● 02.19.21

● Links 19/2/2021: DXVK 1.8 Release, KDDockWidgets 1.3.0 is Out, SolarWinds Crack Leaves Microsoft in State of Disarray

Posted in News Roundup at 10:24 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Chromebooks

=> ↺ Unlock your Chromebook’s hidden potential with Linux

• Google Chromebooks run on Linux, but normally the Linux they run isn’t particularly accessible to the user. Linux is used as a backend technology for an environment based on the open source Chromium OS, which Google then transforms into Chrome OS. The interface most users experience is a desktop that can run Chrome browser apps and the Chrome browser itself. And yet underneath all that, there’s Linux to be found. If you know how, you can enable Linux on your Chromebook and turn a computer that was probably relatively cheap and basic into a serious laptop with access to hundreds of applications and all the power you need to make it an all-purpose computer.

• [...]

• Now that you’re running in Developer Mode, you can activate the Linux Beta feature in Chrome OS. To do that, open Settings and click on Linux Beta in the left column.

• Activate Linux Beta and allot some hard drive space for your Linux system and applications. Linux is pretty lightweight at the worst of times, so you don’t really need much space, but it obviously depends on how much you intend to do with Linux. 4 GB is enough for Linux plus a few hundred terminal commands and two dozen graphical applications. Because my Chromebook has a 64 GB memory chip, I gave 30 GB over to Linux because most of what I do on my Chromebook is in Linux.

• Once your Linux Beta environment is ready, you can launch a terminal by pressing the Search button on your keyboard and typing terminal. If you’re new to Linux, you may not know what to install now that you have access. This, of course, depends on what you want to do with Linux. If you’re interested in Linux for programming, then you might start with Bash (that’s already installed and running in the terminal) and Python. If you’re interested in Linux for all of its amazing open source applications, you might try applications like GIMP, MyPaint, LibreOffice, or Inkscape.

• The Linux Beta mode of Chrome OS lacks a graphical installer for software, but applications can be installed from the terminal. Install applications with the sudo apt install command.

=> ↺ Windows is losing to Linux… but not how you might think.

• Microsoft’s days of dominating the desktop operating systems space is starting to wane. Today we take a look at a new report showing huge grows of ChromeOS in the OEM space and how we, as the Linux community, can learn from its success!

Applications

=> ↺ An early look at VLC 4.0 – Hello darkness, my old friend

• I first tried VLC around 2003 or so. It wasn’t a good experience. The player’s interface showed me a garbled view of the video file I was trying to play. Then, in 2006 or so, I tried it again. Since, it’s become my staple media player on every single platform and operating system, including the mobile. The reasons are many: the king of codecs, tons of features, a simple no-frills interface.

• Recently, the VLC team has started working on a visual revamp of the UI, which should come live in version 4.0. This marks a significant departure from the established look & feel of the player, which really hasn’t seen any big visual updates throughout its history. So I thought, let’s have a look at the early work and see what the future has in store for us. Early impressions, don’t get too excited, things may rapidly evolve and change and whatnot. Follow me.

=> ↺ Starship: Open-Source Customizable Prompt for Any Shell

• A cross-shell prompt that makes it easy to customize and configure the Linux terminal prompt, if you care too much about the looks of your terminal.

• [...]

• Starship is an open-source project that’s written in Rust to help you set up a minimal, fast, and customizable shell prompt.

• No matter whether you’re using bash, fish, PowerShell on Windows or any other shell, you can utilize Starship to customize the appearance.

• Do note that you do have to go through its official documentation to be able to perform advanced configuration for everything you like but here I will include a simple sample configuration to get a head start along with some key information about Startship.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to find your IP address in Linux? – Linux Hint

• An IP address is a network address of your device when it connects to the internet or local area network. On the internet, IP addresses are allocated to each user which is used to distinctly identify them. . Internet uses this address to get your emails, messages, files, and images from another device of a different identification number (IP). The IPV4 address is a 32-bit unique number that has two types: public and private. Public IP is used to access the internet while private IP is reserved for local usage.

• Knowing your IP address is important especially when you want to create a local area network for gaming or data transferring. It is also important when it comes to troubleshooting your network issues and configuring the firewall. This guide will elaborate on the different methods to check your IP address whether public or private in Linux.

=> ↺ How to Use the “find” command in Linux to Search Files? – Linux Hint

• If you are a Linux user, then you can’t just rely on GUI to perform various tasks, therefore, a solid grasp of terminal commands is really essential. All distributions based on Linux run the commands to perform different administrative tasks. Although the Linux terminal is a text interface that seems complex, it is actually very flexible, easy to use, and quite a useful tool. Commands can easily be copied from online sources and pasted into the terminal to perform various operations. There are tons of commands but this post will focus on the “find” command.

• The “find” command is used to find, filter, or search files and folders in your system according to user-specified conditions and perform several operations on them.

• Let’s discuss how to use the “find” command, its syntax, and various operations performed by this command in detail.

=> ↺ How do I Increment a Variable in Bash? – Linux Hint

• Incrementing or decrementing the value of a counter or an iterator is one of the most crucial tasks while using loops in any programming language. In doing so, it helps us reach the termination condition of our loop without which our loop will run infinitely. Today, our focus will be on the different methods of incrementing a variable in Bash in Linux Mint 20.

=> ↺ How to delete lines in Vi/Vim? – Linux Hint

• Vim previously known as Vi, stands for “Vi IMproved”, is a multi-purpose text editor that is compatible with all UNIX based operating systems like Linux and macOS. Vim can be used for various purposes such as creating, editing text, and/or computer program files.

• You often need to delete one or more lines while editing text files in Vim editor, and unlike any other text editor, it allows you to edit your files quite efficiently. This guide will focus on how to edit and delete lines from your files in the Vim editor.

=> ↺ Bash Variable Name Rules: Legal and Illegal – Linux Hint

• A variable is a storage space having a particular name that holds a certain value in it. You might have been working with a lot of programming languages and have a good perspective of variables. However, in the bash programming, it is slightly different. In this guide, we will learn about the rules invariable naming and execute some examples to declare a variable in a bash shell and observe its effect whether, it is valid or invalid, e.g., legal or illegal.

=> ↺ Install Rhythmbox: Audio Player on Linux – Linux Hint

• If you are searching for an open-source audio music player for Linux, then you are in the right place. There are tons of free music players available but Rhythmbox stands out because of its stability, reliability, and ability to handle tens of thousands of songs and support of plugins.

=> ↺ How To Install GIMP on Debian 10 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install GIMP on Debian 10. For those of you who didn’t know, GIMP is a free and open-source image editor used for retouching and editing images. From retouching to restoring to creative composites, the only limit is your imagination. GIMP is used for producing icons, graphical design elements, and art for user interface components and mockups. GIMP provides top-notch color management features to ensure high-fidelity color reproduction across digital and printed media.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation of the GIMP images editor on a Debian 10 (Buster).

=> ↺ Using Snap Packages in Linux – A Beginners Guide to Snapd – Putorius

• Snaps are software packages developed by Canonical initially for Ubuntu. Now they are available for all major Linux distributions and exhibit significant benefits over typical packaging systems like APT, RPM, and Pacman. The package manager used to manage snaps is known as snappy and the service behind it is known as snapd.

• [...]

• In this article, we will explain how to install snapd on Linux OS. We will be covering the use of snap (and the snap store) to manage and run snap packages. You can use either the GUI or the command line to manage snaps. We will focus more on managing the snaps via the command line as it offers advanced functionalities.

=> ↺ Learn Difference Between Sourcing and Forking in Bash

• The main focus of this article is to clearly understand what happens when you run the script vs source the script in bash. First, we will clearly understand how the program is submitted when you call the script in different ways.

• [...]

• Basically, every script starts with a line called a shebang(#!). The Hash symbol in bash will be interpreted as comments but shebang has a special meaning. It tells bash to submit the program in whatever interpreter you mentioned in shebang.

=> ↺ Completely Uninstall MySQL Server in Ubuntu

• While package management in Ubuntu, as in most Linux operating systems nowadays, makes it extremely easy to install, upgrade and delete a piece of software, some software is a bit more complex in nature and contains multiple configuration folders, etc.

• One such complex software is MySQL Server. Uninstalling MySQL Server does not simply amount to running ‘apt purge‘ as is done usually. There are few small steps you can follow to completely uninstall MySQL Server from your Ubuntu machines.

=> ↺ systemd-tmpfiles – Managing Temporary Files & Directories – Putorius

• Temporary files and directories are a basic function of almost all operating systems. They store data generated by the operating system and different applications running on it. If not regularly cleaned, these files can take up a large amount of storage space. To avoid disk space issues and possible data leaks, the best practice is to clean up these files regularly. That is where systemd-tmpfiles comes in.

• The systemd-tmpfiles services is a configurable tool for managing temporary files and directories. It creates, removes, and cleans up volatile and temporary data that is stored on the system. This article will help you to understand how systemd-tmpfiles functions as it automatically creates, removes, or cleans the temporary files in our system.

=> ↺ How to Enable Legacy Kickoff Menu in KDE Plasma 5.21

• This quick guide explains the steps to enable Legacy Kickoff Menu in KDE Plasma 5.21.

Wine or Emulation

=> ↺ DXVK 1.8 Released with Improvements for Nioh 2, Hitman 3, and F1 2020

• First, let’s take a look at the game improvements implemented in DXVK 1.8, which adds workarounds for black screen issues in the Nioh 2 game, AMD AGS (AMD GPU Services) issues on AMD GPUs for the Hitman 3 game, broken compute shaders causing artifacts with AMD drivers in the F1 2018-2020 games, and video playback issues in the Atelier Ryza 2 game.

• Some older Windows games also received improvements in this release, including Tomb Raider Legend and Everquest, which should now perform much better, as well as Battle Engine Aquila and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic to fix broken textures in the former and out-of-memory issues on startup in the latter.

