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Posted in News Roundup at 11:18 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers
For those that switched off Apple already, share your stories! What hardware or software did you get? What was your decision like? How’s it going so far?
inspired by this post below by @RightsOfBill and insight from @hashbreaker2021
2 weeks ago I purchased a Lemur Pro laptop from System76. I had just purchased a 16″ MBP from Apple a year ago so I wasn’t looking for a replacement. I’ve used Macs forever and in the past 24 months bought a MBP, iPad, Watch, Airpods pros and max. I was cheering Apple’s “Mind your own business” ads. Then this CSAM bs. Bye.
On this episode of This Week in Linux, Linux 5.14, What’s Coming in KDE Plasma 5.23, GNOME 41 Beta & New GNOME Apps Website, CentOS Support Lifeline from CloudLinux, CentOS SIG Repositories in AlmaLinux, Asahi Linux Progess on M1 Mac, Naomi Wu Gets GPL Compliance from UMIDIGI, CuteFish OS Beta, EndeavourOS, Linux From Scratch 11, LibreOffice 7.2, and LibreELEC. All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!
The **llc** , **lli** , **llvm-ar** , **llvm-as** , **llvm-bcanalyzer** , **llvm-c-test** , **llvm-config** , and **llvm-cov** commands from the **d** software series of Slackware. Also, an off-script rogue demo of **lcov**.
↺ High Resolution Scrolling On Linux Progressing, Apple Magic Mouse Support In Linux 5.15 – Phoronix
Being worked on for several years now on the Linux desktop has been high resolution scrolling including work for it around X Input, the libinput library used both by X.Org and Wayland systems, and the kernel driver side for the HID/input devices to support it. The latest user-space work is high resolution scroll wheel support within the next libinput release. Separately, with Linux 5.15 is now additionally support for high resolution scrolling with the Apple Magic Mouse.
Peter Hutterer of Red Hat who serves as the Linux input expert and is responsible for much of the high resolution scrolling work released libinput 1.18-rc1. With this new snapshot there is support for hold gestures and high resolution scroll wheel support. Peter notes in that announcement that the high resolution wheel scrolling replaces the earlier pointer axis API.
With Linux 5.15 there are optimizations for EXT4, big improvements for XFS, and significant work on Btrfs too. Rounding out the notable file-system work on Linux 5.15, the F2FS updates were submitted and subsequently landed for this next kernel version.
F2FS with Linux 5.15 has also been striving for better performance by addressing issues around locking contention, correcting compress_cache issues, and resolving other problems.
One of the kernel patch series that has seen ongoing work for more than one year now is around introducing the FUTEX2 system call to better match the behavior of Microsoft Windows’ NT kernel in order to allow for more efficient Proton/Wine usage that powers Steam Play for enjoying Windows games on Linux.
For all the great changes and new features building up in Linux 5.15, unfortunately, this looks to be another kernel that will lack FUTEX2. The latest revision of the FUTEX2 patches were posted this weekend and now being half-way through the merge window is certainly too late to see it review, additional testing, and submitted in time.
One thing I LOVE about Linux is that there are so many ways to do things.
When I used to run a KDE/Plasma desktop, one of my “must-have” widgets was one that displayed the weather forecast on my desktop. When I switched to the Xfce desktop, one of the first panel plugins I installed was the weather plugin for the Xfce panel. It’s still that way today, anytime I install or reinstall Xfce.
I’m not obsessed with the weather, but I do like to know what’s coming on my next day off, when I’m usually trying to plan something that I’ll be doing with my wife and kids.
Well, there is a great way to get a weather forecast while you work in a terminal session, too. That means you don’t have to leave your command line environment to check on the weather forecast.
I don’t even remember how I stumbled across this, because it was in a post on the DietPi forum site, in the tutorial section. I don’t even have a Raspberry Pi, so I don’t tend to visit these types of forums.
I’m always looking for new GIMP tutorials for you! Recently, I’ve been looking on the website called Davies Media Design to see what he’s doing, and found a video tutorial he called “10 Things Beginners Need To Know”. While I did a beginners article way back, GIMP has changed considerably since then, and it was interesting to see his ten things. Most of these things we should already know, but if we have beginners, I’ll summarize his ten.
1. His first thing was to tell the beginners where to download GIMP: https://www.gimp.org/ but we already knew that. The thing we know that he may not know is that we can get GIMP from our own PCLinuxOS repository. He did emphasize that GIMP is open source and you should never have to pay for it.
