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● 09.19.18

● Links 19/9/2018: Chromebooks Get More DEBs, LLVM 7.0.0 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 12:53 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ It’s time to pay the maintainers

• Earlier this year, Tidelift conducted a survey of over 1,200 professional software developers and open source maintainers. We found that 83% of professional software development teams would be willing to pay for better maintenance, security, and licensing assurances around the open source projects they use. Meanwhile, the same survey found that the majority of open source maintainers receive no external funding for their work, and thus struggle to find the time to maintain their open source projects.

Desktop

=> ↺ Chrome OS 69 Finally Brings Linux Apps to Some Chromebooks, Night Light Feature

• Chrome OS 69 is the first release of the Linux-based operating system that enables support for running Linux apps on Chromebooks. However, the Linux app support is still in development and it’s presented to users in a beta form, available only on select devices due to hardware restrains. A complete list with the Chromebooks supporting Linux apps is available here.

• “While we would like to be able to bring this work to all Chromebooks, the required kernel and hardware features limit where we can deploy this,” says Google in the blog announcement. “A lot of features we use had to be backported, and the further back we go, the more difficult & risky it is to do so. We don’t want to compromise system stability and security here.”

=> ↺ Chromebooks Are Getting Better Parental Controls

• Better parental controls are coming to Chromebooks, with the ability to set screen time limits and manage apps.

• We’ve shown you how manage your child’s Android phone with Google Family Link. The feature allowed parents to set up an account for a child under 13, giving parents control over how their kids can use the phone.

=> ↺ Linux Apps Are Now Available in Chrome OS Stable, But What Does That Mean?

• Chrome OS 69 just hit the stable channel and is currently rolling out to devices. This brings a handful of new features and changes, including Google’s Material theme, Night Light, an improved file manager, and most importantly: support for Linux apps.

• Linux Apps for Chromebooks?

• At Google I/O earlier this year, Google announced that it was going to bring support for Linux applications to Chrome OS, starting first with the Pixelbook. While Linux support has been available on the developer and beta channels for a while now, users who choose to stick with the stable channel (a wise choice for the most part) may now get their chance to check this out.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ ​Linus Torvalds is doing a good and brave thing

• Linus Torvalds is known for his “salty” language and take-no-prisoners approach to Linux developers. If you get things wrong, he’s not afraid to let you know — in no uncertain terms — that you’re an idiot. It gets results, but it also drives away many talented developers and leads to a development culture where harsh attacks are tolerated and even approved of by some.

• But Torvalds realized he was hurting both the development process and his fellow programmers. So, he announced he’s stepping away from the Linux developer community to change his personal behavior. Torvalds also approved a new “Code of Conduct” for Linux kernel developers. No one would have expected to see either of these changes.

=> ↺ Linux Patches Surface For Supporting The Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5

• Last year Creative Labs introduced the Sound BlasterX AE-5 PCI Express gaming sound card while finally there are some patches pending for supporting this high-end sound card in Linux.

• Connor McAdams who most recently got the Creative Recon3D support into good shape on Linux has now been working on getting the Sound BlasterX AE-5 working well on Linux.

=> ↺ Linux Has a Code of Conduct and Not Everyone is Happy With it

• The code of conduct was signed off by Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman (kind of second-in-command after Torvalds). Dan Williams of Intel and Chris Mason from Facebook were some of the other signees.

• If I have read through the timeline correctly, half an hour after signing this code of conduct, Torvalds sent a mail apologizing for his past behavior. He also announced taking a temporary break to improve upon his behavior.

Linux Foundation

=> ↺ Blockchain Training Takes Off

• Meanwhile, job postings related to blockchain and Hyperledger are taking off, and knowledge in these areas is translating into opportunity. Careers website Glassdoor lists thousands of job posts related to blockchain.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ AMD Picasso Support Comes To The RadeonSI OpenGL Driver

• Last week AMD sent out initial support for yet-to-be-released “Picasso” APUs with the Linux AMDGPU kernel graphics driver. Today on the user-space side the support was merged for the OpenGL RadeonSI Gallium3D driver.

• Picasso details are still fairly light but they are expected to be similar to Raven Ridge and for the AM4 processor socket as well as an edition for notebooks. On the same day as publishing the Picasso AMDGPU kernel patches, AMD also went ahead and published the Linux patches for the “Raven 2″ APUs too.

=> ↺ The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Arrives For Linux Benchmarking

• It looks like NVIDIA has their launch-day Linux support in order for the GeForce RTX 2080 “Turing” graphics cards slated to ship later this week as arriving today at Phoronix was the RTX 2080 Ti.

• The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is NVIDIA’s new flagship desktop GPU with the Turing GPU architecture, 4352 CUDA cores, a 1635MHz boost clock speed rating for this Founder’s Edition model, 11GB of GDDR6 video memory yielding a 616 GB/s memory bandwidth rating, and designed to suit real-time ray-tracing workloads with their RTX technology. Pricing on the RTX 2080 Ti Founder’s Edition is $1,199 USD. Last week NVIDIA published more details on the Turing architecture for those interested as well as on the new mesh shader capability.

=> ↺ NVIDIA Vulkan Beta Adds New KHR_driver_properties & KHR_shader_atomic_int64

• Not to be confused with the new NVIDIA Linux/Windows drivers that should be out today for RTX 2070/2080 “Turing” support and also initial RTX ray-tracing support, there is also out a new Vulkan beta driver this morning.

• The NVIDIA 396.54.06 driver is this new Vulkan beta and as implied by the version number is still on the current stable branch and not in the Turing era. But this driver release is quite exciting as it does bring support for two new extensions… These extensions are very fresh and not yet in the official Vulkan specification: VK_KHR_driver_properties and VK_KHR_shader_atomic_int64.

=> ↺ GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Linux Benchmarks Coming Today, NVIDIA Driver Bringing Vulkan RTX

• NVIDIA’s review/performance embargo has now lifted on the GeForce RTX 2080 series ahead of the cards shipping tomorrow. I should have out initial Linux benchmarks later today, assuming Linux driver availability.

• As wrote about yesterday, just yesterday I ended up receiving the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti for Linux benchmarking. But, unfortunately, no Linux driver yet… But I am told it will be posted publicly soon with the Windows driver. Assuming that happens within the hours ahead, I’ll still have initial RTX 2080 Ti benchmarks on Ubuntu Linux out by today’s end — thanks to the Phoronix Test Suite and recently wrapping up other NVIDIA/AMD GPU comparison tests on the current drivers.

=> ↺ Intel’s New Iris Gallium3D Driver Picks Up Experimental Icelake Bits, GL Features

• One of the talks we are most interested in at XDC2018 is on the Intel “Iris” Gallium3D driver we discovered last month was in development.

• We stumbled across the Iris Gallium3D driver that’s been in development for months as a potential replacement to their “i965″ classic Mesa driver. But they haven’t really detailed their intentions in full, but we should learn more next week. This is particularly exciting the prospects of an official Intel Gallium3D driver as the company is also expected to introduce their discrete GPUs beginning in 2020 and this new driver could be part of that plan.

Applications

=> ↺ 10 Free Open Source Tools for Creating Your Own VPN

• As more people use the Internet everyday they are becoming more conscious about their privacy with regards to how much of the information they don’t want to share at all is being compromised. Tons of VPN services have been created to solidify users’ safety but that doesn’t seem to be enough as there seems to be an increasing need to create custom VPNs.

• It isn’t a bad thing to create a VPN service for yourself and there are actually a good number of developers and organizations that favour this habit.

• Today, we bring you a list of the best open-source tools that you can use to create your own VPN. Some of them are relatively more difficult to set up and use than the others and they all have their feature highlights.

• Depending on the reason why you want to deploy your own VPN, choose the title that is suitable for you.

=> ↺ Variety Wallpaper Changer And Downloader 0.7.0 Ported To Python 3, Adds Support For Settings GDM Background

• A new major version of Variety Wallpaper Changer is out. With the latest 0.7.0 release, Variety was ported to Python 3, while also receiving some improvements like support for setting the Gnome Screensaver / GDM background to match the desktop wallpaper.

=> ↺ Cozy Is A Nice Linux Audiobook Player For DRM-Free Audio Files

• You could use any audio player to listen to audiobooks, but a specialized audiobook player like Cozy makes everything easier, by remembering your playback position and continuing from where you left off for each audiobook, or by letting you set the playback speed of each book individually, among others.

• The Cozy interface lets you browse books by author, reader or recency, while also providing search functionality. Books front covers are supported by Cozy – either by using embedded images, or by adding a cover.jpg or cover.png image in the book folder, which is automatically picked up and displayed by Cozy.

• When you click on an audiobook, Cozy lists the book chapters on the right, while displaying the book cover (if available) on the left, along with the book name, author and the last played time, along with total and remaining time:

=> ↺ Survey: Console Based Linux File Managers

• The term ‘file management functions’ refers to the functions used to manage files, such as creating, deleting, opening, closing, reading from, and writing to files.

• In the field of system administration, Linux has bags of graphical file managers. However, some users prefer managing files from the shell, finding it the quickest way to navigate the file system and perform file operations. This is, in part, because console based file managers are more keyboard friendly, enabling users to perform file operations without using a mouse, and make it quicker to navigate the filesystem and issue commands in the console at the same time.

• A console application is computer software which can be used with a text-only computer interface, the command line interface, or a text-based interface included within a graphical user interface operating system, such as a terminal emulator. Whereas a graphical user interface application generally involves using the mouse and keyboard (or touch control), with a console application the primary (and often only) input method is the keyboard. Many console applications are command line tools, but there is a wealth of software that has a text-based user interface making use of ncurses, a library which allow programmers to write text-based user interfaces.

