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● 04.03.20

● Links 3/4/2020: Ubuntu Beta, GNOME 3.36.1, ExTiX LXQt Mini, NetBSD 8.2 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 11:28 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ System76 Thelio Major Proves To Be A Major Player For Linux Workstations

• For the past two months we have been testing the System76 Thelio Major and it’s been working out extremely well with performance and reliability. The Thelio Major offering with options for Intel Core X-Series or AMD Ryzen Threadripper and resides between their standard Thelio desktop with Ryzen/Core CPUs and the Thelio Massive that sports dual Intel Xeon CPUs.

• The Thelio Major is the platform we have been using for all of our AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X testing and it’s been working out great. The Thelio Major besides having Threadripper and Core X-Series CPU options can be configured with up to 256GB of RAM, up to two GPUs, and up to 46TB of storage for really yielding incredibly powerful Linux workstation performance potential.

=> ↺ Meerkat in the Lab: An Interview with Day Zero Diagnostics

• Day Zero Diagnostics, a life science company based in Boston, MA, is using genome sequencing and machine learning to modernize infectious disease diagnosis and treatment. They’re also a System76 customer. To get a better sense of what role our hardware has in their research, we sat down for an interview with Software Architect Walter Gillett, Product Director Ronda Kalis Taylor, and Manager of Sequencing Technologies Ian Herriott.

Server

=> ↺ Improvements to the Ingress API in Kubernetes 1.18

• The Ingress API in Kubernetes has enabled a large number of controllers to provide simple and powerful ways to manage inbound network traffic to Kubernetes workloads.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Command Line Heroes – SEASON 4, EPISODE 5: Smarter Phones: Journey to the Palm-Sized Computer

• Few could imagine what a handheld computer would look like—or even do. But a trio of visionaries saw where computing was headed. Hear how they threw out the conventional wisdom on hardware and changed everything.

=> ↺ 2020-04-02 | Linux Headlines

• ProtonMail’s new Linux bridge makes its encrypted services available to standard email clients, new LTS releases for Linux Container tooling, a Manjaro-powered laptop from TUXEDO Computers, and a special edition PinePhone with Ubuntu Touch pre-installed.

=> ↺ Grains of Salt | BSD Now 344

• Shell text processing, data rebalancing on ZFS mirrors, Add Security Headers with OpenBSD relayd, ZFS filesystem hierarchy in ZFS pools, speeding up ZSH, How Unix pipes work, grow ZFS pools over time, the real reason ifconfig on Linux is deprecated, clear your terminal in style, and more.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux 5.5.15

• I’m announcing the release of the 5.5.15 kernel.

• All users of the 5.5 kernel series must upgrade.

• The updated 5.5.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.5.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:

• https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s…

=> ↺ Linux 5.4.30

=> ↺ Linux 4.19.114

=> ↺ Linux 4.14.175

=> ↺ Linux 4.9.218

=> ↺ Linux 4.4.218

=> ↺ WireGuard VPN Gets Added to the Next Linux Kernel

• I briefly mentioned WireGuard when I wrote of Cloudflare’s WARP beta. I think it’s something to add to your technology watch lists. It’s just not any old VPN app, it’s a VPN protocol that could very well replace current protocols like IPsec and OpenVPN, or at least be offered as an alternative.

=> ↺ Stable kernel 5.6.2

=> ↺ Btrfs File-System Updates Land In Linux 5.7

• SUSE’s David Sterba sent in the Btrfs file-system updates this week for the Linux 5.7 kernel.

• Some of the highlights for the feature-rich Btrfs file-system in Linux 5.7 consist of:

• • Speed-up of extent back reference resolution with an example test going “down from a hour to minutes.”

=> ↺ Linux 5.7 Seeing Updates For Intel SpeedSelect Technology, Jasper Lake PMC

• Andy Shevchenko submitted on Tuesday the x86 platform driver updates targeting the Linux 5.7 kernel merge window.

• Highlights of the platform-drivers-x86 updates for Linux 5.7 include:

• • Many improvements to the Intel SpeedSelect Technology support on Linux, including Cascadelake-X updates, displaying the enabled CPU core count, improved error reporting, and many fixes. Intel has been working on SST support since Linux 5.3 for dealing with these more granular power/performance controls on Cascade Lake and newer CPUs.

=> ↺ Linux Kernel 5.6.2[Stable] Released with added features & more!!

• Kernel 5.6.2 Released: The latest and the most stable Linux Kernel 5.6.2 has been released on April 2, 2020. Kernel authors Greg Kroah-Hartman, Eric Biggers, Jiri Slaby, Daniel Borkmann, Johannes Berg and more have added the changelog of the Kernel 5.6.2 on the official kernel.org.

=> ↺ Plenty Of New Sound Hardware Support, Continued Sound Open Firmware Work For Linux 5.7

• SUSE’s Takashi Iwai who oversees the sound subsystem for the Linux kernel sent in his changes on Thursday that are ready for the 5.7 kernel.

Applications

=> ↺ Cloudflare Launches Free VPN for Windows and Mac, Linux Version Also Coming

• Cloudflare has released the first beta of WARP for Windows and Mac, one year after the application make its way to mobile devices.

• Available free of charge on the two platforms right now, WARP is supposed to make its way to Linux as well, but Cloudflare says additional work is required in this regard.

• The company promises WARP for Windows and macOS will graduate from beta faster than the mobile sibling did on Android and iOS – general availability for the mobile version was announced in September 2019 after the April debut of the beta.

=> ↺ Best Computerized Telescopes for Linux

• We are living in exciting times, don’t you think? Interstellar objects are visiting our galaxy. Astronomers are winning Nobel. History is being made in so many fields of Astronomy. Thanks to the advancements in computers and technology, today, anyone can indulge in amateur level astrophotography. You just need the right equipment, a few add-ons, and you are all set. However, before you set your eyes at the Saturns rings, Martian ice-caps, or Jupiter’s moons, you need to learn the basics of Computerized Telescopes. Worry not, if you don’t know what those are. We will be covering all that in the buyer’s guide section. While the computers in most popular brands support windows, in this article, we will be reviewing the top 5 best computerized telescopes that support Linux too. So let’s begin!

=> ↺ Glipper – Clipboard Manager for GNOME Desktop

• We have covered several clipboard managers in the past with advanced applications such as Clipboard Anywhere, CopyQ and Indicator Bulletin. Today, I’m happy to introduce to you a simple tool for managing your copy and paste history and it goes by the name of Glipper.

• Glipper is a free and open-source clipboard manager built for the GNOME desktop environment. With it, users can manage their copied text using the clipboard history and it features plugin support to enable extra functionality. It was built to solve the problem of Ubuntu not having a built-in feature for managing copied texts.

=> ↺ With ProtonMail Bridge, You Can Now Use Encrypted Email With any Desktop Email Client

• Switzerland based ProtonMail is one of the best secure email services for privacy-concerned users with a focus on providing open source solution. Apart from encrypted email service, they also provide a free VPN service in the form of ProtonVPN.

• Providing the same encrypted email service through desktop client was a problem. To solve that problem, ProtonMail has officially launched ProtonMail Bridge for Linux.

=> ↺ QQ for Linux 2.0 Beta2 Released with Stability Improvements

• QQ for Linux, the popular instant messaging apps developed by Tencent, released the second Beta on April Fools’ Day.

• The development of QQ on Linux is quite slow. It has been 5 months since the last release.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Install Konquest for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS?

=> ↺ Different methods to Install KMouse for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS!

=> ↺ How To Install Nim Programming Language On Linux

=> ↺ Upgrade To Ubuntu 20.04 LTS : From Ubuntu 18.04 LTS,Ubuntu 19.10

=> ↺ 5 Ways To Create a File in Linux by Commands Beginner’s Guide

=> ↺ What is Curl in Linux, How to use curl command? beginner’s tutorial

=> ↺ How to Use Shutdown Command in Linux with examples You should know

=> ↺ How to Install Rust Programming Language on Linux

=> ↺ How to Reset Forgotten Root Password in RHEL 8

=> ↺ How to Use a For Loop in Bash Script? {Quick Learn For Starters}

=> ↺ How to Build Your Own Cloud File Sync with Nextcloud

=> ↺ How to install Kanboard in Ubuntu

=> ↺ Check If Two Strings are Equal in Bash Script! (With Examples)

=> ↺ Use a Nano Text Editor or Nano command in Linux

=> ↺ Network troubleshooting with packet captures

=> ↺ Run commands & copy files on salt clients from SUSE Manager Server

=> ↺ Tutorial: Create a Docker Swarm with Persistent Storage Using GlusterFS

=> ↺ Scheduling tasks on Linux using the at command

=> ↺ Re: 30 Things to do After Installing Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (all-in-one video)

=> ↺ RPM Command to Manage Packages on RHEL/CentOS/Fedora Systems

=> ↺ How Linux Package Managers Work

=> ↺ Take Screenshots of Websites from the Linux Command Line

=> ↺ Creating a Remote Desktop Web Gateway on Raspberry Pi with Apache Guacamole

=> ↺ How to Use the Top Command as Task Manager in Linux

=> ↺ Learn CentOS Part 10 – Managing Users

=> ↺ Sosumi, an easy way to install macOS on Ubuntu Linux, but didn’t work

=> ↺ How to Upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 (Beta) Right Now

=> ↺ Kwave Installation on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS!!

=> ↺ How to Install Visual Studio Code Server on Debian 10

=> ↺ How to Install Attendize on FreeBSD 12

=> ↺ How to Create your First Java Program in Debian 10

=> ↺ How to check all the running services in Linux

=> ↺ Concatenation of Two Strings in Bash Script!!

Games

=> ↺ Cellar Door Games have officially announced Rogue Legacy 2

• Rogue Legacy 2 from Cellar Door Games is a “genealogical” rogue-lite following the popular gameplay idea from the original, where you die and pass on your skills and continue to grow through new characters.

• While there’s currently no platforms mentioned for release since they’ve only just begun teasing it (there’s not even a trailer yet), it’s likely it will come to Linux since both the original Rogue Legacy and Cellar Door’s other title Full Metal Furies were on Linux and they were ported by Ethan Lee.

=> ↺ X-Plane 11.50 has a first Beta with Vulkan API support which should improve performance

• X-Plane 11 is a very highly rated flight simulation game and Laminar Research have been working on advancing the graphics side of it, with a first Beta out for the next version with Vulkan support.

• Announced on their official blog yesterday, Laminar mentioned that had 50+ third-party developers do plenty of private testing for them but as this is the first public Beta it will likely have some issues. For the Linux version any Linux distribution that can run recent GPU drivers should be fine, with any somewhat recent GPU that supports Vulkan. On the NVIDIA side you need at least driver version 440.26 but Mesa version for AMD was not mentioned (Intel seems not supported).

=> ↺ Strange Times: During The COVID-19 Outbreak, Evictions Get A Pause…In Final Fantasy 14

• As the world navigates the reality of the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic, we’ve already noted several ways that the outbreak has changed our daily lives. Me being me, I noticed just how many professional sports organizations were moving into broadcast versions of their eSports as a way to fill the void. That of course isn’t the only way video game life has changed.

=> ↺ Mesa OpenGL Threading Enabled For More Games Yielding Sizable Performance Jumps

• Well known open-source AMD OpenGL driver developer Marek Olšák has enabled more Linux games to run with Mesa’s GLTHREAD functionality enabled for helping with the performance.

• This OpenGL threading functionality is now enabled by default for more games. This OpenGL threading is only enabled on a per-application basis or when setting mesa_glthread=true but can really help with the performance especially on older hardware.

=> ↺ X-Plane 11.50 Public Beta 1: Vulkan and Metal Are Here

• Today is the day. X-Plane 11.50 public beta 1 is now available for download to everyone. (Steam users: the beta is staged on the servers, and we’ll let it loose this afternoon if it isn’t setting people’s machines on fire.) I want to extend my appreciation to the 50+ third party developers who participated in the eleven (!) private developer previews. This is probably the most complex single patch we have developed with regards to third party add-ons; their help testing and trouble-shooting issues was invaluable.

=> ↺ X-Plane 11.50 Flight Simulator Beta Released With Vulkan API Support

• For years we have been looking forward to X-Plane with a new Vulkan renderer to replace its aging OpenGL renderer. Finally today the X-Plane 11.50 Beta has been made public for this realistic flight simulator that supports Metal on Apple platforms and Vulkan everywhere else.

=> ↺ Google announce multiple new games coming to Stadia with Gunsport a ‘First on Stadia’ title

• As Google move ever closer to finally opening up Stadia to everyone, they continue building up their collection of streaming games with three titles out for April’s Pro subs and two new titles announced for release. Time for another Stadia round-up.

• For a reminder: right now you can get the Serious Sam Collection, Stacks On Stacks (On Stacks) and Spitlings free as part of Stadia Pro if you kept up your subscription. Thumper is also staying for another month, after it previously due to leave Stadia Pro on March 31 and Metro Exodus has now left Stadia Pro so anyone else would need to buy it.

=> ↺ Darkest Dungeon: The Butcher’s Circus due out in May with online PvP arena battles

• Darkest Dungeon: The Butcher’s Circus is adding in a new twist on the harsh turn-based combat of Darkest Dungeon with arena PvP battles where you don’t risk your standard campaign crew.

• Giving players an entirely new way to play the game, you will be entering a new Hamlet location: The Butcher’s Circus where The Butcher demands a show. It sounds quite interesting, certainly nothing like the current Darkest Dungeon where the exploration forms a huge part of the usual gameplay. Doing away with all of that to focus purely on facing other players online, and climbing up the ranks certainly sounds interesting. With the supreme style it has, this could be great.

=> ↺ Another new NVIDIA Vulkan Beta driver expands Ray Tracing support on Linux

• The second update in the space of a week, NVIDIA just today put out another NVIDIA Vulkan Beta driver which further expands the Ray Tracing capabilities on Linux.

=> ↺ Mixing a sci-fi RPG with a Visual Novel ‘Planet Stronghold 2′ is out now

• Planet Stronghold 2 from Winter Wolves is a brand new science-fiction RPG that blends in isometric map exploration and Visual Novel elements. Serving as a sequel to their 2011 game, Planet Stronghold 2 turns things up a notch as their biggest game yet with it being their biggest game yet.

