● 10.24.21

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 24/10/2021: XWayland 21.1.3 and Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS Daily Build

Posted in News Roundup at 4:42 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Embedded Linux Boot time optimization: training and webinar

• Bootlin has been helping its customers optimize the boot time of embedded Linux systems for many years, ensuring that these systems meet their startup time requirements. Thanks to this, Bootlin has accumulated a significant experience in this field.

=> ↺ Mediatek Posts 8k Lines Of New Linux Kernel Driver Code For AI Processing Unit Support – Phoronix

• For a number of months Mediatek engineers have been posting some Linux kernel driver code for bringing up the AI Processing Unit (APU) within the MT8192 SoC while out this weekend is the complete patch series at more than eight thousand lines of code.

• There has been some APU power handling and IOMMU patches previously posted while on Saturday was the complete set of patches for bringing up the MT8192 APU with power control, tinysys controller (a micro-controller on the APU), and middleware support. In total it’s 8.1k lines of new kernel code.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ xwayland 21.1.2.901

=> ↺ XWayland 21.1.3 Nears With Support For NVIDIA 495 Driver’s GBM – Phoronix

• The release candidate to XWayland 21.1.3 is out today with just a few changes but made significant by support for the NVIDIA 495 series driver GBM code path.

• XWayland 21.1.3 is the next point release to this code that is spun out from the upstream X.Org Server for delivering standalone XWayland releases separate from tagged xorg-server versions. XWayland 21.3. has only a handful of fixes like an XDG_Output memory leak fix, fixed handling of 1-bit pixmaps in GLAMOR, avoiding possible integer overflows on large pixmaps, and other maintenance items.

=> ↺ Vulkanised Fall 2021 Material Available – Autodesk Has Begun Using MoltenVK – Phoronix

• Last week was the virtual Vulkanised Fall 2021 event hosted by The Khronos Group. The two-day event was focused on all things Vulkan and for those that missed it all of the slide decks and other material are now available.

• This was a two-day virtual affair focused on the high performance graphics and compute API featuring a current status update around features like ray-tracing and video encode/decode, interesting usages of Vulkan, and related work like Arm’s astcenc encoder, HLSL shader compilation, and more.

Benchmarks

=> ↺ An Early Look At The GCC 12 Compiler Performance On AMD Zen 3 – Phoronix

• GCC 12 isn’t seeing its stable release until around March~April as usual, but with feature development slowly wrapping up as approaching the next stage of development next month to focus on fixes, recently I wrapped up some preliminary benchmarks for how GCC 12.0 is currently performing against GCC 11.2 on an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (Zen 3) system.

• This is just an initial look at the GCC 12.0 performance as it stands right now for the speed of the resulting binaries compared to when built under GCC 11.2. The benchmarks under test were built under both GNU Compiler Collection releases with “-O2″, “-O3″, “-O3 -march=native”, and “-O3 -march=native -flto”.

• The results at this time and on this hardware though didn’t end up being too eventful. There were no dramatic differences overall but largely on-par with GCC 11 performance while this next compiler release has been busy adding new C/C++ language features, new CPU targets, and other improvements.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Iterating on how we do NFS at Wikimedia Cloud Services

=> ↺ Iterating on how we do NFS at Wikimedia Cloud Services

• NFS is a central piece of technology for some of the services that the Wikimedia Cloud Services team offers to the community. We have several shares that power different use cases: Toolforge user home directories live on NFS, and Cloud VPS users can also access dumps using this protocol. The current setup involves several physical hardware servers, with about 20TB of storage, offering shares over 10G links to the cloud. For the system to be more fault-tolerant, we duplicate each share for redundancy using DRBD.

• Running NFS on dedicated hardware servers has traditionally offered us advantages: mostly on the performance and the capacity fields.

• As time has passed, we have been enumerating more and more reasons to review how we do NFS. For one, the current setup is in violation of some of our internal rules regarding realm separation. Additionally, we had been longing for additional flexibility managing our servers: we wanted to use virtual machines managed by Openstack Nova. The DRBD-based high-availability system required mostly a hand-crafted procedure for failover/failback. There’s also some scalability concerns as NFS is easy to grow up, but not to grow horizontally, and of course, we have to be able to keep the tenancy setup while doing so, something that NFS does by using LDAP/Unix users and may get complicated too when growing. In general, the servers have become ‘too big to fail’, clearly technical debt, and it has taken us years to decide on taking on the task to rethink the architecture. It’s worth mentioning that in an ideal world, we wouldn’t depend on NFS, but the truth is that it will still be a central piece of infrastructure for years to come in services like Toolforge.

=> ↺ How To Install Google Cloud SDK on Debian 11

• Google Cloud Platform is Google’s solution for cloud computing. Now in this post, you will learn how to install the Google Cloud SDK on Debian 11 through a step-by-step guide.