=> ↺ Opus 1.3 Codec Library Nears, New Tools Release

• Back in June was the first release candidate of Opus 1.3 (libopus v1.3) with this open-source audio codec allowing to use SILK down to bitrates of about 5kb/s, wideband encoding down to 9kb/s, improved security, improved Ambisonics support, and much more. Libopus 1.3 RC2 is now available along with some tooling updates.

• Libopus 1.3 RC2 was released on Tuesday to fix issues with bandwidth detection, enable Ambisonics support by default, and enables security hardening by default.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Winamp Media Player Is Back From The Dead! New Beta Version 5.8 Leaks Online

• I am sure all the early Internet kids remember a nostalgic app called Winamp which really “whipped the llama’s ass!”

• Winamp was once a very popular MP3 player for Windows devices, and many die-hard fans use the app to date. However, it has seen a rough patch in the recent years.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Host your own cloud with Raspberry Pi NAS

=> ↺ How to Create Python Virtual Environments on Ubuntu 18.04

=> ↺ How to Change Cursor Size on Ubuntu Desktop

=> ↺ Delivering cron and logwatch emails to gmail in RHEL

=> ↺ Using ARP via netlink to detect presence

=> ↺ How to Install Croogo CMS on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

=> ↺ How to Make Android as Secure as Possible

=> ↺ Complete guide for creating Vagrant boxes with VirtualBox

=> ↺ Caddy – A HTTP/2 Web Server with Automatic HTTPS for Websites

=> ↺ Bash get basename of filename or directory name

=> ↺ How to Manually Mount/UnMount a USB Device on Ubuntu

=> ↺ What is the Function of Shebang in Linux?

=> ↺ How to list repositories on Linux

=> ↺ My summary of the OpenStack Stein PTG in Denver

=> ↺ Identity Management for Systems in a DMZ

• In this post we will be talking about managing Linux systems that are located in a demilitarized zone (DMZ) also referred to as a perimeter network. From the identity management and authentication perspective, DMZ installations create a particular challenge: How can we provide identity and authentication services without jeopardizing the integrity of our perimeter security?

=> ↺ Everything Is File In Linux – Part 1

• Divided into 2 parts, in this first part I will introduce the concept that everything is file and present the special devices / dev / null, / dev / zero, / dev / random and / dev / full. Part 2 will be to present didactically interesting features about this, for example, how to turn a file into a partition!

=> ↺ Writing More Compact Bash Code

• In any programming language, idioms may be used that may not seem obvious from reading the manual. Often these usages of the language represent ways to make your code more compact (as in requiring fewer lines of code). Of course, some will eschew these idioms believing they represent bad style. Style, of course, is in the eyes of beholder, and this article is not intended as an exercise in defining good or bad style. So for those who may be tempted to comment on the grounds of style I would (re)direct your attention to /dev/null.

=> ↺ How to Run Commands Simultaneously in Linux

=> ↺ How to Remove Packages with Dependencies Using Yum

=> ↺ How To Force APT Package Manager To Use IPv4 In Ubuntu 16.04

=> ↺ How to fix Indigo Error on Kodi

Games

=> ↺ Ioquake3-Derived Spearmint 1.0 Engine Coming Next Month, But Ceasing Development

• Spearmint, an enhanced version of the open-source ioquake3 engine in turn derived from the id Tech 3 source code, will see the big “1.0″ milestone in October. But that will also coincide with the developer and ioquake3 maintainer ceasing work on this engine now with an eighteen year lineage.

=> ↺ Village building god sim ‘Rise to Ruins’ had an absolutely massive update

• Rise to Ruins, a village builder that mixes in some god sim fun just went through a bit of an evolution with the latest patch, which really is absolutely massive. In terms of file-size the patch was relatively small, but good things come in small packages!

=> ↺ Roguelike RPG ‘Depth of Extinction’ is nearing release with a launch trailer

• I’m personally very excited about Depth of Extinction, a roguelike RPG with turn-based battles and an interesting setting. The release is closing in for this month and they have a new launch trailer. Note: This was a personal purchase for me.

=> ↺ Puzlogic combines elements from Sudoku and Kakuro to make an interesting puzzle game

• Puzlogic from developer Eduardo Barreto was released on Steam back in July and it just recently gained Linux support. It combines elements from Sudoku and Kakuro along with some lovely ambient music to create a pretty decent and relaxing experience.

• Currently in Early Access, the developer expects the full release to be available in the first part of 2019.

=> ↺ Never Split the Party, a free online team-based action-RPG is now on Linux

• Never one to pass up trying out a free game, today I tested out some of Never Split the Party, an “an ultra social rogue-like” and it’s not bad. While the game is free to play, you only get given one single character. If you want access to the others, you need to buy the Fellowship DLC which will unlock the Cleric, Rogue, Mage, Ranger and Mercenary.

=> ↺ Godot Engine 3.1 will have support for simplex noise generation which looks incredibly useful

• Godot Engine 3.1 [Official Site], the big upgrade coming to the open source game engine has gained another exciting feature with simplex noise generation.

=> ↺ One of the fine folks in the Intel Mesa driver team has written up a post on their work improving games in DXVK

• Writing on their personal blog, Jason Ekstrand from the Intel Mesa team has written up some information on what they’ve been doing to improve the Intel drivers on Linux. What they’re talking about isn’t exactly new, since the fixes are already in Mesa but it’s nice to get some information about how they came across the issues and what they did to solve them.

• Regardless of your feelings towards Wine, DXVK, Steam Play and so on, no one can ignore the benefits they bring to the people actually working on the drivers. Giving them so many more ways to test and push Linux graphics drivers is a good thing, as it means we can end up with much better drivers for all sorts of workloads (not just gaming!).

=> ↺ The Humble One Special Day Bundle is live with two nice Linux games

• The Humble One Special Day Bundle just went live and it has two rather nice native Linux games available. Others may work with Valve’s Steam Play.

• For the native Linux games, you will be able to grab OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood in the $1 tier which by itself is a pretty great deal. You will also find Surgeon Simulator: Anniversary Edition if you pay more than the average. Not a lot of native titles this time, hopefully their next game bundle will be a step up for us…

=> ↺ Valve have opened up the code for their VR ‘Moondust’ tech demos, also a third revision of the Knuckles controller

• What will hopefully help developers work on VR projects using Valve’s experimental “Knuckles” controllers, Valve have opened up the source code for their Moondust Knuckles Tech Demos.

• Their Moondust GitHub repository appeared on the 12th of this month, although until today it remained mostly empty. They’ve now updated it and put it out for the public to take a look.

=> ↺ Valve Posts The Code To Their Moondust VR Demo

• As expected when discovering a Valve “Moondust” repository on GitHub, today they indeed posted the code to this latest VR tech demo.

• Moondust is their tech demo from earlier this summer aimed to show off the abilities of the Knuckles EV2 VR controllers.

=> ↺ Aspyr Media have announced a Layers of Fear and Observer bundle making them cheaper together

• Aspyr Media along with Bloober Team have announced that they’ve bundled up Layers of Fear and Observer, two great horror titles and getting them together makes them cost less.

=> ↺ Distance, the amazing atmospheric racing platformer is now officially out

• I’ve been waiting on this for what feels like forever, after a great run in Early Access the atmospheric racing platformer Distance is now out. A game I’ve gone back to many times during Early Access! Everything about Distance hits the mark for me.

=> ↺ FPS game Ballistic Overkill’s Bloodlust update is out

• Ballistic Overkill, a cheap and quite decent online FPS game has released a new update named Bloodlust full of tweaks for their newer Rounds game mode.

=> ↺ The Count Lucanor, a 2D mystery and horror adventure is now on GOG

• For you GOG fans, they’ve added another quality Linux game! The Count Lucanor, a 2D mystery and horror adventure is now up with Linux support.

=> ↺ Valve have been fined 147 thousand euros in France

• Thanks to a tip in our Discord, we’ve found out today that Valve have been fined 147 thousand euros in France. Probably a drop in the ocean compared to Valve’s revenue, but enough to turn their heads and pay attention.

=> ↺ Wolfenstein: The Old Blood Should Now Be In Good Shape With RadeonSI On Mesa 18.3

• Earlier this month Valve developers began working on Mesa/RadeonSI fixes for Wolfenstein: The Old Blood to run nicely with the open-source Linux drivers while the game is running under Steam Play / Proton. The last batch of these fixes for The Old Blood are now in Git for Mesa 18.3.

• First up is a revert to fix menu hangs in id Tech games like RAGE and Wolfenstein: The New Order.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ New KDE.ru website

• Today, on September 18th, 2018, the Russian-speaking KDE community launches its updated website on KDE.ru.

• The new website serves as the main page for the Russian-speaking community. It provides localized information about the community, product download links and the list of social network pages we maintain. It is also meant to help new members get involved in KDE’s projects, particularly in our translation and promotion efforts.

• The website was created by me and Alexander Potashev on top of Jonah Brüchert‘s work for plasma-mobile.org. It uses Jekyll and is now hosted on official KDE servers. It replaces the old forum that has significantly lost its users in the past years.

=> ↺ Everything old is new again

• Just because KDE4-era software has been deprecated by the KDE-FreeBSD team in the official ports-repository, doesn’t mean we don’t care for it while we still need to. KDE4 was released on January 11th, 2008 — I still have the T-shirt — which was a very different C++ world than what we now live in. Much of the code pre-dates the availability of C++11 — certainly the availability of compilers with C++11 support. The language has changed a great deal in those ten years since the original release.

• The platforms we run KDE code on have, too — FreeBSD 12 is a long way from the FreeBSD 6 or 7 that were current at release (although at the time, I was more into OpenSolaris). In particular, since then the FreeBSD world has switched over to Clang, and FreeBSD current is experimenting with Clang 7. So we’re seeing KDE4-era code being built, and running, on FreeBSD 12 with Clang 7. That’s a platform with a very different idea of what constitutes correct code, than what the code was originally written for. (Not quite as big a difference as Helio’s KDE1 efforts, though)

=> ↺ Let’s take this bug, for example…

• Krita’s 2018 fund raiser is all about fixing bugs! And we’re fixing bugs already. So, let’s take a non-technical look at a bug Dmitry fixed yesterday. This is the bug: “key sequence ctrl+w ambiguous with photoshop compatible bindings set” And this is the fix.

