𝕿𝖊𝖈𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙𝖘 Bulletin for Wednesday, December 23, 2020 ┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅ Generated Thu 24 Dec 00:14:13 GMT 2020 Created by Dr. Roy Schestowitz (𝚛𝚘𝚢 (at) 𝚜𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚣 (dot) 𝚌𝚘𝚖) Full hyperlinks for navigation omitted but are fully available in the originals The corresponding HTML versions are at 𝒕𝒆𝒄𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔.𝒐𝒓𝒈 Latest in 𝒉𝒕𝒕𝒑://𝒕𝒆𝒄𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔.𝒐𝒓𝒈/𝒕𝒙𝒕 and older bulletins can be found at 𝒉𝒕𝒕𝒑://𝒕𝒆𝒄𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔.𝒐𝒓𝒈/𝒕𝒙𝒕-𝒂𝒓𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒔 Full IPFS index in 𝒉𝒕𝒕𝒑://𝒕𝒆𝒄𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔.𝒐𝒓𝒈/𝒊𝒑𝒇𝒔 and as plain text in 𝒉𝒕𝒕𝒑://𝒕𝒆𝒄𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔.𝒐𝒓𝒈/𝒊𝒑𝒇𝒔/𝒕𝒙𝒕 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐁𝐔𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐒 ════════════════════════════════════╕ Previous bulletins in IPFS (past 21 days, in chronological order): Qmb1nmr8opPQQQchMsxCxxgtpnpvC6ntG5egMNCvSy6goB QmedadEVa8qx38m3nCc1XAsSv1Ysax8t5GDMfnDFFQ9uuD Qmbeyyus6WJKney9DHZmnSFuEe3qvF2Sobtjn7Meuxzeax QmPWBiWqJudrvMfHmJsdpGQnTiyouDZ2XVRas97CR47vCe QmbWU8LZAoueFo3sFHg9yUhSStNjX3gHp2HdjiLbC1S1CY QmTHV7Z8T6n8D8q3njyZvFEW2igm8TkT7vWz9BwTnLtZCY QmYq9nBUinhGJxPEMNFrimohy385yozBshCqbwY9ZfdYW9 QmQxFpN1zaj9q7VEH7KHHxsNW8nxKEKw42BNKPmSZXAgEP QmekNhrLiLMoZ4ZPFaxo2Ys3qBUQn368R3QWYRgu3C9e7P QmdpfTZxDZZquSvRkhW95WZVsZytNYA53p6shrBUHSQPYr Qmd1GuTBmLn3K3aP2r3xam7p7o7rcouxvySMxbKNnvpGnw QmbHQS5itmbUekP3QFagQqT2gXkX5PJ2UD3mpmkjBE6KvP QmdXfrL6vz8jFumCUchTsn25vMWff8gnK48LzAbN6StXRM QmeaBomXSM7Mc53Kq6ifnZkFjL5raWVHd4xdvZ9UzJxXgB QmXf3HB6Jq9wMuXp5vFfkaXztzF9P8W4KPSrjLhYhM6V2m QmXzsVS69veQV4wbmm5RatdgHTFJcrsrh9FBMtUzEBqMMN QmbJS9vucziTqe4eGSR9un6EoifwTo4y3oYap1EqCtiEZJ QmSAYUFrCv96gXitnJ8gDGZj7xGiXMyWaEsog4tkRBPshu QmT1eNxN6hLuYyaPNLfaNNzeKF64xWsLazqhpFcUYV7WVx QmSfJ73cH6MLEHhch8bgEhBGC43kVNADRJUpeQv2hcUsrE QmXGEdtH99MG2mdPMztAxsUXJWBLMXyuYaqdnx6inpuX7c ╒═══════════════════ 𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐗 ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ ⦿ Christmas for Team UPC | Techrights ⦿ Pushing Mesa and Linux Graphics Towards Proprietary Microsoft GitHub, WSL (Vista 10), and DirectX | Techrights ⦿ Holiday Greetings to Readers and Their Loved Ones | Techrights ⦿ IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 22, 2020 | Techrights ⦿ More Pseudo-Journalism About the Unified Patent Court (UPC), Composed by Those With Stake in the Coup | Techrights ䷼ Bulletin articles (as HTML) to comment on (requires login): http://techrights.org/2020/12/23/christmas-for-team-upc/#comments http://techrights.org/2020/12/23/embrace-extend-extinguish-graphics/#comments http://techrights.org/2020/12/23/holiday-greetings/#comments http://techrights.org/2020/12/23/irc-log-221220/#comments http://techrights.org/2020/12/23/upc-coup-by-pseudo-journalism/#comments ䷞ Followed by Daily Links (assorted news picks curated and categorised): http://techrights.org/2020/12/23/haiku-os-report/#comments http://techrights.org/2020/12/23/neochat-and-libtracefs-1-0/#comments ䷩ 𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 59 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐋𝐄 ═════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ (ℹ) Images, hyperlinks and comments at http://techrights.org/2020/12/23/christmas-for-team-upc/#comments ⠀⌧ █▇▆▅▄▃▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 12.23.20⠀▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ ⌧ ✐ Christmas_for_Team_UPC⠀✐ Posted in Europe, Law, Patents at 6:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇German guten tag; Don't do it, Margot; UPC right around the corner; the patent trolls await; Screw the German constitution; We're above the law anyway and pandemic distracts everybody⦈ Summary: Given that the UPC is getting_nowhere (twice as many complaints as the last time) these holidays will be exceptionally tough for people who spent a decade or more pushing this Trojan horse ䷩ 𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 85 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐋𝐄 ═════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ (ℹ) Images, hyperlinks and comments at http://techrights.org/2020/12/23/embrace-extend-extinguish-graphics/#comments ⠀⌧ █▇▆▅▄▃▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 12.23.20⠀▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ ⌧ ✐ Pushing_Mesa_and_Linux_Graphics_Towards_Proprietary_Microsoft_GitHub,_WSL_ (Vista_10),_and_DirectX⠀✐ Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft, Standard, Vista_10, Windows at 1:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/videos/microsoft-loves-linux.ogv Summary: In yet another arrogant display of Hubris and self-admiration, Microsoft enters a project merely to divert resources away from its principal goals, instead rendering it a ‘slave’ of Microsoft’s proprietary universe (DirectX, WSL, GitHub) THE ‘good folks’ from Microsoft have decided to ‘help’ Linux… by helping themselves to it. In whose favour? To whose ends? Bill Gates once said: “The fact that there’s some e-mail here at MS that says ‘let’s go up and beat this guy’: there’s nothing wrong with that – that is capitalism at work for consumers.” Yeah, so sabotaging Linux is also “capitalism at work for consumers.” “They don’t love Linux, they just try to change Linux, including outsourcing of Linux to GitHub, which is proprietary software.”He even used the word “consumers” because that’s how Microsoft views computer users — merely those ‘peasants’ out there, ripe to ‘consume’ whatever Microsoft imposes on them. This video started as a response to this hours-old article entitled “Microsoft Adds_SPIR-V_To_DXIL_Library_In_Mesa_–_With_A_Focus_On_WebGPU_Support“ (as usual, the responses are better). 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇Linux and GitHub⦈ Microsoft “should stop fooling around, drop DX/DXIL and switch to Vulkan/SPIR-V to begin with,” as somebody_put_it in the latest comment. The article itself says Microsoft is “using Mesa to translate the APIs for consumption by Direct3D 12 drivers…” So they come to Mesa to promote Microsoft, i.e. the usual. We’ve seen this many times before and we wrote about it dozens of times this year alone. They don’t love Linux, they just try to change Linux, including outsourcing_of Linux_to_GitHub, which is proprietary software. It's_all_about_control (by Microsoft). As these videos aren’t scripted I ended up also discussing the sort of vision Microsoft has for Linux, namely a kernel that’s closely controlled by Microsoft, with all developers closely monitored and censored by Microsoft. Is this what we want for Linux? Microsoft loves to use or mischaracterise its control over some GNU/Linux instances (in Azure) as “proof” that it “loves Linux”, but Azure has basically been an utter failure (financial_calamity) and days ago we had it confirmed that Azure_employees_were_fired_this_year. The video above also mentions that WSL_has_been_an_utter_failure. They’re not exactly succeeding at “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish,” but they carry on trying. If we aren’t sufficiently vigilant, we might even fall into their trap. █ ䷩ 𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 162 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐋𝐄 ═════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ (ℹ) Images, hyperlinks and comments at http://techrights.org/2020/12/23/holiday-greetings/#comments ⠀⌧ █▇▆▅▄▃▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 12.23.20⠀▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ ⌧ ✐ Holiday_Greetings_to_Readers_and_Their_Loved_Ones⠀✐ Posted in Site_News at 10:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz Freedom of Movement (FoM) ended not because of Brexit but because of other factors 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇Postcard from holiday⦈ Summary: An end of year message (a tad early or premature, but we’ll be busy changing datacentres in days to come); in short, stay safe, don’t do anything too extravagant (it’s risky) WE DON’T typically prepare ‘corny’ posts about “top articles of the month/year” and “happy [holidays] everyone” because they’re kind of purposeless. They don’t say much that wasn’t already obvious. No reason/s to publicly berate sites that do in fact produce such ‘meta’ articles; after all, we too occasionally write about our own operations, future plans, and even past accomplishments. “The past year has been rather messy, more/most so because of coronavirus (as opposed to Brexit, as many predicted last Christmas).”The coming week will be potentially difficult for us because of a datacentre switch and overhaul — possibly the biggest technical overhaul in the site’s history. The site is expected to still look the same, but changes at the back end may be profound (and less visible to readers). Bandwidth limits aren’t an issue, but capacity is expected to improve (over the past week we’ve served an average of about 3 megabytes per second). We want to become increasingly self-hosted, but at the same time decentralised (among peers that are trusted) because the latter makes us more robust to downtime, either for technical or for legal reasons (the EPO has a history of threatening to sue us; Benoît_Battistelli repeatedly did that and António_Campinos is still just “his master’s voice”). Yesterday we did several hours of maintenance on the Raspberry Pi 4 that serves the site’s contents over IPFS; that gave us the first real opportunity to properly test access to all the objects when one (and primary) node was offline (and yes, that worked really well; objects were served very fast in that node’s absence, even while powered down for hardware upgrades). That node is serving visitors from our home, having been placed literally 2 meters from me. It’s connected to a mouse, an old keyboard, optionally a screen (it’s a headless server with two HDMI ports) and now a set of 8 versatile LEDs that we program to reflect status. Another Christmas project… The past year has been rather messy, more/most so because of coronavirus (as opposed to Brexit, as many predicted last Christmas). We are apparently heading towards an even worse year because, as this_article has just put it: “More than 40 countries have temporarily suspended some or all travel from the United Kingdom after British health officials announced a highly infectious variant of the novel coronavirus has been spreading in the country. South Africa has detected a similar variant.” People who say that a vaccine developed in just months (as opposed to years or as long as 2 decades) with expedited certifications is assured to restore order and economic stability are simply lying. Don’t believe them any more than you’d believe Battistelli’s “quality” talk. 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇OK, 'Boris'... Whatever...⦈ Notice the dates above. We’ve set our expectations extremely low this year. We put up the Christmas tree a month ago, turning the lights on every night, but at the dinner table it’ll be just my wife and I. Having just recovered from 2 days of pain, the last thing I want during datacentre migration (with pressing and imminent deadline) is something like COVID-19 (or whatever number they choose next). 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇Holiday House⦈ This coming week will certainly not be easy for us. But the work needs to be done and it’ll likely mean less articles, erosion in uptime (we’re testing things, so sometimes we shut down databases, HTTP daemons, even whole components of the filesystem). I’ve just run a script to count the number of files in Techrights (not including databases). It says it’s over 170,000. That’s almost 15 years’ worth (we’ll soon have 30,000 blog posts). Rigorous testing cannot be done on a page-by-page basis (to ensure everything was preserved perfectly following migrations/updates). Daily Links will be a priority because we don’t wish to lose sight of what’s going on in the world. When talk about panic buyers and rapidly-spreading viruses (not including Brexit itself) calms down a bit we’ll visit town and check if better equipment is still available on shelves for recording. In the past 3 days the videos were fetched nearly 15,000 times, so demand for videos is definitely there. Take care, keep the dinner small (in the sense of number of people attending), and catch you again in 2021. We’ll still post articles, but probably not as much or as often as usual. █ ䷩ 𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 269 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐋𝐄 ═════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ (ℹ) Images, hyperlinks and comments at http://techrights.org/2020/12/23/irc-log-221220/#comments ⠀⌧ █▇▆▅▄▃▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 12.23.20⠀▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ ⌧ ✐ IRC_Proceedings:_Tuesday,_December_22,_2020⠀✐ Posted in IRC_Logs at 2:26 am by Needs Sunlight 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇H 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇HTML5_logs⦈_ #techrights_log_as_HTML5 #boycottnovell_log_as_HTML5 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇H 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇HTML5_logs⦈_ #boycottnovell-social_log_as_HTML5 #techbytes_log_as_HTML5 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇t 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇text_logs⦈_ #techrights_log_as_text #boycottnovell_log_as_text 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇t 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴_🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽_⦇text_logs⦈_ #boycottnovell-social_log_as_text #techbytes_log_as_text Enter_the_IRC_channels_now =============================================================================== § IPFS Mirrors⠀➾ CID Description Object type IRC log for  QmNttqcj4JAR6yzLRB8EMNBCqjjdehvQktiKx7x6nzdHgM #boycottnovell 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇HTML5 logs⦈ (full IRC log as HTML) IRC log for #boycottnovell  QmPdd3xAouQ63CGZ2FAEF3zkVcgHs6QT1wKhas4zxfEue3 (full IRC log 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇text logs⦈ as plain/ASCII text) IRC log for #boycottnovell-  QmaP39GZ9mdq69nuTZCDMbqvKngASLYvmBGs2Luz8i1b1e social 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇HTML5 logs⦈ (full IRC log as HTML) IRC log for #boycottnovell-  QmcwE5eLEnojzueQjHf4ewLMy7unPgJuNbW4pN2awG65X4 social 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇text logs⦈ (full IRC log as plain/ASCII text) IRC log for  QmWDmHtNtGiUgav9b3T6okcbgob6MhZXMs3zfEnXHgCAnU #techbytes 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇HTML5 logs⦈ (full IRC log as HTML) IRC log for #techbytes  QmchvxaoyVPpxzvUkCAoiDYHCFQDRqnmSUb2asuaiU7Pog (full IRC log 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇text logs⦈ as plain/ASCII text) IRC log for  QmbCo743C2SATsHg1STnogJSEsHaBJJiYGK2djZTkiUpqu #techrights 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇HTML5 logs⦈ (full IRC log as HTML) IRC log for #techrights  QmPsoczUh874NyZfDogt4L6YRJfPbvx4y5YfDGAzr2yFDh (full IRC log 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇text logs⦈ as plain/ASCII text) 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇IPFS logo⦈ § Bulletin for Yesterday⠀➾ Local_copy | CID (IPFS): QmXGEdtH99MG2mdPMztAxsUXJWBLMXyuYaqdnx6inpuX7c ䷩ 𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 382 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐋𝐄 ═════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ (ℹ) Images, hyperlinks and comments at http://techrights.org/2020/12/23/upc-coup-by-pseudo-journalism/#comments ⠀⌧ █▇▆▅▄▃▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 12.23.20⠀▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ ⌧ ✐ More_Pseudo-Journalism_About_the_Unified_Patent_Court_(UPC),_Composed_by Those_With_Stake_in_the_Coup⠀✐ Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 8:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/videos/upc-kluwer.ogv Summary: Another spontaneous rebuttal to the latest trash talk from Team UPC (now in Kluwer Patent Blog) THIS morning the ‘fine folks’ (or very fine people) of Team UPC decided_to_tell us “[t]he new complaints could lead to further severe delays” as if it’s all just a question of when, boiling down to mere “delays”; this is more of that typical lying from Team UPC, which conveniently (for itself) ignores the very simple fact that UPC/A is not constitutional. As we explained_yesterday, those sorts of misleading articles still dominate the so-called ‘media’ (because no proper journalists or large publishers bother covering the subject, except when Benoît_Battistelli and António_Campinos pay them to spread EPO talking points). “To a lot of folks inside Team UPC the delusions are very much “reality”; they’re surrounded by people who say the same.”It’s tempting to just ignore these lies and move on, but we ought to recognise the possibility that many politicians don’t know better and endless repetition of lies can be effective and act like a radicalising echo chamber. To a lot of folks inside Team UPC the delusions are very much “reality”; they’re surrounded by people who say the same. 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇Breton-Battistelli relationship⦈ In our estimation, the complaints cannot be dismissed, certainly not both of them. Interest in the UPC will continue to wane, the UK will be formally out of the EU very soon (depending on where we set the criteria/thresholds of “exit”), and any remaining arguments about the viability and tenability of the UPC will become so self-discrediting that not even Battistelli's_enablers can rear their ugly heads. 2020 ends with a dark chapter about unrest, overpopulation, authoritarianism (the world’s sole superpower is still governed by a man who wanted to declare “martial law” in order to undermine democracy and annul an election) and perhaps a lack of credibility for laws and constitutions. We don't_expect_2021_to_be_much_better… █ ䷩ 𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 438 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐃𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐘 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒 ═════════════════════════════════════════════╕ ⠀⌧ █▇▆▅▄▃▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 12.23.20⠀▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ ⌧ ✐ Links_23/12/2020:_Xfce_4.16,_Go_1.16_Beta_1_and_Haiku_OS_Report⠀✐ Posted in News_Roundup at 12:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇GNOME bluefish⦈ § Contents⠀➾ * GNU/Linux o Distributions o Devices/Embedded * Free_Software/Open_Source * Leftovers * § GNU/Linux⠀➾ o § Server⠀➾ # ⚓ 10_lessons_from_sysadmins_adapting_to_change_in_2020⠀⇛ While 2020 will certainly be remembered for elections, protests, and most of all, the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of other things changed in 2020, including a whole lot of cool changes in technology. Through it all, we could count on system administrators to do what they do best. Perhaps more so than ever, as we all moved from physical offices to working from home. We generated more load than ever on our infrastructure as more users relied on virtual private networks and videoconference tools to get their daily work done. # ⚓ A_Custom_Kubernetes_Scheduler_to_Orchestrate_Highly Available_Applications⠀⇛ As long as you’re willing to follow the rules, deploying on Kubernetes and air travel can be quite pleasant. More often than not, things will “just work”. However, if one is interested in travelling with an alligator that must remain alive or scaling a database that must remain available, the situation is likely to become a bit more complicated. It may even be easier to build one’s own plane or database for that matter. Travelling with reptiles aside, scaling a highly available stateful system is no trivial task. o § Audiocasts/Shows⠀➾ # ⚓ I_Use_Three_Monitors_(And_You_Should_Too!)⠀⇛ Every computer wants to increase their efficiency and productivity. Better hardware will certainly help in this regard. But before you drop massive amounts of money on better CPUs and more RAM, have you thought about investing in multiple monitors? # ⚓ elementary_ROLLING?!_–_Gecko_Rolling_Pantheon_Review⠀⇛ Here’s a distro proposition for you, Pantheon desktop from elementary OS combined with openSUSE Tumbleweed by Gecko Linux! # ⚓ WAYLAND:_what_is_it,_and_is_it_ready_for_daily_use?⠀⇛ Probably everyone that is interested in the Linux desktop has heard about Wayland. It’s the next big thing, the replacement for X.org, a solution to a lot of woes in terms of performance and graphics on Linux. And still, it has failed to materialize, over and over, and is still not the default on many big distributions, like Ubuntu, or Linux Mint. # ⚓ UbuntuDDE_Remix_20.10_overview_|_Powerful_Ubuntu_with_the most_beautiful_desktop_environment.⠀⇛ In this video, I am going to show an overview of UbuntuDDE Remix 20.10 and some of the applications pre-installed. # ⚓ Arandr:_Multiple_Monitors_Easier_Than_Ever_–_YouTube⠀⇛ Configuring a multi monitor solution on Linux can be kind of a pain with xrandr so how about trying a graphical frontend for it instead called arandr, obviously it has it’s limations but when you’re done you can just export your xrandr script and modify it as you wish. # ⚓ The_Future_of_Mobile_Phones⠀⇛ I loaded this phone up with 15 Mobile Operating Systems. o § Kernel Space⠀➾ # ⚓ Linux_5.11_Drops_AMD_Zen_Voltage/Current_Reporting_Over Lack_Of_Documentation⠀⇛ The Linux hardware monitoring “k10temp” driver is dropping support for reporting CPU voltage and current information for AMD Zen-based processors over lack of documentation for being able to properly support the functionality. Earlier in 2020 this long-standing AMD hwmon temperature driver added support for core/SoC current and voltage reporting with Zen processors based on the work by the community and some best assumptions around the appropriate registers. But now that support is being dropped for lack of accuracy in some configurations and the possibility it might even damage the hardware. o § Benchmarks⠀➾ # ⚓ The_Fastest_Linux_OS_For_AMD_Ryzen_Zen_3?