=> ↺ DXVK 1.8 Released With Support For More Direct3D Games

• DXVK 1.8 is out as the newest feature release of this translation layer for Direct3D over Vulkan.

• DXVK 1.8 now ensures CPU-based Vulkan implementations are enumerated last, optimized image layout transitions, DXGI multi-monitor support, improved D3D9 texture upload performance, and other Direct3D support improvements.

=> ↺ D3D9, D3D10 and D3D11 to Vulkan translation layer DXVK 1.8 is out now

• Usually used for Wine and Steam Play Proton, the translation DXVK layer that moves Direct3D 9, Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 11 to Vulkan has a new release available with DXVK 1.8. The first release since December 2020, while a lot of work is currently ongoing with VKD3D-Proton to do the same for Direct3D 12 to Vulkan.

• Nice to see it quite alive and well though, and you’re likely to see smaller updates for years to come due to thousands of games being released ever year and some end up needing tweaks.

=> ↺ Portal 2 Sees A Vulkan Renderer Added Via DXVK

• Portal 2, Valve’s puzzle platform game that has been around for a decade already, is now seeing Vulkan rendering support added by leveraging DXVK.

• Portal 2 to date has supported OpenGL on Linux while Direct3D 9 has been available on Windows for this Source Engine game. Now though Valve is introducing Vulkan support not by moving to a newer version of the Source Engine but in integrating DXVK natively to allow optionally translating the Direct3D 9 path atop Vulkan.

=> ↺ Portal 2 from Valve gets a big update with Vulkan support from DXVK

• Portal 2, the classic first-person puzzle game from Valve available on Steam, just had a huge upgrade come out of nowhere along with Vulkan API support powered by the DXVK project.

• To stop any rumours: no, this is not Source 2 or anything of the sort. Portal 2 by default uses Direct3D 9 on Windows and OpenGL on Linux. For the Linux version, original Source engine games like this used a translation layer called ToGL to translate D3D9 to OpenGL.

• With this update it now includes a special native build of DXVK along with some extra dedicated Source tweaks, which allows you to run Portal 2 with “-vulkan” as a launch option to switch it over to Vulkan. It might give you better performance depending on your setup, although the OpenGL build already performed quite well overall.

Games

=> ↺ How to play The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Special Edition on Linux

• The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Special Edition is a remastered release of the original Skyrim released in 2012. It includes all DLC expansions as well as graphical and technical improvements. Here’s how to play the game on your Linux system.

=> ↺ Paradox makes Crusader Kings 2 complete edition accessible through subscription

• Paradox Interactive seems to have come with a new — or maybe, very old — way to keep its already long-lived game Crusader Kings 2 afloat, even with Crusader Kings 3 already out: a subscription service including the game and all its many DLCs. The spokesperson said “This is an affordable way for players to experience the entire Crusader Kings 2 catalogue”.

=> ↺ Nintendo 64 Support Mailed In For The Linux 5.12 Kernel – Phoronix

• As expected, the new port of the Linux kernel to the Nintendo 64 game console from the 90′s is now being mainlined in 2021 with the Linux 5.12 kernel…

• The MIPS feature pull request was sent in today and it includes the port to the Nintendo 64. This is the Linux port to the N64 announced back on Christmas. The Nintendo 64 is powered by a MIPS64 NEC VR4300 at 93.75MHz with SGI Reality Coprocessor graphics clocked at 62.5MHz while having just 4MB of RAM (or expandable to 8MB).

DEs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ KDDockWidgets 1.3.0 released!

• We’ve released KDDockWidgets 1.3.0! KDDockWidgets is a framework for custom-tailored docking systems in Qt.

• The main highlights for this release are PySide6 and experimental QtQuick support.

• The QtQuick backend isn’t production ready, but you can already build with -DKDDockWidgets_QTQUICK=ON, run the examples under examples/qtquick/dockwidgets/ and start reporting issues.

=> ↺ First Milestone

• In this blog post, I’d like to give an overview of what I’ve been doing for the past month since I’ve joined SoK this year. It has been an amazing journey so far and I’m really looking forward to completing the project and seeing how the whole thing looks in the end.

• In January, I had been accepted as a SoK student, in which I’m going to work to extend Peruse functionality to support visualising Jump objects on the screen. Peruse is an awesome comic book reader/creator that make reading/creating a comic book really easy and it supports the ACBF format. Some of those comic books might have something called Jump object, a Jump object is a clickable area on a comic book page which links to another page in the book, clicking on that area should navigate the reader to the target page. This can be used to create/read Interactive Fiction Books, such as Create Your Own Adventure type comic books. By the end of SoK, Peruse will be able to visualise Jump objects on pages in a nice, and attractive way, while also providing the functionality to create and preview how they’d look like on the screen.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GTK 4.2 Releasing Next Month With Likely Introducing A New OpenGL Renderer

• While the GTK 4.0 toolkit just released in December, GTK 4.2 is already gearing up for release next month with GNOME 40.

• While not merged quite yet, most notable to GTK 4.2 as the first GTK4 update is a new OpenGL renderer. This OpenGL renderer overhaul was driven in improving the macOS support where its OpenGL requirements are more strict than Linux. With GTK 4.0 is also the Vulkan renderer that is available to Linux users. The new renderer code hasn’t been merged yet but its noted that it’s nearly at feature parity and in turn is likely to still land for GTK 4.2. The old OpenGL renderer will likely co-exist for comparison/testing until the new renderer has proven itself.

Distributions

PCLinuxOS

=> ↺ Kernel 5.10.17 now available » PCLinuxOS

• Kernel LTS 5.10.17 is now available for installation from the regular PCLinuxOS software repository. The Kernel developers have plans to maintain Kernel 5.10 LTS up to 2026.

=> ↺ Shotcut updated to 21.02.15 » PCLinuxOS

• Shotcut is a free and open-source cross-platform video editing application for Linux.

=> ↺ Telegram updated to 2.5.9 » PCLinuxOS

• Telegram is an Open Source instant messaging platform for mobile and desktop focused on privacy.

=> ↺ Signal Desktop updated to 1.40.0 » PCLinuxOS

• Signal desktop and a desktop application that provides private messaging.

Gentoo Family

=> ↺ Gentoo vs. Ubuntu Linux Comparison

• Habit is the enemy of change. If you have been using Linux for a while, you may have gotten used to the distribution it offers. If your situation and computing needs changing, then you should think it over. If not, you might want to consider learning a new system for the benefit of apprehension. Knowledge is a very light burden to bear.

• For many users, choosing Gentoo is a giant leap. A leap that they never take but can be a serious mistake if you have important reasons to use your computer or system of computers.

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

=> ↺ Remi Collet: PHP version 7.4.16RC1 and 8.0.3RC1

• Release Candidate versions are available in testing repository for Fedora and Enterprise Linux (RHEL / CentOS) to allow more people to test them. They are available as Software Collections, for a parallel installation, perfect solution for such tests, and also as base packages.

• RPM of PHP version 8.0.3RC1 are available as SCL in remi-test repository and as base packages in the remi-php80-test repository for Fedora 32-34 and Enterprise Linux.

• RPM of PHP version 7.4.16RC1 are available as SCL in remi-test repository and as base packages in the remi-test repository for Fedora 32-34 or remi-php74-test repository for Enterprise Linux.

=> ↺ Why every job in the tech industry is technical

• Several years ago, I applied for a marketing job at a tech company. I got called back for the phone screening and had a delightful conversation with the recruiter. The next day, I got an email from the recruiter saying that I was not “technical” enough to move forward to the next round of interviews. I was shocked.

• I had always been the one my colleagues would call on for technical help and feedback. Understanding and using technology came naturally to me. By that point in my career, I had become even more proficient and technical within my specialty. So how could the recruiter think that I am not “technical”?

• I wrote a letter to the recruiter explaining why the hiring manager should not dismiss me just yet. Sure, I did not have experience in the tech industry (I had always worked for companies in consumer goods and retail), but isn’t every company a software company these days? I also wanted to alleviate any concerns about my lack of coding abilities. Between managing website migrations, blog redesigns, product merchandising, and fixing that annoying indent on a particularly finicky landing page, I felt that I had that “in the weeds” troubleshooting practice similar to that of a programmer.

=> ↺ Máirín Duffy: User Experience (UX) + Free Software = ❤

• Let’s talk about a topic that is increasingly critical as time goes on, that is really important for those of us who work on free software and care really deeply about making a positive impact in the world. Let’s talk about user experience (UX) and free software, using the ChRIS Project as a case study.

=> ↺ Kinoite: Immutable Fedora variant with KDE Plasma desktop on the way

• Red Hat’s Fedora project is to add a new variant called Kinoite, an immutable desktop operating system alongside the existing Silverblue, which runs GNOME desktop.

• The idea behind an immutable operating system is that it is mounted read-only; also, conceptually, it is not patched but rather is replaced when it needs to be updated, in the same way as a container. This has obvious security advantages, as well as making features like rollback easier to implement.

• Silverblue was introduced in early 2018 based in part on an earlier project called Atomic Host. The first full release of Silverblue was as part of Fedora 29 in October 2018. Fedora CoreOS, designed for hosting containers, is also designed as an immutable operating system. Both CoreOS and Silverblue are presented as “emerging Fedora editions” rather than mainstream, and Fedora itself is the leading-edge Linux distribution from Red Hat, unlike Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which emphasises stability for production.

=> ↺ Why The Founder Of CentOS Is Building The Next Platform

• Greg Kurtzer, one of the co-founders of the CentOS Linux distribution, the creator of the Singularity container environment for HPC workloads, the founder of the new Rocky Linux distribution that seeks to replace the now defunct CentOS, and an HPC guru in his own right, is on a mission. And it is a mission that we admire and see all the time: To build an integrated application platform that radically removes the complexity of modern distributed computing without dumbing it down.

• This is a very hard thing to do, and Kurtzer knows this full well, even though he comes at it from a slightly oblique angle.