=> ↺ How To Install Prospect Mail on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Prospect Mail on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Microsoft has yet to release a native Linux client for its Outlook email service. To get Outlook on Ubuntu and other Linux distributions, you’ll have to settle for a workaround app called Prospect Mail (an unofficial Outlook client for Linux) powered by Electron.

• 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 Prospect Mail Unofficial Outlook 365 Client 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.

=> ↺ Fixing hardware profiling and xorgwizard

• As the old saying goes “the devil is in the details”. Testing the Xorg Video Wizard, in the situation of fixing broken video, have run into issues with hardware-profiling of the video and module blacklisting.

• For Xorg video hardware profiling, the profile was a combination of the GPU PCI IDs and a checksum of the monitor edid. However, when no DRM GPU kernel module is loaded, unable to get the edid checksum, which means get a different hardware-profile, which confuses the Xorg Wizard.

=> ↺ Run Nexus Repository Manager Behind Apache Reverse Proxy – kifarunix.com

• Follow through this tutorial to learn how to run Nexus repository manager behind Apache reverse proxy. According Reverse proxy guide page, Apache, apart from functioning as a “basic” web server, and providing static and dynamic content to end-users, it ca also act as a reverse proxy server, also-known-as a “gateway” server.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Dash to Dock now officially supports GNOME 40 (but not GNOME 41)

• One of the most criticized things about GNOME 40 is the fact that it broke compatibility with many extensions due to the large number of changes it introduced. Despite this, the extension developers have not given up, so after many months of waiting, Dash to Dock 70 has recently arrived as stable for GNOME 40 compatibility.

• This means that users no longer have to install Dash to Dock on GNOME 40 manually from the GitHub repository, but can instead go the standard way of going to the corresponding website within the GNOME Extensions site.

=> ↺ #15 Sepia and App Updates · This Week in GNOME

• Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from October 15 to October 22.

Distributions

=> ↺ Development of New Open Source Operating System Distro Is Announced by the Largest Open-Source and Linux Technology User Group in North America, Jeff.pro

• Launched September 11, 2021 to an initial group of 44,000 subscribers on the Telegram app, Jeff.pro is the largest Open-source and Linux User Group in North America.

• The group announced plans to develop Mobile Linux, a new Open Source Operating System “Distro,” (Distribution) as a North American cross-border technology project.

• Veteran technology entrepreneur Jeffrey Peterson said: “Today, our group announced plans to develop Mobile Linux, as a North American cross-border technology project, with a special team we are building in America’s Southern heartland, in the beautiful city of Mobile, Alabama.”

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ New tech-preview Images for SUSE Linux Enterprise Base Container Image

• We are happy to announce a brand new set of lightweight hardened tech-preview container images (SLE BCI) targeted to developers and operators.

• SLE Base Container Images (BCI) are meant to run on any Linux and K8s distributions.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ First Ubuntu 22.04 Daily Builds Go Live

• And we’re off, kids — Ubuntu 22.04 daily builds are now available to download.

• Fresh from unveiling the Ubuntu 22.04 codename — “Jammy Jellyfish”, to save you a click — opening the archives, and sharing a tentative release date on Discourse, the first official development snapshots in the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS cycle are primed for action.

• Not that there’s much to see yet, of focus!

• At the time I write this the Ubuntu 21.10 release is less than two weeks old so devs haven’t had a lot of time to do anything. Plus, the first few weeks of any new Ubuntu development branch is all about getting imports synced, tooling updated, and the requisite foundations plumbed in for building on later.

• And we can expect quite a few new things this cycle, including GNOME 41 (or later) and more work on the new Ubuntu installer.

• If you’re technically minded (and like bugs) you can spin up a virtual machine or create a separate install to install Ubuntu 22.04 daily build and follow along with its development. Just install updates as they appear and you’ll be riding the 22.04 release cycle like a pro.

=> ↺ Trying Out Ubuntu’s New Flutter+Curtin-Powered Desktop Installer Was Disappointing

• An effort going on for a while at Canonical has been to develop a new desktop installer for Ubuntu. With the recent Ubuntu 21.10 release they are still using their classic Ubiquity installer by default but have published a new preview build of Ubuntu 21.10 with their new desktop installer option. Here is a look at Ubuntu’s forthcoming new installer.

• With a new daily preview build of Ubuntu’s new installer and today’s call for feedback on the new installer, I decided to give it a shot with this fresh ISO.

=> ↺ You can download Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) daily builds right now

• Ubuntu 22.04 won’t be released in stable form until 2022. To be more precise, it will be officially available in April of that year. After all, that is what the 22.04 indicates — a two digit year followed by a two digit month.