_It’s_Still_Intel Clear_Linux⠀⇛ As we have shown with prior AMD Ryzen and EPYC processors, the Linux distribution generally offering the fastest out-of-the-box performance is Intel’s Clear Linux platform. Given there aren’t many other distributions as aggressively optimizing their default package set and engaging in features like AutoFDO, PGO, and various out-of-tree patches in the name of modern Intel x86_64 Linux performance — and in turn, AMD performance benefits as well — Clear Linux really shines with modern hardware. Testing of the latest Clear Linux with a Ryzen 9 5900X continues to delivering promising performance compared to the likes of Fedora, openSUSE, Manjaro, Debian, and Ubuntu. o § Applications⠀➾ # ⚓ App_Showcase:_Animatch⠀⇛ Animatch is a fun, easy to install app on the Librem 5. Pop open the PureOS store and install. # ⚓ Kitty_–_A_Powerful_GPU_Based_Terminal_Emulator⠀⇛ Written in Python and Objective C, Kitty is a cross-platform and feature-rich GPU based terminal emulator developed under the GPL 3.0 license. It supports graphics, images, Unicode, true-color, mouse protocol, hyperlinks, multiple copy/paste buffers, etc. It’s a lightweight emulator that can be controlled from scripts, shell prompt, and over SSH. Like tilix and terminology, kitty is a feature-rich terminal emulator. o § Instructionals/Technical⠀➾ # ⚓ Learn_to_use_the_Sed_text_editor_|_Opensource.com⠀⇛ Created for version 7 of AT&T’s original Unix operating system, the sed command has been included with probably every Unix and Linux OS since. The sed application is a stream editor, and unlike a text editor it doesn’t open a visual buffer into which a file’s data is loaded for processing. Instead, it operates on a file, line by line, according to either a command typed into a terminal or a series of commands in a script. # ⚓ Building_and_installing_the_future_kernel_from_AUR_| Arcolinux.com⠀⇛ We investigate with yay what kernels we can build from the AUR. We visit the website https://kernel.org. We take a look at the PKGBUILD of the kernel. In the ~/.cache/yay folder we take a look at all the data that is required to build a kernel. We go on a search to find some kind of list of all the nvidia cards supported in the kernel. Unfortunately I just found parts. It was my believe there used to be some kind of list in the files from kernel.org. Maybe you can find it. Maybe it is just not there. We did find a lot of links online. # ⚓ 8_steps_to_check_your_network_interface_information⠀⇛ In a GUI, checking the state of a network interface card is pretty easy. That is to say, you just have to click on the network information icon to see all the details. On the other hand, do you ever wonder how to check it in Linux command line? It is really simple task if you use mii-tool command. # ⚓ Bind_DNS_server_setup_on_Centos_7⠀⇛ In one of our earlier articles we demonstrated how to configure a caching only DNS server. In this article we will be explaining the step by step process of configuring a DNS server using bind. Along with the DNS server configuration we will also be explaining some DNS related terms like domains, TLDs and sub domains before we get to the actual configuration. # ⚓ How_to_install_Tor_Browser_on_Ubuntu_20.04_or_18.04_LTS_– Linux_Shout⠀⇛ Tor Browser that is based on Firefox is best known for its privacy and Tor network integration features. It is free & open-source and can be used to surf and chat anonymously on the Internet so that we can protect our privacy, data and remain clandestine over the web. It is possible because while exchanging the data, it uses a random overlay network that consists of thousands of relays. Moreover, the forwarded data traffic will also be in encrypted form, thus it becomes impossible to identify the source where the request was generated, hence, you leave no trace while using the Tor network. That is why people also use the “Tor Browser” to access websites available on the Darknet. # ⚓ How_to_install_RPG_Maker_VX_on_a_Chromebook⠀⇛ Today we are looking at how to install RPG Maker VX 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_Kali_Linux_on_VMware_Workstation_– buildVirtual⠀⇛ This article goes through how to install Kali Linux on VMware Workstation. Kali Linux is a Debian- derived Linux distribution designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. It is maintained and funded by Offensive Security. Kali comes bundled with over 600 tools used for penetration testing. Running Kali as a VMware virtual machine means you don’t have to do a bare-metal install, and get the advantages that running as a VM offers. Usnig the virtual image is a good alternative to using a live CD. Here we will be covering how to install Kali Linux on VMware Workstation, but many of the steps will be valid for VMware Player and for VMware Fusion which are VMware’s other desktop hypervisors. # ⚓ Mtr_:_Stop_using_ping_and_traceroute_anymore_–_The_Linux Juggernaut⠀⇛ In today’s guide, we are going to look at the mtr command and see what it can tells us about network connections. Mtr is a simple linux command line tool that you can use for network diagnostic and troubleshooting in linux. It comes with the options of both ping and traceroute commands. Just like a typical traceroute query, a query from the MTR command will show the route from a computer to a specified host. The advantage over using the ping and traceroute commands is that Mtr will provide a lot of statistics about each hop, like response time and percentage. # ⚓ Linux_Boot_Process:_Explained_Step_by_Step_for_Beginners⠀⇛ Booting a computer is the very first step to use the system. No matter which operating system you chose to run your system, you need to know how to boot the system. In Linux, the necessary steps for booting a computer is a very straightforward process. If you use a personal computer (PC), you might find the CPU power switch. On the other hand, if you are using a notebook or a laptop, you would find the power button right above the keyboard. Nowadays, some notebook manufacturing companies are often placing the power button along with the keyboard to make the system compact. However, a Linux system’s booting procedure is an effortless and uncomplicated task, but knowing tiny detailed information about the Linux boot process might help you if you fall into any troubles while booting the system. # ⚓ Everything_You_Need_To_Know_About_Linux_Chmod_Command⠀⇛ If you are familiar with the Linux filesystem, you know that all the system files are stored inside the root (/) directory. Linux reserves some specific file system permission only for the root user. The main difference between the filesystem of the Linux-based operating system and other operating systems is that Linux reserves some specific file system permission. If you are not a root user, you can’t delete, move, or modify root files from your system. For example, if you have a localhost server running on your Linux system, you can’t move the server configuration files without the root permission. Even you can’t change the configuration settings without the root permission. To change the filesystem status, you need to know the chmod commands. The chmod command allows you to read, write, and execute files on a Linux system. # ⚓ How_to_install_Skype_on_Ubuntu_20.10_–_YouTube⠀⇛ In this video, we are looking at how to install Skype on Ubuntu 20.10. # ⚓ How_to_Control_Your_Wi-Fi_Network_in_Linux⠀⇛ Is your Wi-Fi connection too slow? Are you having constant network problems while surfing the ‘Net? Chances are your wireless network is handling more traffic than it should. Luckily, it is quite easy to control your Wi-Fi network in Linux. You can use the open-source application evillimiter for monitoring and controlling device bandwidth. This guide illustrates how to do this using a step-by- step approach. # ⚓ How_to_Move_Linux_Files_With_the_Mv_Command⠀⇛ While you likely already know how to move a file in Linux using the GUI file browser, you may be wondering if there’s a move command in the terminal that allows you to quickly move files to different directories. The mv command is the one you want, and it’s easy to use with its simple syntax and a few optional safety flags. This basic terminal command works on most Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Kali Linux, and Fedora. # ⚓ How_To_Install_Python_3.9_on_CentOS_8_–_idroot⠀⇛ In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Python 3.9 on CentOS 8. Python is an open-source and beginner-friendly programming language. Python 3.9 uses a new more flexible parser, based on PEG, which replaces the LL parser. In the next Python versions, the old parser will be deleted. 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 Python 3.9 on a CentOS 8. # ⚓ How_to_install_Latte_dock_on_Ubuntu_20.04_or_18.04_LTS_– Linux_Shout⠀⇛ Out of the box, Ubuntu comes with a standard Gnome panel or Dock on the left side of the screen. However, if you are not familiar or switching from macOS to Ubuntu or just want to give fancy look to your Linux OS, then try out Latte Dock. It is a responsive dock based on KDE plasma frameworks. It offers animation to dock contents or icons by using the parabolic zoom effect. # ⚓ How_to_install_PostgreSQL_Database_Server_CentOS_8⠀⇛ PostgreSQL, also known as Postgres, is an open- source relational database management system (RDBMS) that implements the Structural Query Language (SQL). PostgreSQL is an enterprise-class SQL Database server that allows you to build fault- tolerant and complex applications. It stores and organizes data and allows the retrieval of information in a structural way. PostgreSQL has many advanced features like reliable transactions and high concurrency. In this tutorial, we will learn how to install PostgreSQL on CentOS 8. So let’s get started. [...] In this tutorial, we have learned how to install PostgreSQL on CentOS 8. We also saw, how to allow PostgreSQL for remote access connection, how to add a Firewall rule to enable access for the remote. I hope this tutorial will help you in setting up PostgreSQL on Centos 8. # ⚓ How_to_install_VLC_Media_Player_3_on_CentOS_8⠀⇛ VLC is one of the most popular media players, also known as VideoLAN client. It was developed by the VideoLAN project, which is a non-profit company. It is an open source, free and cross-platform framework that lets you play multimedia files, for example, audio CD, VCD, DVD, CD and other supported media protocols. VLC is a portable media player software available on all operating systems such as Linux, Windows, Solaris, Android, OS X, Mac and other operating systems that support VLC player. A new version of VLC media player 3 has been released with some new advanced features and improvements. If we talk about CentOS 8 Linux system, this media player is not available by default. We will install VLC by using third-party packages. In this article, we will learn how to install VLC on CentOS 8 Linux. # ⚓ How_to_scan_port_from_your_Linux,_macOS,_and_FreeBSD_Unix system_using_netcat/nc⠀⇛ # ⚓ Linux_Set_Environment_Variable_Command_Tutorial⠀⇛ # ⚓ How_to_copy_file_from_local_to_remote_server_in_linux⠀⇛ If you are looking something to transfer the file using SSH then you are at right article We will cover How to copy a file from local server to a remote server or remote server to local. This can be easily performed through SCP(Secure Copy). An SCP command utility helps us to transfer file and directories in a secure way to transfer between remote server to local and vice versa. The reason why we said secure when you transfer file using SCP, data get encrypted with cipher key between in both system. o § Compression⠀➾ # ⚓ Why_LZO_was_chosen_as_the_new_compression_method⠀⇛ Everyone wants fast applications. Recently, we provided a mechanism to make snap applications launch faster by using the LZO format. We introduced this change because users reported desktop snaps starting more slowly than the same applications distributed via traditional, native Linux packaging formats like Deb or RPM. After a thorough investigation, we pinpointed the compression method as the primary slowdown. Once we introduced the change, some users started wondering why we chose LZO as the new compression method for snaps, given that there are “better” algorithms available. Here, we want to take you through the journey of understanding why we picked LZO, and what is next for the snap compression story. # ⚓ Patch_Proposed_For_Removing_BZIP2_Support_From_The_Linux Kernel⠀⇛ For at least a second time, a patch sent out under “request for comments” would strip out the existing BZIP2 code within the Linux kernel. Back when Zstd was added to the kernel there was a proposal as part of that to eliminate the BZIP2 usage given its inefficiencies compared to other modern compression algorithms. That change wasn’t pulled at that time while now a developer has proposed a new patch stripping out BZIP2 from the possible kernel use-cases. o § Games⠀➾ # ⚓ The_Steam_Winter_Sale_2020_is_now_live,_plus_a_new Codemasters_Humble_Bundle_|_GamingOnLinux⠀⇛ Another season another big Steam sale, is your wallet prepared? There’s plenty of huge discount going on right now for you to take a look at. Plus to save you a click – there’s a new Codemasters Humble Bundle. With this latest Steam sale live until January 5, 2021, developers have put up thousands of games for discount. Plus, Valve has added new seasonal items to the Points Shop. Not only that, the Points and Profile system on Steam has now been expanded. You can upgrade your Steam Profile showcases to get more room, you can get additional profile showcases and there’s new award types too for actual Steam Profiles and community posts. Read more on that here. If you really love Steam Chat we’ve got good news there too, as each day Valve are giving out a free sticker in the Points Shop too. # ⚓ FlightGear_2020.3.5_Released_With_Hundreds_Of_Bug_Fixes_– Phoronix⠀⇛ If you miss flying this holiday season due to the pandemic, you can at least experience it virtually by flying your own aircraft with the open-source, cross-platform FlightGear flight simulator software. FlightGear 2020.3.5 is out as mainly a bug-fix release over the prior FlightGear 2020.3 release. # ⚓ Get_an_early_look_at_online_multiplayer_in_the_action-RPG Last_Epoch_|_GamingOnLinux⠀⇛ One of the most promising upcoming action-RPGs around, Last Epoch had a pretty great year expanding the content available along with a new playable class and they have their sights set to get you playing online in 2021. The singleplayer is already a lot of fun, but being able to play directly with a bunch of friends in Last Epoch sure does sound enticing. In their new preview, they make it clear it’s still multiple months away but it sounds exciting. They’re working on bringing up all the social systems so that you will be able to form parties, inspect the gear from other players, show off all your loot and more. With a party system allowing up to 4 players, the game will scale the difficulty of enemies based on that and their planning lots of server regions too. # ⚓ Get_the_incredible_Brigador:_Up-Armored_Deluxe_free_on_GOG until_December_25_|_GamingOnLinux⠀⇛ Need a new game? Here’s one I can recommend without hesitation – Brigador: Up-Armored Deluxe and it’s free to claim and keep for 72 hours. Brigador is a game I’ve sunk a great many hours into, and I’ve written a few words here and there before about just how entertaining it is. An isometric rogue-lite with seriously intense combat, and plenty of fancy destruction as you can annihilate an entire city with your big mech or tank with customizable loadouts it’s so much fun to blast through. Getting it free really is an absolute steal you shouldn’t pass up. [...] Why the giveaway? Well, that’s because the GOG Winter Sale is still going on until January 4 and there’s of course lots of juicy Linux games on sale. o § Desktop Environments/WMs⠀➾ # ⚓ Xfce_4.16_Desktop_Environment_Officially_Released,_This_Is What’s_New⠀⇛ The Xfce 4.16 desktop environment arrives with numerous new features and improvements, including client-side decorations (CSD) for all Settings dialogs, fractional scaling, dark mode for the Panel, and much more. Highlights of Xfce 4.16 include a refreshed look with new icons and color palette, support for fractional scaling in the Display dialog, dark mode for the Panel, improved search and filter capabilities for the Settings Manager, support for client-side decorations for all the Settings dialogs, as well as a revamped About Xfce dialog that now shows basic system information. # ⚓ Xfce_4.16_released⠀⇛ Today, after 1 year and 4 months of work, we are happy to announce the release of the Xfce desktop 4.16, a new stable version that supersedes Xfce 4.14. 4.16 was a special cycle in many respects (not only pandemic-wise, but also). One of the corner-stones of the non-code changes concerns our migration to GitLab, which is a change in development workflow and a huge step forward in terms of becoming more contributor-friendly and welcoming. In parts, the humungous changelog of Xfce 4.16 can be attributed to new contributors proposing merge requests (288 merge requests were merged or closed against our core components alone!). We also created a reference Docker container (xfce/xfce-build) and added CI pipelines to all components to ensure we don´t break the build. None of this would have been possible without our hosting being sponsored by Gandi and Fosshost! Another big change concerns our visual identity, which we updated from a strange mix of random (partly Tango-based) icons and not following any naming scheme to a new, visually consistent set (following the freedesktop.org naming specification and a fixed color palette). We´re aware this will generate some work for icon theme maintainers (if they really want to override our gorgeous icons ;)) but we believe the longterm benefit outweighs this one-time effort. # ⚓ Xfce_4.16_Released_With_Numerous_Improvements_To_This Lightweight_GTK3_Desktop⠀⇛ Xfce 4.16 managed to ship in 2020 as one of the original goals for this release after the much delayed Xfce 4.14 series. Xfce 4.16 comes with many incremental improvements to this GTK3 desktop environment. # ⚓ Xfce_4.16_tour⠀⇛ This tour will introduce you to new major features of Xfce 4.16. It only covers improvements made on the (user-visible) surface; for the full list of changes, see the changelog. # § K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt⠀➾ # ⚓ Kdenlive_20.12_Released_with_New_Subtitling_Tool, Same_Track_Transitions⠀⇛ Kdenlive video editor 20.12 was finally announced. Here’s what’s new and how to install it in Ubuntu. The new release features the long requested same track transition function. It can be activated by selecting a clip and pressing “u” on keyboard or via the icon in the timeline toolbar. Kdenlive 20.12 also features new subtitling tool allows to add and edit subtitles directly in the timeline or by using the new subtitle widget. # ⚓ The_Fairy_Fir_tree_–_Krita_timelapse⠀⇛ I compressed the 6h (or more) of recorded video for an illustration into a 8min timelapse. Honnestly, the artwork could have been done twice faster; but I made ‘small’ mistakes on the first steps of the making-of (maybe I wanted to go too fast?). # § GNOME Desktop/GTK⠀➾ # ⚓ GNOME_40_is_Looking_to_Bring_Plenty_of_UX_Changes_ [And_That’s_a_Good_Thing]⠀⇛ GNOME developers have announced that they are bringing some major Shell UX changes in the next major release of GNOME 40. GNOME team has been working on updated designs for Activities Overview. As a result, there are many futuristic changes proposed for the next versions of GNOME desktop. o § Distributions⠀➾ # ⚓ Top_10_Linux_Distributions_For_Everyone_Out_There⠀⇛ The open-source and price-tag free attributes of the Linux operating system continues to be a blessing in disguise. The name Linux is a household name that holds numerous Linux distributions or distros. The existence of these distros makes it flexible enough to accommodate operating system users with different skill sets. Therefore, you no longer have to acquaint with the Linux operating system as a security-based software only. These distros continue to attract an increasing number of community users who are embracing the dynamic applicability of the Linux OS, which is turning out to be more than just a security- centered software. From a desktop to an enterprise environment, Linux gives its community users a reason to stick around regardless of whether you have an unmatched set of IT skills or are just a passerby looking for a new OS home. # ⚓ AppImage_for_KID3_tag_editor⠀⇛ Since there’s no reason to install the Qt5 enormous bullshit of libs, just to run KID3 Tag Editor : here’s the AppImage ! kid3-3.8.4-x86_64-1.AppImage This AppImage should run on any Linux distro… but you have “1 click” menu integration in Zenwalk 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇;)⦈ # § IBM/Red Hat/Fedora⠀➾ # ⚓ Bid_to_explain_Red_Hat’s_killing_of_CentOS_makes users_angrier⠀⇛ Wade’s arguments could be summed up this way: CentOS and CentOS Stream are antithetical to each other and thus both could not exist. He also claims that CentOS Stream could replace CentOS in 95% of cases. His post comes well after Mike McGrath, Red Hat’s vice-president of Linux Engineering, told Christine Hall of the website ITPro:”As with any decision like this, there was a lot of discussion and several aspects that went into it. I would say the big one for us was that CentOS itself was not actually providing that much usefulness to Red Hat. Most of the communities we set up, Fedora, for example, do have a lot of bidirectional community involvement. Unfortunately, CentOS was never like that. It was always a community of users, so that that contribution model was mostly one way.” # ⚓ Red_Hat_defends_CentOS_decision_following_push_back⠀⇛ With no end to the backlash resulting from its decision to terminate CentOS in favour of CentOS Stream, Red Hat’s Karsten Wade put forth the company’s rationale behind the move in a blog post. Writing in the official CentOS blog, Wade, a member of the CentOS Governing Board, and longtime Fedora Linux contributor, shared that he “was part of the consensus decision that we [CentOS] recently announced about shifting the project’s focus.” # ⚓ Red_Hat_unveils_common_Kubernetes_platform_for Windows_and_Linux⠀⇛ Red Hat has announced the general availability of its common Kubernetes foundation for Windows and Linux container workloads: Red Hat OpenShift Support for Windows Containers. Containers allow organizations to package and run Windows and Linux applications on- premises and in the cloud. With Red Hat’s new service, enterprises can simultaneously manage Linux and Windows-based containerized workloads, eliminating the need for parallel software processing across hybrid cloud environments. # ⚓ Six_courses_to_build_your_technology_skills_in_2021⠀⇛ The new year is a great time to be thinking about your career and where you want to take it. Why not take advantage of the opportunity to learn new sought-after skills with IBM courses? You can enroll free of charge, work at the time and pace that’s right for you, and open up brand new career opportunities in 2021. # ⚓ Oracle_Linux_8:_Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_made_easy_with short_training_videos⠀⇛ A popular tool for developers and users creating cloud and local applications without the overhead of using a full server environment, Oracle VM VirtualBox runs on standard x86 desktop and laptop computers. It allows users to set up multi-platform virtual machine environments for software development, testing, and general purpose operating system (OS) virtualization, with optional runtime encryption. Software engineers can develop for cloud native environments from within Oracle VM VirtualBox VMs directly on their Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and Oracle Solaris machines, making it easier to create multi-tier applications with just a standard laptop. Oracle VM VirtualBox also enables users to create and update virtual machines locally, including the OS and applications, and then package them into an industry standard file format for easy distribution and cloud deployment in conjunction with Oracle Linux KVM, or other server virtualization solutions. Oracle VM VirtualBox allows users to run nearly any standard x86 OS hosting applications that are not available natively on their systems. # ⚓ Fedora_34_Planning_To_Make_Use_Of_Systemd-OOMD_To Improve_Low_Memory_Experience_–_Phoronix⠀⇛ At the end of November systemd 247 released with the new Out-of-Memory Daemon (systemd- oomd) and for the Fedora 34 release next year that will likely be enabled by default for all spins. Systemd-OOMD aims to improve the Linux low- memory / OoM experience and is based on code originally written by Facebook for their Linux servers and then adapted for Linux desktop memory pressure scenarios. Systemd- OOMD allows monitoring for resource contention and can kill opt-in processes when the memory/SWAP pressure is above a predefined threshold. # ⚓ IBM_To_Acquire_Finnish_Cloud_Firm_Nordcloud⠀⇛ # ⚓ MontaVista_Enhances_MVShield_For_CentOS_Service⠀⇛ MontaVista Software LLC is renewing its commitment to providing MVShield for CentOS Service for both existing and new customers interested in securing high-quality support and maintenance services for their products and platforms on long-term maintained CentOS minor releases. Despite the recently announced change in the CentOS Project’s strategy to focus future development on the CentOS Stream at the end of 2021, MontaVista will continue to provide long-term branch maintenance services uninterrupted and unchanged. # § Debian Family⠀➾ # ⚓ Vendoring_Rust_dependencies_for_a_Debian_derivative⠀⇛ Recently, I needed to package a Rust crate libslirp for a Apertis, a Debian derivative. libslirp is used by the newly release UML backend of debos, our Debian image build tool. Unfortunately, this crate hasn’t yet been properly packaged for Debian proper, so I could not simply pull the packaging from Debian. Even worse, its build dependencies haven’t all been packaged yet. Most importantly, I have only uploaded zbus to Debian today, and at that time none of its dependencies were in Debian either. Another issue with this were that each crate is packaged for Debian as a separate package, making the process a bit more tricky since I’d need to import all of the crates into Apertis separately. Doing that takes time and is further complicated by the CI loop we’re using which requires the full build process to complete for a package before a pipeline a dependent package can run. Having all that considered, I took a shortcut: I vendored all the build dependencies with the package itself, and here’s how. # ⚓ Call_for_testing:_monitoring-plugins_2.3_in experimental⠀⇛ As announced recently I prepared a monitoring-plugins 2.3 package for experimental. If there is enough positive feedback until 12th January 2021, I intend to upload this into unstable targeted for Debian Bullseye. # § Canonical/Ubuntu Family⠀➾ # ⚓ ODROID-Go_Super_is_an_$80_Ubuntu-powered_handheld game_system⠀⇛ Hardkernel’s third ODROID-Go device has a bigger screen, a bigger battery, improved wireless capabilities, and more buttons than the company’s first two handheld gaming systems. The ODROID-Go Super will go on sale in late January 2021 for $80. # ⚓ This_$80_Games_Console_Looks_Like_a_Switch,_But_Runs Ubuntu⠀⇛ It’s a 5-inch handheld PC built by Korean hardware company Hardkernel. They have previous form in the area of low-cost Linux portables. Their newly-unveiled ODroid Go Super runs Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and the EmulationStation frontend (meaning, yes: it supports a wide range of classic gaming content from the likes of Nintendo, Sony, and Atari). Hardkernel pitch the Super as an ideal “developers’ gaming gadget for 2021”. The thing is small, performant, and (awesomely) rather cheap too. I’d certainly have one on my desk to entertain me during lengthy distro upgrades and those days where… I just …can’t… write… anything. o § Devices/Embedded⠀➾ # ⚓ The_Reclaimer_Labs_STM32WB_Feather_board_#Feather #Bluetooth⠀⇛ Reclaimer Labs has released their STM32WB Feather board. It has a STM32WBCGU6 Bluetooth SoC at its core and has been designed for low power. # ⚓ STM32WB_Feather_board_features_STM32WB55_Bluetooth_5.0 SoC⠀⇛ The board can be programmed with STM32CubeProgrammer, and the company provides an example project using the STM32CubeIDE which presents a Bluetooth device named “WB-Feather” with GATT Characteristics for ADC readings of the analog inputs, internal temperature, reference voltage, and several GPIOs. The link to the code sample together with the schematics can be found on the product page. # ⚓ Industrial_5G/4G_Base_Shield_supports_Raspberry_Pi,_Jetson Nano,_other_SBC’s_(Crowdfunding)⠀⇛ Akari, a start-up based in Japan, has designed an industrial base shield for Raspberry Pi 4/3/Zero, Jetson Nano, Rock Pi 4, and other compatible single board computers. # ⚓ Add_face_recognition_with_Raspberry_Pi_|_Hackspace_38⠀⇛ # § Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications⠀➾ # ⚓ Google_TV_vs_Android_TV:_What’s_new_and_different⠀⇛ # ⚓ This_$700_4K_Android_TV_from_Hisense_is_almost_as_big as_Michael_Jordan_($300_off)⠀⇛ # ⚓ Best_wireless_earbuds_to_pair_with_your_Android smartphone⠀⇛ # ⚓ Best_Android_app_deals_of_the_day:_Final_Fantasy_VII, Dragon_Quest,_Chrono_Trigger,_much_more⠀⇛ # ⚓ Android_11_update_reaches_European_Sony_Xperia_1_II units⠀⇛ # ⚓ Voice_search_lands_in_Chrome_for_Android_–_thanks_to this_nifty_little_trick⠀⇛ # ⚓ Driving_the_XC40_Recharge,_Volvo’s_first_electric crossover_with_native_Android_Auto⠀⇛ # ⚓ Unlock_Your_Chromebook_Supported_By_Android_Phone⠀⇛ # ⚓ Hozpitality_launches_its_Mobile_Apps_for_Apple_and Android_phone_users⠀⇛ # ⚓ How_to_Shoot_HDR_Photos_With_an_Android_Go_Phone⠀⇛ # ⚓ How_to_download_and_play_GTA_5_on_Android_devices using_Steam_Link:_Step-by-step_guide_for_beginners⠀⇛ # ⚓ MacDroid_makes_it_easier_than_ever_to_transfer_files between_Android_and_the_Mac⠀⇛ # ⚓ [Global_rollout]_Redmi_7_Android_10_stable_update_re- released,_still_no_MIUI_12⠀⇛ # ⚓ Realme_UI_2.0_(Android_11)_update_rolling_out_to Realme_6_Pro_&_Realme_7⠀⇛ # ⚓ Sony_Xperia_1_II_Android_11_stable_update_arrives_in the_UK⠀⇛ # ⚓ OnePlus_OxygenOS_11_(Android_11)_update_known_bugs_& issues⠀⇛ # ⚓ Samsung_Galaxy_S10_Lite_gets_Android_11-based_One_UI 3.0_update⠀⇛ # ⚓ Lava_BeU_announced_with_6.08”_LCD,_Android_10_Go_and unique_design⠀⇛ # ⚓ Xiaomi_rolls_out_Android_10_update_for_Redmi_7_global variant⠀⇛ # ⚓ Google_Pixel_4a_review:_Our_favourite_Android_phone of_2020⠀⇛ # ⚓ How_to_Play_Local_Media_Files_on_Android_TV_(Guide)⠀⇛ # ⚓ How_to_use_Apple’s_AirPods_with_any_Android_phone⠀⇛ # ⚓ ProtonCalendar_is_now_available_on_Android_(APK Download)⠀⇛ o § Free, Libre, and Open Source Software⠀➾ # ⚓ Haiku_OS_Gearing_Up_For_2021_With_Improving_ARM_Port,_Other Hardware_Improvements_–_Phoronix⠀⇛ mt fixed various warnings, use-after-free, memory leaks, and dead code problems detected by the clang static analyzer. X512 reworked app_server memory management to use owning pointers and avoid some memory leaks and use-after-free cases. This led to a rework of the classes used for that purpose, in particular AutoDeleter and its variants, to be more efficient and more flexible. kallisit5 fixed a crash in the icon-o-matic save panel. PulkoMandy fixed an ABI problem that resulted in crashes for the 64bit version of Wonderbrush. Wonderbrush is now available in HaikuDepot for 64bit systems. # ⚓ Haiku_OS_Gearing_Up_For_2021_With_Improving_ARM_Port,_Other Hardware_Improvements_–_Phoronix⠀⇛ The Haiku project has issued an activity report concerning their happenings for November/December 2020. Haiku over this time has seen code clean-ups, various user interface improvements, continued work on the ARM port, POSIX compatibility enhancements, networking updates, storage handling updates, and continued work on sound and other hardware drivers. The fixed up ACPI thermal driver is also now able to read some motherboard and CPU temperatures. # ⚓ Announcing_FOSS_Quiz:_Quiz_Platform_For_Open_Source⠀⇛ At FOSS Post, we are very happy today to release our newest project: FOSS Quiz. When any new user enters the open source world, he/ she will discover that there are so many details, so much information and tons of software to learn a lot about. Users wishing to dive deeper in the field may find it hard to just browse the random Internet in order to collect the knowledge they need about the topics they wish to learn more about. FOSS Quiz comes here to solve that problem; A central platform for taking various quizzes about open source software, so that interested users can try to answer these quizzes and learn much more about the respective project/software in the process, in a fun and interactive way. # § Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra⠀➾ # ⚓ Best_Community_2020:_LibreOffice_at_DINAcon⠀⇛ At the recent online DINAcon (Digital Sustainability Conference) in Switzerland, Mike Saunders from The Document Foundation gave a talk about how TDF and the LibreOffice community works. And guess what: our community won an award at DINAcon too: Best Community 2020! We’re really proud to have such an active, passionate and diverse range of contributors all across the globe – LibreOffice wouldn’t be as popular and powerful today without their help. # § Programming/Development⠀➾ # ⚓ Joachim_Breitner:_Don’t_think,_just_defunctionalize⠀⇛ CPS-conversion and defunctionalization can help you to come up with a constant-stack algorithm. # ⚓ Go_1.16_Beta_1_is_released⠀⇛ We have just released go1.16beta1, a beta version of Go 1.16. It is cut from the master branch at the revision tagged go1.16beta1. Please try your production load tests and unit tests with the new version. Your help testing these pre-release versions is invaluable. # ⚓ Two_more_months_until_Go:_1.16_beta_offers_improved tooling_up_for_a_test-drive⠀⇛ With two more months until the final Go 1.16 release, the Go team has called upon developers to start testing the newly cut first beta version of the programming language. However, those looking to play with new language features might have to sit this one out, as work has mainly been done on the tooling and infrastructure front this time around. Most changes can be found in the go command which now allows the embedding of static files and file trees into executables through a new //go:embed directive, and has become module-aware by default. To support the latter, go install has learned to accept arguments with version suffixes for installing packages in module mode without taking the go.mod file into account. # § Perl/Raku⠀➾ # ⚓ Perl_steering_council_elected⠀⇛ The Perl project has announced the election of the first steering council to serve under the project’s new governance rules. Eight candidates put their names in; the winners were Ricardo Signes, Neil Bowers, and Sawyer X. # ⚓ First_Perl_Steering_Council_elected_to_replace Pumpking_position⠀⇛ # ⚓ Perl_weekly_challenge_92⠀⇛ I’m not a great blogger – but I will try and explain my solutions to the Perl weekly challenge each week. I always try and look for interesting solutions to the problems at hand. # ⚓ Raku_Challenge,_Week_92,_Issue_1⠀⇛ This week’s task has an interesting solution in Raku. So, here’s the task: You are given two strings $A and $B. Write a script to check if the given strings are Isomorphic. Print 1 if they are otherwise 0. OK, so if the two strings are isomorphic, their characters are mapped: for each character from the first string, the character at the same position in the second string is always the same. In the stings abc and def, a always corresponds to d, b to e, and c to f. That’s a trivial case. But then for the string abca, the corresponding string must be defd. # ⚓ Raku_Advent_Calendar:_Day_23:_Christmas- oriented_design_and_implementation⠀⇛ Every year by the beginning of the school year, which starts by January 8th in the North Pole, after every version of the Christmas gift-giving spirit has made their rounds, Santa needs to sit down to schedule the classes of the North Pole Community College. These elves need continuous education, and they need to really learn about those newfangled toys, apart from the tools and skills of the trade. [...] So Santa created this script to take care of it, using a bit of point free programming and Perl being Perl, the whippipitude and dwimmability of the two sister languages, Perl and Raku. # § Python⠀➾ # ⚓ Josef_Strzibny:_Serve_Django_static_assets_with Gunicorn⠀⇛ Serving static assets by the application server such as Gunicorn is usually not a good idea. We should prefer a web server with a better performance, but what if you want to serve the assets directly with the Django application? # § Rust⠀➾ # ⚓ Advent_of_Rust,_Day_20_and_21:_Stumped_by_Sea Monsters⠀⇛ Unlike in the past puzzles, I have no idea how to tackle this problem, so I start just by reading in the data. I’ll create a struct Tile to hold the data. I don’t have to store the actual image data, just the borders, so I can compare them to the borders of the other tiles. There are eight borders — one on each of the four sides, plus the tiles may also be flipped, so the same borders again but reversed. I’ll store each border as a u16 bit pattern for easy comparing, in an array of length 8. # ⚓ Learn_Rust_by_writing_a_simple_game⠀⇛ Start programming with a simple game you can try in multiple languages. # § Java⠀➾ # ⚓ [Older]_Jakarta_EE_9_provides_new_baseline_for evolution_of_platform⠀⇛ The Eclipse Foundation has announced the release of Jakarta EE 9, which provides a new baseline for the evolution of the platform. According to the Eclipse Foundation, the major change in Jakarta EE 9 is the completion of the transition from the javax.* package namespace to the jakarta.* namespace. The foundation explained this namespace change establishes Jakarta EE 9 as a foundation to develop enterprise Java applications on. * § Leftovers⠀➾ o § Education⠀➾ # ⚓ Lecturer_‘penalises_whole_class’_over_cheating allegations⠀⇛ The ABC reported that 300 students in a third-year algorithms class had been told they would be docked 30 per cent of their marks from a project to develop a software application because their lecturer had been unable to identify the perpetrators of “massive academic misconduct”. The chicanery was apparently exposed when the university uncovered advertisements from students offering to pay others to complete the task for them but could not identify who had posted them. o § Health/Nutrition⠀➾ # ⚓ #NoCovidMonopolies_–_Twitter_storm_activist_toolkit⠀⇛ Negotiations continue at the World Trade Organisataionns on South Africa’s and India’s proposal for #NoCovidMonopolies and we need YOU to help us stand up for global solidarity in this COVID-19 pandemic. # ⚓ A_silent_spine-related_epidemic_building_up,_warns_doctor⠀⇛ The associated factor is the forced sedentary lifestyle, and prolonged sitting, lack of exercise and poor activity. Poor understanding of spine ergonomics leads to improper posturing and is also contributory, explains Dr Samir K Kalra, Consultant, Department of Neurosurgery, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. # ⚓ Air_pollution_killed_17_lakh_Indians_last_year_and_led_to loss_of_1.4%_of_GDP⠀⇛ In 2019, an estimated 17 lakh individuals died from air pollution in India, which was 18% of the total deaths in the country, while the economic shortfall due to lost output from premature deaths and morbidity from air pollution was equivalent to Rs 2,60,000 crore, according to the study published in Lancet Planetary Health. For the country as a whole, the economic loss in GDP terms is the maximum in Uttar Pradesh (2.15% of GDP) and Bihar (1.95%). But in southern India, Karnataka (1.22%) tops the list followed by Andhra Pradesh (1.09%) and Tamil Nadu (1.06%). The study also showed that household air pollution was decreasing over the last two decades resulting in 64% reduction in the death rate attributable to it from 1990 to 2019, whereas the death rate from outdoor ambient air pollution has increased during this period by 115%. o § Integrity/Availability⠀➾ # § Proprietary⠀➾ # ⚓ Microsoft_rushes_out_fix_for_critical_Windows_10 bug⠀⇛ A new critical bug appears to have emerged in Windows 10, which is crashing some computers when they run the chkdsk command. It appears that this bug is affecting Windows 10 running the latest update (December 2020), which was released by Microsoft to fix numerous problems. Instead, as Windows Latest reports, some users have found that when they run the Check Disk tool (also known as chkdsk), their PCs crash, and the dreaded Blue Screen of Death appears. # § Pseudo-Open Source⠀➾ # § Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)⠀➾ # ⚓ Microsoft_Adds_SPIR-V_To_DXIL_Library_In Mesa_–_With_A_Focus_On_WebGPU_Support [Ed: Microsoft seems to be infiltrating Linux only to promote its own proprietary ‘standards’. “MS should stop fooling around, drop DX/DXIL and switch to Vulkan/ SPIR-V to begin with,” as somebody_put it]⠀⇛ …using Mesa to translate the APIs for consumption by Direct3D 12 drivers… # § Security⠀➾ # ⚓ The_SolarWinds_Hack_Is_Just_The_Same_Sort_Of Espionage_The_US_Government_Engages_In_Every Day⠀⇛ A historic hack of unprecedented scale has set off alarms in the US government — itself a target of suspected Russian hackers who leveraged IT infrastructure company SolarWinds’ massive customer base to compromise an unknown number of victims. Among those victims were several US government agencies, including the DHS’s cybersecurity wing, which announced its own breach hours after issuing a dire warning to potentially affected government agencies. # ⚓ Biden_faults_Trump_administration_on cybersecurity_following_massive_[attack] [iophk: Windows TCO]⠀⇛ President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday accused the Trump administration of failing to prioritize cybersecurity in the wake of a far-reaching breach of private and government systems and promised a serious response when he takes office. # ⚓ Senator_Says_[Crackers]_Compromised_US_Treasury Email_Accounts⠀⇛ Wyden said that while the [attack] “appears to be significant,” there is no indication those responsible compromised taxpayer data. He added that department officials do not know the full extent of the [attacker]s’ actions or exactly what information they stole. # ⚓ Microsoft_Azure_breach_left_thousands_of customer_records_exposed⠀⇛ Thanks to questionable security practises by an app developer, more than half a million sensitive documents of its customers were exposed on the Internet. The documents were housed in an unprotected Microsoft Azure blob storage and could be viewed by anyone with the direct address of the files, without any kind of authentication. Azure Blob storage is a feature of Microsoft Azure that allows users to store large amounts of unstructured data on Microsoft’s data storage platform. The unsecured blob was managed by Surrey-based app developer Probase and according to The Register, it contained 587,000 files, ranging from backed-up emails to letters, spreadsheets, screenshots, and more. # ⚓ Security_updates_for_Tuesday⠀⇛ Security updates have been issued by CentOS (kernel and thunderbird), Debian (openjdk-8 and webkit2gtk), Fedora (gdm, mingw-openjpeg2, and openjpeg2), Mageia (compat-openssl10, golang- googlecode-net, mbedtls, openssl, and virtualbox), openSUSE (ovmf and xen), Red Hat (kernel, mariadb-connector-c, mariadb:10.3, postgresql:10, and postgresql:9.6), and SUSE (ardana- cassandra, ardana-mq, ardana-osconfig, ardana-tempest, crowbar-core, crowbar- openstack, grafana, influxdb, openstack-cinder, openstack-heat, openstack-heat-gbp, openstack-heat- templates, openstack-horizon-plugin- gbp-ui, openstack-ironic-python-agent, openstack-manila, openstack-neutron, openstack-neutron-gbp, openstack- neutron-vpnaas, openstack-nova, python- Jinja2, python-pysaml2, python-pytest, python-urllib3, release-notes-suse- openstack-cloud, spark, ceph, crowbar- core, crowbar-openstack, grafana, influxdb, openstack-heat-templates, openstack-nova, python-Jinja2, firefox, java-1_7_0-ibm, java-1_7_1-ibm, PackageKit, and thunderbird). # ⚓ But,_what_about_root_passwords?⠀⇛ If you’ve walked long enough into your enterprise identity management journey you might reach this question: How will root passwords be managed? Having centralized user and group IDs, your access policies—Host Based Access Control (HBAC) and Role Based Access Control (RBAC)—in Red Hat Identity Management (IdM) or any similar solution might still leave root passwords unmanaged. [...] While there is a resemblance in some of these examples and the public cloud’s approach in having no root password set, and shifting the privileged access to users other than root, there is one big difference. Many physical and virtual provisioning workflows for on- prem will include setting up a default root password for a variety of reasons, but those reasons are beyond the scope of this blog post. # ⚓ Kali_Linux:_The_Last_12_Months_(2019/2020)_& Looking_forwards_(2021)⠀⇛ As the end of the year is coming up (some may say not quickly enough), we want to take a few minutes and recap on our roadmap 2019/2020 post. At a higher level, the last 12 months of Kali Linux (outside of the normal release items – e.g. packages updates), Kali has had various refreshes, switches and additional new features added. # ⚓ Josh_Bressers:_Episode_248_–_Door_23:_How_to report_1000_security_flaws⠀⇛ Josh and Kurt talk about how to file 1000 security flaws. One is easy, scale is hard. # § Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/ Dramatisation⠀➾ # ⚓ The_State_of_Safety_Certification_of Platforms⠀⇛ A lot has been written about safety “certification” of platforms. As the number of applications involving human safety increases in markets such as avionics, automotive, industrial, etc., the importance of the functional safety certification of software that controls key functions has never been greater. There are several standards that govern the safety certification of software like DO-178, SEAL, ISO26262, and IEC61508. It is the best known and perhaps the most rigorous is the DO-178 standard that is governed by the FAA for commercial avionics software. A look “under-the-hood” into the process of safety certification reveals many interesting facts. As the leader of an engineering team that is working on certifying code for deployment on big programs like the Joint Strike Fighter, I thought it would be interesting to share the next level of what is involved. Let me start with a datapoint. The average time to get a single line of source certified to DO- 178 DAL A Standard (used for the most critical system functions in aircraft and helicopters) may take 2-3 hours. So, that means that every 2,000 lines of code takes one year to certify. How many applications these days have as little as 2,000 lines of code? # § Privacy/Surveillance⠀➾ # ⚓ Twitter_will_make_Joe_Biden’s_@POTUS account_start_with_zero_followers⠀⇛ This is a reversal from what Twitter did in 2017 when the Trump administration took over accounts from the Obama administration. Back then, Twitter essentially duplicated the existing accounts, creating an archive of Obama-era tweets and followers and building a new set of accounts for the incoming administration that retained all of those followers without any of the tweets. # ⚓ ‘Free_speech’_Reddit_clone_Voat_says_it will_shut_down_on_Christmas⠀⇛ However, Voat faced chronic funding and technical problems, as well as denial-of-service attacks and an apparent warning from law enforcement about threats made on the site. Chastain warned in 2017 that Voat was likely to shut down, but a year later, he announced a partnership with the unnamed investor, keeping the site online. Other alternative social networks have struggled to gain traction as well. Gab migrated to the decentralized Mastodon network in 2019, after a mass shooting by a Gab user prompted PayPal and GoDaddy to sever ties. Parler experienced a massive user influx after the 2020 presidential election, but its momentum slowed rapidly. Voat’s death has been announced before, and it’s possible the site will pull through again — but its demise looks much more likely this time around. o § Defence/Aggression⠀➾ # ⚓ Activist_Karima_Baloch_found_dead_in_Canada,_police_say_no reason_to_believe_foul_play⠀⇛ Unverified reports, mostly in the Indian media quoting unnamed sources, had said that Baloch had been killed. But a spokesperson for the Toronto Police told Dawn.com that authorities were investigating the death as “non-criminal”. “On Monday, December 21, 2020, a 37-year-old woman was located deceased. It is currently being investigated as a non-criminal death and there are not believed to be any suspicious circumstances,” Caroline