• With a branching plot featuring some tough and mutually exclusive choices, the ability to play as Male or Female with full skills customization and even a little romance thrown in too. What’s also interesting is that you can play it in different ways: either as a full RPG with the map exploration or tune it to the Visual Novel mode if you just want story content.

=> ↺ Terraria has now sold over 30 million copies as they get closer to the massive Journey’s End update

• Terraria from developer Re-Logic has now officially passed 30 million sales and shows no sign of stopping, as they approach a huge update with Journey’s End.

• What’s interesting is that they had announced in May last year, that they hit 27 million. So in the space of only around a year, they’ve added an additional 3 million. Considering how old Terraria is now (2011), it’s incredibly impressive that they’re just continuing to grow. They broke it down a little to mention that 14 million is from PC, 7.6 million on consoles and 8.7 million was from mobile.

=> ↺ inXile Entertainment announce Wasteland 3 is delayed until August 28

• Wasteland 3 was originally set for May 19 and now that some platforms have access to a Beta, inXile Entertainment have said they’re now going for an August 28 launch.

• The main reason being of course the current Coronavirus situation, they said in an announcement on their official site that they’re working from home like a lot of other companies which has impacted their work. However, they make it clear they’re in a good position with Microsoft and Deep Silver supporting them well and they wish to ensure “a stellar product on day one”.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Plasma Mobile: How to help us!

• We often get asked: “how long until the 1.0 release?”. Or: “how far away is Plasma Mobile 1.0?”. The usual answer to both these question is “It’ll be ready when it is ready”. But, really, how do we know that it is ready?

• Recently some of us prepared a check list of items which we consider necessary before we can declare Plasma Mobile “ready” or at rc1 status.

=> ↺ [Krita's] April Development Update

• With near infinite difficulty we managed to release Krita 4.2.9 in the last week of March… So now it’s time to look ahead! All Krita developers work from home anyway, whether they do sponsored work or are volunteers, but it’s quite hard to keep focus these days. Several of us are in quarantine, others are in lock-down — with people in Hong Kong, China, India, Russia, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, U.S.A, Canada, Mexico and Brazil we live under a wide variety of pandemic responses. The Libre Graphics Meeting in Rennes has been moved to 2021, as has the Krita Developers Sprint that was going to happen right after LGM.

• But life goes on, and we’re on the verge of another edition of Google Summer of Code. Krita has received a bunch of excellent proposals! Let’s keep our fingers crossed for our prospective students!

• And, of course, a lot is happening in Krita’s repository! About two weeks ago we merged the resource management rewrite branch into master. Now, let’s unpack this in what we’ve been doing, and what this means… For the past five years, we’ve been working on rewriting the way Krita handles things like brush presets, brush tip and tags. This turned out to be a huge amount of work, sucking up lots and lots of energy. But in March we felt we could risk merging everything into master so it would get into the development builds.

=> ↺ KDE on Instagram

• Instagram is one of those social medium services and is run by everyone’s favourite Facebook. The good side of it is that it’s based on happy pretty pictures rather than angry people (Twitter) or political disinformation (Facebook) but the bad side of that is it is common to feel inferior because you’re not as good looking as the people in the pictures. Well that’s not a problem because everyone using KDE or helping out the community is automatically good looking.

=> ↺ Elisa Music Player by KDE is Refreshing, But Not There Just Yet

• If you’re someone who still listens to locally stored music, in this day and age of several streaming music services, you deserve a good music player app. I use Google Play Music because it also lets me upload my local music files. Yet, I can never really fully switch over because I just don’t like the silly-looking interface. Google Play Music just has the worst interface of all music streaming services. Thus, I still prefer using a nice, beautiful local music player app more often when I can. As such, I’m always on the lookout. Elisa Music Player was just released by the KDE team and is kind of available for every Windows, openSUSE, and Arch Linux user.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GNOME 3.36 and 3.38

• Launched three weeks ago on March 11th, the GNOME 3.36 “Gresik” desktop environment brings numerous new features and performance enhancements, including refreshed login and unlock screens, a more polished GNOME Shell, and a new Extensions app for managing GNOME Shell extensions.

• GNOME 3.36 also revamps the calendar popover with a built-in Do Not Disturb feature, reorganizes the Power off / Log out options to be more accessible, adds a password peeking feature to most auth dialogs, and redesigns many panels of the GNOME Control Center.

=> ↺ GNOME 3.38 Desktop Environment Slated for Release on September 16

=> ↺ First GNOME 3.36 Point Release is Out with Oodles of Fixes

• Composed of bug fixes, band-aids, and post-release patches, the GNOME 3.36.1 point release aims to iron out lately-discovered wrinkles in the various components that make up the GNOME desktop environment.

• “GNOME 3.36.1 is a stable release containing three weeks of bugfixes since the 3.36.0 release. All distributions shipping GNOME 3.36 should upgrade,” GNOME advise.

=> ↺ GNOME 3.36.1 Released With First Batch Of Fixes

• Following last month’s release of GNOME 3.36 with its many new features and performance improvements, GNOME 3.36.1 is out today with the first batch of updates/fixes to this H1’2020 open-source desktop.

• With GNOME 3.36.1 comes changes like:

• • Improved app folders for GNOME Shell as well as improving its screen reader support.

• • Mutter has fixed its hardware cursor support on GPU hot-plug, support for middle-click emulation on mice, scaling fixes, fixed for building with OpenGL ES but without desktop OpenGL, and other bug fixes.

=> ↺ Molly de Blanc: SCaLE 18x

• The GNOME presence was felt throughout the conference with a special GNOME Beers and pre-release party on the first day of the conference, Thursday, March 5th. GNOME information flyers were also included inside every attendee bag.

• This presence carried on to our booth where we were able to connect with GNOME community members, contributors, and enthusiasts as well as tote our merchandise, including a brand new GNOME t-shirt, and stickers. Thank you to the number of supporters who assisted us at the booth including Foundation staff, Melissa Wu, Caroline Henriksen, Neil McGovern, and Rosanna Yuen, along with Foundation members Matthias Clasen, Sriram Ramkrishna, and Nuritzi Sanchez.

Distributions

New Releases

=> ↺ ExTiX LXQt Mini with LXQt 0.14.1, Refracta Snapshot and kernel 5.6.2-exton :: Build 200402

• I‘ve made a new “mini” version of ExTiX – The Ultimate Linux System. It is based on (upcoming) Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa. The ISO file is now of 1050 MB, which is good if you want to run the system super fast from RAM. When the boot process is ready you can eject the DVD or USB stick. Use Boot alternative 2 or Advanced options… >> load to RAM. The best thing with ExTiX 20.4 is that while running the system live (from DVD/USB) or from hard drive you can use Refracta Snapshot (pre-installed) to create your own live installable Ubuntu 20.04 system. So easy that a ten year child can do it! ExTiX 20.4 uses the latest kernel – 5.6.2. Released by Kernel.org today.

• Study all pre-installed packages in ExTiX 20.4.

=> ↺ ExTiX “The Ultimate Linux System” Gets a Mini Version Based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Linux 5.6

• Arne Exton released today a new version of his ExTiX “The Ultimate Linux System” distribution with a “Mini” flavor featuring the lightweight LXQt desktop environment.

• ExTiX 20.4 is now available for download, and it’s the first release of the so-called “The Ultimate Linux System” distribution that’s based on the upcoming Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) operating system.

• This is also the first release of this Ubuntu-based distribution to ship with the recently released Linux 5.6 kernel series (Linux kernel 5.6.2 is included by default) and a “Mini” version, which features the lightweight and modern LXQt desktop environment.

=> ↺ ExTix 20.4 ‘Mini’ Linux Distro Released: Based On Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

• The Ultimate Linux system ExtiX 20.2 was the first Linux distro based on the upcoming Ubuntu 20.04 LTS “Focal Fossa.” Though v20.2 was an unstable version, Arne Exton, the ExTiX developer, has released a new mini version ExTiX 20.4.

• ExTiX LXQT 20.4 is tagged as ‘Mini’ release because it ships with the lightweight and user-friendly LXQT desktop environment. The v20.04 is also based on the next long term Ubuntu 20.04 and includes the latest Linux Kernel 5.6.2.

• [...]

• The installation process involves only three steps. First, download the ISO by clicking the button given below. Next, create a bootable USB using downloaded ExTiX ISO file. Then, plug in a USB stick into the system and finally reboot to either run in live mode or install ExTiX.

BSD

=> ↺ NetBSD 8.2 is available!

• The third release in the NetBSD-8 is now available.

• This release includes all the security fixes in NetBSD-8 up until this point, and other fixes deemed important for stability.

=> ↺ NetBSD 8.2 Released With Fix For Ryzen USB Issues, Fix For Booting Single Core CPUs

• While NetBSD 9.0 has been out since mid-February, for those still on the NetBSD 8 series the NetBSD 8.2 milestone is now available with various fixes. As a result of the coronavirus, the NetBSD 7 series is also being extended.

• NetBSD 8.2 ships with a fix for AMD Ryzen USB issues, a regression that caused a crash when booting single-core CPUs, Microsoft Hyper-V Gen2 VM frame-buffer support, TFTP support for x86 EFI booting, kernel memory information leak fixes, multiboot 2 support for x86 boot-loaders, mitigating last year’s Key Negotiation of Bluetooth attack, fixed firmware loading for the Nouveau driver, fixed loading of the AMD Radeon “Tahiti” VCE firmware, and other fixes.

Screenshots/Screencasts

=> ↺ Ubuntu Kylin 20.04 Beta Run Through

• In this video, we are looking at Ubuntu Kylin 20.04 Beta. Enjoy!

Arch Family

=> ↺ New Manjaro Linux ARM 20.04 Released For Single Board Computers

• With the successful shipment of Manjaro Linux ARM to Pinebook Pro, the Manjaro ARM team has released a new ARM v20.4 for single board computers. The latest version is a successor to the previous ARM 20.02 with major system changes. Manjaro ARM is an Arch and Manjaro Linux-based small distribution by a developer team from Manjaro Linux. The ARM edition is a dedicated operating system for devices using ARM architecture-based processors.

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

=> ↺ What’s new with tzdata: The time zone database for Red Hat Enterprise Linux

• The Time Zone Database (tzdata) provides Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) with data that is specific to the local time zone. Applications in the Linux operating system use this data for various purposes. For instance, the GNU C Library (glibc) uses tzdata to ensure APIs such as strftime() work correctly, while applications such as /usr/bin/date use it to print the local date.

• The tzdata package contains data files documenting both current and historic transitions for various time zones around the world. This data represents changes required by local government bodies or by time zone boundary changes, as well as changes to coordinated universal time (UTC) offsets and daylight saving time (DST).

=> ↺ JetBrains IntelliJ Red Hat OpenShift extension provides debug support for OpenShift components

• The 0.2.0 release version of the Red Hat OpenShift extension for JetBrains IntelliJ is now available. You can download the OpenShift Connector extension from the JetBrains Plugins Repository. This release provides a new OpenShift: Debug action to simplify the debugging of OpenShift Components pushed to a cluster. It is similar to features developed for Visual Studio Code and JBoss Tools for Eclipse. OpenShift Connector uses OpenShift Do‘s (odo‘s) debug command under the hood and supports only local Java and Node.js components. This enhancement lets the user write and debug local code without leaving IntelliJ.

=> ↺ IBM awards its second $50,000 Open Source Community Grant to internship and mentorship program Outreachy

• Last October, the open source community at IBM awarded a first-of-its-kind quarterly grant to promote nonprofits that are dedicated to education, inclusiveness, and skill-building for women, underrepresented minorities, and underserved communities in the open source world. Our Open Source Community Grant identifies and rewards future developers and open source leaders and creates new tech opportunities for underrepresented communities.

• Today, we are pleased to announce that the winner of the second quarterly Open Source Community Grant is Outreachy. Our open source community nominated a number of nonprofits doing incredible work and, while voting was close with plenty of deserving organizations in the mix, we awarded Outreachy the most votes for their commitment to providing paid internships to underserved and underrepresented minorities. The award is timely as it will help Outreachy provide paid remote work to underrepresented groups in a time when people are being forced to work from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

=> ↺ Red Hat OpenShift Serverless Inches Closer to GA

• Red Hat recently updated its OpenShift Serverless platform with a handful of new features that inch it closer to general availability (GA). The move highlights both the ongoing maturation of serverless platforms as well as the tepid pace of that maturation process.

• Red Hat’s OpenShift Serverless product is based on the Knative project. It boasts many of the benefits tied to serverless platforms like the ability to scale up or down to zero, which theoretically allows for lower operational costs. And OpenShift is Red Hat’s Kubernetes-focused enterprise platform.

• The update uses the Knative 0.12 iterations of serving, eventing, and the Knative command line interface (CLI). That’s just a few steps behind the most recent Knative releases that are part of the project’s rapid-fire release cycle. It also includes a handful of other integrations designed to ease use and integration.

=> ↺ Red Hat: We need to talk about cloud-native

• As they edge towards a 5G architecture, can the network operator community build on key takeaways from their early virtualization efforts? Susan James, senior director of telecommunications strategy at Red Hat, sure as hell hopes so.

• “The telcos need to look at what has been learned from the NFV years,” says James, adding pointedly, “there’s no point in just dumping applications into containers.”

• And that could be the temptation as the telecom sector starts to embrace the cloud-native aspects of 5G and all that encompasses, from new ways of building, onboarding, integrating, managing, exposing and supporting applications, whether developed in-house or sourced from third-party developers.

• Telcos have been talking about cloud-native for a few years, since they realized that somewhat monolithic virtualized network functions (VNFs) running on early NFV infrastructure platforms would only get them a smidge of the agility and flexibility they seek. Instead, a wide-area-network-friendly, carrier-grade version of the containerized systems increasingly popular with large enterprises and the data center brigade looks far better suited for the challenges that full-blown 5G (with its gazillions of potentially latency-intolerant devices connected to edge platforms) will bring.