=> ↺ Andrew Crouthamel: How I Got Involved in KDE

• Since this blog is starting after the beginning of my contributions to KDE, the first few regular posts will be explaining my prior contributions, before moving into the present.

=> ↺ Akademy 2018

• I had the awesome opportunity to attend Akademy in Vienna this year. First off, a big thank you to the organising team for pulling off this years Akademy without a hitch.

• This Akademy was a bit more special, since it was decided to switch up the format, which in my opinion worked quite well. There were training’s that ran alongside the talk’s and BoF’s, which I think was a great idea. I signed up to the Public Speaking Training and the Non Violent Communication training, which I think were run exceptionally. I hope that these training sessions are run again next Akademy because I found them exceptionally valuable.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GNOME.Asia 2018

• GNOME.Asia 2018 was co-hosted with COSCUP and openSUSE Asia this year in Taipei, Taiwan. It was a good success and I enjoyed it a lot. Besides, meeting old friends and making new ones are always great.

=> ↺ NetworkManager Merges An Initrd Generator For Early Boot Handling

• Days following the NetworkManager 1.14 release, feature activity on the next release is progressing and the newest addition is nm-initrd-generator.

• The NetworkManager Initrd Generator is used to generate an early-boot NetworkManager configuration. This new utility scans the command line for supported options and from there generates a network configuration and the necessary configuration files to handle an early instance of NetworkManager that runs from the initial ramdisk during the system’s early boot stage.

Distributions

=> ↺ The History of Various Linux Distros

• Linux has been around for almost 30 years. Yes, it’s that old, and it did make history. If you are interested in the history of some of the major Linux distros, here it is in a nutshell – the history of various Linux distros, like Ubuntu, Fedora, REHL, Linux Mint, Slackware, etc. The reasons for their creation and their philosophy will be briefly discussed.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

=> ↺ Mageia at fête de l’humanité 2018

• The booths were in a different place from previous years, and we had a lot more visitors. We gave out all the flyers we brought by Saturday evening – there was only one left for Sunday – so we gave out Mageia stickers instead. We did not sell any T-shirts, but we sold two USB sticks.

• Many people asked for general information; I spoke so much that I lost my voice! We had strong interest, coming from people already using a Linux distribution as well as from people wishing to turn to free software.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ BU Spark! teams up with Red Hat, hosts software design workshop

• Students traveled across Boston to its Fort Point neighborhood to attend a BU Spark! workshop about interaction design Friday. There they delved into interaction design and explored how to develop user-friendly software.

• BU Spark! and Red Hat Inc. hosted the Interaction Design Bootcamp jointly at Red Hat’s Boston office. BU students and Spark! Interaction design fellows attended.

• Red Hat is a software company that specializes in information technology and has a research relationship with Boston University that includes educational elements. The programs taught by Red Hat focus on user experience design, one of Red Hat’s specializations, according to their website.

=> ↺ Open source can spark innovative business transformation in government, Red Hat leaders say

• The federal government, largely hamstrung by legacy systems, is in need of a major digital transformation. Open source technology can be the spark that sets off that revolution, leaders from open-source software company Red Hat said Tuesday.

• “The types of technologies that you choose matter,” said Mike Walker, global director of Open Innovation Labs at Red Hat. “It will influence the way your business operates and open new doors to new business process, and ultimately allow you to become a software company that can achieve some of those innovations and reductions in cost and time.”

=> ↺ Kubernetes Ingress vs OpenShift Route

• Although pods and services have their own IP addresses on Kubernetes, these IP addresses are only reachable within the Kubernetes cluster and not accessible to the outside clients. The Ingress object in Kubernetes, although still in beta, is designed to signal the Kubernetes platform that a certain service needs to be accessible to the outside world and it contains the configuration needed such as an externally-reachable URL, SSL, and more.

• Creating an ingress object should not have any effects on its own and requires an ingress controller on the Kubernetes platform in order to fulfill the configurations defined by the ingress object.

• Here at Red Hat, we saw the need for enabling external access to services before the introduction of ingress objects in Kubernetes, and created a concept called Route for the same purpose (with additional capabilities such as splitting traffic between multiple backends, sticky sessions, etc). Red Hat is one of the top contributors to the Kubernetes community and contributed the design principles behind Routes to the community which heavily influenced the Ingress design.

=> ↺ VirtualBox DRM/KMS Driver Proceeding With Atomic Mode-Setting Support

• The “vboxvideo” DRM/KMS driver for use by VirtualBox guest virtual machines that has been part of the mainline Linux kernel the past several cycles will soon see atomic mode-setting support.

• Hans de Goede of Red Hat, who has been stewarding this driver into the Linux kernel after Oracle has failed to do so, is tackling the atomic mode-setting as his latest advancement to this driver important for a VirtualBox desktop VM experience. Published today were initial patches preparing the move to atomic mode-setting but not yet the full migration to this modern display API that offers numerous benefits.

=> ↺ Troubleshooting FDB table wrapping in Open vSwitch

• When most people deploy an Open vSwitch configuration for virtual networking using the NORMAL rule, that is, using L2 learning, they do not think about configuring the size of the Forwarding DataBase (FDB).

Finance

=> ↺ A Roadblock Ahead? – Red Hat, Inc. (RHT), Ingersoll-Rand Plc (IR)

=> ↺ Red Hat Shares Have Even Upside-Downside Profile, JPMorgan Says In Downgrade

=> ↺ Earnings Preview: Red Hat poised to deliver earnings growth for Q2

=> ↺ J.P. Morgan Securities Slams Red Hat Stock With Downgrade Before Earnings

=> ↺ Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Moves Lower on Volume Spike for September 18

Fedora

=> ↺ Test Day: Fedora Silverblue

• Fedora Silverblue is a new variant of Fedora Workstation with rpm-ostree at its core to provide fully atomic upgrades. Furthermore, Fedora Silverblue is immutable and upgrades as a whole, providing easy rollbacks from updates if something goes wrong. Fedora Silverblue is great for developers using Fedora with good support for container-focused workflows.

• Additionally, Fedora Silverblue delivers desktop applications as Flatpaks. This provides better isolation/sandboxing of applications, and streamlines updating applications — Flatpaks can be safely updated without reboot.

=> ↺ Understand Fedora memory usage with top

• Have you used the top utility in a terminal to see memory usage on your Fedora system? If so, you might be surprised to see some of the numbers there. It might look like a lot more memory is consumed than your system has available. This article will explain a little more about memory usage, and how to read these numbers.

• [...]

• Your system has another facility it uses to store information, which is swap. Typically this is an area of slower storage (like a hard disk). If the physical memory on the system fills up as needs increase, the OS looks for portions of memory that haven’t been needed in a while. It writes them out to the swap area, where they sit until needed later.

• Therefore, prolonged, high swap usage usually means a system is suffering from too little memory for its demands. Sometimes an errant application may be at fault. Or, if you see this often on your system, consider upgrading your machine’s memory, or restricting what you run.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ What’s New in Ubuntu Budgie 18.04 LTS

• Ubuntu Budgie 18.04 LTS is the latest release of Ubuntu budgie. As part of Ubuntu 18.04 flavor this release ships with latest Budgie desktop 10.4 as default desktop environment. Powered by Linux 4.15 kernel and shipping with the same internals as Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver), the Ubuntu Budgie 18.04 LTS official flavor will be supported for 3 years, until April 2021.

• Prominent new features include support for adding OpenVNC connections through the NetworkManager applet, better font handling for Chinese and Korean languages, improved keyboard shortcuts, color emoji support for GNOME Characters and other GNOME apps, as well as window-shuffler capability.

• Ubuntu Budgie 18.04 LTS also ships with a new exciting GTK+ theme by default called Pocillo, support for dynamic workspaces, as well as a “minimal installation” option in the graphical installer that lets users install Ubuntu Budgie with only the Chromium web browser and a handful of basic system utilities.

=> ↺ Endless OS May Be the Best Linux Version for New Computer Users

• Linux appeals to a certain kind of computer user: if you like computers enough to read about or tinker with them in your free time, then there’s a good chance you’ll find something to like about Linux. Otherwise, you will probably consider it too much work to bother.

• Endless Computer’s Endless OS aims to provide a complete desktop experience that’s versatile enough to serve families. Is this the ideal way to introduce newcomers to Linux?

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi I/O add-on targets aquaponics and hydroponics

• Upsilon is Kickstartering a “BioControle” I/O add-on board for the RPi 3 designed for aquaponics and hydroponics. The $89, open-spec add-on offers power-protected 12-bit ADC and DAC, 4x relays, servo outputs, and sensor and logical I/O.

• We knew it was only a matter of time before we covered a board from Luxembourg, and that time has come. Rodange, Luxembourg based Upsilon Engineering, which is led by embedded engineer Yann Leidwanger, has gone to Kickstarter to launch its BioControle add-on board for the Raspberry Pi 3. The board can be used as a general purpose I/O and DAQ add-on but is specifically designed as a control board for aquaponics and hydroponics gardening.

Android

=> ↺ Google Just Struck A Major Android Auto Deal With Renault, Nissan, Mitsubishi

=> ↺ Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL Leak: New Set Of Official Press Renders

=> ↺ How To Use Android Without Google: Google Services Alternatives For 2018

=> ↺ How to Remove Bloatware From Android Devices?