2. The next thing, of course, is how to open an image. In most all programs, it’s nearly always File > Open and lets you navigate to the correct file. Also, as we all know in many programs, there is more than one way to do everything. In GIMP, you can drag the image you’re opening over the top of your toolbox and it will open as well. As you can see below, I’ve dragged an image to the top of the toolbox, and a black outline has appeared. When I let go of the mouse pointer, the image will open in GIMP.
During the pandemic, I have become more conscientious about my backup regime on our two desktop PCs; I use the combination of Timeshift (for system files) and Grsync (for documents and personal files). I recently saw in the PCLinuxOS forum that Texstar recommended Back In Time [BiT] as a backup application for your personal files. After a bit of searching, I found that the Timeshift developers also rate BiT as an excellent tool.
Since I did not have a backup solution in place for our old — but trusty — Dell Latitude E4300 laptop (used as a secondary computer), I installed Back In Time to learn more about it. I hope that my article will help you get started with BiT and encourage you to explore its flexible yet powerful features.
Back In Time is a mature application, originally released in 2008; it is supported on all major Linux distributions. BiT was written by a team of developers including Dan Oprea, Bart de Koning, Richard Bailey, Taylor Raack and Germar Reitze.1 BiT was inspired by the now discontinued FlyBack project, which was a backup utility modeled loosely on macOS’s Time Machine. BiT is based on the classic rsync CLI utility; it is written in Python and comes with a Qt5 GUI which will run on both KDE and GTK-based desktop environments.
The beauty of Back In Time is that although it is highly customizable (as we will discuss shortly), it is also suited for people who want a simple program for backing up their data. Configuration can be done entirely via the GUI; only three requirements for BiT must be specified: where to save snapshots; which folders to back up; and when to perform the backup.
Pwd command is used Linux to print the path of the current working directory, starting from the root (/). In this tutorial, we learn about pwd command with useful examples.
Unwanted traffic is blocked by a firewall, while wanted traffic is allowed through it. Hence, the goal of a firewall is to build a security barrier between private networks and the internet. A firewall is the most important component on a network to keep this from happening.
Internet intruders can acquire our information; therefore, firewalls safeguard our computers from them. It is sometimes misunderstood as being unnecessary for Linux. The Linux operating system has been rigorously designed to provide optimum security. For example, these include numerous levels of authorization to prevent viruses and malicious software from being installed. Unlike Windows, the Linux system has no open ports by configuration, which means that no external devices or programs may access your machine without opening ports. Furthermore, because Linux is the least common operating system, viruses and spyware designed for it are extremely rare. Cyber attackers will find it nearly unprofitable to attack it as a result. Despite this, there are still severe security flaws that might expose your Linux system.
Furthermore, because most Linux users believe they don’t require additional security, they are more exposed if an assault is conducted. As a result, it makes sense to invest in a trustworthy Linux Firewall that will provide you with the necessary protection. However, there are instances when you are working on an important activity and your Firewall obstructs your progress by preventing genuine efforts to access your system. You may feel compelled to disable your Firewall in such circumstances. As a result, we will learn how to disable the Firewall today.
I was asked how to transfer files using scp without a password using a pem file for authentication. After reading this tutorial, you’ll know how to generate an SSH key and convert it to a pem file to download or upload files using the scp command.
If you already have your .pem key, you can jump to the Using scp with pem section.
Whenever we talk about working with the databases in any operating system, the database management systems (DBMS) are always discussed. PostgreSQL is also a DBMS that falls in the category of relational database management systems, i.e., it deals with the management and working of relational databases. This relational DBMS offers the flexibility of creating and manipulating the databases and installing them on any famous operating system, i.e., Linux, macOS, and Windows. This is exactly why this DBMS is all the more famous across many programmers out there.
This relational DBMS is free and open-source, contributing more to its wide usage within the different industrial sectors. Moreover, the kind of transactions that this DBMS deals with is ACID, i.e., it can efficiently perform the transactions with ACID properties (atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability). It means that if you have the data with these properties and want to create a relational database for it, you should definitely consider using the PostgreSQL server.
Since the launch of this relational DBMS back in 1996, it has undergone several upgrades, which is why its functionality is comparable with any of the latest relational database management systems. Moreover, this DBMS also provides enhancements in the traditional database management systems’ features and perfect compliance with SQL. This relational DBMS supports a wide range of native data types and some user-defined data types. In addition to that, it also handles the different versions of your databases while maintaining their concurrency in an extremely graceful manner.
