● 04.03.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 03/04/2023: Compudopt and Red Hat at 30

Posted in News Roundup at 8:14 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

=> ↺ PineTab2 and PineTab-V Linux tablets will launch April 11

• While the Android tablet market seems to be cooling, the Linux tablet world is starting to gain some traction, thanks in large part to Pine64 and their PineTab. The company’s latest Linux tablet, the PineTab2, is set to launch on April 11 at a budget-tier price.

• The PineTab2, which was revealed back in December, is a low-powered tablet that supports the Linux kernel and can run a variety of Linux distributions, or “distros.” The PineTab2 is the successor to the original PineTab, which proved to be an interesting experiment that struggled with real-world usability.

=> ↺ A Compact Camera Running Linux? What’s Not To Like

• One of the devices swallowed up by the smartphone for the average person is the handheld camera, to the extent that the youngsters are reported to be now rediscovering 20-year-old digital cameras for their retro cool factor. Cameras aren’t completely dead though, as a mirrorless compact or a DSLR should still blow the socks off a phone in competent hands. They’ve been around long enough to be plentiful secondhand, which makes [Georg Lukas]’ look at a ten-year-old range of models from Samsung worth a second look. Why has a deep dive into old cameras caught our eye? These cameras run Linux, in the form of Samsung’s Tizen distribution.

• His interest in the range comes from owning one since 2014, and it’s in his earlier series of posts on hacking that camera that we find some of the potential it offers. Aside from the amusement that it runs an unprotected X server, getting to a root shell is fairly straightforward as we covered at the time, and it turns out to be a very hackable device.

Applications

=> ↺ Essential System Utilities: bottom – graphical process/system monitor for the terminal

• Essential System Utilities is a series of articles highlighting essential system tools. These are small utilities, useful for system administrators as well as regular users of Linux based systems.

• The series examines both graphical and text based open source utilities. For details of all tools in this series, please check the table at the bottom.

• bottom is billed as a customizable cross-platform graphical process/system monitor for the terminal. The utility draws inspiration from gtop, gotop and htop, tools which will be familiar to seasoned LinuxLinks readers.

=> ↺ HP Linux Imaging and Printing Now Supports Linux Mint 21.1, Ubuntu 22.10

• Arriving five months after the HPLIP 3.22.10 release, which was a small update only adding support for Manjaro Linux 21.3, openSUSE Leap 15.4, RHEL 9.0, Linux Mint 21.0, and MX Linux 21.2, the HPLIP 3.23.3 release brings support for new distros, including Linux Mint 21.1, Ubuntu 22.10, Fedora Linux 37, elementary OS 7, and MX Linux 21.3.

• It also supports the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.7, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.1 distributions. This means that you can now use your HP printer or scanner device on any of these new Ubuntu, Linux Mint, MX Linux, Fedora, RHEL, or elementary OS distributions if you install the latest HP Linux Imaging and Printing drivers.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Install KDE Plasma on Linux Mint with Very Simple Steps

• Not finding Cinnamon attractive enough? Switch to KDE Plasma.

Games

=> ↺ The Reason Why Valve Is Not Sharing Steam Deck Sales Numbers

• As I was reviewing the predictions that we had made for the year 2022, one of them had become very hard to assess: the one about the number of Steam Deck units sold.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ Package manager consolidation

• I have created a tutorial about the three package managers in Easy:

• https://easyos.org/user/package-manager-concepts.html

• …and they might be joined by a fourth; Flatpak.

• Heading toward consolidation of these package managers, the “sfs” icon has been removed from the desktop: [...]

=> ↺ Package manager concepts tutorial

• A new tutorial page:

• There may be a third package manager soon, as I am thinking of supporting Flatpaks.

New Releases

=> ↺ Ethical Hacking Distro BlackArch Linux Gets New ISO Release with over 2800 Tools

• The BlackArch Linux developers have been very quiet for the past year, but today they finally released new ISOs and OVA images that include more than 2800 penetration testing and hacking tools, as well as a new version of their text-based installer, an enhanced Vim setup, and the latest Linux 6.2 kernel.

