● 07.02.21

● Links 2/7/2021: Jim Whitehurst Leaves IBM, KDSoap 2.0.0, and EasyOS 2.8.4

Posted in News Roundup at 3:11 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ Updated Chrome OS 91 Stable Channel fixes broken clipboard in Linux on Chromebooks

• I often tell readers to submit a bug report when they spot some issue in Chrome OS. Some do, but others tell me “Google doesn’t listen to our feedback.” To be honest, it’s downright impossible to listen to feedback that’s never shared! That’s why I’m happy to see people who couldn’t copy and paste between Chrome OS and Linux actually did report the issue to Google. A Chrome OS 91 Stable Channel update was released this week and it fixes the broken clipboard in Linux on Chromebooks.

• Google didn’t specifically mention this issue was resolved in its blog post, which is why I’m calling attention to it.

• I, along with another 20 or so folks, starred the bug so I was notified of the fix. Google did provide a link to the fixes in Chrome OS 91 though, so anyone could have clicked through to find this.

• Here are the specifics if you’d rather just see the history of this particular issue. And here’s a report of the problem to illustrate the clipboard behavior.

Linux Mag

=> ↺ Brain Rights

=> ↺ Workshop: Accessing log data with Loki

=> ↺ Tools for converting multimedia files

=> ↺ Automate your web logins

=> ↺ Zack’s Kernel News

=> ↺ An old-style distro doing new things

=> ↺ This month in Linux Voice.

=> ↺ Fast Debian downloads

=> ↺ openSUSE Leap 15.3 and Kubuntu 21.04

=> ↺ Running Linux apps on Android without rooting your phone

=> ↺ NVidia and Valve Collaborate to Bring DLSS to Linux

=> ↺ An interview with IRCNow’s Aaron Lin

=> ↺ Safer Internet Searches

=> ↺ Dress for Success

=> ↺ This month Graham looks at Penpot, ProcMon, diskgraph, Shaarli, Music Radar and more!

=> ↺ Keep your documents organized with SeedDMS

=> ↺ An introduction to electronic weighing

=> ↺ Create screencasts with menyoki

=> ↺ Freehand writing and drawing

=> ↺ The sys admin’s daily grind: exa

=> ↺ The new Python match

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ How to install Pop!_OS 21.04

• In this video, I am going to show how to install Pop!_OS 21.04.

=> ↺ Linux in the Ham Shack (LHS) Episode #419: The Weekender LXXIV

• It’s time once again for The Weekender. This is our bi-weekly departure into the world of amateur radio contests, open source conventions, special events, listener challenges, hedonism and just plain fun. Thanks for listening and, if you happen to get a chance, feel free to call us or e-mail and send us some feedback. Tell us how we’re doing. We’d love to hear from you.

=> ↺ SFP#11: REUSE Booster and our update on REUSE with Max Mehl

• For this episode we have invited Max Mehl. This is the first time since the launch of the Software Freedom Podcast that a FSFE staff member joins the podcast. Max Mehl, FSFE’s program manager, has been with the FSFE since 2011 and has worked on the numerous campaigns. Including the “I Love Free Software Day”, “Free Your Android”, “Router Freedom”, and the “Public Money? Public Code!” campaign just to name a few. Nowadays, Max Mehl is also the responsible for the REUSE initiative and one of the REUSE tool’s maintainers.

=> ↺ A Solution Looking for a Problem | Self-Hosted 48

• Tuya shocks us by announcing native Home Assistant support, we have an update on a smart doorbell Ring alternative, and we tell all about how PiKVM just levelled up in awesome.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux 5.14 ARM64 Preps For When Not All The CPU Cores Support 32-bit Execution – Phoronix

• The 64-bit ARM architecture changes were submitted this week for the ongoing Linux 5.14.

• One of the recent ARM64/AArch64 themes has been making kernel preparations for upcoming platforms where not all of the CPU cores may support 32-bit execution but limited to just 64-bit execution. Some of those kernel changes are in place for Linux 5.14 while some other pieces haven’t yet landed.

=> ↺ Intel Overhauls & Replaces Its RDMA Linux Driver – Phoronix

• Intel has wrapped up a 3+ year effort to overhaul and replace its existing RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) driver. With Linux 5.14 is their shiny new “IRDMA” driver while their former driver is being immediately removed.

• Linux 5.14 is landing Intel’s replacement RDMA driver that is a complete rewrite of their older driver and continues supporting the older hardware as well as better supporting new/future hardware. Intel has been working on this new unified Ethernet Protocol Driver for RDMA (named the “irdma” driver) for X722 iWARP hardware as well as newer E810 hardware where the RDMA support isn’t in place with their current (now prior) mainline driver. The IRDMA driver is a replacement to the existing i40iw kernel module that is being stripped from the kernel tree.

=> ↺ Systemd 249 Has Another Chance For Testing Before Release

• Another release candidate of systemd 249 is available for testing while the actual release appears imminent.

• As previously noted the systemd 249 update is coming with many new features. Some of the systemd 249 highlights include:

• • Systemd-sysusers and systemd-firstboot now supports querying information from the credential subsystems.

=> ↺ Linux 5.14 Bringing SD Cache Ctrl Support, Other SD Card Support Improvements

• The MMC/MEMSTICK updates for Linux 5.14 bring more work on bettering the kernel’s Secure Digital card support.

• Sent in earlier this week was the MMC/MEMSTICK updates for Linux 5.14 and from those various changes catching our eye were a number of Secure Digital (SD) related improvements and supporting more functionality on that front. It was only last year that SD Express support got ironed out and some other SD features have lagged behind in the past while now the mainline kernel is working in the direction of catching up.

=> ↺ OpenZFS 2.1 Adds Linux 5.13 and InfluxDB Support, Distributed Spare RAID

• The biggest change of the OpenZFS 2.1 release is support for the recently launched Linux 5.13 kernel series. Of course, this means that you can use the ZFS file system on a GNU/Linux distribution powered by Linux kernel 5.13. Right now, OpenZFS is compatible with Linux kernels 3.10 to 5.13.

• Other major new features of OpenZFS 2.1 include dRAID (distributed spare RAID) support for creating pools using a new distributed variant of RAIDZ, support for the InfluxDB time-series database for collecting pool statistics, and a new compatibility property that lets sysadmins specify a set of features to be enabled on the pool.

Benchmarks

=> ↺ Linux Leading Over Early Windows 11 Benchmarks For AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Performance

• With Microsoft making public this week their early Windows Insider Preview builds of Windows 11, curiosity got the best of me to give it a whirl in looking at the performance of the early Windows 11 preview build compared to Ubuntu Linux.

• This week I fired off some initial benchmarks of the Windows 11 22000.51 build made available this week via the Windows Insider Preview program and compared the performance to the current Windows 10 21H1 release with all available stable release updates as of testing. The benchmarks were then compared to both Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS and Ubuntu 21.04 for seeing how those LTS and latest stable Linux distribution releases compare on the same hardware. In a follow up article will be looking at the Windows 11 WSL2 performance.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Securely Delete Files in Linux Using shred

• When you delete a file on your computer, the system clears the blocks in your storage by removing the reference to the file. The file doesn’t disappear suddenly and is still accessible using advanced software, which might not be what you want.

• Anyone with a file recovery tool can extract those deleted files from your storage and view their content. But what if you don’t want this to happen? And what’s the best possible way to delete files on Linux so that no one can ever recover them?

• Here’s when the shred utility comes into play. This article will discuss the shred command in detail, its limitations, and how to use it to securely delete files on Linux.

=> ↺ How to Check SSD/HDD health in Linux

• If you are a system administrator and responsible for managing Linux systems in Datacenter. Then, it is recommended to check the health of the SSD and HDD drives regularly. It will help you to identify failed drives and they can be replaced before any data loss occurs. S.M.A.R.T is a tool used to monitor the health status of SSD and HDD. It also allows you to perform on-demand tests on the drive.

• In this post, we will show you how to check SSD and HDD health on Linux.

=> ↺ How to get a list of Symbolic Links on Linux

• A symbolic link also known as a soft link is a kind of a pointer that points to the location of a folder or a file on your system. Some of these links are created by default on your system, whereas you yourself can also create symbolic links manually for any of your desired files or folders. This article will explain to you the different methods through which you can list down all symbolic links on Linux, I have used Linux Mint 20 for this guide, but the same steps will work on any Linux distribution.

=> ↺ How to Set Up Git Username and Email in Ubuntu – Make Tech Easier

• Git is a distributed version control system developed by Linus Torvalds to help build the Linux kernel. Since its initial days, Git has grown tremendously to become the most popular version control system.

• Git allows multiple users to simultaneously contribute to a single project, track changes, revert to previous versions, and create branches for various project versions. This is why it is important to set up your username and email in Git so each commit can be traced back to the user.

=> ↺ Automatic Shutdown Easily in Ubuntu via System Menu Option | UbuntuHandbook

• Want to automatically power off Ubuntu after given time? Here’s an Extension adds the option to top-right system menu.

• Yes, you can do this either via a graphical shutdown application, or shutdown command with few parameter. However, for beginners or those hate Linux command, life will be easier with the ShutdownTimer extension.

• The extension adds an option under Power Off/Log Out menu. With it, you can just move the slider to change time delay, and turn on the toggle icon to automatically shutdown your computer.