This tutorial shows 3 simple ways to get the last modified date of a file in Linux. After reading this tutorial, you’ll know how to check the last modification date of a file using the commands ls, date, and stat.
This tutorial explains how to easily transfer directories using the Linux scp (Secure Copy Protocol) command.
Despite the Linux scp command being deprecated and replaced by SFTP and RSYNC, its use is widely adopted. Even after being deprecated and replaced, probably SCP is the most common method to transfer files. Yet, its use isn’t professionally recommended. That’s why after the scp instructions to download and upload directories, I added instructions to do the same using the sftp command.
The command terminal on Linux is a CLI (Command-Line Interface), where you type the commands that would otherwise take time with the GUI. It is equivalent to the Command Prompt (CMD) provided in Windows. The terminal is the perfect way a user can truly feel that they are communicating with their system. It feels invigorating when you type commands on the terminal, and the computer performs exactly what you instructed it to do. The terminal is also great for people who want to know what exactly is going on deep inside the computer. You can understand the pathways and the steps taken by the computer to perform even the very basic tasks. In the end, it all comes down to preference.
To truly master the terminal, you first need to learn the basic navigation on it. We will guide you through the commands used to navigate the files and directories present on your Linux system. So, let’s get started.
Roblox is a multiplayer game that was released in 2006. Created by the Roblox Corporation, Roblox allows its users to develop their own games through the platform with the help of its programming language “Lua”. These games can be shared with the whole online community. It’s fun and free to play.
Although the game has in-app purchases, most of them are cosmetic items and don’t interfere with the gameplay. This means you can enjoy the full Roblox experience without having to worry about any pay-to-win advantages.
Although it was released back in 2006, it started gaining users continuously from 2015 onwards as it shot to fame. With people forced to stay inside their homes, they have turned their attention to games such as Roblox to keep them entertained.
Roblox is available for most platforms but not for Linux. There is no need to be disappointed however, as there are ways you can get around this limitation.
You may experience some jitters as the only way you can make Roblox work on Linux is through Windows compatible software layers such as “Wine” and “Grapejuice”. This article will guide you through the steps you need to follow for playing Roblox on Ubuntu.
This tutorial explains how to fetch files and directories from a remote host to our local device.
SCP or Secure Copy Protocol is an SSH-based protocol that allows sharing of files between remote devices. Using SCP, you can send a receive file from and to a local device or between remote devices.
Currently, SCP is considered outdated, and it has been replaced by SFTP and RSYNC. At the end of the SCP instructions, I added tips to download files from remote hosts using SFTP with a similar syntax as SCP.
Unlike many other filesystems, ZFS mounts the pools and filesystems that you create automatically.
If you create a ZFS pool pool1, it will automatically mount it in the /pool1 directory of your computer.
If you create a ZFS filesystem documents on pool pool1, it will automatically mount it in the /pool1/documents directory of your computer.
In the same way, if you create another ZFS filesystem downloads on pool pool1, it will automatically mount it in the /pool1/downloads directory of your computer. You get the idea.
In this article, I am going to show you how to mount ZFS pools and filesystems in other directories of your computer. So, let’s get started.
In Ubuntu, users use the gpg command to keep data safe and protect their privacy. The gpg is an acronym for “GnuPrivacy Guard”. It encrypts your files securely so that only the specified receiver can decrypt those files. GPG is based on the concept of each user having two encryption keys. Each individual can have a pair of public and private keys.
Utilizing GPG encryption to encrypt your data before its transfer assures that no one without a valid matching key pair can view or read it. You can encrypt a file with your private key and the recipient’s public key to send it securely. Then, the recipient will decrypt the received file using their private key and your public key. This concept demonstrates that public keys must be shared for the successful decryption of any file. Making your public keys just that “public” does not bring any risk to your system. It is obligatory to keep private keys “private”. If your public key is available to the public, your private key must be kept private and secure.
In this article, we will discuss how to use the gpg command on Ubuntu. So let’s start!
This article introduces the SCP (Secure Copy Protocol) command as a secure and efficient way to transfer files across the public internet, providing 12 SCP command examples that you can try yourself on virtually any distribution.
Linux is an open-source Unix-based operating system. It was first released by Linus Torvalds, but he wasn’t the only one who contributed to creating Linux. Being open-source, there were thousands of contributors and this led to the development of several distributions based on Linux. These distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux are referred to as Linux distros.