• Of course, before the official release, there will be a Beta and other pre-release versions. If you like living on the edge, however, you can actually download and install Ubuntu Linux 22.04 immediately. Yes, folks, daily builds (very early versions) of the upcoming operating system are available starting today.

• What do we know about Ubuntu Linux 22.04? At this point, not much. With that said, the code name is not a mystery — it will be called “Jammy Jellyfish.” More importantly, it will be an LTS version. This stands for “Long Term Support” and indicates it will be officially supported until at least 2027.

=> ↺ Where To Purchase Lenovo Computers With Ubuntu Preinstalled

• This article is for you to find Lenovo desktop and laptop computers sold with Ubuntu preinstalled. We want everyone to know that Ubuntu computers exist and help them to buy quality computers they want. This article is part of our support to Free Software Business and also a response to Lenovo’s 2020′s announcement of the availability of their Ubuntu-powered ThinkPad and ThinkStation.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Daily Builds Are Now Available

• The development starts for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and daily builds are now available for download.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ QNAP TBS-464 ultra-thin NAS supports 4 M.2 NVMe SSDs, 2.5GbE networking – CNX Software

• Most NAS are large boxes that take several 3.5-inch SATA drives, but QNAP TBS-464 NASbook is a different beast with an ultra-thin design enabled by four M.2 PCIe slots for NVMe SSDs, plus two 2.5 GbE ports to match the higher data transfer speed allowed by the SSDs.

• The NAS is equipped with a recent Intel Celeron N5105/N5095 Jasper Lake quad-core processor coupled with 8GB DDR4 memory, and also offers USB 3.0 ports, as well as two HDMI 2.0 video outputs and an IR receiver that would make it suitable as a NAS & HTPC combo, for example, running Plex.

=> ↺ BrainChip AKD1000 SNN AI SoC gets Raspberry Pi and x86 development kits – CNX Software

• BrainChip has introduced two development kits for its Akida AKD1000 neuromorphic processor based on Raspberry Pi and an Intel (x86) mini PC in order to enable partners, large enterprises, and OEMs to begin testing and validation of the Akida chip.

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi Powers Neural Network Processor Dev Kit | Tom’s Hardware

• BrainChip, the neuromorphic AI specialist, has announced on Twitter that it is now taking orders for two new development kits for its Akida advanced neural networking processor, as spotted by CNX Software. One of the development kits comes with a Raspberry Pi 4, and the other, which is twice the price, comes with a barebones X86 mini PC.

=> ↺ Rockchip RK3566/RK3568 SoM’s feature board-to-board connectors or castellated holes

• Rongpin Electronics has designed RK3566 and RK3568 systems-on-modules (SoM) with either board-to-board connectors or castellated holes for direct soldering to the carrier board, which adds competition to the Firefly Core-3568J AI Core Rockchip RK3568 system-on-module offered in a SO-DIMM form factor with an edge connector.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Best Free Android Apps: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup – roguelike game of exploration and treasure-hunting – LinuxLinks

=> ↺ 7 essential Android 12 features to tap on day one | Popular Science

=> ↺ These iQOO smartphones to get Android 12 Beta. Check list

=> ↺ Android Auto bugs, issues & problems tracker: Here’s the current status

=> ↺ Motorola Moto G Play (2021) review: Near-stock Android at a low price

=> ↺ PUBG Mobile Lite 0.22.0 update APK download link for Android devices: Complete installation guide

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Open source gets dirty with 3D printing

• Developing an open source toolchain using a Lua script, in the IceSL slicer with a GUI enables researchers to create and configure their digital soil models, called monoliths. Done without using meshing algorithms or STereoLithography (STL) files because those reduce the model’s resolution.

• Monolith examples are fabricated in polylactic acid using open source fused filament fabrication technology with a layer thickness of 0.20, 0.12, and 0.08 mm. The images generated from the digital model slicing are analyzed using open source ImageJ software. ImageJ provides information about internal geometrical shape (porosity, tortuosity, grain size distribution, and hydraulic conductivities). The results show that the developed script enables designing reproducible numerical models that imitate soil structures with defined pore and grain sizes in a range between coarse sand (from 1 mm diameter) to fine gravel (up to 12 mm diameter).

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

=> ↺ Transparent shadow for tables from PPTX in Impress

• Impress is now able to correctly render shadows for table shapes, even if the shadow itself or the fill of the table cells have transparency. The result is now compatible with PowerPoint.

• First, thanks to our partner SUSE for working with Collabora to make this possible.