=> ↺ How To Backup And Restore Files Using Deja Dup In Linux – OSTechNix

• There are multitude of applications available to backup data in Linux and Unix operating systems. In this guide, we will see how to backup and restore files using Deja Dup in Linux.

=> ↺ How To Install Ant Media Server on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Ant Media Server on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Ant Media Server is a highly scalable real-time video streaming platform – WebRTC server. ultra-low latency and adaptive WebRTC streaming software.

• 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 the step-by-step installation of the Ant Media Server on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

=> ↺ How to Install VirtualBox Guest Additions on Manjaro – Linux Nightly

• VirtualBox Guest Additions will help you get the most out of your Manjaro virtual machine. It gives you automatic resolution scaling, a shared clipboard between the host and VM, and drag and drop ability. The step by step instructions below will explain how to install VirtualBox Guest Additions on Manjaro Linux.

=> ↺ How to Install and Setup Sendmail on Ubuntu – Cloudbooklet

• How to install and configure Sendmail on Ubuntu for sending emails using a email server which routes or relays the mail delivery.

• Sendmail is a opensource Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) which is used to route email using server or by using shell commands. You can also configure SMTP using Sendmail.

• In this guide you are going to learn how to install and setup Sendmail on Ubuntu. Also you will setup SMTP and configure it with PHP.

=> ↺ Server Monitoring with Munin and Monit on Debian

• In this article, I describe how you can monitor your Debian 10 (Buster) server with Munin and Monit. Munin generates nifty little graphs about almost every aspect of your server (load average, memory usage, CPU usage, MySQL throughput, network traffic, etc.) without much configuration, while Monit checks the availability of services like Apache, MySQL, Postfix and takes the appropriate action like a restart if it finds that a service is not behaving as expected. Combining the two gives you complete monitoring: graphs that let you see current or impending problems (e.g. “We need a bigger server soon, our load average is increasing rapidly.”), and a watchdog that ensures the availability of the monitored services.

• Although you can monitor more than one server with Munin, we will only discuss monitoring the system it is installed on here.

• This guide was written for Debian 10 (Buster), but the configuration should also apply to other distributions like Ubuntu with minor changes.

=> ↺ How to ensure your snap uses the correct theme | Ubuntu

• An app is an app is an app. But in the world of Linux, things are a little more nuanced. Take VLC as an example. The software may be packaged ever so slightly differently in various Linux distribution archives, even different releases of the same distribution – the av01 codec is an interesting use case in this regard. Then, software may also be packaged as a snap. Due to their security containment and bundling of necessary dependencies, snaps can behave or look differently to their classic RPM or Deb counterparts. As a publisher, you want to make sure that your users get a consistent look & feel, regardless of the target platform.

• In this blog post, we’d like to highlight several ways you can ensure your users get the best visual experience with snaps. While there may still be outstanding issues with specific aspects of desktop usage, the tips and tricks today should help narrow that gap.

=> ↺ systemd on Linux 2: systemctl commands

• The second video in the systemd series, which covers the most common systemctl commands that developers, sysadmins, and devops engineers use.

=> ↺ Run Prometheus at home in a container | Opensource.com

• Prometheus is an open source monitoring and alerting system that provides insight into the state and history of a computer, application, or cluster by storing defined metrics in a time-series database. It provides a powerful query language, PromQL, to help you explore and understand the data it stores. Prometheus also includes an Alertmanager that makes it easy to trigger notifications when the metrics you collect cross certain thresholds. Most importantly, Prometheus is flexible and easy to set up to monitor all kinds of metrics from whatever system you need to track.

• As site reliability engineers (SREs) on Red Hat’s OpenShift Dedicated team, we use Prometheus as a central component of our monitoring and alerting for clusters and other aspects of our infrastructure. Using Prometheus, we can predict when problems may occur by following trends in the data we collect from nodes in the cluster and services we run. We can trigger alerts when certain thresholds are crossed or events occur. As a data source for Grafana, Prometheus enables us to produce graphs of data over time to see how a cluster or service is behaving.

=> ↺ Pablo Iranzo Gómez: UEFI boot order change

• In case you’ve a dual boot machine, sometimes it might happen that grub menu is no longer appearing.

• For systems using regular BIOS, a grub-install against the device it was installed might be required, but when using UEFI, it’s really easy to use a rescue media and execute efibootmgr to alter the boot order.

=> ↺ Enable Sysadmin’s June 2021 top 10 Linux article round-up

• June 2021 was a special month for Enable Sysadmin. We celebrated our 2 year anniversary, published 26 articles and received over 600k page views from over 415k unique visitors. Today, we are looking back at our top ten articles to give readers a chance to catch up on any of the great content they might have missed. In this list, you will see various topics covered and we are confident that some, if not all will be of interest to you.

Games

=> ↺ Steam On Linux Still Tap Dancing Around 0.9% Marketshare – Phoronix

• Even with Steam Play continuing to get into quite good shape for running recent Windows game releases on Linux with ease thanks to the work Valve has been investing into Proton, DXVK, VKD3D-Proton, and lower-level Linux graphics infrastructure, for now at least the overall marketshare is holding steady at around 0.8~0.9% for the past number of months.

• Since the introduction of Steam Play where the Linux gaming marketshare ticked up off its lows, the Linux marketshare has been holding steady in the 0.8~0.9% range for the past two years or so. Granted with Steam’s overall user base likely still growing, the absolute Linux gamer count appears to at least be keeping base proportionally.

=> ↺ Gorgeous adventure-puzzle game The Lightbringer gets a Linux demo

• Interested to try out a fresh demo? The Lightbringer looks pretty great and the developer seems keen to support Linux with it too and they’ve put out a demo.

• “The Lightbringer is a poetic adventure/puzzle platformer with light combat elements, set in a beautiful world claimed by a vile corruption. Guided by your sister’s spirit, you must prevail where she could not. Cleanse the corruption, become The Lightbringer.”

=> ↺ NVIDIA puts out a new release of their open source NVAPI interface

• What’s the use for Linux? NVIDIA say the version of nvapi.h that’s now under the MIT license helps to enable “open source re-implementations of NVAPI for Windows emulation environments”.

=> ↺ So I Tried Xbox Game Pass (on Linux)…

=> ↺ GamerOS Has Been Renamed to ChimeraOS

• After major backlash from the community, the developers behind GamerOS — the enhanced SteamOS alternative — have decided to give the project a new name. It’s now called ChimeraOS. As someone who’s never heard the name “Chimera,” I had to look up what it meant.

=> ↺ Massive scale city-builder Songs of Syx gets a new world map, Total War styled conquests | GamingOnLinux

• After the initial Early Access success where Songs of Syx managed to quickly shift over 11,000 copies the developer has been toiling away on a massive update that’s now in Beta.

• What is Songs of Syx? A fantasy city-builder where you start off as an insignificant colony and build, scheme, and fight your way towards a metropolis and empire. It blends together elements of so many different games into quite a unique experience, and now even more so. V58 Conquest adds in entirely new game mechanics for the overworld, along with a big visual refresh and it looks quite fantastic. There’s also now “basic Civilization/Total war mechanics” allowing you to ” sally forth and conquer your foes and do that which Conan the Barbarian loves so”.

=> ↺ Albion Online continues to see big player counts, with lots more to come on the roadmap | GamingOnLinux

• After a successful launch on mobile which saw player numbers explode, the cross-platform Albion Online is getting some more big upgrades.

• Sandbox Interactive shared earlier in June that player numbers jumped to a new record of over 270,000 daily active. An impressive number for an indie MMO to be hitting, which is boosted thanks to now being available across Linux, macOS, Windows and mobile all together.

• It’s quite an exciting time for the game as the developer has published a small look into what to expect from the next major content update. Scheduled to release this year, their plan is to really bring the open-world gameplay into focus with a biome appearance upgrade with fancier graphics, higher-tier areas will also get a more unique look and feel, a reworking of region layouts to make them easier to navigate and they plan to ensure each biome type has a clear theme recognizable from the region map.

=> ↺ Metro Exodus on Linux | Ubuntu 20.04 | Native

• Metro Exodus running natively on Linux.

=> ↺ Command & Conquer – Combined Arms blends many factions into one big package | GamingOnLinux

• Love your classic RTS games? I sure do and thanks to the power of the OpenRA game engine reimplementation you can try out Command & Conquer – Combined Arms which bundles many factions from different C&C games together.

• It lets you answer the question of who would win in a fight between the Soviets and the Scrin? Or perhaps the Soviets versus the Brotherhood of Nod? That and more can be done with Combined Arms a cross-platform blending of the Allies, Soviets, Nod, GDI and the Scrin into one game. This doesn’t just take OpenRA and the classic Westwood factions and bundle them though, as it does do plenty of tweaks with elements taken from Tiberium Dawn, Red Alert, Tiberium Sun, Red Alert 2 & Generals.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ KDSoap 2.0.0 Released

• KDSoap is a tool for creating client applications for web services, without the need for any further component such as a dedicated web server. This tool makes it possible to interact with applications which have APIs that can be exported as SOAP objects. The web service then provides a machine-accessible interface to its functionality via HTTP.

• KDSoap also supports writing SOAP servers easily, using Qt code.

=> ↺ KDE’s Summer App Update

• The KDE community makes a vast array of apps which get shipped in Linux distros, on Linux app stores, for Windows and Mac and for Android too. Following the re-branding of our scheduled app releases to KDE Gear we are splitting out the app update into these separate articles which will cover the self-released apps where the projects themselves manage their own release schedule. Here’s what we have released in the last few months.