=> ↺ How To Use Android Without Google: Google Services Alternatives For 2018

=> ↺ How to update your smartphone to Android 9.0 Pie

=> ↺ Car deal earns Android serious dashboard real estate

=> ↺ Google, Automakers to Bring Android to Cars

=> ↺ TomTom killer? Your next car could come with Google Android

=> ↺ Look out, iPhone XS: A boatload of powerful Android phones are coming in October

=> ↺ Google partners w/ Renault, Nissan, Mitsubishi to offer Assistant, Maps, & Android on 2021 cars

=> ↺ Renault-Nissan alliance takes Google Android for a drive

=> ↺ Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi adopts Android infotainment in coup for Google

=> ↺ 91 “child friendly” Android apps accused of exploitation

=> ↺ How to change the quick settings in your notification drawer on Android Pie

=> ↺ Google Is Testing A Floating Keyboard On Android

=> ↺ Here’s our first look at Android Pie on the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus

=> ↺ BlueStacks 4 boasts better Android gaming on PCs than on [UPDATE]

=> ↺ PDF edit app Flexcil eyes cross-device expansion into iPhone and Android

=> ↺ Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi lets Google’s Android into its dashboards

=> ↺ Google wins major Android deal with auto partnership Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi

=> ↺ Bluestacks 4 released: Your Android apps on PC could run faster than your flagship phone

=> ↺ 5 handy hidden features in the Gmail Android app

=> ↺ Android Security Bulletin September 2018: What you need to know

=> ↺ Google Family Link adds much-needed teen Android management

=> ↺ Forget the iPhone XS — here are all the Android phones coming in October 2018

=> ↺ BlueStacks, an Android emulator for PC, gets update with major performance upgrade

=> ↺ Android Confidential: Why these 3 upcoming Android phones could put the iPhone XS to shame

=> ↺ Exclusive: This is Android Pie with Samsung Experience 10 on the Samsung Galaxy S9+

=> ↺ Google Is Testing A Floating Keyboard On Android

=> ↺ Big Dolby donation to UCSF; Android cars are coming; OPEC supports Iran

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Google AI Tool Can Distinguish Between Different Types of Lung Cancer

=> ↺ Artificial intelligence can determine lung cancer type

=> ↺ Scientists dig up cancer’s secrets buried in ‘gene deserts’

=> ↺ CloudBees Announces Availability of Support for Jenkins Open Source

• This marks the first-ever, support-only offering for Jenkins users.

=> ↺ New CloudBees Suite Addresses DevOps Gaps in Software Delivery

• CloudBees is bringing a set of products into a new CloudBees Suite that it said will help companies of all sizes streamline the software development process. The new software is set to be announced Sept. 18 at the company’s DevOps World / Jenkins World conference in San Francisco. Jenkins is the open-source version of CloudBees, which is a commercial offering.

• A central piece of the CloudBees Suite is the CloudBees Core for unified governance of continuous delivery operations and processes used in DevOps. Software pipelines can also use Core to run software pipelines more efficiently in a self-managed way in the cloud or on-premises.

=> ↺ First results of the ROSIN project: Robotics Open-Source Software for Industry

• Open-Source Software for robots is a de-facto standard in academia, and its advantages can benefit industrial applications as well. The worldwide ROS-Industrial initiative has been using ROS, the Robot Operating System, to this end.

• In order to consolidate Europe’s expertise in advanced manufacturing, the H2020 project ROSIN supports EU’s strong role within ROS-Industrial. It will achieve this goal through three main actions on ROS: ensuring industrial-grade software quality; promoting new business-relevant applications through so-called Focused Technical Projects (FTPs); supporting educational activities for students and industry professionals on the one side conducting ROS-I trainings as well as and MOOCs and on the other hand by supporting education at third parties via Education Projects (EPs).

=> ↺ Baidu To Launch World’s First Intelligent Vehicle Infrastructure Cooperative Systems Open Source Solution By End Of 2018

• Baidu Inc. has announced it will launch the Apollo Intelligent Vehicle Infrastructure Cooperative Systems (IVICS) open-source solution by the end of 2018, leveraging its capabilities in autonomous driving to bring together intelligent vehicles and infrastructure to form a “human-vehicle-roadway” interplay – an important step toward developing future intelligent transportation.

=> ↺ Versity Open Sources Next Generation Archiving Filesystem

• The ScoutFS project was started in 2016 to address the rapidly growing demand for larger POSIX namespaces and faster metadata processing. The design goal for ScoutFS includes the ability to store up to one trillion files in a single namespace by efficiently distributing metadata handling across a scale out cluster of commodity compute nodes.

=> ↺ IBM launches tool aimed at detecting AI bias

• The Fairness 360 Kit will also scan for signs of bias and recommend adjustments.

• There is increasing concern that algorithms used by both tech giants and other firms are not always fair in their decision-making.

=> ↺ IBM launches tools to detect AI fairness, bias and open sources some code

• IBM said it will launch cloud software designed to manage artificial intelligence deployments, detect bias in models and mitigate its impact and monitor decision across multiple frameworks.

• The move by IBM highlights how AI management is becoming more of an issue as companies deploy machine learning and various models to make decisions. Executives are likely to have trouble understanding models and the data science under the hood.

=> ↺ IBM Debuts Tools to Help Prevent Bias In Artificial Intelligence

=> ↺ IBM launches software to detect racist and sexist AI

=> ↺ IBM launches cloud tool to detect AI bias and explain automated decisions

=> ↺ IBM announces cloud service to help businesses detect and mitigate AI bias

=> ↺ Top 5 Open Source Data Integration Tools

• Businesses seeking to improve their data integration know that today’s data integration software perform complex tasks. They enable applications to access data associated with other applications, and also to migrate data from one platform to another, transforming it as necessary. Given this sophistication, selecting the best data integration tool is far from easy.

• Adding to the complexity of the selection process: early data integration tools focused on ETL – extract, transform, and load processes. However, most of today’s data integration products have much more advanced capabilities and can generally connect both on-premises and cloud-based data. Many also integrate with other data management products, such as business intelligence (BI), analytics, master data management (MDM), data governance and data quality solutions.

• To help sort through the complex options, the list below highlights five of the best open source data integration tools, based on vendor profile and completeness of their data integration tool set.

=> ↺ The Future of Open Source

• Linux and the open source business model are far different today than many of the early developers might have hoped. Neither can claim a rags-to-riches story. Rather, their growth cycles have been a series of hit-or-miss milestones.

• The Linux desktop has yet to find a home on the majority of consumer and enterprise computers. However, Linux-powered technology has long ruled the Internet and conquered the cloud and Internet of Things deployments. Both Linux and free open source licensing have dominated in other ways.

• Microsoft Windows 10 has experienced similar deployment struggles as proprietary developers have searched for better solutions to support consumers and enterprise users.

Web Browsers

=> ↺ Microsoft Windows U-turn removes warning about installing Chrome, Firefox

• The feature raised some hackles and brought back memories of Microsoft’s strong-arm tactics promoting its old Internet Explorer browser in the first browser wars two decades ago. But Microsoft isn’t alone in such tactics: Google promotes its Chrome browser as faster and safer to people who visit its own websites with other browsers.

• Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the change of direction.

Chrome

=> ↺ Google releases Chrome OS 69 with new Material Theme design and Linux support

• Google’s big Chrome overhaul that arrived on desktop and mobile earlier this month is coming to Chromebooks today with the release of Chrome OS version 69. The really noticeable change is the new Material Theme redesign of Chrome itself, which brings tabs with rounded corners and some softer aesthetic elements, like a blank white new tab page, to the overall look and feel of the browser.

=> ↺ Chrome OS revamp delivers a new look and Linux app support

=> ↺ Chrome OS 69 Brings New Look, Linux App Support

=> ↺ Chrome OS 69 rolling out w/ Google Material Theme, Night Light, Linux, dictation, more

• Chrome OS 69 is rolling out today following the Android and desktop release last week. Version 69 includes the Google Material Theme to coincide with the browser’s 10th anniversary. Meanwhile, Linux apps are launching on the stable channel for select devices, while Chrome OS adds Night Light and easier to access system-level voice dictation.

Mozilla

=> ↺ AutoFill your passwords with Firefox Lockbox in iOS

• Today Firefox Lockbox 1.3 gives you the ability to automatically fill your username and password into apps and websites. This is available to anyone running the latest iOS 12 operating system.

=> ↺ Streaming RNNs in TensorFlow

• The Machine Learning team at Mozilla Research continues to work on an automatic speech recognition engine as part of Project DeepSpeech, which aims to make speech technologies and trained models openly available to developers. We’re hard at work improving performance and ease-of-use for our open source speech-to-text engine. The upcoming 0.2 release will include a much-requested feature: the ability to do speech recognition live, as the audio is being recorded. This blog post describes how we changed the STT engine’s architecture to allow for this, achieving real-time transcription performance. Soon, you’ll be able to transcribe audio at least as fast as it’s coming in.

=> ↺ Mozilla Launches Firefox Reality Web Browser For Virtual Reality Headsets

• Mozilla is ready to take web browsing experience to the next level with its virtual reality web browser called Firefox Reality. It has been built exclusively to work with standalone VR and AR headsets.

• You can actually use Firefox Reality inside a virtual reality headset to search and browse websites just with your VR hand controller. This web browser makes use of voice search for searching while you step into an immersive computer-generated world.

=> ↺ Explore the immersive web with Firefox Reality. Now available for Viveport, Oculus, and Daydream

• Earlier this year, we shared that we are building a completely new browser called Firefox Reality. The mixed reality team at Mozilla set out to build a web browser that has been designed from the ground up to work on stand-alone virtual and augmented reality (or mixed reality) headsets. Today, we are pleased to announce that the first release of Firefox Reality is available in the Viveport, Oculus, and Daydream app stores.

• At a time when people are questioning the impact of technology on their lives and looking for leadership from independent organizations like Mozilla, Firefox Reality brings to the 3D web and immersive content experiences the level of ease of use, choice, control and privacy they’ve come to expect from Firefox.