Linux was based on Unix, but it didn’t have the code of Unix – only their architecture was the same. With the emergence of an open-source OS, leading companies and technologies started preferring Linux and it replaced Unix. Today, the popularity of Linux is not the same as that of Windows, but some people and companies prefer using Linux over Windows due to Linux being lightweight, fast, secure, and open-source. The open-source factor is the primary one. Having the ability to create another OS out of it is appealing and the added security of a Linux kernel has boosted its popularity.
If you are also looking to jump on the bandwagon and try out Linux, this article should help you learn the basics of Linux and how to use it.
Java is a high-level, Object-Oriented programming language developed in 1995 by Sun Microsystems. Over time, Java has grown to become one of the most prominent high-level languages. It is now popular among app developers, financial, scientific, and estate enterprises. It is independent of the platform, open-source, versatile, and easy to learn and use.
It is practically a Turing-complete language so anything can be done on it. Most of the things one can do in Python can also be done in Java. Jpython is a Python version that runs on Java in the JVM (Java Virtual Machine). In this guide, we will dive into the procedure of looking up the Java version on Ubuntu Linux and install it if it is not already available.
Amazon EC2 is one of the most preferred platforms used to provision web servers due to its flexibility. You can launch a web server with limited resources, and later you can scale your web server’s resources when necessary. This blog explains the procedure of increasing the disk space on an EC2 instance using the following steps.
While managing EC2 instances on AWS, you need to move data from an EC2 instance to the local machine. By default, the AWS EC2 instance requires SSH key authentication to access the instance, so sometimes, it is difficult for beginners to download data from the EC2 instance to the local machine. There are multiple ways to move data from the EC2 instance to the local machine, and this blog describes the following ways.
EC2 (elastic compute cloud) is a scalable compute service provided by AWS. You can use the AWS EC2 service to launch virtual servers on the cloud in seconds or minutes. AWS provides hardware-level selection while initializing an EC2 instance (EC2 virtual machine). You can select hardware architecture, operating system, storage, and different configurations of CPU and memory depending upon your requirements.
S3 (a simple storage service) is a highly available and scalable storage service provided by AWS. It provides almost infinite storage, but you will only be charged for what you use from this storage. S3 stores your data in multiple places so you do not lose your data in case of disaster. That is why S3 can be used to backup your important data.
While working on EC2, sometimes you need to store some important data from EC2 instance to S3 regularly, like database backups or some other important data as a backup because EC2 servers may crash on AWS, and you may lose all your data. In this blog, we will discuss how we can move important data from EC2 to S3.
Kubernetes objects called namespaces divide a single Kubernetes cluster into numerous virtual clusters. Every Kubernetes namespace determines the limits for the Kubernetes Names it includes, which implies that each object in the cluster has a unique identity. For separating and administering Kubernetes clusters, namespaces are fundamental objects. We can use namespaces to logically separate and assign resources to certain individuals, teams, or apps. For applications, individuals, or groups of users, namespaces provide basic components for the resource to use allowance, access control, and segregation. You can boost resource efficiency by using Namespaces because a single cluster can now be used for a diverse collection of workloads.
When dealing with Kubernetes, you have two options for listing all the resources associated with a certain namespace: use separate kubectl get commands to list each resource one after the other, or use a single command to display all the resources inside a Kubernetes namespace. We will show you several different approaches to list the resources in a Kubernetes namespace in this tutorial.
This tutorial explains what Linux kill signals are and how to use them to interrupt, terminate, suspend and continue processes.
ImageMagick is the “Swiss Army knife” of manipulating images on the command line. While you could use a desktop graphics program like GIMP or GLIMPSE to adjust or combine photos and graphics, sometimes it’s just easier to use one of the almost dozen tools from ImageMagick.
In order to mitigate the NO STARTTLS vulnerabilities, I recently switched my local SMTP smarthosts from STARTTLS (port 587) to implicit TLS (port 465).
Go, or Golang, is an open-source programming language that Google created. It’s statically typed and produces compiled machine code binaries. Go language is a compiled language. This is popular amongst developers as it means you do not need to compile the source code to create an executable file. Developers that use Google’s Go language say it is the C for the twenty-first century when it comes to syntax.