=> ↺ Week 4: Finalizing Path Encoding / Decoding activity

• In my previous blog, I discussed the progress on adding new activities to GCompris project. In the past three weeks, I was working on ‘Deplacements’ activity, which has now been renamed to ‘Path (Encoding / Decoding)’.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ First Look: GNOME’s Default Theme is Getting a Revamp

• The changes to Adwaita sound relatively minor in isolation — no borders on buttons, no background colour on header bars — but together they outfit GTK apps with a much brighter, lighter look than the current version do.

• In design documents to demo the overall form of the new look GNOME’s Tobias Bernard lists the following key changes as being required…

Distributions

New Releases

=> ↺ IPFire 2.25 – Core Update 158 available for testing

•  Another update is available for testing and it is packed a one-click VPNs for Apple iOS and Mac OS devices as well as with various fixes across the board including security fixes.

• It is now possible to export IPsec road warrior connections for Apple devices so that they can easily be imported into those with only a few clicks. This makes creating secure connections with these devices quick and fool-proof – even when certificates are involved.

• Various smaller changes come with these changes: Certificates now have sane expiry times (instead of a hundred years).

• Detailed documentation for this feature is not available yet, but will be added before the release.

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

=> ↺ Rocky Linux release attracts 80,000 downloads as ex-CentOS users mull choices

• Rocky Linux 8.4, which was made generally available early last week, attracted 80,000 downloads within 72 hours, but disaffected CentOS users are wondering whether Rocky, rival AlmaLinux, or some other OS, is the right next move.

• Both Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux are designed to be binary-compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), while also being free software, for those who can manage without Red Hat’s support. Red Hat’s CentOS used to fulfil this role, until the company declared that in future it would be only CentOS Stream that previews rather than follows what will be in RHEL.

=> ↺ Making Java programs cloud-ready, Part 4: Optimize the runtime environment | Red Hat Developer

• This is the final article in a series where we are updating a monolithic Java EE application to function as a microservice and run in a distributed cloud environment such as Red Hat OpenShift. In the first article, we set up the legacy Java application and defined our goals. Then, we upgraded the Java environment to Jakarta EE. In the last article, we used MicroProfile to prepare the application for use in a distributed environment.

=> ↺ IBM emeritus IWB: What Musical Mindsets Can Teach Us About Business Innovation

• Over the past few decades, creativity and innovation have received increasing attention in the business world. For example, the overriding finding of a Global CEO Study conducted by IBM in 2010 was that creativity is the most crucial factor for future success. The IBM study interviewed more than 1,500 CEOs from 33 different industries and 60 countries, who overwhelmingly said that creativity, – even more than management discipline or strategic vision, – was the key leadership quality required to navigate an increasingly volatile and complex world.

=> ↺ Modernizing retail banking with blockchain, Red Hat and HCL

• The global financial system has long been at the forefront of technological change. Initially, banking institutions had minimal systems and fewer products, instead, the focus was on regular in-person customer interactions. However, as the global reach of finance grew, so did the need for proxies and platforms.

• At present, there is a need to simplify this multi-system approach within banks and streamline the flow of data among various banking platforms. The concept of distributed ledger on blockchain can help a bank share information across the board internally or with different banks under the same network. Blockchain ledgers are hard to tamper with. Transactions written to a blockchain cannot be amended, making it easier to establish accountability and reduce dispute among network participants.

• Cross border transactions is an area that has been heavily looked upon as a blockchain use case and one of the most lucrative opportunities for innovation. Cross border payments account for $130 trillion USD annually as per The 2020 McKinsey Global Payments Report (PDF). Banks usually have to incur high charges for cross border transactions.

• These charges can be as high as 10% of the transaction because of the hops a transaction goes into till it finally settles with the end customer. Using blockchain tokens, transactions can be done in real time with ledgers reflecting the transacted tokens between banks. This can be achieved using smart contract functionality where a smart contract can hold the business logic agreed between banks and once a transaction is executed, the shared ledger will keep the record immutable. These transaction records can help in reconciliation and faster settlements.

=> ↺ Managing secrets for Kubernetes pods | Enable Sysadmin

• The term container is not new in our collective IT vocabulary. Currently, many utilities are available in the industry for managing containers. Kubernetes is one of them and it provides container orchestration tools. In Kubernetes, pods are deployed. You can create containers in these pods. Kubernetes also offers several ways to keep your data secure. When you deploy a pod in a Kubernetes cluster, hiding sensitive data about the pod is an essential part of the deployment.

=> ↺ Oliver Gutierrez: Non destructive system tests for Toolbox

• Toolbox system tests were developed for using them in the Tooolbox CI. Because of that, that tests were not designed with local execution in mind. I’ve spent some time working on this tests to make them executable locally.

• The system tests basicly use podman and skopeo to execute the setup and test tasks. They are run with the bats test suite, and they do a heavy handling of images and containers to run the different tests needed for Toolbox.

=> ↺ Tim Lauridsen: Yum Extender is alive again

• After almost 5 years of deep sleep, I have decided to continue development of Yum Extender.

• Many issues has been solved and support for theming af been added.

• Here is was the current upstream looks like with the default theme.

=> ↺ IBM Leadership Changes

• Jim Whitehurst has played a pivotal role in the IBM and Red Hat integration. In the almost three years since the acquisition was announced, Jim has been instrumental in articulating IBM’s strategy, but also, in ensuring that IBM and Red Hat work well together and that our technology platforms and innovations provide more value to our clients. Jim has decided to step down as IBM President, however I am pleased he will continue working as Senior Advisor to me and the rest of the Executive Leadership Team as we continue to evolve our business.

=> ↺ Red Hat leader Jim Whitehurst steps down as IBM President

• Under Whitehurst, Red Hat became a billion-dollar company and was acquired by IBM. He then moved up to become IBM’s President to lead IBM’s cloud efforts. Now, out of the blue, Whitehurst is stepping down as IBM’s leader.

=> ↺ Jim Whitehurst Steps Down As IBM President

• In a surprise move, Jim Whitehurst has decided to step down as IBM’s president just 14 months after taking the role through the $34-billion Red Hat acquisition.

• Whitehurst has played a critical role in the IBM and Red Hat integration.

• “In the almost three years since the acquisition was announced, Jim has been instrumental in articulating IBM’s strategy, but also, in ensuring that IBM and Red Hat work well together and that our technology platforms and innovations provide more value to our clients,” Arvind Krishna, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IBM, said in a statement.

=> ↺ IBM stock slides on report president Jim Whitehurst is leaving company

Debian Family

=> ↺ Call for testing [Tails] 4.20~rc1

• Contribute to Tails by testing our release candidate for Tails 4.20!

=> ↺ EasyOS Dunfell-series version 2.8.4 released

• Version 2.8.3 was released on June 28:

• https://bkhome.org/news/202106/easyos-283-released.html

• The only change this time is SeaMonkey bumped to version 2.53.8. Noticed a new bug introduced with 2.53.8: At youtube.com, 1080p video, “Cinema mode” button does not work, have to manually resize the window. Full-screen button works.

=> ↺ SeaMonkey 2.53.8 compiled in Dunfell-series

• SM (SeaMonkey) 2.53.8 has just been released. The current release of EasyOS Dunfell-series is 2.8.3, and it has SM 2.53.7.1.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Linux-based telematics gateway offers four CAN Bus interfaces, cellular & WiFi connectivity, and more

• iWave Systems already provided some Linux-based vehicle diagnostic systems such as their NXP i.MX 7 powered OBD-II dongle with 4G LTE and GPS. But their latest model, the iW-Rainbow-G41 telematics gateway, goes a step further with an NXP i.MX 8 processor controlling four CAN Bus interfaces, and offering both wired (RS232/RS485, automotive Ethernet) and wireless (cellular, Wifi, Bluetooth) connectivity options.

• iW-Rainbow-G41 telematics gateway specifications…

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ The Future of Computers: The Neighborhood and The Nursing Home

• Is your computer your property?

• Throughout much of the history of the personal computer, owning a computer was like owning a house. The cost of ownership might be high at first, but afterwards you joined a neighborhood of other owners running similar software. Maintaining a computer, like a house, requires some effort and sometimes expertise. The do-it-yourself folks in the neighborhood would tackle projects themselves and might help a neighbor with their projects, while others would hire those jobs out to professionals. Generally speaking, people in this neighborhood had autonomy and freedom in how they lived in their homes. Your home was your castle.

• While many people continue to live in traditional neighborhoods, some of the wealthier owners, in the name of security and aesthetics, moved into gated communities. These communities might have guards at the gates, and guests have to be registered ahead of time. While you do own your home, there are also strict rules on what you can add to your property and what you can do in the community. Common areas in the community are well-maintained with nice landscaping.