• You can study all the 2842 tools included in BlackArch Linux here. The devs did not yet provide details about what else is included in the new ISO images, but they’re more than welcome for those who want to deploy BlackArch Linux on new computers without having to download hundreds of updates from the repositories.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] Red Hat 30th anniversary: Celebrating Red Hat Day in North Carolina

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] Red Hat Shares – Security automation

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Red Hat Customer Portal launches new UX for search

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Linux Mint: Monthly News – March 2023

• Many thanks to you all for your support and your donations!

• Today we’re revealing some of the visual changes we’ve been working on in preparation for the next release.

• This was well received and it provided a lot of options for users to choose from.

• That said, a few issues caught our attention.

• The huge variety of themes and color variants created clutter and made it harder for users to locate a particular theme.

• Some icon themes work well with some control themes but not with others. The welcome screen provides a way to quickly switch from light to dark and from one color to another but it has its own limitation: It only works with the Mint-Y theme and only in our distribution.

• With this in mind we decided to design a solution which could work for any theme and any distribution and which would make it much easier to browse and pick without having to go through long lists of installed themes and without worrying about compatibility.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Blog: Closing the digital divide with Compudopt and Ubuntu Desktop

• Compudopt is a US based organisation with an inspiring mission; to provide technology access and education to under-resourced youth and their communities. This goal speaks to the heart of Ubuntu’s own mission, to bring free software to the widest audience.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Making jackets smarter by letting them smell

• Few things are worse than going to exercise, coming back home, and then realizing that you have been nose blind the entire time to your own odor. In order to detect the potential stench before anyone else does, Luke Berndt and his daughter, Elena, teamed up to create the Smelling Fresh, Feeling Fresh! project.

=> ↺ Micro robot arm controls macro robot arm

• Building a capable robot is only half of the battle. To take advantage of that robot, you’ll need a good way to control it. When it makes sense, you can pre-program movements. But when you want to control a robot in real time, you need suitable controller.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Ranking all 19 versions of Android, from worst to best | Digital Trends

=> ↺ Hide apps: Android Privacy guide: How to hide apps, files, and pictures to tackle peeping toms?

=> ↺ Acer W Series 4K QLED Android TV has just arrived – NotebookCheck.net News

=> ↺ OnePlus 7T Android 12 update broke dual-SIM functionality

=> ↺ 10 Tips for New Android TV Users

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ The Mastodon plugin is now available on the Steampipe Hub

• When Twitter changed hands last November I switched to Mastodon; ever since I’ve enjoyed happier and more productive social networking. To enhance my happiness and productivity I began working on a Mastodon plugin for Steampipe. My initial goal was to study the fediverse writ large. Which people and which servers are powerful connectors?

Programming/Development

=> ↺ How WebAssembly is accelerating new web functionality

• WebAssembly is fundamentally changing how new developer capabilities and functionality can be created on the web. In order to maintain browser interoperability, new web capabilities need to go through a rigorous standardization process and cross browser implementations. Decades of major investment has pushed the browser functionality to astonishing heights, but this process can take time and the web doesn’t need to have every capability built in. After years of investing in lower level capabilities that act as building blocks for higher level functionality, we are seeing a new dawn of expanded functionality at a dramatically expanded pace.

=> ↺ YAML could do better. Please try again (TOML)

• Are TOML or JSON better options than YAML?

Python

=> ↺ Update: re-search.py Version 0.0.22

• This update to re-search.py, my tool to search text files with regular expressions, brings several new regular expressions. There are 4 new regular expressions for cryptographic hashes: md5, sha1, sha256, sha512. And one new name that groups these 4 regular expressions: hashes.