• Kurtzer is a funny guy, even if the work he has done is deadly serious. By his own admission, he wandered a bit in college, studying mechanical engineering, music, and pre-med before getting a bachelor’s of science in biochemistry in 1997 from what he refers to as the “Northern California Chicken Grooming School,” adding that “you might think I am indecisive, but I am not so sure.” (That is presumably the University of California at Berkeley, one of the major hotbeds of computer hardware and software architecture in the world.) Kurtzer did work at a biotech firm doing genomics work after graduation, and then landed a job as a software engineer at Linuxcare, one of a zillion Linux distros, just before the dot-com boom went bust in late 2000.

=> ↺ Influential women

• When people ask me about success engaging women in some of the mentoring programs for free, open source software, I never feel comfortable taking credit for that. I feel that it comes down to one simple thing: collaborating with a number of successful and influential women in a variety of different places. Today is the tenth anniversary of the passing of Sally Shaw. Sally had made monumental contributions to the success of the Yarra Yarra Rowing Club (YYRC), even while fighting cancer, raising a family and managing projects for IBM.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ PoE powered AI Edge computer combines NXP i.MX 8M SoC with Google Edge TPU

• AAEON has introduced several BOXER AI edge computers over the years either powered by an NVIDIA Jetson module, a HiSilicon HI3559A Arm SoC, or an Intel processor combined with Movidius Myriad AI accelerator.

• [...]

• The fanless rugged mini PC runs ACLinux 4.0 operating system based on Debian 10, and developers can use Google’s suite of training software, including AutoML Vision Edge, and create models for TensorFlow Lite framework.

=> ↺ The Raspberry Pi Pico Can’t Run Linux. But It Can Run FUSIX.

• The great divide in terms of single board computers lies between those that can run some form of Linux-based distribution, and those that can not. For example the Raspberry Pi Zero is a Linux board, while the Raspberry Pi Pico’s RP2040 processor lacks the required hardware to run everybody’s favourite UNIX-like operating system. That’s not to say the new board from Cambridge can’t run any UNIX-like operating system though, as [David Given] shows us with his FUSIX port.

• FUSIX is a UNIX-like operating system for less capable processors, more in the spirit of those original UNIXes than of a modern Linux-based distribution. It’s the work of the respected former Linux kernel developer and maintainer [Alan Cox], and consists of a kernel, a C compiler, and a set of core UNIX-like applications.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ LiPo battery powered Olimex boards use ESP32-S2′s USB OTG interface

• Last year, Olimex introduced ESP32-S2-DevKit-LiPo and ESP32-S2-WROVER-Devkit-LiPo boards optimized for battery-powered applications with as little as 30uA deep sleep power consumption. ESP32-S2 processor comes with a USB OTG interface, but at the time, Espressif Systems ESF-IDF SDK did not support programming via the built-in USB interface, so Olimex added CH340T USB to serial converter for programming.

=> ↺ Arduino Blog » Expand the power of your MKR boards with ROBOTIS DYNAMIXEL Shield

• We are happy to announce the new ROBOTIS DYNAMIXEL SHIELD for the Arduino MKR series. As part of the “Works with Arduino” program, the DYNAMIXEL SHIELD expands the capabilities of the MKR family, opening up the opportunity to drive the DYNAMIXEL smart servos and create stunning robotics projects.

• The “Works with Arduino” program ensures both the compatibility and quality of the shield within the Arduino ecosystem. Thus, the shield is fully supported by a set of high-quality libraries that are available in the Arduino IDE.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Android 12 lets you swipe to dismiss the screenshot UI

=> ↺ Android 12′s gestures navigation works better in full-screen and immersive views

=> ↺ Android 12 might add support for iOS-esque widget stacks

=> ↺ Pocketnow Daily: Android 12 is Here! Here’s What’s NEW! (video)

=> ↺ Motorola G Pro Android 11 update apparently fixes Bluetooth LDAC bug

=> ↺ Google Evolves Offline Classroom For Android To Meet School Needs

=> ↺ Nokia 3.4 First Impressions: Android One on a Budget | NDTV Gadgets 360

=> ↺ Android Watches Market Report 2021 | Recent PDF Report | Future Demand Strategies 2025 | Mobvoi, LG, Misfit, Samsung, Asus, Huawei – KSU | The Sentinel Newspaper

=> ↺ Android 12: Everything you need to know! | Android Central

=> ↺ Android 12 beta launches – here are 9 important changes coming to your phone | TechRadar

=> ↺ Android 12 brings pinch-to-resize and stashing for PiP windows

=> ↺ Android 12 DP1 preps a Conversations widget, but it isn’t ready yet

=> ↺ AC Podcast 513: Android 12; Nothing gets Essential; Sonos | Android Central

=> ↺ Xiaomi Android 11 update tracker: Mi & Redmi devices received beta/stable

=> ↺ “ShareIt” Android app with over a billion downloads is a security nightmare | Ars Technica

=> ↺ Attention ShareIt users, Android app with over 100 crore downloads marred by several security flaws – The Financial Express

=> ↺ Unpatched Android App with 1B Downloads Allows RCE | Threatpost

=> ↺ Delete this Android app right now – BGR

=> ↺ The 15 Best 3D Printing Apps (Android / iPhone) in 2021 | All3DP

=> ↺ Google Classroom for Android will also work offline later this year

=> ↺ Apple TV+ finally arrives on (some) Android TV devices

=> ↺ The Teracube 2e Android smartphone has been announced

=> ↺ Android 12 developer preview released – What’s New?

• Google releases a new version of Android every year, and the company is now usually releasing a developer preview in February to allow feedback and testing from app developers.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ My open source internship during a pandemic

• In May 2020, in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, I started a summer internship with Red Hat. COVID-19 had cut short my third year studying computer engineering at Georgia Tech, and I learned I would have to work remotely all summer. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a virtual internship.

• This was my second internship but my first time working completely remotely. I adjusted quickly to the new virtual environment—I think having so little experience in a physical workspace helped me. The hardest part of working remotely was knowing when to stop working and call it a day. It was easy to get wrapped up in my work, write another line of code, and just finish one more task. However, I will say that I didn’t miss the commute.

• I spent my internship working on the Pulp team. Pulp is a platform for managing repositories of software packages and making them available to many consumers. Pulp can mirror all or part of a repository locally, host software packages in repositories, and manage many types of content from multiple sources in one place. To manage a certain type of content with Pulp, you just add a content plugin to it.

=> ↺ Kodi 19 “Matrix” Open-Source Home Theater Released, This Is What’s New

• Dubbed “Matrix” after the well-known Hollywood movie franchise with the same name, Kodi 19 has been in development for the past two years and comes with support for the AV1 video coding format, Python 3 support for add-ons, a new Matrix-inspired music visualization, along with new setting to automatically open the full-screen music visualization window when playback is started.

• Kodi 19 also improves the handling of multi-disc CD sets and box sets and handling of album release dates, adds support for changing the subtitle opacity and a new dark grey color for subtitles, adds support for file tags over HTTPS, improve the viewing quality of Pixel Art games, adds support for more OpenGL bicubic scalers, as well as various improvements to user information.

=> ↺ The Apache News Round-up: week ending 19 February 2021

=> ↺ The alternative to wpa_supplicant

• As of December 2020, there is an alternative to wpa_supplicant. It works. It’s called iwd, iNet Wireless Daemon, and you can use it on Debian systems today.

Education

=> ↺ In the French city of Fontaine the schools protect children’s data using Open Source

• More than 200 school computers in the city of Fontaine, in the South-East of France, run on elementary OS. It is a GNU/Linux based operative system. User-friendly with a nice layout and a high level of data security. Elementary OS provides pupils (and any other user) with the possibility of gaining knowledge about digital technologies without giving lasting digital footprints to proprietary tech companies.

FSFE

=> ↺ Call to apply for FSFE support for your local project – FSFE

• It is no secret that the FSFE’s activities are only possible with the priceless help of our contributors and supporters around Europe. In return we support local engagement financially, with our expertise, information material and networks. To help formalize this process, we run our next call for FSFE community projects.

• [...]

• To participate in the call you simply fill in your contact data and your project facts (who is doing what, when and how much it potentially will cost) and you will soon receive feedback, approval or a call back on your proposal.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ td 0.0.2 on CRAN: Updated and Expanded

• The still very recent td package for accessing the twelvedata API for financial data has been updated and is now at version 0.0.2.

• The time_series access point is now vectorised: supply a vector of symbols, and you receive list of data.frame (or xts) objects. See this tweet teasing out the earliest support for this new featire, and showing a quick four-securities plot. We also added simpler accessors get_quote() and get_price() rounding out the basic API support.

=> ↺ Experiencing Smalltalk

• Smalltalk2 is one of the outputs of this strand of thinking and has had a big impact on general purpose programming languages3. However the focus on object orientation and test-driven development have robbed the world of what I think are its most important aspects: [...]

Python

=> ↺ How to Create Pandas DataFrame in Python? – Linux Hint

• Pandas DataFrame is a 2D (two dimensional) annotated data structure in which data is aligned in the tabular form with different rows and columns. For easier understanding, the DataFrame behaves like a spreadsheet that contains three different components: index, columns, and data. Pandas DataFrames are the most common way to utilize the panda’s objects.

• Pandas DataFrames can be created using different methods. This article will explain all possible methods through which you can create Pandas DataFrame in python. We have run all examples on the pycharm tool. Let’s start the implementation of each method one by one.

=> ↺ How to Join DataFrames in Pandas Python? – Linux Hint

• Pandas DataFrame is a two-dimensional (2D) data structure thatis aligned in a tabular format. These DataFrames can be combined using different methods such as concat (), merge (), and joins. Pandas have high performance, and full-featured join operations that are resembled with SQL relational database. Using the merge function, join operations can be implemented between DataFrames objects.

• We will explore the uses of merge function, concat function, and different types of joins operations in Pandas python in this article. All examples will be executed through the pycharm editor. Let’s start with the details!

