● 05.25.21

● Links 26/5/2021: Magit 3.0 and Chrome 91 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 8:34 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ Dell OptiPlex 7090 Ultra Review

• OS Options

• [...]

• Ubuntu 20.04 NeoKylin v10 (China only, Coming soon)

Server

=> ↺ Ubuntu Supports Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ampere A1 Compute

• Together with Oracle, Canonical announces an optimised Ubuntu image for the launch of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Ampere A1 Compute. Oracle Cloud customers will benefit from running Ubuntu, the most popular cloud operating system, on a secure, scalable, and highly cost-effective infrastructure.

• “Ubuntu on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ampere A1 Compute provides a high performing and cost-effective solution for all types of workloads. Ubuntu gives developers a highly optimized cloud operating system and kernel with excellent boot speed, strong security, and stellar stability,” said Matt Leonard, vice president, product management, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

=> ↺ EuroHPC’s Leonardo and Lumi Supercomputers Take Shape

• Progress is now underway on these supercomputers, with Slovenia’s 6.8 peak petaflops Vega system already online. According to HPCWire, two of the three pre-exascale systems — Finland’s Lumi system and Italy’s Leonardo system — are taking shape as well. Spain’s MareNostrum 5 has yet to be detailed.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ OpenIndiana 2021.04 overview | Community-driven illumos Distribution.

• In this video, I am going to show an overview of OpenIndiana 2021.04 and some of the applications pre-installed.

=> ↺ Improve Efficiency In Chrome or Firefox With Vimium

• Vimium is a browser extension that provides keyboard-based navigation and control of the web in the spirit of the Vim editor. It helps you navigate the web without touching the mouse. Vimium uses a clever highlighting method to navigate using links.

=> ↺ And the Answer is… | LINUX Unplugged 407

• From our origins with Linux to preparing your home LAN for a solar storm, it’s an Ask us Anything special edition!

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux 5.14 To Allow Hot Unplug Of AMD Radeon GPUs – Phoronix

• Linux 5.14 to debut later in the summer will allow for hot unplugging of AMD Radeon graphics cards such as when using an external GPU enclosure or passing back a GPU from a virtual machine to the host. Up until now the AMDGPU kernel driver hasn’t cooperated nicely with the Radeon GPU for hot unplug events.

• Going back a number of months AMD developers have been working to better support GPU hot unplug handling for AMD Radeon graphics cards as the current behavior could lead to system crashes and other problems when removing an “eGPU” enclosure or otherwise removing the graphics card from the system while in operation.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ Intel Protected Xe Path Code Updated, Now Defaults PXP Code To Disabled

• Intel’s open-source driver engineers remain very active on bringing up their discrete graphics card support under Linux with restructuring of the kernel driver to handle local/dedicated memory among a variety of other changes needed. Plus there are new features with the latest generation of Intel graphics such as the Protected Xe Path (PXP) for hardware-protected sessions for multi-user / multi-process scenarios. The Intel PXP code for their Linux driver has been in the works since last year and the latest revision now submitted.

• Protected Xe Path is hardware-protected sessions by way of encrypted video memory and a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) for protecting different sessions/clients running on Intel Xe graphics. This will likely be of importance for Intel Xe Graphics in the data center and any public clouds for ensuring different clients/processes are properly isolated. Intel hasn’t publicly talked much about PXP but their Linux support remains ongoing.

Benchmarks

=> ↺ DragonFlyBSD 6.0 Is Performing Very Well Against Ubuntu Linux, FreeBSD 13.0

• Earlier this month in our initial benchmarking of DragonFlyBSD 6.0 we found DragonFlyBSD 6.0 performing much better than DragonFlyBSD 5.8, but how does that put its performance up against FreeBSD 13.0 and Ubuntu Linux for reference? Here are such benchmarks in our latest benchmarking of DragonFlyBSD 6.0, FreeBSD 13.0 (with both GCC and Clang), and Ubuntu Linux. Today’s round of benchmarking is looking at the performance of: - DragonFlyBSD 5.8.3 - DragonFlyBSD 6.0 - Ubuntu 21.04 - FreeBSD 13.0 - FreeBSD 13.0 + GCC (using the GCC 10.2 compiler from ports rather than the default LLVM Clang 11 compiler, so to have a run matching the other operating systems defaulting to GCC.)

Applications

=> ↺ Magit 3.0 released

• I am excited to announce the release of Magit version 3.0, consisting of 1264 commits since the last feature release two and a half years ago. The release notes can be found here.

=> ↺ Magit 3.0 released

=> ↺ Feeling Overwhelmed With Vim? Try Micro Text Editor Instead

• Command-line text editors are a testament to the usefulness of the Linux terminal, allowing you to edit files without ever needing to leave the terminal. These editors use fewer resources and are blazing fast, perfect for some quick editing.

• Some of the popular command-line text editors include Vi, Vim, and Nano. These tools are so popular that they come preinstalled on most Linux distributions. However, some editors like Vi or Vim have their learning curves and key bindings which can be hard to grasp for beginners. Here’s a simpler alternative: Micro Text Editor.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to check your CPU in Linux

• If you’re a Linux user and need to know your CPU hardware specs, there are many ways to find out. In this guide, we’ll focus on Lscpu, the cpuinfo file, as well as Inxi. This guide will show you how to use all of these tools to find your CPU specs on Linux.

• To start, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T on the keyboard, or search for “Terminal” in the app menu. Once the terminal window is open, follow along with the instructions below that correspond with the tool you prefer to use.

=> ↺ How to manage an AWS RDS instance using aws-cli

• You can easily create and manage RDS resources using aws-cli commands. In this article, we will see the commands to create an RDS MySql Instance and how to make a snapshot of the database. We will also see commands to tag the RDS Instance, delete the Instance, and do asnapshot.

=> ↺ How to execute a .run or .bin file in CentOS 8

• There are some files that we are downloaded from the internet that have extensions of .bin or .run. To run such files, we have to set the permission to execute those files. A .bin or .run file is a self-extracting binary file in Linux and Unix Operating systems. For example, Java and Flash are two examples of such files. In this tutorial, we will learn how to run .bin and .run extension files. So let’s get started.

=> ↺ How to Unzip Files in Linux Explained with Examples

• In this article, we will explain how to use the unzip command in Linux to easily list, test and extract compressed ZIP archives.

• So you’ve been sent a zip file and now you’re stuck figuring how to unzip it’s content on Linux? You can use the unzip command to extract (unzip) the file on Linux.

=> ↺ How to Use Auto-CPUFreq to Squeeze Battery Life In Linux Laptops – Make Tech Easier

• It’s no secret that the day-to-day use of a laptop is ultimately governed by its battery. Everything you do, from watching a video to opening your browser, sucks a certain amount of juice from your device. That juice will run out at some point, so the rule of the game is to delay that moment as much as possible.

• Unfortunately, Linux doesn’t quite cooperate with you. Although many distributions have made strides in terms of battery efficiency, they don’t make the best use of what your CPU can do to give you the most productive experience.

=> ↺ How to Install Google Roboto Font on Windows, Mac and Linux

=> ↺ How to bind a service to a port in Linux | FOSS Linux

• The issue of binding a service to a port in Linux strongly depends on the operating system’s environment. A Linux OS environment exists either as a desktop or a server. The Linux server is a better candidate for the assessment of this topic.

• This assessment is in comparison to how these two OS environments deal with ports and services. The Linux server OS environment is more dynamic in offering ports and services functionalities.

• A Linux server machine is characterized by an IP address linked with the Network Layer and several port numbers linked with the Transport Layer. This characterization is under a normal network topography. In terms of functionality, a machine that exists in a defined network will depend on its assigned IP address for it to be located.

• So when an IP address points to a machine’s destination on an existing network, a port number will be associated with the machine system’s destination service.

=> ↺ How To Install Ajenti Control Panel on Debian 10 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Ajenti Control Panel on Debian 10. For those of you who didn’t know, Ajenti is a free, open-source, lightweight control panel for managing Linux servers. It comes with a lot of plugins to manage emails, websites, domains, and more. It is written in Python and provides a responsive graphical interface to manage the server.

• 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 Ajenti Control Panel on a Debian 10 (Buster).

=> ↺ How to install WPS Office 2019 on Deepin 20.2

• In this video, we are looking at how to install WPS Office 2019 on Deepin 20.2.

=> ↺ How To Install PostgreSQL on AlmaLinux 8 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PostgreSQL on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, PostgreSQL is a free-opensource object-relational database management system with over 30 years of active development that has earned it a strong reputation for reliability, feature robustness, and performance.

• 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 MySQL databases on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Rocky Linux.

=> ↺ A Survey of Init Systems

• While most distros ship with systemd, init alternatives exist. Here are a few of the leading init systems available for Linux.

