developed by Red Hat and is widely used in the cloud and on-premises to run enterprise applications. Since 2020, Red Hat has no longer produced a full, freely available version of CentOS that is intended as an enterprise Linux distribution. Red Hat’s decision spawned a number of organizations, including the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation (RESF) and Alma Linux, to create their own versions of CentOS.

        Among the primary supporters of the RESF is CIQ, which announced on May 11 that it had raised $26 million to help it grow its Rocky Linux efforts.

      • Linux Magazine ☛ Rocky Linux 9 Has Arrived » Linux Magazine

        The latest iteration of Rocky Linux is now available and includes a host of new features and support for new architecture.

        Rocky Linux 9 is now available and is a landmark release for several reasons. First off, there has been a surge in Rocky Linux deployments, putting it ahead of CentOS Stream and AlmaLinux. But more than that, Rocky Linux includes several security enhancements and networking features to help make it a best-in-class open-source operating system for businesses of all sizes.

        In the new release, you’ll find SHA-1 message digest for cryptographic purposes has been deprecated (as the cryptographic hash functions are no longer considered secure). Along with that is the addition of OpenSSL 3.0.1 (which includes provider concept, a new versioning scheme, an improved HTTP(S) client, support for new protocols/formats/algorithms, and more), OpenSSH version 8.7p1 (which includes the replacement of the SCP/RCP protocol with the more predictable SFTP protocol), SELinux performance improvements, and the automatic configuration of security compliance settings for PCI-DSS, HIPAA, DISA, and more.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

      • Linux Mint ☛ Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa” Xfce – BETA Release – The Linux Mint Blog

        Linux Mint 21 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2027. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

      • Linux Mint ☛ Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa” MATE – BETA Release – The Linux Mint Blog

        Linux Mint 21 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2027. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

      • Linux Mint ☛ Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa” Cinnamon – BETA Release – The Linux Mint Blog

        Linux Mint 21 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2027. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

      • The Register UK ☛ Linux Mint 21 hits beta • The Register

        The next version of Linux Mint has reached the beta-test stage. The Reg took a look at what’s new.

        At the start of the week, the Mint team posted beta ISO images for the forthcoming Linux Mint version 21, codenamed “Vanessa”. As with every version since Mint 17 in 2014, it’s based on the latest Ubuntu LTS version. For Mint 21, that means 22.04, so while this is a beta version, it’s built from pretty solid components. The latest Mint blog describes some of the changes, and we also touched on some of them recently when we discussed the Timeshift backup tool.

        Also as usual, there will be editions with three different Windows-like desktops: one with Mint’s own Cinnamon version 5.4, one with the MATE desktop forked from GNOME 2, and one with the lightweight Xfce desktop.

      • Neowin ☛ Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa” beta arrives in three flavours – Neowin

        Neowin speculated yesterday that the Linux Mint 21 beta releases were imminent, now, the team’s lead has confirmed their release. The team recommends using the beta releases for testing purposes only, as they may contain critical bugs. If you are desperate to give them a go, you can boot them from a LiveUSB without having to install them to your hard drive.

        Unlike previous versions of Linux Mint, users of Linux Mint 20.3 will be able to upgrade to Linux Mint 21 thanks to the work put into the new graphical Upgrade Tool. Before the introduction of this tool, upgrades were only easy between point releases, and it was preferred that big upgrades were done via a clean installation.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • Leftovers

    • Linux Foundation

      • Linux Foundation’s Site/Blog ☛ Top 5 Reasons to be Excited about Zowe [Ed: More mindless IBM openwashing with the shallow appearance of neutrality, misusing the name "Linux"]

        The Open Mainframe Project’s Zowe initiative was born from an ambitious goal: make the mainframe a seamless, integrated part of the modern IT landscape — employing the same practices, tools and skillsets — without compromising its core attributes of stability, security and resiliency. Achieving this vision would address the growing talent crunch while helping enterprises modernize their mission-critical applications for today’s hybrid cloud world. It was exciting from the outset.