• These rules are enforced by a Home Owner’s Association (HOA) who are paid by community members and are empowered to punish people who break the rules. Residents in these neighborhoods sacrificed some freedom (and some money) for a bit more security and privacy, better maintenance of common areas, and a hope that their property would retain its value.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Google to bake COVID-19 vaccine passport support into Android with Passes API update • The Register

=> ↺ Chrome Starts Adopting Android 12′s ‘Material You’ Colors

=> ↺ This Android phone could have even more RAM than the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra | TechRadar

=> ↺ OnePlus will update its Android phones for three years now – 9to5Google

=> ↺ OnePlus now has one of the best Android update schedules | Ars Technica

=> ↺ Android Users Are Getting Closer to an iMessage-Like App

=> ↺ Google may soon launch an Apple-like medical records app for Android | Android Central

=> ↺ Google Photos for Android preps a homescreen widget for your Memories

=> ↺ Google bringing digital Covid vaccination cards to Android | Trusted Reviews

=> ↺ Google Play dumps APKs for the more Google-controlled “Android App Bundle” | Ars Technica

=> ↺ Google Chrome: Google Chrome browser: Android smartphone users worried about your data, here are important tips – Times of India

=> ↺ How to set Google Search History to auto-delete on Android – TechRepublic

=> ↺ How to scan documents and photos into PDFs on Android

=> ↺ How to Enable End-to-End Encryption in Android Messages

=> ↺ LG updates the Q92 5G to Android 11 – NotebookCheck.net News

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

=> ↺ LG Q92 Getting Stable Android 11-Based LG UX 10 Update | Technology News

=> ↺ Android 11-based Realme UI 2.0 now seeding to Realme 7 – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ Nokia Is Loyal To Android OS: No Harmony OS On Nokia Phones

=> ↺ Using AirPods With Android? You Need to Download These 3 Apps

=> ↺ Stadia for Android TV scores 50k downloads in two weeks – 9to5Google

=> ↺ Five useful tips to boost battery life on your Android smartphone | The Star

=> ↺ This Android phone could have even more RAM than the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra | TechRadar

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Fedora Community Blog: Friday’s Fedora Facts: 2021-26

• Here’s your weekly Fedora report. Read what happened this week and what’s coming up. Your contributions are welcome (see the end of the post)!

• I have weekly office hours on Wednesdays in the morning and afternoon (US/Eastern time) in #fedora-meeting-1. Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else. See the upcoming meetings for more information.

=> ↺ Alejandro Domínguez: Small progress update of my 2021’s GSoC with Fractal-next

• This is a small update about the progress of my internship in GNOME for Fractal. There’s not much to tell since I’ve been mostly learning about the tools required to complete the tasks.

• After some time outlining the design and the path for the implementation of multi-account support in Fractal-next, I started hacking my way to this goal. Before I could even start, I had to learn and play around with the GtkBuilder UI XML format, GLib subclassing in Rust and the whole ListModel stuff. As someone who relies a lot on the type system to get things done and is used to somewhat linear data flows, this has been quite a bit more difficult than I expected initially to get a grasp on.

=> ↺ This radio tailors the morning news to your waking mood

• Very few of us are ever excited to wake up for the work day, but your mood can still vary from one morning to the next. If you had a rough night, you might wake up feeling melancholy. In that case, the last thing you want to do is hear depressing news on the radio. To help people enter wakefulness, Varenya Raj built a radio called Nidra that tailors the morning news to suit its user’s mood.

• Nidra’s design is unusual, in that it doesn’t resemble any radio or alarm clock that you’ve ever seen. Atop its plastic enclosure there are two buttons. The first looks like a pin cushion and the second seems like it could have come from a shaggy, purple marmot.

=> ↺ The Month in WordPress: June 2021

• In the “WordCamp Europe 2021 in Review” episode of the WP Briefing podcast, Josepha Haden talks about the importance of collaboration, which is vital in building WordPress. This edition of The Month in WordPress covers exciting updates that exemplify this philosophy.

=> ↺ The Apache News Round-up: week ending 2 July 2021

Education

=> ↺ School’s out for summer Universities and draft boards fight over Russia’s incoming graduate students

• In a new investigative report, Novaya Gazeta journalist Alexandra Dzhordzhevich examines how Russia’s draft boards sometimes ignore conscription exceptions for university students, terrifying young people and sparking legal battles with schools. At the heart of these disputes is the summer break between undergraduate and graduate studies, known as “postgraduate holidays” in Russia, where the military drafts roughly 135,000 men between the ages of 18 and 27, every year from April 1 to July 15. Students rely on this vacation period to ward off eligibility for conscription in the summer, but Novaya Gazeta found that some draft boards pursue them, nevertheless. Meduza summarizes the story here.

FSF

=> ↺ Apply to be the FSF’s next executive director

• The Free Software Foundation (FSF), a Massachusetts 501(c)(3) charity with a worldwide mission to protect computer user freedom, seeks a principled, compassionate, and capable leader to be its new executive director. This position can be remote or based in our Boston office.

• The FSF is committed to the notion that users are entitled to control their computing, individually and collectively, and therefore to control the software that does that computing. The executive director will work closely with the president, board of directors, and all Foundation staff to achieve this goal.

• The FSF faces many challenges as software becomes increasingly central in the exercise of all fundamental human freedoms, including speech, association, privacy, and movement, and as software owners seek to exploit their control over us to profit at the expense of those freedoms. The executive director has a vital role in enabling the FSF to continue meeting these challenges, starting from the strong base that has been built in the last thirty-five years. The Foundation has recently reached record-high membership numbers and was awarded a perfect score from Charity Navigator, as well as its eighth consecutive four-star rating. Efforts to improve the Foundation’s governance are underway.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ The art of the SWAG

• I’ve explored estimates are important in software projects, and shared my technique for producing an accurate estimate. That technique is detailed, systematic, and can produce fairly accurate estimates. The tradeoff is time: estimation techniques, including mine, require some time to produce any level of accuracy.

• Sometimes, though, it’s less important that an estimate be accurate than that it be quick. The canonical example is being asked for a quick estimate during a meeting: e.g., “if we wanted to add 2FA to this app, about how long would that take?” It can be quite useful to be able to give a quick and moderately accurate answer. Generally, a super-accurate estimate isn’t important; the person is just trying to calibrate the level of effort enough to know if it’s an idea worth exploring further.

• How do you give an off-the-cuff quick estimate like this? You make a Simple Wild-Ass Guess – a SWAG. The name’s a bit of a joke, but the practice isn’t. You never have to make a SWAG – it’s always appropriate to defer until you’ve had time to make a proper estimate – but if you can make one, and know that it’ll be at least plausible, a SWAG can help cut through a complex debate and keep things moving.

=> ↺ How to Make a Wild Guess

• Jacob Kaplan-Moss has tips for how and when to make a wild guess in terms of estimating timelines for software projects.

• Estimating timelines is an important part of any software project, and producing an accurate estimate requires a detailed, systematic approach, says Jacob Kaplan-Moss.

Perl/Raku

=> ↺ Jo Christian Oterhals: What not to do — how to mess up for loops in Raku

• I guess that for many of you what I’m about to write is fairly obvious. But I hadn’t really thought about for loops this way before. So you more or less witness my spontaneous reaction.

• The other day Joelle Maslak tweeted something that made me think. Joelle pointed out that in Raku the code blocks of for loops are just lambdas — anonymous functions.

• [...]

• Now, this isn’t unique in any way. I include the example here just to prove a point: Anonymous blocks can be replaced with named subs. Many programming languages can do this, and you have probably done this lots of times (most of what I show here can be done in, say, JavaScript; but since it was Raku that made me think of this stuff, the examples will be in Raku).

• Personally, though, I’ve never thought about replacing for code blocks with subs. Mostly I’ve had a sub first and then called it from a for loop later. As I think about it, it makes sense to think about the sub and the loop simultaneously: Branching out the code loop into a sub can be a good way to shorten and clean up a piece of code. Especially when what happens in the block is a fairly long and maybe convoluted piece of code. It keeps the main code shorter and perhaps, hopefully, more readable.

Leftovers

=> ↺ The Ideology of the Border

• John Tanton isn’t a household name; for much of his life, he lived a relatively unassuming existence as an ophthalmologist in Northern Michigan. Yet even if you don’t recognize his name, you’re probably familiar with his anti-immigrant ideas and their trajectory from fringe to federal public policy over the past few years. Tanton and his wealthy benefactors spent decades founding various groups, all for the sake of building up a machine to generate new nativist policy ideas that would serve as a kind of administrative state in waiting for a future right-wing president. As he wrote in a memo to a fellow member of an informal gathering of like-minded xenophobes: “All we lack is a king to advise!” He would live long enough to see this dream realized in Donald Trump.

=> ↺ How the Los Angeles Metro Sabotaged Its Own Less Fair “Fareless Transportation Plan” and Reverted to Its Structural Transit Racism

• In its May 2021 the Los Angeles the MTA rejected demands by the Bus Riders Union and many community allies for “free public transportation for all” now. Instead, MTA Mayor Eric Garcetti and County Supervisor Janice Hahn cut a back room deal to kill the plan for free public transportation for K-12 and Community Students and its plan for a pilot project for “fareless transit” for adults. The Bus Riders Union strongly supported the free student passes but opposed the general pass plan that would have required all people to prove poverty in order to qualify, otherwise pay the regular fare that they could not afford or face tickets and arrests for “fare evasion.” If you could imagine, Garcetti and Hahn attacked even the most racist elements of their own plan from the right.

• After more than 50 community groups went through the charade of public comment where they called for free public transportation for all and mentioned the Bus Riders Union often, the MTA acted as if no one had spoken—as always. Instead, the Board carried out a travesty of justice as each board member came up with “amendments” “qualifications” “delays” “postponement” “requirements”— Poison Pills. The entire board took turns introducing amendments to kill the whole idea.