• Now those conversations about containers, Kubernetes and next-generation telco cloud functionality are getting more frequent, says James, who has been with Red Hat – one of the leading providers of open source software systems for telco cloud deployments, such as its version of OpenStack and its OpenShift container platform – for almost two years, following more than 15 years at Ericsson.

=> ↺ Let’s monitor edge computing networks with RHEL!

• One of the characteristics of edge computing is that rather than one big network, multiple smaller networks are being used. Network connectivity inside of these smaller networks is mostly reliable, but the connectivity between these network bubbles can be unstable—some edge network concepts are even designed to cope with temporary network interruptions between these networks.

=> ↺ Ansible streaming video series, open source security tools, and more industry trends

• As part of my role as a senior product marketing manager at an enterprise software company with an open source development model, I publish a regular update about open source community, market, and industry trends for product marketers, managers, and other influencers. Here are five of my and their favorite articles from that update.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Norbert Preining: KDE/Plasma updates for Debian sid/testing

• I have written before about getting updated packages for KDE/Plasma on Debian. In the meantime I have moved all package building to the openSUSE Build Service, thus I am able to provide builds for Debian/testing, both i386 and amd64 architectures.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Beta Released

• For those with extra time on their hands due to being at home and social distancing, Canonical released the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS beta today for testing.

• The Ubuntu 20.04 “Focal Fossa” beta is out for the desktop, server, and cloud platforms. Additionally, beta images are available for Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Beta Released Today! The Wait is Over!

• Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Beta Released: The Team Canonical announced the latest version of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS for public usage. Users all around the world are eagerly waiting for the release of the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS version. The full release of this Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is scheduled to be released on 23 April 2020.

• The exact words from the Ubuntu team are…

=> ↺ Ubuntu 20.04: The most exciting new features

• Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) will be unleashed on April 23rd, 2020. The first reports of this new release were mostly focused on a new release of GNOME and a few other aesthetic tweaks, plus a couple of additional performance enhancements.

• But we are talking about Ubuntu, one of the most user-friendly and enterprise-ready desktop Linux distributions on the market. So of course the developers weren’t going to settle for having their twentieth release standing as an uneventful occasion. So it should come as no surprise that, in recent days, the news that Ubuntu was going to do something really important for this update came down the pipe.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Beta Is Now Available for Download

• Highlights of the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS release include the latest and greatest GNOME 3.36 desktop environment, a new graphical boot splash that integrates with the system BIOS logo, and Linux kernel 5.4 LTS with lz4 compression algorithm by default for kernel and initramfs for faster boot times.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 20.04 Beta is Now Available to Download

• Landing in advance of next month’s stable release, the Ubuntu 20.04 beta gives enthusiasts and testers the chance to get up close with the various changes on offer.

• Such as?

• Well, Ubuntu 20.04 beta ships the Linux 5.4 kernel; offers the majority of the recent GNOME 3.36 release, including its new lock screen; and adds a new ‘dark mode’ setting to the Appearance section.

=> ↺ Get Ubuntu Touch And A Custom Case On The Newest 2020 PinePhone

• The surprisingly affordable $150 Linux Smartphone is getting its first “Community Edition” beginning this month, and it’s a momentous step forward for the PinePhone and for the open source mobile OS ecosystem. Pine64 — which also produces the PineBook Pro — has announced the PinePhone UBPorts Community Edition is available for pre-order right now and will begin shipping the custom device in May 2020.

=> ↺ PinePhone UBports Community Edition brings back an old but ongoing dream

• Linux phones like the PINE64 PinePhone and Purism Librem 5 may be the hot topic in the free and open source community but they are hardly the first to take a stab at that dream. Just a few years back, Canonical, makes of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, decided to take a whack at creating a mobile Linux platform, Ubuntu Touch. It failed but the open source community took over the helm, paving the way for a new partnership that has now resulted in the PinePhone UBports Community Edition.

• [...]

• UBports positions this PinePhone Community Edition as the newest way for tinkerers, developers, and users to get a phone they can use and change to their open source hearts’ content. It also warns, however, that it isn’t fit yet for a daily driver, depending on your needs. Things like cameras and support for USB peripherals are still missing but are coming.

=> ↺ PinePhone “Community Edition: UBports” Linux Phone Launched with Ubuntu Touch

• PinePhone “BraveHeat” Limited Edition Linux smartphone launched last November as promised for $149.99. As the codename implied, it was for the enthusiasts as the phones that were part of that product batch may have had some defects, and came without an operating system, meaning the users had to flash the firmware themselves.

• But there’s now a new edition, namely PinePhone “Community Edition: UBports” pre-loaded with UBports with Ubuntu Touch featuring Lomiri user interface.

=> ↺ PinePhone ‘Community Edition’ Linux Phone With Ubuntu Touch: All You Need To Know

• After almost finishing the shipment of PinePhone ‘Braveheart Edition,’ Pine64 has opened the pre-order of their new PinePhone ‘Community Edition.’ One of the major updates in the latest edition is the collaboration with the UBports community.

• If you don’t know, UBports is the foundation that is supporting Ubuntu Touch after Canonical gave up the Ubuntu Phone project. After almost four years, UBports has finally entered into an official association with a Linux Phone. Also, Ubuntu Touch is the first pre-installed OS shipping in PinePhone as the previous Braveheart featured no official Linux OS.

=> ↺ [Older] My first steps with the BraveHeart PinePhone – Florent V

=> ↺ Forget the iPhone: PinePhone Linux Phone Running Ubuntu Touch Announced

• The so-called PinePhone “Community Edition” is a custom version of the PinePhone Linux phone that comes with Ubuntu Touch pre-installed, so you can now enjoy a full Linux package – the original version of the device shipped without an operating system.

• “The PinePhone UBports ‘Community Edition’ is the culmination of all our work over the past 18 months, from the first laggy Unity8 [now Lomiri] demos on the ‘Anakin’ development unit, to fighting with the modem on the “Don’t be Evil” prototype (turns out the SIM slot wasn’t wired correctly), through to our work to make the ‘Braveheart’ units suitable for use by early adopters and enthusiasts,” the official announcement reads.

=> ↺ Essential Guide: How to Upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 (Beta) Right Now

• Well, in this guide I show you the steps required to upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 from Ubuntu 18.04 or Ubuntu 19.10 right now, , nice and early, ahead of the final release.

• You do not need to download an .iso, fuss around with a USB thumb drive, or lose any of your files — you can upgrade directly with a half-way decent internet connection.

• Just keep in mind that (at the time you read this) the final stable release of the Focal Fossa is not yet available, only a beta quality candidate is.

=> ↺ Linux Mint 20 “Ulyana”: All New Features And Release Date

• Linux Mint is undoubtedly one of the best beginner-friendly and tough competitors of the most famous Ubuntu Linux. One of the reasons can be credited to its upstream codebase. Since Linux Mint is an Ubuntu-based distro, it uses the codebase of the latest Ubuntu long term support version.

• After ending 2019 with the release of Linux Mint 19.3, the Linux Mint team is ready to roll out its first version in 2020. As already revealed in their monthly blog, the upcoming Linux Mint 20 will be based on the next Ubuntu 20.4 LTS. So, in this article, I’m going to discuss everything about the new changes and release date of Mint 20.

=> ↺ LXD 4.0 LTS stable release is now available

• The stable release of LXD, the machine container hypervisor, is now available. LXD 4.0 is the third LTS release for LXD and will be supported for 5 years, until June 2025. This version comes with a significant amount of new features including adding virtual machines (VMs) support, the introduction of projects and improved networking, storage and security capabilities.

=> ↺ LXD 4.0 LTS Released For Offering The Latest Linux Containers Experience

• Ahead of the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS release later this month, the Canonical folks working on LXD for Linux containers and VMs have released LXD 4.0 LTS.

• LXD 4.0 LTS is offering up the latest Linux containers experience and in great shape for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Some of the highlights for LXD 4.0 include:

• • Support for backing up of virtual machines using lxc export and lxc import, similar to existing container backup functionality.

=> ↺ LXD 4.0 LTS has been released

• The LXD team is very excited to announce the release of LXD 4.0 LTS!

• This is the 3rd LTS release for LXD and a very busy and exciting one! The changelog below is split so that both users of LXD 3.23 and LXD 3.0 can see what we have in store for them.

• As with all our other LTS releases, this one will be supported for 5 years (June 2025) and will receive a number of bugfix and security point releases over that time.

• As for LXD 3.0, we’re hoping to release one last bugfix release as 3.0.5 in the near future before we enter security-only maintenance mode for its remaining 3 years.

=> ↺ Ubuntu MATE 20.04 Release Notes

• There are many way ways of testing. A spare machine, a secondary hard drive, a live USB, or using a VM (Virtual Machine). If you are planning on using a VM, you may be interested in trying quickemu which allows you to easily manage QEMU VM’s with a shell script.

• We hope you will join in and help us make Ubuntu MATE 20.04 and all of it’s family a success

=> ↺ Canonical Wants to Manage Away Open Source Complexity

• Canonical launched a managed applications platform that allows enterprises to have the vendor control their open source applications regardless of what type of infrastructure those applications are running on.

• The Canonical Managed Apps platform is launching with the ability to manage 10 cloud-native database and logging, monitoring, and alerting (LMA) applications on multi-cloud Kubernetes infrastructure or on virtual machines (VMs) running on bare metal, public, or private clouds. The initial applications include databases MySQL, InfluxDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and ElasticSearch; the Open Source MANO NFV management and orchestration application; the Kafka event streaming platform; the Graylog logging platform; the Prometheus monitoring system; and the Grafana observability platform.

• Stephan Fabel, director of product at Canonical, explained that the management platform sits on top of or to the side of the infrastructure platform depending on the infrastructure being used. It acts to enforce the policies and models of that piece of software. The platform itself runs on open source software, and the vendor’s Juju service orchestration tool and underlying Charms deployment model.

=> ↺ Canonical To Simplify Cloud Operations For Enterprises With Managed Apps

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Rugged, 28.6-inch signage PC supports Linux

• Ibase’s EN50155-certified “MRD-286” is a 28.6-inch, bar-type panel PC for passenger info and signage applications that runs Linux or Win 10 on an Apollo Lake SoC. It offers IP65 protection and -20 to 55°C support.

• Public touchscreen computers are a tough sell in these tough days of contagion, but there are plenty of applications out there that don’t need our grubby fingers to operate. Ibase refers to the MRD-286 as a panel PC, but its super wide-screen, bar-type, 28.6-inch display lacks touch support.

=> ↺ The Off-Grid CyberDeck Is a Computer for the Apocalypse

• With a Raspberry Pi and other parts, it’s simple to build a rugged waterproof computer to ride out the collapse of civilization.

=> ↺ Odyssey x86 mini PC supports Windows, Linux, and Arduino for $188

• A new Windows mini PC which also supports, Linux and Arduinois now available to purchase from the Seeed Studio website priced at just $188. The ODYSSEY X86J4105 mini PC is based on Intel Celeron J4105, is a Quad-Core 1.5GHz CPU with boosts up to 2.5GHz support by 64GB eMMC, with onboard ATSAMD21 Core, an ARM Cortex-M0+ MCU that allows you to program Arduino on the x86 platform.

=> ↺ This $188 single-board x86 computer supports Windows, Linux, and Arduino

• The ODYSSEY X86J4105800 is a single-board computer with a 10 watt Intel Celeron J4105 quad-core Gemini Lake processor, 8GB of RAM. Available from SEEED Studio for $188, it’s basically a full-fledged mini-desktop computer on a 4.3″ x 4.3″ board, complete with support for Windows 10 or most GNU/Linux distributions.

• [...]

• It’s also an Arduino-compatible device thanks to an integrated ARM Cortex-M0+ co-processor. And there’s a 40-pin Raspberry Pi-compatible header, another 28-pin header, and several other developer-friendly features.

• [...]

• The 40-pin connector means you can use Raspberry Pi HATs with the system. The ARM microcontroller means you can program ARuino applications on the device. And there’s even a SIM card slot that allows you to use the system as a router or gateway when used with a cellular modem.

=> ↺ Best Raspberry Pi Operating Systems for Various Purposes

• Raspberry Pi is an indispensable single-board computer that comes in handy for a lot of work. Don’t believe me? Just go through this list of Raspberry Pi projects to get a gist of what this tiny device is capable of.

• Considering how useful a Raspberry Pi is – it is an important task to choose the right operating system for it. Of course, you can do a lot of things with Linux but an OS specially configured for a specific purpose can save you considerable time and effort.

• So, in this article, I will be mentioning some of the popular and useful operating systems tailored for Raspberry Pi.

=> ↺ Embedded Linux Implementation Services: Enabling Linux Deployments

• The Wind River Linux suite includes everything embedded teams need to create secure, reliable, and high-performance products. It enables the building and deployment of intelligent edge devices and systems without the risk, effort, and high cost of ownership associated with an RYO package.

=> ↺ Fanless Whiskey Lake industrial PC has wide power and operating ranges

• Taicenn’s fanless “TBOX-28” industrial computer has an 8th Gen Whiskey Lake CPU, 2x GbE, 6x serial, 4x USB 3.1, HDMI, DP, SATA, and optional wireless.

• Taicenn has launched an embedded industrial PC that incorporates Intel’s 8th Gen, 15W Whiskey Lake-U processors, including dual- and quad-core Core i3, i5, and i7 models. No OS support was listed for the TBOX-28, but we imagine that like Taicenn’s Atom D2550 based TBOX-4000, the system runs Linux or Windows.

=> ↺ How the Raspberry Pi Foundation is responding to the novel coronavirus (part 2)

=> ↺ Building a sensing prosthetic with the Raspberry Pi

• Content advisory: this article contains frank discussions of breast cancer.

• What’s the first question you ask your surgeon when you’re discussing reconstruction options after breast cancer?

• “How many USB ports can you give me?” is probably not the one that comes to mind for many people!