      • Linux Foundation’s Site/Blog ☛ The Lifecycles of Open Source Projects [Ed: Linux Foundation in 2022 is pseudoscience. But a few scientists are on the payroll and actually use]

        There are hundreds of thousands of open source projects out there – many are innovative ideas, poised to make a positive impact on the world. There is a much smaller number that move from an idea with one or two maintainers to broad adoption with an active community and investments from other organizations. How does this happen? What moves the needle? Helping projects grow and mature is exactly the mission of the Linux Foundation. We are a place where open source innovators thrive.

    • Security

      • USCERT ☛ Juniper Networks Releases Security Updates for Multiple Products

        Juniper Networks has released security updates to address vulnerabilities affecting multiple products. An attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

      • Alpine Linux edge signing keys rotated | Alpine Linux

        Since Alpine Linux 3.15, new 4096-bits RSA signing keys were introduced. But for the edge branch, these keys were not used yet to give everyone time to obtain the new public keys.

        Now, the edge keys have been rotated as well, meaning new packages will start getting signed with the new keys.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • Wired ☛ A New Attack Can Unmask Anonymous Users on Any Major Browser | WIRED

          The findings, which NJIT researchers will present at the Usenix Security Symposium in Boston next month, show how an attacker who tricks someone into loading a malicious website can determine whether that visitor controls a particular public identifier, like an email address or social media account, thus linking the visitor to a piece of potentially personal data.

          When you visit a website, the page can capture your IP address, but this doesn’t necessarily give the site owner enough information to individually identify you. Instead, the hack analyzes subtle features of a potential target’s browser activity to determine whether they are logged into an account for an array of services, from YouTube and Dropbox to Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and more. Plus the attacks work against every major browser, including the anonymity-focused Tor Browser.

          […]

          “Let’s say you have a forum for underground extremists or activists, and a law enforcement agency has covertly taken control of it,” Curtmola says. “They want to identify the users of this forum but can’t do this directly because the users use pseudonyms. But let’s say that the agency was able to also gather a list of Facebook accounts who are suspected to be users of this forum. They would now be able to correlate whoever visits the forum with a specific Facebook identity.”

        • DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ Participation in Facebook and Twitter can and will be used against you. You have no right to remain silent after you’ve already spoken. If you need an attorney, good luck with that. – BaronHK’s Rants

          Participation in Facebook and Twitter can and will be used against you. You have no right to remain silent after you’ve already spoken. If you need an attorney, good luck with that.

          (The US Supreme Court is dismantling the Bill of Rights, starting with a major opening salvo against your Miranda Rights recently.)

          In one recent post, I linked to an archived Nitter mirror showing that a company called FAMA doxxed a man’s Twitter account for “bad language”, “risky likes”, etc, and sent his employer a 350+ page printout.

          Pointy Hair Bosses are too dangerous to be allowed access to information like this.

          They get snookered by con artists at companies like this in order to fire or refuse to hire people based on what that person’s legitimate beliefs and speech are.

          If you can’t find a job, or get laid off, can you say definitively that FAMA wasn’t the reason why? That was rhetorical. You aren’t even supposed to know that they exist.

          What starts happening to you when Landlords start using it to see if you are “trouble” without getting to know you?

          The answer, of course, is that Twitter, which is already worth nothing, is definitely causing people to become unemployed, and potentially homeless.

          I certainly hope you’re hearing about FAMA from me and not after it’s already too late and you’re living in a box under the CTA train.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • BONUS – The Google AI Sentience Psyop with Ryan Cristian

        In this bonus podcast of a video interview, Ryan and Whitney discuss the likely motives behind the claim that an AI at Google is “sentient” and has a “soul”, including how it benefits the narratives within the new book co-written by Henry Kissinger and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt – “The Age of AI”.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • AccessNow ☛ ECOWAS Court victory: Twitter ban in Nigeria declared unlawful

        Today, 14 July, 2022, in a huge win for human rights, the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS Court) declared that Nigeria’s seven-month Twitter ban was unlawful. While the blocking, initiated by President Muhammadu Buhari in June, 2021, was lifted in January, the Court held that it violated the freedom of expression of people in Nigeria. The Court now requires the government to take steps to ensure it does not repeat similar acts of censorship in the future.