de Kloet, Toronto Police’s media relations officer, said in an email response. Baloch was critical of the Pakistani establishment and had been living in Canada since 2016, where she had been granted asylum. A close friend of hers told the BBC she was receiving threats while in Canada. # ⚓ Pakistani_Human_Rights_Activist_Found_Dead_in_Canada⠀⇛ “I can’t believe that it’s an act of suicide,” he told the newspaper. “She was a strong lady and she left home in a good mood. We can’t rule out foul play as she has been under threats. She left Pakistan as her home was raided more than twice. Her uncle was killed. She was threatened to leave activism and political activities, but she did not and fled to Canada.” Her friend, Lateef Johar Baloch, told the BBC Baloch had recently received anonymous threats that someone would “teach her a lesson.” o § Environment⠀➾ # ⚓ Taiwan_and_China_cooperate_against_illegal_Chinese_sand dredgers⠀⇛ After over 100 Chinese ships illegally dredged sand near Taiwan’s outlying island of Matsu, both countries reached an agreement to battle the problem together, Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said Tuesday (Dec. 22). The presence of the Chinese sand dredgers last September caused concern in Taiwan over the environment and national security, as Matsu lies close to the coast of the Chinese province of Fujian. However, in its latest interpretation of the issue, the CGA said the dredging was not politically motivated but purely a case of illegal profit- seeking, the Liberty Times reported. o § AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics⠀➾ # ⚓ The_Socialists_vs._Andrew_Cuomo⠀⇛ Two socialists emerged from a flower shop in Astoria, Queens, with a bouquet of red roses. Jabari Brisport, 33, a newly elected state senator from Brooklyn, sported a red Democratic Socialists of America hoodie while Zohran Mamdani, 29, a newly elected assemblyman from Queens, wore a red-and- black checked Arsenal jersey—an item he’d just purchased and later characterized as “this ridiculous shirt” yet was plainly excited to show off. NYC-DSA endorsed both this year, and the pair spent the overcast November weekend surprising each of the organization’s freshly endorsed City Council candidates at home with a rose. (The color red has represented socialism and communism at least since the 1840s, while the red rose, now the symbol of the Democratic Socialists of America, has been associated with socialist and social democratic movements and parties since the 1880s.) “I’d like to point out that he didn’t pay [for the flowers]. That’s the problem with socialism,” Mamdani ribbed Brisport, impersonating a conservative. “Eventually you run out of other people’s money.” # ⚓ Trump’s_Longtime_Banker_at_Deutsche_Bank_Resigns⠀⇛ Mr. Trump’s key contacts at his biggest financial backer are leaving at a perilous time for the departing president. He owes Deutsche Bank about $330 million, and the loans come due in 2023 and 2024. Mr. Trump provided a personal guarantee to get the loans, meaning that if he fails to pay them back, the bank can pursue his personal assets. # ⚓ Trump_Is_Guilty_of_Sedition_and_Must_Be_Brought_to Justice⠀⇛ If I were a lawyer, I’d say that Trump is building a pretty good sedition case against himself, urging war against the institutions of American democracy and substituting loyalty to the person of Trump for loyalty to the country, the Constitution, and the institutions that he, and all of his government colleagues, have sworn an oath to protect. But I’m not a lawyer, so I’ll just call it as I see it. Having lost the popular vote by 7 million, having lost the Electoral College vote too, and having failed at every level of the court system to get judges to intervene to squeeze a victory out of the bitter lemons of defeat, Trump is now grasping not only at one frivolous lawsuit after the other but at the straws of violence: specifically, military and paramilitary violence. o § Censorship/Free Speech⠀➾ # ⚓ Two_shades_of_Virtual_Private_Networks⠀⇛ In July 2018, the Over-The-Top (OTT) tax on social media platforms was introduced to generate more revenue to improve Internet services. Critics examined it as a wider web to silence alternative or dissenting opinions on matters of public interest in Uganda. After President Museveni spoke disdainful to social media users that the tax was aimed at dealing with the consequences of online “gossip”, this led to the massive adoption of Virtual Private Network (VPNs), to evade the daily Shs200 tax to access social media platforms. o § Monopolies⠀➾ # ⚓ Government_Contracts_and_Ownership_of_Technical_Data⠀⇛ This is a government contract case involving rights to technical data provided to the government from a contractor. Boeing is working on a multi-billion- dollar F-15 Eagle Passive/Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS) project subject to a DoD contract. Under the contract, Boeing “retains ownership” of the technical data it generates and delivers. However, the U.S. Gov’t receives also “unlimited rights” to the data, including the right to “use, modify, reproduce, perform, display, release, or disclose [the] technical data in whole or in part, in any manner, and for any purpose whatsoever, and to have or authorize others to do so.” When Boeing began providing data, it included first notice below. The U.S. Gov’t. objected to that language and Boeing offered the second alternative. Still though the U.S. Gov’t. objected as out of compliance with the DoD regulations. (DFARS 252.227-7013(f)). This objection apparently came as something of a surprise — Boeing says that it has been marking its technical data with propriety legends since 2002. [...] Technical Data Rights: The underlying question, of course, is what rights are we talking about? The US does not have a category of property rights known as “technical data rights.” The best data protection may be trade-secret rights, but that does not seem to work here because we’re talking about data that has been turned over to another party without any restriction. Boeing’s copyright notice is probably the best-clue. However, copyright protection in a document is a far-cry being the “owner” of the technical data as the court discussed. # § Patents⠀➾ # ⚓ Pre-AIA_102:_Meaning_of_On_Sale_“in_This_Country”⠀⇛ Caterpillar filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission (ITC) against Wirtgen — arguing that the German manufacturer was importing infringing devices into the US. However, the ITC found the claims invalidated by the company’s pre- filing sales. On appeal here, the Federal Circuit has affirmed. Caterpillar’s U.S. Patent No. 7,140,693 covers a milling machine with retractable wheels (or tracks). The invention here was originally created by engineers at the Italian company Bitelli in the late 1990’s. Caterpillar purchased Bitelli in 2000, the priority patent application was not filed (in Italy) until April 2001, followed by the PCT in 2002. Bitelli had already been selling embodiments of the invention even before 2000. # ⚓ $1,500_Awarded_for_Mountech_IP_prior_art⠀⇛ Unified is pleased to announce the PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winner, Ekta Aswal, who received a cash prize of $1,500 for their prior art submission for U.S. Patent 7,991,784. The patent is owned by Mountech IP, an NPE and IP Edge subsidiary. The ‘784 patent generally relates to a method for automatic dynamic contextual data entry completion system. The ‘784 patent has been asserted in district court against ZTE, Samsung, Motorola, Blackberry, and LG. # ⚓ Breaking:_German_UPC_legislation_challenged_again_by constitutional_complaints⠀⇛ Another chapter has been added to the endless UPC saga. Two constitutional complaints were filed last Friday against the German ratification law for the Unified Patent Court. This was confirmed by the spokesman of the German Constitutional Court responding to a request from JUVE Patent. The highest German court apparently received the two complaints (case IDs: 2 BvR 2216/20 and 2 BvR 2217/20) shortly after the German Bundesrat approved the German UPC legislation. The second chamber of the German parliament had unanimously passed the laws on 18 December. Prior to this, the German Bundestag had approved them with the necessary two-thirds majority. This cleared the way for the completion of the German UPC ratification and the launch of the UPC as a whole. It is currently unknown who the claimants are. The Constitutional Court did not provide any information on this matter. However, in the run-up to the votes in the German parliament, two groups had hinted at potential lawsuits. In November, Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) took a combative stance, calling on companies to join forces to file a constitutional claim. # ⚓ New_UPC_complaints_filed_in_Germany⠀⇛ Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has confirmed it has received two complaints against the country’s Unified Patent Court legislation. In a statement sent to Managing IP, the court confirmed: “Regarding the Act on the Agreement of February 13 2013 on a Unified Patent Court, two constitutional complaints have been filed and are pending.” However, the statement added that a decision date was not known. Neither the identity of the plaintiffs nor the grounds of the complaints are currently available. In March this year, a long-awaited FCC ruling declared that the act approving the UPCA had not been signed off by a required two-thirds majority in the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament. That ruling was based on a complaint filed in 2017 by German lawyer Ingve Stjerna. # ⚓ Two_constitutional_complaints_filed_against_new German_UPC_legislation⠀⇛ The German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht – BVerfG) has informed the press (see here and here) that last Friday two constitutional complaints (cases 2 BvR 2216/20 and 2 BvR 2217/20) were filed against the draft legislation enabling Germany to ratify the Unified Patent Court (UPC) Agreement and its Protocol on Provisional Application. As reported here, on the same day the Bundesrat approved that legislation but further steps are required for the legislation to come into force. Neither the grounds of the complaints nor the identity of the complainants are known. However, in upholding in March 2020 the constitutional complaint against the previous draft German law on the ground of it not having been having been approved by the requisite majority in the Bundestag, the BVerfG did not rule on other parts of the complaint (see here). One potential ground for another constitutional complaint is that the UPC Agreement’s provisions that establish the primacy of EU law infringe the Basic Law (the German constitution). The BVerfG did not previously consider that ground but comments by the rapporteur in that case, Justice Huber, suggest that it may succeed; FAZ reported (here) Justice Huber’s comments on the BVerfG’s decision in May 2020 in the ECB case (in which Justice Huber was rapporteur), and in response to the question (translated) “The EU Commission is examining an infringement procedure. Is that not inevitable?”, Justice Huber replied (translated) “It is by no means inevitable. On the contrary, the Commission has political discretion in this respect. In doing so, it should note that Germany and most other Member States of the European Union would not have been allowed to join the European Union at all if the unrestricted primacy of European law over the Basic Law, as assumed by the CJEU, would exist. We made this clear once again in the decision on the Unified Patent Court in January.” # ⚓ TRU-VA-DI_TRU-VA-DA,_Life_goes_on_at_Gilead⠀⇛ Each time I hear “TRUVADA”, the catchy chorus of the Beatles’ Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da sounds different to me… However, TV addicts or literature lovers also keen on pharmaceutical litigation should not have failed to notice a more disturbing coincidence: “Gilead” is moreover the sweet name given to the dictatorship where The Handmaid’s Tale is set – a sort of reminiscence of Oceania in 1984. Randomness. No doubt. In any case, the Paris Court of Appeal’s decision of June 19, 2020 is by now the last episode in our TRUVADA® Pharma Saga, perhaps its final point. As a reminder, TRUVADA® is an anti-HIV drug consisting of the combination of tenofovir disoproxil (TD) and emtricitabine (FT), which has been approved for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PreP) of HIV infection. It has been shown to reduce the risk of HIV infection by 86%. This combination was the object of a European patent (EP0915894) until July 25, 2017. Its protection was extended by Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs), including one for “tenofovir disoproxil and its salts, hydrates, tautomers and solvates in combination with other therapeutic compounds such as emtricitabine” and expiring on February 21, 2020 in the French territory (FR08C0020), based on European Union marketing authorization EU/1/04/305/001 and the patent claim 27, which reads as follows : “A pharmaceutical composition comprising a compound complying with any of claims 1 to 25 [tenofovir disoproxil is claimed in claim 25], together with a pharmaceutically acceptable vehicle, and where appropriate, other therapeutic ingredients.” [emphasis added]. In the meantime, the description also disclosed this possibility of combining a claimed active ingredient with “other therapeutic ingredients”, but also does not specifically mentioned emtricitabine [09-15]. Based on SPC FR08C0020, Gilead decided to take action for infringement against Mylan, which launched TENOFOVIR DISOPROXIL, a generic of TRUVADA®. Thus, the issue raised by this case was the following: could emtricitabine (FTC) constitute a product protected by the basic patent within the meaning of Article 3(a) of Regulation (EC) No 469/2009, even though the patent did not explicitly refer to it and only cited possible combinations with “other therapeutic ingredients”? # § Copyrights⠀➾ # ⚓ Trump_urges_Congress_to_amend_‘wasteful’_coronavirus aid_bill⠀⇛ Mr Trump concluded: “Congress found plenty of money for foreign countries, lobbyists and special interests, while sending the bare minimum to the American people who need it. It wasn’t their fault. It was China’s fault. “I am asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2,000 or $4,000 for a couple. “I’m also asking Congress to immediately get rid of the wasteful and unnecessary items from this legislation and to send me a suitable bill, or else the next administration will have to deliver a Covid relief package.” Mr Trump’s statement stunned Capitol Hill, plunging the long-awaited aid bill into turmoil. # ⚓ New_‘felony_streaming’_measure_is_aimed_at_piracy services,_not_Twitch_streamers⠀⇛ That doesn’t mean copyright activists can rest easy. The multitrillion-dollar package did include a copyright measure that civil liberties activists fear could have dramatic consequences. The CASE Act was also approved in the package and would create a quasi- judicial copyright claims court within the Copyright Office. Copyright holders could be awarded up to $30,000 in damages if they find their creative work being shared online. There’s also more bad copyright news coming from Sen. Tillis in the next congressional term. The senator is planning to offer up additional copyright changes next year that have already spooked the tech and creative industries. National Journal reported on Tuesday that Tillis has been circulating a draft proposal of a bill that would completely reform the DMCA. The bill would include a “notice-and-staydown” provision that could make copyright bots, like YouTube’s Content ID, stricter. National Journal said that Tillis’ office would limit this provision to “complete or near-complete works” and would focus on larger enterprises rather than small platforms or creators. Still, current copyright-striking tech has been hit-or-miss. # ⚓ The_COVID-19_Stimulus_Bill_Would_Make_Illegal Streaming_a_Felony⠀⇛ Perhaps most surprising, according to the text of the bill being circulated, illegal streaming for commercial profit could become a felony. It’s been less than two weeks since Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) released his proposal to increase the penalties for those who would dare stream unlicensed works. In doing so, the North Carolina Senator flirted with danger. About a decade ago, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar made a similar proposal before it ended up dying as people worried about sending Justin Bieber to jail. (No, seriously.) This time, Tillis’ attempt was winning better reviews for more narrowly tailoring the provisions towards commercial operators rather than users. That said, it’s had very little time to circulate before evidently becoming part of the spending package. If passed, illegal streaming could carry up to 10 years in jail. That’s not the only copyright change either. The spending bill also appears to adopt a long-discussed plan to create a small claims adjudication system within the U.S. Copyright Office. # ⚓ Covid_relief_bill_to_make_illegal_streaming_a_felony with_up_to_10-year_prison_sentence,_in_landmark_victory for_Hollywood_studios⠀⇛ Studios have been trying to pass copyright legislation to curb piracy for almost a decade since the failed 2012 Stop Online Piracy Act. If the 5000-page Covid-19 relief package passes, buried in there will be increased penalties for illegal streaming of movies and music that could carry up to 10 years in jail, as first reported by The Hollywood Reporter. # ⚓ US_Passes_Spending_Bill_With_CASE_Act_and_Felony Streaming_Proposal⠀⇛ US Congress passed the spending bill a few hours ago. The legislation package includes the CASE Act, which establishes a tribunal for small copyright claims. A proposal to criminalize streaming piracy services also passed as part of the omnibus bill. # ⚓ US_Congress_passes_a_COVID-19_relief_bill—and_also some_new_copyright_laws⠀⇛ “This is why Congress needs time to actually read this package before voting on it. Members of Congress have not read this bill. It’s over 5000 pages, arrived at 2pm today, and we are told to expect a vote on it in 2 hours. This isn’t governance. It’s hostage- taking.” # ⚓ Both-Sidesing_the_Stimulus_Bill⠀⇛ Nearly nine months after the CARES Act, Congress has finally passed a second economic stimulus. The bill, with a price tag of about $900 billion, falls far short of what Democrats and most economists say is necessary, as a result of continual Republican insistence that aid not reach the $1 trillion mark. But to hear corporate media tell it, the too little, too late stimulus story has been largely another example of both parties’ intransigence. # ⚓ You’ll_Need_Fifty_Stimulus_Checks_To_Pay_The_Damages You_Might_Get_Hit_With_Under_The_CASE_Act⠀⇛ It was only mid-day yesterday that it was confirmed that Congress has slipped in two controversial copyright provisions into the must-pass government funding bill. Last night, as everyone expected, that must-pass bill did indeed pass, and it will soon be law. # ⚓ Congress_throws_garbage_copyright_and_streaming_rules in_with_COVID_relief_bill⠀⇛ Section 212 of the proposed bill, meanwhile, is the “copyright small claims” part. Specifically, the proposed bill refers to the “Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act 6 of 2020″ also referred to as the “CASE Act of 2020.” And just what is the CASE Act, you ask? The Electronic Frontier Foundation has some thoughts. “Under the CASE Act, people could file copyright infringement claims with an obscure body, under the auspices of an office most people have no experience with,” reads a statement from the EFF. “And that board could decide that the subjects of those claims owe up to $30,000 for activities as common as sharing memes, images, and videos online.” Yup. Sharing memes. # ⚓ ‘DMCA_2.0′_Draft_Hints_at_Filters_With_Notice-and- Staydown_Scheme⠀⇛ Senator Thom Tillis has released a discussion draft of the “Digital Copyright Act of 2021,” a potential successor to the current DMCA. The draft proposes a takedown-and-stay down requirement for online service providers, which indirectly suggests the use of piracy filters. That’s just one of the many elements that will be fiercely debated in the coming months. # ⚓ Senator_Tillis_Releases_Massive_Unconstitutional_Plan To_Reshape_The_Internet_In_Hollywood’s_Image⠀⇛ Yesterday, Senator Thom Tillis helped ram through a gift for Hollywood: getting the felony streaming copyright bill that he’d only released a week earlier included in the must-pass omnibus funding bill despite literally no discussion or debate about the problems with the bill. # ⚓ Police_“Seize”_Pirate_IPTV_Platform,_Prepare_to Identify_50,000_Users⠀⇛ Italy’s Guardia di Finanza says it has carried out a “preventative seizure” of a pirate IPTV platform serving in excess of 50,000 users. The action follows an investigation by Sky and football league Serie A. According to reports, the authorities are now working to identify the platform’s subscribers. ䷩ 𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 3081 ╒═══════════════════ 𝐃𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐘 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒 ═════════════════════════════════════════════╕ ⠀⌧ █▇▆▅▄▃▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ 12.23.20⠀▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ ⌧ ✐ Links_23/12/2020:_NeoChat_1.0_and_LibTraceFS_1.0⠀✐ Posted in News_Roundup at 12:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz 🄸🄼🄰🄶🄴 🄳🄴🅂🄲🅁🄸🄿🅃🄸🄾🄽 ⦇GNOME bluefish⦈ § Contents⠀➾ * GNU/Linux o Distributions o Devices/Embedded * Free_Software/Open_Source * Leftovers * § GNU/Linux⠀➾ o ⚓ A_Cloud-Native_World_Pushed_Service_Meshes_Forward_in_2020_|_IT Pro⠀⇛ Service meshes debuted in 2017, but really broke big in 2020 due to the increased complexity of the cloud-native world, which includes microservices and more. o § Desktop/Laptop⠀➾ # ⚓ 9_stories_about_switching_to_an_open_source_alternative_in 2020⠀⇛ In 2020, as every year, new open source projects launched as alternatives to proprietary solutions. Here is a roundup of the top nine articles about open source alternatives that made the headlines in 2020 on Opensource.com. o § Linux Magazine⠀➾ # ⚓ Working_with_Git_branches⠀⇛ # ⚓ State_of_the_distros⠀⇛ # ⚓ An_ASCII_puzzle_for_an_escape_room_challenge⠀⇛ # ⚓ Search_Daylight⠀⇛ # ⚓ Charly’s_Column_–_Shell_History⠀⇛ # ⚓ A_tool_for_distro_hoppers⠀⇛ # ⚓ Zack’s_Kernel_News⠀⇛ # ⚓ Optimize_SVG_files_for_websites⠀⇛ # ⚓ Run_statistics_on_typed_shell_commands⠀⇛ # ⚓ System_resource_monitoring_with_bpytop⠀⇛ # ⚓ Decoding_videos_in_Firefox_with_VA-API⠀⇛ # ⚓ Exploring_Linux’s_new_iNet_wireless_daemon⠀⇛ # ⚓ Developing_Tiny_Core_Linux_extensions⠀⇛ # ⚓ This_month_in_Linux_Voice.