• Although the remark was said jokingly, it sparked a thread that would ultimately become SenseBreast—an early prototype of a sensing mastectomy prosthetic, based on open hardware.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Android 11 update DP2.1 released with a fix for jankiness

=> ↺ Android 10-Based LineageOS 17.1 Released With Unique Features

=> ↺ Nokia 7.2 VoWiFi (WiFi calling) for Airtel enabled with Android 10 update

=> ↺ Galaxy Tab S6 owners, Android 10 is finally out for your tablet

=> ↺ Anker’s Nebula Cosmos projectors will adopt Android TV platform

=> ↺ ColorOS 7.1 Review: OPPO’s latest Android OS is its best yet

=> ↺ How Huawei’s flagship P40 Pro could still impact premium Android phones in the U.S.

=> ↺ How to block unknown numbers on your Android in 4 steps

=> ↺ How to find the IMEI number on your Android device in 2 different ways

=> ↺ Honda HR-V and Jazz get Apple and Android connectivity

=> ↺ How to trim a video on your Android device using the built-in Gallery app

=> ↺ How to add widgets on an Android device and resize them on your home screen

=> ↺ How to scan barcodes or QR codes on an Android device using a third-party app

=> ↺ How to invert the colors on your Android device in 4 simple steps

=> ↺ Some Android TV devices are delivering errant casting notifications, but Google’s working on a fix

=> ↺ Android TV owners seeing unwanted cast notifications on their phone

=> ↺ Nokia 7.2 now receiving stable Android 10 update

=> ↺ Google releases Android 11 Developer Preview 2.1 with bug fixes

=> ↺ Six Dark Sky alternatives for Android weather watchers

=> ↺ OnePlus 8 hasn’t even launched yet but its Android rivals should already be very afraid

=> ↺ Samsung releases Android 10-Based One UI 2.0 for Galaxy A10s

=> ↺ LineageOS 17.1 based on Android 10 is now officially available

=> ↺ How to Send SMS Messages with Google Sheets and your Android Phone

=> ↺ How to Turn an Old Android Device Into a Cool, Useful Gadget

=> ↺ How to record audio on an Android using a built-in app on your device

=> ↺ OneDrive for Android now lets you unlock with your face. Yes, yours.

=> ↺ Web Video Caster can stream videos from Android and iOS to your Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV, and many more (Sponsored)

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy M01 certified with Android 10 onboard

=> ↺ Motoz Z4 Finally Gets Android 10

=> ↺ Dolby On is now available for Android, and iOS gets Twitch integration

=> ↺ Dolby On app arrives on Android to make impromptu jam sessions sound great

=> ↺ How to stop iPhone videos from turning into a blurry mess on Android phones (and vice versa)

=> ↺ MonitorMinor stalkerware: Dangerous new Android malware

=> ↺ How to set a song as a ringtone on Android: Set a custom ringtone

=> ↺ How to turn an old Android phone into a security camera

=> ↺ How to share your Android phone’s mobile connection by tethering or hotspot

=> ↺ Android 10 Is Now Rolling Out To Five New Xiaomi Smartphones

=> ↺ Google fixes several bugs with Android 11 Developer Preview 2.1

=> ↺ Moto G8 Power Lite launches with Android 9 Pie, MicroUSB, and 720p screen

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Rant of the day: well, at least Microsoft is making loads of money…

• Sadly, many if not most of our schools today are suddenly pumping lots of extra money into Microsoft, Zoom and other proprietary software companies, because they need online collaboration. We all know there are many alternatives to giving their students’ data away to foreign companies but most don’t bother. It is annoying, there is always budget for Microsoft, but not for proper, local, privacy-protecting open source solutions, even if those are better. Why is that?

Events

=> ↺ Highlights of YaST Development Sprint 96

• While many activities around the world slow down due to the COVID-19 crisis, we are proud to say the YaST development keeps going at full speed. To prove that, we bring you another report about what the YaST Team has been working on during the last couple of weeks.

• The releases of openSUSE Leap 15.2 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP2 are approaching. That implies we invest quite some time fixing bugs found by the testers.

=> ↺ Indonesian LibreOffice community: Online translation marathon

• Communities around the world help to translate and localise LibreOffice in over 100 languages. We really appreciate their efforts!

=> ↺ Update on openSUSE + LibreOffice Conference

• Organizers of the openSUSE + LibreOffice Conference had a meeting this week to discuss various topics surrounding COVID19 and how it may affect the conference and planning for it.

• At this point, it is uncertain what restrictions governments may keep in place in the coming months. While October is some months away, there are many aspects we are considering as to how to run the openSUSE + LibreOffice Conference.

• Travel restrictions, flights, hotel and venue availability, event capacity and our community members’ ability to attend the conference are all factors we are considering. We hope to make a decision about the conference at the latest by mid-June.

=> ↺ Daniel Stenberg: The curl roadmap 2020 video

• On March 26th 2020, I did a live webinar where I talked about my roadmap visions of what to work on in curl during 2020.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

=> ↺ LibreOffice’s extension Formatting of All Math Formulas 0.1.9 is released

• We have updated our extension Formatting of All Math Formulas to 0.1.9 version. The extension allows you to change font and font size for all (or only for selected) Math formulas in your Writer, Calc, Draw or Impress document for one time.

FSF

FSFE

=> ↺ Any Corona tracking app must be used voluntarily and be Free Software

• The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) demands that the use of tracking technologies that aim at breaking the chains of disease infection may only be promoted on a voluntary basis, fundamental rights must be respected and the software must be published under a Free Software licence.

• In the last days there have been increasing debates about the use and development of apps that aim at helping to contain the corona virus, by tracking new infections and their contact persons. With the help of a contact diary it is possible to record who met with whom and when. If a person is infected with the corona virus, their contacts are informed and asked to isolate themselves and to take further actions, if necessary. It will be hopefully possible to break the chain of infection and thus reduce the infection rate. In some countries, there are also discussions about a mandatory use of this app, which would interfere on people’s right to control their technology and thus their privacy.

GNU Projects

=> ↺ Guix deprecating support for the Linux kernel

=> ↺ Foundation is now close to Catalina compatibility

• I have worked hard to get it to this point, but all of the classes in Catalina are now present in GNUstep’s base implementation. Soon, all of the classes available in AppKit will also be available in GNUstep’s GUI implementation.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Open Access/Content

=> ↺ Bassel Khartabil Fellowship Awarded to Tarek Loubani—Using Open Access to Combat COVID-19

• The Fellowship award will allow Loubani to Combat COVID-19 through the release of Open Access plans for medical hardware, so that vital equipment may be produced cheaply by anyone with commonly available 3D printers. Loubani’s approach enables high quality devices to be made available during periods of global supply chain disruption, and in areas with limited access. Glia has released face shields already being used in the battle against COVID-19, as well as other hardware including stethoscopes, tourniquets, and otoscopes. Additional devices including pulse oximeters, electrocardiograms, and dialysis products are currently in development. See the full press release for more information about Loubani’s work and how the fellowship will support his efforts.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Purism: Our tips for remote working

• Most of us don’t like writing documentation at the best of times but when going remote, a great team wiki or docs portal can help keep everyone in the loop and reduce repetitive questioning in team chat.

• Choose a solution that tracks changes (version control) and if needed, has an easy to use interface for non-technical people. We use wiki.js backed by git.

• You should document something if you have to say it more than once. This will empower people to answer their own questions by searching for the answer.

• If you are looking for a good example of team documentation take a look at GitLab’s public handbook (our wiki is private).

=> ↺ Dirk Eddelbuettel: RQuantLib 0.4.12: Small QuantLib 1.18 update

• QuantLib is a very comprehensice free/open-source library for quantitative finance; RQuantLib connects it to the R environment and language.

• This version does relatively little. When QuantLib 1.18 came out, I immediately did my usual bit of packaging it for Debian as well creating binaries via my Ubuntu PPA so that I could test the package against it. And a few call from RQuantLib are now hitting interface functions marked as ‘deprecated’ leading to compiler nags. So I fixed that in PR #146. And today CRAN sent me email to please fix in the released version—so I rolled this up as 0.4.12. Not other changes.

Perl/Raku

=> ↺ Observing Coronavirus Pandemic with Raku

• Every few years a new unknown virus pops up and starts spreading around the globe. This year, the situation with COVID-19 is different not only because of the nature of the virus but also because of the Internet. Whilst we have instant access to new information (which is often alarmist in tone) we also have the ability to access data for ourselves.

• Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering synthesizes COVID-19 data from different sources, and displays it on their online dashboard. They also publish daily updates in CSV files on GitHub.

• I decided to ingest their CSV data and display it using different visualizations to reduce panic and provide a way to quickly see real numbers and trends. The result is the website covid.observer. The source files are available in the GitHub repository.

Python

=> ↺ PyCharm 2020.1 Release Candidate

• We’ve passed the final approach fix, and we’re now established on the glideslope for the PyCharm 2020.1 release. This week’s build brings a couple of bug fixes as we hope to take the release in for a smooth landing. Let us know how we’re doing by getting this version, if you run into any issues please leave us a ticket on YouTrack.

=> ↺ EuroPython 2020: CFP for the Online Event

• Since we had started the CFP under the assumption of running an in-person conference and are now switching EuroPython 2020 to an online event, we will extend the CFP for another two weeks until April 12, to give everyone who would like to participate in this new format, a chance to submit a session proposal.

=> ↺ Visualizing Decision Trees with Python (Scikit-learn, Graphviz, Matplotlib)

• Decision trees are a popular supervised learning method for a variety of reasons. Benefits of decision trees include that they can be used for both regression and classification, they don’t require feature scaling, and they are relatively easy to interpret as you can visualize decision trees. This is not only a powerful way to understand your model, but also to communicate how your model works. Consequently, it would help to know how to make a visualization based on your model.

=> ↺ Python Bytes: #175 Python string theory with superstring.py

=> ↺ Onboarding Continuity – Building SaaS #50

• In this episode, we stepped from the welcome onboarding page to the first interactive page in the flow. I extracted the common banner for each of the templates and customized it for each of the steps in the process.

• The first thing we did was create a button on the starting page. The button connects the welcome page to the second step in the flow where the app will ask for information about the user’s school year.

• With the button in place, we created the new view to handle the school year form. Before getting into that form, I extracted the common onboarding banner into a template fragment.

=> ↺ Templates For User Interfaces

• In the previous Understand Django article, we looked at the fundamentals of using views in Django. This article will focus on templates. Templates are your primary tool in a Django project for generating a user interface. Let’s see how templates hook into views and what features Django provides with its template system.

=> ↺ Split String in Python

• When a string of multiple words is divided into the specific number of words based on a particular separator then it is called string splitting. Most of the programming languages use the split() method to divide a string into multiple words. The return type of this method is an array for many standard programming languages. the split() method is used in Python also to divide a string into words and it returns a list of words based on the separator. How to split() method can be used in Python is shown in this article by using different examples. Spyder3 editor is used here to write and execute the python script.

=> ↺ Send and receive UDP packets via Python

• We already know about two main transport layer protocols like TCP and UDP. For more information about TCP and UDP you can check reference section. In this article we will learn how to send and receive UDP packets using python program.

=> ↺ The 7 most popular ways to plot data in Python

• “How do I make plots in Python?” used to have a simple answer: Matplotlib was the only way. Nowadays, Python is the language of data science, and there’s a lot more choice. What should you use?

• This guide will help you decide. It will show you how to use each of the four most popular Python plotting libraries—Matplotlib, Seaborn, Plotly, and Bokeh—plus a couple of great up-and-comers to consider: Altair, with its expressive API, and Pygal, with its beautiful SVG output. I’ll also look at the very convenient plotting API provided by pandas.

• For each library, I’ve included source code snippets, as well as a full web-based example using Anvil, our platform for building web apps with nothing but Python. Let’s take a look.

=> ↺ Episode 3: Effective Python and Python at Google Scale

• In this episode, Christopher interviews Brett Slatkin about the 2nd edition of his book Effective Python. Brett talks about the revisions he made for the book, and updating it for the newest versions of Python 3.

• Christopher asks who is the intended developer for the book. Brett also discusses working on Google App Engine, and what it’s like to develop and maintain Python applications at Google Scale. Brett mentions a brief anecdote about working with Guido van Rossum, while they both worked at Google. He also provides advice about maintaining a large and aging Python code base.

=> ↺ Randy Zwitch: Building pyarrow with CUDA support

• The other day I was looking to read an Arrow buffer on GPU using Python, but as far as I could tell, none of the provided pyarrow packages on conda or pip are built with CUDA support. Like many of the packages in the compiled-C-wrapped-by-Python ecosystem, Apache Arrow is thoroughly documented, but the number of permutations of how you could choose to build pyarrow with CUDA support quickly becomes overwhelming.

• In this post, I’ll show how to build pyarrow with CUDA support on Ubuntu using Docker and virtualenv. These directions are approximately the same as the official Apache Arrow docs, just that I explain them step-by-step and show only the single build toolchain I used.

=> ↺ Python String Formatting

• The string Formatting is a very important task of any type of programming language. It helps the user to understand the output of the script properly. The string formatting can be done in Python in various ways, such as using ‘%’ symbol, format() method, string interpolation, etc. This article shows how the string data can be formatted in Python by using different string formatting methods. Spyder3 editor is used here to write and run the script.

• Two types of formatting parameters can be used in Python. These are positional parameters and keyword parameters. The parameter which is accessed by the index is called the positional parameter and the parameter which is accessed by key is called the keyword parameter. The uses of these parameters are shown in the next part of this article.

=> ↺ 30 Days Of Python | Day 3 Project: A Simple Earnings Calculator

• Welcome to the first mini project in the 30 Days of Python series. For this project we’re going to be creating a simple console application that will help an employer calculate an employee’s earning in a given week.

• [...]

• Once you’ve written your program, you shouldn’t be worried if it looks a little bit different to ours. You might have chosen different variable names or prompts, or you might have used a slightly different approach to us. This is absolutely fine. There are often may different ways to write even very short programs like this.

=> ↺ When to use the Clean Architecture?

• There are few possible reactions after learning about the Clean Architecture or Hexagonal Architecture (AKA Ports & Adapters) or even merely innocent service layer in Django. Some developers are enthusiastic and try to apply these techniques immediately, some are hesitant, full of doubts. The rest is strongly opposing, declaring openly this is an abomination. Then they say we already have excellent tools, like Django. Then they argue others don’t know about the advanced features of common tools. Then they call you Java developer in disguise.