        “The #KeepItOn coalition commends the ECOWAS Court for making a public stand on the impact of internet shutdowns on freedom of expression and the right to information in this win not just for Nigeria, but for people around the world impacted by censorship online,” said Natalia Krapiva, Tech Legal Counsel at Access Now. “We encourage more courts to follow ECOWAS’ lead on defending human rights of people at risk, and more lawyers to fight internet shutdowns in court.”

        The Buhari administration banned Twitter in June, 2021, in evident retaliation for removing a tweet by the President which threatened violence against Igbo ethnic nationalities, severely impacting people across the country who used Twitter as a tool for communication and engagement, activism, and business.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Public Knowledge ☛ Public Knowledge Welcomes FCC Spectrum Action To Narrow Digital Divide

        Today, the Federal Communications Commission voted to approve a Report and Order and Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that will establish an “Enhanced Competition Incentive Program (ECIP)” to help narrow the digital divide. The ECIP would encourage licensees to partition, disaggregate, or lease spectrum to small carriers, Tribal Nations, and other entities that service rural areas.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

    • Technical

      • I Built a Video Game Console

        It runs vanilla Raspberry Pi OS (formerly known as Raspbian). I want to install some games on it! Sure, emulators are cool but I don’t have any roms. I’m looking for other games. The kind I can “apt-get install” and play with a modern gamepad.

      • Programming

        • Bob’s Not-So-Secret Online Journal: – FizzBuzz! (in Oberon)

          My son did a FizzBuzz in Python, so I did one in Oberon, just for fun.

          I’ve been programming for a long time, and don’t use Oberon in my daily, but I really enjoy Oberon’s simplicity, although it can easily cause one to write code that is normally already written, in other languages, these days.

* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.

Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a Microsoft Front Group, Still Defending GPL Violations on Microsoft’s Payroll

Posted in Deception, GPL, Microsoft, OSI at 3:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Hours ago (Stefano Maffulli making excuses for Microsoft’s proprietary Copilot):

Why we need to dive deeper into AI

IRS filing (over $252,000 to promote GitHub’s monopoly):

OSI money

Summary: Stefano Maffulli, who wrote this a few hours ago, gets his salary paid by GitHub, so of course he’s defending Microsoft’s abuses. The OSI is nowadays a Microsoft front group, shilling proprietary software and making excuses for GPL violations, just like the Linux Foundation.

Also see:

[Meme] EPO Kool-Aid Dispenser

Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 2:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

EPO Kool-Aid

Summary: Over the past couple of years the EPO‘s president reached new lows and 0% of staff has much trust in him (according to the latest staff survey, António Campinos is less trustworthy this year than in 2020; he’s scoring even worse than Benoît Battistelli at analogous times), so his Kool-Aid gets delivered nowhere except bribed media operative like Joff Wild

[Meme] Preserving the EPO’s “Slush Fund”

Posted in Europe, Patents at 2:33 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

EPO - Slush Fund
Some of that money (“Slush Fund”) is misused to bribe or to buy a reappointment (not to mention bribes to media and academia)

Summary: The EPO‘s António Campinos, an imposter who pretends to be some kind of patent guru after working for a corrupt and notorious bank [1, 2], continues to hoard money by selling fake patents to large foreign corporations, which in turn can — and often do — sue European citizens, European firms, and drive up the prices across Europe (a lack of competition leads to that)

The EPO as a Diploma Mill, Rubber-Stamper, and Training Camp for Scabs Cannot Produce Valuable Work (Low-Quality Junk in High Quantities)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 2:20 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum 805ffb78d5d0f09e9d2941c40d9aa1e3
EPO Quality Down Along With Productivity
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The EPO‘s “production line” of granted monopolies (carte blanche from Frenchmen Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos) shows that the EPO no longer serves or behaves like a patent office; it’s just run like a bank for the sole purpose of revenue extraction’s maximisation (at the expense of the European population — the externality)

IN Part II of the ongoing series we showed that the bubble is already bursting. The never-ending flow of monopolies (granted with minimal scrutiny due to a lack of time) is corrosive, damaging to the economy and in violation of the EPC.