Leftovers

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Banksy: ‘Brace Yourself!’ fetches three times estimate

Hardware

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] My pragmatic shift from PS/2 keyboards and mice to USB ones

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ 2023-03-24 [Older] How Long COVID affects the careers of top athletes

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Remote Work Is Winding Down—Just Ask Zuckerberg

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] German manners: Is after the pandemic before the pandemic?

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Deadly overdose crisis escalating among Alberta children and youth, child advocate warns

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Github ordered to identify user who leaked Twitter source code

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Twitter’s Recommendation Algorithm Is Now Open Source

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Twitter’s recommendation algorithm is now on GitHub

Security

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Nexus Android trojan targets 450 banking, financial apps; how to protect your bank details?

=> ↺ Service NSW breach exposes personal data affecting thousands of customers

• The personal information of Service NSW customers has been exposed to other logged-in individuals during a privacy incident, the agency says.

• An update released to the “My Services” dashboard on March 20 resulted in the data breach, Service NSW chief executive officer Greg Wells said in an email to affected customers shared with AAP on Monday.

• Personal information available through linked services that might have been visible included driver’s licence and vehicle registration details, contact information and children’s names.

=> ↺ School principal resigns after writing $100,000 check to Elon Musk impersonator

• The principal of a Florida science and technology charter school has resigned after allegedly writing a $100,000 check to an Elon Musk impersonator using school funds.

• Dr Jan McGee, who is listed as a founding board member of Burns Science and Technology Charter in Oak Hill, Florida, told the school’s board of directors that she had been fooled by the fake Musk after being “groomed” (in her words) for months.

=> ↺ Developing: Stormous claims to have attacked hospital; apologizes minutes later, pledges to undo damage, and seeks forgiveness

• Stormous Ransomware added Cameron Memorial Community Hospital in Indiana to their leak site today and posted a pointer to it on their Telegram channel.

=> ↺ Are you a “Lucky Winner” from Equifax?

• On Saturday, DataBreaches received a slightly different version of the email vx-underground posted. The “hr.” subdomain triggered a few intact neurons because I had seen hoax emails with the “hr.” subdomain in February. At the time, I had received a number of emails from various addresses, most of which had “hr.” in the senders’ addresses. Two of the February emails contained usernames in the body of the messages that suggested a BreachForums connection. One name I recognized, but the other, I didn’t.

• After getting about half a dozen emails, I contacted Pompompurin to ask him if he had any idea why the unrecognized forum user would be sending me somewhat angry or confusing emails. After looking at one header, Pom reminded me that HR.com had been hacked and more than 2 million records had been put up for sale on the forum last August.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] 3 Face Charges in Death of Alaska Man After Facebook Post

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Belarus: Lukashenko blames West for threat of nuclear war

=> ↺ Committee Head: Support for US Aid to Ukraine ‘Overwhelming’

• The head of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee says there is “overwhelming” support in the United States to continue supplying aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, despite vocal opposition from a hard-right faction of his own Republican Party

=> ↺ Russian mercenary force claims it’s taken key Ukrainian city of Bakhmut

• Claim by Russian mercenary force it has seized key Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

=> ↺ U.S. discussing freeze-for-freeze approach to Iran nuclear program

• The Biden administration discussed with its European and Israeli partners in recent weeks a proposal for an interim agreement with Iran that would include some sanctions relief in exchange for Tehran freezing parts of its nuclear program, according to 10 Israeli officials, Western diplomats and U.S. experts with knowledge of the proposal.

=> ↺ Russia’s Lavrov: West Trying to Drive a Wedge Between Moscow, Beijing

=> ↺ More than half of U.S. states allow permitless carry of concealed guns after Florida bill becomes law

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed into law Monday a measure that will allow people in the state to carry concealed weapons without licenses or training.

=> ↺ What Putin’s partners gain from standing with Russia over Ukraine

• As much of the world backs away from Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow is providing cheap oil, a friend on the UN Security Council and sensitive military technology to those partners still standing by it.