• As a speaker and an author of the book Implementing the Clean Architecture , I have faced all the reactions from this spectrum. What two extremes fail to do, is to ask the right question – WHEN? When the Clean Architecture should be used?

Rust

=> ↺ This Week in Rust 332

Leftovers

=> ↺ Meet the Pastors Holding In-Person Services During Coronavirus

• At least 25 parishioners filed into a beige-brick church here Wednesday evening and were handed rubber gloves at the door. A handwritten sign directed them to designated areas with seats that had been spaced 6 feet apart. Another sign laid out five things people should do to keep from spreading the new strain of coronavirus, including staying away if they felt sick.

• The founding pastor of City on a Hill, Juan Bustamante, was in a particularly good mood. A day earlier, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott joined 30-plus other governors around the country in issuing a statewide stay-at-home order — though he declined to refer to it as such — that also designated religious services as essential. Under the order, Texans must stay home unless they work in certain business sectors or are grocery shopping, running must-do errands or exercising outdoors. Or going to church.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ The Swedish Alternative: Coronavirus as a Grand Gamble

• As draconian lockdowns, punitive regimes and surveillance become the norm of the coronavirus world, Sweden has treaded more softly in the field.  This is certainly in contrast to its Scandinavian cousins, Denmark and Norway.  The rudiments of a life uninterrupted generally remain in place. Cafes, restaurants and shops, for the most part, remain open and stocked.  As do gyms and cinemas.  Vibrant after-ski parties persist, much to the bemused horror of those across the border.

=> ↺ Is the Covid-19 Pandemic Mother Nature’s Response to Human Transgression?

• The coronavirus may not, in retrospect, prove to be the tipping point that upends human civilization as we know it, but it should serve as a warning that we will experience ever more such events in the future as the world heats up.

=> ↺ Now That Coronavirus Is Inside This Adult Home for the Elderly or Mentally Ill, It May Be Impossible to Stop

• Over the years, Elmhurst residents have learned to mostly ignore the bedraggled and destitute residents who quarrel over cigarettes and beg for change outside the Queens Adult Care Center.

• But now, inside the worn brick building, are all the elements of an epidemiologist’s nightmare.

=> ↺ Appeal for Humanitarian Diplomacy in the Korean Peninsula

• As of March 28, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected over 192 countries and territories around the globe, infecting over 600,000 people and claiming nearly 30,000 lives. In the midst of one of the worst pandemics in recent history, one country still has not publicly confirmed a single case: North Korea.

=> ↺ Trump Administration Ignored National Intelligence Warning about Threat of Deadly Pandemic

• As of April 2, 2020, more than 997,000 patients have been diagnosed with COVID-19 (referred to as Coronavirus) in at least 204 countries and territories, with approximately 50,970 deaths, according to one source tracking the pandemic’s human toll, including more than 236,000 confirmed cases and 5,780 deaths in the United States.

=> ↺ Fighting for a Just COVID-19 Response

• The coronavirus gives us the opportunity to declare in our political and medical decisions that we will not drape the cloak of invisibility over historically neglected victims of disaster.

=> ↺ ‘Government Needs to Step In’: Food Banks Across US Report Unprecedented Demand—and Shortages—as Coronavirus Pandemic Ravages

• “We’re seeing people from every socio-economic level because the majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.”

=> ↺ Medical Staffing Company Slashed Benefits for Doctors, Nurses Fighting COVID-19

• Emergency room doctors and nurses many of whom are dealing with an onslaught of coronavirus patients and shortages of protective equipment — are now finding out that their compensation is getting cut.

=> ↺ Where’s the Money for Health Care and Saving the Planet? Well, We Clearly Have It.

• The necessary response to the COVID outbreak shows how foolish politicians have been to say there’s no money for the things the US—and the world—so desperately need.

=> ↺ What We Need to Understand About Asymptomatic Carriers if We’re Going to Beat Coronavirus

• In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., around the last week of February, I joked to a colleague that maybe now, finally, people would learn how to wash their hands properly. My remark revealed a naive assumption I had at the time, which was that all we needed to do to keep the novel coronavirus contained was follow a few simple guidelines: stay home when symptomatic and maintain good personal hygiene. The problem, I thought, was that nobody was following the rules.

• In the past few weeks, however, more and more reports have emerged to challenge my neat assumptions. Seven out of 14 NBA players, coaches and staff who tested positive didn’t have symptoms when they were diagnosed, The Wall Street Journal reported. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a case study on a nursing facility in King County, Washington, where 23 residents tested positive for COVID-19, and it found that 13 reported no symptoms initially. Sixty singers went to rehearsal and followed all the rules, according to the Los Angeles Times — nobody hugged, shook hands or appeared ill — yet three weeks later, 45 were diagnosed with COVID-19 or had symptoms of the disease, and two have died.

=> ↺ Trump Backs Pharma Company’s Exclusive Patent on Possible COVID-19 Treatment

• As the United States leads the world in coronavirus cases, the nation’s healthcare system is already stretched to capacity and protective gear in short supply. President Trump and his health advisors say more than 100,000 Americans could die from the coronavirus in the next two weeks. Meanwhile, millions of people have lost their jobs, and a record 6.6 million unemployment claims were filed this week, on top of last week’s 3.3 million claims. For more on the economic impacts of the coronavirus, and how Trump has responded to the pandemic by rewarding pharmaceutical corporations like Gilead Sciences and indefinitely suspending environmental regulations, we speak with Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen.

=> ↺ Pandemic Highlights India’s Class Divide as 1.3 Billion Lock Down

• In India, 1.3 billion people have been locked down for more than a week to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The country reports nearly 2,000 cases and at least 50 deaths. Millions living in poverty and migrant workers were stranded far from home when the lockdown was announced, and some have reportedly died making the perilous journey home. More than 80% of India’s workforce is informal, with most living off daily wages often less than $2 or $3 a day — wages they cannot earn under the present curfew — and more than 4 million Indians are homeless. We speak with Indian journalist Rana Ayyub, a contributing global opinions writer for The Washington Post. Her recent piece in Foreign Policy is headlined “Social Distancing Is a Privilege.”

=> ↺ No work through April and regional responsibility: Putin’s latest COVID-19 address at a glance

• This week of non-working days and self-isolation rules has allowed us to buy time to fight the coronavirus epidemic as effectively as possible. However, the peak [of the epidemic] has not passed in Russia, nor has it passed in the world more broadly. Therefore, I am making the decision to extend our non-working days through April 30. Salaries will continue to be paid. If the situation allows, we will adjust that period of time to end earlier. Because the epidemic is spreading through [Russia’s] regions unevenly, some areas must keep harsh restrictions in place, and others will find local, point-by-point decisions to be sufficient. For that reason, regional heads of government will receive additional authority. By the end of the week, they must propose measures optimized for their specific regions. In any case, government agencies, industries with nonstop workflows, medical institutions, and stores will continue to operate: limits may be placed on those facilities only at the federal level. Citizens of Russia, I ask you to pay extremely close attention to government demands and to doctors’ recommendations. Even this short week has shown that if we understand the seriousness of this situation, we will be able to decrease the risks. Good health to you.

=> ↺ Moscow public transit use finally decreases amid COVID-19 response measures

=> ↺ We Are Facing a Resurgence of Sexually Transmitted Infections Amid the Pandemic

• The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the critical importance of a robust and prepared public health infrastructure that can support people with limited income and resources — a grim reality for an increasing number of Americans given the mass shutdown of the U.S. economy.

=> ↺ Prisons are a COVID-19 Petri Dish

• Now is the time to empty the prisons. With over two million people incarcerated, the vast majority for nonviolent crimes, prisoners are packed like sardines, their overcrowding perfect for mass infection and spread of the Covid-19 pestilence. Nonviolent drug offenders, people who couldn’t make bail, people within six months of release, the elderly and infirm – all should be freed before they catch the disease, spread it and die.

=> ↺ Putin will address the nation again today, as Russia confirms a 28-percent spike in COVID-19 cases in the past day

• Vladimir Putin will make another national address on Thursday. The speech will reportedly air on television sometime after 4 p.m., Moscow time. 

=> ↺ Intellectual Disability Service Providers Want to Protect Clients. The State Isn’t Telling Them How.

• Christi Estrada has no idea when she’ll be able to visit her son again.

• John Estrada, 33, has autism. He lives in a government-funded group home in Tucson, Arizona. In mid-March, Christi received a call informing her that John’s house was quarantined because of fears of COVID-19. He was not allowed to go to a day program where he worked one-on-one with a care provider, participated in games, drew on his iPad and went hiking and bowling. Christi was barred from visiting.

=> ↺ International JUULs: E-Cigarette Giant Courts Foreign Governments

• In recent months, JUUL has come under immense pressure in the US. The company has faced hundreds of lawsuits, along with being raided by the FDA. The company has faced scandals around their marketing tactics, causing the company’s overall value to plummet from $38 billion in 2018 to $12 billion in 2020. One way that the company can make up for these lost profits is by spreading into international markets where they can use marketing techniques and advertising pitches that have been deemed illegal by the FDA in the US.

=> ↺ New York Wants Health Workers to Join the Fight Against COVID-19. Will It Pick Up Their Medical Bills if They Get Sick?

• As patients infected with the novel coronavirus begin to overwhelm hospitals in parts of the country, and more medical staff become ill, states are asking retirees, recent medical school graduates and other health professionals to step into the breach.

• New York City, the current epicenter of the pandemic with more than 44,915 cases, is recruiting medical volunteers with exhortations that recall World War I and World War II-era posters, “We want you for medical work now.”

=> ↺ Corporate Media Ignore International Cooperation as Shortcut to Coronavirus Vaccine

• When Dr. Jonas Salk was asked in a legendary interview about who owned the patent on the effective polio vaccine he and his team had developed, he acknowledged that their achievement belonged to “the people,” and likened efforts to profit off their innovation to be as unethical as trying to patent the Sun (Washington Post, 3/2/20). Their story is a fitting reminder in the midst of a global coronavirus pandemic, as Salk and his team understood that universal no-cost or low-cost access to their innovation was central to their mission of eradicating the scourge of their day.

=> ↺ You Don’t Need to Believe China About China’s Coronavirus Success

• Bloomberg News (4/1/20) reported that anonymous US officials say that a secret US intelligence report says that China’s statistics on the coronavirus outbreak are “fake”…

=> ↺ Russian public health authority can’t explain why it’s published the same exact coronavirus test count for three days straight

• On April 2, Russia’s Federal Service for Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare (Rospotrebnadzor) reported that more than 536,000 tests for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 have been conducted throughout the country since the pandemic began.

=> ↺ In Russia, COVID-19 criminal charges are starting to roll in. Attorneys say they’re a scare tactic to keep people at home.

• On March 26, a residential care facility in St. Petersburg called “Zarya” (“Dawn”) was reoutfitted to serve as an observation center for city residents returning from abroad. Ever since, the center has been used to contain dozens of Russians accused of breaking self-isolation rules, and some of those individuals are facing criminal prosecution.

=> ↺ How sleeping with your phone increases the risk of cancer and infertility

• This risk linked to our dear laptops, the Department of Health of the State of California has just recognized it, based on numerous studies including one of the WHO. One of the safety recommendations in particular would be to not sleep with your phone. Not so eccentric as the laptop has replaced the blanket of many teenagers … and adults. It is estimated that 80% of users sleep with their phones.

• “The use of mobile phones has increased dramatically in recent years, including among children and young adults,” said the California Department of Health. However, certain laboratory experiments as well as studies on human health have suggested a possible long-term effect of the waves emitted by cell phones on human health. A potential impact on the occurrence of brain cancer, acoustic nerve tumors and salivary glands, but also on the decline in the number of sperm or their efficiency. The state of California also mentions a possible link between intensive use of the laptop and the appearance of headaches, as well as effects on learning and memory, hearing, behavior and sleep.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

=> ↺ Chrome, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, VSCode Now Unofficially Available For Clear Linux

• One of the common criticisms for those trying to use Clear Linux on the desktop is that it lacks easy access to proprietary packages like Google Chrome and Steam. There has been plumbing within its swupd package/bundle management system to support third-party repositories to expand the ecosystem and now we’re finally seeing that happen.

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

=> ↺ Code Search for Google open source projects

• We are pleased to launch Code Search for Google open source projects. Code Search is one of Google’s most popular internal tools, and now we have a version (same binary, different flags) targeted to open source communities.

• Googlers use Code Search every day to help understand the codebase: they search for half-remembered functions and usages; jump through the codebase to figure out what calls the function they are viewing; and try to identify when and why a particular line of code changed.

• The Code Search tool gives a rich code browsing experience. For example, the blame button shows which user last changed each line and you can display history on the same page as the file contents. In addition, it supports a powerful search language and, for some repositories, cross-references.

=> ↺ Google Opens Code Search For Angular, Dart, TensorFlow And More

• Google has announced the launch of Code Search for its popular open source projects — Angular, Bazel, Dart, ExoPlayer, Firebase SDK, Flutter, Go, gVisor, Kythe, Nomulus, Outline, and Tensorflow.

Privatisation/Privateering

Linux Foundation

=> ↺ The Linux Foundation to Award 500 Training Scholarships

=> ↺ OpenDaylight Magnesium Advances Open Source Software Defined Networking

• On March 31, the OpenDaylight Magnesium release became generally available marking the 12th release of the open source Software Defined Networking (SDN) controller platform. The OpenDaylight project was officially announced in April 2013 with a long list of marquee sponsor all focused on the goal of creating an open source SDN controller. OpenDaylight has two releases in any given year, with Magnesium following up the Sodium and Neon releases from 2019.

• As is often the case, there are updates to existing projects as well as the addition of new projects in the Magnesium release. OpenDaylight is a platform that is comprised of multiple modular component project that users can choose to mix and match in different configurations as needed.