=> ↺ The Myths of Point Reyes: Popularity, Local Control and Process

• Myth of Popularity

• It is a common claim that the public, who owns the national seashore, likes the ranches there. Rep. Huffman described Point Reyes as “a unique mosaic which most people love pretty much the way it is,” [i] and frequently casually repeats the assertion, without proffering any data.

=> ↺ 28 years and done The head of Russia’s top-ranked university is stepping down after more than a quarter of a century on the job

• Yaroslav Kuzminov, the longtime head of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (HSE), has resigned, the news outlet RBC reported on Thursday. Sources told the news agency TASS that Kuzminov planned for some time to step down and recently informed the school’s academic council about his decision, saying that he wants to focus on his own research. After nearly three decades on the job, Kuzminov leaves behind a legacy tainted by political controversy in recent years. Meduza breaks down how one of Russia’s most prominent scholars ended his role at the nation’s top-ranked university.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ UK Health Secretary Resigns After Caught In Clinch With Aide

• Hancock resigned his position shortly after the Murdoch-owned tabloid The Sun released CCTV footage of what transpired in his ministerial suite.

• Both Hancock and Coladangelo are married with 3 young children each (though Hancock announced after being caught that they would be moving in together).

=> ↺ 200+ Groups to Congress: ‘No Water Privatization’ in Any Infrastructure Deal

• In a letter to congressional leaders on Thursday, 218 organizations urged against water privatization “in all its forms” and called on federal lawmakers to enact a “bold, uncompromising infrastructure package.”

• “This White House-approved infrastructure deal would lead to communities handing over public infrastructure…

=> ↺ The Coronavirus Lab Leak Theory: Not Disproven, But Unlikely

• The past month has proven that right-wing ideas supported by little or no credible evidence are like the Terminator: they rise time and again from seemingly certain death. They even gain currency in the mainstream, due to their proponents parroting them over and over until they achieve the illusory truth effect. There are several historical precedents.

=> ↺ House Passes $715 Billion Water and Transportation Infrastructure Bill

• A number of progressive advocacy groups welcomed as a critical step forward the U.S. House’s Thursday approval of a water and transportation infrastructure bill, the INVEST in America Act.

• “This act is the real clean transportation and water plan people in our country deserve,” said Deron Lovaas, a senior policy advocate in NRDC’s Healthy People & Thriving Communities program, calling the bill “what we need to tackle the crises of crumbling roads and bridges, unsafe water, racial inequality, and climate change.”

=> ↺ On One Native American Reservation, Vaccine Hesitancy Has Long Historical Roots

• “Mass sterilization to most people is just an event,” Remi Bald Eagle told me recently, holding back tears. “But to us, that’s family that never made it here.” The sterilization campaign that the Indian Health Service carried out in the 1960s and ’70s afflicted somewhere between 25 and 40 percent of Native American women of childbearing age nationwide. Sterilizations were performed through coercion and without informed consent, a grievous violation of the physical integrity and personal agency of the women affected. On the Cheyenne River Reservation, the sovereign Lakota nation in South Dakota where Bald Eagle lives, the campaign left deep scars in the community. “There’s always that loss,” said Bald Eagle. “The vaccine is an event we have to figure out how it’s going to affect our families for generations to come,” says Remi Bald Eagle, the Intergovernmental Affairs Coordinator for the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation in South Dakota. (Sarah Stacke)

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

Security

=> ↺ Wireless Carrier Injects Ads Into Two-Factor Authentication Texts

• Not only are countless systems and services not secure, security itself often isn’t treated with the respect it deserves. And tools that are supposed to protect you from malicious actors are often monetized in self-serving ways. Like that time Facebook advertised a “privacy protecting VPN” that was effectively just spyware used to track Facebook users when they weren’t on Zuckerberg’s platform. Or that time Twitter was hit with a $250 million fine after it chose to use the phone numbers provided by users for two-factor authentication for marketing purposes (something Facebook was also busted for).

=> ↺ LinkedIn’s 700 Million Users Data Is Available On Sale

• Facebook’s record of database leak has been broken by LinkedIn. Just a few months back we saw Facebook’s database of 533 million users available for free on a forum. This time, it’s LinkedIn’s 700 million users database available on sale on the same forum.

• LinkedIn’s 700 million users database has been leaked on a public forum known for database leaks. The user who started the thread, posted a sample of 1M records to prove that the data is real. It includes email addresses, names, phone numbers, physical addresses, Geolocation records, LinkedIn usernames & profile URLs, profile data such as user experience, genders, and other social media accounts.

• Early in April, another user had posted a thread selling LinkedIn’s 500M databases. The database included users’ records from different countries as you can see in the screenshot below.

=> ↺ Security updates for Friday

• Security updates have been issued by Fedora (ansible and seamonkey), openSUSE (go1.15 and opera), Oracle (kernel and microcode_ctl), and Red Hat (go-toolset-1.15 and go-toolset-1.15-golang).

=> ↺ Linux Variant of REvil Ransomware Targets VMware’s ESXi, NAS Devices

=> ↺ 7 Unconventional Pieces of Password Wisdom

• Challenging common beliefs about best practices in password hygiene.

=> ↺ Israeli researchers discover global cyberattack in over 1,300 locations

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Appeals Court Reverses Earlier Decision, Says Baltimore’s Aerial Surveillance Program Is Unconstitutional

• After two court decisions declaring the Baltimore Police Department’s Persistent Surveillance Systems-provided aerial surveillance system wasn’t actually persistent surveillance, the en banc Fourth Circuit Appeals Court has reversed itself, finding that the system capable of capturing the movements of people and vehicles over an area of 32-square-miles violates the Fourth Amendment.

=> ↺ Moscow court bans Telegram bot ‘Eye of God’ over privacy violations

• At the request of Russia’s censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, Moscow’s Tagansky District Court has banned the Telegram bot “Eye of God” for alleged illegal activity that violates privacy rights.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Analysis Shows How Democrats Fall for Right Wing-Orchestrated Attacks on Ilhan Omar

• An anti-disinformation project at the think tank Atlantic Council revealed on Thursday how the Democratic Party has played into the hands of right-wing media organizations that aim to sow discord in the party and scapegoat its progressive wing, particularly Rep. Ilhan Omar.

• At the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, resident senior fellow Emerson T. Brooking and research intern Avani Yadav analyzed one of the most recent controversies centered on Omar, who has been a frequent target of Republicans and centrist Democrats for her condemnation of Israeli policy, statements about U.S.-Israel relations and the powerful pro-Israel lobby, and criticism of Islamophobic U.S. policies following September 11.

=> ↺ Biden’s First Pentagon Budget Isn’t Making Us Any Safer

• President Biden’s first Pentagon budget, released late last month, is staggering by any reasonable standard. At more than $750 billion for the Defense Department and related work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy, it represents one of the highest levels of spending since World War II— far higher than the peaks of the Korean or Vietnam wars or President Ronald Reagan’s military buildup of the 1980s, and roughly three times what China spends on its military.

=> ↺ America’s Nearly $1.3 Trillion National Security Budget Isn’t Making Us Any Safer

• Developments of the past year and a half — an ongoing pandemic, an intensifying mega-drought, white supremacy activities, and racial and economic injustice among them — should have underscored that the greatest threats to American lives are anything but military in nature. But no matter, the Biden administration has decided to double down on military spending as the primary pillar of what still passes for American security policy. And don’t be fooled by that striking Pentagon budget figure either. This year’s funding requests suggest that the total national security budget will come closer to a breathtaking $1.3 trillion.

• That mind-boggling figure underscores just how misguided Washington’s current “security” — a word that should increasingly be put in quotation marks — policies really are. No less concerning was the new administration’s decision to go full-speed ahead on longstanding Pentagon plans to build a new generation of nuclear-armed bombers, submarines, and missiles, including, of course, new nuclear warheads to go with them, at a cost of at least $1.7 trillion over the next three decades.

=> ↺ Mike Gravel and An Ongoing Road to Courage

• I heard Senator Gravel speak at those debates in the days and months after I came home the second time from the Iraq War. Those words by themselves were not enough to give me the courage to face the reality of what the United States’ wars in the Muslim world were actually for and about. Nor did they allow me to acknowledge how counter-productive the wars were, to admit their moral and intellectual dishonesty, or to accept how the only people profiting from the wars were the weapons companies, the generals earning promotions, the politicians waving bloody flags, and al-Qaeda itself, who benefited from tens of thousands rallying to their cause in response to the US’ savage occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. I would still go on to join the State Department, after having been in the Marine Corps for ten years, and on to the Afghan War.

• In Afghanistan, I was a political officer stationed in the rural provinces of the insurgent dominated east and south of the country, on the border of Pakistan. What I saw in Afghanistan was no different than what I had seen in Iraq. Any differences “experts” would describe between the two countries, the culture, the terrain, the near and far history of the places, etc., were all irrelevant. This was simply because the one thing that mattered was the presence of the US military and the intentions of those in Washington, DC.

=> ↺ Rumsfeld on Iraq’s WMDs, 2003

• From a compilation of quotes by American politicians on Iraq’s alleged WMDs that I put together for my book, Grand Theft Pentagon.

=> ↺ Derek Chauvin: Why Did You Kill My Brother?

• For Derek Chauvin, nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds have turned into twenty-two and a half years—the prison sentence he recently received for the murder of George Floyd.