• Why it matters: According to the White House, Russia is swiftly moving toward a “full-fledged defense partnership” with Iran, and now plans to dispatch a delegation to negotiate with North Korea. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to fear that China will abandon its supposed “neutrality” and back Russia more directly.

Environment

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] Carbon price jumps to $65/tonne, but rebates will also rise for millions of households

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Joe Biden’s Rightward Pivot Isn’t Increasing His Popularity

=> ↺ 2023-03-24 [Older] Danish opposition parties bemoan absence of climate urgency in Budget

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] Ontario bill aims to stop gas station thefts with pay-before-you-pump rule

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] A warm winter threatens Europe’s rivers — and energy security

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] More Dutch providers offering hourly energy rates so consumers can aim for lowest prices

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Eurozone inflation lower than expected, as energy costs drop

=> ↺ Parisians overwhelmingly voted to ban rented electric scooters

• Residents of Paris overwhelmingly voted to ban rented electric scooters, with 89% choosing to restrict the devices in a low-turnout municipal election on April 2. Only 100,000 Parisians voted, a fraction of those eligible.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] Rescued pups recovering after being found malnourished, nearly frozen in rural Manitoba

Finance

Axios ☛ M&A activity is took a dive in Q1Data: Dealogic; Chart: Axios VisualsThe further Wall Street gets from 2021, the more of an aberration it looks like.Driving the news: The value of U.S. merger and acquisition activity fell 20% from the previous quarter — and is nearly halved from Q1 of last year.Why it matters: It’s one more example of the chill that the Fed’s rate hiking campaign has shot into the markets.“The [rates] uncertainty is what dampens the appetite for dealmaking,” Suzanne Kumar, a VP with Bain & Co’s global M&A practice, tells Axios. “It’s less about the level and more about the ability to make an assumption about what interest rates will be.”Axios ☛ Manufacturing comes off its high boilData: FactSet; Chart: Axios VisualsSo far in 2023, the flow of economic data has been a story of ups and downs: first, with several weeks of signs that the economy was slowing and inflation fading, then several weeks of data suggesting boom times were still here.With the first significant economic release of April (reflecting March activity), we’re back on the downward part of the roller coaster.

=> ↺ Turkey’s official inflation rate drops to 50.51 percent

• According to an inflation monitor run by a group of economists, the inflation rate was twice as high as the official figures.

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] Credit Suisse Takeover Hits Heart of Swiss Banking, Identity

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Who will end up paying for the banking crisis: You

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Banking Collapses Raises Fresh Questions: How To Benefit from The Corporate Veil?

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] Don’t Republicans Ever Get Tired of Carrying Water for the Banks?

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] After SVB Sale, White House Says Banking System Is ‘Safe’

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] Silicon Valley Bank’s Failure Shows Why We Need to Expand Public Banking

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] High rent burden for Germany’s tenants raises ‘red flag’

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Capitalism’s Looming Crises: From Budget Debt Hyperbole to Banking Disaster

=> ↺ T-Mobile Says Get Ready to Lose Your AutoPay Discount if You Use a Credit Card. Bonus: Automated Super Depressing McDonalds

• T-Mobile has had like eight data breaches in the past 5 years, and recently a banner popped up on my account stating that if I continue paying with a credit card, which has strong fraud protection, then I will lose my AutoPay discount for not switching to bank drafts or debit cards, which have weak fraud protection.

• I’m extremely leery about giving a company with such awful security practices direct access to my bank account, and I’ve noticed from reading Reddit posts that this is exactly what other customers say about them too.

• T-Mobile is obviously sick of paying for people’s credit card rewards, but thieves have made off with so much data about their customers, that do you want your bank account exposed too? Just try fixing that!