Rust

=> ↺ This Week in Rust 378

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ ‘That’s Classic Andrew Cuomo,’ Says de Blasio After NY Gov Accused of Bullying Fellow Democrat Over Nursing Home Disaster

• Cuomo reportedly threatened to “destroy” a New York assemblyman who has vocally criticized the governor’s handling of the state’s nursing homes during the coronavirus pandemic.

=> ↺ Opinion | America’s Response to Covid-19 Should Long Perforate Our Pomposity About Being the Greatest Nation on Earth

• 500,000 US Covid-19 deaths and counting: a shameful public health failure.

=> ↺ Dying on the Waitlist

• In early December, Miguel Fernandez lay unconscious in the intensive care unit at a Los Angeles area hospital. A mechanical ventilator pumped oxygen into his lungs, which had been ravaged by COVID-19. The 53-year-old was dying.

• The best, and likely only, chance of Miguel surviving was a therapy called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, better known as ECMO. It would allow his lungs to rest while a machine infused his blood with the oxygen he needed. But PIH Health Whittier Hospital, where he had been admitted, didn’t have any ECMO machines or the highly trained staff needed to run them. Only a handful of hospitals in southern California did, and they were overrun with COVID-19 cases.

=> ↺ COVID-19 Shaves 1 Year off US Life Expectancy

• The new CDC data put the United States in line with estimates from England, Wales and Spain, which also calculated about a one-year drop in life expectancy.

• France projected a half-year decline for men and four-tenths for women. Swedish men also lost an estimated half a year, and women, three-tenths.

• U.S. life expectancy already “lags substantially behind virtually all of the high-income countries,” Goldman noted. “Now, we’ll just be even further behind.”

=> ↺ American Life Expectancy Dropped By A Full Year In 1st Half Of 2020

• Life expectancy at birth for the total U.S. population was 77.8 years – a decline of 1 year from 78.8 in 2019. For males, the life expectancy at birth was 75.1 – a decline of 1.2 years from 2019. For females, life expectancy declined to 80.5 years, a 0.9 year decrease from 2019.

=> ↺ ‘New Car Smell’ Is The Scent of Carcinogens, And Even Short Trips May Overexpose Us

• Estimating commuter times from census data and using measurements of chemicals detected in previous studies, the new study found commutes of more than 20 minutes put people at risk of unacceptably high levels of two carcinogens used in car manufacturing.

• At first glance, it might seem like worrying news for people who spend a lot of time behind the wheel on daily commutes. But there are a lot of factors at play, so let’s unpack it a little.

=> ↺ Coronavirus Mutants Are Spreading Fast

• And ever since the virus mutants began spreading around the globe, even the last motivation for bravery is fading: the hope that the nightmare will soon end thanks to vaccination. Because as incredibly fast as it was possible to find and produce vaccines, the mutants were faster. And they are still faster.

• For physicist and mathematician Michael Meyer-Hermann of the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research in Braunschweig, one thing is clear: “Vaccination isn’t going to help us slow down the momentum of infections until the younger population has been immunized.” And what about higher temperatures in the spring and summer? It might help a bit, Meyer-Hermann thinks, when people start spending more time outside. “But that alone will in no way suffice.”

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

=> ↺ Apple reportedly negotiating to build iPads in India

• Apple is said to be lobbying the Indian government in a move that could see the company manufacture iPads in the country for the first time. Reuters reports that the government is planning to launch an incentive scheme designed to boost India’s computer exports, and Apple wants in — but is angling for a better deal.

• The initiative will have a budget of up to Rs. 70 billion ($964 million) over five years, according to Reuters, but Apple is reportedly asking for that to be almost tripled to Rs. 200 billion. The reason is said to be partly that India’s supply chain doesn’t yet have the scale to meet Apple’s demands.

=> ↺ Apple lobbies for India incentives as it plans iPad assembly: sources

• Apple Inc is angling to participate in a new scheme to boost India’s exports of computer products, part of what government and industry sources say are plans to bring iPad tablet manufacturing to the South Asian country.

=> ↺ New MultiMac NIC driver package (20210125) released

• Arca Noae is pleased to announce the immediate availability of a new release of our MultiMac NIC driver package.

• This is a maintenance release of the MultiMac drivers. It contains some minor updates to the system libraries that affects system stability and reliability and applies to all drivers. Specifically, this update fixes a defect that cause a trap on multi-CPU systems with an extremely busy network. This update also adds the ability to pass on the correct link speed for drivers that have the ability to report this. Currently the only drivers that provide link speed notification are E1000B, MMIGB, and MMLEM. This update is recommended for all users.

Pseudo-Open Source

Privatisation/Privateering

Linux Foundation

=> ↺ US taps Linux Foundation to boost open 5G

• The US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) teamed with the Linux Foundation to boost development of open 5G, edge, AI and IoT technologies, a move the consortium’s CRO and COO Mike Woster told Mobile World Live (MWL) reflected increased interest from governments worldwide.

• Their deal covers creation of a new US Government Open Programmable Secure (US GOV OPS) initiative to function as a standard open source programme governed by the Linux Foundation.

• The first project in the programme will focus on using open source software and systems to create a secure end-to-end 5G reference architecture to deliver the ability to rapidly rollout new features, mitigate large-scale botnet and other threats, and deploy secure network slices which can operate on untrusted infrastructure.

Security

=> ↺ Investigators suggest [attackers] exploited weak password security to breach Florida water facility

• “The unidentified actors accessed the water treatment plant’s SCADA controls via remote access software, TeamViewer, which was installed on one of several computers the water treatment plant personnel used to conduct system status checks and to respond to alarms or any other issues that arose during the water treatment process,” the department wrote. “All computers used by water plant personnel were connected to the SCADA system and used the 32-bit version of the Windows 7 operating system,” which Microsoft ended support for in January of last year.

• “Further, all computers shared the same password for remote access and appeared to be connected directly to the Internet without any type of firewall protection installed,” the alert reads. A spokesperson for the Massachusetts department said the department received the details from the EPA.

=> ↺ I’m Controlling Your Cursor

• In the years to come, there will most assuredly be books and oral histories written about what happened in Florida, the sheer folly of leaving remote access open with so little focus on security. But it should not be a knock on remote access, which was a super-novel concept back in the mid-’80s and is still pretty awesome today as it has improved along with GUIs and network access.

=> ↺ SolarWinds hackers studied Microsoft source code for authentication and email

• The hackers behind the worst intrusion of U.S. government agencies in years won access to Microsoft’s secret source code for authenticating customers, potentially aiding one of their main attack methods.

• [...]

• Some of the code was downloaded, the company said, which would have allowed the hackers even more freedom to hunt for security vulnerabilities, create copies with new flaws, or examine the logic for ways to exploit customer installations.

• Microsoft had said before that the hackers had accessed some source code, but had not said which parts, or that any had been copied.

• U.S. authorities said Wednesday the breaches revealed in December extended to nine federal agencies and 100 private companies, including major technology providers and security firms. They said the Russian government is likely behind the spree, which Moscow has denied.

• Initially discovered by security provider FireEye Inc, the hackers used advanced skills to insert software back doors for spying into widely used network-management programs distributed by Texas-based SolarWinds Corp.

=> ↺ Daniel Stenberg: “I will slaughter you”

• You might know that I’ve posted funny emails I’ve received on my blog several times in the past. The kind of emails people send me when they experience problems with some device they own (like a car) and they contact me because my email address happens to be visible somewhere.

• People sometimes say I should get a different email address or use another one in the curl license file, but I’ve truly never had a problem with these emails, as they mostly remind me about the tough challenges the modern technical life bring to people and it gives me insights about what things that run curl.

=> ↺ Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 167 released

• The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 167. This version includes the following changes:

• • Temporary directory handling:

• • Ensure we cleanup our temporary directory by avoiding confusion between

• the TemporaryDirectory instance and the underlying directory.

• (Closes: #981123)

• • Use a potentially-useful suffix to our temporary directory based on the

• command-line passed to diffoscope.

• • Fix some tempfile/weakref interaction in Python 3.7 (ie. Debian buster).

• (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#239)

• • If our temporary directory does not exist anymore (eg. it has been

• cleaned up in tests, signal handling or reference counting), make sure

• we recreate it.

• • Bug fixes:

• • Don’t rely on magic.Magic(…) to have an identical API between file’s

• magic.py and PyPI’s “python-magic” library.

• (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#238)

• • Don’t rely on dumpimage returning an appropriate exit code; check that

• the file actually exists after we call it.

• • Codebase changes:

• • Set a default Config.extended_filesystem_attributes.

• • Drop unused Config.acl and Config.xattr attributes.

• • Tidy imports in diffoscope/comparators/fit.py.

• • Tests:

• • Add u-boot-tools to test dependencies so that salsa.debian.org pipelines

• actually test the new FIT comparator.

• • Strip newlines when determining Black version to avoid “requires black

• = 20.8b1 (18.9b0\n detected)” in test output (NB. embedded newline).

• • Gnumeric is back in testing so re-add to test dependencies.

• • Use assert_diff (over get_data, etc.) in the FIT and APK comparators.

• • Mark test_apk.py::test_android_manifest as being allowed to fail for now.

• • Fix the FIT tests in buster and unstable.

=> ↺ X.509 user certificate authentication with Red Hat’s single sign-on technology

• This article illustrates how to configure a browser authentication flow using X.509 user-signed certificates. Once you have set up authentication using X.509 user-signed certificates, your users will not be required to enter a username and password when authenticating against Red Hat’s single sign-on technology (SSO). Instead, they will present an X.509 certificate to the SSO instance.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ The future of Data Privacy Officers in India

• Corporates have realised the need for hiring a data privacy officer to protect data and stay compliant with GDPR and other regulations. Recently Vodafone Idea appointed Mathan Babu Kasilingam as the new CISO & Data Privacy Officer.

• There was only a few thousand official privacy officers worldwide before GDPR came into effect in 2018. By 2019, it was estimated that globally already half a million organizations were relying on the expertise of a privacy officer.