• Not long ago, few Linux users cared about the init system. It mostly ran in the background, the first process to run during bootup, and the one that started and, if necessary, stopped the others. However, the init system came under closer scrutiny in 2012-2015, when systemd started to be used as the init system in most major distributions. Many complained about its complexity and the way that it was promoted by officials in major distributions. Thanks to the Devuan distro, some even began to talk about “Init Freedom,” the right to choose your init system as though it was as basic as the four software freedoms advocated by the Free Software Foundation. Others replied that init freedom would complicate compiling packages and general distro releases.

• Today, the discussion continues. While most distributions ship systemd, a number of alternatives exist. Below is a quick summary of the leading init systems. If you are interested in trying one, the search filters on DistroWatch can let you locate which distro, if any, defaults to the init system that interests you. Alternatively, you can replace your existing init with another one, although the task is not for the faint-hearted, nor recommended for any except well-informed experts.

=> ↺ Launch Flatpaks from your Linux terminal

• The Flatpak application distribution model is helping developers target Linux in a new and easy way, and it’s helping Linux users install more applications without worrying about what version of Linux they’re running. It’s an exciting technology, and on my Fedora Silverblue system, it’s the default package installation method. All of my desktop applications on Silverblue and several of my favorites I use on Slackware are running as Flatpaks.

• There’s one thing that makes Flatpak a little awkward in some cases, though, and that’s its naming scheme. For instance, when I install Emacs as a Flatpak, it’s registered on my system as org.gnu.emacs. This is done, apparently, for fear of clobbering the name of an existing system-level application—if I already have Emacs installed, then what’s the differentiation between /usr/bin/emacs and the Flatpak installation of Emacs?

=> ↺ How to install Gnome on FreeBSD 13

• The initial setup of FreeBSD does not provide the Desktop Environment. It is command line mode only. If you want to use this FreeBSD 13 as your laptop or personal computer operating system, then you will need to install a Desktop Environment.

• There are some version of Desktop Environments available. They are Gnome, KDE and Xcfe. In this tutorial we will install the Gnome.

=> ↺ Vincent Bernat: Jerikan: a configuration management system for network teams

• There are many resources for network automation with Ansible. Most of them only expose the first steps or limit themselves to a narrow scope. They give no clue on how to expand from that. Real network environments may be large, versatile, heterogeneous, and filled with exceptions. The lack of real-world examples for Ansible deployments, unlike Puppet and SaltStack, leads many teams to build brittle and incomplete automation solutions.

=> ↺ How to transfer files between Android and Linux with Warpinator – TechRepublic

• One would think, given the Linux roots in Android, that transferring files between the two platforms would be built into both operating systems. It’s not. However, adding such a feature isn’t nearly as hard as you think, thanks to a tool created for Linux Mint, called Warpinator. Although you won’t find Warpinator in the standard repositories for distributions outside of Mint, a Flatpak was created, so any distribution that supports this universal installation package can enjoy easy file transfer between Android and Linux.

• Let me show you how to make this bit of magic happen.

Games

=> ↺ Hints appear of Valve making a handheld Steam “SteamPal” Neptune console

• Pavel Djundik, creator of SteamDB who has often dug up interesting new strings showing up in Steam updates has a new Twitter thread up going over some new appearances that raise some eyebrows.

• New appearances are seen mentioning a “Neptune” controller along with things like “GameList_View_NeptuneGames”, “SteamPal Games” and more curious entries that mention things like quick access and a power menu – all of which point to something quite a bit more than just a new controller. Not only that, there’s also earlier mentions of a “Callisto Developer Program” and “Device Optimized Games” going by what Djundik found.

• Recently, Valve’s Gabe Newell spoke at Sancta Maria College in Auckland, New Zealand that was highlighted in a since deleted Reddit posts (but you can find the video on the likes of YouTube) where Newell was asked about Steam on consoles to which Newell replied “You’ll get a better idea of that by the end of this year”. Initially, we thought that might mean the likes of Half-Life: Alyx on PlayStation VR 2 but now we’re not so sure going by this new set of leaks.

=> ↺ CSGO Devs Fix Trust Factor Issues for Linux Users

=> ↺ Gaming on the Librem 14

• Gaming on the Librem 14 is respectful, ad-free, and covers most game classes at no upfront or monthly cost, all while protecting your data.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ KDE DEVLOG 4: Finishing Up the Active Applet Indicator!

=> ↺ Tech report of fund.krita.org

• Featured image of post Tech report of fund.krita.org A few weeks ago, the Krita project announced the Krita Dev Fund. This project scope was the same as the Blender Dev Fund. Provide a stable way to fund the development of Krita via recurring donations.

• Since I was the one who helped with the technical bits on the website and I heard that were are interested FOSS communities that want to deploy something similar, I decided to write a small tech report about how we did it in Krita.

• Luckily for us, when we started researching how to create something similar, we rapidly discovered that the Blender Fund website itself is open source and licensed under the same license as Blender: GPL. It made it easy to reuse the code.

• The system is written with Django for the backend and uses Braintree as a payment provider. The code was built with Blender need in mind and not as a reusable project that I could use without any change, so a fork was inevitable. To make the maintenance more manageable, I decided to try to stay as near as possible to upstream in our Python code so that it’s easy to rebase the Krita fork when needed.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GNOME 40′s Shell Theme Code Is Rather Expensive But Optimization Pursued

• It’s been a while since last having any major/exciting optimizations to the GNOME desktop to report on by Canonical’s Daniel van Vugt that is known for his performance work over the past few years, but some optimizations are forthcoming.

• In particular, Daniel noted that he noticed with GNOME 40 that up to half of the render time is being consumed by the GNOME Shell’s theme code. He is now investigating possibly rewriting the slow parts of the theme code as a shader in order to cut down that render time. This work though is still in the early stages with no merge request yet or any guarantee of success.

Distributions

=> ↺ Kaboxer – Kali Applications Boxer

• What does that mean? Apps in containers, for packages (a way forward for applications that are hard to package properly). But instead of being stand alone containers, they are integrated into the standard Kali package management systems and can be installed/removed through standard apt commands.

• Okay. But what does Kaboxer do? Not every tool is easy to package. There are various criteria to meet, at times some crazy dependency trees or peculiar system modifications. You may need to use a legacy library, or you may need to change a configuration of something that would break another application. What do you do? We work with tool authors to try and make it easier, or we spend many late nights trying to get it to fit or we are just unable to package it.

• Enter Kaboxer. Using containers we can put in complex non-standard package into a container and integrate it with the rest of the operating system, and bundle it up into the packaging eco-system. This means you can apt-install a Kaboxer program and use it without needing to take any special steps.

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

=> ↺ Ubuntu supports Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ampere A1 Compute

• Together with Oracle, Canonical announces an optimised Ubuntu image for the launch of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Ampere A1 Compute. Oracle Cloud customers will benefit from running Ubuntu, the most popular cloud operating system, on a secure, scalable, and highly cost-effective infrastructure.

• “Ubuntu on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ampere A1 Compute provides a high performing and cost-effective solution for all types of workloads. Ubuntu gives developers a highly optimized cloud operating system and kernel with excellent boot speed, strong security, and stellar stability,” said Matt Leonard, vice president, product management, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

• “Ampere and Canonical are partnering to bring cloud native solutions to the market. Together, we have optimized everything from the Ubuntu OS to OpenStack to K8s to Anbox Cloud for Ampere® Altra®. We are excited to see all of these technologies available to the market on the OCI Ampere A1 platform, which is available on the OCI Free Tier today,” said Jeff Wittich, Chief Product Officer at Ampere Computing.

=> ↺ Oracle Ampere A1 Compute tuning for advanced users

• With CPU-bound benchmarks and applications such as SPEC CPU 2017, it’s relatively straightforward to get optimal performance on an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ampere A1 Compute instance. But, for applications that have many interrupts or that share memory across non-uniform memory access (NUMA) nodes, it takes some effort to get the best performance. On NUMA systems, a key aspect to control is remote memory accesses. Ensuring that work is done where an application’s memory is located reduces expensive remote memory accesses and results in the best and most predictable performance on large-scale applications.

=> ↺ Start developing Arm-based applications quickly using the Oracle Linux Cloud Developer image

• We are excited for the availability of our Arm compute service on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), built to deliver a high performance cloud offering based on the Ampere Altra processor. With the launch of the Ampere A1 Compute platform in OCI, we are also pleased to announce the availability of the Oracle Linux Cloud Developer image as part of OCI’s Arm developer ecosystem.

• The launch of the Oracle Linux Cloud Developer image for Arm in OCI provides a fast and easy path to transition, build, and run Arm-based applications with the best price-performance in the cloud. This image bundles the most valuable and useful development tools, includes free licensing and support for many of these tools, and enables an immediate launch of a complete Arm development environment in the cloud.

=> ↺ Different Approaches to Open Source Knowledge Sharing

• Deb Bryant looks at how different open source communities develop, maintain, and distribute best practices. Paragraphs Creating open source software is a massive knowledge-sharing experience, says Deb Bryant, Senior Director of Red Hat’s Open Source Program Office (OSPO) in a recent article at Opensource.com.