• To make things worse, you have to not only log in to the T-Mobile account to see the alert. You have to navigate to “Manage AutoPay” to see the warning, so for millions of customers, T-Mobile will just start raising their bill $10 a month and they’ll never notice, but T-Mobile can say “It was posted that Earth was going to be blown up to make room for a hyperspace bypass. It’s not our fault you didn’t see that!”

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] SVB deal soothes markets as default stress haunts banks

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] French prosecutors search major banks in Paris in global tax fraud probe

=> ↺ 2023-03-25 [Older] Banks aren’t out of the woods yet and neither is the economy. Here’s why

=> ↺ 2023-03-25 [Older] US Mulls More Support for Banks While Giving First Republic Time – Bloomberg News

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Bank of Canada ready to step in if global financial crisis causes ‘spillovers’ to banks here

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Paris banks raided in €100 billion tax fraud probe

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] Following U.S. bank failures, is it time for Canada to raise deposit insurance limits?

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] China and Saudi Arabia are getting closer. Should the US be worried?

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] What Beijing’s Iran-Saudi deal means

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] Freedom House: Turkey’s elections among most vulnerable in the world

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] After a visit to Turkey, Swiss Socialist Party calls for international pressure for free elections

=> ↺ 2023-03-25 [Older] Armenia, Turkey To Partially Reopen Land Border

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] Brazil: Who Is Judge Sergio Moro? Lula’s Jailer With No Proof

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] A Bolsonaro Win is The Militarization of Politics in Brazil

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] Hong Kong rejects US report on crackdown on freedoms

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Andrew Tate and brother to be moved to house arrest

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Bipartisan US Lawmakers Introduce Bill Aimed at Google, Facebook Ad Clout

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Facebook Users in the EU Will No Longer Have to Suffer From Targeted In-App Ads

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] Finland election: Chronic labor shortage could decide the vote

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] The Twitter I Love Doesn’t Exist Anymore

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Elon Musk wants to fill your Twitter feed with paid accounts

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Elon’s Ego Can Rest Easy Knowing He Now Has the Most Followers on Twitter

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Twitter Details How Much Money API Access Will Cost Now

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] A new Twitter alternative is trying to lure users about to lose their old checkmark

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] 10 Tweets That Could Tank Company Stocks Amid the Great Un-Verification

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Congressional Twitter Account Suspended for ‘Vengeance’ Post

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] Twitter Removes Tweets About ‘Trans Day of Vengeance’

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] Twitter Blocks Pakistan Govt’s Account for Viewing in India – Notice

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Catturd2 and Ben Shapiro Reportedly Land on Twitter’s List of 35 VIP Accounts

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Elon Musk Says ‘For You’ Section Will Soon Be Entirely Users Who Paid for Twitter [Updated]

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Elon Musk: Only paid subscribers will show up in your Twitter feed

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Twitter changes to benefit ‘blue check’ accounts only

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Twitter’s secret VIP list is the reason you see Elon Musk’s tweets so often

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] Musk Says Twitter Is Worth Less Than Half the $44 Billion He Used to Buy It

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] We Could Have Used Twitter Trolls in the Run-Up to the Iraq War

=> ↺ 2023-03-24 [Older] Should Anyone Believe Elon Is Killing Legacy Blue Checks on April Fools’ Day?

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] Elon Musk reportedly values Twitter at $20 billion

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] Elon Musk Puts $20 Billion Value on Twitter – the Information

=> ↺ 2023-03-24 [Older] Twitter may let you hide the fact you pay to use Twitter

=> ↺ 2023-03-24 [Older] Twitter says it’s killing legacy verified checkmarks starting on April 1st

=> ↺ 2023-03-24 [Older] Blue Check Marks Were Always Shameless

=> ↺ Elon Musk just changed Twitter’s logo to the Dogecoin symbol

• Twitter CEO Elon Musk has apparently changed the company’s logo to the symbol for Dogecoin—a popular cryptocurrency—in some parts of its website.

=> ↺ At Elon Musk’s Twitter, speech is anything but free

• A series of changes at Twitter has laid bare what the service has become under Elon Musk: a place where speech is anything but free.