Security

=> ↺ Security updates for Thursday

• Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (chromium, kernel, linux-hardened, linux-lts, and pam-krb5), Debian (haproxy, libplist, and python-bleach), Fedora (tomcat), Gentoo (ghostscript-gpl, haproxy, ledger, qtwebengine, and virtualbox), Red Hat (haproxy, nodejs:12, qemu-kvm-rhev, and rh-haproxy18-haproxy), SUSE (memcached and qemu), and Ubuntu (apport).

=> ↺ COVID-19 forces browser makers to continue supporting TLS 1.0

• COVID-19 is forcing browser makers including Google and Mozilla to continue supporting the TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 protocols.

• In one of the strangest stories of the year, the COVID-19 virus has halted plans by major browsers to drop support for the ageing and insecure Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0 and 1.1 protocols.

• Mozilla Firefox and Google’s Chrome developers sneaked out the move in recent days with only Microsoft Edge team bothering to formally announce the sudden reprieve on Tuesday.

• In fairness, with COVID-19 throwing development schedules into minor chaos browser development teams probably have other things on their minds right now anyway.

• While a temporary delay, it’s still an unexpected retreat for an industry which had showed unity in collectively deciding to banish TLS 1.0 and the lesser used TLS 1.1 by early 2020.

=> ↺ New TLDs and Automatic link detection was a bad idea

• I’ve a few more .conf files in /etc which could be interesting in an IT environment, but for the sake of playing with it I registered nsswitch.co at godaddy. I do not want to endorse them in anyway, but for the first year it’s only 13.08EUR right now, which is okay to pay for a stupid demo. So if you feel like it, you can probably register something stupid for yourself to play around with. I do not intent to renew this domain next year, so be aware of what happens then with the next owner.

=> ↺ In-Store Gift Card Scams Need More Investigation

• Although consumers might think it’s safe to purchase gift cards in-store, scammers are managing to hack those cards’ security codes. “They can actually tamper with the card itself and then recover that so it looks like it’s never been tampered with, or there are some devices that can actually strip the number off the cards,” Stan Prager with GoGeeks told KPTV.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ When Big Brother Goes to School the Students are the Test Subjects

• Facial recognition software is being sold to schools with the promise that it will increase their students’ safety, both on and off campus. Proponents proclaim that these systems are imperative in reducing drug abuse and violence, overseeing student mental health, and even going as far to claim that they have the ability to prevent school shootings– all without any real evidence in support. Further, the students in schools who have decided to adopt these measures are required to participate, foregoing parent permission.

=> ↺ Big Brother in the Age of Coronavirus: 100+ Groups Warn Against Exploiting Pandemic to Permanently Expand Surveillance State

• “These are extraordinary times, but human rights law still applies.”

=> ↺ New Inspector General’s Report Finds Even More Problems With The FBI’s FISA Surveillance Applications

• The FBI’s inability (or unwillingness) to craft factual FISA court affidavits was exposed late last year by an investigation by the DOJ’s Inspector General. During the FBI’s surveillance of former Trump advisor, Carter Page, information known by the agency was omitted to allow agents to continue its interception of Page’s communications. Despite having obtained info showing Page was likely not acting on behalf of a foreign power, the FBI continued its surveillance for months by hiding this key finding from the FISA court.

=> ↺ Teleconferencing Company Zoom Pitching End-To-End Encryption That Really Isn’t End-To-End

• As Karl Bode wrote what feels like a decade ago on March 19, 2020, privacy and encryption will be more important than ever during this pandemic and the future that succeeds it. Plenty of governments have been sacrificing citizens’ privacy for better virus tracking and plenty of governments were already throwing shade at encryption well before the pandemic became a pandemic. That includes our government, which has been agitating against encryption for several years now and fighting against our privacy in federal courts for decades.

=> ↺ Saudi Arabia Exploiting Wireless SS7 Flaw to Track Targets In The United States

• In 2017, hackers and security researchers highlighted long-standing vulnerabilities in Signaling System 7 (SS7, or Common Channel Signalling System 7 in the US), a series of protocols first built in 1975 to help connect phone carriers around the world. While the problem isn’t new, a 2016 60 Minutes report brought wider attention to the fact that the flaw can allow a hacker to track user location, dodge encryption, and even record private conversations. All while the intrusion looks like ordinary carrier to carrier chatter among a sea of other, “privileged peering relationships.”

=> ↺ Senator Blumenthal Is Super Mad That Zoom Isn’t Actually Offering The End To End Encryption His Law Will Outlaw

• Richard Blumenthal has been attacking internet services he doesn’t understand since before he was even a US Senator. It has carried over into his job as a Senator, and was abundantly obvious in his role as a co-sponsor for FOSTA. His hatred of the internet was on clear display during a hearing over FOSTA in which he flat out said that if smaller internet companies couldn’t put in place the kind of infrastructure required to comply with FOSTA, that they should go out of business. Blumenthal’s latest ridiculous bit of legislation lose your Section 230 protections. And while Blumenthal likes to pretend that the EARN IT Act doesn’t target encryption, he also lied about FOSTA and insisted it had no impact on CDA 230 (which it directly amended).

=> ↺ Harden Your Zoom Settings to Protect Your Privacy and Avoid Trolls

• Whether you are on Zoom because your employer or school requires it or you just downloaded it to stay in touch with friends and family, people have rushed to the video chat platform in the wake of COVID-19 stay-at-home orders—and journalists, researchers, and regulators have noticed its many security and privacy problems. Zoom has responded with a surprisingly good plan for next steps, but talk is cheap. Zoom will have to follow through on its security and privacy promises if it wants to regain users’ trust.

• In the meantime, take these steps to harden your Zoom privacy settings and protect your meetings from “Zoombombing” trolls. The settings below are all separate, which means you don’t need to change them all, and you don’t need to change them in any particular order. Consider which settings make sense for you and the groups you communicate with, and do your best to make sure meeting organizers and participants are on the same page about settings and shared expectations.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ The Fury and the Folly: We Need a Vaccine to Stop Endless War

• What if idealism were the essence of human politics, not its scapegoat?

=> ↺ The Future May Be Female, But the Pandemic is Patriarchal

• Before I found myself “sheltering in place,” this article was to be about women’s actions around the world to mark March 8th, International Women’s Day. From Pakistan to Chile, women in their millions filled the streets, demanding that we be able to control our bodies and our lives. Women came out in Iraq and Kyrgyzstan, Turkey and Peru, the Philippines and Malaysia. In some places, they risked beatings by masked men. In others, they demanded an end to femicide — the millennia-old reality that women in this world are murdered daily simply because they are women.

=> ↺ Incompetence on Covid-19 Exposed at Home, Trump Tests Wagging the Dog With Threats Against Iran

• One reason for Trump’s saber-rattling against Iran may be that he hopes a conflict with Iran could take the public’s mind off his criminal mishandling of the coronavirus.

=> ↺ We Need a Coronavirus Truce

• International cooperation needs to take priority right now, and countries must stop their wars against one another and against their own populations.

=> ↺ US-Backed Forces in Cameroon Displace Thousands of Innocent People

• The soldiers of the BIR have burned down entire villages and subjected civilians to arbitrary detention, torture, indiscriminate killings, Joe Penney reported for the Intercept.

=> ↺ As Trump Lobs Threats and Deploys Missiles, Iran Demands Halt to ‘Warmongering During Coronavirus Outbreak’

• “What kind of maniac risks such a war in the middle of a global pandemic? Answer: President Donald Trump, aided and abetted by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser Robert O’Brien.”

=> ↺ Uganda’s ‘Kill the Gays’ Bill and Chick-Fil-A

• In November 2019, the Ugandan lawmakers re-introduced a bill that will criminalize the “promotion and recruitment” of homosexuality and impose the death penalty for gay sex acts.

=> ↺ Rise of US Airstrikes in Afghanistan Caused Threefold Increase in Civilian Casualties

• Since the Trump administration softened its rules of engagement in Afghanistan in 2017, the county has relied heavily on US airstrikes to combat the Taliban. This shift has put more civilians at risk because airstrikes can now take place far from US or Afghan forces’ operations. According to the Bureau’s report, May 2019 saw the largest uptick in airstrikes since 2015, when the Bureau started covering the conflict. In 2019, the US was responsible for eighty percent of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan, while Afghan forces accounted for fewer than ten percent of them. The escalation of US airstrikes is likely due to efforts to force the Taliban to negotiate as a part of the Doha peace process.

=> ↺ Trump Admin’s Bounty on Venezuelan President Triggers Explosive Confession of Violent Plot

• Washington’s indictment of Maduro and members of his inner circle has backfired and could lead to the arrest of coup leader Juan Guaidó, reports Leonardo Flores.

Environment

=> ↺ Covid-19’s viral lessons for climate heating

• In the midst of the coronavirus epidemic, Covid-19’s viral lessons offer a warning of what may lie ahead.

=> ↺ Decline in Fossil Fuel Emissions Due to Coronavirus Lockdowns No Substitute for Climate Action, Advocates Say

• “If this were what climate success looked like, I wouldn’t want to vote for it,” wrote NYU professor Gernot Wagner. “I care about climate change because I care about people, and people are dying right now.”

=> ↺ Google Has Made “Substantial” Donations to Climate-Change Denying Organizations

• According to the Guardian, an unidentified Google spokesperson said: “We’re hardly alone among companies that contribute to organizations while strongly disagreeing with them on climate policy.”

=> ↺ Delaying #COP26 Over Coronavirus, Say Green Groups, ‘Is Not an Excuse to Postpone Climate Ambition!’

• Activists urged world leaders to learn from the pandemic “about the importance of listening to science and the need for urgent collective global action.”

Energy

=> ↺ Delta Airlines Jet Fuel Dump and Environmental Racism

• The article states that protocol is for pilots to dump fuel in case of emergency above 10,000 feet. The second requirement when dumping fuel is that it must be over an unpopulated area or above the ocean. The pilot admitted that he dumped fuel even when it was unnecessary at a mere 2,000 feet above ground level. This act overwhelmingly affected low-income Latinx Cudahy school teachers, students, and residents, who, in this area, are considered to be environmentally disadvantaged. They live nearby active multiple sources of chronic pollution including oil wells and commercial truck routes. As a result, the area has had record levels of asthma hospitalizations in years past. In response, Ponce reported, community members are making their voices heard about environmental injustices that affect low-income Latinx, black, and brown communities, in Los Angeles and around the country.

=> ↺ As Pandemic Paralyzes Global Economy, World Is ‘Awash in Seas of Oil’ With Nowhere Left to Store It

• “How about we #KeepItInTheGround?”

=> ↺ ‘Moving to Rob Us Blind in Broad Daylight’? Trump to Hold In-Person Meeting With Big Oil CEOs to Discuss Coronavirus Relief

• “Right now money is needed for people’s health, direct relief, and making sure we have a resilient future—not bolstering the fossil fuel industry.”

=> ↺ Trump to Hold In-Person Meeting With Big Oil CEOs to Discuss COVID-19 Relief

• President Donald Trump on Friday is reportedly set to hold an in-person White House meeting with top executives from some of the largest fossil fuel companies in the world — including Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and Continental Resources — to discuss relief measures for the industry as the coronavirus pandemic tanks global oil demand.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ It’s Time to Clean Ecofascism Out of Environmentalism

• The coronavirus pandemic is lethal, but could there be a silver lining beyond the pain? Social media is awash with how the newly cleaned environment is hosting wildlife not seen for years. Dolphins are swimming in Venetian canals: except they aren’t, they’re really near Sardinia as usual. Swans? Yes, but they’ve always been there. The canals may be cleaner but the story’s fake.

=> ↺ Alliance for the Wild Rockies Sues Feds to Stop a Project That Will Kill 72 Yellowstone Grizzly Bears in Wyoming’s Upper Green and Gros Ventre Rivers

• Once over 50,000 strong in the lower 48 states, grizzlies were reduced to less than 1,000 bears. Grizzly bears were eliminated from Texas by 1890, California by 1922, Utah by 1923, Oregon by 1931, New Mexico by 1933, and Arizona by 1935.

=> ↺ Can You Draw An Extinct Species From Memory?

Finance

=> ↺ ‘Not Enough’: Trump Reversal on Coronavirus Relief Payments Still Leaves ‘Unacceptable’ Barrier for Millions

• “They’re still requiring SSI recipients and veterans receiving pensions to file a tax return before receiving their coronavirus stimulus payments.”

=> ↺ By The Time We Notice We’re Hungry, It May Be Too Late

• “[A]s the top U.S. watermelon-producing state prepares for harvest, Reuters reports, “many of the workers needed to collect the crop are stuck in Mexico …. Without the workers crops could rot in fields throughout the country,” starting in Florida and California where major harvests begin in April and May.

=> ↺ ‘Never Seen Anything Like It’: Economists Warn 6.6 Million New Jobless Claims Portend Unparalleled Crisis

• “A portrait of disaster. Unemployment insurance claims for the last two weeks are mind-blowing.”

=> ↺ ‘Portrait of Disaster’: Initial Unemployment Claims in US Jump from 211,000 to 6.6 million in Just 3 Weeks

• Given the incredible deterioration of the labor market in a matter of weeks, federal policymakers will absolutely need to come back and provide more desperately needed relief.

=> ↺ Unemployed Workers Can Get SNAP During Health Emergency

• States may need to update their public information about eligibility and their application process to enable eligible people to receive SNAP.

=> ↺ Swept Away: Disappearing and Criminalization of the Homeless Continues

• City and government officials repeatedly destroy these people’s lives and the few belongings that they have left in this world in effort to “clean up” public spaces. They uproot the self-built shelters and inhabitants’ belongings, leaving people with little means to meet their basic human needs and nowhere else to go. Authorities have caused the deaths of many people during these sweeps as many just want the problem to disappear without addressing or changing the root causes.

=> ↺ When the Invisible Hand Gives You the Finger

• Corporate media shrug as elite declare loss of profits worse than loss of lives.

=> ↺ Trump Congratulates Businesses for Helping Fight Coronavirus. But His Own Company Has Been Absent.

• As America’s coronavirus crisis has mushroomed, President Donald Trump has repeatedly touted the efforts of businesses to meet a desperate nation’s needs. “It’s been really amazing to see these big, strong, powerful — in some cases, very small companies, family-owned companies — step up and make a lot of great product for what we’re going through and what we will continue to be going through for a while,” Trump declared on March 24.