=> ↺ Koo crosses 3 million users, popularity surges amid Twitter row

• Koo has in the last few weeks seen a massive surge in user base as Union ministers and government departments have endorsed the homegrown microblogging platform amid a spat with Twitter.

• From information technology ministry using Koo to broadcast its stand on Twitter not fully complying with its order to take down inflammatory content to ministers, including Piyush Goyal, urging people to switch platform, these developments have led to a surge in the userbase of the Indian rival.

• Koo, which has startling similarities with Twitter, now has over three million users. Downloads of Koo app surged 10-fold this week. Koo has a yellow bird as its logo in contrast to the blue bird of Twitter.

=> ↺ Return on Data: When governments fail to make surveillance useful

• There is this common refrain about how companies have data about you and could do bad things. Yet governments often pass surveillance laws that are much worse, and by definition, you can’t “vote with your wallet” for them. So in a world where I’m already giving data to third parties, it is useful to ask what I get in return.

=> ↺ IMF Calls for Credit Score to be Tied to Internet Search Histor

• In a blog post courtesy of the International Monetary Fund, IMF researchers Arnoud Boot, Peter Hoffmann, Luc Laeven, and Lev Ratnovski called for internet search history to be tied to credit score.

• Presenting their findings from a paper they wrote, the researchers argue that by using non-financial data, specifically “the history of online searches and purchases,” we can solve the problem of “certain kinds of people not having enough hard data (income, employment time, assets and debts) available.”

• The authors of the piece claim that this move is a necessary innovation in order to compete with the rise of corporate cryptocurrencies such as the one in development by Facebook, who hope to launch next year. While Facebook is a monopoly that has engaged in political censorship, their power pales in comparison to that of the IMF . The International Monetary Fund is a veritable superpower with ties to the World Bank, and they oversee the entire global economy.

=> ↺ What is Really New in Fintech

• Fintech resolves the dilemma by tapping various nonfinancial data: the type of browser and hardware used to access the internet, the history of online searches and purchases. Recent research documents that, once powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, these alternative data sources are often superior than traditional credit assessment methods, and can advance financial inclusion, by, for example, enabling more credit to informal workers and households and firms in rural areas.

=> ↺ The End of the Privacy of Digital Correspondence

• The EU wants to have all private chats, messages, and emails automatically searched for suspicious content, generally and indiscriminately. The stated aim: To prosecute child pornography. The result: Mass surveillance through fully automated real-time messaging and chat control and the end of secrecy of digital correspondence.

• In 2020 the European Commission proposed “temporary” legislation aimed at allowing the search of all private chats, messages, and emails for illegal depictions of minors and attempted initiation of contacts with minors. This is to allow the providers of Facebook Messenger, Gmail, et al, to scan every message for suspicious text and images. This takes place in a fully automated process and using error-prone “artificial intelligence”. If an algorithm considers a message suspicious, its content and meta-data are disclosed automatically and without human verification to a private US-based organization and from there to national police authorities worldwide. The reported users are not notified.

• Some U.S. providers of services such as Gmail and Outlook.com are already performing such automated messaging and chat controls. Through a second piece of legislation, the EU Commission intends to oblige all providers of chat, messaging and e-mail services to deploy this mass surveillance technology.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ “No Hate! No Fear!” Democracy Now! Co-Host Nermeen Shaikh Celebrates 10 Years Covering War & Peace

• As Democracy Now! prepares to mark 25 years on air, we celebrate Nermeen Shaikh’s 10th anniversary as a Democracy Now! co-host and feature a report she filed from protests at New York’s JFK Airport against the Trump administration’s Muslim ban, one of the many highlights from her time on the program.

=> ↺ In Okinawa, the US Military Seeks a Base Built on the Bones of the War Dead

• One Sunday in October, Takamatsu Gushiken dug up a femur. It was one of several exciting finds that fall. By the month’s end, he had uncovered the phalange of a foot, two fibulas, and a lower jaw, too. He rushed to tell the rest of his volunteer group, Gamafuya, which means “cave diggers” in the Okinawan Indigenous language of Uchinaaguchi. The bones confirmed what Gushiken had known all along: There, in a tract of forest in the southern city of Itoman, Okinawa, lay the remains of the victims of World War II.

=> ↺ George Shultz’s Character Study of Robert Gates

• Shultz was almost singularly responsible for convincing President Ronald Reagan that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev wanted detente and arms control with the United States. Shultz had to maneuver against William Casey and Robert Gates at the CIA as well as Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger and Deputy Secretary Richard Perle, who opposed detente and arms control.  Weinberger and Perle resigned because of the successful negotiation of the Intermediate-forces Nuclear Treaty in 1987.

• At the Moscow summit in 1988, it was Shultz who convinced Reagan to take a photo opportunity in Red Square, which all of Reagan’s other advisors opposed.  The Red Square images are an iconic reminder of the success of Soviet-American summitry.  Shultz threatened to resign when Reagan threatened to polygraph senior government officials because of leaks to the press.  Reagan immediately retreated.  If Shultz had threatened to resign in 1986, Reagan might have been spared the policy and political failure of Iran-Contra.

=> ↺ Finland approved by State Department for $91.2M rocket launcher purchase

• The sale of multiple launch rocket systems to Finland was approved by the State Department, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced on Wednesday.

• The potential $91.2 million deal, with Lockheed Martin Missile and Fire Control as its sole contractor, still requires approval by the U.S. Senate, DSCA said in a press release.

• The sale would include M30A2 and M31A2 Extended Range Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, quality assurance testing services, and technical and logistical support.

=> ↺ Taliban tweet threatens Malala; Twitter removes account

• A Pakistani Taliban militant who nine years ago is alleged to have shot and badly wounded Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai has threatened a second attempt on her life, tweeting that next time, “there would be no mistake.” Twitter on Wednesday permanently suspend the account with the menacing post.

=> ↺ French assembly passes bill ensuring ‘French values,’ banning polygamy, forced marriage

• The bill introduces mechanisms to guarantee that mosques and associations that run them are not under the sway of foreign interests or homegrown Salafists with a rigourous interpretation of Islam.

=> ↺ French academics blast minister’s warning on ‘Islamo-leftism’

• The comments came amid a divisive debate in France about what President Emmanuel Macron has termed “Islamist separatism,” in which Islamists are said to be flouting French laws in closed-off Muslim communities and fuelling terror attacks on French soil.

=> ↺ Son of detained veteran Islamist politician threatens to “turn Sudan into hell” should father be handed over to ICC

• Nafeh is a long-time ally of Omar al Bashir who was ousted by the country’s military following nation-wide protest triggered by bread prices in April 2019. Following the arrest of al Bashir, Nafeh was also arrested on several charges including corruption and the 1989 military coup.

• He is also wanted by the ICC on Darfur war crimes just like al Bashir himself.

Environment

=> ↺ Philippe Sands on why “ecocide” should be a crime

• Sands is now part of a push to make the systematic destruction of nature a recognised international crime known as “ecocide”. Since November, Sands has been co-chairing an expert panel charged with giving the term legal definition. If an amendment to the ICC’S founding treaty is then adopted, ecocide will sit alongside war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity as a legally binding offence – one through which chief executives and heads of state can be brought to justice.

• There are multiple reasons for making ecocide a criminal offence, from giving legal teeth to international treaties such as the Paris Agreement, to facing up to the scale of the threat posed by the climate crisis. There is also a practical need for environmental criminal prosecutions to be truly international in scope, so that its perpetrators have nowhere to hide – as Jojo Mehta, who co-founded the Stop Ecocide campaign alongside the late legal pioneer Polly Higgins, has highlighted.

Overpopulation

=> ↺ Degrowing for peace? Tackling structural violence and climate resilience

• In a recent article published in Sustainability Science, I explore how climate action and peace can be advanced simultaneously. Finding an answer, I suggest, lies in making space to imagine alternatives to our current sustainability approach: transitioning to a different economic system that focuses on people rather than profit, foregrounding broad understandings of peace, and pursuing societal change. Seeds of such change, lie with degrowth, activities and policies that recenter the economy on ecological and human well-being. Examples of degrowth provide a starting point for considering concrete steps toward tackling structural violence, fostering climate resilience, and advancing peace.

=> ↺ Overpopulation is what’s driving climate change

• Hellish forest fires, super storms, parching droughts, desertification, mass extinction, filthy water, new deadly diseases, civil unrest and violence are in our faces daily. Is 2021 cursed or is Mother Nature giving us a final warning?

• All these extreme events are called “climate change” which is just a vague and cowardly euphemism. Call it as it is: Overpopulation! There are too many humans, devouring our diminishing resources. The fact is we are changing our climate and pushing all life to extinction.

• Because of our runaway population, we are now using the principal of Earth’s bounty. We’re no longer living on just the interest of Earth’s resources. Any accountant can tell you how fast the principal disappears!

=> ↺ Opinion | Bending the Moral Arc of the Universe—Toward Peace, Sanity, and Survival—No Matter the Obstacles

• Uncertainty in a vulnerable world.

Finance

=> ↺ Demanding ‘Dignified Work and a Living Wage’ as Legal Rights, Ayanna Pressley Unveils Jobs Guarantee Resolution

• “It’s time to establish a legal right to a job for all people in America.”

=> ↺ Ro Khanna Introduces Bill to End ‘Runaway Tax Evasion’ by US Millionaires and Billionaires

• “The wealthiest 1% are responsible for roughly 70% of the ‘tax gap,’” said the California Democrat. “It’s time every American pay their fair share.”

=> ↺ Freedom From Poverty Should Be a Human Right

• In June 1990, future South African president Nelson Mandela addressed a joint session of Congress only months after being released from 27 years in a South African apartheid prison. He reminded the political leadership of the United States that “to deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. To impose on them a wretched life of hunger and deprivation is to dehumanise them.”