=> ↺ Nuclear Weapons: An All-American Horror Story

• Yes, once upon a time I regularly absorbed science fiction and imagined futures of wonder, but mainly of horror. What else could you think, if you read H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds under the covers by flashlight while your parents thought you were asleep? Of course, that novel was a futuristic fantasy, involving as it did Martians arriving in London to take out humanity. Sixty-odd years after secretly reading that book and wondering about the future that would someday be mine, I’m living, it seems, in that very future, however Martian-less it might be. Still, just in case you hadn’t noticed, our present moment could easily be imagined as straight out of a science-fiction novel that, even at my age, I’d prefer not to read by flashlight in the dark of night. 

=> ↺ “He Was Defeated”: Ethiopian PM Withdraws from Tigray After Months of Civil War, as Famine Looms

• The Ethiopian military has withdrawn its forces from Mekelle, the capital of the war-torn Tigray region, after the government declared a ceasefire. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed denied reports his military was defeated by Tigrayan forces, and said he had successfully pacified the city. Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, launched the offensive against Tigray separatists in November. Since then, thousands have been killed, over a million civilians have been displaced, and some 350,000 people are now on the brink of famine. Alemayehu Fentaw Weldemariam, a constitutional law scholar, political theorist and conflict analyst, says Prime Minister Ahmed’s “unilateral” ceasefire hides the reality of what happened. “He was defeated,” he says. We also speak with Stanley Chitekwe, chief of nutrition at UNICEF Ethiopia, who says the organization is seeing “very high levels of malnutrition” in Tigray, including among children under 5. “This malnutrition situation may deteriorate into famine,” he warns.

=> ↺ Demonization of Iran Is a “Mistake” That Has Trapped the U.S. in Perpetual Middle East Conflict

• After the Biden administration launched airstrikes targeting an Iranian-backed militia in Syria and Iraq, military historian Andrew Bacevich says the United States needs to reassess its decades-long hostility toward Iran. “The demonization of Iran is now a well-established reality of our contemporary politics. It’s a mistake,” he says. “Over the past 40 years or so, we’ve decided that Iran needs to be classified as an evil power, and I think that that inclination makes it very difficult for us to come to a reasoned understanding of how we got so deeply enmeshed in the Persian Gulf and how it is that we end up basically in the pocket of the Saudis.” Bacevich also discusses the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and warns that a Taliban takeover of the country could spark another refugee crisis.

=> ↺ The Case for Negotiating With Adversaries

• We should remember that the first head of state to reach President George W. Bush on the very day of the 9/11 attacks was President Putin, who made several calls to the White House and had to overcome the resistance of Vice President Dick Cheney who initially refused to forward Putin’s messages of sympathy and assistance.  Putin’s offers were generous, including the offer of access to air fields in the former Soviet space as well as assistance in helping downed or troubled U.S. pilots.

• Several months later, Putin got an “answer” from the Bush administration in the form of U.S. abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the cornerstone of the disarmament process and strategic stability.  The absence of strategic missile defense was needed to open the door to comprehensive offensive missile reductions.  Putin used his press conference in Geneva last month to ridicule the United States for walking away from arms control and disarmament by abrogating not only the ABM Treaty, but also the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty.

=> ↺ “He Was a Disaster”: Ret. Col. Andrew Bacevich on Donald Rumsfeld’s Legacy as Architect of Iraq War

• Donald Rumsfeld, considered the chief architect of the Iraq War, has died at the age of 88. As defense secretary for both Presidents George W. Bush and Gerald Ford, Rumsfeld presided, his critics say, over systemic torture, massacres of civilians and illegal wars. We look at Rumsfeld’s legacy with retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich, whose son was killed in Iraq. Bacevich is the president of the antiwar think tank the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He says the Iraq War should be the most important item inscribed on Rumsfeld’s headstone. “He was a disaster,” Bacevich says. “He was a catastrophically bad and failed defense secretary who radically misinterpreted the necessary response to 9/11, and therefore caused almost immeasurable damage to our country, to Iraq, to the Persian Gulf, more broadly.”

=> ↺ Law enforcement raid Oleg Stepanov’s campaign office as part of Navalny investigation

• On July 1, law enforcement officers raided the campaign office of Oleg Stepanov, Alexey Navalny’s former coordinator in Moscow, who’s trying to run in the upcoming State Duma elections.

=> ↺ Rumsfeld Was Not “Controversial.” He Played a Leading Role in Mass Murder.

=> ↺ The War Crimes Case Against Donald Rumsfeld

• On November 14, 2006 the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the International Federation for Human Rights, Germany’s Republican Attorneys’ Association, and other groups and individuals filed a formal complaint with the German Federal Prosecutor to open an investigation and, ultimately, a criminal prosecution of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other major U.S. officials. The complaint argues that Rumsfeld and other high-ranking civilian and military officials named as defendants in the case have committed war crimes, and in particular torture, against prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay. Following is an interview by the staff of Revolution with MICHAEL RATNER, president of the CCR, who was among those in Germany on November 14 to file the complaint.

• Question: Let’s begin with the nature of this complaint and what it’s designed to accomplish. Rumsfeld is a major focus, but the lawsuit seems to go well beyond him in its scope and intentions.

=> ↺ US Corporate Media Fixin for a Cold War Fight With China

• US media are fixin’ for a fight with China, Russia—or both. Commentary on the recent G7 and NATO summits, as well as President Joe Biden’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, was replete with examples of news outlets alternately praising the Biden administration for ramping up new cold wars with China and Russia, and criticizing it for not being even more aggressive. As it propagandized about the US supposedly fighting for democracy, this coverage betrayed a total indifference to the potential costs of these hostilities.

Environment

=> ↺ 200+ Groups to Democrats: $6 Trillion ‘Should Be the Floor’ for Climate and Infrastructure Bill

• A coalition of more than 200 progressive advocacy organizations and think tanks released a joint statement Wednesday arguing that $6 trillion in spending “should be the floor, not the ceiling” of Democratic lawmakers’ ambitions as they craft a legislative package aimed at combating the climate crisis, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, and repairing the tattered safety net.

• “The recent bipartisan framework announced by the White House is insufficient to meet these challenges and must not advance on its own,” reads the new statement, referring to the $579 billion infrastructure plan that President Joe Biden touted last week, flanked by Republicans and conservative Democrats. “Congress must seize the historic opportunity in the FY2022 budget resolution to build on the Biden Administration’s proposals and set the stage for a bold reconciliation package.”

=> ↺ ‘Horrifying’: Record-Breaking Northwest Heatwave Linked to Hundreds of Deaths

• The record-shattering heatwave currently scorching the Pacific Northwest has been linked to hundreds of deaths in the region over just the past week, with British Columbia alone reporting at least 486 “sudden and unexpected” fatalities since last Friday.

• “There is a way out of this nightmare of ever-worsening weather extremes… A rapid transition to clean energy.”—Michael Mann, Susan Joy Hassol

Energy

=> ↺ Footage of Exxon Lobbyist Increases Pressure on Biden to End Fossil Fuel Subsidies

• Environmentalists on Thursday ramped up pressure on President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats to repeal federal subsidies to the fossil fuel industry following the release of secretly recorded footage in which an ExxonMobil lobbyist admits that—despite its recent posturing as a proponent of climate action—the oil giant is still undercutting green energy initiatives behind closed doors.

• “President Biden and the Democratic Party received a historic majority to deliver relief and solutions for the American people, not Exxon.”—Varshini Prakash and Alexandra Rojas

=> ↺ Secret Footage of ExxonMobil Lobbyists Sparks Calls for Congressional Action

=> ↺ Big Oil Should Be Prosecuted for Their Crimes Against Humanity

• This article is part of The Guardian’s new climate crimes series investigating how the fossil fuel industry contributed to the climate crisis and lied to the American public. All stories in the series are republishable by Covering Climate Now partners, under the terms outlined here. Are you a fossil fuel industry insider? The Guardian wants to hear from you.

Finance

=> ↺ Living a Dignified Life Shouldn’t Depend on Luck

• I grew up in a poor, undocumented family. I was lucky—we got our legal residency, I got an education, and now I have a good job. But no one should have to count on luck.

=> ↺ This Is the Moment to Rebuild America’s Middle Class

• The coming of Independence Day is an opportunity to assess the American Dream of equal opportunity and middle-class status.  Unfortunately, for more than four decades, the middle class has been squeezed. Today, too many hard-working Americans find themselves financially treading water or falling behind. And the increased pressure on the middle class has taken more than a financial toll. According to the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, “Even the physical and mental health of the American middle class is getting progressively worse.” 

=> ↺ Trump Org CFO Weisselberg, Facing Tax Evasion Crimes, Surrenders to Authorities

=> ↺ Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg Surrenders Ahead of Indictment

• The Trump Organization’s longtime Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg surrendered to the Manhattan district attorney’s office Thursday morning, just hours before prosecutors are expected to unveil charges against the executive for tax crimes committed while the former president was leading the company.

• While the precise charges against Weisselberg and the Trump Organization are not yet known, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance has been probing whether the financial officer unlawfully failed to pay taxes on benefits he received from the company.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ From Neoliberalism’s Old Normal to the 21st Century New Normal

• But at some point, markets become saturated, demand rates fall and overproduction and overaccumulation of capital becomes a problem. In response, we have seen credit markets expand and personal debt increase to maintain consumer demand as workers’ wages have been squeezed, financial and real estate speculation rise (new investment markets), stock buy backs and massive bail outs and subsidies (public money to maintain the viability of private capital) and an expansion of militarism (a major driving force for many sectors of the economy).