• His press conferences have sometimes seemed like a parade of CEOs, from the leaders of retail and pharmaceutical giants like Walmart and Roche to chiefs of relative mites like MyPillow. Vice President Mike Pence and Ivanka Trump have chimed in, too, lauding one hotel chain for offering free rooms to doctors, nurses and medical first responders.

=> ↺ ‘How Does It Feel to Sell Your Soul to the World’s Richest Man?’: Obama Aide Turned Amazon Exec Ripped Over Fired Workplace Organizer

• “Your boss is the richest person on Earth, and he just became $3.4 billion richer last month dumping stock in anticipation of this pandemic. How much does he pay you to pretend he can’t afford to give his workers PPE and a sane paid sick leave policy?”

=> ↺ How to Prepare for the Trump Recession

• Stronger safety nets are not only good for individuals and families in need. They will also prevent the looming recession from becoming an even deeper and longer economic crisis. 

=> ↺ For Americans With Bills to Pay, Help Is on the Way. Sort Of.

• April has arrived. Americans, hunkered down while a pandemic rages, face what to do about their mortgage, their rent payment, their credit card bill and their other debts.

• Local, state and federal governments have announced a variety of aid programs to help debtors through this dark period. But like the response to the coronavirus itself, the varying initiatives have been scattered and confused. Some governors acted to stop renters from being evicted weeks ago, while in other states the courts are still open, and meanwhile the federal government says it depends what kind of mortgage your landlord has. The answer to what kind of help can I get is a resounding, “It depends” — on what type of debt you’re talking about, who owns your debt and where you live. And on how long this societywide lockdown carries on. In short, it’s a mess.

=> ↺ Primary Election Debate Exposes Poverty and Homelessness in New Hampshire

• In 2018, New Hampshire had one of the lowest poverty rates in the nation; at just 7.6 percent, it was one of just six states in the US with a poverty rate under ten percent. As Jarret noted, some critics have argued that New Hampshire’s “unique and hallowed place in the presidential-campaign calendar” ought to be changed, because its relative lack of poverty is “ not reflective of the national condition.” However, Murphy wrote, New Hampshire also suffers from poverty, just not in ways that are readily “visible to television cameras and news correspondents who ramble through for a few days every four years.”

=> ↺ An Open Letter to My Landlord #CancelRent

• We will not be paying rent for April, and we thought we’d let you know why.

=> ↺ Subway Fare Hike in Chile Results in Mass Protests

• The people of Chile have been dealing with neoliberalism for decades and their lives are affected in many ways because of it. The protests in that country have even spread to Argentina where a protestor, Juan Carlos Giordano, stated that the people don’t have access to water, electricity, and that the prices of most goods in his country are at first world-levels while the salaries are at third world-levels.

=> ↺ In Nation Without Medicare for All, 3.5 Million Workers May Have Lost Employer-Provided Insurance Over Last Two Weeks

• “The COVID-19 pandemic lays bare the cruelty of tying health insurance coverage to employment.”

=> ↺ Even During a Pandemic, Plutocrats Prioritize Profits Over People

• These 24 billionaires, executives, and right-wing pundits are urging a premature rollback of social distancing, risking millions of American lives.

=> ↺ Trump Labor Department Accused of Quietly ‘Twisting the Law’ to Slash Paid Sick Leave Amid Pandemic

• “The Trump administration is robbing workers of the paid sick days and paid leave Congress passed into law for them. That is unconscionable.”

=> ↺ Stock Sales by GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler Trigger Allegations of Insider Trading

• An ethics watchdog called for Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., to be investigated by “any federal law enforcement agencies that have jurisdiction over insider trading” after a new report revealed the lawmaker unloaded millions of dollars in stocks from industries hit hard by the economic fallout over the coronavirus pandemic as she publicly downplayed the extent of the outbreak.

=> ↺ Senator Loeffler’s COVID-Related Stock Trades Looking Even Worse, While Feds Start Investigating Senator Burr’s

• As we noted just a few weeks ago, two Senators — Kelly Loeffler from Georgia and Richard Burr from North Carolina, both of whom were publicly trying to play down the risks associated with COVID-19 — were quietly engaging in stock trades that suggested they had a different viewpoint (while five different Senators sold stock during this period, only Loeffler’s and Burr’s look particularly suspicious). Burr’s stock sell-off was revealed first, and got the most attention, in part because he’s also the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and was getting classified briefings about COVID-19. The latest news on that front is that the Justice Department has supposedly opened an investigation:

=> ↺ Russian government to give businesses 2.6 billion rubles to avoid layoffs

• Russia’s executive cabinet will allocate 2.6 billion rubles ($32.9 million) from the federal budget to banks with orders to compensate small and mid-sized businesses for COVID-19-related losses, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced through his cabinet’s press service.

=> ↺ The Return of Infrastructure Week

• According to the Washington Post, Donald Trump is calling for a fourth stimulus package, which he wants to be “very big and bold,” and to focus on infrastructure. He argued that this is a good time to do this, since interest rates are very low.

=> ↺ In Desperation, New York State Pays Up to 15 Times the Normal Prices for Medical Equipment

• With the coronavirus outbreak creating an unprecedented demand for medical supplies and equipment, New York state has paid 20 cents for gloves that normally cost less than a nickel and as much as $7.50 each for masks, about 15 times the usual price. It’s paid up to $2,795 for infusion pumps, more than twice the regular rate. And $248,841 for a portable X-ray machine that typically sells for $30,000 to $80,000.

• This payment data, provided by state officials, shows just how much the shortage of key medical equipment is driving up prices. Forced to venture outside their usual vendors and contracts, states and cities are paying exorbitant sums on a spot market ruled by supply and demand. Although New York’s attorney general has denounced excessive prices, and ordered merchants to stop overcharging people for hand sanitizers and disinfectant sprays, state laws against price gouging generally don’t apply to government purchases.

=> ↺ ‘The Poor, the Sick, the Homeless, the Children, the Low-Wage Workers’: Moral Leaders Demand Coronavirus Relief for Most Vulnerable

• “We are asking people to call on the White House and Congress to enact relief for the people that Jesus cared about,” say the Poor People’s Campaign co-chairs.

=> ↺ ‘Nightmare Scenario That Everyone Predicted’: As Millions Struggle to Meet Basic Needs, Trump Organization Requests Financial Relief

• “I’d be interested in knowing what help Trump and Jared are extending to their tenants as they ask for help themselves.”

=> ↺ The Dark Secrets in the Fed’s Last Wall Street Bailout Are Getting a Devious Makeover in Today’s Bailout

• From December 2007 to November 10, 2011, the Federal Reserve, secretly and without the awareness of Congress, funneled $19.6 trillion in cumulative loans to bail out the trading houses on Wall Street. Just 14 global financial institutions received 83.9 percent of those loans or $16.41 trillion. (See chart above.) A number of those banks were insolvent at the time and did not, under the law, qualify for these Fed loans. Significant amounts of these loans were collateralized with junk bonds and stocks, at a time when both markets were in freefall. Under the law, the Fed is only allowed to make loans against “good” collateral.

=> ↺ The White House Wanted To Give $0 To Tribes In The $2 Trillion Stimulus Bill

• In the end, tribes got about $10 billion in the emergency $2 trillion stimulus bill that President Donald Trump signed into law last Friday.

• But if the White House had its way, tribes wouldn’t have gotten a penny in direct relief, according to three Senate Democratic aides familiar with negotiations on the bill. And if Senate Republicans had their way, tribes would have gotten way less than they got.

• The National Congress of American Indians, the largest organization representing the interests of tribal governments and communities, told Congress in mid-March that the nation’s 574 tribes would need at least $20 billion in direct federal relief to stem job losses and economic instability caused by the coronavirus pandemic. When the Senate and White House began talks on the stimulus, Democrats pushed for creating a $200 billion stabilization fund to provide direct aid to local and state governments. Of that $200 billion, $20 billion should go to tribal governments, they proposed.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ What We Should Do About COVID-19

• With his first speech on the coronavirus, Prime Minister Narendra Modi got us to scare evil spirits away by having people bang the hell out of their pots and pans.

=> ↺ The Coronavirus Paradox: Biden’s Delegate Lead Increases as the Need for Bernie’s Politics Adds Up

• The unfolding health and economic crises confirms the importance of moving quickly in the direction Bernie Sanders has been pointing. It is time to construct a new normal that is truly decent—one that is characterized by social and economic democracy.

=> ↺ ‘Still Ahead of His Time’: New Video Details Bernie Sanders’ Prescient Warnings About Pandemic Threat and Need for Medicare for All

• “Voters are watching in real time as Bernie Sanders’ platform—Medicare for All, a federal housing guarantee, paid leave for everyone, and much else—is looking more and more like a common-sense solution to huge problems.”

=> ↺ The Coronavirus Rained on Trump’s Easter Charade

• In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump was hell-bent on loosening social restraints so that churches could be “packed” on Easter (April 12). Never mind that health care experts warned that such a premature move would worsen the spread of the virus, overwhelm hospitals with patients, lead to countless deaths and result in even more severe damage to the economy. Trump persisted, saying, “The day Christians celebrate the resurrection of Christ is a ‘very special day’ to him.” And, “ ‘It would be a beautiful time and it’s just about the timeline that I think is right.’” (“’Beautiful thing’: Trump hopes to see ‘packed churches’ on Easter Sunday,” By Anthony Leonardi, www.washingtonexaminer.com, Mar. 24, 2020)

=> ↺ As DNC Postpones Milwaukee Convention From July to August, Critics Say ‘Absolutely Foolish’ to Hold Wisconsin Primary Next Week

• “The DNC is delaying a convention that was set to take place in Wisconsin in July. But the Democratic governor and Republican legislature there won’t move—or cancel the in-person portion of—a primary that’s happening there next Tuesday.”

=> ↺ Russian foreign ministry: Russia and U.S. evenly split costs of newly arrived coronavirus aid

• Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry has announced that humanitarian aid sent to New York’s JFK Airport to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States was paid for in part by Russia and in part by the United States.

=> ↺ Fox News Has Been Lying Its Aging Viewers Into Early Graves

• That moment when you step back from yourself and realize every cell and fiber in your body is a gusting scream of fury and fear so encompassing that you are thrumming on a subharmonic level, yet simultaneously you are so quiescent that the purring cat asleep on your chest has no idea of your condition — that is my personal resting face today.

=> ↺ “We’re Running Out of Time to Get This Right”: Congress Urged to Move Swiftly to Protect 2020 Elections From Pandemic’s Mayhem

• “None of us know how long this pandemic will last, and no American should have to choose between protecting their health and exercising their right to vote.”

=> ↺ The real viral hoax Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation says ‘RT’ has been buying comments and faking view counts. ‘RT’ says it’s the most popular news source on YouTube.

• The Russian state-funded international TV network RT (formerly Russia Today), led by Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan, has been paying to fake its YouTube view and comment counts, according to a new investigation by the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). The FBK is led by opposition politician Alexey Navalny.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Chilling Free Expression: How ICE Uses Social Media to Target Immigrants

• As Max Rivlin-Nadler reported in a December 22, 2019 article in The Intercept, in Southern California, ICE agents used Facebook posts, photographs, and other personal digital information, to locate and ultimately arrest an immigrant after the man posted photos of himself and his family at his father’s birthday party. This is just one of the growing number of cases in which ICE has used a social media “surveillance dragnet” to target vulnerable and often non-violent immigrants who might be subject to deportation.

=> ↺ Google News Highlights Homophobic Stories about LGTBQ Community

• In that study, Tracy found that Google News featured content associated with a number of people or groups that have been classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

=> ↺ Automated Moderation Must be Temporary, Transparent and Easily Appealable

• For most of us, social media has never been more crucial than it is right now: it’s keeping us informed and connected during an unprecedented moment in time. People have been using major platforms for all kinds of things, from following and posting news, to organizing aid—such as coordinating the donations of masks across international boundaries—to sharing tips on working from home to, of course, pure entertainment.

• At the same time, the content moderation challenges faced by social media platforms have not disappeared—and in some cases have been exacerbated by the pandemic. In the past weeks, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook have all made public statements about their moderation strategies at this time. While they differ in details, they all have one key element in common: the increased reliance on automated tools.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Assange’s Privacy Breached During 24/7 Surveillance of Ecuadorian Embassy

• Beyond raising general concerns over privacy, these secret surveillance methods could be seen as a serious breach of attorney-client privilege, as conversations and meetings between Assange and his legal team would be picked up and broadcast through the embassy bugging network. What’s more, the head of Undercover Global, David Morales, has some ties to individuals close to President Trump, providing circumstantial evidence that the US might have been involved in the operation. Morales’s company was often employed by the casino magnate and by political donor Sheldon Adelson, who has close ties to Donald Trump and is a major donor to the Republican Party. During this same period in 2018, Assange became the target of CIA surveillance under the direction of then director Mike Pompeo. Assange has since been apprehended by British authorities and is awaiting extradition to the US where he faces charges in relation to his activity with Wikileaks that could lead to as much as 175-year prison sentence.

=> ↺ Revive Journalism with a Stimulus Package and a Public Option

• Media scholar Victor Pickard writes in Jacobin and the Guardian that small local newspapers have been dying out, and the newspaper industry in general has lost more than fifty percent of its reporting staff since 2001. This is evidence that the market-based system we currently have is not working. For journalism to survive and thrive, we need a public option, which will require big changes. There would have to be government subsidies, a firewall put in place to protect media outlets from their influence. Media monopolies would have to be broken up and diversification would need to be a necessity, along with strengthening unions in newsrooms. This would replace the the profit model that we have today in the US. News outlets would have to be regulated and act in support of the informational needs of society. The general public would have to be included in order to be truly invested and supportive of such an endeavor.

=> ↺ At risk from coronavirus, Julian Assange is one of just two inmates in Belmarsh maximum-security prison held for skipping bail

• Julian Assange is one of just two inmates at Belmarsh maximum security prison in London, which houses 797 prisoners, being held for violating bail conditions, it can be revealed. Last week, lawyers for Julian Assange, who has a chronic lung condition, applied for emergency bail for their client on the grounds he was particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic. The presiding judge on the case, Vanessa Baraitser, rejected the claim.