• But for us, the ability to enjoy the 2D web is just table stakes for a VR browser. We built Firefox Reality to move seamlessly between the 2D web and the immersive web.

=> ↺ These Months In Servo 113

• In the past 1.5 months, we merged 439 PRs in the Servo organization’s repositories.

=> ↺ Things Gateway – Rules Rule

• A smart home is a lot more than just lights, switches and thermostats that you can control remotely from your phone. To truly make a Smart Home, the devices must be reactive and work together. This is generally done with a Rule System: a set of maxims that automate actions based on conditions. It is automation that makes a home smart.

• There are a couple options for a rule system with the Things Gateway from Mozilla. First, there is a rule system built into the Web GUI, accessed via the Rules option in the drop down menu. Second, there is the Web Things API that allows programs external to the Things Gateway to automate the devices that make up a smart home. Most people will gravitate to the former built-in system, as it is the most accessible to those without predilection to writing software. This blog post is going to focus on the this rules system native to the Things Gateway.

=> ↺ Lessons from Carpenter – Mozilla panel discussion at ICDPPC

• The US Supreme Court recently released a landmark ruling in Carpenter vs. United States, which held that law enforcement authorities must secure a warrant in order to access citizens’ cell-site location data. At the upcoming 40th Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, we’re hosting a panel discussion to unpack what Carpenter means in a globalised world.

=> ↺ The future of online advertising – Mozilla panel discussion at ICDPPC

• At the upcoming 40th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, we’re convening a timely high-level panel discussion on the future of advertising in an open and sustainable internet ecosystem.

CMS

=> ↺ Moving from WordPress

=> ↺ Global Open-Source Learning Management Systems Software Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

=> ↺ Kong 1.0 Debuts Providing Open Source API Platform for Cloud Native Applications

=> ↺ Kong 1.0 launches: the only open source API platform specifically built for microservices, cloud, and serverless

=> ↺ Kong 1.0 launches to help meet scalability demands

=> ↺ Running Ubuntu VMs on Windows just got a whole lot more streamlined

=> ↺ Hyper-V Quick Create Feature Makes Creating Ubuntu Virtual Machines Easier

=> ↺ Click your heels, um, mouse thrice and you’ve quickly got Ubuntu on Hyper-V in Win 10 Pro

=> ↺ Now You Can Run Ubuntu VMs On Windows 10 Easily With Hyper-V Quick Create

=> ↺ Ubuntu desktop images optimised for Hyper-V on Windows 10 Pro launched

• Canonical and Microsoft have released the Ubuntu Desktop 18.04.1 image in the Hyper-V gallery, which is specially optimised for running Ubuntu as a guest with Windows 10 Pro as the host.

• “Our friends over at Microsoft have worked with XRDP upstream to add support for their Enhanced Session Mode, which provides tight integration between a Windows host and the Ubuntu virtual machine running in Hyper-V,” said Canonical.

=> ↺ Hyper-V Quick Create Feature Makes Creating Ubuntu Virtual Machines Easier

• Microsoft has collaborated with Canonical to make running Linux even easier on Windows 10. The Hyper-V Quick Create command in the upcoming Fall Creator’s Update will feature a virtual machine image that can be launched by typing “Hyper-V Quick Create” in your start menu. In addition to the easier VM functionality, you can use the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

BSD

=> ↺ LLVM 7.0.0 released

• The release contains the work on trunk up to SVN revision 338536 plus work on the release branch. It is the result of the community’s work over the past six months, including: function multiversioning in Clang with the ‘target’ attribute for ELF-based x86/x86_64 targets, improved PCH support in clang-cl, preliminary DWARF v5 support, basic support for OpenMP 4.5 offloading to NVPTX, OpenCL C++ support, MSan, X-Ray and libFuzzer support for FreeBSD, early UBSan, X-Ray and libFuzzer support for OpenBSD, UBSan checks for implicit conversions, many long-tail compatibility issues fixed in lld which is now production ready for ELF, COFF and MinGW, new tools llvm-exegesis, llvm-mca and diagtool. And as usual, many optimizations, improved diagnostics, and bug fixes.

=> ↺ LLVM 7.0 Released: Better CPU Support, AMDGPU Vega 20; Clang 7.0 Gets FMV & OpenCL C++

• As anticipated, LLVM release manager Hans Wennborg announced the official availability today of LLVM 7.0 compiler stack as well as associated sub-projects including the Clang 7.0 C/C++ compiler front-end, Compiler-RT, libc++, libunwind, LLDB, and others.

• There is a lot of LLVM improvements ranging from CPU improvements for many different architectures, Vega 20 support among many other AMDGPU back-end improvements, the new machine code analyzer utility, and more. The notable Clang C/C++ compiler has picked up support for function multi-versioning (FMV), initial OpenCL C++ support, and many other additions. See my LLVM 7.0 / Clang 7.0 feature overview for more details on the changes with this six-month open-source compiler stack update.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ What’s happening this International Day Against DRM?

• We couldn’t be more excited about what’s happening today on the Web and around the world. Organizations, nonprofits, and companies have stepped up to take action, sharing their work to make the world DRM-free.

=> ↺ Digital Handcuffs

• This report examines issues arising from Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies and the legislation protecting these technologies. The report looks at how the use of DRM can impact on users’ security, privacy and right of access, while also exploring how DRM stifles innovation and competition. Furthermore, the report looks into the phenomena of obsolescence and vendor lock-in facilitated by DRM.

=> ↺ Hill-Climbing Our Way to Defeating DRM

• Computer science has long grappled with the problem of unknowable terrain: how do you route a packet from A to E when B, C, and D are nodes that keep coming up and going down as they get flooded by traffic from other sources? How do you shard a database when uncontrollable third parties are shoving records into it all the time? What’s the best way to sort some data when spammers are always coming up with new tactics for re-sorting it in ways that suit them, but not you or your users?

• One way to address the problem is the very useful notion of “hill-climbing.” Hill-climbing is modeled on a metaphor of a many-legged insect, like an ant. The ant has forward-facing eyes and can’t look up to scout the terrain and spot the high ground, but it can still ascend towards a peak by checking to see which foot is highest and taking a step in that direction. Once it’s situated in that new place, it can repeat the process, climbing stepwise toward the highest peak that is available to it (of course, that might not be the highest peak on the terrain, so sometimes we ask our metaphorical ant to descend and try a different direction, to see if it gets somewhere higher).

=> ↺ No Netflix on my Smart TV

• When I went to the Conrad store in Altona, I saw that new Sony Smart TVs come with a Netflix button on the remote. Since I oppose DRM, I would never buy such a thing. I would only buy a Smart TV that Respects My Freedom, but such a thing does not exist.

=> ↺ W3C sells out the Web with EME – 1 year later

• Digital Restrictions Management exists all over the world in all sorts of technologies. In addition to media files, like music and film, we can find DRM on the Web and enshrined in Web standards. As a Web standard, its use is recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), making it not only easier, but expected for all media files on the Web to be locked down with DRM.

• It’s been a year since the the W3C voted to bring Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) into Web standards. They claimed to want to “lead the Web to its full potential,” but in a secret vote, members of the W3C, with the blessing of Web creator Tim Berners-Lee, agreed to put “the copyright industry in control” of media access. The enshrinement of EME as an official recommendation is not how we envision the “full potential” of the Web at the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

• EME is an approach to DRM specifically for the Web. EME encrypts media files, requiring a license/key exchange managed by (almost always) proprietary software controlled by rights holders. While EME proponents claimed they were doing away with proprietary plugins like Adobe Flash, all they did was drive the proprietary software down even deeper. Instead of plugins, users now have to install proprietary Content Decryption Modules specific to various companies — including Adobe.

=> ↺ What is the relationship between FSF and FSFE?

• Ever since I started blogging about my role in FSFE as Fellowship representative, I’ve been receiving communications and queries from various people, both in public and in private, about the relationship between FSF and FSFE. I’ve written this post to try and document my own experiences of the issue, maybe some people will find this helpful. These comments have also been shared on the LibrePlanet mailing list for discussion (subscribe here)

• Being the elected Fellowship representative means I am both a member of FSFE e.V. and also possess a mandate to look out for the interests of the community of volunteers and donors (they are not members of FSFE e.V). In both capacities, I feel uncomfortable about the current situation due to the confusion it creates in the community and the risk that volunteers or donors may be confused.

• The FSF has a well known name associated with a distinctive philosophy. Whether people agree with that philosophy or not, they usually know what FSF believes in. That is the power of a brand.

• When people see the name FSFE, they often believe it is a subsidiary or group working within the FSF. The way that brands work, people associate the philosophy with the name, just as somebody buying a Ferrari in Berlin expects it to do the same things that a Ferrari does in Boston.

• To give an example, when I refer to “our president” in any conversation, people not knowledgeable about the politics believe I am referring to RMS. More specifically, if I say to somebody “would you like me to see if our president can speak at your event?”, some people think it is a reference to RMS. In fact, FSFE was set up as a completely independent organization with distinct membership and management and therefore a different president. When I try to explain this to people, they sometimes lose interest and the conversation can go cold very quickly.

Licensing/Legal

=> ↺ The Commons Clause vs. Open Source controversy, explained

• So, what is Commons Clause and why isn’t it the same thing as open source?

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Epic Clock Clocks The Unix Epoch

• Admit it: when you first heard of the concept of the Unix Epoch, you sat down with a calculator to see when exactly 2³¹-1 seconds would be from midnight UTC on January 1, 1970. Personally, I did that math right around the time my company hired contractors to put “Y2K Suspect” stickers on every piece of equipment that looked like it might have a computer in it, so the fact that the big day would come sometime in 2038 was both comforting and terrifying.