Zoom is a communications technology platform that provides videotelephony and real-time online chat services through a cloud-based peer-to-peer software platform and is used for teleconferencing, telecommuting, distance education, and much more.
Recently, there was a debate on the PCLinuxOS forum about KDE Plasma’s implementation of telemetry through KUserFeedback. While in PCLinuxOS, we can remove it without any collateral effects to the system, while other users reported that doing the same in other distros (like Debian 11) results in the complete removal of KDE Plasma! Why force such an implementation, if, as KDE’s developers say, it is just an innocuous, privacy-respecting measure?
Coincidence or not, in the past years many popular Linux distributions started rolling out optional telemetry. Then it was the time of computer programs: news broke out in May regarding Audacity, a popular audio editing app, which announced it was starting the use of telemetry. The move was finally pushed back after users revolted against it.
But in Plasma’s case, it is not just an app or a single distro, but an entire desktop environment, employed in several Linux distributions, that is being shipped with telemetry. While many point out that the data collection is by opt-in and entirely anonymous, others have found that, even if you don’t activate telemetry, data is still collected, using computer resources, registering “apps and boot, number of times used and duration in /home/user/telemetry folder.” As such, they argue that, because of the way Linux permissions work, other programs could have access to these log files. KUserFeedback’s FAQs page confirms this:
GNOME Radio 0.4.0 for GNOME 41 is available with National Public Radio (NPR) live audio broadcasts.
GNOME Radio 0.4.0 will be the successor to GNOME Internet Radio Locator built for GNOME 41 with Cairo, Clutter, Champlain, Maps, GStreamer, and GTK+ 4.0.
Zorin OS, a Linux distribution, has created a version for power users and professionals that looks like the upcoming Windows 11. The Win11 “window dressing” is only available to users who use the paid Zorin OS Pro version of the operating system. Its release is expected within the next few months.
So, users can get the appearance of Windows 11, but the stability and security from running Linux. Zorin OS Pro comes with a full suite of productivity programs, such as GIMP, an Ebook reader, accounting software, 2D and 3D CAD software, a password manager, and much more.
Purchasers of Zorin OS Pro will also have access to Zorin OS Pro Lite, a special version of the OS that is designed to run fast and stable on older computers. Paid users will also get access to Zorin Installation Support services, as well as helping to support the future of Zorin OS.
All releases: updated installer and live system to latest versions. Some translation updates but most are still in progress. The live menus now include special features like rollback options for remasters gone wrong. In addition, we added the mesa vulkan drivers to the default package set. New “mx-comfort” themes are also in use. Better support for some realtek wifi parts. Debian security repo enabled by default.
Xfce isos: removed gtk3-nocsd as debian’s package produced undesirable default results. the package is still install-able via your favorite package managers. Updated Xfce packages to latest bug fix releases. Added thunar samba shares plugin (accessible via a folder’s properties dialog in thunar). Updated docklike plugin.
KDE/plasma iso: fix for dolphin file manager crash issues when “Save desktop changes” was utilized during install.
Fluxbox isos: updates to many of the mxfb-accessories scripts, improved localization, general configuration changes. Captions on by default on desktop, and additional pre-configured panel setups. removed gtk3-nocsd as debian’s package produced undesirable default results. the package is still install-able via your favorite package managers.
MX Linux team released MX Linux 21 Beta2 Download and test, The second beta of the upcoming MX Linux 21 is now ready for testing. This new build of the popular Debian-based distribution is available in Xfce, KDE Plasma and Fluxbox editions: “MX 21 beta 2 is now available for testing. MX 21 is built from Debian ‘Bullseye’ and MX repositories.
After about one and a half year of development OpenWrt 21.02 has been released with exciting new features.
OpenWrt is a free, open-source project for creating custom embedded operating systems for routers. It is a complete replacement for the vendor-supplied firmware of a wide range of wireless routers and non-network devices. OpenWrt is based on Linux kernel and it is the oldest open-source router firmware project.
Yesterday the OpenWrt community announced the first stable release of the OpenWrt 21.02 stable version series. The new release brings Linux kernel 5.4, gcc 8.4, glibc 2.33, and binutils 2.34, among many other updates and improvements.
Franz is a free messaging app / former Emperor of Austria and combines chat & messaging services into one application. Franz currently supports Slack, WhatsApp, WeChat, HipChat, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Google Hangouts, GroupMe, Skype and many more.
PDFArranger is a small python-gtk application, which helps the user to merge or split pdf documents and rotate, crop and rearrange their pages using an interactive and intuitive graphical interface.