• What’s happening: From its shift to pay-for-play to impulsive policy changes made by Musk, the site more resembles an intrigue-filled palace than the town square that Musk says he seeks to protect.

=> ↺ New York police prepare for Trump arraignment as barricades go up near courthouse

• New York City police have stepped up security measures ahead of former President Trump’s expected arraignment on Tuesday on charges related to a 2016 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] Florence invites Floridians to see pornographic Michelangelo

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] The Anti-Palestinian Censorship Machine Runs on Racism

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Gay Games Hong Kong unfazed by potential censorship, organiser says

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Suspects in hate speech laser projections get community service for Breda assault

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Journal of Free Speech Law: “Diversity! Mandating Adherence to a Secular Creed,” by Prof. Matthew Finkin (Illinois)

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Altaylı: ‘Interviewing Öcalan is not something to be ashamed of, it is good journalism’

• Journalist Fatih Altaylı responded to those criticizing him pointing at a photograph showing him with PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in a column article.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Man shot dead by gendarmerie in Diyarbakır after allegedly disobeying warning to stop

• A murder suspect reportedly attempted to flee when the gendarmerie was to detain him.

=> ↺ Prosecutor turns complainant trans woman into the suspect

• İstanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office filed a suit against trans woman Ajda Ender claiming she insulted her neighbors and their lawyer.

=> ↺ Starbucks fired the employee who ignited unionization at the company

• Starbucks fired a prominent union leader just days after former CEO Howard Schultz was grilled by Congress on union-busting activity at the company.

=> ↺ Utah abortion clinic ban: Planned Parenthood, ACLU sue

• The Planned Parenthood Association of Utah (PPAU) and the state ACLU Utah filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the state’s abortion clinic ban.

• Driving the news: Republican Gov. Spencer Cox last month signed ​​HB 467 — effectively closing all abortion clinics in the state.

Monopolies

=> ↺ 2023-04-01 [Older] U.S. Department of Justice reinforces motion for spoliation sanctions against Google, heavily relies on evidence from Epic Games case and points to Google’s untruthfulness

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] Epic v. Google judge chides Google for unrepentance and lying about chat deletion, non-monetary sanctions TBD after April 7 discovery cutoff: implications for United States et al. v. Google

Patents

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Another Group of Law Professors File Amicus Brief in Amgen v. Sanofi

=> ↺ 2023-03-27 [Older] U.S. Government Files Amicus Brief in Amgen v. Sanofi

=> ↺ 2023-03-30 [Older] Esteemed Scientists File Amicus Brief in Amgen v. Sanofi on Respondents’ Behalf

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Delhi High Court hands Ericsson appellate victory over Indian electronics maker Intex in standard-essential patent case: FRAND is not a one-way street; without injunctions, hold-out will occur

=> ↺ 2023-03-31 [Older] Table of contents and synopsis of European Commission’s draft proposal for standard-essential patent regulation

=> ↺ 2023-03-29 [Older] European Commission departs from best practices in hasty preparation of standard-essential patent policy proposal that is fundamentally flawed and unbalanced

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Exclusive-EU Patent Body to Oversee Tech-Standard Patent Royalties -EU Draft Rule

=> ↺ 2023-03-28 [Older] Patent licensing firm IPCom announces settlement with LG while litigation against Samsung apparently continues

=> ↺ 2023-03-26 [Older] [Guest post] Expected introduction of a full patent examination in Switzerland: Opportunity or burden?

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ 🔤SpellBinding: BCEIUSP Wordo: SYNCS

=> ↺ Tahini

• One trick to making sesame tahini with an immersion blender (if you have one strong enough—I’ve tried this at friend’s houses and their blenders were too weak) is to put a few dabs of water on.