• Over time, she says, open source communities have “honed their knowledge into best practices as a natural byproduct of the open collaboration and transparency passed on within their respective communities.”

=> ↺ Migrating to SAP S/4HANA: Migration deadlines and how Red Hat technologies can help

• Digitalizing key business processes can be mission critical. But for many businesses, the pandemic slowed progress on key digital transformation initiatives. If your business depends on traditional SAP environments, delays are particularly problematic given the 2027 deadline for migration to SAP HANA or SAP S/4HANA.

• Red Hat can help by providing a portfolio of solutions that reduce the complexity of migration, make your data center more efficient, simplify hybrid IT, power the intelligent edge, and allow you to generate new business value.

=> ↺ IBM WebSphere App Server Now Available on Azure Linux VMs

=> ↺ How IBM is building together across the tech ecosystem to enable developers

=> ↺ it did in the 1980s

• As we heard at Think 2021, the era of hybrid cloud is increasing demands on enterprise developers with more responsibility shifting to you and your work as the critical success factors. An IBM Institute for Business Value study, The hybrid cloud platform advantage found that a typical enterprise uses nearly 8 clouds from multiple vendors, and in the next 3 years, hybrid cloud adoption is expected to grow by 47%. The average organization will be using nearly 6 clouds. As a result, businesses can benefit the most when they are supported by an ecosystem of partners that continually provides their best technologies and industry expertise.

• At this inflection point for enterprise developers, you’re being asked to deliver the kinds of solutions that require you to consistently invest in your skillsets and to build together collaboratively in an ecosystem environment. To help ease this transformation, my team’s goal is to help you build together: increasing capabilities for developers and lifting burdens that have previously hindered your innovation.

• A few months ago, we talked about an ongoing collaboration between IBM and Microsoft to enable the WebSphere product portfolio on Azure. Today, we are pleased to announce the availability of a new solution to run the IBM WebSphere Application Server (Traditional) Network Deployment on Azure Linux Virtual Machines. The solution is jointly developed and supported by IBM and Microsoft, and a wonderful example of how we are building together across the ecosystem to give you more flexibility to accomplish your goals.

=> ↺ Fedora Podcast Has Returned With The Destination Linux Network

• The Fedora Community has brought back the Fedora Podcast! If that wasn’t enough, the Fedora Podcast has also joined the Destination Linux Network as a collaborative effort to spread the word about all things Fedora! I know I might be slightly biased about this news but I am incredibly excited to work with Fedora in making the new season of the Fedora Podcast a huge success!

• For those who might not be aware, Front Page Linux is an open community powered news, tutorial, article, etc. website brought to you by the Destination Linux Network. I know I speak for the entire DLN crew when I say “Welcome to the Family”.

=> ↺ Adam Young: What is the Fedora 34 RAW Image. Part one

• I was able to boot my Raspberry Pi using the Pi Imager and the Fedora AARCH64 Raw Image. While this makes me happy, I don’t really understand what these pieces are. So, I want to take a little more look at them.

=> ↺ Adam Young: What is the Fedora 34 RAW Image. Part Two

• Last article I discussed the Fedora RAW file image and the first partition it contains. Now let us look at the second and third partitions.

=> ↺ IBM COBOL for Linux on x86 1.1 is now generally available

• IBM COBOL for Linux on x86 1.1 is the latest addition (as of April 2021) to the IBM COBOL compiler family. It is designed for developing and modernizing applications for Linux on x86 and hybrid cloud environments where applications can seamlessly share data and logic with critical applications running on IBM z/OS.

• [...]

• You can find other important resources such as the data sheet, blogs, and support links in the Resources tab on the IBM COBOL for Linux on x86 product page.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Adding a custom postinst script to the FAI image

• The FAIme service now supports uploading a custom shell script. This script is added to the installation ISO and gets executed during the first boot on request. You can upload a plain shell script or a compressed version using gzip. Using the postinst script you can adjust the new installed system to your local needs after FAI has done the initial installation.

=> ↺ Steinar H. Gunderson: LZ24

• I cooked together a new compression format over the weekend; it’s based on experiences I had way back when I worked on Snappy, and intends to be as kind as possible to the branch predictor. I don’t intend to productionize it because it isn’t competitive (see below), but I still think the idea is interesting enough to put out there.

• The implementation isn’t much; it’s generally slightly less dense than Snappy, but decompresses faster than it, but it thoroughly trounced by LZ4 still (factor 2–3x!). I don’t know if that’s LZ4′s format being inherently faster or just if it’s about the massive amount of tuning in the implementation; back when we open-sourced Snappy, it was in the same league as LZ4 (well, faster to begin with, and then LZ4 picked up a lot of the same tricks and had a simpler format), so evidently, a lot of things have happened, and I don’t have the patience anymore to tweak individual cycles.

=> ↺ EasyOS now has a save-file

• I have only edited two scripts, in the initrd: /init and /sbin/fscheck Booting from USB-stick, WKG_DEV (in my case) is “sdb2″, and WKG_DIR is “easyos”. The init script creates a sparse file, /mnt/sbd2/easyos/easysave.ext4, with ext4 filesystem in it, slightly less size than the amount of free space in sdb2 — but being a sparse file, it only takes up a tiny fraction of that, due to whatever files are in it. The init script then mounts /mnt/sbd2/easyos/easysave.ext4 on /mnt/sbd2/easyos, and everything proceeds as normal. /mnt/sbd2/easyos will look just as it did before, with the folders ‘containers’, ‘home’, ‘releases’, ‘.session’ and ‘sfs’ in it. To users, it will seem like nothing has changed. However, as /mnt/sbd2/easyos is a mounted ext4 filesystem, sdb2 no longer has to have a Linux filesystem. sdb2 could have an NTFS filesystem.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi GPIO support in Ubuntu | Ubuntu

• We are proud to announce that Ubuntu 21.04 includes support for the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi. This has been a long time coming. We know. With support for the camera modules and Bluetooth added last year GPIO was the obvious next step. But with our Raspberry Pi focused engineers working to make sure there was Pi support for the Ubuntu Core 20 launch earlier this year, GPIO got pushed back. But not longer.

• [...]

• This is all because we want to build a more interactive community around Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi. A big part of building a community like this is starting conversations. That started with our call for feedback and to ‘try things out’, and continues next week (June 1st) when Will Wilson (jawn-smith, the author of the tutorial), Dave Jones (waveform and long time Ubuntu Pi guy), and I sit down on a YouTube and Twitch live stream to talk about Ubuntu on Raspberry Pi, the past, the future, and the community.

=> ↺ Ubuntu in the wild – 25th of May 2021

• The Ubuntu in the wild blog post ropes in the latest highlights about Ubuntu and Canonical around the world on a bi-weekly basis. It is a summary of all the things that made us feel proud to be part of this journey. What do you think of it?

• [...]

• The nature of the security landscape itself makes it impossible to be completely prepared for the new threats coming in. The number and the diversity of attacks keep on increasing, which pose the question: do you really need immediacy to have a secure environment? Focusing on the short term negatively impacts the long term, and companies need to shift their approach to be more secure. In this article, Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos, Product Manager at Canonical, presents the benefits of Extended Security Maintenance (ESM).

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Google is officially releasing its Fuchsia OS, starting w/ first-gen Nest Hub

• Google’s long-in-development, from-scratch operating system, Fuchsia, is now running on real Made by Google devices, namely, the first-generation Nest Hub.

• Google has told us that as of today, an update is beginning to roll out to owners of the first-generation Nest Hub, first released in 2018. For all intents and purposes, this update will not change any of the functionality of the Nest Hub, but under the hood, the smart display will be running Fuchsia OS instead of the Linux-based “Cast OS” it used before. In fact, your experience with the Nest Hub should be essentially identical. This is possible because Google’s smart display experience is built with Flutter, which is designed to consistently bring apps to multiple platforms, Fuchsia included.

=> ↺ Google Rolls Out Fuchsia OS to First-Generation Nest Hub

=> ↺ Arm announces first Armv9 cores, including powerhouse Cortex-X2

• Arm unveiled its first Armv9 cores: Cortex-X2 (16% faster than -X1), Cortex-A710 (10% faster than -A78), and Cortex-A510 (35% faster than -A55), all with at least twice the AI power of their predecessors.

• After announcing the Armv9 architecture in March, Arm has quickly followed up with the first three core IP designs based on it: the flagship, customizable Cortex-X2, as well as the “Big” Cortex-A710 and “Little” Cortex-A510. Arm skipped over the Cortex-A79 and -A56-59 naming schemes, perhaps to emphasize the fresh start with Armv9. Arm also announced a DSU-110 L3 bus follow-on to DynamIQ, which enables 8MB L3 on the Armv9 designs, as well as a high-end Mali-G710 GPU (see farther below).

=> ↺ Arm Announces The Cortex-X2 Armv9 Flagship CPU, Cortex-A710, Cortex-A510

• Arm today announced the Cortex-X2 as their new flagship Armv9 processor design.