FSF

Licensing/Legal

=> ↺ Trump’s new social media platform could face legal issues after allegedly ripping off code

• This isn’t necessarily unusual — Mastodon is an open-source software (with an AGPLv3 license, specifically) which allows other sites to create modified versions of its technology, called “forks,” provided that they abide by a specific set of rules . This is where Trump’s latest venture appears to have gone wrong: TRUTH Social’s terms of service claim that “all source code” is proprietary, despite the fact that Mastodon requires anyone using its code base to acknowledge where its software came from and make any copied code public.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Petter Reinholdtsen: Debian still an excellent choice for Lego builders

• The Debian Lego team saw a lot of activity the last few weeks. All the packages under the team umbrella has been updated to fix packaging, lintian issues and BTS reports. In addition, a new and inspiring team member appeared on both the debian-lego-team Team mailing list and IRC channel #debian-lego. If you are interested in Lego CAD design and LEGO Minestorms programming, check out the team wiki page to see what Debian can offer the Lego enthusiast.

=> ↺ Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppQuantuccia 0.0.5 on CRAN: Updated and Calendar Focus

• Another new release of RcppQuantuccia arrived on CRAN today, just a couple of days after the previous release. RcppQuantuccia started from the Quantuccia header-only subset / variant of QuantLib which it brings it to R.

• As of this release, it concentrates on calendaring functionality taking advantage of the extensive collection of country-specific holiday information in QuantLib. The release updates the included code to the most recent QuantLib release. We added one calendar (for Brazil) and one utility function (of exporting all business days in a given range, which is the simple complement to the existing holiday list getter).

Perl/Raku

=> ↺ My Favorite Modules: diagnostics | Tom Wyant [blogs.perl.org]

• One of the things the Perl 5 Porters work hard on is issuing diagnostics that are actually diagnostic. I think they do a pretty good job at this, but sometimes I need a bit more explanation than the typical one-line message.

• Now, there is documentation on all of these in perldiag, but paging through that looking for my message is a pain.

• Fortunately, there is a module for that: diagnostics. This module causes diagnostics to be expanded into their full explanation as it appears in perldiag.

• Typically you would not put a use diagnostics; in your Perl code, though of course you could. Instead, you would load it via a command-line option to perl, or maybe via environment variable PERL5OPT.

Python

=> ↺ Typeerror: ‘list’ Object is Not Callable [Solved]

• While working in python language, you must have inserted and accessed elements from a list or dictionary several times. We have mainly used the index of that particular element to access it. We must have used the square brackets around the index number to fetch the elements. Whenever a user tries to fetch the list element by using any other brackets, the type error occurs saying: ‘list’ object is not callable. This guide will show how this error occurs and how it could be resolved with a little change using some examples. So, we have been using the Spyder3 python tool to illustrate our examples. Thus, let’s start looking at them.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ RSS is Wonderful

• With blogs came RSS feeds. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. It’s a technical specification for a protocol designed to publish content. But over the years RSS became synonymous with other protocols, like Atom, that are designed to do the same thing. With RSS we can curate our own feed of information. We can collect feeds from all the blogs we like, and we can get notified of new posts by subscribing with an RSS Reader. Readers will aggregate posts and list them chronologically for us. When the blog publishes content to their RSS feed, then it will be in our RSS reader without being subject to an invisible ranking algorithm like that which exists in social media. RSS is far more honest in that way.

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ When Prison Guards Refuse Vaccines, Incarcerated People Pay the Price

=> ↺ As COVID Travel Restrictions Ease, It’s Past Time to Repeal Title 42

=> ↺ Facebook whistleblower warns ‘dangerous’ encryption will aid espionage by hostile nations

• In her interview, Ms Haugen expressed concern about the impact Facebook algorithms within its Instagram app may have had on British teenager Molly Russell, who took her life just six days before her 15th birthday in 2017.

• Her father, Ian, later accused Instagram of “helping to kill” his daughter after he discovered she had been viewing self-harm and suicide material on the app.

• An inquest is due to be held next year to establish if social media algorithms “overwhelmed” the teenager with the content they showed her, which is yet to be determined.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

=> ↺ Microsoft under fire again from open-source .NET devs: Hot Reload feature pulled for sake of Visual Studio sales

=> ↺ 1

=> ↺ 2

• Microsoft has enraged the open-source .NET community by removing flagship functionality from open-source .NET to bolster the appeal of Visual Studio, not least against its cross-platform cousin Visual Studio Code.

=> ↺ Microsoft is ‘sorry’ for angering developers by removing a key feature – Times of India

=> ↺ Microsoft reverses controversial .NET change after open source community outcry – The Verge

Security

=> ↺ Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 188 released

• The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 188. This version includes the following changes:

=> ↺ Popular NPM library hijacked to install password-stealers, miners

• Hackers hijacked the popular UA-Parser-JS NPM library, with millions of downloads a week, to infect Linux and Windows devices with cryptominers and password-stealing trojans in a supply-chain attack.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ WhatsApp, Facebook monetise users’ information, not legally entitled to privacy protection claim, Centre tells Delhi HC

• The Centre told the Delhi High Court on Friday that WhatsApp and Facebook that monetise users’ information for business/commercial purposes are not legally entitled to claim that they protect privacy. In fact, the regulators of various countries clearly hold that Facebook should be held accountable for its services and data management practices.

• Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY’s) through an affidavit opposed the petition of Whatsapp and Facebook challenging newly amended IT Rules, stating that WhatsApp has already violated the fundamental rights of the users in India by denying them any dispute resolution rights in the country.

=> ↺ EXCLUSIVE Dutch forensic lab says it has decoded Tesla’s driving data

• It was already known that Tesla cars store data from accidents, but the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) said it had discovered far more data than investigators had previously been aware of.

• The NFI said the decrypted data showed Tesla vehicles store information about the operation of its driver assistance system, known as Autopilot. The vehicles also record speed, accelerator pedal position, steering wheel angle and brake usage, and depending on how the vehicle is used, that data can be stored for over a year.

=> ↺ Italy woos Intel over multibillion-euro chip plant: Sources

• Rome is already in talks with Intel about the potential investment, which according to preliminary estimates would be worth more than 4 billion euro ($4.7 billion), the sources who are involved in the discussions said.

• One of them said the total could even reach around 8 billion euros, depending on Intel’s plans.

=> ↺ [Crackers] lay claim to Donald Trump’s social app before its launch

• Former President Donald Trump declared Wednesday evening that he would start a “media powerhouse.” Its flagship operation would be Truth Social, a Twitter-like social network that would “stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech,” he said in a statement.

• Within two hours, [attackers] had gained access to a private version of the social network, creating fake accounts for Trump; far-right personality Steve Bannon; Ron Watkins, a QAnon conspiracy theorist; and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who barred Trump from Twitter after his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Opinion | Biden Administration Is Undermining the Venezuela Dialogue

• The talks between the Venezuelan government and the extreme-right wing opposition had been going well. There are still outstanding issues to be resolved, like ending the economic war, but the discussions held in Mexico led to concrete electoral developments. The European Union agreed to send an electoral observation mission. The United Nations decided to send a panel of electoral experts. (Both institutions refused to observe the 2018 presidential and 2020 legislative elections, despite invitations from the government.) Thousands of opposition candidates registered to run in the mega-elections, which include voting for governors and mayors, as regional and local legislators.

=> ↺ Insurgency, secessionism and banditry threaten Nigeria

• Why, then, do most young Nigerians want to emigrate? One reason is that they are scared. Jihadists are carving out a caliphate in the north-east; gangs of kidnappers are terrorising the north-west; the fire of Biafran secessionism has been rekindled in the oil-rich south-east. The violence threatens not just Nigeria’s 200m people, but also the stability of the entire region that surrounds them.

=> ↺ Danish Islamic Scholar Mundhir Abdallah Criticizes The Taliban For Compromising On The Goal Of Global Islamic Caliphate: You Cannot Recognize Countries Like China And Qatar; Your Goal Should Be To Liberate Humanity From The Filth Of Liberalism, The Injustice Of Capitalism

• In past sermons, Mundhir Abdallah has said that jihad necessitates the conquest of Europe and has called for the killing of Jews. In July 2018, Mundhir Abdallah was indicted in Denmark for calling for the murder of Jews in a 2017 sermon that was translated and published by MEMRI. [...]

=> ↺ Afghanistan’s Sikhs to ‘make choice between converting to Islam or leaving country’: Report

• The community, which once numbered in the tens of thousands, has been ruined and devastated by years of emigration and death, driven by both systemic discrimination and an uptick in fanatical religious violence in Afghanistan, International Forum For Rights and Security (IFFRAS) said.

=> ↺ Militants are targeting Hindu and Sikh civilians in Kashmir

• Most Pandits fled during a grim insurgency in 1990s. There are also some 80,000 Sikhs, some of whom are now being murdered too. But by far the largest, most vulnerable group of potential targets are the migrant workers who have come from the rest of India, mainly the poor states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, over the past two decades. Some are Muslim; most are Hindu. None speaks the local language and almost all relocated to escape penury. There may be 300,000-400,000, including many now scrambling to flee.

• An outfit calling itself the Resistance Front (TRF), which Indian security forces say has links to Pakistan, has claimed responsibility for the killings. Most Kashmiris of all religions are appalled at the violence aimed at the defenceless. It may be that TRF or other groups are attacking civilians around Srinagar because their forces have been worn down from the fight against armed forces in the countryside and are finding softer targets.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ After 45 years, Randy Bachman’s cherished 1957 Gretsch guitar finally found — in Tokyo

• Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bachman was stuck at home recording YouTube videos when he received an email from a viewer from White Rock, B.C., claiming he had found Bachman’s missing Gretsch.