• [Forklift] is similarly entranced by the idea of the Unix Epoch and built a clock to display it, at least for the next 20 years or so. Accommodating the eventual maximum value of 2,147,483,647, plus the more practical ISO-8601 format, required a few more digits than the usual clock – sixteen to be exact. The blue seven-segment displays make an impression in the sleek wooden case, about which there is sadly no detail in the build log. But the internals are well documented, and include a GPS module and an RTC. The clock parses the NMEA time string from the satellites and syncs the RTC. There’s a brief video below of the clock in action.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ 3 top Python libraries for data science

• Python’s many attractions—such as efficiency, code readability, and speed—have made it the go-to programming language for data science enthusiasts. Python is usually the preferred choice for data scientists and machine learning experts who want to escalate the functionalities of their applications. (For example, Andrey Bulezyuk used the Python programming language to create an amazing machine learning application.)

• Because of its extensive usage, Python has a huge number of libraries that make it easier for data scientists to complete complicated tasks without many coding hassles. Here are the top 3 Python libraries for data science; check them out if you want to kickstart your career in the field.

=> ↺ This Week in Rust 252

• Hello and welcome to another issue of This Week in Rust! Rust is a systems language pursuing the trifecta: safety, concurrency, and speed. This is a weekly summary of its progress and community. Want something mentioned?

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ PortableCL 1.2 Still Coming While POCL 1.3 Will Further Improve Open-Source OpenCL

• It’s been a number of months since last having any major news to report on POCL, the “PortableCL” project providing a portable OpenCL/compute implementation that can run on CPUs, select GPUs, and other accelerators.

• POCL 1.1 from March remains the current stable release while POCL 1.2 has been in the release candidate stage. The POCL 1.2 release candidates began last month with a few highlights like LLVM 7.0 support, device-side printf support, and HWLOC 2.0 library support.

Leftovers

Hardware

=> ↺ Ampere eMAG for Hyperscale Cloud Computing Now Available, LLVM 7.0.0 Released, AsparaDB RDS for MariaDB TX Announced, New Xbash Malware Discovered and Kong 1.0 Launched

• Ampere, in partnership with Lenovo, announced availability of the Ampere eMAG for hyperscale cloud computing. The first-generation Armv8-A 64-bit processors provide “high-performance compute, high memory capacity, and rich I/O to address cloud workloads including big data, web tier and in-memory databases”. Pricing is 32 cores at up to 3.3GHz Turbo for $850 or 16 cores at up to 3.3GHz Turbo for $550.

=> ↺ Ampere eMAG Processors Delivering 32 ARMv8-A Cores At Up To 3.3GHz

=> ↺ Why the Future of Data Storage is (Still) Magnetic Tape

• It should come as no surprise that recent advances in big-data analytics and artificial intelligence have created strong incentives for enterprises to amass information about every measurable aspect of their businesses. And financial regulations now require organizations to keep records for much longer periods than they had to in the past. So companies and institutions of all stripes are holding onto more and more.

• Studies show [PDF] that the amount of data being recorded is increasing at 30 to 40 percent per year. At the same time, the capacity of modern hard drives, which are used to store most of this, is increasing at less than half that rate. Fortunately, much of this information doesn’t need to be accessed instantly. And for such things, magnetic tape is the perfect solution.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ How We Compared Clinical Trial and Cancer Incidence Data

• An in-depth look at newly approved cancer drugs, who participates in their clinical trials and who is affected by those cancers.

• [...]

• In 2012, as part of the FDA Safety and Innovation Act, Congress asked the FDA to report clinical trial participation by demographic subgroup. In 2013, the agency found minorities were often underrepresented, noting that, for many of the drugs under consideration, “there were too few African American or Black patients in the trials to enable meaningful subset analysis.”

• For every new drug approved starting in 2015, the FDA published a “Drug Trials Snapshot,” which includes the demographic breakdown for the clinical trial participants by sex, race, and age subgroups. ProPublica has compiled this data for all FDA-approved drugs from January 2015 to mid-August 2018 into a single dataset. Download this dataset at ProPublica’s Data Store.

• Snapshots included clinical trials run in the United States and internationally, but did not begin until 2017 to report what percentage of trials were conducted in the U.S. Though Asians appear to be well-represented in most trials, many of these trials were likely based outside of the United States. Analysis of 2017 data shows that, for drugs with at least 70 percent of trials conducted within the U.S., Asians make up only 1.7 percent of participants. Furthermore, the “Asian” category does not say if participants are of East Asian, South Asian, Southeast Asian, or Pacific Islander descent.

• Reports did not include a Hispanic ethnicity category until 2017, and do not distinguish between white and non-white Hispanics, or between Hispanics of European or Latin American descent.

=> ↺ A Cancer Patient’s Guide to Clinical Trials

• Clinical trials are a crucial step in getting new treatments to market. Before a drug can be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and released widely, manufacturers are required to carry out studies in humans to document that it is effective and to discover any side effects.

• Fewer than 5 percent of adult cancer patients enroll in clinical trials. ProPublica has found that the vast majority of participants in these studies are white, even when minorities have a similar or higher risk of getting the cancer that the drug treats.

• Most trials are run at academic medical centers and conducted by researchers there. Patients outside those centers often aren’t aware that clinical trials are an option, or they may wonder what joining a study entails. For patients who might consider a clinical trial, here are answers to some common questions.

=> ↺ Denied ‘life-extending opportunities’: Black patients are being left out of clinical trials amid wave of new cancer therapies

• It’s a promising new drug for multiple myeloma, one of the most savage blood cancers. Called Ninlaro, it can be taken as a pill, sparing patients painful injections or cumbersome IV treatments. In a video sponsored by the manufacturer, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., one patient even hailed Ninlaro as “my savior.”

• The Food and Drug Administration approved it in 2015 after patients in a clinical trial gained an average of six months without their cancer spreading. That trial, though, had a major shortcoming: its racial composition. One out of five people diagnosed with multiple myeloma in the U.S. is black, and African-Americans are more than twice as likely as white Americans to be diagnosed with the cancer.

• Yet of the 722 participants in the trial, only 13 — or 1.8 percent — were black.

• The scarcity of black patients in Ninlaro’s testing left unanswered the vital question of whether the drug would work equally well for them. “Meaningful differences may exist” in how multiple myeloma affects black patients, what symptoms they experience, and how they respond to medications, FDA scientists wrote in a 2017 journal article.

Security

=> ↺ Linux and Open Source FAQs: Common Myths and Misconceptions Addressed

• LinuxSecurity debunks some common myths and misconceptions regarding open source and Linux by answering a few Linux-related frequently asked questions.

• Open source and Linux are becoming increasingly well-known and well-respected because of the myriad benefits they offer. Seventy-eight percent of businesses of all sizes across all industries are now choosing open source software over alternative proprietary solutions according to ZDNet (https://zd.net/2GCrTrk). Facebook, Twitter and Google are are among the many companies currently using, sponsoring and contributing to open source projects. Although Linux and open source are widely recognized for the advantages they provide, there are still many myths and misconceptions that surround these terms. Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about Linux and open source:

• Question: What are the advantages of the open source development model? How can using and contributing to open source software benefit my business?

• Answer: Open source offers an array of inherent advantages which include increased security, superior product quality, lower costs and greater freedom and flexibility compared to other models. It also is accompanied by strong community values and high standards, which encourage the highest levels of creativity and innovation in engineering.

=> ↺ Security updates for Tuesday

=> ↺ Reproducible Builds: Weekly report #177

=> ↺ Microsoft: Like the Borg, we want to absorb all the world’s biz computers

=> ↺ never serious about real security

• The technology allows Redmond to scan and monitor enrolled devices, and push out security patches, operating system upgrades, and software updates to the kit as necessary. It will also use machine-learning code and analytics to, in its own words, “manage the global MMD device population.”

=> ↺ Unit 42 Researchers Discover Xbash – Malware Which Destroys Linux and Windows Based Databases

• Xbash mainly spreads by targeting any unpatched vulnerabilities and weak password

=> ↺ Windows, Linux Servers Beware: New Malware Encrypts Files Even After Ransom Is Paid

• Ransomware skyrocketed from obscurity to infamy in no time flat. Headline-grabbing campaigns like WannaCry, Petya and NotPetya preceded a substantial increase in the number of small attacks using similar techniques to extort unwary internet users. Now, researchers at Palo Alto Networks have revealed new malware that carries on NotPetya’s legacy while combining various types of threats into a single package.

• The researchers, dubbed Unit 42, named this new malware Xbash. It’s said to combines a bot net, ransomware and cryptocurrency mining software in a single worm and targets servers running Linux or Windows. The researchers blame an entity called the Iron Group for Xbash’s creation, which has been linked to other ransomware attacks. The malware is thought to have first seen use in May 2018.

=> ↺ Xbash Malware Deletes Databases on Linux, Mines for Coins on Windows

=> ↺ CCTV Cameras Are Susceptible To Hacks; Hackers Can Modify Video Footage

• A vulnerability has been discovered in video surveillance camera software that could allow hackers to view, delete or modify video footage.

• A research paper published by Tenable, a security firm, has revealed a vulnerability named Peekaboo in the video surveillance systems of NUUO. By exploiting the software flaw, hackers can acquire the admin privileges and can monitor, tamper and disable the footage.

=> ↺ Tenable Research Discovers “Peekaboo” Zero-Day Vulnerability in Global Video Surveillance Software

• Tenable®, Inc., the Cyber Exposure company, today announced that its research team has discovered a zero-day vulnerability which would allow cybercriminals to view and tamper with video surveillance recordings via a remote code execution vulnerability in NUUO software — one of the leading global video surveillance solution providers. The vulnerability, dubbed Peekaboo by Tenable Research, would allow cybercriminals to remotely view video surveillance feeds and tamper with recordings using administrator privileges. For example, they could replace the live feed with a static image of the surveilled area, allowing criminals to enter the premises undetected by the cameras.