⠀⇛ # ⚓ Linux_Mint_20_and_Kali_Linux_2020.4⠀⇛ # ⚓ Add_Variety_to_your_desktop⠀⇛ # ⚓ Fluid_Dynamics⠀⇛ # ⚓ Visual_Studio_Code_for_programming_a_Raspberry_Pi⠀⇛ # ⚓ Sparkling_gems_and_new_releases_from_the_world_of_Free_and Open_Source_Software⠀⇛ # ⚓ In_the_news⠀⇛ # ⚓ Reading_and_writing_metadata_from_multimedia_files⠀⇛ # ⚓ A_twin-panel_file_manager_based_on_Python_3/GTK3⠀⇛ Following in the footsteps of Norton Commander and its clones, the Sunflower twin-panel file manager takes a giant leap forward with a switch to Python 3 and GTK3. o § Audiocasts/Shows⠀➾ # ⚓ mintCast_350.5_–_Change_Your_SSID_–_mintCast⠀⇛ 0:16 HPR Spot 1:26 Show Start 2:44 Linux Innards 50:34 Vibrations from the Ether 1:04:09 Check This Out 1:07:14 Outro In our Innards section, we talk spooky scary security And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions # ⚓ The_2020_Tuxies_|_LINUX_Unplugged_385⠀⇛ We reveal the winners of the 2020 Tuxies. We’ve tallied the audince votes for the best open source projects, desktops, distros, editors, games, and much much more. Special Guests: Drew DeVore and Nate Graham. o § Kernel Space⠀➾ # ⚓ libtracefs_1.0.0⠀⇛ libtracefs has finally been officially released. The code that interacts with the tracefs file system in trace-cmd has been extracted out into its own library. This will facilitate other applications that need to manipulate or simply read the trace event file formats. https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/libs/libtrace/ libtracefs.git/snapshot/libtracefs-1.0.0.tar.gz https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/libs/libtrace/ libtracefs.git/ All exposed functions have man pages. We do plan on extending the functions that tracefs will include. Some have already been added to bugzilla, but feel free to request your own features you would like to have for your applications, to easily manipulate ftrace. https://bugzilla.kernel.org/ buglist.cgi?component=Trace- cmd%2FKernelshark&list_id=1079173&product=Tools&resolution=- -- Here are the list of functions that libtracefs provides. Along with libtraceevent (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/libs/libtrace/ libtraceevent.git/) making programs that interact with the ftrace file system has greatly become more simplified! # ⚓ LibTraceFS_1.0_Released_For_Interacting_With_Linux’s Tracing_File-System⠀⇛ TraceFS is a pseudo, stackable file-system for capturing file-system traces in a portable manner. TraceFS is designed explicitly for this use-case rather than the prior tracing tacked atop DebugFS. LibTraceFS was born out of the trace-cmd front-end to the Linux kernel ftrace tracer. LibTraceFS outside of trace-cmd provides an API for accessing the TraceFS directory and various tracing features in a convenient library form or simply for consuming the data. # ⚓ Linus_Benedict_Torvalds:_Computer_scientist_and_software sector_genius⠀⇛ Between 1988 and 1996, he attended the University of Helsinki and obtained a master’s degree in computer science. During his studies, he joined the Finnish Army Uusimaa brigade in 1989 and attended the 11-month officer training programme to fulfil the country’s mandatory military service norm. Fascination for computers In 1990, he resumed studies at the university. It was during this time that he got acquainted with the operating system, ‘Unix’. He wrote his Master’s thesis on ‘Linux: A Portable Operating System’. He became fascinated and interested in computer science after he worked on the 8-bit home computer, VIC-20. He later purchased the personal computer but was not satisfied with the computer’s operating system and modified the computer, especially the operating system. Months of determined programming work yielded the beginnings of an operating system known as Linux. # ⚓ Linux_5.11_Adding_VirtIO-MEM_“Big_Block_Mode”⠀⇛ The previously covered VirtIO memory (VirtIO-MEM) work on its Big Block Mode “BBM” will be landing with Linux 5.11. The Red Hat led feature work was sent in today as part of Linux 5.11 virtIO updates. This is about overcoming a current limitation that the VirtIO-MEM driver can only support device block sizes up to the size of a single Linux memory block. The Big Block Mode allows for any device block size for any Linux virtual machine even if it’s larger than a Linux memory block size of the running system. # § Graphics Stack⠀➾ # ⚓ Zink_OpenGL-On-Vulkan_Lands_Tessellation_Shader Support_In_Mesa_21.0_–_Phoronix⠀⇛ Landing in Mesa 21.0 on Tuesday was support for OpenGL tessellation shaders (ARB_tessellation_shader) with the Zink Gallium3D code implementing generic OpenGL support atop Vulkan. Tessellation support is one of the key requirements for OpenGL 4.0 and one of the remaining extensions for Zink in hitting GL 4.0 on mainline Mesa besides ARB_gpu_shader5 and ARB_texture_gather. o § Benchmarks⠀➾ # ⚓ Windows_10_Competing_Well_Against_Ubuntu_20.10_On_The_AMD Ryzen_9_5950X⠀⇛ Earlier this month we were a bit surprised to see Windows 10 performing close to Ubuntu 20.10 on the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X. With prior AMD Ryzen (and Intel Core) desktop CPUs we normally are used to seeing Ubuntu Linux exhibit healthy performance advantages over Windows 10 in most workloads. But with Zen 3 the Windows vs. Linux performance is much closer and thus led us to also running Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu benchmarks on the higher-end Ryzen 9 5950X to reproduce the earlier findings. o § Applications⠀➾ # ⚓ Notepadqq:_Notepad++_alternative_for_Linux⠀⇛ Notepadqq is Notepad++ alternative which is one of the most popular TextEditor tools between programmer and web designer. Just switched from Windows to Linux system and missing your old TextEditor. We can still install notepad++ in Linux using snap, but some people don’t like snaps too much, and yes I am also one of them. So, if you don’t want to change your taste and still want to enjoy notepad++ like TextEditor, then you are at right place. o § Instructionals/Technical⠀➾ # ⚓ How_to_Install_GnuCash_4.2_via_PPA_in_Ubuntu_20.04,_Linux Mint_20⠀⇛ Don’t like the universal Linux flatpak package? Here’s how to install the latest GnuCash 4.2 via an Ubuntu PPA in Ubuntu 20.04 and/or Linux Mint 20. The latest version of the personal and small- business financial-accounting software is GnuCash 4.2. For Linux binary, GnuCash website refers to the universal flatpak package (See this how-to for detail). For those prefer an apt repository, an unofficial PPA is available with the .deb packages for Ubuntu 20.04 and Linux Mint. # ⚓ How_to_declare_Boolean_variables_in_bash_and_use_them_in_a shell_script_–_nixCraft⠀⇛ I need to define a bash variable called failed and set the value to False. When my script is called from a cron job, specific tasks might fail, and then I need to flip failed to True. Based upon $failed, I need to send an email alert that my cron job has failed. # ⚓ How_to_Install_Ansible_on_Ubuntu⠀⇛ Ansible is an open-source tool that allows you to provision, configure, manage, and deploy applications. It helps to run infrastructure as a code, basically an automation tool. Ansible runs on Linux, Unix-like, and Windows systems. It is a free tool written in Python. Using Ansible, automation and controlling of a large of servers is simplified. This made the system admin or DevOps engineer manage all servers from a single control node. Unlike Chef and Puppet, Ansible doesn’t need any special software to be installed on the nodes. Ansible uses SSH to execute tasks and YAML file to define provision information. # ⚓ Jonathan_McDowell:_Rooting_the_Tesco_Hudl⠀⇛ I have an original Tesco Hudl – a Rockchip RK3188 based Android tablet. It’s somewhat long in the tooth and mine is running Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean). As a first step in trying to get it updated a bit I decided to root it and have a poke about. There are plenty of guides for this, but they mostly involve downloading Android apps that look dodgy or don’t exist any more. Thankfully the bootloader is unlocked, so I did it the hard (manual) way from a Debian 10 (Buster) box. I doubt this is useful to many folk, but I thought I’d write it up. As you’d expect follow this at your own risk; there is the potential to brick the Hudl. First, enable developer mode on the Hudl (so we can adb in). Open the Settings app, scroll down to the bottom and click “About Tablet”, scroll down to the bottom and tap “Build number” 7 times, at which point it will tell you “You are now a developer!”. Go back to the main settings menu and just above “About Tablet” there will now be a “Developer options” entry. Click it, then make sure the box beside “USB debugging” is ticked. # ⚓ How_to_install_UbuntuDDE_Remix_20.10⠀⇛ In this video, I am going to show how to install UbuntuDDE Remix 20.10. # ⚓ How_to_Install_Kodi_on_Ubuntu_20.10_–_Linux_Hint⠀⇛ Kodi is a popular and open-source media player application where you can watch movies, TV shows, listen to music and even play games. It was developed as a homebrew app for the original Xbox by the name of Xbox Media Center (XBMC). Microsoft abandoned it, but it continues to evolve with the support of XBMC a non-profit organization. # ⚓ Create_Animated_Presentations_with_AnimationMaker_on_Ubuntu 20.10_–_Linux_Hint⠀⇛ Animations are one of the excellent approaches to convey your message. Illustrations through animations make them easier to comprehend. AnimationMaker is one of the applications that allow you to make beautiful animated presentations and videos on your Ubuntu device. These animations can be uploaded on YouTube and Vimeo. AnimationMaker lets you export files in various formats including mp4, avi, GIF, and HTML, etc. It is a free alternative to premium applications like Adobe Edge and Adobe Animate. # ⚓ How_to_Update_All_Packages_in_Oracle_Linux_8⠀⇛ When installing new packages on any operating system, a common piece of advice is to update the system before installing any new packages. This is so that your system will be free of any potential software bugs that may occur due to outdated software. While using your computer system, you may also mess up some of the packages and dependencies. A package update is also required to fix such issues. This article shows you how to update all packages in your Oracle Linux 8 system. # ⚓ How_to_Change_the_Hostname_in_Oracle_Linux_8⠀⇛ When you get a new computer system or install a new virtual machine on an already existing computer system, there will be a default hostname or device name that comes with the system. In Oracle Linux 8, you may change the server hostname according to your preferences. This article shows you the two most effective methods for changing the hostname of an Oracle Linux 8 system. # ⚓ How_to_install_and_use_Tor_Browser_on_Linux_Mint_20-_Error free_method⠀⇛ Tor browser is known for its Privacy features and anonymous web surfing features using relay network. It is based on Mozilla firefox, however, the problem that most people are facing while installing this browser using the popular Torbrowser-launcher method is the Signature failure error. In this method, we are not going to use that, instead of a simple and straightforward one by using the portable Tor browser packages available for the Linux operating system. Also, we let you know how to create a Desktop shortcut for the TOR Browser. # ⚓ How_to_Set_Up_a_Bitcoin_Node,_With_Lightning⠀⇛ A Raspberry Pi ($66 for version 4): This is a pocket-sized computer that powers the Lightning node. (Computers have certainly evolved since the ENIAC, which weighed 50 tons, about 10 times as much as an elephant.) # ⚓ How_to_use_the_Eclipse_IDE_as_your_text_editor_| Opensource.com⠀⇛ Eclipse is an IDE (integrated development environment). It’s definitely not a text editor. Then again, an IDE is really just a text editor with a lot of extra features for specific kinds of text. Furthermore, an IDE is often home to a developer. Developers have their IDE of choice open all day long, so it’s natural to stay in that IDE when it’s time to write a project README file, or to jot down a quick note, or to just make a grocery list. So sometimes, an IDE is just a text editor, after all. # ⚓ Deploy_Fedora_CoreOS_servers_with_Terraform_–_Fedora Magazine⠀⇛ Fedora CoreOS is a lightweight, secure operating system optimized for running containerized workloads. A YAML document is all you need to describe the workload you’d like to run on a Fedora CoreOS server. This is wonderful for a single server, but how would you describe a fleet of cooperating Fedora CoreOS servers? For example, what if you wanted a set of servers running load balancers, others running a database cluster and others running a web application? How can you get them all configured and provisioned? How can you configure them to communicate with each other? This article looks at how Terraform solves this problem. # ⚓ How_to_create_Windows_10_USB_installation_Drive_in_Linux⠀⇛ # ⚓ How_To_Install_Eclipse_IDE_on_CentOS_8_–_idroot⠀⇛ In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Eclipse IDE on CentOS 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Eclipse is a cross-platform, wildly popular Java integrated development environment (IDE) that you can easily install and manage your Java-based projects. It contains a base workspace and an extensible plug-in system for customizing the environment. 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 install of Eclipse on CentOS 8. # ⚓ How_to_Install_Opera_Browser_on_Ubuntu_20.04_–_TecAdmin⠀⇛ Opera is a Chromium-based multi-platform web browser developed by Opera Software. It have multiple features similar to the Google chrome as both are developed on Chromium. You will get a new looks and multiple different features that other browsers, which makes it more powerful. The Opera browser is available under the Snapcraft packages. Also the Opera team provides an PPA for installing Opera on Ubuntu systems. This tutorial help you to install Opera web browser on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux system. # ⚓ How_&_Why_To_Use_Airgapped_Backups⠀⇛ It’s that last one that is of particular interest today. A lot of backup strategies are such that if a user (or administrator) has their local account or network compromised, their backups could very well be destroyed as well. For instance, do you ssh from the account being backed up to the system holding the backups? Or rsync using a keypair stored on it? Or access S3 buckets, etc? It is trivially easy in many of these schemes to totally ruin cloud-based backups, or even some other schemes. rsync can be run with –delete (and often is, to prune remotes), S3 buckets can be deleted, etc. And even if you try to lock down an over- network backup to be append-only, still there are vectors for attack (ssh credentials, OpenSSL bugs, etc). In this post, I try to explore how we can protect against them and still retain some modern conveniences. [...] Additionally, with the recent addition of ZFS crypto to ZFS on Linux, the replication stream can optionally reflect the encrypted data. Yes, as long as you don’t need to mount them, you can mostly work with ZFS datasets on an encrypted basis, and can directly tell zfs send to just send the encrypted data instead of the decrypted data. The downside of ZFS is the resource requirements at the destination, which in terms of RAM are higher than most of the older Raspberry Pi-style devices. Still, one could perhaps just save off zfs send streams and restore them later if need be, but that implies a periodic resend of a full stream, an inefficient operation. dedpulicating software such as borg could be used on those streams (though with less effectiveness if they’re encrypted). o § Games⠀➾ # ⚓ Stadia_Pro_gets_F1_2020_free_in_January_2021,_all_users_can claim_Crayta_free_right_now⠀⇛ A few bits of big news to go over for Stadia followers on Linux, as there’s new games released, free games, games on sale and a whole lot more. Firstly, time is running out to spend the $10 / £10 credit that Stadia Pro users get as this will vanish in January 2021. This is the same credit they’ve had up for some time now so if you’ve already used it – there’s no more but a reminder for anyone that hasn’t. Want some free games? Stadia Pro subscribers can claim the newly released Stadia title Cthulhu Saves Christmas. Additionally, Stadia Pro subs can also now claim the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds – Breakthrough Edition bundle. # ⚓ Open_source_Linux_instant-replay_tool_ReplaySorcery_has some_major_upgrades_|_GamingOnLinux⠀⇛ Need an easy way to capture those awesome moments when you’re playing Linux games? ReplaySorcery is what you need, and the developer has been very busy with it. ReplaySorcery is a bit like AMD ReLive or NVIDIA ShadowPlay Instant Replay. The idea is simple: while running it stores around 30 seconds of your screen and audio in memory ready to dump it into a video file for you. It works, and really quite well too. Since we last wrote about it there’s new features aplenty including: audio capture, options for changing output quality, VA-API hardware acceleration, local config file support, the ability to not run as root and more. It’s quickly becoming a great short-capture solution. # ⚓ Happy_Holidays,_Merry_Christmas,_Happy_New_Year_from GamingOnLinux⠀⇛ Through this year we’ve seen a lot of fun things for Linux gaming including tons of exceptional indie games being released. Certainly hasn’t been a dull year! You can see some of my own favourites right here. We also had Vulkan Ray Tracing officially released – finally, that is quite exciting for the future of games. Valve are also continuing to put resources into many different parts of Linux and Linux gaming through Steam Play, driver upgrades, the newer container system and lots more that continue to mature. There’s so many moving parts to keep everything exciting that we can’t wait to see evolve even further through 2021. # ⚓ Our_top_favourite_Linux_games_released_in_2020_| GamingOnLinux⠀⇛ As 2020 comes to a close, here’s a brief look over what games we personally thought truly stood out in 2020 that directly supported Linux. # ⚓ Check_out_the_new_footage_of_ENCODYA_a_cyberpunk_point_and click_adventure_|_GamingOnLinux⠀⇛ The first title from Chaosmonger Studio with new publisher Assemble Entertainment looks to be shaping up well, and there’s a new featurette trailer with chief developer Nicola Piovesan. ENCODYA is a cyberpunk dystopian point-and-click adventure, which shall release with Linux support on January 26, 2021 – following on from their successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. This new featurette has Piovesan chatting about the world their team created along with a bunch of new footage. # ⚓ Free_and_open_source_2D_RTS_‘Wyrmsun’_4.0_is_out_now⠀⇛ If you love classic 2D RTS games like Warcraft 2 and other similar titles, Wyrmsun is one you should take a look at because not only is it free and open source but it’s seeing major upgrades too. Their original plan to move to Godot Engine didn’t work out, so they decided to stick with the classic Stratagus engine which it was originally based on. Instead, they continued enhancing what’s was possible with what they already had including some substantial tech improvements including a 2x scaling option, improved pathfinding performance, parallel sound loading to improve loading times, mini-map zooming and more. Lots of gameplay enhancements were also added in Wyrmsun 4.0 like a smarter AI that will now try to aid its buildings under attack, the AI will try to actually complete its quests and it only declares war during scenarios after 20 minutes so main quests go a bit smoother. o § Desktop Environments/WMs⠀➾ # ⚓ Xfce_4.16_Released._This_is_What’s_New⠀⇛ The lightweight desktop environment Xfce releases its latest installment Xfce 4.16 with many exciting features. Here in this post, we summarize the Xfce 4.16 release covering the brand new features, updates, and download details. # ⚓ Major_Update:_Xfce_4.16_Released_with_New_Features_&_Visual Changes⠀⇛ This new stable version of the Xfce desktop makes a number of visual changes, usability enhancements, and bug fixes. For instance the xfwm4 window manager has various compositing and GLX improvements; only shows windows from the primary display (when set) in the alt + tab switcher; and comes with the option to “keep minimized windows in the most recently used list” to improve users workflow. A variety of xfce4-panel tweaks are included too, such as a new Status Tray plugin to handle modern and legacy systems tray icons alike; dark mode support; and a new autohide transition effect makes it more apparent “where the panel has gone” when hiding out of view. # § K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt⠀➾ # ⚓ KDE’s_Open_Source_Video_Editor_Kdenlive_20.12_Is_Out With_New_Features⠀⇛ A new stable version 20.12 of free and open source video editing software Kdenlive (KDE Non-Linear Video Editor) is out with exciting new features, bug fixes, performance, and usability improvements. First and foremost, Kdenlive 20.12 now includes an in-built subtitling tool. This allows you to add and edit subtitles directly in the timeline on a special subtitle track or using a new subtitle widget. # ⚓ Announcing_NeoChat_1.0,_the_KDE_Matrix_client⠀⇛ Matrix is an instant messaging system similar to Whatsapp or Telegram, but uses an open and decentralized network for secure and privacy- protected communications. NeoChat is a visually attractive Matrix client that works on desktop computers and mobile phones. NeoChat provides an elegant and convergent user interface, allowing it to adapt to any screen size automatically and gracefully. # § GNOME Desktop/GTK⠀➾ # ⚓ Shaun_McCance:_Custom_docs_checkers_in_yelp-check⠀⇛ I have a personal goal of getting top-notch docs CI in place for GNOME 40, and part of that is having checks for merge requests. We have a number of great checks already in yelp-check, like checking for broken links and media references, but for large documents sets, you want to be able to enforce your own rules for style and consistency. The most common tool for this is Schematron, and in fact we do have a Schematron file in gnome- help. But it has a lot of boilerplate, most people don’t know how to write it, and the command to run it is unpleasant. # ⚓ Marcus_Lundblad:_Christmas_Maps⠀⇛ So, it’s that time of year again. And even if this year is a lot different than usual in many ways I thought we should still follow the tradition of summing up some of the last updates to GNOME Maps in 2020 (and before the first beta of what will be part of GNOME 40, in the new versioning scheme). The biggest change that was landed since the release of 3.38 has been the redesigned ”place bubbles” by James Westman. James has already written an excellent blog post highlighting this. But I still want point this out here as well. The bubbles now feature larger thumbnails with images from Wikipedia when places are tagged with Wikipedia articles in OpenStreetMap (and the article features a title image), utilizing the MediaWiki API. This feature has been present for some time, but with the redesign the thumbnail are larger and has a more balanced and prominent place. Furthermore a short summary of the Wikipedia article is also shown (in the language preferred by the user’s locale settings, if the article is translated to that language in Wikipedia). The details are also shown in a nicer list view-style with icons to give visual cues. [...] Also since the last time we’ve had some new contributors. Ravi Shankar improved the detection of invalid URLs and Anubhav Tyagi has improved loading of shape layer files (GeoJSON, GPX, and KML) by replacing synchronous file I/O with asynchronous while loading and also an update to show a dialog asking the user for confirmation when loading files larger than 20 MB since it can takes some time to load (and parse). And last, but not least, Maps old-timer Jonas Danielsson contributed a fix to normalize phone numbers in the links shown for phone number when an app is installed that can handle tel: URIs. This allows the Calls app on e.g. the PinePhone to use these links directly from Maps. o § Distributions⠀➾ # § IBM/Red Hat/Fedora⠀➾ # ⚓ First_Release_Of_Rocky_Linux_Will_Arrive_After_March 2021⠀⇛ It has been almost two weeks since the announcement of dropping maintenance support for CentOS Linux and shifting full focus to its future CentOS Stream, which ultimately led to the creation of a new alternative Rocky Linux by CentOS creator Greg Kurtzer itself. Now, in the very first community update, Rocky Linux Community Manager Jordan Pisaniello has shared all the progress done so far and updates for future releases of Rocky Linux. # ⚓ Red_Hat_defends_its_CentOS_decision,_claims_Stream version_can_cover_’95%_of_current_user_workloads’⠀⇛ Red Hat’s Karsten Wade, a Senior Community Architect and member of the CentOS board, has defended the decision to kill off CentOS Linux in favour of CentOS Stream, saying the two projects were “antithetical” and Stream is a satisfactory replacement in most cases. CentOS Linux is downstream of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), whereas CentOS Stream, introduced in September 2019, is upstream, a late development build of what will shortly go into RHEL (unless problems are discovered). All CentOS variants are free, and CentOS Linux is understandably popular, combining the stability of RHEL with free availability. For example, according to statistics from W3Techs CentOS has an 18.5 per cent share of websites, compared to Red Hat’s 1.5 per cent share. Earlier this month Red Hat declared that CentOS Linux would be phased out in favour of Stream. # § Canonical/Ubuntu Family⠀➾ # ⚓ This_Nintendo_Switch_clone_runs_Ubuntu,_and_is_half the_price⠀⇛ There’s a potential new player in the handheld video games console device thanks to a new release from Hardkernel. The South Korean hardware vendor, known for its Odroid series of single board computers (SBC) has shared details about its latest flagship handheld device powered by Ubuntu. The Odroid-Go Super (OGS) is the third rendition of the popular Odroid-Go series of handheld devices that features a bigger screen, a bigger battery, and improved wireless capabilities over its predecessors. Designed primarily as a portable gaming console, the device runs Ubuntu 20.04 to emulate retro gaming consoles from Sony, Nintendo, Atari, Sega, and NEC. o § Devices/Embedded⠀➾ # ⚓ ESP32-C3_WiFi_&_BLE_RISC-V_processor_to_launch_at_ESP8266 price⠀⇛ When we reported about ESP32-S2-MINI modules last September, we also noted Espressif teased us with ESP32-S3 and ESP32-C3 with close to no details. ESP32-S3 is expected to be a multi-core WiFI & Bluetooth processor with AI instructions/ accelerator, but there were no details about ESP32- C3 at all, and we only found out it would be a RISC-V processor several weeks ago. But Twitter user Johnny Wu posted a screenshot in Chinese and its translation claiming ESP32-C3 was finally released by Espressif Systems. # ⚓ Glasgow_Interface_Explorer_is_an_iCE40_FPGA_based_hardware debugging_tool_(crowdfunding)⠀⇛ We’ve seen some pretty interesting boards for hardware hackers and reverse engineers in recent months with the likes of Ollie and Tigard USB debug boards that allow interfacing various hardware interfaces and/or flashing firmware to different types of target boards. # ⚓ 10_Raspberry_Pi_project_ideas_from_2020⠀⇛ The Raspberry Pi is the small, low-cost, single- board PC that took the world by storm when it was released in 2012. Since then, educators, students, makers, and tinkerers have used the various Raspberry Pi models for many, many unique and interesting projects. The possibilities are nearly endless. # ⚓ New_Part_Day:_Hackboard_2,_An_X86_Single-Board_Computer⠀⇛ From the old Gumstix boards to everyone’s favorite Raspberry Pi, common single-board computers (SBCs) have traditionally had at least one thing in common: an ARM processor. But that’s not to say hackers and makers haven’t been interested in an SBC with a proper x86 processor. Which is why the $99 Hackboard 2 is so exciting. With a modern x86 chip at the core it’s akin to a small footprint desktop motherboard, but with all the extra features that we’ve come to expect in a hacker- friendly SBC. [...] That Celeron processor also means the Hackboard 2 can run Windows, if you’re into that sort of thing. While hacker types are usually more than happy with running Linux or potentially BSD on their ARM boards, there’s unquestionably a subset of the community that feels more comfortable with Clippy looking over their shoulder. Or maybe they’ve got some project that requires a piece of Windows software that doesn’t play well with WINE. Either way, getting a proprietary OS preinstalled on your SBC is going to cost you: it’s an extra $40 to get your Hackboard 2 with a copy of Windows 10 Pro on its 64 GB eMMC. While we can’t complain about the CPU and GPU given what the competition is packing, the fact that there’s only 4 GB of RAM onboard is something of a disappointment. Especially when the cheaper Raspberry Pi 4 includes up to 8 GB. It’s certainly enough for most Linux distributions, but pretty skimpy for a Windows box. Depending on what software you’re hoping to install, it might even be a non-starter. If you’re looking for a cheap machine to run Photoshop on, you’ll want to look elsewhere. # § Open Hardware/Modding⠀➾ # ⚓ Use_AutoTVM_and_uTVM_to_optimize_ML_workloads_on embedded_devices_&_microcontrollers⠀⇛ We are seeing a massive increase in resource- constraints for embedded devices due to a lack of mature software stacks. With the increase in open-source hardware, the available software support takes a considerable amount of time to develop AI/ML/ DL applications. Some of the challenges faced today are that bare-metal devices do not have on-device memory management, and they do not have LLVM support. # § Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications⠀➾ # ⚓ Best_apps_to_watch_tv_shows_and_movies_on_Android⠀⇛ # ⚓ How_to_Open_and_Read_a_PDF_on_Android⠀⇛ # ⚓ How_to_clear_Google_Play_cache_on_any_Android_device to_help_troubleshoot_problems⠀⇛ # ⚓ Samsung_has_updated_these_phones_to_Android_11⠀⇛ # ⚓ Android_11_for_Sony_Xperia_1_II_lands,_other_Sony phones_to_follow_soon⠀⇛ # ⚓ Meizu_starts_recruiting_Android_11_beta_testers_for Meizu_17_series⠀⇛ # ⚓ Lava_launches_BeU_entry-level_smartphone_in_India with_Android_10_Go⠀⇛ # ⚓ Xiaomi_Mi_QLED_TV_4K_55-inch_Ultra-HD_Android_TV_ (L55M6)_Review⠀⇛ # ⚓ Android_11_update_rolling_out_to_Galaxy_Note_20 series_[Updated]⠀⇛ # ⚓ Redmi_7_is_getting_Android_10-based_MIUI_11_update⠀⇛ # ⚓ How_to_open_Google_Assistant_with_back_tap_on_Android smartphone⠀⇛ # ⚓ Apple_is_finally_working_on_a_feature_that_Android phones_had_for_years⠀⇛ # ⚓ Millions_of_Android_phones_will_be_blocked_from_the web,_but_a_solution_is_on_the_way⠀⇛ # ⚓ Gizmochina’s_Best_Android_Smartphones_of_2020⠀⇛ o § Free, Libre, and Open Source Software⠀➾ # § Web Browsers⠀➾ # § Mozilla⠀➾ # ⚓ L10n_Report:_December_2020_Edition_|_Mozilla L10N⠀⇛ As anticipated in the last report, this release cycle is longer than usual (6 weeks instead of 4), to accommodate for the end of year holidays in Europe and the US. The number of new strings remains pretty low, but expect this to change during the first half of 2021, when we should have new content, thanks to a mix of new features and old interfaces revisited. There will also be changes to improve consistency around the use of Title Case and Sentence case for English. This won’t result in new strings to translate for other locales, but it’s a good reminder that each locale should set and follow its own rules, and they should be documented in style guides. # § Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra⠀➾ # ⚓ NO_proprietary_formats_in_Italy,_please!⠀⇛ I, the undersigned Roberto Guido… point out a very widespread anomaly among small municipalities distributed all across Italy. With minimum effort, I was able to identify some calls and assignments, all published over the last 12 months, with which several small municipalities have requested and acquired licenses of the Microsoft Office software application. Consequently, I individually contacted the representatives of each tender, to ask clarifications about their non-compliance with several official guidelines (see below), despite the well-known availability of alternative and more compliant solutions. Unfortunately, several of those municipalities completely ignored the request for generalized civic access made pursuant to article 5 of Legislative Decree 33⁄2013 and subsequent amendments. The answers from the others (attached to this complaint) were surprisingly similar to each other. In addition to several more or less specific factors, the common one expressed by all those administrations is incompatibility of the IT management system they currently use with documents generated in formats other than those native of Microsoft Office. Some administrations cited their own negative experiences with other digital formats (which they had, however, on their own laudable initiative, tried to adopt). Others mentioned explicit recommendations from the supplier of their document management system. Investigating further, I had to acknowledge that all those municipalities, in different parts of Italy, share the same IT management service provider, i.e. the company Halley Informatica srl, which appears (following a research perhaps superficial and not exhaustive, but in any case indicative) to cover the same role in about 1700 Italian municipalities (about 20% of the total). # § FSF⠀➾ # ⚓ Free_Software_Directory_meeting_day_changes_for_the rest_of_the_year⠀⇛ Due to the holidays, the two final Free Software Directory meetings for 2020 will be held on Thursday instead of Friday. Join us to help improve the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones. # ⚓ Help_us_set_high_priorities_for_2021:_Send_input_by Jan._8⠀⇛ The High Priority Free Software Projects (HPP) list is an initiative from the Free Software Foundation (FSF). It draws attention to areas of development of strategic importance to the goal of freedom for all computer users, and highlights specific projects within these areas. The HPP list helps guide volunteers, developers, funders, and companies to projects where their skills and resources can be utilized, whether they be in coding, graphic design, writing, financial contributions, or activism. The HPP list helps projects explain their importance, which attracts other developers and sponsors. Adding the right projects and project areas to the HPP list while keeping it comprehensive is thus extremely important for the future of free software. Besides this, we also enjoy being able to highlight projects of major importance, giving them the attention they deserve for the inspirational and challenging work that they do. [...] Remember, we’re looking for projects of great strategic importance to the goal of freedom for all computer users. We are looking for areas where people feel they are heavily pressured or even required to use proprietary software, as well as for important missing features in existing free software, and for problems you see on the horizon as technology is developing. # § GNU Projects⠀➾ # ⚓ SD_Times_news_digest:_Apache_Kafka_2.7.0,_Bash- 5.1,_and_System.Text.Json_updates⠀⇛ Bash is a GNU project bourne again shell that features interactive command line editing, job control, support for csh-like features, and history substitution. The release also includes several outstanding bug fixes. In a post, the team explained the biggest change is “a return to the bash-4.4 behavior of not performing pathname expansion on a word that contains backslashes but does not contain any unquoted globbing special characters.” # ⚓ mailutils_@_Savannah:_Version_3.11⠀⇛ Version 3.11 of GNU mailutils is available for download. # ⚓ gdbm_@_Savannah:_Version_1.19⠀⇛ Version 1.19 is available for download. # ⚓ Gnulib_helps_you_write_efficient_algorithms⠀⇛ When writing algorithmic code, the classical approach is to define the data structures, write the algorithm, debug it, and then profile it. It often occurs that you notice that a certain list, set, or map can get large and that this costs CPU time. Then, you change the data structure, adapt the code (often substantial changes), debug it again, and finally profile it again. Gnulib has a set of container types, that you can use for your data structures, and that can make this process easier. With these types, changing the data structure is a one- liner change, no second debugging is needed, and you can proceed to the final profiling right away. # § Programming/Development⠀➾ # ⚓ Firebird_php_driver_status_for_Firebird_Advent_2020⠀⇛ Firebird php driver status for Firebird Advent 2020 # § Perl/Raku⠀➾ # ⚓ Alles_in_Ordnung⠀⇛ Perl returns its hash values in a random order. Since 5.14 or so, the random order changes every time. So if you loop over your hash values, you get a different ordering each time. # § Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh⠀➾ # ⚓ Understanding_Bash:_A_guide_for_[GNU/]Linux administrators⠀⇛ # § Java⠀➾ # ⚓ Use_Lambdas_Instead_of_Anonymous_Classes_In Java_|⠀⇛ Another useful feature introduced since Java 8 is the possibility to use lambdas instead of anonymous classes. # ⚓ Supersonic,_Subatomic_gRPC_services_with_Java and_Quarkus_–_Red_Hat_Developer⠀⇛ gRPC is an open source remote procedure call (RPC) framework. It was released by Google in 2015 and is now an incubating project within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. This post introduces gRPC while explaining its underlying architecture and how it compares to REST over HTTP. You’ll also get started using Quarkus to implement and consume gRPC services. * § Leftovers⠀➾ o ⚓ The_Winter’s_Tale:_Solstice_on_the_Streets_of_Paris⠀⇛ When you give assistance in any form to a homeless asylum seeker shivering in the freezing European winter, he or she may not be able to repay you there and then. One day though, if you’re lucky enough, you might see the fruit of the smile you created. Asylum seekers come to France with a thousand and one hopes, and with no way back because of the war and violence that ravages their homeland. Uncertainty grips their hearts with a frigid hand. They can taste the chill of winter on their breath, and feel it penetrating their bones. o § Education⠀➾ # ⚓ Opinion_|_Dr._Leslie_T._Fenwick_for_Secretary_of Education⠀⇛ Leslie Fenwick knows that public schools are an essential element of American democracy. They are community institutions that belong to the public, not to entrepreneurs or corporate chains.  o § Hardware⠀➾ # ⚓ SPEC_replaces_SPECsfs_2014_benchmark_with_AI_and_genomics workouts⠀⇛ SPEC Solution 2020 can support a non-POSIX storage system with a plugin shared library for accessing an AFS storage service. Others may be added in the future, such as an object store, S3, Ceph, and more. The new test supports custom workloads for private, no-publishable testing. o § Health/Nutrition⠀➾ # ⚓ Millions_of_India’s_Farmers_Are_in_a_Fight_for_Their Economic_Lives⠀⇛ About half of India’s workers depend on the agricultural industry, and the government has long had in place regulations to protect farmworkers, acting as a middleman between farmers and buyers of their produce. Now those protections have been upended. In September 2020, Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) pushed three deregulatory bills through Parliament amid chaos and even some opposition from within his own party. Amandeep Sandhu, author of Panjab: Journeys Through Fault Lines, has been closely following the farmers’ protests. In an interview, he explained to me that the first of the three bills scrapped the Essential Commodities Act, a 1955 law that stabilized food prices by preventing traders from hoarding supplies. According to Sandhu, “now traders can stockpile as much food as they want and can play the markets as they wish.” Two-thirds of India’s population of 1.3 billion rely on subsidized food rations, which Sandhu says are now endangered. # ⚓ Could_the_Next_Standing_Rock_Could_Be_Brewing_in_Northern Minnesota?⠀⇛ Despite sub-zero winter temperatures, a conflict over a controversial new pipeline is threatening to boil over in rural Minnesota, turning it into the next Standing Rock. 22 people were arrested last week during protests in Aitkin County, around 120 miles north of Minneapolis, for trespassing against the construction of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline. The pipeline project would carry more than 750,000 barrels of fracked Alberta tar sand oil through the United States. # ⚓ Opinion_|_Biden’s_Drug_Czar_Must_Be_Someone_Willing_to Diverge_From_Our_Country’s_Failed_Drug_War⠀⇛ “We are at a crossroads—and the Biden-Harris administration has the power to make an incredibly important decision with its handling of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and who leads it.” # ⚓ Black_Critical_Care_Dr._Taison_Bell_of_UVA_on_Fighting COVID,_Racism_&_Securing_Fair_Vaccine_Access⠀⇛ More than 40 countries have temporarily suspended some or all travel from the United Kingdom after British health officials announced a highly infectious variant of the novel coronavirus has been spreading in the country. South Africa has detected a similar variant. The new variant is believed to be 70% more contagious, but health experts say existing vaccines will still be effective against it. “What’s important to remember is that mutations will naturally happen in the course of a virus that’s in the community and circulating,” says Dr. Taison Bell, critical care and infectious disease physician at the University of Virginia. “It’s not unexpected to have these changes.” Bell also describes how he received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine earlier this month. # ⚓ The_Main_Public_Hospital_in_the_Nation’s_Largest_County_Is Out_of_ICU_Beds⠀⇛ # ⚓ Memorial_Sloan_Kettering_Gave_Top_Doctor_$1.5_Million_After He_Was_Forced_to_Resign_Over_Conflicts_of_Interest⠀⇛ In 2018, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s chief medical officer, Dr. José Baselga, resigned under fire over his failure to disclose payments from health care companies in dozens of research articles he wrote. Now, recent Internal Revenue Service filings show the nonprofit hospital paid more than $1.5 million in severance to Baselga in 2018 and 2019. # ⚓ Black_Men_Have_the_Shortest_Lifespans_of_Any_Americans. This_Theory_Helps_Explain_Why.⠀⇛ COVID-19 has killed many young Black men with deadly efficiency. When ProPublica reporters began collecting their stories and speaking to health experts to understand why, their efforts led them to a little-known body of research that takes its name from one of the most enduring symbols of Black American resilience. Sherman James is a social epidemiologist who has spent the past four decades exploring why Black men have higher rates of diseases that lead to shorter lifespans than all other Americans. # ⚓ How_COVID-19_Hollowed_Out_a_Generation_of_Young_Black_Men⠀⇛ The Rev. Dr. Kejuane Artez Bates was a big man with big responsibilities. The arrival of the novel coronavirus in Vidalia, Louisiana, was another burden on a body already breaking under the load. Bates was in his 10th year with the Vidalia Police Department, assigned as a resource officer to the upper elementary school. But with classrooms indefinitely closed, he was back on patrol duty and, like most people in those early days of the pandemic, unprotected by a mask. On Friday, March 20, he was coughing and his nose was bleeding. The next day, he couldn’t get out of bed. Bates was only 36, too young to be at risk for COVID-19, or so the conventional wisdom went. He attributed his malaise to allergies and pushed forward with his second full-time job, as head pastor of Forest Aid Baptist Church, working on his Sunday sermon between naps. Online church was a new concept to his parishioners, and during the next morning’s service, he had to keep reminding them to mute their phones. As he preached about Daniel in the lion’s den — we will be tested, but if we continue to have faith, we will come through — he grimaced from the effort. That night he was burning up with fever. Five days later he was on a ventilator; five days after that, he died. # ⚓ Opinion_|_Tom_Vilsack’s_Cozy_Relationship_With_Big_Ag_Makes Him_A_Non-Starter_at_USDA⠀⇛ The Biden administration will fail rural America right out of the gate with a choice like Tom Vilsack for Secretary of Agriculture. # ⚓ AfD_Strongholds,_Hygiene_Rallies,_Tin-Foil_Hats_and Coronavirus_Infections⠀⇛ An analysis by German researchers suggests that in local counties with a large number of AfD voters, COVID-19 cases are high. During the last months, various German lockdowns had a mediating effect on the coronavirus until the second wave hit Germany. In many geographical areas, the coronavirus cases increased faster in recent weeks. This increase fuels fear of a dramatic Christmas season – the cancellation of Christmas, and even more severe restrictions. In other words, no Glühwein parties. With even higher death tolls compared to last summer, there is now a somewhat frantic search for the causes of the recent rise in coronavirus cases in Germany. o § Integrity/Availability⠀➾ # § Proprietary⠀➾ # § Security⠀➾ # ⚓ Security_updates_for_Wednesday⠀⇛ Security updates have been issued by Debian (awstats and mediawiki), Fedora (mbedtls and pngcheck), openSUSE (firefox and thunderbird), Oracle (gnutls, go-toolset:ol8, pacemaker, postgresql:10, postgresql:12, and postgresql:9.6), and SUSE (clamav, groovy, jetty-minimal, and xen). # ⚓ NSW_Health_among_users_of_compromised_network management_tool⠀⇛ The NSW Department of Health, a user of the Orion network management software that was compromised in a supply chain attack, says it was alerted on 14 December to the fact that an attack had taken place. # ⚓ Keep_CentOS_6_Servers_Safe_From_A_New_OpenSSL Vulnerability_–_OSTechNix⠀⇛ CloudLinux offers extended support until 2024 to keep your CentOS 6 servers secure from a new OpenSSL Vulnerability. OpenSSL recently released a security patch for a high-level finding that affects any servers running 1.0.2 and 1.1.1 versions. Unfortunately, OpenSSL announced that it would not release patches for CentOS 6, only CentOS 7 and CentOS 8. This leaves any server running unpatched OpenSSL including the CentOS 6 operating system vulnerable to denial-of-service (DoS) where software, critical services, or the operating system could crash. CloudLinux, however, will patch current versions of OpenSSL, the unsupported 1.0.1 version, and servers running the CentOS 6 operating system. # ⚓ 13_Linux_security_tutorials_|_Enable_Sysadmin⠀⇛ Fighting the good fight for better security is a never-ending battle. See how some sysadmin warriors have approached it. # § Privacy/Surveillance⠀➾ # ⚓ New_York’s_Suspension_of_Facial Recognition_Surveillance_in_Schools_‘Should Serve_as_a_National_Model,’_Says_Advocate⠀⇛ Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law a first-of-its-kind moratorium on biometric surveillance tools, passed by state legislators in July. # ⚓ IMF_suggests_that_your_credit_score_could be_based_on_your_internet_history⠀⇛ What is soft data though? The researchers pointed to information that is usually superfluous to credit worthiness discussions such as: o § Defence/Aggression⠀➾ # ⚓ Opinion_|_The_Lessons_of_Two_Failed_Wars:_Reflections_on Vietnam_and_Iraq⠀⇛ The madness of American-style war. # ⚓ ‘Persecution_mania’:_How_the_Kremlin’s_spokesman_responded to_the_latest_revelations_about_Navalny’s_poisoning⠀⇛ Following opposition figure Alexey Navalny’s bombshell video where he speaks to an FSB operative implicated in his poisoning, journalists had plenty of questions for Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. In conversation with reporters on Tuesday, December 22, Peskov reiterated the FSB’s statement dismissing the video and claimed that Navalny (or as he insists on calling him, “the Berlin patient”) suffers from “a pronounced persecution mania.” Here are Peskov’s comments, in full. # ⚓ What_If_Jesus_Had_Been_Born_in_the_American_Police_State?