In the process, the EPO creates a “class” of plunderers, people who notoriously “print money” (extortionate hourly rates) for having gained “access” to the “monopoly machine”. It grants monopolies and it suggests to applicants that they should always process applications through these middlemen (a “class” of career-climbing suit-wearing failed scientists or corrupt officials who can't be bothered to pass exams).

Rubber-Stamping, Training Camp, Diploma MillToday in the EPO’s Web site they advertise a “Website” (it’s not actually a Web site at all, it’s just this page) for another diploma mill.

Putting aside the catastrophe ahead (a ton of fake, invalid patents, or papers not compliant w.r.t. EPC), we’re facing a number of other catastrophes, including the eroded legitimacy of the EU. As a reader reminded us this week: “Breton did not answer to the Breyer question, meaning they know there is a problem but do not want to act for obvious reasons.”

European software patents are in effect fake/bogus patents, irrespective of acronyms like CII, 4IR, and AI. As we shall show later in the series, the EPO is betting on hundred of thousands of such illegitimate patents to mask the bursting of the bubble. Campinos is a low-grade white-collar criminal who wears a smile to the cameras (but not staff, whom he curses and insults). █

[Meme] The More, the Merrier?

Posted in Europe, Patents at 1:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Why Can't I Hold All These Lousy Patents?

Summary: As we shall explain in the next (upcoming, still processing) video, the EPO did not become more productive; it’s just granting tons of fake patents like software patents and since Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos do not understand science or patents, they think of everything in superficial fiscal terms, dooming the EPO in the process

Posner on patents

Paper on patents

ECONOMIST ON PATENTS

[Meme] A Message to You, Toni…

Posted in Europe, Patents at 1:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

A message to you, Toni
‘Lame duck’ Toni. Quacks like a *uck.

Summary: The self-described “f***ing president” of the EPO, António Campinos, has managed to upset the staff even faster than Benoît Battistelli. Toni’s or Monopoly Tony’s credibility levels and legitimacy metrics, as measured in a very large staff survey, fell to the same levels as Battistelli’s within just a couple of years; now the staff is engaged in industrial action (one step away from work stoppage, which also happened this year). The situation keeps getting worse, which is understandable because Toni breaks the law, violates constitutions and treaties, and denies staff its most basic rights.

Links 14/07/2022: Rocky Linux 9 and GNOME Builder 43 Alpha

Posted in News Roundup at 11:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Linux Magazine ☛ Slimbook Executive Linux Ultrabook Upgrading Their CPUs

        The Spanish-based company, Slimbook, has made available their next generation Slimbook Executive Linux ultrabooks with a 12th Gen Intel Alder Lake CPU.

        Slimbook, the company well known for producing KDE Plasma-powered laptops, has given their Executive series a bit of a refresh by making them available with the 12 Gen Intel Alder Lake CPU. This new iteration adds considerably more power (14 Cores, 20 threads, 24MB cache, and up to 4.80 GHz clock speeds), improved battery life, and better graphics (via an integrated Iris Xe 4K chipset). Consumers will find 2 different models available with this configuration: A 14″ 3K display, running at a 90Hz refresh rate (at 2880 x 1800 resolution) and a 16″ model that sports NVIDIA RTX 3050Ti graphics with 4GB GDDR6 RAM (also at a 90 Hz refresh rate).