• The less water the better; water counter intuitively makes the seeds harder to blend (they just float apart) but makes the seeds less likely to fly away out of the blending jar. Juuuust enough so they rest heavily in the jar. I don’t measure it out, I just sprinkle a few drops.

=> ↺ Happy new year!

• It’s April now, but better late than never, right?

• I don’t really have anything to write about. I’ve been doing a lot of gopherspace lurking, popping over to gemini to water my astrobotany plant every few days. Work is keeping me too busy to do much more than that.

Music

=> ↺ Album #224: Oasis – (What’s The Story) Morning Glory

• One of the pleasures of growing up is the autonomy you get. It’s different for everyone, of course, but big questions like who you spend your time with, where you live and what you do are some of the major things we gain control of. An extra one of those for me has always been ‘Where am I least likely to hear anything off (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?’.

=> ↺ Album #223: Public Enemy – Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black

• Like that album though, the style doesn’t really work for me. The sampling is skillful, the anger is clear, but it never really adds up. The low score doesn’t mean it doesn’t belong on this list: perhaps after checking the book or having a conversation I’ll go back and ‘get it’, but this isn’t for me.

=> ↺ Album #220: Harry Nilsson – Nilsson Schmilsson

• Leans heavily on the singles. To call them tentpoles would be to ignore just how saggy the first half of the album is. It ends on some absolute classics – “Without You” is fantastic, “Coconut” is… well, I hate it but it has its fans, and “Jump into Fire” is a classic rock staple. But when it’s not those hits, it’s as limp and boring as the the cover art.

Technical

=> ↺ DuckDuckGo Is Leaking Location Data And Could Be Violating FTC Guidelines

• I’ve been using DuckDuckGo almost since it first launched. Occasionally I’d get these weird completely unrelated search results that seem to have an unreasonable understanding of my location data.

=> ↺ Coaxial, the ancient wonder tech

• Internet back in my home country was easy. You call one of the two monopolies to hook up fiber to your home, then someone runs a Belling-Lee[0] cable from the fiber hub to your modem/router, and then everything is just LAN (RJ45).

• If you own the house, you can even start drilling holes and looping gigantic 30m ethernet cables all over the place, but you’ll suffer a significant drop in signal.

=> ↺ Contra Touchscreens

• I found an old post of mine on Usenet, which I’m going to quote in full here.

• I’m blind, and I find it a bit difficult to actually use a smartphone for the purpose of making and taking calls, mostly due to the lack of physical buttons. Conventional handsets are quite easy for a blind person to use. The keypad is familiar. The ten number keys, *, and # are all arranged in a conventional layout. To take a call, just lift it from its cradle or hit another physical button. I learned to use and dial a phone when I was about two. I also learned to dial rotary phones. There weren’t too many of those left while I was growing up, but there were a few. They’re not as convenient, because you have to count holes. In any case, the standard touch-tone phone facilitated quick and easy calling. It’s a great example of universal design. Compare this to a touch screen smart phone. If it has screen reading software, I can dial it, but it’s clunky. I don’t remember which is faster: rotary phone dialing or dialing on a touch screen. The touch screen may win, but not by much, and yet, it is a regression when compared to the physical keypad.

Programming

=> ↺ EOL Story

• This has come up a few times on the tilde #gemini IRC channel, surprise that CR LF must be used at the end of line. CR LF lines are a rather an old convention, as far as the internet goes.

=> ↺ Re: Source controlled dotfiles

• I’ll share my dotfile setup after a post by Senders expressing their dissatisfaction with GNU stow.

• When I first put my dotfiles in version control I also used GNU stow to create symlinks from the git repository to the appropriate locations in my home directory. I created a script to automatically create those symlinks for me but I was never quite satisfied with this setup. It always felt too complex and flimsy. It didn’t help that due to distro security policies for some packages their configuration files had to be regular files and not symbolic links. This meant I had to add extra logic to my stow wrapper script to copy these files instead. Nevertheless, not having any better ideas on how to do this I kept using GNU stow.

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