• We have also witnessed systems of production abroad being displaced for global corporations to then capture and expand markets in foreign countries.

=> ↺ ‘Tip of the Iceberg’: Experts Weigh In as Trump Lieutenant Charged

• As longtime Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg was charged Thursday with 15 felony counts in connection with what Manhattan prosecutors called “a sweeping and audacious illegal payments scheme” involving alleged tax fraud and other criminal offenses, legal and other experts weighed in on what the charges mean for other company executives—including former President Donald Trump himself.

• Appearing in court Thursday after surrendering to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, Weisselberg—who pleaded not guilty on all counts—listened as Assistant District Attorney Carey Dunne accused him of a involvement in “a 15-year-long tax fraud scheme involving off-the-books payments.”

=> ↺ Five years of silence More than 20 State Duma lawmakers haven’t said a word in parliament since they were elected in 2016

• The Russian State Duma’s seventh convocation is coming to the end of its five-year term. And according to a new report from IStories and Znak.com, dozens of its deputies haven’t said a word in a parliamentary session since they were elected in 2016. Others haven’t put forward a single bill. Be that as it may, this hasn’t stopped these lawmakers from collecting high salaries and planning to put their names on the ballot for the State Duma election coming up in September.

=> ↺ The Truth About the Bipartisan Infrastructure Agreement

• As a performance art, politics features more clowns than princes, and a media that often mistakes the melodrama for the plot. Thus, President Joe Biden was first lavishly praised for “reviving the art of dealmaking” with the bipartisan infrastructure agreement, and then skewered for endangering the same by implying that his signature was dependent on passage “in tandem” of a far bolder budget reconciliation package with Democratic votes only. Republicans feigned high dudgeon; The Wall Street Journal denounced the “bipartisan betrayal”; while the ever-apoplectic Senator Lindsay Graham charged “extortion.”

=> ↺ After SCOTUS Upholds Arizona Limits, Congress Urged to Protect Voters and Expand Court

• A wide range of politicians, voting rights experts, and advocacy groups responded with calls for congressional action on Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing majority upheld voter suppression policies in Arizona—a possible bellwether for how justices may respond to other state-level attacks on the franchise.

• “We will not stand for this sustained attack on voting rights and our democracy.”—Rahna Epting, MoveOn

=> ↺ Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Voting Restrictions in Blow to Voting Rights Act

=> ↺ ‘Because They’re Complicit’: Nearly Every House Republican Votes Against Jan. 6 Panel

• House Republicans drew rebuke Wednesday for their near unanimous vote against the establishment of a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

• “Why did so many Republicans vote against a committee to fully investigate the deadliest attack on our Capitol in more than a century?” asked Rep. Pramilia Jayapal (D-Wash.). “Because they’re complicit.”

=> ↺ ‘I’m Running’: Progressive Democrat Charles Booker Aims to Unseat Rand Paul

• A year after his narrow Senate primary loss to an ultimately unsuccessful centrist candidate hand-picked by Democratic leaders, former Kentucky state legislator Charles Booker announced Thursday that he will again challenge assumptions about how the Democratic Party can win elections in the state, launching his 2022 campaign against Sen. Rand Paul.

• “I grew up in the West End of Louisville, and for years, I lived in the poorest zip code in the Commonwealth… I’ve lived the struggle other politicians just talk about.” —Charles Booker

=> ↺ McCarthy Told GOP Lawmakers He’d Kick Them Off Committees Over Jan 6 Commission

=> ↺ Supreme Court Ruling Delivers ‘Dark, Dark Day for Democracy’

• The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Thursday further empowered moneyed interests to manipulate elections through untraceable campaign contributions—dark money—by ruling in favor of two right-wing nonprofit groups who argued that California’s donor disclosure requirement violated their First Amendment rights.

• “Today’s analysis marks reporting and disclosure requirements with a bull’s-eye.”—Justice Sonia Sotomayor

=> ↺ New York’s Election Mess Is Not the Fault of Ranked-Choice Voting

• More than a week after voting in the New York mayoral election concluded, voters are more confused than ever about who the city’s next mayor will be.

=> ↺ Conservatives Blame Ranked-Choice Voting for NYC Election Chaos. They’re Wrong.

Misinformation/Disinformation

=> ↺ Cross-discipline boffin dream team issues social media warning: FIX IT NOW!

• A group of 17 researchers from a wide cross-section of different disciplines have come together to contribute to a paper suggesting social media might be a risk to humanity’s continued existence as we know it.

• [...]

• Due to the fact the scientists know what they don’t know regarding the effects of social media on collective behaviour, the paper proposes no solid solutions as such, beyond “stewardship of social systems”, which is presumably fancy talk for improved regulation and oversight of Big Tech.

• While this may be in the works, the power of firms like Facebook, Google, and Apple makes it a hard sell. Also, lumbering government response times to tech developments, combined with the increasingly tribal, combative nature of political debate mean regulators and lawmakers frequently find themselves several steps behind online trends and unable to agree what to do about them in any case.

• So there are a lot of problems with social media. But come on, they’re not really going to lead to the end of the world, surely? Bergstrom thinks we could do what is required, but he is not altogether confident about how things will turn out if nothing is done to rein in the “infodemic” of misinformation…

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Ridiculous Lawsuit Against Facebook Gets Tossed Out Of Court

• As you may recall, last summer we wrote about what we referred to as an “insanely stupid” lawsuit that Robert F. Kennedy had filed against Facebook on behalf of his wacky anti-vax organization “Children’s Health Defense” (CHD). The issue, of course, is that Facebook blocked CHD from posting the usual conspiracy theories and medical disinformation that RFK Jr. has been known to spread. But the case tried out some “new” theories on why such moderation was against the law: specifically, it argued that Section 230 turned websites into state actors by “privatizing” censorship and also that because Rep. Adam Schiff had sent a letter to Facebook asking it to crack down on disinformation on vaccines, that this also made them a state actor.

=> ↺ Content Moderation Case Study: Facebook Removes Image Of Two Men Kissing (2011)

• Summary: In the spring of 2011, two men were on a first date at the John Snow pub in London. They were apparently thrown out of the pub after another patron at the bar complained that the two men were kissing each other in the corner. The story of being thrown out of the pub for kissing began to go viral on social media, followed by a plan for a protest at the pub in question. In a sign of support for the protest, many people on social media posted images of two men kissing each other as well.

=> ↺ Former Trump Aide Launches Twitter Clone, That Seems To Yank A Ton Of Data Right Out Of Twitter; Already Has First Content Moderation Crisis

• Just as more news of what Trump wanted from Parler breaks, comes the news that his somewhat infamous former aide, Jason Miller, has launched a social media site called GETTR. It should be noted that through all of the rumors about Trump starting his own social network, it was usually Jason Miller who was claiming that it was on the way.

=> ↺ Trump Allegedly Demanded Parler Kick Off His Critics If It Wanted Him On The Platform

• There has been a lot of speculation regarding whether or not Donald Trump would set up his own social network or if he’d just join one of the struggling social networks which only seem to exist in order to cater to Trump’s most fervent supporters. Parler, obviously, gets a lot of attention and earlier this year there were reports that, while Trump was still President, he had entered into negotiations to take an equity stake in Parler and then embrace the platform as his preferred social network. As we noted back then, “for whatever reasons, the agreement did not materialize.”

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ The Empire Strikes Back at the Left in Buffalo and Cleveland

• The two biggest cities on the shores of Lake Erie are now centers of political upheaval. For decades, Buffalo and Cleveland have suffered from widespread poverty and despair in the midst of urban decay. Today, the second-largest cities in New York and Ohio are battlegrounds between activists fighting for progressive change and establishment forces determined to prevent it.

=> ↺ ‘So Wrong’: GOP Donor Paying to Send South Dakota National Guard to Southern Border

• Progressive Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on Thursday added her voice to those outraged that an out-of-state billionaire Republican donor’s foundation is paying for South Dakota’s GOP governor to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

• After Gov. Kristi Noem—a potential 2024 presidential candidate who is up for re-election next year—announced the deployment earlier this week, news broke that it is being paid for by a private donation from Willis and Reba Johnson’s Foundation.

=> ↺ Politically Correct Racism

• I offer these words of Nikole Hannah-Jones, whose 2019 essay is part of the New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” to the Heritage Foundation and the horde of Republican politicians currently trying to update the look and feel of American racism (a.k.a., “the lie”), to make it, you know, respectable and politically correct, so that it fits seamlessly into the mores of the 21st century.

• To do so, they’ve taken aim at an academic concept dating back to the 1970s, known as “critical race theory,” which essentially makes the point that racism isn’t merely a phenomenon of individual beliefs but something, my God, built into the social structure – which is absurd, so they say, in a country that is long past its racial troubles and is now colorblind.

=> ↺ Is This Joe Biden’s PATCO Moment?

• Speaking on the recent National Solidarity Call in support of striking nurses at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, Our Revolution leader Joseph Geevarghese characterized the situation as “Biden’s PATCO Moment.”  The call was convened by the Labor Campaign for Single Payer to help mobilize national support for the 800 nurses at the Tenet Healthcare-owned hospital who are now engaged in the longest nurses strike nationally in over a decade. Tenet has spent more than $75 million to date to prolong the strike. A fraction of those funds could have easily met the nurses demands for the staffing improvements that are the sole issue driving the strike.