      • Full Circle Magazine: Full Circle Magazine #182

        This month:
        * Command & Conquer
        * How-To : Python, Blender and Latex
        * Graphics : Inkscape
        * Everyday Ubuntu : Ubuntu Software Centre
        * Micro This Micro That
        * Review : Kubuntu 22.04
        * Review : Fedora 35
        * Review : Ebook Readers
        * My Story : Calibre

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Jupiter Broadcasting ☛ Linux Action News 249

        Why Google says we should all go rolling, Red Hat’s got a new boss, Microsoft gets called out, and why it might be the year of Linux hardware.

      • The BSD Now Podcast ☛ BSDNow 463: The 1.0 Legend

        Differences between base and ports LLVM in OpenBSD, Netgraph for FreeBSD’s bhyve Networking, Audio on FreeBSD – Quick Guide, FreeBSD’s Legend starts at 1.0, Hacker News running by FreeBSD, TrueNAS 13, and more

      • The TLLTS Podcast ☛ The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 961

    • Kernel Space

      • MIT Technology Review ☛ The US military wants to understand the most important software on Earth | MIT Technology Review

        Now DARPA, the US military’s research arm, wants to understand the collision of code and community that makes these open-source projects work, in order to better understand the risks they face. The goal is to be able to effectively recognize malicious actors and prevent them from disrupting or corrupting crucially important open-source code before it’s too late.

        DARPA’s “SocialCyber” program is an 18-month-long, multimillion-dollar project that will combine sociology with recent technological advances in artificial intelligence to map, understand, and protect these massive open-source communities and the code they create. It’s different from most previous research because it combines automated analysis of both the code and the social dimensions of open-source software.

        “The open-source ecosystem is one of the grandest enterprises in human history,” says Sergey Bratus, the DARPA program manager behind the project.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • H2S Media ☛ Install Sensu Go Monitoring on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04 LTS

        Start Monitoring your server systems and network devices by installing the Sensu Go Monitoring tool on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish or 20.04 Focal fossa.

      • Trend Oceans ☛ How to Start and Stop Monitor mode in Linux – TREND OCEANS

        The Wifi module comes with multiple modes and one of them is monitor mode, which you have commonly heard from security enthusiasts to sniff over a network using Wireshark.

      • LinuxBuz ☛ How To Remove Docker Images, Containers & Volumes – LinuxBuz

        Docker is an open-source tool that helps you to build, test and deploy applications in containerized environments. However, there are lots of unused containers, images, volumes, and networks that may reside in your system. They consume a significant amount of disk space of the host operating system. Docker does not remove those objects without cleaning up it manually.

        It is a good habit to clean up these unused disk spaces regularly and keep your system organized. Docker has several commands to clean up those unused objects.

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to remove Docker images, containers, and volumes.

      • LinuxBuz ☛ How to Stop / Remove all Docker Containers and Images – LinuxBuz

        There are a lot of commands for running and managing a Docker container. If you are new to Docker then it is very difficult for you to deal with Docker commands. “Stop and remove all docker containers” is a day-to-day task of any Docker administrator. So it is essential for you to know how to remove and stop all docker containers. In this post, we will show you how to remove and stop all containers.

      • Ubuntubuzz ☛ LibreOffice Calc Basics VI: ROUND

        This tutorial continues Calc Basics V and now we will learn a new formula namely ROUND. With this, we can simplify numbers. For example, we will simplify student scores based on the previous AVERAGE exercise. As a reminder, if you haven’t followed this LibreOffice Calc series, read the first and second parts here. Now let’s exercise again.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Builder 43.alpha0 – Happenings in GNOME

          It’s been an absolute mad dash this cycle porting Builder to GTK 4, but 43.alpha0 is out and available on GNOME Nightly.

          Builder is one of the larger applications within GNOME, especially if you include the libraries I had to write and maintain to make that possible.
          Porting an application to a new toolkit is always a big undertaking.
          However, it also provides an opportunity to rethink how major components work and simplify them while you’re there.

          So that is what has happened this cycle.
          It’s going to end up being a much more polished product due to the enormous amount of simplification going on.