In the PCLinuxOS forum, hakerdefo posted a good question to our resident cook, HTML and Ebook creator, webmaster, networking guru, and photographer, The_CrankyZombie. Here it is in its entirety:
So if someone who is permanently broke (financially) and totally new to photography and wants to buy a camera to learn photography, what would be your recommendation?
Hakerdefo’s question, coupled with The_CrankyZombie’s reply, gave birth to this article. Anyone who has spent much time in the forum will recognize the hundreds of photos that The_CrankyZombie has posted and shared with the PCLinuxOS forum members.
Imagination is an easy to use tool designed for use in creating DVD slideshows. It provides a very simple and straightforward way for you to create slideshows of family photos, business presentations, or anything else that might require a slideshow.
The user interface is quite well laid out and has been designed for speed and ease of use. In the upper right corner of the screen, you’ll find the play button and frame seeker buttons for previewing the slideshow. Down at the bottom of the screen is the timeline, from which you can select slides and then edit their properties on the sidebar to the right. To begin making a slideshow, simply click on the Import pictures button up in the toolbar to start loading your images into Imagination.
Fedora test days are events where anyone can help make sure changes in Fedora Linux work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. If you’ve never contributed to Fedora Linux before, this is a perfect way to get started.
Kyrptor FPGA, sometimes just called Kryptor, is a compact Intel/Altera MAX10 FPGA development board mostly designed for encryption, and acting as a dedicated Hardware Security Module (HSM) with a custom soft-core from Skudo OÜ. But obviously, you could also use the FPGA board for other purposes.
Hardware encryption can be quite more secure than software-based encryption reduced attach surfaces, especially data processing can be done in the FPGA RAM. The HSM can be used to encrypt files, videos, emails, IoT messages, etc… from various hardware platforms including Arduino and Raspberry Pi boards. Contrary to closed-sourced commercial solutions, the soft-core is open-source and as such can be verified by third parties to make sure there aren’t any backdoors or security flaws.
A post on the Careers at Apple website might be giving us a clue about Apple’s future plans regarding the chips it uses to drive its devices. Currently, the company relies on ARM Holding’s chip architecture for its chipsets, but the tech giant is seeking a RISC-V High-Performance Programmer. RISC stands for reduced instruction set computer and is an open-source chip architecture.
The table above shows our articles updated in August 2021.
For our entire collection, check out the categories below. This is the largest compilation of recommended software. The collection includes hundreds of articles, with comprehensive sections on internet, graphics, games, programming, science, office, utilities, and more. Almost all of the software is free and open source.
Released at the start of August was dav1d 0.9.1 for this high performance CPU-based AV1 open-source video decoder while now another point release is available with yet more optimizations.
TenFourFox Feature Parity Release 32 Security Parity Release 4 “32.4″ is available for testing (downloads, hashes). There are, as before, no changes to the release notes nor anything notable about the security patches in this release. Assuming no major problems, FPR32.4 will go live Monday evening Pacific time as usual. The final official build FPR32.5 remains scheduled for October 5, so we’ll do a little look at your options should you wish to continue building from source after that point later this month.
This article will cover a guide on using nested functions in Python. Nested functions or inner functions are defined inside other Python functions. They are useful in certain programming patterns and use cases. Some of them will be explained in this article. All code samples in this article are tested with Python 3.9.5 on Ubuntu 21.04.
This article will cover a guide on using “Enum” objects in Python. An enum or an “enumeration” class allows you to create unique constants whose value remains unchanged in Python programs and applications. All code samples in this article are tested with Python 3.9.5 on Ubuntu 21.04.
This is an excerpt from the keynote address for the online conference on “Changing Configurations and New Directions” at Ajeenkya DY Patil University in Pune, India, on July 27, 2021.
The Yarnell flames were so erratic and intense the team became suddenly trapped, and despite each of the men deploying their individual fire shelters, all fighting the flames that day perished. The lone survivor was out fetching a truck for his crew, only to return to the gruesome scene to find his buddies were gone. It was the single deadliest incident for firefighters since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
On Monday, the United Nations announced an environmental and public health milestone: the end of the use of leaded gasoline in automobiles and road vehicles worldwide.
The last holdout was Algeria, which had large stockpiles of leaded gasoline; in July, those stockpiles ran out, and Algeria has now made the transition to unleaded gasoline.