• The Cortex-X2 was announced by Arm this morning along with the Cortex-A510 as a new Armv9 “little” core design and the Cortex-A710 was also announced as the Cortex-A78 successor.

=> ↺ PC/104 boards keep the legacy alive with Quadro P1000 and Intel Braswell

• Adlink announced the “CM5-P1000,” the first PC/104 board equipped with Nvidia’s Quadro P1000 graphics. Meanwhile, ICOP has introduced a PC/104 form-factor “IBW-6954” SBC with an Intel Braswell CPU.

• Adlink and ICOP have each announced products that support the legacy PC/104 embedded board form factor and run Linux and Windows 10. Adlink’s CM5-P1000 is billed as the world’s first PC/104 board featuring Nvidia’s Quadro P1000, bringing advanced graphics and AI capabilities to legacy customers. ICOP’s IBW-6954 brings its customers somewhat up to date with an Intel Atom processor from the 6-year-old Braswell generation. ICOP chose Braswell because it is the last Intel platform that can support both UEFI and Legacy BIOS.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ This low-cost motion control rig helps capture high-quality shots | Arduino Blog

• Being a camera operator is tough. Having to move the camera and maintain a smooth motion can be tricky, and the speed at which it’s done is never consistent. That’s what prompted Andy to create his own motorized robotic camera rig that can move in up to four different axes simultaneously. The camera gets attached to a standard mounting plate and then placed into the gimbal. The gimbal is able to both pitch the camera up (rotate around the X axis) and rotate it side to side (called ‘yaw’ or Z-axis rotation). In order to prevent a bunch of wires from tangling around each other while spinning, each rotational axis uses a slipring to transfer electrical power and signals continuously.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Android 12: 4 hidden features you’re sure to love from day one – CNET

=> ↺ Android 12 Beta 1 Brings 389 New Emojis: Here’s a Look At All New Android Emojis, In Photos

=> ↺ Android 12′s quietly important privacy progress | Computerworld

=> ↺ Poll: How many Android devices do you have aside from phones?

=> ↺ How to preview links in Chrome on Android | Android Central

=> ↺ How to enable Google Meet’s noise cancellation on your Android device | Android Central

=> ↺ Arm introduces its first Armv9 architecture CPUs and GPUs, previewing 2022’s Android flagships – The Verge

=> ↺ Cubic Enhances Ventra Card Offering to Include Contactless Fare Payment Option for Android Users | Business Wire

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Inductive Bias: When it takes a pandemic …

• 2020 was a special year for all of us – with “us” here meaning the entire world: Faced with a truly urgent global problem that year was a learning opportunity for everyone.

• For me personally the year started like any other year – except that news coming out of China were troubling. Little did I know how fast those news would reach the rest of the world – little did I know the impact that this would have.

• I started the year with FOSDEM in Brussels in February – like every other year, except it felt decidedly different going to this event with thousands of attendees, crammed into overfull university rooms.

• Not a month later, travel budgets in many corporations had been frozen. The last in person event that I went to was FOSS Backstage – incapable of imagining just for how long this would be the last in person event I would go to. To this date I’m grateful for Bertrand for teaching the organising team just how much can be transported with video calls – and I’m still grateful for the technicians onsite that made speaker-attendee interaction seamless – across several hundred miles.

Web Browsers

Chromium

=> ↺ Stable Channel Update for Desktop

• The Chrome team is delighted to announce the promotion of Chrome 91 to the stable channel for Windows, Mac and Linux. This will roll out over the coming days/weeks.

=> ↺ Chrome 91 Released With Gravity Sensor API, JSON Modules, WebAssembly SIMD – Phoronix

• Google has released Chrome 91 as a rather exciting feature update to their open-source, cross-platform web browser.

• Exciting with Chrome 91 is WebAssembly SIMD support for making use of the system’s native SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) instruction capabilities within WebAssembly while remaining platform independent. WebAssembly SIMD being enabled by default with Chrome 91 should be of big help for performance sensitive WASM.

Mozilla

=> ↺ Updates to Firefox’s Breach Alert Policy

• Your personal data is yours – and it should remain yours! Unfortunately data breaches that reveal your personal information on the internet are omnipresent these days. In fact, fraudulent use of stolen credentials is the 2nd-most common threat action (after phishing) in Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigations report and highlights the problematic situation of data breaches.

• In 2018, we launched Firefox Monitor which instantly notifies you in case your data was involved in a breach and further provides guidance on how to protect your personal information online. Expanding the scope of protecting our users across the world to stay in control of their data and privacy, we integrated alerts from Firefox Monitor into mainstream Firefox. We integrated this privacy enhancing feature into your daily browsing experience so Firefox can better protect your data by instantly notifying you when you visit a site that has been breached.

• While sites continue to suffer password breaches, other leaks or lose other types of data. Even though we consider all personal data as important, notifying you for every one of these leaks generates noise that’s difficult to act on. The better alternative is to only alert you in case it’s critical for you to act to protect your data. Hence, the primary change is that Firefox will only show alerts for websites where passwords were exposed in the breach.

=> ↺ Why I’m joining Mozilla’s Board of Directors

• I was born and raised in Zambia and came to the United States for university. Even though growing up, I had almost no exposure to computers, I chose to study computer engineering. Fortunately for me, this leap of faith proved to be a great decision, as I’ve been very blessed with the career that came after.

• [...]

• From the beginning, Mozilla has had an important vision: for the internet to benefit everyone, it should remain a global resource that is open and accessible. With this vision in mind, Mozilla has played a prominent role in the advancement of open source and community collaboration. The impact of Mozilla has catalyzed the internet as a force for good, as it touches lives in some of the least developed parts of the world.

=> ↺ Mozilla Newspeak extension falls flat as only ~1,200 users in the world need a safe space from harsh language.

• Last year, Mozilla created a new extension called Bitch to Boss, which did the very important job of taking some unkind words about women and changing them to appear as “boss” for only the people who installed that extension. George Carlin mocked the self-esteem movement. (“Most people with low self-esteem, have earned it.”) It has created people so fragile that they need to shelter themselves from words.

• Mozilla has invested itself in releasing 6 updates to the extension since it released 15 months ago, and according to the page, it has 1,225 users in the entire world. Which is where Firefox itself might be if Boss Mitchell Baker has her way with it for a few more years.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

=> ↺ PGO, the Crunchy Postgres Operator 4.7 Released: PVC Resize, GCS, Advanced Cloning, and more!

• Crunchy Data is pleased to announce the release of version 4.7 of PGO, the Postgres Operator from Crunchy Data, which automates and simplifies deploying and managing open source Postgres clusters on Kubernetes and other Kubernetes-enabled Platforms. Instructions for getting started with the Postgres Operator can be found here:

FSF

=> ↺ Community meeting on the future of our IRC presence

• The meeting will be held in the #fsf channel on the Freenode network on Thursday, May 27 from 13:00-14:30 EDT (17:00-18:30 UTC). The discussion will be moderated by members of the FSF staff, as well as GNU webmasters Amin Bandali and Jason Self.

GNU Projects

=> ↺ Thomas Fitzsimmons: Excorporate 1.0.0

• I think there’s a lot of potential to create nice user interface features with Excorporate’s API — like a scheduler that shows people’s availability with ASCII-art bars, usable on a TTY. The included Org, diary and calfw front-ends show real-world usage of the API. I hope people send patches for new user interface features and keybindings, and contribute new authentication methods. I’ll continue watching for bug reports.

Licensing/Legal

=> ↺ SPDX: It’s Already in Use for Global Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) and Supply Chain Security

• In a previous Linux Foundation blog, David A. Wheeler, director of LF Supply Chain Security, discussed how capabilities built by Linux Foundation communities can be used to address the software supply chain security requirements set by the US Executive Order on Cybersecurity.

• One of those capabilities, SPDX, completely addresses the Executive Order 4(e) and 4(f) and 10(j) requirements for a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM). The SPDX specification is implemented as a file format that identifies the software components within a larger piece of computer software and metadata such as the licenses of those components.

• SPDX is an open standard for communicating software bill of material (SBOM) information, including components, licenses, copyrights, and security references. It has a rich ecosystem of existing tools that provides a common format for companies and communities to share important data to streamline and improve the identification and monitoring of software.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Enrique Ocaña González: GStreamer WebKit debugging by using external tools (2/2)

• This is the last post of the series showing interesting debugging tools, I hope you have found it useful. Don’t miss the custom scripts at the bottom to process GStreamer logs, help you highlight the interesting parts and find the root cause of difficult bugs.

=> ↺ Asynchronous database access with QtSql

• When working with Qt most of the time you do not need to care about threading. Most things already work asynchronously, they don’t block and there’s no reason to mess with additional threads. This is the case for network requests via the QNetworkAccessManager where signals are used (as pretty much everywhere). If you’ve got other tasks like hash calculation of large files or image scaling, then there’s QtConcurrent::run() for you which will execute a function on the application’s thread pool.