⠀⇛ The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one. The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land # ⚓ Maga_Megadeath⠀⇛ # ⚓ Covid-19_catch-22:_Regime-change_policies_come_packed_with US_pandemic_relief⠀⇛ # ⚓ F.S.B._Andrei_Soldatov_answers_the_questions_about_Russia’s top_intelligence_agency_that_you’re_too_afraid_to_ask⠀⇛ Over the past two months, a team of reporters and researchers from multiple countries managed to identify several of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents who tracked and possibly tried on several occasions to murder opposition figure Alexey Navalny. The investigation was a success because the officers committed a series of basic errors when using their cell phones and mobile Internet connections while in the field. The apparent bumbling at the heart of the story has raised questions about the professionalism of Russia’s top intelligence agency. For insights into this matter and for answers to other burning questions about the FSB, Meduza turns to journalist Andrei Soldatov, who together with Irina Borogan has written several books about the Russian intelligence community’s operations at home and abroad, including “The New Nobility,” “The Red Web,” and “The Compatriots.” # ⚓ Another_Russian_Secret_Service_officer_dies_by_suicide_in Moscow⠀⇛ An officer in Russia’s Secret Service, the Federal Protective Service (FSO), died by suicide in Moscow yesterday, RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday, December 22, citing an unnamed source in law enforcement. # ⚓ Biden_and_the_Manufacturing_of_Big_Official_Enemies⠀⇛ The most likely candidate is Russia. Count on the continuation of Russia’s role as America’s Official Enemy Number One. While everyone thought the Cold War ended long ago, not so for the U.S. national- security establishment. The Cold War was a high- cotton racket for the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, and they weren’t about to let it go. That’s why they did everything they could to ensure that Russia remained an official enemy of the United States during the Trump administration. There is little doubt that Russia’s role as Official Enemy #1 will be magnified during the Biden administration. Another likely candidate is China. Count on Biden to continue the official animosity toward China. Given that it’s still a communist regime, it falls in perfectly with the old Cold War mindset — that the Reds are coming to get us, one way or another. # ⚓ ACLU_Reminds_Biden_of_‘Moral_and_Legal_Imperative’_to Reverse_Trump’s_Unlawful_Asylum_Policy⠀⇛ The civil liberties group stressed the new administration must “restore the right to asylum and end the government’s ongoing violations of law.” # ⚓ Failed_Trump_Coup_Gives_Way_to_‘Brazen_Attempt’_by_GOP_to Undermine_Voting_Rights⠀⇛ “This appears to be laying the groundwork for what may be a more massive and coordinated voter suppression effort in the new year.” # ⚓ Trump_Plots_to_Overturn_Election:_An_Attack_on_Democracy_or a_Scheme_to_Make_Millions_for_Himself?⠀⇛ As President Trump continues to look for ways to overturn the 2020 election, he has also continued to raise massive sums of money — over half a billion dollars since mid-October, including more than $250 million since Election Day. The New York Times reports more than $60 million of what Trump raised has gone to a new political action committee that he will control after he leaves office, an unprecedented war chest for an outgoing president. There are few legal limits on what Trump can do with the raised funds, and he could use it to pay off his massive $420 million debt or to fund a potential 2024 run. “This is entirely unprecedented,” says Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at Campaign Legal Center, who has been closely following Trump’s fundraising since the election. “It’s a loosely regulated political vehicle that Trump can tap into after he leaves the White House to retain influence in the Republican Party and also to potentially benefit himself and his family financially.” # ⚓ Is_a_Fascist_Movement_Developing_Here?⠀⇛ Is this the beginning of a domestic fascist movement to discredit our democratic institutions? Historian Timothy Snyder in his book “On Tyranny” argues that institutions preserve our decency. They do not protect themselves. They fall if citizens do not protect them. The Trump-appointed Director of Cybersecurity, Chris Krebs, was fired because he announced the vote across the nation “was the most secure in American history.” Krebs has since filed a lawsuit charging that Trump has initiated a campaign of intimidation, retaliation and threats against Republicans. # ⚓ US_Attorney_Blames_Violent_Crime_Spike_In_Austin,_Texas_On Police_Budget_Cuts_That_Haven’t_Even_Been_Implemented_Yet⠀⇛ Movements to “defund” law enforcement agencies have sprung up around the nation, trailing the protests against police violence that spread across the country following the killing of an unarmed black man by Minneapolis police officers in May. # ⚓ From_Stopping_Endless_Wars_to_Providing_Real_Covid-19 Relief,_People’s_Agenda_Details_Crucial_‘Way_Forward’⠀⇛ “This people-first legislative roadmap for the first six months of 2021 is an urgent, brave, and just agenda.” o § Environment⠀➾ # ⚓ Climate_Wins_—_Sort_of_—_in_a_Largely_Inadequate_Stimulus Package⠀⇛ # ⚓ Chile’s_waste_bus_changes_throw-away_societies⠀⇛ In a world choking on its own discarded rubbish, Chile’s waste bus is showing a way to slow the flood. # ⚓ 12_Trump_Attacks_on_the_Environment_Since_the_Election⠀⇛ In the aftermath of the November 3 election, President Donald Trump has tried every trick in the book to avoid facing the reality of his loss. A barrage of lawsuits accompanied by disinformation campaigns has attempted to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election. # ⚓ Sustainability_is_Morality⠀⇛ The locus of immorality driving that crisis is the nature of our civilization. Undoing that immorality would require destroying all our politics and economics, and abandoning all our ideologies and religions — which are basically just categories of excuses apologizing for varieties of egotistical selfishness and separatist bigotries — and rebuilding our entire civilization from zero on the basis of a homo sapiens wide solidarity and intelligent compassion in harmony with Nature and with a reverence for All Life on Planet Earth. All other attitudes about the sustainability crisis are excuses to avoid facing it, seeing it as: an economic, or political, or technical, or emotional issue, or opportunity to advance an agenda during the course of its inequitable immiseration of humanity and destruction of the non-human natural world. # ⚓ Opinion_|_Save_Santa’s_Home⠀⇛ In a single night, he defies space and time as he travels to every country on a flying sled and somehow fits down every chimney. The least we could do in exchange is not melt his natural habitat. # ⚓ Trouble_at_the_Vostok_Station_After_investing_millions_in_a brand-new_polar_research_complex,_Russia_faces_problems getting_it_to_Antarctica⠀⇛ For years, Russia’s Vostok Research Station in Antarctica has been falling into a state of disrepair. In 2019, the government finally issued orders to build an entirely new complex, with one of Russia’s wealthiest citizens investing billions of rubles in the project. Constructed in St. Petersburg, the modules that comprise the new station set sail for Antarctica in October, but the cargo ship never reached its destination. Russia’s researchers stationed in Antarctica have now been told to expect further delays, and the coronavirus pandemic is making matters only worse. # § Energy⠀➾ # ⚓ You_Can_Refuse_to_Work_for_Fossil_Fuel Companies—These_Law_Students_Show_How⠀⇛ We hoped to begin this term of law school enjoying the clear skies and clean air of Northern California. The climate crisis had other ideas. # ⚓ “Disappointing”_Decision_from_Norway’s_Supreme_Court in_Climate_Lawsuit_Challenging_Arctic_Offshore_Oil Licenses⠀⇛ The ruling – a culmination of four years of high-profile litigation in a case challenging continued fossil fuel production on climate change grounds — came as a big disappointment, and even outrage, for environmental and climate activists in Norway and internationally. # ⚓ How_The_Fracking_Revolution_Is_Killing_the_U.S._Oil and_Gas_Industry⠀⇛ While the pandemic has hurt the industry, companies have also benefited from excessive bailouts from pandemic relief programs but these bailouts are a stop gap financial band- aid for the struggling industry. o § Finance⠀➾ # ⚓ The_Insufficient_COVID_Stimulus_Must_Not_Be_Followed_by Austerity⠀⇛ # ⚓ Why_We_Say:_Don’t_Pay_the_Rent!⠀⇛ And really to anyone else in the US, particularly in other localities that have passed similar laws to the eviction moratorium that was just renewed by the Multnomah County Board of Supervisors this week — which is now good until July 2nd. # ⚓ Congress_Passes_COVID_Relief_With_Billions_in_Handouts_for the_Wealthy⠀⇛ # ⚓ ‘No_More_Caving’_to_Austerity_Warns_Sanders_After_Biden Lauds_Paltry_Covid-19_Relief_Deal_as_‘Model’_Legislation⠀⇛ “If we allow Republicans to set the parameters of the debate going forward, like they did in this current Covid relief bill, the next two to four years are going to be a disaster.” # ⚓ Biden_Taps_Bruce_Reed,_Deficit_Hawk_and_Longtime_Enemy_of Social_Security,_for_Deputy_Chief_of_Staff⠀⇛ “You cannot have Bruce Reed in your administration and pretend Social Security is safe.” # ⚓ GOP_Senator_Worth_$39_Million_Was_Biggest_Opponent_of_the $600_Stimulus_Checks⠀⇛ # ⚓ We_Must_Reject_Austerity_Politics:_Economist_Darrick Hamilton_on_Why_$900B_Stimulus_Is_Not_Enough⠀⇛ As Congress passes a $900 billion coronavirus relief package, the first new aid since April, critics say the bill does not go far enough in providing direct aid to those most impacted by the economic downturn. “It needs to be thought of as a relief bill, as a bridge to get us to a Biden presidency, where we can do something that is far more intense and larger in scale,” says Darrick Hamilton, professor of economics at The New School and founding director of the Institute for the Study of Race, Stratification and Political Economy. # ⚓ Opinion_|_The_True_Meaning_of_Christmas_in_the_Age_of Pandemic_and_Austerity⠀⇛ With the pandemic raging and millions unemployed, this Christmas will witness tears among the smiles. # ⚓ Opinion_|_Why_Can’t_CEOs_Pay_For_Their_Own_3_Martini Lunches?⠀⇛ Buried in the Covid relief deal is a provision that will require taxpayers to subsidize lavish business meals for corporate executives. # ⚓ Brexit,_Billionaires_and_the_Little_People⠀⇛ A recent exponent of this proposition is Sir Jim Ratcliffe, a billionaire who was a strong advocate for Britain leaving the European Union. In approaching negotiations with the EU after the referendum result, he had an instruction to Britain’s diplomats: “We must listen, we must be unwaveringly polite and retain our charm. But there is no room for weakness or crumpling at 3am when the going gets tough and when most points are won or lost.” He praised Britain’s “decent set of cards”: London as a key financial centre; companies such as Mercedes continuing to sell cars in the country. This sentiment was echoed by other wealthy British billionaires who simply assumed that the consequences of a UK exit from the EU were going to be minor ripples rather than a massive shake. It was the sort of advice given by occupants of mansions and gilded penthouses, gradually ossifying with time. Lord Anthony Bamford, Chairman of JCB and Construction Equipment, claimed from his summit of comfort that “European markets are important to many UK businesses, including JCB, and this will not change.” The UK, being the “world’s fifth largest trading nation” had “little to fear from leaving the EU.” # ⚓ Congress_Passes_$900_Billion_Mitigation_2.0_Bill_(As_Double Dip_Recession_Looms)⠀⇛ The new spending shouldn’t be confused as a ‘stimulus’ bill. It won’t stimulate the economy much, if at all. A stimulus requires significant net new spending. Most of the deal is just a continuation of past spending levels, and in some notable examples it’s a reduction in spending levels. The same can be said for the companion legislation to keep the US federal government funded. That’s another $1.4 trillion. But that too is just continuation spending. Nevertheless, we hear from the mainstream media it’s a $2.3 trillion total spending package, the second largest in US history (the first largest being the past March Cares Act which the same media keeps misrepresenting as a $3 trillion package). For the record, the $3T Cares Act amounted only to $1.4 trillion actual spending that got into the US economy. More than $1 trillion in loans initially earmarked for medium and large corporations, and 11 financial markets, never got spent by the Federal Reserve. In addition, $650 billion of the $3T was actually tax cuts for investors and businesses. That’s mostly been hoarded. The only actual spending that got into the real economy and GDP was the $500 billion for income checks and unemployment benefits for workers, plus $525 billion in loans and grants for 5 million of the 31.7 million US small businesses, plus another $100B or so to the Federal Reserve’s ‘Main St.’ lending programs and less than $100B for other Fed lending. So the much touted March Cares Act actual spending was less than half the media’s reported $3T. # ⚓ Review:_Anti-Social⠀⇛ Nick Pettigrew was an anti-social behavior officer for council housing for over a decade. This book is a diary of one year in the life of that job. According to the author, the dates, names, and some of the identifying details have been changed but not exaggerated. While it’s hard to verify that, and I’m sure a few of the stories have been tweaked to make better narratives, it has a messiness and chaos of half-resolved drama mixed with mundane office tedium that makes it ring true. [...] Council housing is the UK’s version of what the US would call public housing or “the projects,” although it’s a far larger percentage of the housing stock in the UK than it is in the US. These are buildings built by the government and run by local governments or non-profits to provide housing to working class and poor people at reduced cost compared to the private market. As in the US, new council housing construction has dropped off dramatically; as in the US, a bunch of it has been privatized, although in the UK the Right to Buy law at least sells the housing to the people living in it, as opposed to slumlords. o § AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics⠀➾ # ⚓ Fox_News_Forced_to_Debunk_Its_Own_False_Voting_Machine Claims⠀⇛ # ⚓ From_“Day_One”_to_We_Will_“Need_Time,”_Team_Biden_Walks Back_Vow_to_End_Trump_Attack_on_Asylum_Seekers⠀⇛ “It appears that the inclusion of a policy in a campaign platform, or a promise by a candidate trying to win votes, doesn’t actually mean that’s what will be done once the person is in power.” # ⚓ ‘DeJoy_Is_the_Real_Life_Grinch’:_Postmaster_General’s_Pre- Election_Sabotage_Fuels_Christmas_Delivery_Delays⠀⇛ “No parcels are moving at all. As bad as you think it is, it’s worse.” # ⚓ Hold_On_to_Your_Hats,_It_Seems_Good_Government_is Possible⠀⇛ The rules may not be perfect.  They are a human endeavor after all.  But they are light-years ahead of the state’s efforts that have cost the public many millions and delivered next to nothing. The state, clearly guided by Gov. Jared Polis’ market- oriented politics, has slow-walked implementation of SB 181, the law to end all laws on oil and gas pillage and destruction. Not quite, the state’s regulatory landscape looks pretty much like it did before the passage of the law nearly two years ago. All the self- congratulatory propaganda generated by the Polis administration cannot bury the facts. Over 3,400 drilling permits have been approved since Polis took office, not one facility has been shuttered for threatening public health, and Colorado’s abysmal air quality along its urban Front Range has not improved perceptively, even in the pandemic. # ⚓ David_Vest_–_Crooked_Politician⠀⇛ # ⚓ Opinion_|_Cyber_Threats_Call_for_Cyber_Diplomacy⠀⇛ “The incoming Biden-Harris administration should prioritize cyber diplomacy by… pursuing multilateral negotiations with the major players in cyberspace, particularly Russia and China.” # ⚓ What_Election_Day_Revealed_About_Progressive_Policies⠀⇛ The people have given Biden and Congress a mandate for bold, progressive change. Now they must deliver. # ⚓ What_Will_Trump_Attempt_in_His_Last_Days?_We_Must_Prepare for_Anything.⠀⇛ # ⚓ Levada_Center:_Sobyanin_tops_list_of_most_trusted politicians_in_Moscow⠀⇛ Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has risen to the top of the list of the politicians Muscovites trust the most, says a new poll conducted by the independent Levada Center. # ⚓ Boris_Johnson_is_as_Incompetent_as_General_Haig_at_the Somme:_the_Price_is_50,000_Unnecessary_Deaths_This_Year⠀⇛ # ⚓ Cruz_and_Graham_Working_to_Block_Biden_From_Rejoining_Paris Climate_and_Iran_Nuclear_Deals⠀⇛ The president-elect has vowed to return to both international agreements, which were finalized during the Obama administration. # ⚓ After_Four_Years_of_‘Outright_Grift’_Under_Trump,_Trio_of Democratic_Senators_Urges_Biden_to_‘Padlock_the_Revolving Door’⠀⇛ To improve outcomes for people in the United States, the lawmakers wrote, the next administration must “stop special interests from profiting off of the public service of government officials.” # ⚓ A_Victory_for_Latino_Democrats,_a_Disappointment_for_Many Black_Women⠀⇛ There’s no doubt the United States Senate needs more racial diversity. And class diversity, too. By picking California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to fill Vice President–elect Kamala Harris’s soon- to-be-vacant Senate seat, Governor Gavin Newsom met both goals. Padilla, the working-class son of Mexican immigrants, will become the first Latino senator from California, a state that is roughly 40 percent Latino. # ⚓ Here’s_the_Progressive_Biden_Should_Pick_to_Run_America’s Consumer_Watchdog⠀⇛ Few federal agencies see the pain plaguing American families quite like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As the nation’s consumer watchdog, the CFPB has received a dramatic increase in complaints during the pandemic—from predatory payday lenders’ tactics to companies using consumers’ personal information improperly and everything in between. # ⚓ Can_the_GOP_Doofus_Caucus_Block_Joe_Biden_on_January_6?⠀⇛ If the likelihood of a plot’s succeeding correlates at all with the intelligence of the people behind it, then the far-right effort to block Joe Biden’s election in Congress on January 6 is doomed. It’s being run by the Congressional Doofus Caucus—Representatives Mo Brooks, Matt Gaetz, Jody Hice, Jim Jordan, and Andy Biggs and Representative-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene of QAnon fame. According to Politico, they noshed on meatballs and pigs in blankets—brain food—on Monday while they plotted with Trump to deny Biden the Electoral College votes he won in key states, and hold onto the White House. # ⚓ Opinion_|_God_Bless_America_Also_Please_Buy_A_Hoodie_To Free_Kyle_Rittenhouse⠀⇛ o § Censorship/Free Speech⠀➾ # ⚓ Getting_Serious_About_Repealing_Section_230⠀⇛ Trump apparently believes that repealing Section 230 would prevent Facebook from pulling down posts from Trump and his racist friends. He also is upset that Twitter labels his absurd lies as being subject to dispute. In fact, repealing Section 230 would in no way prevent Facebook from pulling down posts it found objectionable or stop Twitter from putting warning labels on Trump’s nonsense tweets. There are others who seem to believe that repealing Section 230 would force Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks to remove material that is racist, sexist, or in other ways offensive. There is nothing about Section 230 that facilitates the spread of such material and its repeal would not stop it. # ⚓ Content_Moderation_Case_Study:_Xhamster,_The_22nd_Biggest Site_On_The_Internet,_Moderates_Content_Using_Unpaid Volunteers_(2020)⠀⇛ Summary: Formed in 2007 and operated out of Limassol, Cyprus, xHamster has worked its way up to become the 20th most-visited site on the internet. The site boasts 10 million members and hundreds of millions of daily visitors despite being blocked by a number of governments around the world. o § Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press⠀➾ # ⚓ Top_UN_Anti-Torture_Official_Urges_Trump_to_Send_Message_of ‘Justice,_Truth,_and_Humanity’_by_Pardoning_Julian_Assange⠀⇛ “WikiLeaks fights secrecy and corruption throughout the world and, therefore, acts in the public interest both of the American people and of humanity as a whole.” # ⚓ Open_Letter_to_President_Donald_Trump_regarding_Julian Assange_from_Australian_parliamentary_group⠀⇛ # ⚓ Number_of_Journalists_Murdered_in_Retaliation_for_Their Work_More_Than_Doubled_in_2020:_Report⠀⇛ “The fact that murder is on the rise and the number of journalists imprisoned around the world hit a record is a clear demonstration that press freedom is under unprecedented assault.” # ⚓ Media_outlets_publish_investigator’s_resolution_on_treason charges_against_Ivan_Safronov⠀⇛ The newspaper Vedomosti and the outlet The Bell have published a copy of the FSB investigator’s resolution to bring treason charges against former journalist and advisor to the head of Roscosmos Ivan Safronov.  o § Civil Rights/Policing⠀➾ # ⚓ Opinion_|_Dreamers_Deserve_a_Path_To_Citizenship⠀⇛ DACA changed my life. But after four years of fear, it’s clear that undocumented young people need more protection. # ⚓ People_Incarcerated_in_Alabama_Are_Pushing_for_a_New_Year’s Prison_Strike⠀⇛ # ⚓ Class-Action_Suit_Sought_Over_‘Disturbing_Pattern_of Inhumane_Medical_Abuse’_of_ICE_Detainees_Including_Forced Hysterectomies⠀⇛ “In many instances the medically unindicated gynecological procedures,” the filing states, “amounted to sexual assault.” # ⚓ After_Trump_Blocked_UN_Inquiry_of_Racist_Violence,_NGOs_Are Conducting_Their_Own⠀⇛ # ⚓ Judges_Are_Locking_Up_Children_for_Noncriminal_Offenses Like_Repeatedly_Disobeying_Their_Parents_and_Skipping School⠀⇛ In Michigan, judges have sent children to locked detention centers for refusing to take medication or failing to attend online class. For testing positive for using marijuana. For repeatedly disobeying their parents. Even as other states move toward reforms focused on keeping nonviolent juvenile offenders in the community, Michigan continues to lock up children for minor transgressions that aren’t actually crimes: technical violations of probation or status offenses like truancy or staying out after curfew. # ⚓ Calls_Increase_for_NYPD_Commissioner_to_Be_Stripped_of Absolute_Authority_Over_Officer_Discipline⠀⇛ The chair of New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board is calling for a fundamental shift in how NYPD officers are disciplined for abuse of civilians. The Rev. Fred Davie, who has led the board since April 2018, said last week the police commissioner should no longer be the final arbiter of discipline in cases investigated by the CCRB. # ⚓ Warren_Leads_Call_for_DOJ_to_Probe_‘Frenzied_and Unprecedented’_Spree_of_Federal_Executions_Under_Trump⠀⇛ In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, despite public health concerns, the Trump administration ended a 17-year hiatus on federal executions. # ⚓ Court_in_France_bans_police_drones_at_demonstrations⠀⇛ The use of police drones for Corona compliance and at political rallies in Paris is unlawful. La Quadrature du Net sees the „balance of power“ with police reversing. # ⚓ Police_in_Germany_launch_large-scale_drone_project⠀⇛ North Rhine-Westphalia will equip the police with a total of 106 quadrocopters from 2021. They will also be used for the „pursuit of offenders“. # ⚓ How_Should_We_Remember_Ellis_Island?