The AMA, the country’s largest doctors group, is now joining in warning against use of the drug, joining the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC.
We are discouraged from “sharing Covid data that is not related to the course.” Presumably, nattering on about the state’s overburdened hospitals, worn-down physicians, and increasing death counts might constitute “pressure,” and faculty “should not pressure students to get vaccinated or wear a mask.” The most we can do is “encourage.” In practice, these guidelines have left faculty proffering details of their personal lives to crowds of unmasked students. We have become beggars and supplicants, hoping for mercy.
B ut for most of us, it’s not working. Our stories do not yield fully masked classes. In a small classroom stuffed with 40 or 50 students, just a handful will wear a mask. Classes packing in hundreds may have fewer than half masked. Some faculty post online about their successes in getting students to wear masks. I read these posts closely because I want to know if there is some magic key, a particular appeal or strategy that could reliably work. I am a moral philosopher by trade, so I am also natively interested in how to morally motivate people to do what they’d rather not. So far, I have not uncovered any secrets.
↺ Gunshot Victims Left Waiting as Horse Dewormer Overdoses Overwhelm Oklahoma Hospitals, Doctor Says
The rise in people using ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug usually reserved for deworming horses or livestock, as a treatment or preventative for Covid-19 has emergency rooms “so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting” access to health facilities, an emergency room doctor in Oklahoma said.
The WHO reports that the earliest documented samples of the mu variant came from Colombia in January; the strain now makes up 39 percent of all the cases there. It has also been detected in dozens of other countries, most commonly popping up in the United States, Mexico, Spain and Ecuador. A British risk assessment released last month suggests that the mu variant could be at least as resistant to vaccine-based immunity as the beta strain, although more research needs to be done. The mu variant contains several mutations that have been associated with resistance to immunity, such as E484K and K417N, as well a mutation known as P681H that has been linked to accelerated transmission.
“This variant has a constellation of mutations that suggests that it would evade certain antibodies, not only monoclonal antibodies, but vaccine- and convalescent serum-induced antibodies,” President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci told reporters on Thursday. “But there isn’t a lot of clinical data to suggest that. It is mostly laboratory in-vitro data.”
People who were dumb enough to drink a horse-sized dose of Ivermectin are flocking to the ERs to beg a doctor who went to six years of medical school to save their lives.
This is the cost of having Facebook conspiracy groups and Republican politicians who are allowed to say anything they want.
Doctors in Oklahoma are having to turn away gunshot victims because anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers who listen to Republican conspiracy theories are flooding the hospitals with COVID and Ivermectin overdoses.
Our search for blåhaj wasn’t finished yet: there were two options, Winnipeg had nearly 100 in stock, and the Kansas City location had 53. A decision had to be made. We looked at the border crossing requirements for entering Canada and found out that if you present your CDC vaccination card, you could enter Canada without any problems. So, we flipped a coin: do we go six hours north, or six hours south?
Some of the points, particularly those dealing with fair compensation are admittedly a bit vague and unfortunately insurmountably huge to be tackled by a few paragraphs in an open letter anyway. However, most other points seem to all center around an alleged broken and badly set-up internal reporting system at Apple, combined with potential misuse of employee personal data, that harms the sense of safety and trust in the workplace. To quote the letter itself: [...]
Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) has issue warning after spam emails purporting to be from is rector, Tiit Land, have been found. If opened the emails can activate malware on the recipient’s computer.
Welcome to the latest report from the Reproducible Builds project. In this post, we round up the important things that happened in the world of reproducible builds in August 2021. As always, if you are interested in contributing to the project, please visit the Contribute page on our website.
So Cyber Security and Cryptography both are key elements to protect communication over the internet. We are in an era of undercommented and exposed web spread everywhere. Everything shared is visible over the internet if that information is not protected using some sort of method. Cryptography simply hides your information in a secured way and assures a safe transition.
Also Encryption takes plain text and turns it into ciphertext. You can not read this text if you do not have a key.
GoDaddy, the web hosting service, has notified Texas Right to Life that it has 24 hours to find a new hosting service because the organization’s anti-abortion “whistleblower” website violates the company’s terms of service regarding people’s privacy.
“Last night we informed prolifewhistleblower.com they have violated GoDaddy’s terms of service and have 24 hours to move to a different provider,” GoDaddy told Newsweek in a statement.
The website, prolifewhistleblower.com, allows people to leave anonymous tips reporting doctors, clinics or other individuals that may have helped women get an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected.