          GTK 4 has simplified how a lot of things work and provided APIs that feel so obvious when you use them.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Its FOSS ☛ ‘Matrix’ Network Hits 60 Million Users, Improving the Demand for Decentralized Communication

      
      Matrix is an open-source standard for decentralized communication. It is constantly evolving to the requirements of modern solutions keeping in mind the privacy of users.

      You will find Matrix clients as a replacement for Slack, Microsoft Teams, and several other popular communication platforms.

      And, to re-affirm the adoption of decentralized communication, Matrix has announced that it has surpassed sixty-million users worldwide.

    • Linux Links ☛ 10 Top Free and Open Source Lisp Web Frameworks

      
      Lisp (derives from “LISt Processing”) is one of the oldest programming languages. It was invented in 1958, with the language being conceived by John McCarthy and is based on his paper “Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine”. Over the years, Lisp has evolved into a family of programming languages. The most commonly used general-purpose dialects are Common Lisp and Scheme. Other dialects include Franz Lisp, Interlisp, Portable Standard Lisp, XLISP and Zetalisp.

      Here’s our recommended web frameworks for Lisp captured in a legendary Linuxlinks chart. We only feature free and open source software.

    • OpenSource.com ☛ How one European bank embraces open source

      
      As the Development COE lead, I consider the expertise, structure and capabilities needed to make software development successful across hundreds of developers. We have roughly 600 people in the broader development team, but I’m not directly responsible for managing them. I’m responsible for defining how they will do their job. So for development best practices, standards unification and so on.

      Our transformation project. We have the current bank, which is built on typical legacy banking systems that are huge, distributed monolithic architecture systems. That is where most of our developers (around 400) are working day-to-day as it generates the bulk of the revenue for the bank.

      Alongside the legacy applications, we decided to completely modernize to something that we call “Digital Hub” which is replacing the bank’s current infrastructure. The front-end applications are native mobile and web applications.

    • Programming/Development

      • Improving Space Bar Functionality – GSoC’22 post #6

        On my weekly call with mentors today, I showed them how my Space bar works and I recieved some suggestions.

        One point of discussion was that clicking on a Space icon for first time resulted in noticeable delay before the UI was updated with filtered room list. The cause was traced to the latency introduced by /hierarchy api call.

      • Review and Updates for Merge Request – GSoC’22 post #7

        On July 9th, I created a merge request to submit all the work I did to add Space bar. The first issue was that CI builds failed because CI image has libQuotient 0.6 which doesn’t support the Space /hierarchy call. As suggested by Tobias, getting around it was easy, as I could guard relevant code inside #ifdef QUOTIENT_07. This got the CI build passing.

      • Medevel ☛ Reactide is an Open-source RAD React IDE

        Reactide is a cross-platform desktop application that offers a simulator, made for live reloading and quick React component prototyping.

        The IDE is built to aid developers produce rapid React-based application as it streamlines the development, offers components visualization, simple configuration, and comes with a built-in development server reactide-server.

        React brings an integrated suite of development tools to streamline react development. The days of flipping between browser, IDE, and server are over.

      • Medevel ☛ Editor.js is The Best Modular Open-source Content Block Editor for 2022

        There are many WYSIWYG content editors out there, however, this one is not your typical editor, it is a block editor that is similar to WordPress content block editor, and the best part it is free and open-source.

      • OpenSource.com ☛ 5 ways to learn C programming on Linux | Opensource.com

        There are many theories about why the C programming language has endured for as long as it has. Maybe it’s the austerity of its syntax or the simplicity of its vocabulary. Or maybe it’s that C is often seen as a utilitarian language, something that’s rugged and ready to be used as a building material for something that needs no platform because it’s going to be its own foundation. C is clearly a powerful language, and I think its longevity has a little something to do with the way it serves as a springboard for other popular technologies. Here are five of my favorite technologies that utilize and rely upon C, and how they can each help you learn more about C yourself.