=> ↺ Sorry, Robinhood: legacy brokers won from the GameStop frenzy

• Robinhood has thus failed to topple the broking establishment. Though the upstart firm has 13m users, traditional brokers still serve the majority of traders. Indeed, the firm’s success, in a reversal of the intentions of the mythical hero and his band of merry men, may be benefiting the rich at the expense of the poor. Research suggests that people playing with their own money nearly always end up poorer than when they started. The winners in such circumstances are often stockbroking firms, which gain new customers, and professional investors, who are happy to take the other side of foolish trades.

=> ↺ Hill Report: who wants to talk to Reddit?

• For a hearing investigating what happens when a bunch of Redditors disrupt the US financial markets, social media’s role in the GameStop squeeze wasn’t really a major part of Thursday’s hearing. But for the lawmakers focused on the internet’s influence in January’s events, they appeared deeply concerned about how social media discourse can cause real-world problems.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Opinion | What About Eliminating the Senate Altogether?

• The U.S. Senate is a global and national problem.

=> ↺ To Pave Way for DeJoy’s Ouster, 80 House Democrats Urge Biden to Quickly Fill Postal Board Vacancies

• “USPS will never recover so long as DeJoy is given free rein by a partisan, ineffective, and incomplete board of governors.”

=> ↺ What Was Rush Limbaugh So Afraid Of?

• “Being attacked by Rush Limbaugh is like being gummed by a newt.”

=> ↺ Lame Limbaugh obits: Mainstream media fawns over a toxic bigot who poisoned our politics

• But calling out the hatred and bigotry that Trump established as the central tenets of the modern Republican Party remains a step too far. Our newsroom leaders still cannot bring themselves to declare that the hysteria and conspiracy theories that once only inhabited the lunatic fringes of our political discourse — until Rush Limbaugh, and then Donald Trump, came along — don’t merit respect, but should be banished, rejected and denied.

• And that is why, even with a year to pre-write and edit them, major media outlets on Wednesday published obituaries celebrating Limbaugh’s extraordinary success as a “conservative provocateur.” They whitewashed his once-unimaginably vile and divisive demagoguery as “comic bombast.” They hailed him as “the voice of American conservatism,” when what really matters about Rush Limbaugh is that he spread hatred more effectively and lucratively than any American before him. He didn’t hide his bigotry and, eventually, neither did the Republican Party.

=> ↺ MEA’s response to celebrity activism shows that India is new to Twitter diplomacy

• While hashtag activism was welcomed by the protesting farmers’ associations and many activists, some Indian film and sports stars have urged conscientious restraint on policy matters internal to the nation. Drowned in the chorus of support and dissent, is the sober voice of former Secretary, MEA, Vivek Katju: “This marks a new page for our external publicity efforts to counter criticism. The question is if it will be effective to reach the followers of those who have tweeted.”

=> ↺ Four men own Britain’s news media. Is that a problem for democracy?

• But it is worth noting that these are the same media groups that put Boris Johnson in power – via the Sun, Daily Mail and Telegraph – by helping to persuade 52 per cent of those who voted in the EU membership referendum to favour Leave.

=> ↺ Turkish-born candidate for local elections in Germany claims: Our party list is open to Muslims and infidels

• The statement of the top candidate of the Aktive Demokraten (Active Democrats) in Rüsselsheim, Erdal Koca, that the party list is open to Muslims as well as ” infidels”, has caused a lot of fuss and anger in the past week.

=> ↺ The Trumpers Among Us

• Perhaps I am naive, but I try to remember that there are more of us than there are of them. True, thanks to the Constitution, and gerrymandering, and Citizens United, and the six conservatives on the Supreme Court, Republicans have powerful advantages. But if we can lessen sheer desperation—and Biden’s $1.9 trillion aid package is a good start—maybe we can peel off the Trumpers who really are motivated by economic insecurity. Maybe, if we can get enough power, the Trumpers’ numbers will dwindle as they see it’s not so terrible to have health insurance, or to legalize the status of immigrants who’ve been living here forever, or even to wear a mask to prevent a deadly virus from spreading. Or maybe they won’t, and we’ll just have to make sure they lose—like they did in Georgia.

=> ↺ The Newest Diplomatic Currency: Covid-19 Vaccines

• India, the unmatched vaccine manufacturing power, is giving away millions of doses to neighbors friendly and estranged. It is trying to counter China, which has made doling out shots a central plank of its foreign relations. And the United Arab Emirates, drawing on its oil riches, is buying jabs on behalf of its allies.

• The coronavirus vaccine — one of the world’s most in-demand commodities — has become a new currency for international diplomacy.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ The contradictions of “cancel culture”: Where elite liberalism goes to die

• The ruling elites and the courtiers who trumpet their moral superiority by damning and silencing those who do not linguistically conform to politically correct speech are the new Jacobins. They wallow in a sanctimonious arrogance, one made possible by their privilege, which masks their subservience to corporate power and their amorality. They do not battle social and economic injustice. They silence, with the enthusiastic assistance of the digital platforms in Silicon Valley, those who are crushed and deformed by systems of oppression and those who lack their finely developed politesse and deference to linguistic fashion. They are the useful idiots of corporate power and the emerging police state. Cancel culture is not the road to reform. It is the road to tyranny.

=> ↺ Sharia-Enforcing Amazon Brownshirts Delete Book That Criticized Islam

• And so we see it yet again: criticize Christianity, and you’ll be celebrated as a heroic, courageous intellectual, standing up against the forces of reaction. You’ll be feted and laden with honors, a la Dawkins today. Criticize Islam, on the other hand, and you’ll be excoriated as a “racist” (one more time, kids: Islam is not a race, and indeed, any belief system that you can ascribe to or discard is not and cannot be a race), “bigoted” “Islamophobe,” and the Southern Poverty Law Center will call you a “hate group leader” and make sure that all good, right-thinking people don’t come near you with a ten-foot pole.

=> ↺ Hidden from View: Egypt’s Blasphemy Cases

• Egypt has restricted free speech across every sector of society. These restrictions are enforced by officials whose job involves monitoring social media. The situation begs the question: What is driving Egypt’s recent increase in blasphemy cases? As Egypt becomes more proficient at monitoring social media, many Christians worry that the widespread enforcement of blasphemy laws has only just begun.

=> ↺ What has the New York Times got against Ayaan Hirsi Ali?

• Occasionally there is talk of needing to at some point address these questions in a ‘responsible’ fashion. But the long-awaited day never comes, and in the meantime whenever anybody attempts to address these questions ‘responsibly’ the same routine applies. A small coterie of left-wing and Islamist activist boundary-beaters pop-up to ensure that the discussion is suppressed once more.

• In recent days, this formula has again been employed against Ayaan Hirsi Ali. As soon as her book came out, The New York Times published a characteristically inaccurate hit-piece to try to kill it at birth. Speaking engagements – even virtual ones – involving Hirsi Ali came under sustained pressure to cancel. The Council on American-Islamic Relations and other Muslim groups started to campaign against the book. And figures like an obscure communist activist called Maryam Namazie, who claims to campaign against Islamism, found common cause with the Islamists in trying to take-out Hirsi Ali. In the latter case, Hirsi Ali was berated for having views that are ‘regressive’, as though one must have ‘progressive’ communist views or have no views at all.

=> ↺ Facebook vs. Australia: What Happens When Big Tech Comes for the News?

• Supporters of the new code say it’s a necessary step toward addressing the growing imbalances in the market for digital ads: Roughly 70 percent of the $6.8 billion per year Australian online ad market is currently cornered by Google and Facebook. Google threatened to leave Australia over the law before reneging, but Facebook has held firm. In the social media giant’s view, news is only a small part of what appears on users’ feeds, and publishers largely reap the benefits by gaining access to Facebook’s audience. About 70 percent of Australians use the platform.

• Foreign Policy spoke with Lisa Davies, the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Australia’s most widely read newspaper. It’s also a part of Nine Entertainment, a media group that has been influential in pushing for the new laws. She spoke about the surprise move and the wider impact of the government’s new media code.

=> ↺ Australia to Hold Talks With Facebook’s Zuckerberg After BlockAustralia to Hold Talks With Facebook’s Zuckerberg After Block

• Still, Frydenberg said the government will proceed with its controversial legislation that will force Facebook and Google to pay Australian publishers for news content — the law is expected to pass parliament next week.

=> ↺ Australia’s Leader Vows to Press Ahead With Content Law Despite Facebook Block on News

• Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison vowed to move forward with the country’s proposed content laws that will see tech giants pay for journalism, despite Facebook’s unprecedented move to block news content in Australia.

• Facebook’s new rules for Australian users mean that they cannot share Australian or international news and international users outside Australia also cannot share Australian news. The move has been widely condemned by healthcare and emergency services in Australia.

=> ↺ Facebook Dubbed ‘Bully’ as Backlash Grows over Dispute with Australia

• An international backlash was growing Thursday to Facebook blocking users of its platform in Australia from viewing or sharing links to domestic and international news stories, with the social media giant accused of behaving like a “bully.”

• Facebook’s move to block the content ahead of Australian lawmakers approving a new measure forcing the company to pay media organizations is prompting widespread condemnation from politicians in Europe and North America.

=> ↺ Facebook walks as Google caves in Australia

• The dust-up, which is far from over, pits the new media barons of Silicon Valley against the old ones of television and the press. What so far looks like a one-all draw in Australia is likely to be played out around the world in the months ahead.

• Australia’s “news media bargaining code” has been in development for three years, but the argument is older. A decade ago offline media controlled more than 80% of the advertising market in Australia. Yet there, as in the rest of the world, advertisers have found that digital media are better at reaching their audiences. In the past ten years offline media’s share of the market has fallen by half. The lion’s share has gone to Facebook, which dominates display ads, and Google, which has cornered the search market.

=> ↺ Facebook: high time for Australians to wake up and smell the roses

• Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has made his reaction known to the blocking of news content in the country by Facebook – in a post on Facebook.

• Morrison is a bit thick, so the irony of doing this may have been lost on him. But it serves to underline the kind of idiocy that has been on display ever since Facebook announced, early on Thursday morning AEDT, that it would restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content on its platform.