=> ↺ “Abolition Amendment” Could End Loophole That Allows Forced Labor in Prisons

=> ↺ ‘Families are the most vulnerable’ A look at LGBTQ rights in Russia, eight years after the introduction of the infamous ‘gay propaganda’ law

• Eight years ago yesterday, on June 30, 2013, Russia’s “gay propaganda” law entered into force, banning the “promotion of non-traditional sexual relations” among minors. In spite of this legislation, LGBTQ+ people have become much more visible in Russian society in recent years and there’s a lot more information in the public sphere about their lives and the difficulties they face. At the same time, state-sanctioned homophobia has intensified. LGBTQ+ Russians are regularly subjected to aggression, often incited by the authorities. Meduza breaks down the consequences of homophobia being made part of the Russian state’s ideology.

=> ↺ Judge Don Willett Calls Out Appeals Court For Saying Setting A Suicidal Man On Fire Didn’t Violate His Rights

• Earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted qualified immunity to cops who responded to a call about a suicidal man by setting him on fire and killing him. The man, who had just finished pouring gasoline over himself, was tased by two officers, causing him to burst into flames, which soon spread to the house around him. They tased him despite knowing two things: the man was covered in gas and that the manufacturer of their [extremely-dark lol] “less-lethal” devices specifically warned against deploying them around flammable substances.

=> ↺ UN Report Calls for Reparations for Victims of Systemic Racist Police Violence

=> ↺ Texas Gov. Is Slashing Prison Funding — But He’s Doing It to Fund Trump’s Wall

=> ↺ An Artist’s Vision of Brexit Nightmares

=> ↺ Supreme Court Narrows Ability to Hold U.S. Corporations Accountable for Facilitating Human Rights Abuses Abroad

• The Supreme Court has now further narrowed one mechanism: the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). We now call on Congress to fill the gaps where the Court has failed to act.

• The Supreme Court recently issued an opinion in Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe, in which we filed an amicus brief (along with Access Now, Article 19, Privacy International, Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, and Ronald Deibert, director of Citizen Lab at University of Toronto.) Former child slaves on cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire claimed that two American chocolate companies, Nestlé USA and Cargill, facilitated their abuse at the hands of the farm operators by providing training, fertilizer, tools, and cash in exchange for the exclusive right to buy cocoa. The plaintiffs sued under the ATS, a law first passed by Congress in 1789, which allows foreign nationals to bring civil claims in U.S. federal court against defendants who violated “the law of nations or a treaty of the United States,” which many courts have recognized should include violations of modern notions of human rights, including forced labor.

• EFF’s brief detailed how surveillance, communications, and database systems, just to name a few, have been used by foreign governments—with the full knowledge of and assistance by the U.S. companies selling those technologies—to spy on and track down activists, journalists, and religious minorities who have then been imprisoned, tortured, and even killed.

=> ↺ #FreeBritney and All Saudi Women Too!

• One week after Britney Spears sent shockwaves across the world by relaying the conditions she has lived under for the past 13 years, a Los Angeles judge has denied her request to have her father removed from her conservatorship. Despite testifying that under her father’s care, she has not been allowed to marry, or make medical, professional, legal, or financial decisions for herself, the courts have yet to grant Britney the freedom she is asking for.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Joe Brockmeier: 3 ways to reduce technical debt in content: Avoid bare URLs, events and analyst content

Monopolies

=> ↺ Facebook and the FTC: Next Steps in the Fight to Break Up Big Tech

• This week a court dismissed lawsuits by the Federal Trade Commission and dozens of state attorneys general to break up Facebook and force it to allow third party applications to integrate with its dominant social network.

Patents

=> ↺ Polpharma and Wuesthoff succeed in revoking MS drug patent

• EP 967 covers natalizumab as used to treat inflammatory or autoimmune diseases. For example, where plasma or serum from a blood sample is tested for the presence of IgG antibodies to anti-John Cunningham virus (JCV). IgG antibodies, the most common antibodies, are found in blood and other fluids. They protect the body against various viruses and bacterial infections.

• EP 967 also requires that a doctor can initiate treatment for MS, if serum from a blood sample is negative for IgG antibodies to JCV. However, patients who test anti-JCV antibody positive have a higher risk of developing progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML).

• Until 2019, Biogen’s Tysabri had dominated the market for the treatment of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. However, in 2019, Polpharma and Sandoz reached an agreement that the former will take over the global commercialisation for a proposed natalizumab biosimilar. The biosimilar is currently undergoing Phase III clinical trials, which should be completed by August 2021.

• Waiting for European Medicines Agency (EMA) approval may extend the timeframe. Regardless, Biogen could experience competition for Tysabri as early as the end of 2022.

• [...]

• Regarding inventive step, the division decided that EP 967’s Auxiliary Request 1 lacks inventive step over the prior art. The prior art, in this instance, is a scientific article published by J.D. Berger in 2005. As such, according to the examiners, a person skilled in the art would be unaware that presence of IgG antibodies is a risk-marker in some MS patients.

• In terms of inventive step, the division decided that Biogen omitted a monitoring step, which formed part of the original filed patent application, in the patent’s claims. However, Biogen still has five divisional patents pending.

=> ↺ EPO Confirms Prohibition On Double Patenting – But Leaves Questions Outstanding

• Some EPC states, including the UK, have provisions under their national law which aim to prevent double protection for the same invention by both a patent granted under national law and one granted by the EPO. However, the EPC does not contain any explicit provisions banning double protection of the same invention by two EPO-granted patents.

• Despite this, the EPO’s practice in recent years has been to refuse to grant patents in circumstances where two applications belonging to the same applicant have identical claims, have the same filing or priority date, and designate overlapping groups of contracting states. In such situations the EPO requires the applicant to either choose one application to proceed to grant, or else to amend the claims of one or both applications, or amend the designated states to remove overlap. As legal basis for this practice the EPO has relied on the notion that “an applicant has no legitimate interest in proceedings leading to the grant of a second patent for the same subject-matter if the applicant already possesses one granted patent for that subject-matter”.

• This practice has been highly controversial, not least as it originates from obiter dicta in two earlier Enlarged Board decisions which were concerned with the assessment of added matter in connection with divisional applications, and not with the issue of double patenting per se. The legal basis for these obiter dicta, and so for the EPO’s consequent practice, was uncertain. Questions had also arisen as to the interpretation of this exclusion: for example could an applicant be said to have a ‘legitimate interest’ in obtaining two patents for the same subject-matter based on the additional year of protection provided by one application claiming priority from an earlier application with the same claims?

=> ↺ CVC Substantive Preliminary Motion No. 1 for Priority Benefit

• On May 20th, Junior Party the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Vienna; and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, “CVC”) filed its Substantive Preliminary Motion No. 1 in Interference No. 106,127 (which names ToolGen as Senior Party), asking the Patent Trial and Appeal Board for benefit of priority to U.S. provisional application No. 61/652,086, filed May 25, 2012 (“P1″), U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/716,256, filed October 19, 2012, (“P2″), and U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/757,640, filed January 28, 2013 (“Provisional 3″), pursuant to 37 C.F.R. §§ 41.121(a)(1)(ii) and 41.208(a)(3) and Standing Order ¶ 208.4.1.

=> ↺ 2021 Patent Dispute Report: First Half in Review

• The biggest development of 2021 so far was the Supreme Court’s split decision in Arthrex, where a plurality of the Court found the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) Administrative Patent Judges (APJs) were unconstitutionally appointed principal officers. Rather than create pure chaos, the Supreme Court identified a simple way to resolve the issue– the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director merely needed to retain the power to review APJ’s final decisions. Even with the uncertainty looming while Arthrex was pending, it appears that it has been business as normal with a 4.3% increase in litigation and PTAB filings from the first quarter.

Copyrights

=> ↺ When the movie is derived from a literary classic—are you an “All-In”, or a “Well, Maybe”, viewer?

• First, the copyright basics. The movie is a film adaption of Austen’s novel. Were Austen’s copyright still in effect, the movie would, as a legal matter, be a derivative (or adaptive) work and, as such, permission would have been required to transform the story into cinematic form. Of course, there is no such legal constraint with respect to “Emma”. In such circumstances, the question of how closely to align the book with the movie and its ultimate viewers arises not because of any legal considerations, but because of artistic and commercial ones.

• The challenge in making a screen adaption of a Jane Austen novel is that the potential viewers need to be broken down into several classes, each of which will have a different expectation for the movie. At one end, there are the Jane Austen afficionados, who have read the entire corpus of her published novels (or, even if not all of them, have an affinity for “Emma”). Members of this class are well aware of the respective plots and characters of Austen’s books. Some may even be a member of a Jane Austen society, devoted to promoting her literary legacy. Let’s call this the “All-In” class.

=> ↺ Denmark’s Media Companies Form ‘Copyright Collective’ To Force Google And Facebook To Pay More For Sending Them Traffic

• One of the most outrageous ideas dreamt up by traditional media companies is that Internet companies like Google and Facebook should pay for the privilege of sending huge amounts of traffic to their sites. This “snippet tax”, also known as the “link tax”, was unfortunately enshrined in the EU Copyright Directive in 2019. More recently, Australia has brought in its own link tax, the News Media Bargaining Code, that is even worse than the EU approach.

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