• “He said he’d done facial recognition of my guitar,” Bachman said. “I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘Well, we do it for faces. The guitar has a face, right?’”

• The viewer sent Bachman a video from Christmas 2019 of Japanese pop musician Takeshi playing the guitar. The facial recognition software pinged on what looked like a little blemish, which is actually just a knot in the wood.

• Bingo. Bachman’s lost guitar was found at last.

Environment

=> ↺ How the 1% tricks you into thinking climate change is your fault

• Climate change isn’t a problem caused by all people equally; it is caused mostly by the rich, and since we live in a capitalist world, the suffering will fall disproportionately on the poor. Climate scientists, sociologists and economists are largely in agreement on this point. And it presages the way that things will need to change in order to stave off the extinction of humanity.

=> ↺ Opinion | Now or Never: Will Glasgow’s COP26 Help Save the World From Disaster?

• Peering back through the tunnel of three frustrating decades, it’s hard to believe that, as the 1990s opened, the world expected to quickly agree on effective action to tackle climate change.

Energy

=> ↺ US Plastics Industry Will Have More Emissions Than Coal by 2030, New Report Says

=> ↺ Limited Tracking of Pandemic School Aid Leaves Effectiveness of Funding Unclear

=> ↺ All manner of industries are piling into the hydrogen rush

• The other supermajors—BP, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and TotalEnergies—have also announced investments in hydrogen clusters and technologies. Ahmad al-Khowaiter, chief technology officer of Saudi Aramco, says that the state-controlled oil colossus intends to be the world leader in fossil-derived low-carbon hydrogen in the 2030s. The kingdom’s hope is also to maintain its energy superpowerdom as oil’s prospects fade by exporting hydrogen made using its world-class solar and wind resources.

• Aaron Denman of Bain, a consultancy, calls such bets a quest for “growth engine number two” in case the firms’ core fossil-fuel business falters. The same rationale may underlie the hydrogen efforts of other sectors with a spotty environmental record. On October 11th Andrew Forrest, a mining tycoon and Australia’s richest man, who controls Fortescue Metals Group, unveiled plans to build the world’s biggest factory for electrolyser machines, needed to produce green hydrogen from water.

Finance

=> ↺ Opinion | Can Billionaires Save the World?

• Great wealth can do great damage. Grand personal fortunes, we’ve come to understand, can menace our democracy and distort our economic life. But these fortunes can also wreak a much more hidden havoc: They can mess up the minds of people who hold them. Great fortunes can leave their owners feeling supremely sure they themselves must be great.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Opinion | Corporate Cable Outlets Refuse to Report on Financial Conflicts of Manchin and Sinema

• As the October 31 deadline to vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill approaches, the media have made a project of examining senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema’s opposition to the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, also known as the Build Back Better Act (FAIR.org, 10/6/01). Despite countless hours of coverage and conjecture about what might or might not get Manchin and Sinema to vote for the bill, the financial conflicts of interest that reinforce their reluctance to vote for the bill have been almost completely ignored. In a review of 21 relevant news programs, airing on October 3–4 on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC, financial conflicts were discussed for only 45 seconds.

=> ↺ Opinion | Joe Manchin Is the One With an ‘Entitlement Mentality’

• At the end of September, Sen. Joe Manchin (D‑W.V.) told reporters he would not support President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act—a generational investment in social programs, including public funding for childcare and paid family leave—because, “I cannot accept our economy or basically our society moving toward an entitlement mentality.” 

=> ↺ Secretive House Caucus Is Appointing Corporate Democrats to Key Committee Seats

=> ↺ ‘When We Organize, We Win’: Ocasio-Cortez Joins India Walton at Rally in Buffalo

• “When people say universal child care’s not possible, guaranteed healthcare is not possible… They say post-industrial cities cannot do that anymore, they don’t want to do that anymore… Buffalo is taking that excuse away.”

• “This is corruption at its finest,” said Walton on social media. “Federal money meant to serve our community has gone to line the mayor’s pockets. We cannot afford another four years of corruption at City Hall.”

=> ↺ From Playboy Sports Star to Islamist Politician: The Strange Turn of Imran Khan

• Khan’s cricketing career peaked when he captained Pakistan to victory in the 1992 World Cup. After he retired from cricket, he pursued a career in politics. An intelligent man possessed of enormous self-belief, he was passionate about improving the lot of his countrymen and -women. Distrustful of the existing parties which were dynastic and corrupt, he established his own political party in 1996, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) (Pakistan Movement for Justice). Upon entering the choppy waters of Pakistani politics, one factor has been constant—the centrality of Islam to his thinking, and to the PTI’s overarching goal of creating a theocratic welfare state.