⠀⇛ At the beginning of the 20th century, one of the easiest ways to get marked for deportation at Ellis Island was flunking an eye exam. From 1903 to 1930, trachoma—an eye disease caused by Chlamydia trachomatis bacteria, which eventually leads to blindness—was classified by the United States Health Service as among the most serious of diseases “brought in” by immigrants. As Grover A. Kemp, a doctor who worked on Ellis Island from 1912 to 1916, recalled, everyone who stepped foot on the island had to undergo an inspection for it: To turn the eyelid I used the good old buttoner—the button shoes were common in those days, and there was a little loop [used] to button shoes[;] [we] used [it] to turn the eyelid—it was the most efficient way of turning the eyes ever devised. # ⚓ The_Latinx_Future_Will_Not_Look_Like_the_Latinx_Past⠀⇛ The ongoing struggle for racial justice. The future for immigrant families. The health and well-being of all Americans. The very fate of our fragile planet. The United States faces a crossroads in 2020. Seeking out the stories flying under the national radar, The Nation and Magnum Foundation are partnering on What’s At Stake, a series of photo essays from across the country through the lenses of independent imagemakers. Follow the whole series here. This installment was produced with support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. # ⚓ Moscow_expands_list_of_EU_representatives_banned_from entering_Russia⠀⇛ The Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry has released a new list of individuals from EU member states who are now banned from entering Russia. This comes in response to recent EU sanctions over the poisoning of opposition figure Alexey Navalny. Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced the blacklist on its website on Tuesday, Decemeber 22. # ⚓ Good_Riddance_to_Robert_E._Lee⠀⇛ At 4 am on Monday, in the crypt of the United States Capitol, a team of workers removed the statue of Robert E. Lee that since 1909 has represented the Commonwealth of Virginia in the National Statuary Hall Collection. # ⚓ The_New_Humanitarian_|_Rethinking_Humanitarianism_podcast: Multilateral_reform⠀⇛ While we don’t know what’s on the UN secretary general’s list of new year resolutions, one item might very well be to push ahead with the aid sector overhaul that he launched when he took office in 2017. But change is hard. Given the complicated politics of how the UN is run, can his vision – or any reform agenda – realistically deliver? Does that agenda create openings for reform of the multilateral system? As we close out a year in which the UN marked its 75th anniversary, we’re taking a hard look at whether reform of multilateral agencies has a chance. o § Internet Policy/Net Neutrality⠀➾ # ⚓ We_Had_To_Pass_A_Law_To_Stop_Telecom_Monopolies_From Charging_You_‘Rental_Fees’_For_Things_You_Already_Own⠀⇛ For much of the last few years, broadband customers have been complaining that Frontier Communications, the nation’s third-biggest telco, had been charging its customers a rental fee for modems they already owned. Normally, you’re supposed to be able to buy your own modem instead of paying your ISP a rental fee upwards of $10 per month. To nab some extra dough from captive customers, Frontier basically decided to charge its customers a rental fee anyway, giving them a polite, though giant, middle finger when they complained. # ⚓ NBN_‘fully_built’_though_35,000_premises_still_unconnected. Don’t_they_count?⠀⇛ Thirty-five thousand Australian premises are yet to be connected to the national broadband network, but Communications Minister Paul Fletcher has declared that the network is “built and fully operational”. # ⚓ Book_review:_Internet_Law_and_Regulation⠀⇛ To begin, the first thing to mention is that this book is no casual read, weighing in at 1625 pages. The previous edition was published 12 years ago, so there was certainly a lot to catch up on. In that time the internet and social media have come a long way, and so the legislation, case law and policy have been developed and continue to do so. As Graham Smith comments in the preface, writing a book on internet law these days is pretty much writing a book on law; because the seeds of the internet have been sown in all the fields of regulation. As such, a selection process for the topics covered in the book was necessary. Graham explains that some areas had significant legislative, judicial and policy activity that called for more comprehensive treatment, for example copyright. However, Graham explains, the book also indulges in other more obscure nook and crannies of the law. The book is authored by cyberlaw expert Graham Smith and a team of contributors from Bird & Bird. It focuses on UK law, but also takes a comparative approach where relevant to discuss the laws of other jurisdictions including Australia, USA, Canada and Singapore. [...] This book is an essential resource to anyone practising or researching in any area of law that involves the internet, whether this be a predominantly online area, or one where the relationship is developing. It covers a vast amount of legal issues online, with particularly extensive coverage on intellectual property law, including copyright, confidential information, patents, trade marks, and domain names. The book provides a comprehensive study of current and developing areas of internet law, delivering both in-depth analysis and practical guidance. Whilst considerable in length, the layout makes the book easy to navigate and will no doubt become a well-thumbed reference guide for academics and practitioners alike. o § Monopolies⠀➾ # ⚓ Czech_Search_Engine_Seznam_Joins_In_the_‘Let’s_Sue_Google’ Fun,_Seeks_$417_Million_in_Damages⠀⇛ It seems that people have decided that now is a good time to attack Google in various ways. In October, the US Justice Department sued Google for allegedly violating antitrust laws. This month, ten US states sued Google, alleging anticompetitive behavior, followed by another 38 states, alleging that the company has created an illegal monopoly in online search and advertising. In November, 165 companies and industry bodies sent a letter to the EU complaining about Google and asking for tougher antitrust action. The EU has also released first drafts of its new Digital Services Act, and Digital Markets Act. One of the key elements of the new laws is tackling the power of leading online platforms like Google. # ⚓ Is_There_a_Free_L(a)unch?_Liability_for_Damages_Caused_by Interim_Injunctions_in_Trademark_Litigation_in_Hungary⠀⇛ The common understanding based on Article 9(7) of the Enforcement Directive was that, if the court orders an interim injunction which is later lifted, the plaintiff shall compensate the defendant for the damages caused by the injunction. This may be the case, for instance, if the plaintiff’s trademark is cancelled at a later point, but also if the second instance court simply overturns the first instance decision and lifts the injunction. This is in contrast with an ordinary lawsuit, where the plaintiff is generally not liable for the defendant’s damages caused by an injunction, even if the injunction is later lifted. Thus, the plaintiff of an ordinary lawsuit is not liable for the defendant’s damages even if an enforceable second instance judgment is later overturned by the Supreme Court in revision proceedings. To state the obvious, the plaintiff of an ordinary lawsuit is not liable for the defendant’s damages where the defendant voluntarily stops the allegedly infringing activity upon receiving the statement of claims or the unfavourable first instance judgment. Hungary has a bifurcation system for both patents and trademarks, which means that Hungarian courts cannot decide on the validity of patents and trademarks in the infringement proceedings. Therefore, interim injunctions can remain in force for a long time and can cause substantial damage, by the time the plaintiff’s patent or trademark is finally cancelled in parallel proceedings. [...] The question is how that reads for trademarks. For example, trademark owners seem to be liable for the damages of the defendant caused by an interim injunction in case their trademark is later cancelled for bad faith. Enforcing a bad faith trademark is clearly abusive. However, what if the same trademark owner has legitimate reasons to believe that his trademark was not applied for in bad faith? We are of the view that the CJEU ruling could change the practice in likelihood of confusion matters: where the trademark owners do not act in bad faith, but merely enforce their registered trademark rights, even if the injunction is later lifted, the plaintiff shall not be liable for the defendant’s damages, since this kind of litigation is not abusive. It will be interesting to see whether this CJEU ruling will encourage trademark owners, which are not acting abusively, to request interim injunctions in Hungary more often. It will be even more interesting to see whether the ramifications of this decision go beyond Hungary. # § Patents⠀➾ # ⚓ India_on_TRIPS_Waiver:_Will_WTO_Pass_the_Test_of Humanity?⠀⇛ India, through its Ambassador and Permanent Representative at the WTO, delivered a short but strong statement at the WTO TRIPS General Council Meeting held between 16-18th December, 2020, on the on-going TRIPS waiver proposal. (context here for those unaware of the waiver proposal – in brief, South Africa and India proposed a waiver for the WTO TRIPS provisions that relate to, i.e., restrict, vaccines, treatment options, etc for Covid- 19, for the duration of the pandemic). Pointing out that making the vaccines accessible and affordable is going to be a test of our humanity, India also noted that history will remember the WTO’s response to this pandemic, and that the WTO needed to prove they can deliver in a time of crisis. India’s statement also pointed out that currently ongoing voluntary activities such as COVAX and ACT-accelerator were inadequate to meet global needs, and that none of the pharma companies who have developed vaccines have joined WHO’s C-TAP. India also indirectly noted the hypocrisy of developed countries when saying “ Global community should not be looking inward at this juncture. Though we have repeatedly heard that no one is safe until everyone is safe, yet even the most optimistic scenarios today cannot assure access to vaccines and therapeutics for all, even by the end of 2021.” India’s statement comes some days after South Africa (the other initial co-sponsor of the waiver proposal) delivered a much longer, and stronger statement at the TRIPS Council meeting. South Africa specifically called out the voluntary measures (that US, EU, Japan suggested as the best solution) as ‘ad hoc, non-transparent and unaccountable’ deals that reinforce ‘vaccine apartheid’. It also detailed in depth how the waiver proposal is a calibrated and proportionate response suggestion (i.e. how it wouldn’t apply to non-Covid drugs, counterfeits, etc, while also noting that quality of drug and IP protection over a drug have no connection). South Africa’s statement is definitely worth reading in full and KEI has made it available here. [...] Regardless of this – EU’s statement, on 18th December, reflects that it still believes that intra-TRIPS solutions are the best way forward. On on-going arrangements such as COVAX it had to say: “COVAX is indeed an excellent tool for wealthier countries to provide vaccines for deployment in countries with fewer financial means.” (note: this is as opposed to measures which include these ‘poorer’ countries doing their own manufacturing! Colonial legacy of holding on to means of production?). EU also stated that compulsory licensing is a valid way forward as well (it would be wonderful if this memory stays sharp years down the line, in non-Covid contexts, when member countries may decide to implement CLs for reasons they choose as valid, rather than when EU says ‘now its okay’). EU’s statement is available here. # ⚓ EPO_allows_the_taking_of_evidence_by_VICO [Ed: The EPO again openly and shamelessly violates_the_EPC and is thus operating outside the rule of law; does it wish to be disbanded?]⠀⇛ At its virtual meeting on 15 December 2020, the Administrative Council decided to amend Rules 117 and 118 EPC to allow evidence to be taken by videoconference (VICO) in proceedings before the European Patent Office (EPO). The amendment will take effect as of 1 January 2021 and will mean that evidence can be taken this way regardless of whether the oral proceedings are held by VICO or on the EPO premises. # ⚓ AIPPI_UK_Event_Report:_Roundup_of_2020’s_Patent_Cases [Ed: These AIPPI-led fake ‘events’ are now hosted by Hogan Lovells — basically_a_bunch_of_liars_and_patent trolls’_boosters. The real event got canceled, but Annsley Merelle Ward calls a bunch of webchats “event” (to keep up appearances of this think tank of litigation fanatics and monopolists)]⠀⇛ # ⚓ Two_new_constitutional_complaints_in_Germany_against UPCA [Ed: Amusing_to_see how Team UPC at Kluwer Patent Blog is spinning the_latest_debacle in this morning’s post. Can’t wait for lots of correctional comments to appear.]⠀⇛ Two new constitutional complaints against ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement have been filed with Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court. The FCC confirmed to several media it received the complaints last Friday, the very day the parliamentary ratification procedure in German ended with the approval of the UPC legislation by the German Bundesrat. According to a report by Managing IP, the court said in a statement: “Regarding the Act on the Agreement of February 13 2013 on a Unified Patent Court, two constitutional complaints have been filed and are pending.” The FCC added that a decision date was not known. “Neither the identity of the plaintiffs nor the grounds of the complaints are currently available”, it stated. The complaints mean a new chapter in the ever longer history of the attempted creation of the Unified Patent Court and Unitary Patent system has begun. [...] Without German ratification, the UPC nor the Unitary Patent can be launched. The new complaints could lead to further severe delays, although is isn’t clear whether the FCC will accept the complaints and request the German Bundespräsident to refrain from signing the UPCA legislation into law as long as it hasn’t decided on them, as happened when Stjerna filed his complaint in 2017. Although it isn’t clear who have filed the two new complaints, there are two obvious candidates: Dr Stjerna once more, and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), whose president Benjamin Henrion has repreatedly stated he was preparing a claim. Henrion wasn’t immediately available for comment. # § Software Patents⠀➾ # ⚓ Adaptive_Streaming_Inc._v._Netflix,_Inc._(Fed. Cir._2020) [Ed: Notice how patent litigation profiteer Michael Borella is still bashing courts for saying what's rather obvious about software patents]⠀⇛ Adaptive Streaming, the owner of U.S. Patent No. 7,047,305, sued Netflix in the Central District of California for alleged infringement. Netflix moved to dismiss the case on the pleadings under Rule 12(b)(6), asserting that the claims did not meet the subject matter eligibility requirements of 35 U.S.C. § 101. The District Court agreed, and Adaptive appealed. [...] Adaptive argued that the USPTO’s finding the claims to be novel and non- obvious cut against the Court’s position. The Court disagreed, observing that “satisfying the requirements of novelty and non- obviousness does not imply eligibility under § 101, including under the second step of the Alice inquiry, because what may be novel and non-obvious may still be abstract.” But this statement reflects the intellectual dishonesty that underlies the current interpretation of Alice — claim elements that are deemed “conventional” — i.e., in the prior art — count against the patentee in the § 101 inquiry. But arguments that the claimed invention exhibits an overall novelty are given no weight in that analysis. Until the exact nature of the prior art consideration under § 101 is clarified, this is an area that will continue lack consistency and render patent-eligibility procedurally unclear. In any event, this apparent hypocrisy did not bother the Federal Circuit, as it affirmed the District Court’s invalidity ruling. # § Trademarks⠀➾ # ⚓ A_Christmas_tale._The_General_Court_shows_that_even judges_have_a_heart.⠀⇛ This Christmas’ tale goes like this. Forbo opposed a EUTM application and the opposition was rejected on 12 February 2019. Forbo timely appealed, but filed the grounds of appeal only on 26 June 2019, i.e. 14 days after the 12 June 2019 deadline as per art. 68(1) of Regulation 2017/1001. With the grounds, Forbo also filed a request for restitutio in integrum claiming that the lawyer who represented it had been unable to timely file the grounds because of a serious illness contracted by him in an unforeseeable manner. In support of this assertion, Forbo submitted two solemn declarations, one made by the lawyer and the other by his spouse. The request for restitutio in integrum was rejected by the Board of Appeal which said that the lawyer had not been shown to have complied with the diligence imposed by the circumstances. Even though, in exceptional cases, a sudden illness could justify restitutio in integrum, the Board held that the lawyer had not provided sufficient evidence of his claims, since his solemn declaration and that of his wife had only limited probative value, and there was no medical certificate. # ⚓ Information_from_UK_IPO:_Bulk_change_of_address⠀⇛ MARQUES is sharing the latest information regarding Brexit and the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020. This information comes from the UK Intellectual Property Office, who should be contacted directly if there are any queries. From 13 January until 31 March 2021, the IPO will provide a temporary service to process high volume requests from customers with 50 or more newly created, comparable trade marks and re-registered designs to update their representative addresses. # ⚓ Around_the_IP_Blogs⠀⇛ MARQUES shared the latest information regarding Brexit and the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020. This information comes from the UK Intellectual Property Office, who should be contacted directly if there are any queries. # § Copyrights⠀➾ # ⚓ Trends_and_Developments_in_Artificial_Intelligence: Challenges_to_Copyright⠀⇛ The impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on intellectual property (IP) law undoubtedly ranks as one of the most-discussed topics of 2020 among legal academics and practitioners (including on this blog). Following initiatives at WIPO, the EPO and several national IPOs (including the UKIPO and the USPTO), EU institutions have now also become active in this area. On 20 October 2020, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on IP rights for the development of AI technologies. In parallel, on 25 November 2020, the European Commission published a commissioned study on challenges posed by AI to the European IP rights framework. The study, which was carried out by researchers at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) [the authors of this post] and the Joint Institute for Innovation Policy (JIIP), examines the state of the art of copyright and patent protection in Europe for AI- assisted outputs in general and in three priority domains: science (in particular meteorology), media (journalism), and pharmaceutical research. The term “AI- assisted outputs” is used in the study to refer to productions or applications generated by or with the assistance of AI systems, tools or techniques. This post focuses on the copyright analysis of the study (for a broader overview of the study, see here). # ⚓ The_CASE_Act_Is_Just_the_Beginning_of_the_Next Copyright_Battle⠀⇛ The CASE Act is supposed to be a solution to the complicated problem of online copyright infringement. In reality, it creates a system that will harm everyday users who, unlike the big players, won’t have the time and capacity to negotiate this new bureaucracy. In essence, it creates a new “Copyright Claims Board” in the Copyright Office that will be empowered to adjudicate copyright infringement claims, unless the accused received a notice, recognizes what it means, and opts out—in a very specific manner, within a limited time period. The Board will be staffed by “claims officers,” not judges or juries. You can appeal their rulings, but only on a limited basis, so you may be stuck with whatever amount the “claims board” decides you owe. Large, well-resourced players will not be affected, as they will have the resources to track notices and simply refuse to participate. The rest of us? We’ll be on the hook.  The relief bill also included an altered version of a felony streaming bill that is, thankfully, not as destructive as it could have been. While the legislation as written is troubling, an earlier version would have been even more dangerous, targeting not only large-scale, for-profit streaming services, but everyday users as well.  We’re continuing the fight against the CASE Act, but today brings even bigger problems. Senator Thom Tillis, who authored the felony streaming legislation, launched a “discussion draft” of the so-called Digital Copyright Act. Put simply, it is a hot mess of a bill that will rewrite decades of copyright law, give the Copyright Office (hardly a neutral player) the keys to the Internet, and drastically undermine speech and innovation in the name of policing copyright infringement. Read more analysis of this catastrophic bill here.  # ⚓ ‘Pathetic’:_Congress_Passes_Covid_Relief_Bill_With Billions_in_Gifts_for_the_Wealthy,_$600_Checks_for_the Working_Class⠀⇛ “You’re getting a one-time $600 check to survive a pandemic, but hey, at least lobbyists can get their three-martini lunches delivered.” # ⚓ This_Disastrous_Copyright_Proposal_Goes_Straight_to Our_Naughty_List⠀⇛ We’ll have a more in-depth analysis of this draft bill later, but we want to be clear about our opposition from the start: this bill is bad for Internet users, creators, and start-ups. The ones with the most to gain? Big Tech and Big Content. This draft bill contains so many hoops and new regulations that the only Internet companies that will be able to keep up and keep on the “right” side of the law will be the Big Tech companies, who already have the resources and, frankly, the money to do so. It also creates a pile of new ways to punish users and creators in the service of Hollywood and the big record labels. Unless we stop this proposal, DMCA reform will crush huge swaths of online expression and innovation, not to mention the competition we need to develop alternatives to the largest platforms. Some especially important things to note: # ⚓ The_Mystery_Of_The_Copyright_On_Sherlock_Holmes’ Emotions_Goes_Unsolved_Due_To_Settlement⠀⇛ Since this past summer we have been writing about a bonkers lawsuit brought against the makers of a Netflix movie, Enola Holmes, by the Conan Doyle Estate. The stories of Sherlock Holmes are, of course, largely in the public domain now, although roughly 10 tales still haven’t reached the expiration date of their copyright protection. The film does not tell any of those protected stories. Instead, it tells an original story, focused on Holmes’ sister, Enola. To make its copyright claim, the Estate instead suggests that Enola Holmes shows a Sherlock who has feelings and empathy, among other details, and therefore runs afoul of the character copyright as Sherlock didn’t show such features until those still-protected stories were written. Also, something about Sherlock developing a liking towards dogs. Yes, seriously. ╘══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╛ ¶ Lines in total: 6428 ➮ Generation completed at 00:15, i.e. 54 seconds to (re)generate ⟲