=> ↺ 5 ways DevSecOps changes security

• There’s been an ongoing kerfuffle over whether we need to expand DevOps to explicitly bring in security. After all, the thinking goes, DevOps has always been something of a shorthand for a broad set of new practices, using new tools (often open source) and built on more collaborative cultures. Why not DevBizOps for better aligning with business needs? Or DevChatOps to emphasize better and faster communications?

• However, as John Willis wrote earlier this year on his coming around to the DevSecOps terminology, “Hopefully, someday we will have a world where we no longer have to use the word DevSecOps and security will be an inherent part of all service delivery discussions. Until that day, and at this point, my general conclusion is that it’s just three new characters. More importantly, the name really differentiates the problem statement in a world where we as an industry are not doing a great job on information security.”

=> ↺ Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, August 2018

=> ↺ Linux 3.16~4.18.8 Affected By Another Potential Local Privilege Escalation Bug

=> ↺ Encryption bill endorsed by govt party room

• Barely one week of parliamentary sitting days after the date for comment ended, the Federal Government’s party room has endorsed the contentious encryption bill and it could be introduced into the House of Representatives as early as Thursday.

=> ↺ The IT Security Mistakes that Led to the Equifax Breach

• The Equifax data breach that exposed the sensitive personal information of more than 145 million consumers was one of the worst data breaches of recent years, both for the amount of information exposed and the ease with which hackers moved about the company’s systems.

• The breach was publicly disclosed on Sept. 7, 2017, and details on the breach slowly trickled out for months afterwards. Now a year later, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a 40-page report outlining what happened. The retrospective look at the breach provides insights into how the breach occurred and what types of controls and technologies might have helped prevent it.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Congressional Research Service Reports Now Officially Publicly Available

• For many, many years we’ve been writing about the ridiculousness of the Congressional Research Service’s reports being kept secret. If you don’t know, CRS is a sort of in-house think tank for Congress, that does, careful, thoughtful, non-partisan research on a variety of topics (sometimes tasked by members of Congress, sometimes of its own volition). The reports are usually quite thorough and free of political nonsense. Since the reports are created by the federal government, they are technically in the public domain, but many in Congress (including many who work at CRS itself) have long resisted requests to make those works public. Instead, we were left with relying on members of Congress themselves to occasionally (and selectively) share reports with the public, rather than giving everyone access to the reports.

• Every year or so, there were efforts made to make all of that research available to the public, and it kept getting rejected. Two years ago, two members of Congress agreed to share all of the reports they had access to with a private site put together by some activists and think tanks, creating EveryCRSReport.com, which was a useful step forward. At the very least, we’ve now had two years to show that, when these reports are made public, the world does not collapse (many people within CRS feared that making the reports public would lead to more political pressure).

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Congress Passes Measure to Protect Board that Monitors Nuclear Safety

• The Energy Department had taken steps to curtail the reach and authority of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. New Mexico’s senators are fighting back.

• [...]

• The Energy Department has said the May order is simply intended to clarify roles and responsibilities and to decrease costs, and is a necessary update to a manual relied on to guide the relationship between the department and the safety board since 2001. Officials said these actions were taken as part as President Donald Trump’s 2017 executive order to trim regulations.

• But while the for-profit contractors that run the Energy Department’s nuclear sites were consulted on the changes, the board said they were given no formal input on them. Board members also have said the order would inhibit their ability to do key parts of their job, potentially violating the statute under which the board was created.

• The board said it had no comment on the move by Congress to stall the changes.

• In a joint statement, Heinrich and Udall said the provisions they had added to the appropriations bill demonstrated “that Congress shares the widespread concerns about DOE’s information sharing order,” adding that, in their view, the order should be halted.

• “We will continue to work to make sure that the DNFSB has the resources, support, and independence necessary to carry out the complex and extremely serious work that the board does,” they said.

Finance

=> ↺ US business groups lay out priorities to ensure their support for NAFTA

• Leaders of three of the nation’s most powerful business groups detailed six priorities they say need to be fulfilled to earn their support for an update of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to get through Congress.

=> ↺ Apple repays €14B in “illegal aid” to Ireland, so EU drops court case

• European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager said Tuesday that the European Commission will finally close its legal investigation into Apple’s failure to pay back taxes to Ireland after the company paid €14 billion.

=> ↺ Apple pays over the €14.3bn due to Ireland – but the minister again denies that it’s owed

• APPLE HAS NOW paid the €14.3 billion in back taxes and interest that was due to Ireland following the landmark EU ruling in 2016.

• The EU Commission ruled in 2016 that Ireland gave multinational tech giant Apple illegal state aid worth up to €13 billion over a decade.

• The Department of Finance is appealing the decision because it denies that there was any sweetheart deal in place.

• Despite the appeal, Ireland is obliged to collect the funds and hold them in escrow until the appeal process is concluded.

=> ↺ Why Brexit is both exciting and not exciting at all

• Brexit is exciting to a follower of politics: every day it seems there is something new, and one can often swing from thinking there will be a deal or no deal, or even from thinking there will be Brexit or no Brexit.

• Brexit is a news event well suited to social media and rolling news.

• But from a “law and policy” perspective, following the ball rather than the political players, there is less excitement, more a sense of inevitability.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ ‘The Rule Is Designed to Deter People From Reporting’

• Headlines can do a lot of work. Take the August 29 New York Times news story, for example, headed “New US Sexual Misconduct Rules Bolster Rights of Accused and Protect Colleges.” Readers are tipped, you might say, that previous to proposed rules by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, those accused of rape, sexual assault or harassment on college campuses had weak or inadequate rights, and that colleges faced some sort of danger or vulnerability, presumably to being unfairly portrayed as places where such acts occur.

• What’s missing between the prevalent presentation of new rules on sexual assault in schools as a common-sense move towards fairness, and the fact that no sexual assault survivors’ representatives were on the guestlist when Betsy DeVos announced the new rules? Maybe what’s in between is real life?

• We’re joined now by Alyssa Peterson; she’s policy and advocacy coordinator with the group Know Your IX, a survivor- and youth-led project that aims to empower students to end sexual and dating violence in their schools. She joins us now by phone from Connecticut.

=> ↺ Donald Trump Is Actively Obstructing Justice

• Nixon faced impeachment for “interfering or endeavoring to interfere with the conduct of investigations.” That is what Trump is now doing.

=> ↺ Michael Moore: ‘We may not get to 2020′

• Michael Moore warns that the country might not survive as a democracy by 2020 if Democrats don’t make big gains in the midterm elections.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ How Regulating Platforms’ Content Moderation Means Regulating Speech – Even Yours.

• You have a Facebook page, on which you’ve posted some sort of status update. Maybe an update from your vacation. Maybe a political idea. Maybe a picture of your kids. And someone comes along and adds a really awful comment on your post. Maybe they insult you. Maybe they insult your politics. Maybe they insult your kids.

• Would you want to be legally obligated to keep their ugly comments on your post? Of course not. You’d probably be keen to delete them, and why shouldn’t you be able to?

• Meanwhile, what if it was the other way around: what if someone had actually posted a great comment, maybe with travel tips, support for your political views, or compliments on how cute your kids are. Would you ever want to be legally obligated to delete these comments? Of course not. If you like these comments, why shouldn’t you be able to keep sharing them with readers?

=> ↺ Some Schools Need a Lesson on Students’ Free Speech Rights

• An alarming number of schools improperly discipline students for their speech — especially students of color.

• School is back in session, and that means school administrators may be back to surveilling students on social media and unjustly disciplining them for what they say on it.

• We’ve seen both of these troubling trends before. And in today’s era of inspiring student activism, they may become all the more prevalent. Moreover, experience shows that discipline for student expression is not always applied evenhandedly, and can be invoked to silence youth of color and other marginalized students.

• Fortunately, the First Amendment protects student speech. While public schools can regulate student speech that substantially disrupts the functioning of the school, as the Supreme Court held in the landmark 1969 case Tinker v. Des Moines, students do not lose their First Amendment rights simply by virtue of walking into school. Nor do they give up their right to speak out outside of school simply by virtue of being a student. To the contrary, outside of school, students enjoy essentially the same rights to protest and speak out as anyone else.

• In the last five years, more than 100 public school districts and universities have hired companies to monitor the social media of their students. At least one district asked a surveillance company for alerts on any post mentioning “protest” or “walkout.” Another surveillance company offered to help public schools monitor “behavioral information” about specific individuals, including keeping tabs on their conversations with others.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Amazon Plans To Release 8 New Alexa-Powered Devices: Microwave, Subwoofer, Amplifier, And More

=> ↺ Amazon plans to release at least 8 new Alexa-powered devices, including a microwave, an amplifier, and an in-car gadget

• Amazon is doubling down on its Alexa-powered devices, with plans to release at least 8 new voice-controlled hardware devices before the end of the year, CNBC has learned.

=> ↺ Google Accepts Remotely Changing Settings On Android Phones; Apologizes For “Bug”

• Earlier this week, something bizarre started to happen with Android Pie users. Many of them found the battery saver toggled on their smartphones, despite having full or near full battery capacity.

• A bunch of users started reporting on Reddit, and everyone found the same problem with their own devices. According to the report, the affected devices were Google Pixel 2, Google Pixel 2 XL, Essential PH-1, OnePlus 6, and Nokia 7 Plus.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ State Legislator Says 11-Year-Old Tased By Cop Deserved It And Her Parents Probably Suck

• This is even worse than the police union’s take on the incident, which referred to the completely expected backlash as “kneejerk.” But, hey, I guess deciding to tase an 11-year-old in the back — one who reportedly was all of 4’11” and 90 pounds — couldn’t possibly be portrayed as a kneejerk reaction by a law enforcement officer. When force isn’t truly needed, we can be sure some cops will deploy it anyway.