=> ↺ Facebook Blocks News in Australia, Diverging With Google on Proposed Law

• At the heart of the fight is whether the tech giants should pay news organizations for the news articles that are shared on their networks. Under a proposed law from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, both Google and Facebook would be required to negotiate with media publishers and compensate them for the content that appears on their sites.

• Facebook and Google have fought hard to prevent the Australian law — which is expected to pass this week or next — from forcing their hands. But on Wednesday, the two companies sharply diverged on how to head off that regulatory future.

=> ↺ Facebook ‘unfriends’ Australia: news pages go dark in test for global publishing

• Facebook faced an angry backlash on Thursday after blocking news feeds in Australia in a surprise escalation of a dispute with the government which could be a test for the future of online publishing worldwide.

=> ↺ Here’s why Facebook blocked news content for Australian Users | Details

• Facebook has announced to block both Australian users and media companies from sharing or viewing local and international news content, in response to Australias proposed new Media Bargaining law.

• Facebook said that the proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between “our platform and publishers who use it to share news content”.

=> ↺ Facebook blocks news sharing in Australia over media law

• Facebook blocked the sharing of news in Australia on Wednesday over government plans to make it pay media groups for content, but the move disrupted the pages of emergency services while triggering accusations of censorship.

• From early Thursday, Australians were unable to post links to news articles or view the Facebook pages of news outlets from anywhere in the world.

• The move came as retaliation for laws proposed in Canberra that would force social media giants to pay for news content shared on their sites.

=> ↺ Facebook blocks Australians from viewing news, public information amid govt spat

• Australians woke to empty news feeds on their Facebook Inc pages on Thursday (Feb 18) after the social media giant blocked all media content in a surprise and dramatic escalation of a dispute with the government over paying for content.

• The move was swiftly criticised by news producers, politicians and human rights advocates, many of whom pointed out that official health and meteorology information had also been scrubbed during the coronavirus pandemic and at the height of Australia’s summer bushfire season.

=> ↺ Bangladesh orders Al Jazeera documentary be scrubbed from web

• A documentary by Al Jazeera that aired explosive claims about Bangladesh’s army chief must be taken down from the Internet in the South Asian country, a court ordered on Wednesday (Feb 17).

• The Doha-based broadcaster released the hour-long programme entitled All The Prime Minister’s Men in early February detailing allegations that the country’s security forces and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had links to a criminal gang.

• The High Court instructed Bangladesh’s telco regulator to “remove or take down Al Jazeera’s documentary… from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and other digital platforms where it has been shared”, the regulator’s lawyer, Khandaker Reza-e-Raquib, told AFP.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Independent journalist Sergey Smirnov released from jail after serving 15 days for a retweet

• Mediazona editor-in-chief Sergey Smirnov was released from detention on Thursday, February 18, after spending 15 days in jail for a joke he shared on Twitter. 

=> ↺ Indian court rules in favor of female journalist sued for defamation over sexual harassment allegations

• An Indian court has ruled in favor of a female journalist who was sued for defamation after accusing a former minister of sexual harassment, in one of the country’s earliest and most prominent #MeToo cases.

• The journalist, Priya Ramani, first made the allegations in a 2017 Vogue India article, in which she described experiencing workplace harassment during a job interview with an unnamed editor in a Mumbai hotel room.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Illegal social media ride-shares competing with taxi services

• According to legislation, the surveillance authority cannot make an order to a driver on social media to verify their legality. For this reason, it is difficult to even check taxi apps, since vehicles offering services there also do not stick out in regular traffic.

=> ↺ Couple with new-born baby among five Christians arrested in Somaliland

• Islam is the official religion of Somaliland, which declared independence from Somalia in 1991. Its constitution states that individuals have the right to freedom of belief. However, the constitution also prohibits Muslims from converting to another religion, bars the propagation of any religion other than Islam and stipulates all laws must comply with the general principles of sharia (Islamic law).

=> ↺ Fatwa forbids baseless blasphemy allegations in Pakistan

• “We are witnessing a record increase in blasphemy cases against all members of society irrespective of their faiths. This has become a norm here but we are glad that a lot of our Muslim siblings have spoken out against the treatment to our community,” he stated in a recent meeting of Church of Pakistan clergy at the head office of Raiwind Diocese.

• Last month Pakistan’s Ministry of Human Rights launched the country’s first human rights information resource portal.

• The portal, developed in partnership with the European Union, is envisioned to serve as a “central repository of up-to-date and cutting-edge human rights knowledge” for students, academics, practitioners and citizens at large.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ I Pay $9.99 a Month for Spotify Premium. So Why Am I Listening to Podcast Ads?

• Last year, Spotify signed one of the hottest podcasters in the world to an exclusive deal. This year, The Joe Rogan Experience can only be enjoyed on Spotify — that is, after listening to about 10 minutes of ads from multiple sponsors before the start of every episode. Even worse, Spotify is now inserting ads within the podcast at regular intervals, and making those ads difficult to skip if you’re driving, working out, walking the dog, or doing anything else while listening to the show in the background.

• But it’s not just Joe Rogan getting peppered with ads. Other Spotify podcasts are full of lengthy spots. And because Spotify hasn’t filled a lot of its inventory, many of the ads repeat over and over again on smaller shows. All of which sounds reasonable for non-paying listeners, but absolutely absurd for those forking over $9.99 a month for a Premium tier expressly marketed as ad-free.

• The issue isn’t going unnoticed by Spotify paying customers. Complaints are pouring into Spotify’s support channels, and users are also complaining on Twitter, Reddit, and other places. “I pay for my subscription. Every month for years now,” one subscriber named Montesi complained in a Spotify forum. “The main reason I am a paid-for subscriber with Spotify is so I don’t have to hear ads.”

=> ↺ Spotty Connection – Alan Pope’s blog

• I had a few days off work this week. It was very enjoyable to spend a bit more time with the family, doing some jobs around the house, going for walks, and generally nothing else, thanks to The Event. However, in the quiet moments I still find myself browsing around, stumbling on new software I know will be enjoyed by my friends on Linux, and feel compelled to package it up, as a snap. This time around I found a post on /r/gnome about “Spot” a Gtk/Rust Spotify client.

Monopolies

Patents

=> ↺ U.S. Federal Circuit Continues To Pressure BioPharma For More When It Comes To Functional Claims

• Biologic drugs, many of which are antibodies, represent an increasing share of the pharmaceutical market. In recent years, numerous broad functional patent claims directed at therapeutic antibodies have come under attack for failing to satisfy the written description and enablement requirements. The proper scope of these requirements has divided the biopharmaceutical industry. In its latest decision on this topic, Amgen Inc. et al. v. Sanofi, Aventisub LLC et al., ___ F.3d ___, No. 2020-1074 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 11, 2021), the Federal Circuit affirmed the invalidity of claims directed to therapeutic antibodies, noting that “functional claim limitations … pose high hurdles in fulfilling the enablement requirement.”

• This is the second decision of the Federal Circuit in a long-running dispute between the parties. At its center are Amgen’s Repatha® and Sanofi’s Praluent® antibody products for the treatment of high cholesterol. Amgen first sued Sanofi and others for patent infringement in the District of Delaware in late 2014. The defendants stipulated to infringement and a jury returned a verdict in favor of Amgen, failing to find invalidity. During the first appeal, the Federal Circuit struck a significant blow to the biopharmaceutical industry by overturning the “newly characterized antigen” test, which had permitted patentees to obtain broad claims to a genus of antibodies by describing the structure of the corresponding antigen, as opposed to the antibodies themselves. The Federal Circuit also remanded the case for re-trial. Back in the district court, the jury once again found the claims valid, but the district court disagreed, issuing judgment as a matter of law that the patents lacked enablement. This second appeal followed with Bristol Myers Squibb Co., Pfizer Inc., and Eli Lilly and Company, among others, filing dueling amicus briefs.

• [...]

• The Federal Circuit decision focused on the enablement requirement, which stems from 35 U.S.C. § 112 and its purpose is to ensure an adequate quid pro quo between the patentee and the public. In exchange for a limited monopoly on the invention, the patentee must enable the public to “carry out the invention” without “undue experimentation.” On appeal, however, the Federal Circuit held that the amount of experimentation needed to make and use Amgen’s patent claims was too high.

=> ↺ In-house: Xiaomi stalling for time with ETSI suit

• Counsel from automotive and telecoms companies told Managing IP this week that they believed Xiaomi was stalling for time with its bid at the Paris Court of First Instance to force standards-setting organisation ETSI to throw out Philips’ 3G and 4G patents.

• They said that the case was a long-shot, at best, and that it was in all likelihood doomed.

• “The case is very interesting, but there is no hope here for Xiaomi to get Philips excluded from ETSI,” says the head of IP and standards for an international telecoms company. “It’s a very long-winded process and Xiaomi is just playing games here from what I can tell.”

• The Chinese handset manufacturer filed a suit at the Paris court earlier this month, in which it demanded that ETSI help conclude the Chinese company’s licensing row with Philips.

• According to an email from ETSI to its members that was leaked to Managing IP, Xiaomi asked the organisation to exclude Philips’ patents from being essential to the LTE (4G) and UMTS (3G) standards if no licensing agreement could be made.

• [...]

• On Friday, February 12, the European Commission released its international trade rules and included amendments that placed a greater emphasis on IP rights.

• The revised EU Trade Enforcement Regulation pertains to the union’s right to enforce international trade agreements.

• Under the new regulation, the scope of Articles 1, 5, 6 and 9 were expanded to include counter-measure protection for IP rights. Before this change, the regulation only included protection for the trade of goods.

• [...]

• The EPO’s Boards of Appeal has considered the legal basis for extensions to deadlines granted by the office at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it emerged this week.

• In March 2020, the EPO announced an extension of all deadlines. The extension lasted until June 2.