• QtConcurrent uses QFutures to report the results. In Qt 5 QFutures are not very handy (you need a QFutureWatcher to get the results asynchronously and you manually need to create and delete it). With Qt 6 this has changed and now there’s a pretty nice QFuture::then() function where you can directly pass a lambda handling the result…

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ Zigbee vs. Wi-Fi: Which is Better for your Smart Home Needs

• Founded in 2003, Zigbee protocol is an open-standard communication based on IEEE 802.15.4 which also governs other low-rate networks such as 6LoWPAN and Thread. The ‘bee” in Zigbee name was inspired from the zig-zag dance of honeybees while they pass messages in close proximity to one another. Zigbee was therefore, conceived as a low-power, low bit-rate, short-range protocol in 2.4 GHz band for efficient communication across a “mesh” of devices.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Ruralist’s Lament: It’s Alive!

• It’s a tussle sometimes. The fields will go back to forest if left to their own devices. And the soil is a dynamic system of life feeding on death, endlessly recycling a web of life that grinds on in its dust-to-dust way. With the end of World War 2, the chemical industry that had been churning out murderous  poisons and explosives was re-purposed to play an ever bigger role in what we today call the “agriculture industry.” Weeds and bugs have always been a part of farming but the promoters of Better Living Through Chemistry promised final victory over those opposing forces. It came in bags and jugs and initially the results seemed promising. The potions appeared to kill everything in the field except the crop. The careful attention of traditional farmers seemed beside the point. Farming could be “systematized” into a regime of inputs and outputs and growing crops was now supposed to be like manufacturing screwdrivers or Ford Edsels. Millions of farmers were  thus “freed” from the drudgery of farming and could now find careers tending machines, stocking shelves, or packaging retail items in the bowels of some Amazonian jungle fortress somewhere.

• Yes, that was the story and the plan. And whether it worked out all that well for the population at large or the former farmers is almost beneath discussion apparently. But one of the lessons that farmers learn fairly early is that shit happens. In natural systems there are factors that can’t always be controlled by puny humans. Sometimes those corporate “inputs” don’t keep working the way they did initially. The bugs are alive and they evolve. The weeds are alive and they do too.

=> ↺ Anthropologist Laura Nader on the Lost Art of the Letter

• DAVID PRICE: One of the fundamental things I’ve learned from you over the decades is the significance of understanding context. So, let’s start by talking about the cultural context of letters, what they are, and what they used to be. Since you are a time traveler now in your 90s coming here from a past age, what can you tell us about what letters were in this now lost past?

• LAURA NADER: Letters have always been a way of reaching out, to communicate with people way before there were phones or any other technological way of communicating. I think the most inspirational set of letters that I started with were Thomas Jefferson’s letters. If we didn’t have the Jefferson letters—and he wrote five or six a day—we wouldn’t know what was going on between all of these people that were forming our country. The context for many of the letters in my book really is people reaching out to somebody who would listen. And this is, like [David] Riesman said, a lonely crowd. And so, people reached out. And they reach out to people they think might be able to be help.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Opinion | Government Can Be the Solution: Eight Lessons From the Pandemic

• Lesson 1: Essential workers deserve far better.

=> ↺ Coronavirus Travels and Cruising with Viking

• Cruise liners are not for all but advertise themselves as the unrivalled option of travel for the satisfied life.  But every satisfied life comes in gradations, levels, and categories.  Pay more and the cabin room expands with magical effort.  Pay more and the minibar miraculously replenishes.  (Those who opt for the lesser option tend to find themselves having to pay more for other frills and accessories.)  The exercise entails an effort to create a microclimate from home: you are away, but you never leave that sacred grove; you are on a journey, but you are still there, with your home comforts.  You are, in fact, discouraged of seeing anything new, and anything new is heavily curated, even censored, to remove crinkles and crumples.

• Viking Cruises claim to provide an ultrapure version of that experience.  The cruise company, founded by Torstein Hagen, began in 1997 with four ships.  The fleet ballooned to 82 vessels to gain primacy over ocean and river cruise routes.  New markets were founded with buccaneering enthusiasm.  In the 2000s, Hagen sensed an opportunity to lure tourists from the United States to Europe.  The Chinese market followed.  At the start of 2020, 30,000 Chinese passengers were ready to travel with the company.  Forget the poor coach operators and the need to use multiple hotels during your journey.  Take, instead, to water, your cruising home.

=> ↺ WHO Chief Decries ‘Scandalous’ Vaccine Inequality Where Rich Nations Control ‘Fate of the World’

• “The pandemic is not over, and it will not be over until and unless transmission is controlled in every last country.”

=> ↺ A Growing International Movement Is Calling for a “People’s Vaccine”

=> ↺ Advocates Applaud State AGs’ Call for Review of Proposed ‘Cancer Alley’ Petrochemical Plant

• “I believe that if there’s an honest assessment of the environmental racism behind this project’s approval then it will never be permitted,” said one leading local activist. “We must stop Formosa Plastics.”

=> ↺ How New York State Let Covid-19 Run Rampant in Prisons

• For six months last year, Tranelle Drake worked up to 15 hours a day packaging hand sanitizer—filling, capping, labeling, and boxing bottles—in Great Meadow Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in upstate New York. He had signed up last March, putting in for a double shift as soon as he heard that incarcerated people were being enlisted to produce hand sanitizer. This story was published in partnership with New York Focus, an independent, investigative news site covering New York state and city politics.

=> ↺ How antimaskers co-opt techniques of scientific data analysis to generate COVID-19 propaganda

• After more than two decades dealing with antivaxxers, quacks, pseudoscience advocates, contrarians, and conspiracy theorists, I’ve noticed some things about how such people operate and view themselves. For example, virtually all of them believe themselves to be “brave mavericks” of some sort, unlike the run-of-the-mill “sheeple” who accept the narrative of mainstream science and, in their mind, cower before the authority of physicians and scientists on such matters. One other thing that I’ve noticed about them is that they truly believe that they are the scientific ones, the ones “following the science,” the “true” science, at least in their minds. Obviously, my observations are just that, personal observations. I don’t claim that they are scientific. That’s why I’m always interested to find studies that try to look at the characteristics of the arguments of antivaxxers, quacks, pseudoscience advocates, contrarians, and conspiracy theorists and one reason why I’m starting by listing these characteristics that I’ve noticed having observed the rhetoric of such people online going back to the days of Usenet. (Yes, I’m dating myself.) That’s why a new narrative going bubbling up among antimaskers, COVID-19 deniers, contrarians, and conspiracy theorists caught my attention over the weekend about a paper on how conspiracy theorists misuse data analysis to spread disinformation.

=> ↺ Shirish Agarwal: Pandemic, Toolkit and India

• I don’t know from where I should start. This is probably a good start. I actually would recommend Indiacable as they do attempt to share some things happening in India from day to day but still there is a lot thatt they just can’t cover, nobody can cover. There were two reports which kind of shook me all inside. One which sadly came from the UK publication Independent, probably as no Indian publication would dare publish it. The other from Rural India. I have been privileged in many ways, including friends who have asked me if I need any financial help. But seeing reports like above, these people need more help, guidance and help than I.

• While I’m never one to say give to Foundations. If some people do want to help people from Maharashtra, then moneylifefoundation could be a good place where they could donate. FWIW, they usually use the foundation to help savers and investors be safe and help in getting money when taken by companies with dubious intentions. That is their drive. Two articles show their bent. The first one is about the Algo scam which I have written previously about the same in this blog. Interestingly, when I talk about this scam, all Modi supporters are silent. The other one does give some idea as to why the Govt. is indifferent. That is going to a heavy cross for all relatives to bear. There has been a lot that has been happening. Now instead of being limited to cities, Covid has now gone hinterland in a big way. One could ask also Praveen as he probably knows what would be good for Kerala and surrounding areas.

• [...]

• There was also the whole bit about FBS or Fetal Bovin Serum. India ordered millions of blood serum products from abroad and continues to. This was quickly shut down as news on Social Media. Apparently, it is only the Indian cow which is worthy of reverence. All other cows and their children are fair game according to those in power. Of course, that discussion was quickly shut down as was the discussion about IGP (Indian Genome Project). People over the years had asked me why India never participated for the HGP (Human Gnome Project). I actually had no answer for that. Then in 2020, there was idea of IGP which was put up and then it was quickly shot down as the results could damage a political party’s image. In fact, a note to people who want to join Indian civil services tells the reason exactly. While many countries in the world are hypocrites, including the U.S. none can take the place that India has made for itself in that field.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

Pseudo-Open Source

Privatisation/Privateering

Linux Foundation

=> ↺ Linux Foundation Public Health Welcomes New Projects and Members to Advance Public Health, Safely Reopen Amid COVID-19

=> ↺ promote mass surveillance in misleading ‘privacy’ clothing (or ‘health’)

=> ↺ Microsoft, the Linux Foundation, and others team up to make software sustainable

=> ↺ Linux Foundation helps enemies of Linux again

=> ↺ The term “Linux” in “Linux Foundation” is clearly a misfit

=> ↺ Microsoft, the Linux Foundation, and others team up to make software sustainable

=> ↺ The Linux Foundation joins Accenture, GitHub, Microsoft, and ThoughtWorks to Launch the Green Software Foundation to put sustainability at the core of software engineering

Security

=> ↺ Security updates for Tuesday

• Security updates have been issued by Fedora (python-eventlet), openSUSE (grub2 and mpv), and Red Hat (kpatch-patch and rh-ruby25-ruby).