• Yet Declassified UK has found that HMP Belmarsh has been repeatedly criticised by prisons inspectors since 2005 for not having adequate anti-infection precautions in place.

• New figures released to Declassified UK from Britain’s Ministry of Justice (MOJ) also appear to show the irregular nature of the conditions in which Assange is being held.

• The figures, correct for March 11 2020, show that more than 20% of the Belmarsh prison population is held for murder, while nearly two-thirds — or 477 people — are imprisoned for violent offences. A further 16 inmates are held for offences related to terrorism, including four people who planned to carry out terrorist attacks.

• Twenty inmates are held for sex crimes against children. This includes four people imprisoned in Belmarsh for rape of a child under 13, with a further three jailed for making indecent photographs of a child. Thirty-seven inmates are in Belmarsh for serious sex crimes, including 14 inmates convicted of rape of a woman aged over 16.

• In the list of offences of Belmarsh inmates provided to Declassified UK (found at the bottom of this article) it is likely that the one prisoner in the “fail to surrender to court/police bail at the appointed time” category refers to Assange. Another prisoner is held under a similar category: “fail to answer to court/police bail as soon as practicable”. It is not known who this prisoner is.

• The new figures raise further questions as to why the WikiLeaks publisher continues to be held at Belmarsh, which is described as “holding high-security risk prisoners on remand and awaiting trial”. The prison is infamous for its “Category A” facility which houses inmates described by the British government as “prisoners who, if they were to escape, pose the most threat to the public, the police or national security”.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ The Problem with the Term “Latinx”

• Despite the intentions of those who promote “Latinx,” efforts to be more progressive and inclusive continue to leave out important marginalized peoples, Tlapoyawa noted. In trying to decolonize language and thought, some unintentionally further the oppression and exclusion of indigenous people and those of African origins. Historically, Tlapoyawa noted, “The very idea of a ‘Latin America’ and ‘Latin’ people comes from the French intellectual Michel Chevalier, who sought in the late 1800s to create an umbrella term that would unite colonial subjects under a generic ‘Latin’ identity.”

=> ↺ Indigenous Communities Receive Unequal Aid After Natural Disasters

• The current system FEMA has in place for distributing aid puts indigenous communities at a disadvantage. To receive certain sorts of aid, such as “permanent, non-emergency repairs or long-term mitigation measures”, tribes must have a FEMA-approved mitigation plan. However, only 30% of tribes had one. In these communities, every region has one tribal liaison who, “navigates tribal agencies, approved contractors, the federal government and tribal council.” For these situations, this individual would be the sole person in charge of handling the heavy load of paperwork FEMA requires, with no guarantee that any funding or support will be provided. By making the process of seeking aid needlessly difficult for indigenous people, the agency is unfairly barring access to relief based on ethnicity/race.

=> ↺ Lebanon’s Syrian Victims Sold into Prostitution

• The mass influx of Syrian women and children refugees makes them very vulnerable to exploitation. Many times, women are married to a man who turns out to be a trafficker, while other women are sold to traffickers by their desperate family members. Most of these women want to leave this work, but lack the means to do so, in part because there is dire shortage of outreach programs to assist them. Paul, a volunteer for the Jesuits, explained to Al Jazeera that, in 2016, 75 trafficked Syrian women were confined in a brothel in the coastal town of Jounieh, where they were held for years, without any external assistance.

=> ↺ Exposing a Mental Health Facility for Foster Children Known as the “Misery Mill”

• Some children who were sent to Millcreek say that it’s a “horrific” and “violent” place. They report being bribed to fight other kids, and being beaten by the employees to the point where they sustained broken bones and bruises. One 11-year-old boy said “a female worker pushed him down, grabbed him by the hair and put her foot on his back.”

=> ↺ Florida School District under Attack by Anti-LGBTQ Organization

• In the fall of 2018, Jackie Jackson-Dean, a school psychologist and the LGBTQ liaison for schools in Pasco County, Florida, helped to create LGBTQ inclusive guidelines for the district. Not long after, she came under fire from Liberty Counsel, a designated hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Malevolent messages started rolling in from strangers who found her personal information.

=> ↺ How COVID-19 Changed Our Lives: a Report From Beijing

• On January 18, after attending a meeting in Hangzhou, I planned to return to my home in Beijing. At that time, the Spring Festival in China was approaching. Although I had started buying tickets one week in advance, I still did not get a high-speed train ticket from Hangzhou to Beijing so I had to go from Hangzhou to Shanghai and wait for several hours before changing to a later train to return to Beijing.

=> ↺ New Green Scare: Law Enforcement Crackdown on Environmental Activism

• As Elizabeth King explained in an October 6, 2019 Progressive magazine article, while the Trump administration’s corporate-friendly policies dramatically endanger the health of our environment, those who take direct action in its defense are increasingly being framed as a domestic terrorists. The FBI and pro-fossil fuel politicians like Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe have identified environmental activism as a significant domestic terrorism threat.

=> ↺ Leaked Border Patrol Memo Tells Agents to Send Migrants Back Immediately — Ignoring Asylum Law

• For the first time since the enactment of the Refugee Act in 1980, people who come to the U.S. saying they fear persecution in their home countries are being turned away by Border Patrol agents with no chance to make a legal case for asylum.

• The shift, confirmed in internal Border Patrol guidance obtained by ProPublica, is the upshot of the Trump administration’s hasty emergency action to largely shut down the U.S.-Mexico border over coronavirus fears. It’s the biggest step the administration has taken to limit humanitarian protection for people entering the U.S. without papers.

=> ↺ Judge Benchslaps Cops And Courts For Turning Law Enforcement Lies Into ‘Objectively Reasonable’ Mistakes

• It’s always fun to read a good benchslap of cops who’ve tried to turn nothing at all into “probable cause.” It doesn’t happen very often because courts are far too obliging far too often. The standard law enforcement officers are held to — objective reasonableness — rarely seems reasonable, no matter how objectively you approach it.

=> ↺ The Temple of Self-Gratification

• Author David Foster Wallace once said that America is, “One enormous engine and temple of self-gratification and self-advancement.” The spectacle of American consumerism comes galloping to mind. But the pageant of gluttony with which we sate ourselves on a weekly basis is a pale reflection, at least in its intensity, of American foreign policy. Like our national addiction to guns mirrors our international addiction to bombs, so too our appetitive instincts at home merely reflect those same greedy impulses writ large in the global arena. From the soul of the gourmand to the surface-to-air missile, the attitude to the world is the same: take what ye would, all else be damned. But while consumers might bankrupt themselves on needless consumption, it is the imperial arm of the state that visits mass suffering on innocents abroad. The empire is an ogreish consumer that plods across the landscapes of the planet, disfiguring as it dispossesses, a kind of unreflective Freudian id blindly pursuing its own gratification. It’s thirst is unquenchable, its belly ever famished. And, thanks to the power of fiat, this growling Beowulf has unlimited credit with which to bankroll its adventurism. A ravenous profligate thumping through the agoras of the world, claws extended.

=> ↺ Violence Against Native American Women Prevalent Yet Underreported

• Spotted Eagle recounts an experience she had as a young woman. She was walking down the street with some friends when they became victims of a racist attack. The assailants shouted slurs and beat them. Spotted Eagle was left with a broken leg and bystanders did nothing to help them. The reality is that Native women are easy targets. Native American reservations are pretty isolated. They stand out-of-sight and out-of-mind for most people. A major challenge is that not enough people are educated about the problems these women face. They believe that they get great amounts of money from the casinos and government. However, this is not the case, as a lot of reservations don’t even have electricity. Also, the police on reservations are understaffed and don’t have enough resources. If a violator isn’t a part of their tribe, they have little power in investigating and prosecuting them. Perpetrators also seek places they are least likely to be caught. Another issue is that federal and state law enforcement don’t have a huge presence among the reservations. Tribal leaders say this is because of prejudice and longstanding racist issues

=> ↺ Amid Pandemic, Workers Walk Out, Building Momentum Toward General Strike

• Essential workers at Instacart, Whole Foods, Amazon and General Electric are staging protests and walking off the job in droves across the U.S., demanding increased protections and pay as they continue to face disproportionate risks and increasingly perilous working conditions amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

=> ↺ Wisconsin Program Provides Coaching for Pregnant Mothers with Addictions

• Typically, women who are addicted to drugs and pregnant fear that if they are honest about their drug addiction with their doctor, child protective services or foster care will be notified and they will lose custody of their child after birth. At Pregnancy 2 Recovery, women talk to a recovery coach who understands their situation and devotes time to build the necessary trust with their clients. The program provides clients a safe place to get the help they need without the guilt, shame, and stigma that they may feel when they visit a doctor.

=> ↺ The Bleeding Obvious: Allowing Gay Blood Donation Now Will Save Lives

• With a global pandemic placing increasing pressure on our health system, Rodney Croome makes the case for an urgent review of laws that are putting even more pressure on a vital medical service.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Ex-FCC Staffer Says FCC Authority Given Up In Net Neutrality Repeal Sure Would Prove Handy In A Crisis

• It’s worth repeating for the folks in the back: the FCC’s hugely unpopular, facts-optional and fraud-slathered repeal of net neutrality did a lot more than just kill “net neutrality.” It gutted the FCC’s already dwindling authority over giant telecom monopolies, shoveling any remaining authority to an FTC that lacks the authority or resources to police the US telecom sector (the whole goal of telecom lobbyists). As a result, you’ve now got ISPs free to engage in problematic behavior (like bullshit fees, or charging people “rental fees” for modems they already own) that the government is incapable and unwilling to address.

Monopolies

Patents

=> ↺ 3D Printing Ingenuity During Coronavirus Comes With IP Risks

• Innovators and volunteers are rallying to 3D printing to combat the new coronavirus. But with this ingenuity comes concerns about patent infringement and product safety.

• Owners of patents on certain designs of face shields, masks, and ventilator parts could have infringement claims against printers. There is also a risk of lawsuits if supplies are unsafe.

• Shortages of masks, gowns, and other protective gear in many cities hit hard by the pandemic have driven innovations. Open-source instructions are readily available, and volunteers are lining up.

• More than 4,300 individuals—from Portland, Ore. to Berlin, Germany—have added their names to a Google Doc circulating online with offers to help 3D print medical supplies. Businesses, and even some universities, have also offered help.

=> ↺ COVID-19 Patent and Trademark Deadlines Extended

• As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, patent offices worldwide are taking steps to minimize negative impacts that patent and trademark filers may suffer.

• Many offices have asked their employees to work from home, potentially causing delays. Most or all offices, including the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and European Patent Office (EPO), are conducting oral proceedings via telephone or videoconferencing.

• [...]

• Overall, all offices are taking measures to help reduce any delays caused by COVID-19.

• Links to certain offices’ COVID-19 webpages are included below. We encourage you to contact us with any questions you might have.

=> ↺ (Some) EPO Deadlines Extended

• In these unprecedented times, patent deadlines are understandably a much lower priority than they were a couple of months ago. Even those trying to meet their deadlines may find themselves unable to do so with the various limitations imposed by home working and staff shortages. In recognition of this, the EPO has extended time limits expiring on or after 15 March 2020 to 17 April 2020 (see), and it seems likely that further extensions will be announced shortly. However, the extension only applies to “time periods” as defined by the EPO rules and is not universally applicable to all EPO deadlines.

• “Periods” are generally set by EPO Communications or the EPC itself. Typical examples include the deadlines for filing responses to Examination Reports or for providing claims translations in response to the issuance of a proposed text for grant. There are, however, a number of significant EPO deadlines that are not “periods”. For example, we often talk colloquially about the deadline for filing a divisional application. More correctly, a divisional application can only be filed while the parent is pending. Once the parent has granted, the right to file a divisional application is lost. This is not a “period” as defined by the Rules and therefore the extension of time announced by the EPO does not apply.

Software Patents

=> ↺ Huawei commits to patent nonaggression with the Open Invention Network

=> ↺ Huawei joins major US-based open-source patent protection consortium OIN

=> ↺ Huawei signs non-aggression patent pact with membership of Open Invention Network

• Huawei has become a licensee member of the Open Invention Network (OIN), which agrees to cross-license Linux patents to one another royalty free and to any organisation that agrees not to assert its patents against Linux.

=> ↺ Huawei Joins Open Invention Network

• In a surprising move, Huawei has joined Open Invention Network (OIN) — the major US-based open-source patent protection consortium.

=> ↺ Huawei joins the OIN, the largest open source patent protection group

• Huawei is officially joining the OIN (Open Invention Network), the largest patent production group which will arrive as a shock to many. On the one side, the Chinese tech giant has been accused of stealing trade secrets from the US, while at the same time the company made $6 billion in patent royalties since 2001 from US based companies alone.

• For those unaware, OIN is a major patent non-aggression community. Its mission is to enable Linux, its related software and programmers to develop and monetize the Linux and open source software. The primary focus of this being able to monitize without having face issues regarding patent infringement and lawsuits. This is done by practicing patent non-aggression in core Linux and its open source technology. In simpler terms, companies in the group cross license the Linux System to one another without the need for a royalty fee.

Copyrights

=> ↺ ‘YouTube is Not Required to Share Email and IP-Addresses of Movie Pirates’

• YouTube is not required to hand over the email and IP-addresses of pirating users, Advocate General Saugmandsgaard Øe advised in an opinion to the EU Court of Justice. The opinion concludes that EU law doesn’t require providers to hand over more than the infringers’ names and postal addresses. The final ruling, which has yet to be issued, will likely set a crucial precedent for similar cases.

=> ↺ Kendall Jenner Posts Video of Herself on Instagram, Gets Sued For Copyright Infringement

• Model Kendall Jenner generates considerable sums from her Instagram account but according to a lawsuit filed in California, not all of that is raised legally. The complaint states that Jenner obtained a video of herself taken by a third-party and posted it on Instagram, in breach of copyright law. After gaining almost 23 million views, the owner now wants up to $150,000 in damages.

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