=> ↺ Turkey’s Erdogan orders expulsion of 10 ambassadors

• The envoys issued a highly unusual joint statement on Monday saying the continued detention of Parisian-born philanthropist and activist Osman Kavala “cast a shadow” over Turkey.

• The escalating row with the Western countries — most of which are also NATO allies — caps a torrid week for Turkey in which it was added to a global money-laundering and terrorism-financing blacklist and its currency plunged over fears of economic mismanagement and the risk of hyperinflation.

Misinformation/Disinformation

=> ↺ How the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement outwitted Facebook ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection

• By the time Facebook banned the first Stop the Steal group on Nov. 5 for falsely casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election and calling for violence, the group had already mushroomed to more than 360,000 members. Every hour, tens of thousands of people were joining.

• Facebook removed the group from its platform. But that only sent Stop the Steal loyalists to other groups on Facebook filled with misinformation and claims the election was stolen. It was a classic game of whack-a-mole that Facebook tried but failed to stay on top of. Droves of Trump fans and right-wing conspiracists had outwitted the world’s largest social network.

=> ↺ Internal Alarm, Public Shrugs: Facebook’s Employees Dissect Its Election Role

• In each case, Facebook’s employees sounded an alarm about misinformation and inflammatory content on the platform and urged action — but the company failed or struggled to address the issues. The internal dispatches were among a set of Facebook documents obtained by The New York Times that give new insight into what happened inside the social network before and after the November election, when the company was caught flat-footed as users weaponized its platform to spread lies about the vote.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Cinematographer’s Death by Prop Gun Is Not Just a Tragedy. It’s a Labor Issue.

=> ↺ Fatal Film Set Shooting Followed Outcry by Union Crew Members Over Safety Protocols

• “The backstory about the failure to listen to the union workers who had fought for the set to be safe is vital to know.”

=> ↺ Taliban Attack Journalists Covering Kabul Women’s Rights Protest: Report

• The Taliban authorities allowed the women to walk freely for around an hour and a half, AFP journalists saw.

• However, one foreign journalist was struck with the butt of a rifle by one Taliban fighter, who swore and kicked the photographer in the back as another punched him.

• At least two more journalists were hit as they scattered, pursued by Taliban fighters swinging fists and launching kicks.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ A Drug Dog’s Nose Poking Through The Open Window Of A Car Is Unconstitutional, Says Idaho’s Top Court

• How much of a violation needs to take place before it’s a Constitutional violation? It’s a trick question, at least in the hands of the right judge. With the wrong judge, a minimal violation is considered excusable, or at least salvageable by any number of Fourth Amendment exceptions.

=> ↺ Russia puts torture video whistleblower on wanted list

• Russia on Saturday placed a former prison inmate who leaked harrowing videos of rape and torture inside a Russian prison on a wanted list.

• A notice on the interior ministry’s website said Sergei Savelyev — a Belarus national who is seeking asylum in France — was wanted in connection with an unspecified criminal case.

• Savelyev smuggled footage of abuse out of a jail in the central city of Saratov. Fearing reprisals, he fled the country in February and last week arrived in France, where he asked for asylum.

=> ↺ This city will rely on bottled water for weeks because of high lead levels

• State officials on Thursday defended their response to a lead crisis in a small southwestern Michigan city, telling lawmakers that steps to reduce corrosion in aging water pipes began in 2019, just a few months after tests revealed troubling results.

Monopolies

Patents

=> ↺ Teva and Bristows win obviousness claim against Bayer cancer drug

=> ↺ Bristows (liars)

• The UK High Court has found a patent owned by Bayer, which protects the compound of a tosylate, of active ingredient sorafenib, invalid for obviousness. Sorafenib forms the basis of Bayer’s drug Nexavar, which is used to treat various types of cancer, including kidney, liver cell and thyroid cancer. Claim 12 of EP 2 305 255, which was valid until December 2022, covers the tosylate salt of sorafenib.

• Initially, Teva had levied more invalidity attacks than just obviousness against Bayer’s patent. For example, the generic drug company had argued that the patent contained lack of novelty on the basis of loss of priority and intervening prior art. However, Teva dropped the claim once Bayer agreed to drop a conditional amendment to claim 12.

• Thus, Teva argued solely that claim 12 was obvious over the prior art. Originally three patents, including EP 255, were in dispute. However, the parties settled over EP 18 68 579 and EP 17 97 037. Both patents are still in force.

=> ↺ Athenex Gets Patent Claims for NKT Cellular Immunotherapy Platform – MarketWatch

• Athenex Inc. and the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor College of Medicine said the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has allowed patent claims around its NKT cellular immunotherapy platform.