=> ↺ Pen testing with Linux security tools | Opensource.com

• The multitude of well-publicized breaches of large consumer corporations underscores the critical importance of system security management. Fortunately, there are many different applications that help secure computer systems. One is Kali, a Linux distribution developed for security and penetration testing. This article demonstrates how to use Kali Linux to investigate your system to find weaknesses.

• Kali installs a lot of tools, all of which are open source, and having them installed by default makes things easier.

=> ↺ Michael Catanzaro: Reminder: SoupSessionSync and SoupSessionAsync default to no TLS certificate verification

• This is a public service announcement! The modern SoupSession class is secure by default, but the older, deprecated SoupSessionSync and SoupSessionAsync subclasses of SoupSession are not. If your code uses SoupSessionSync or SoupSessionAsync and does not set SoupSession:tls-database, SoupSession:ssl-use-system-ca-file, or SoupSession:ssl-ca-file, then you get no TLS certificate verification. This is almost always worth requesting a CVE.

=> ↺ Half-Double: A New DRAM Rowhammer Vulnerability – Phoronix

• The Rowhammer security exploit affecting DRAM memory modules has a new chapter with Google now detailing “half-double” as a new technique for exploit of system memory.

• Google security researchers discovered Half-Double as a new technique that “capitalizes on the worsening physics of some of the newer DRAM chips to alter the contents of memory.”

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ To Sanction Foreign Terrorist Organizations, Add Them to the State Department’s List

• Here at home, the Biden administration is being besieged with increasing fervor by voices on all sides of the unfolding tragedy. While our ultimate capacity to help resolve the growing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is unclear, there is one thing the President could do that would help the situation and would not risk fracturing his base or reputation at home or around the world. He could take executive action, asking the State Department to consider whether Lehava and Otzma Yehudit should be added to the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list. If the State Department decided to designate the organizations, that would help isolate and deprive them access to vital U.S. funding and other material donor assistance.

• It has been widely reported, both in Israel and the United States, that these organizations and their leaders have received support from U.S. donors through a cryptic network of religious and service organizations designed to provide cover as charitable institutions. T’ruah, a leading American human rights organization representing two thousand rabbis and cantors, has filed a series of official complaints with the IRS documenting the abuse of the U.S. tax laws for so-called “charitable contributions” that ultimately go to support Lehava and Otzma.

=> ↺ Killing the Messengers

• The killings have become less random, too, and more targeted. Four women media workers in Afghanistan have been murdered this year alone. Horrific and public deaths, and the many threats made against media personnel, have resulted in talent exiting the profession at an alarming rate.

• The destruction in Gaza City of more than a dozen media facilities by Israeli bombs, including those of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera, would have been unconscionable just a few decades ago, though not to the U.S.A., as we’ll see. People got out, but notes, equipment, hard drives, family photos were crushed in the rubble of war. Lost in the dust is any remaining sense of personal security for the dedicated reporters there.

=> ↺ NPR Should Ask Where Nicaraguan Non-Profits’ Money Comes From

• The answer is obvious, but why aren’t the shock and horror also evident when US media identify foreign meddling in an election somewhere else? If the meddling is by the US government, ever quick to accuse Russia if there’s any suggestion that it’s interfering in US politics, then there is also gross hypocrisy to be exposed. As a Scottish minister of justice once said (in relation to the US’s contorted involvement in Libya), ‘the US sadly often adopts a position of seeking to enforce standards on others that it will not accept or abide by itself.’ Yet time and again the US media also fail to hold the government to the standards they apply to other countries.

• Take the case of Nicaragua. It has elections coming in November and has just introduced reforms to make its electoral process clearer and improve the tracking of the results so that any scope for fraudulence is further minimized. Another reform is a ‘foreign agents’ law which prohibits foreign funding of politicians and obliges NGOs receiving money from abroad to show how it is being used. It is similar too but less stringent than the US’s own Foreign Agents Registration Act (known as FARA), passed originally in 1938 and now accompanied by at least four other related laws. Despite these precedents, the US State Department, in full hypocrisy mode, said in February that the new law ‘drives Nicaragua toward dictatorship, silencing independent voices’. It has also criticized Nicaragua for suppressing political demonstrations when it merely requires organizers to get police permission, even while the US has itself been criticized recently by a United Nations expert for ‘the wave of anti-protest laws’ that is ‘spreading through the country’.

=> ↺ Dems Reintroduce SANE Act to Slash $73 Billion From ‘Insane’ Spending on Nuclear Arsenal

• While President Trump’s actions tilted the ‘Doomsday Clock’ towards midnight,” said Sen. Ed Markey, “President Biden has a chance to build back a better nuclear weapons policy that does more with less.”

=> ↺ Thoughts and Prayers Again and Again

=> ↺ Dylan at 80: A Sonnet of Appreciation

• Been around almost as long the war with Russia, a child of Odessa blues, who spat at Ellsberg,* like Dad did the Tsar, went hunting Woody’s career, filled his shoes, got himself condemned by the left and right — became the Wandering Jew, harp and guitar, on a Tour that goes till God is in sight, strumming sold out white man’s blues near and far. Broken innocence mirrored everywhere, and dark eyes, lost souls, including his own, but even late, more ghost than man, he’s there at the borderland where stars turn to bone. Just crossing paths with an anti-hero: We always meet at Love Minus Zero.

• • Daniel Ellsberg was still a war-planner when Dylan was a kid singer.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ EFF Sues California Law Enforcement Training Entity Over Its BS Use Of Copyright Law To Deny Public Records Requests

• Following the passage of a law that finally made lots of documentation related to police misconduct publicly accessible in California, the requests for information began pouring in. Some law enforcement agencies complied. Others sued. The state Attorney General showed the public how much they mattered by siding with the secretive agencies.

Environment

=> ↺ Faster Greenland ice melt could be unstoppable

• A rapid thaw could destroy a whole ice sheet if the faster Greenland ice melt scientists have found spreads across the island.

=> ↺ ‘Don’t Abandon Climate, Care, Jobs, and Justice’: Activists Decry Biden Concessions to GOP

• “Negotiating down from an already insufficient plan to cater to a climate-denying party fueled by profit and hate—that is how Democrats lose.”

Energy

=> ↺ Enbridge Line 5 Pipeline Battle Heats Up in Michigan

=> ↺ China Finances Most Coal Plants Built Today

• By Jeff Nesbit, Yale University

• As nations gear up for a critical year for climate negotiations, it’s become increasingly clear that success may hinge on one question: How soon will China end its reliance on coal and its financing of overseas coal-fired power plants?

=> ↺ The Future of Renewable Energy Depends on China

• Thanks to its very name—renewable energy—we can picture a time in the not-too-distant future when our need for non-renewable fuels like oil, natural gas, and coal will vanish. Indeed, the Biden administration has announced a breakthrough target of 2035 for fully eliminating US reliance on those non-renewable fuels for the generation of electricity. That would be accomplished by “deploying carbon-pollution-free electricity-generating resources,” primarily the everlasting power of the wind and sun.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Nectar Thieves: How Invasive Bumblebees Threaten Hummingbirds

=> ↺ Rivers are Key to Restoring the World’s Biodiversity

• And tragically, according to a UN report, “the world has failed to meet a single target to stem the destruction of wildlife and life-sustaining ecosystems in the last decade.”

• It’s time to end that legacy of failure and seize the opportunities before us to correct the past mistakes, manage the present challenges and meet the future challenges that the environment is likely to face. But if we’re going to protect biodiversity and simultaneously tackle the climate crisis, we must protect rivers and freshwater ecosystems. And we must defend the rights of communities whose livelihoods depend on them, and who serve as their stewards and defenders. By doing so, we will improve food security for the hundreds of millions of people who rely on freshwater ecosystems for sustenance and livelihoods—and give the world’s estimated 140,000 freshwater species a fighting chance at survival.

=> ↺ Playing Russian Roulette with Grizzly Matron 399 and the Bears of Yellowstone

• Few if any animals have been more celebrated than 399, the matron grizzly bear of Grand Teton National Park. Each year, families flock to Jackson Hole hoping to catch a glimpse of her shepherding her latest brood – now four irrepressible yearlings. Her grown-up daughter, Grizzly 610, accompanied by two pre-adolescent cubs now as large as she is, generates almost as much excitement. Today, about 10 grizzlies of 399’s lineage make their living along Jackson Hole’s roads in the company of people.