      • Python

      • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

        • Run a command after the process you choose finishes

          Run a command as soon as another long-running command finishes. E.g. suspend the machine after performing apt upgrade. The process is selected interactively via fzf.

        • Network World ☛ [Old] Open-sourced tool speeds up Linux scripts via parallelization

          Researchers have open-sourced pa.sh (also called pash), a tool that can dramatically speed up Linux scripts by using parallelization, saving time and without risk of introducing errors.

          The process of parallelization first examines a script for code that can be run separately and independently, so not all scripts can benefit from the tool. But when pa.sh does find portions that can run independently, it runs them in parallel on separate CPUs. It also uses other techniques to get the code to run faster.

        • Copying previous commands with fzf and zsh

          Sometimes I want to copy a command I previously typed on my shell to the clipboard. It may be for documentation, note taking, writing a script, setting up an Ansible playbook, sending to someone… You name it.

      • Rust

  • Leftovers

    • IBM Old Timer ☛ The Potential Impact of Web3 on the Internet and the Digital Economy [Ed: Buzzwords and hype spewed out by former IBM chief]

      A few weeks ago, the Blockchain Research Institute (BRI) announced that its annual global conference would be renamed Web3 Blockchain World, and that the Enterprise Blockchain Awards would now be called the Web3 & Blockchain Transformation Awards.

      I’ve been affiliated with BRI for a number of years as a research contributor and as chair of its blockchain awards committee. I was somewhat concerned with the name change, because, as is generally true of new technologies in their early stages, there are multiple views of what web3 is all about. Critics view web3 as little more than hype, a rebranding effort to shed some of the cultural and political baggage of crypto, while supporters believe that web3 represents the future of the internet, upending traditional gatekeepers and ushering a middleman-free digital economy.

    • Security

      • Peter ‘CzP’ Czanik ☛ My Favorite IT Security Event: Pass the SALT | Random thoughts of Peter ‘CzP’ Czanik

        “Pass the SALT” (PTS) is a small IT security conference in Lille, France. It has less participants than speakers at the RSA conference. I gave talks at both events. RSA is a lot more prestigious event, but I still prefer PTS. Why?

      • Jump Cloud ☛ Easily Add Full-Disk Encryption to Linux with JumpCloud [Ed: Proprietary software invalidates any encryption in Linux]
      • LinuxSecurity ☛ Crypto-Gram, February 15th, 2003

        CRYPTO-GRAM is a free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses, insights, and commentaries on computer security and cryptography. In this issue, Random Notes on the SQL Slammer, The Importance of Authentication, and a nice analysis of Matt Blaze’s door locks attack in Locks and Full Disclosure. “I’d rather have as much information as I can to make an informed decision about security. I’d rather have the information I need to pressure vendors to improve security. I don’t want to live in a world where locksmiths can sell me a master key system that they know doesn’t work or where the government can implement security measures without accountability.”. . .

      • LWN ☛ Security updates for Thursday

        Security updates have been issued by Debian (request-tracker4), Fedora (kernel and vim), Mageia (gerbv, gnupg2, pgadmin4, and python-coookiecutter), Slackware (xorg), SUSE (cifs-utils, gmp, gnutls, libnettle, kernel, libsolv, libzypp, zypper, logrotate, openssl-1_1, opera, squid, and virglrenderer), and Ubuntu (ca-certificates, git, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi2, linux-snapdragon, linux, linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-azure-fde, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm, linux-kvm, linux, linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-ibm, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-oracle, linux-aws, linux-oem-5.14, and vim).

      • 5 Tricky Container Security Challenges – Container Journal

        Containerized environments can be relatively complex to secure, particularly for enterprise teams used to more traditional network security processes and strategies. There was initial optimism that containerized infrastructure would actually be more inherently secure because microservices are limited in function and can be hardened. The reality, though, has proved otherwise.