=> ↺ Europe and the US lead the world patents for recycling plastics

=> ↺ Europe leading region of innovation in plastic recycling and alternative plastics

=> ↺ Paid-for EPO propaganda

• Europe is a leading region of innovation in plastic recycling and bioplastic technologies, a new study published today by the European Patent Office (EPO) shows. Europe (referring to the region covered by the 38 member states of the European Patent Convention) accounted for 30 percent of patenting activity worldwide in these sectors between 2010 and 2019. This was matched only by the US, which also accounted for 30 percent.

=> ↺ Belgium is global leader in plastic recycling and bioplastic innovations

• Specifically, Belgium stood out for its higher specialisation in bioplastic technologies, the study by the European Patent Office (EPO) found, based on the number of international patents – which represent a high-value invention – that were filed in Belgium.

=> ↺ Bosch Rexroth must disclose purchase agreement with ZF Friedrichshafen

• The sale to ZF included patents for planetary gearboxes. As is usual in such cases, Bosch Rexroth paid a final sum to the inventor, who has now retired. However, the former employee doubted whether the amount paid by Bosch Rexroth was appropriate.

• In particular, the inventor criticised the remuneration settlement for the period dating from the sale in December 2019. Bosch Rexroth had calculated the settlement according to the licence analogy method, basing it on a fictitious turnover. However, the inventor demanded that the company determine the value of his invention on the basis of the net income for the invention sold.

• In 2019, the engineer sued his former employer before the Regional Court Mannheim (case ID: 2 O 2/19). He demanded disclosure of the purchase agreement between Bosch Rexroth and ZF. The inventor argued that this was the only way he could adequately calculate his entitled amount of employee compensation.

• On the other hand, the defendant referred to the Trade Secrets Directive, which came into force in 2019, as well as provisions under data protection law. The company also pointed to a confidentiality obligation contractually agreed with ZF.

=> ↺ AstraZeneca Wins Ruling Upholding Key Patent for Farxiga (1)

• AstraZeneca Plc won a federal court ruling upholding a key patent for its diabetes drug Farxiga, staving off threats from cheaper versions.

=> ↺ Altria Working on Contingency Plan After Order Banning IQOS

• The U.S. International Trade Commission said Wednesday that both Altria and Philip Morris International Inc. — which sells the devices in other countries — infringe patents owned by rival Reynolds American Inc. That means IQOS products will be banned in 60 days unless the move is blocked by the Biden administration. The companies could also appeal, though that could take years.

=> ↺ How data platforms could make medtechs more appealing to investors

=> ↺ often just means illegally-granted software patents

• Some 14,295 patent applications were filed with the European Patent Office (EPO) in the field of medical technology in 2020. As new models of care continue to emerge, digital healthcare technology will spread right along the patient pathway and become an important driver of improved outcomes and higher efficiency.

=> ↺ Ireland ‘late to UPC party’, lawyers fear

• Ireland needs to ratify the UPC Agreement by referendum, but IP lawyers still don’t know when the vote will take place

=> ↺ Intellectual Ventures predicted ‘IP reckoning’ for auto sector, then filed patent suits against General Motors, Toyota, Honda in Texas–even involving a former Daimler patent

=> ↺ Patent trolls of Microsoft and Bill Gates

• The automotive industry must license more patents. Some patent holders are patient because they recognize that car makers are relatively new to the wireless patent licensing business–but that doesn’t mean everyone will wait forever. On October 13, IAM published an opinion piece by Arvin Patel, the COO of non-practicing entity Intellectual Ventures (“IV”): “Why the auto sector is heading for an IP reckoning” (paywalled)

• IV is not going to take the alleged wholesale borrowing of technology in the connected-car era anymore. On October 19, less than a week after that op-ed, IV filed patent infringement complaints against General Motor in the Western District of Texas (over 12 patents), and against Toyota and Honda in the Eastern District of Texas (over 11 patents each).

Software Patents

=> ↺ Dominion Harbor’s entity Liberty Peak Ventures patent challenged

• On October 21, 2021, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 8,066,181, owned and asserted by Liberty Peak Ventures, LLC, a Dominion Harbor entity. The ’181 patent relates to generating an authentication tag for use in contactless transactions and has been asserted against Citigroup.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Bad Bunny Sued For Allegedly Infringing Copyrights for ‘Safaera’

• Bad Bunny was hit with a lawsuit in federal court in California by BM Records, which says the Puerto Rican rapper unlawfully incorporated parts of three works by DJ Playero into his hit song, “Safaera.”

=> ↺ Triller Reportedly Agreed to Settle ‘Jake Paul’ Piracy Claim Then Returned Cash

• In June, Triller filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the YourEXTRA YouTube channel for allegedly pirating the Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren fight. According to court documents the parties previously agreed to settle the claim and a fee was paid but Triller doubled back, returned the money, and filed a lawsuit anyway. And that’s not the only settlement controversy in Triller’s cases.

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