• With a global fan club, Grizzly 399 is an ambassador for grizzlies everywhere. Her tolerance for people is legendary. To cross a road, she is known to look both ways before threading through parked cars and mobs of delighted onlookers, as doors slam and kids shriek – placidly returning to fetch a cub still wrestling with a road cone. Who could still cling to the myth that grizzlies are vicious man-eaters after beholding the ways of 399?

Finance

=> ↺ Biden Removes Student Loan Forgiveness From Budget Proposal

=> ↺ Opinion | This Older Americans Month, Let’s Recommit to America’s Seniors

• Older Americans cannot fill their vital role in society without basic security—the peace of mind of knowing that they can pay their bills and have access to affordable health care and prescription drugs.

=> ↺ Restaurant Workers Say They Won’t Return to Work Without a Living Wage

=> ↺ Opinion | There’s No Restaurant Worker Shortage, Only a Shortage of Safe Jobs With Adequate Pay

• If you believe in its omniscience, the market is signaling corporations and businesses that employers must offer more.

=> ↺ Opinion | JPMorgan Chase Just Became the World’s Most Dangerous Bank

• While the IEA states that there can be no new investment in the expansion of fossil fuels, Chase doesn’t plan to reduce its investments in new fossil fuel supply at all within the next decade.

=> ↺ Family Offices: Trillion Dollar Pools of Unregulated Capital You Haven’t Heard About

=> ↺ Democrats ‘Must Be Trying to Lose’: Progressives Fume After Report Says Biden Budget Excludes Key Promises

• “If the aim is to avoid a midterm massacre, why would you do this?” asked one political critic.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Legal Scholars Detail Why DC Statehood Is Absolutely Constitutional

• “When the nation’s leading constitutional scholars come together to affirm that statehood is constitutional, we need to listen,” declared one campaigner.

=> ↺ As Frustration Grows Over GOP Obstruction, Progressives Intensify Demands to Kill Filibuster

• “It makes no sense that one member of the minority party can trigger a minority veto. That’s not what people voted for.”

=> ↺ New Texas Bill Reduces Polling Locations in Blue and Nonwhite Districts

=> ↺ #MoralMonday Event Elevates Progressive Push for ‘Third Reconstruction’ Resolution

• “We have the power to end poverty,” says Rep. Pramila Jayapal. “We must implement bold proposals that center the poor—providing housing, healthcare, climate justice, and equitable public education.”

=> ↺ Arizona County’s Voting Machines Rendered Unusable By OAN-Financed Vote Auditors

• The libs have been owned. They’ve been owned so thoroughly that Maricopa County, Arizona is going to need to buy millions of dollars of new electronic voting machines.

=> ↺ Florida Man Signs Blatantly Corrupt And Unconstitutional Social Media Bill, Cementing Florida As Tech Laughing Stock

• And, off we go. We’ve talked about a bunch of states pushing blatantly unconstitutional social media content moderation bills, with Florida leading the pack as the most eager to waste taxpayer money on something so obviously bogus. As you’ll recall, at the end of last month, Florida really added some unconstitutional icing on the unconstitutional cake by exempting Disney (and any other company that owned a theme park in Florida) from the bill’s social media requirements.

=> ↺ Republicans Are Against Science, Elections, Democracy, Journalism — and You

=> ↺ Robert Reich (The Danger of Collective Amnesia At the risk of…)

• At the risk of being the skunk at the picnic, I feel compelled to warn you that if we forget and move on from the tragedies of this past year, we’re setting ourselves on a dangerous path. Of course I understand the desire to forget all the unpleasantness and start a new chapter. But if we do, we’re inviting greater tragedies in the future. 

=> ↺ A Biden Speech to Transform the Middle East

• Having already surprised observers by his boldness in domestic policy, he could do so in foreign policy as well by offering a new vision of Middle East peace in a prime-time, televised speech.

• A conclusion to his speech along the following lines would offer, in homage to President Obama, both change to believe in and audacious hope and could produce a far better future for Israelis, Palestinians and all mankind than most people would dare to dream possible in these somber days:

=> ↺ Today in Illinois: Another one of Governor JB Pritzker’s paroled child killers goes missing. Government doesn’t solve problems. Government is the problem.

• I don’t think that a thinking person can still be a part of this party.

• I’m not sure what I’ll do in the next election, but I won’t be supporting Governor Pritzker again. The Democrats and Republicans are fighting over what way to ruin the state. Maybe I will just support the Libertarians.

• Richard Stallman seems to be misguided about the Green Party.

• Whether they intend it or not, they served as Putin’s troll to try to give Trump another term, and their lawyers are Republican law firms.

• Even if they were a legitimate party, for the sake of argument, their policies would be a disaster. There isn’t enough money in the world to do what they’re proposing.

• Those of us who have been watching (American) government for a while now have seen that everything that they start doing that they weren’t doing before ends up being an even bigger mess than it has ever been.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Advocates Hail Ruling Striking Down ‘Unconstitutional’ Georgia Anti-BDS Law

• “This ruling comes at a crucial moment… and makes clear that the Constitution protects participation in the BDS movement.”

=> ↺ Activists Mobilize to Fight Censorship and Save Open Science

• More than half of academic publishing is controlled by only five publishers. This position is built on the premise that users should pay for access to scientific research, to compensate publishers for their investment in editing, curating, and publishing it. In reality, research is typically submitted and evaluated by scholars without compensation from the publisher. What this model is actually doing is profiting off of a restriction on article access using burdensome paywalls. One project in particular, Sci-Hub, has threatened to break down this barrier by sharing articles without restriction. As a result, publishers are going to every corner of the map to destroy the project and wipe it from the internet. Continuing the long tradition of internet hacktivism, however, redditors are mobilizing to create an uncensorable back-up of Sci-Hub.

• It’s an open secret at this point that the paywall model used by major publishers, where one must pay to read published articles, is at odds with the way science works which is one reason researchers regularly undermine it by sharing PDFs of their work directly. The primary functions paywalls serve now are to drive up contract prices with universities and ensure current research is only available to the most affluent or well-connected. The cost of access has gotten so out of control that even $35 billion dollar institutions like Harvard have warned that contract costs are becoming untenable. If this is the case for Harvard, it’s hard to see how smaller entities can manage these costs– particularly those in the global south. As a result, crucial and potentially life-saving knowledge is locked away from those who need it most. That’s why the fight for open access is a fight for human rights. 

• Indeed, the past year has shown us the incredible power of open access after publishers made COVID-19 research immediately available at no cost. This temporary move towards open access helped support the unprecedented global public health effort that spurred the rapid development of vaccines, treatments, and better informed public health policies. This kind of support for scientific progress should not be reserved for a global crisis; instead, it should be the standard across all areas of research.

=> ↺ “Brutal & Gratuitous”: Family of Ronald Greene Demands Justice After Video Shows Deadly Traffic Stop

• New bodycam footage is raising more questions about the deadly arrest of a Black man, Ronald Greene, in Louisiana during a 2019 traffic stop in the city of Monroe. Family members said police originally told them Greene died in a car accident, but the Associated Press obtained video of Louisiana state troopers electrocuting, beating and dragging Greene. Greene’s family has filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit, and Greene’s death is also being federally investigated. Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney representing the family of Ronald Greene, says the family had to fight for a year and a half before being allowed to view police video of Greene’s death, which revealed “the full extent of just how brutal and gratuitous” the violence was. “We’re looking for criminal charges to move forward against these officers at the state level and at the federal level.”

=> ↺ More Matrix.org/Freenode fun… Bonus: Why VPNs should be normal, not just for cranks.

• Yesterday, I ran into more Matrix.org/Element fun.

• Since Cancel Culture runs rampant on Matrix.org and entire rooms and users get knifed and disappear daily, I decided to try to use nerdsin.space instead, and the problem is that while the Matrix protocol supports federation, the IRC bridges are not available locally on nerdsin.space, leaving you to do a double shim into IRC.

• To get into Freenode, you basically have to load Matrix.org rooms and then select the Freenode room you want, and then you’re logged into nerdsin.space, federated to Matrix.org, and then bridged into Freenode IRC.

• The problem here is that now, any issues on any one of those platforms can compromise your ability to use IRC.

• I’m rapidly finding out that just because Matrix is “modern” doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t an even bigger rat’s nest than just using IRC directly.

• Yesterday, around 1:35 PM local time, and going on for about a day, nothing from Matrix.org would federate into nerdsin.space, but if you sent a message from nerdsin.space it would reach the Matrix.org room.

• For a while, I wondered if they banned my account or just locked out nerdsin.space for reasons unknown. It seems that from the perspective of other users, they want to keep bans as quiet as possible.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ ‘State Treachery to the Extreme’: Belarus Accused of Inventing Airplane Bomb Threat to Arrest Dissident Journalist

• “While it sounds like an extraordinary Hollywood plot, it’s not,” said Amnesty International. “The reality of this apparent act of air piracy is chilling.”