• But Rep. John Becker’s take is the hottest take of all. Anyone tased by a cop — even an 11-year-old — is a person who brought that crackling, barbed punishment down on themselves. There’s no reason to question the wisdom or necessity of the Taser deployment. Rather, we should question ourselves. And perhaps society. But mostly ourselves.

• [...]

• “If I were to do the research…” Would this be research beyond the television watching that’s given Becker such keen insight into officer-involved shootings? Who knows? Becker’s certainly not going to do the research. He’s just going to stick by his electro-guns and blame victims of cop violence for being raised badly or otherwise being harmed by the disintegration of the nuclear family unit — the 2.5 children born to married heterosexuals who have managed to weather an escalating divorce rate, porn, video games, movies, television, the internet, social media, Satanism, multiple pagan-based holidays, postal rate hikes, alternate sexual orientations, public school indoctrination, Daylight Savings Time, mandatory vaccinations, HAARP projects (known and unknown), President Obama, Brown v. Board of Education, morning-after pills, weird Twitter, the removal of prayer from schools, the Simpsons, artistic expression in general, and whatever else has reduced the American way of life to a hideous nightmare where punk kids manage to live their whole lives without being deservedly tased by blameless, saintly police officers.

• Becker is an idiot, but let’s pretend the research he didn’t do actually says what he thinks it will say. Even if a majority of kids tased/killed by cops are raised by single and/or inattentive parents, that doesn’t justify force deployments that far exceed the danger presented by the developing situation. This 11-year-old was tased in the back by an officer who was taller, weighed more, and had the ability to summon any number of additional officers if it appeared this preteen was going to, I don’t know, grow a foot, add 100 pounds of weight, and produce an arsenal of weapons before the officer got the mild shoplifting situation under control.

=> ↺ ACLU accuses Facebook of allowing employers to exclude women from seeing jobs ads

• “Sex segregated job advertising has historically been used to shut women out of well-paying jobs and economic opportunities,” Galen Sherwin, an attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, said in a statement. “We can’t let gender-based ad targeting online give new life to a form of discrimination that should have been eradicated long ago.”

=> ↺ Facebook Accused Of Allowing Gender Discriminating Job Ads

• A group of female Facebook users has filed a gender discrimination complaint against Facebook and nine other companies for allowing gender biased job ads on the platform.

• The ACLU along with law firm Outten & Golden LLP and the Communications Workers of America have filed a class action suit filed on behalf of three female workers with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

=> ↺ Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

• Hundreds of thousands of Americans drive for Uber. And the company is looking for many more. It runs ads on Facebook that say, for example: “Driving toward something? Make extra money when it works for you and get there faster.” Another touts: “Earn $1,100 in Nashville for your first 200 Trips. Limited time guarantee! Terms apply.”

• There’s just one catch: Many of those ads are not visible to women.

• A ProPublica review of Facebook ads found that many purchased by Drive with Uber, the company’s recruiting arm, targeted only men in more than a dozen cities across the U.S. Our survey of 91 Uber ads found just one targeting only women; three did not target a specific sex.

• They were all gathered as a part of our Facebook Political Ad Collector project, in which readers sign up to send us the ads they see in their News Feeds.

• [...]

• Targeting by sex is just one way Facebook and other tech companies let advertisers focus on certain users — and exclude others. Based on rich data provided by users and deduced from their web activity, that powerful targeting is key to Facebook’s massive popularity with advertisers and it accounts for much of its revenue. It lets advertisers spend only on those they want to reach.

=> ↺ In Guatemala, a Tireless Search for Parents Separated From Their Children

• Working with the ACLU, human rights defenders look for missing parents in villages and remote regions of the country.

• When Lesly Tayes, a Guatemala City-based tax lawyer, first saw images of children locked in cages inside immigration detention facilities near the southern U.S. border, she was stunned. “It made me very upset and sad,” she said. “Later I learned that Guatemala had the highest number of separated families and I felt even worse. I wanted to help.” Within weeks, she’d have her chance.

• Earlier this summer, the ACLU sued the Trump administration over its policy of separating parents from their children if they crossed the border between points of entry. A federal court issued a preliminary injunction in late June against this policy, ordering that the separated families be reunified within 30 days. But it quickly became clear that the administration didn’t have a plan to meet that deadline, particularly for the more than 400 cases in which the parent had already been deported back to their country of origin. In one court filing, lawyers for the Justice Department suggested that the ACLU should take on the responsibility of finding those missing parents.

• Because the government wasn’t willing to carry out the search itself, the ACLU, along with a small group of other organizations, has set out to do just that.

• One of those organizations is Justice in Motion, a Brooklyn-based non-profit founded to provide legal support for migrant workers. Tayes is a member of Justice in Motion’s “defender network,” a loosely affiliated group of lawyers and activists in Guatemala and Honduras formed in 2008 to gather evidence of migrant worker abuses. After the court ruling in June, the ACLU and Justice in Motion asked Tayes and her colleagues to take on the daunting task of tracking down a large number of the missing parents in the two countries.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Google Fiber’s ‘Failure’ Succeeded In Shining A Light On Pathetic Broadband Competition

• We’ve mentioned several times how Google Fiber’s promise to revolutionize the broadband sector never really materialized. There’s a long list of reasons for that, from incumbent ISPs suing to stop Google’s access to utility poles, to Alphabet executives suddenly getting bored with the high cost and slow pace of deploying fiber and battling entrenched monopolies.

• As it stands, Google Fiber’s expansions are largely on pause as company executives figure out how much money they’re willing to spend, what the wireless future looks like, and whether Alphabet really wants to participate. That said, while Google Fiber’s actual footprint pales in comparison to the hype, the service was a success in that it generated a quality, nationwide conversation about the sorry state of U.S. broadband competition, and spurred some otherwise apathetic incumbent ISPs to actually up their game, as countless cities nationwide decried the terrible state of existing service.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Gilead’s Truvada SPC revoked by English High Court

• The English High Court has ruled that Gilead’s SPC for an antiretroviral product does not comply with Article 3(a)

• Gilead’s supplementary protection (SPC) certificate for antiretroviral product Truvada has been revoked by the English High Court today.

=> ↺ Analysis: Move To Contain Global Challenge By Ascending China At Play In Escalating Trade War Between Washington And Beijing

• In the last three decades, political leaders in both Beijing and Washington have periodically miscalculated over the trade portfolio but eventually, tensions were ironed-out and two-way trade flows advanced. Many nervous executives and political leaders around the world hope that cooler heads prevail, again.

• When the Chinese leadership cracked down demonstrators on Tiananmen Square in June 1989, Washington put Beijing’s bid to re-join the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) – succeeded by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 – on ice until early 1991 before they picked up again.

• Similarly, when the administration of President Bill Clinton in May 1994 de-linked the renewal of China’s Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) status from its human rights record Beijing misread the move and tried to bluff its way into joining the WTO by putting an end of 1994 ultimatum. However, China’s chief trade negotiator, Long Yongtu, was sent back to his capital empty-handed. But during the heated exchanges in Geneva, top western diplomats recall, he put them on notice that when China one day became number one in world trade it would write the rules “in this house.”

Trademarks

=> ↺ BMW Opposes Marvel’s Trademark of Ghost-Spider

• Ghost-Spider is the new name for Spider-Gwen, the parallel dimension version of Gwen Stacy who, in that world, goes by the name of Spider-Woman. Lots of names for one person. The latest may raise the eyebrows of a certain car manufacturer. But why?

=> ↺ For Some Reason, BMW Is Asking For More Time To Oppose The Latest Gwen Stacey Character Trademark

• If you feel like you’re about to get a silly trademark story, your spidey-sense is working. We’ll keep this short and sweet, but this whole thing centers around Gwen Stacy, otherwise known as Spider-Woman. But because this is Marvel we’re talking about, there is also something of an alternate universe version of Gwen Stacy, in which she went by the name Spider-Gwen, but has more recently had that character rebooted as Ghost-Spider.

• [...]

• Two different brands under two different makes of car does not customer confusion make. If that really is the story here, it would be much better if the folks at BMW didn’t waste everyone’s time, because that’s the kind of opposition that will get tossed immediately.

• Meanwhile, maybe the folks at Marvel can dream up a few more alternate realities, including one where trademark law wasn’t so completely busted.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Compromise Music Modernization Act Will Bring Old Sound Recordings into The Public Domain, Tiptoe Towards Orphan Works Solution

• Earlier this year we wrote about the significant concerns we had with the CLASSICS Act, that sought to create a brand new performance right for pre-1972 sound recordings, requiring various internet platforms to pay for that additional right to stream such music. As we’ve discussed for years, pre-1972 sound recordings are kind of a mess in the copyright world. That’s because they weren’t covered by federal copyright law — but rather a mess of state laws (some statutes, some common law). Historically, none of that included a performance right, but some courts have recently interpreted one to exist (while others have said it doesn’t). On top of that, some of those state laws mean that certain works will remain covered by copyright for many decades after they would have gone into the public domain under federal copyright law.

• Many people have advocated for “full federalization” of those pre-1972 works, taking them away from those state copyright laws, and putting them on an even playing field with all other copyright-covered works. There is an argument against this, which is that doing so also creates brand new rights for works that are decades old, which clearly goes against the purpose and intent of copyright law (incentivizing the creation of new works for the public), but given what a mess having two (very different) systems entailed, it seemed like full federalization was the most sensible way forward.

=> ↺ Evolving concepts of work and sustainability of copyright: the curious case of curated fireworks displays

=> ↺ Music Group Celebrates Millions of ‘Pointless’ Piracy Takedown Notices

• The Association of Independent Music has teamed up with anti-piracy outfit MUSO to help its members remove infringing links from the Internet. The early results are promising, with five million takedown requests in a few months. However, on close inspection, it appears that they’re all excited about nothing.

• [...]

• Not only are most of the reported links missing from Google’s search results, they don’t always link to anything infringing on the pirate sites either.

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