• The basis for these extensions was discussed in a case concerning a European patent application directed to processing soybean oil. The applicant involved missed three deadlines dating back to 2018. The final missed deadline fell within the period during which extensions were granted.

• The BoA was strict on the deadlines pre-dating the pandemic, but accepted the COVID-19 extension period as a reason for missing the third deadline.

• However, after assessing the circumstances, the BoA noted a discrepancy between the wording of the EPO’s announcement on extensions and the relevant portion of the European Patent Convention (EPC).

• The EPO’s notice, announced in the Official Journal of the EPO, cited ‘general dislocation’ as mitigating circumstances. But Rule 134(2) of the EPC provides for the extension of deadlines as a result of “a general dislocation in the delivery or transmission of mail” in a contracting state.

• The BoA concluded that, regardless of how the extensions were legally justified, a user of the EPO should not be penalised without good reason for relying on notices published by the EPO itself.

=> ↺ Secondary Factors vs Objective Indicia of Nonobviousness

• I wrote earlier about the Supreme Court petition in Amarin Pharma, Inc. v. Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. (Supreme Court 2021) that focuses on secondary considerations of non-obviousness such as commercial success and long-felt un-met need. There has been a small movement over the years to refer to these as “objective indicia of nonobviousness” as opposed to secondary considerations. That movement did not arise with the Supreme Court. Rather, the Supreme Court has repeatedly referred to these as “secondary factors” or “secondary considerations” of non-obviousness. It did so in both Graham (1966) and again in KSR (2007). In KSR, the court particularly suggested that they have a role in negating obviousness — effectively as rebuttal evidence. “Teleflex has shown no secondary factors to dislodge the determination that claim 4 is obvious.” In Amarin, the patentee is arguing that commercial success and the other factors should not be relegated to rebuttal evidence but rather be used on-par with the other Graham factors.

=> ↺ IPO & Harrity Analytics Release List of Top 300 Patent Holders for 2020

• As with the 2019 report, the 2020 report was compiled in collaboration with Harrity Analytics, based on data obtained from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The IPO and Harrity Analytics noted that patents reported on the 2020 list are utility patents granted during the 2020 calendar year that listed the organization or a subsidiary as the owner on the printed patent document. Harrity Analytics then used organization and subsidiary data provided to two independent third-party data providers and reviewed over 200,000 assignments to attribute ownership to the correct organizations, where applicable. The report notes that patents that were granted to two or more organizations jointly are attributed to each organization separately, and that companies for which patents were granted to subsidiaries are combined with patents granted to the parent.

=> ↺ Who is leading the 5G patent race? A patent landscape analysis on declared SEPs and standards contributions

• The next industrial revolution will see increasing technological convergence as connectivity technologies are gradually integrated into mechanical products. For example, while the importance of connectivity modules in cars may currently be small, experts believe that the connected vehicles of the future will shift consumer focus from the automobile itself to the broader issue of transportation. We will also see the increasing importance of 5G technology in other industries where smart factories, smart homes, smart meters and even smart medical devices will rely on 5G connectivity.

• [...]

• Table 1 illustrates the top patent owners of 5G declared patent families. The first column counts 5G portfolio shares, considering granted patents as well as pending applications at all worldwide patent offices. Here, Huawei leads with a share of more than 15.39%, followed by Qualcomm with 11.24%, ZTE with 9.81%, Samsung with 9.67% and Nokia with 9.01%. The second column counts patent families where at least one patent has been granted, while Column 3 shows 5G patent families where at least one patent has been granted at the USPTO or EPO. Finally, the fourth column presents EPO/USPTO-granted patent families that have never been declared to any previous standard generation (i.e., 2G, 3G or 4G). The shares and counts change depending on the filtering reported in the different columns. Nokia with 15.29%, for example, has the largest EPO/USPTO-granted 5G family portfolio, followed by Samsung with 15.10%. Qualcomm and Huawei have the highest shares when only considering patent families that have not been declared to previous generations.

EPO

=> ↺ OSE Immunotherapeutics Announces Granting of First European Patent Protecting Anti-IL-7 Receptor Antagonist OSE-127/S95011

• OSE Immunotherapeutics (ISIN: FR0012127173; Mnemo: OSE) (Paris:OSE) today announced that it has strengthened intellectual property rights for its anti-interleukin-7 receptor (IL-7R) antagonist OSE-127/S95011 through the granting of a first patent by the European Patent Office (EPO). The patent covers the product and its therapeutic applications in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases through 2037.

=> ↺ Is Late Entry Into The European Regional Phase Possible?

• If you are considering taking your PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) application forward into Europe, you must do so within 31 months from the earliest claimed priority date of the application (or from the PCT filing date, if no priority is claimed). Entry into the European phase requires the filing of a form and paying official fees to the European Patent Office (EPO). An applicant that does not have a residence or place of business with a member state of the European Patent Convention will need to appoint a professional representative before the EPO.

• But what happens if you have missed the 31-month deadline? There are options available which may permit late entry into the European regional phase. Further Processing

• There is a window in which you can enter the European regional phase late ‘as of right’ by paying additional official fees. Shortly after the 31-month deadline, the EPO will issue a notification stating that the European patent application is deemed withdrawn. The applicant will be given a period to enter the European regional phase late if the applicant requests “further processing” under Article 121 EPC. Within that period all the overdue official fees must be paid with a 50% surcharge, which makes this a relatively costly option.

• Please be aware that the deadline for using further processing is 2 months from the date of notification of the missed deadline by the EPO. If you miss this further processing deadline, your only option for entering the European regional phase is by re-establishment of rights. Requesting for Re-Establishment of Rights

• In a few rare cases, there is still the possibility to apply to restore the application by requesting a re-establishment of rights under Article 122 EPC. However, this option should be used only as a last resort, i.e. after the further processing deadline has passed, because requests of this type are only allowed at the discretion of the EPO based on evidence submitted by the applicant.

• A successful re-establishment request requires that the application was not filed on time despite ‘all due care’ having been taken to meet the missed deadline and by all relevant parties. This requires that:

=> ↺ What Factors Affect Costs Upon Entry Into The European Regional Phase?

• If you are considering taking your PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) application forward in Europe before the EPO (European Patent Office), it’s important to be aware of the fees associated with the process. Not only are there set fees, but there are also factors which can affect the cost of your application throughout the process. Take a look at the information below to find out which factors and fees you should consider, and gain an expectation of how much the process should cost you. What are the basic fees for entry into Europe?

=> ↺ Pros And Cons Of Using The European Patent Application System Rather Than Separate National Patent Applications?

• Since its establishment in the 1970s, the European Patent Office (EPO) has become the standard choice for obtaining patent protection across Europe. The European system provides for patent protection in 38 countries, including all current 27 member states within the European Union. However, protection in all those countries comes at a cost, due to the need to validate the European patent in individual countries once granted and the high official fees at the EPO.

• The European Unitary Patent is intended to address some issues concerning patent validation and renewal costs for the member states of the European Union but it will be subject to the same prosecution costs as the current European patent application system. So, is a European patent application worth the cost?

• This very much depends on the number of countries in Europe where patent protection is needed and, to some extent, which countries they are. The European application system is beneficial in that the single European patent application can be prosecuted in only one language (i.e. English, German or French) and by only one representative for the whole of Europe. In contrast, the official fees are lower at national patent offices in Europe but many countries will require a local representative to be appointed for that country, as well as a translation into the national language.

=> ↺ How Quickly Can A European Patent Be Granted?

• Whilst your patent application is pending, you have patent-pending status. You don’t have to wait until you obtain a patent to start creating, marking, selling or licencing your invention. You can begin this process straight away, as long as the patent application adequately covers all of the important aspects of your invention that you intend to exploit commercially.

• In some circumstances, this may mean that you won’t be looking to speed up the patent process and let the timescale run naturally. A slower patent application process may allow you more options for reacting to competitor activity whilst the application is pending, e.g. providing more options for claim amendment than after grant of a patent.

• Another quirk of the European patent system is that renewal fees are paid to the EPO whilst the patent application is pending but are later paid to the national patent offices in individual European countries once the patent is granted. If you intend the patent to remain in force in a large number of European countries, the renewal fees to the EPO whilst the application is pending may be considerably lower than the national patent renewal fees after grant.

=> ↺ Brexit – what you need to do now.

• For any of your EU unitary rights registered before 01 January 2021, you now also have a new comparable UK right that enjoys the same legal status as if you had applied for and registered the right under UK law. Your new comparable UK right inherits the same filing, priority, and seniority date, as applicable.

• [...]

• European Patents are granted by the EPO under the European Patent Convention, which is an autonomous legal system to the EU and so the grant procedure for European Patents remains unchanged. The grant of UK Patents remains the responsibility of the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office, meaning the grant of UK Patents also remains unchanged. Any granted UK Patents or any European Patents validated in the UK continue to take effect in the UK as before.

• However, you should consider that patent rights on patented goods placed on the market in the UK will not be exhausted in the EU, so a patent proprietor in the EU can prevent parallel import of the patented goods from the UK into the EU. You should therefore consider that you might not be able to export patented goods sourced in the UK to the EU, and you should check with the supplier of your goods whether those goods are the subject of a patent in the EU country to which you intend to export and if you have consent to export from the UK to the EU.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Sci-Hub: Elsevier and Springer Nature Obtain UK ISP Blocking Order

• Major UK ISP TalkTalk is reporting that in response to an order from a court in the UK, it is now required to block subscriber access to Sci-Hub. The injunction is reportedly the result of an application by academic publishers Elsevier and Springer Nature, who have teamed up in other regions to block access to ‘The Pirate Bay of Science’.

=> ↺ Copyright Troll Lawyer Must Pay Victims $1.5 Million Restitution, Appeals Court Affirms

• The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed that Paul Hansmeier, a convicted copyright troll lawyer, must pay more than $1.5 million in restitution to victims of a piracy honeypot scheme. Hansmeier protested a district court order, arguing that the amount also included legitimate settlements, but the appeals court disagrees.

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