=> ↺ Dramatic Arrest of Journalist by Belarus Highlights US Targeting of Snowden in 2013

• “Downing aircraft to pursue the arrest of dissidents has always been outrageous,” the NSA whistleblower said Monday.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Opinion | Now Comes the Reckoning: Black Lives Matter Hits the Labor Movement

• Dispatch from the front lines of the war on caregivers.

=> ↺ The Color of Fear

• Has anyone ever pointed a gun at you?

=> ↺ How to Fight White Supremacy by Inverting Stephen Miller’s Playbook

• Former Trump White House senior adviser Stephen Miller played a significant role in mainstreaming white supremacy over the past five years, promoting virulently racist literature, organizing anti-immigrant round tables, crafting Trump’s most xenophobic speeches, and strangling legal pathways into the United States for nonwhite people.

=> ↺ Opinion | Changing the Way the Military Handles Sexual Assault

• How not to leave the fox guarding the henhouse.

=> ↺ A Few Words for the Firing Squad

• South Carolina’s governor has signed into law a bill adding the firing squad as one of the methods of execution that a person sentenced to death must choose between if lethal injection drugs are unavailable.

=> ↺ George Floyd Week of Action Marks Anniversary of His Murder as Police Reform Bill Stalls in Congress

• As the world marks the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, attorney Lee Merritt says there is still a long way to go in reforming “the deadliest police culture in the modern world.” Merritt, who has represented the Floyd family and other victims of police brutality, says Republicans and Democrats should come together to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Floyd’s death in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, set off a nationwide uprising and global movement calling for an end to racism and for the defense of Black lives.

=> ↺ After Record Deportations, Biden Grants 100K Haitians Chance for Temporary Protected Status

• The Biden administration is granting more than 100,000 Haitians in the United States the chance to gain temporary protected status, or TPS, which includes work permits and protection from deportation while Haiti suffers a political crisis. Haitian President Jovenel Moïse continues to refuse calls to step down, even as human rights groups report he has sanctioned attacks against civilians in impoverished neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince, with targeted assassinations and threats against government critics carried out with impunity. President Joe Biden deported more Haitians during his first two months than Donald Trump did in the last year of his presidency. “It’s a break for people who have been looking over their shoulders, who have been worried and concerned about what happens if they’re not given this relief and either become undocumented or detained and deported back to Haiti,” says Nana Gyamfi, executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. “It’s a break, but that’s all it is. It’s a break, and we obviously want more.”

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Rep. Zoe Lofgren Recognizes The Nuances And Complexities Of Regulating Internet Companies

• It’s taken as given among many politicians (and much of the media) that “something must be done” about “big tech” companies. The public seems a lot less concerned about it all. Unfortunately, as we’ve noted repeatedly, many in the government are focused on specific regulatory levers that seem incredibly unlikely to work (and which have a high likelihood of making any of the problems discussed even worse). A big one is antitrust. We keep hearing grandstanding politicians talk about how they need to break up “big tech” without any of them getting into how that will solve any particular issue. In the House, Rep. David Cicilline has been the poster child of this approach — insisting that antitrust is the answer, but refusing to actually explore the nuances and tradeoffs of that approach.

=> ↺ US Telecoms Keep Getting Wrist Slaps For Repeatedly Ripping Off The US Government

• You may have to squint to see it, but tell me if you can detect the faint outline of a pattern here.

Monopolies

Patents

=> ↺ Section 285: When Lawyer Blames Client

• For example, in In re Marriage of Wixom & Wixom, 182 Wash. App. 881, 332 P.3d 1063 (2014), after a bitter and long custody dispute in which both the husband and his lawyer took ridiculous positions, the trial court imposed $55,000 in sanctions jointly against husband and his lawyer. On appeal, the lawyer argued that the sanctions should only be imposed against the husband. The appellate court, on its own motion disqualified the lawyer from representing the client and limited the lawyer’s ability to represent only himself. Later, the appellate court held sanctions could be imposed jointly. See, e.g., U.S. v. Emigration Improvement Dist., 14–CV–701, 2016 WL 4148251, at *6 (D. Utah Aug. 4, 2016) (reasoning that attorneys were conflicted when they tried to shift liability for fee awards from themselves to their client); Exp. Dev. Canada v. ESE Elecs. Inc., CV1602967BRORAOX, 2017 WL 3122157, at *5 (C.D. Cal. July 10, 2017) (“The circumstances indicate a conflict of interest between Counsel and their clients with respect to fault for evidentiary complications related to Bright Light’s payments and the Euler insurance claim.”).

=> ↺ Q1 2021 Developer Updates

• Patent Law is always bedeviled with quality. Identifying good patents is hard enough, let alone figuring out who is good at making them. Unified decided to take on both by first objectively determining what a good patent prosecution outcome is. It then investigated what law firms had the best outcomes for each art unit. Members can now compare outcomes between law firms to see which ones had the best track record of obtaining good patents in the least time. They can also look at how their prosecution outcomes compare to a competitor.

• [...]

• Unified’s Portal now includes an integration with PQAI that uses an open-source platform to retrieve prior-art for a given patent. PQAI uses an AI trained on patent citation data to search for prior-art beyond what was found by the examiner during prosecution. When you request prior-art for a patent, PQAI uses its first claim as the search query. The claim is fed into a deep learning ranking system, which matches the query with all prior patents and ranks them from ‘most similar’ to ‘least similar’. A fixed number of patents from the top of the list is shown to you.

=> ↺ The European Patent Office Grants Cannabics Pharmaceuticals Patent for Company’s Personalized Medicine Drug Discovery Technology

=> ↺ Recordation Requirements and a Certificate of Unenforceability

• There are two interesting patent provisions being debated in the Senate as amendments to bipartisan Endless Frontier Act S.1260. Although it is difficult to tell exactly what will happen, the EFA Bill as a whole is likely to pass through the Senate. Both amendments were proposed in a bipartisan manner by Sens Tillis (R) and Leahy (D) and so also carry some weight. This is being pushed through the Senate and so there are unlikely to be any hearings on these amendments.

• [...]

• Certificate of Unenforceability: The second proposed amendment alters the ex parte reexamination statute. Currently ex party reexaminations can be filed based upon printed prior art. The proposal would also allow for a reexamination to challenge a patent’s enforceability “on the basis of credible evidence that any claim was obtained through fraud.” The PTO would then issue a “certificate of unenforceability.”

=> ↺ Slow down on Mandamus: Federal Circuit Refuses to Short Circuit Judge Albright’s Decision Process

• Another mandamus venue case from Judge Albright’s Waco Texas courtroom. This time, however, the Federal Circuit has denied mandamus, holding that the defendant-petitioner had failed to show the requisite extraordinary cause.

• The underlying lawsuit was filed in July 2020. Koss Corp. v. Bose Corp., 6:20-cv-00661 (W.D. Tex.). In December 2020, Bose filed its motion to dismiss/transfer for improper venue under 28 USC 1400(b). Briefing completed on the motion in March 2021. Then, in April 2021 Judge Albright indicated that he planned to rule on the venue motion “next week” and that all deadlines remained in place as they await the decision. Today, May 25, 2020, Judge Albright has still not ruled on the motion. earlier this month Bose petitioned for mandamus asking the the appellate court to order Judge Albright to set everything aside until he decides the venue question.

• In its analysis, the Federal Circuit found that Judge Albright has already taken steps to place the venue question next in line, and that he is not required to unduly delay other aspects of the case.

=> ↺ Washington State Has Sued A Patent Troll For Violating Consumer Protection Laws

• Landmark Technology, a patent troll that has spent 20 years threatening and suing small businesses over bogus patents, and received EFF’s Stupid Patent of the Month award in 2019, has been sued by the State of Washington.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Book Review: The Routledge Handbook of EU Copyright Law

• As the title suggests, this first section covers the law and policy of the EU harmonisation project. It does this in three chapters. First, Ana Ramalho discusses the competence and rationale of EU copyright harmonization; the cornerstone of its competence being the establishment and functioning of the internal market.

• In the second chapter, Tito Rendas provides an overview of the fundamental rights in EU copyright law. As it is well established by the CJEU, these fundamental rights have horizontal effects which must be balanced fairly. This chapter provides an insight into the influence of fundamental rights in the areas of copyright ownership and scope, exceptions and enforcement… which Rendas argues is, in the end, somewhat superficial.

• Third, Tatiana-Eleni Synodinou critically examines the question of unification of European copyright law. The author argues that the EU Commission should speed up the timeline and introduce a mandatory European unified copyright law at an earlier stage. Partly, as she demonstrates, because the journey has already begun as well as due to the challenges posed by online technology. Without such forward thinking action, the author argues, the more interconnected the world becomes, the more likely that copyright will be seen as a regulatory barrier to a global cultural and economic forum.

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