        Here are five reasons why securing container and Kubernetes environments requires new approaches that must diverge from—and go beyond—traditional security capabilities.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • Politico ☛ China Direct: A hawk for No. 10? — Xi mulls extra title — TikTok in trouble

          China is selling less to Russia, but buying from its internationally-isolated neighbor at an “elevated pace.” That’s according to a Reuters analysis of the latest figures issued by the Chinese customs authorities. Chinese imports from Russia jumped 56 percent in June versus the same month a year ago, in addition to a surge of 80 percent in May. Much of it is thanks to China’s energy needs, particularly in oil and gas. On the other hand, Chinese businesses appear cautious when it comes to selling things to Russia — partly because of Russia’s dire economic situation, but also out of concerns about such activities attracting the (threats of) sanctions from the West. Getting energy from Russia, after all, is not sanctionable. Just look at Germany, which says it will keep buying Russia oil until 31 December.

          [...]

          IN HOT WATER: Italy’s data protection authority has warned TikTok that it may have breached EU privacy laws with its plan to use personal data stored on users’ devices for personalized ads without explicit consent, my colleague Antoaneta Roussi reports.

          The issue: In an update to its privacy policy, TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, informed users that starting yesterday (July 13), those over the age of 18 would be targeted by personal advertizing based on their behavior on the app. The legal basis for processing the data would no longer be consent, but rather the “legitimate interest” of TikTok and its partners, the company announced.

          A fast-tracked investigation by the Italian authority found that TikTok’s policy was incompatible with the European e-Privacy Directive, which requires individual consent for access to information on a user’s device. It also notified the European Data Protection Board and the Irish privacy authority (which formally oversees TikTok in Europe) to consider further action since the move was incompatible with the European General Data Protection Regulation.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Wired ☛ Twitter’s Case in India Could Have Massive Ripple Effects [Ed: Twitter is all about censorship but for political reasons it pretends otherwise]

        IN JUNE, TWITTER received an ultimatum from the Indian government to remove some 39 accounts and content from its platform. Sources familiar with the order say it outlined that if Twitter refused to comply, its chief compliance officer could face criminal proceedings. They say it also stated that the company would lose its “safe harbor” protections, meaning it would no longer be protected from liability for the content created by its own users. This is an escalation of a series of “blocking orders,” or content removal orders, sent by the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, which have increased significantly in the past 18 months.

        Last week, Twitter responded: It will take the Indian government to court.

        While the dispute itself deals with only specific accounts and pieces of content, experts told WIRED that its outcome could have major repercussions, and serve as a “bellwether for this ongoing battle about internet freedom,” says Allie Funk, research director for technology and democracy at Freedom House.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • On Prescriptive Descriptions [ 2022-07-14 ]

        I’d like to discuss a mental somersault that I’ve found has caused me a lot of grief in the past, which is prescriptive descriptions.

      • SpellBinding: ABLNOSW Wordo: GIGAS
      • Email

        I have never really used email for more than making online accounts and work related stuff. Skype,,Discord, Facebook, text and calls were the vehicles of my communication for many years. This year I have been making a concious effort to go back to the humble email to talk to people.

        [...]

        Email is kind of like a digital post card to me.

    • Technical

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Is 16KB enough?

          Quite everyone agrees that nowadays you need a several megabyte internet speed, or if you’re privileged you have several hundred megabytes. But what for?

          The internet got gradually faster, while the websites got gradually slower and more bloated. Even if you have a decent internet connection by today’s standards, try loading any “modern” website and you’ll wait a good dozen of seconds, then you will be bombarded with ads and trackers.

          This is why I’ve switched to text-based browsers. Aside from obvious advantages like no ads, cookies, javascript etc. I don’t participate in any monopoly either. I currently fluctuate between w3m and lynx, both with their pros and cons. Nonetheless, I mostly browse Gemini than use HTTP.

* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.

« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channels: Come and chat with us in real time

New to This Site? Here Are Some Introductory Resources

No

Mono

ODF

Samba logo






We support

End software patents

GPLv3

GNU project

BLAG

EFF bloggers

Comcast is Blocktastic? SavetheInternet.com



Recent Posts