The reports, which were obviously bogus, were the work of activists on TikTok, programmers, and Twitter and Reddit users who said they wanted to ensnarl the site’s administrators in fabricated data.
Their digital dissent was part of a wave of reaction against the Texas law, which bans most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy and makes the state the most restrictive in the nation in terms of access to abortion services. President Biden said Thursday that the situation “unleashes unconstitutional chaos” against women.
China needs to adapt regulatory measures to guard against Internet and data security risks associated with the development of intelligent vehicles, such as the unauthorized collection of personal information, according to an official at the information technology ministry.
I started reading Yasha Levine’s book, and right from the introduction, it’s a punch in the gut: Levine takes us to a meeting, which he attended, in 2014, at Oakland City Hall.
In his words, “Several hundred people packed the Oakland city council chamber. Many of them carried placards. It was an angry crowd, and police officers flanked the sides of the room, ready to push everyone out if things got out of hand.”
Levine continues: “The commotion was tied to the evening’s main agenda item: the city council was scheduled to vote on an ambitious $11 million project to create a citywide police surveillance center. Its official name was the “Domain Awareness Center” – but everyone called it “the DAC.” The project specifications called for linking real-time video footage from thousands of cameras across the city and would concentrate them all in a unified control center. The police would be able to punch in a location and watch it in real time. They would be able to link facial recognition and vehicle tracking systems, link social media feeds, and enhance their vision with data coming from other law enforcement agencies – both local and federal.”
Plans for this surveillance center had been brewing for months, and the scandal was now making its presence felt. Residents, religious leaders, labor activists, retired politicians, masked anarchists from the “black bloc” and representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union – all were present, rubbing shoulder to shoulder with a group of dedicated local activists who had banded together to stop the DAC. A nervous, good-natured city official in a tan suit took the podium to assure the boisterous crowd that the Domain Awareness Center was designed to protect them – not spy on them. “This is not a fusion center. We have no agreements with the NSA or the CIA or the FBI to access our databases,” he said.
Since when did buying train tickets require apps?
[...]
But then again, it’s also hard to imagine a “free” country where people lost control of their government to big auto and oil companies who waged a mostly successful war against public transit, roasted the planet with cars, got everyone in traffic jams wasting all their money on the cars, gas, insurance, and mechanics bills, after shutting down the inter-urbans.
Trains are one of the least carbon-intensive methods to travel, but America funds them badly, and it’s such a shame, because with rising gas prices, a new car shortage, and right to repair your car under attack, along with the impending climate crisis, we’ve needed this more than ever before, and we had it and were foolish enough to let them shut most of it down.
If you’re lucky enough that you can put the numbers into your calculator, trains vs. driving, trains win over long distances every time. Gas aside, you’re beating up your car, in my case I pay per mile for insurance (metromile), you hit regularly scheduled maintenance like oil changes faster, and then there’s traffic jams, car crashes, and police sitting there waiting for a speeder so they can make more money for the government in fines.
The massive airlift from the Kabul airport was an impressive demonstration of the American military’s technical and organizational skills. At the height of the operation, 42 large cargo planes departed within every 24 hours, which means one departure every 35 minutes. Considering the considerable time it takes to have 400+ passengers board a C-17 military transport plane and get the plane ready for departure, there must have been several planes in various stages of boarding on the tarmac at all times — and all that with a single runway for landing and departure!
In all its hypocrisy and cruelty the drug war drags on because it serves an important repressive function that no state is eager to abandon. If its real, as opposed to its proclaimed purpose is recognized, the drug war “works.” And that purpose has never been the halting of production, shipment and consumption of drugs. Take a look at the history of drug wars over the past 175 years. These drug wars are either openly avowed or tacit enterprises that expand the drug trade, or they are pretexts for social and political repression.
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Donald Rumsfeld styled himself as the leader of a revolution in military affairs that made the Pentagon ready for quick, punchy interventions. In reality, he was one of the masterminds behind the Global War on Terror—the longest conflict in American history, whose interminable missions are now derided as the forever wars. Although he lived to the ripe age of 88, Rumsfeld didn’t outlast the wars he played so large a role in instigating. Two months before Rumsfeld’s death, Joe Biden announced a drawdown in Afghanistan. But the forever wars aren’t really ending. They’re just being disguised as more politically palatable enterprises, with military contractors taking the role of troops and drone strikes continuing in frontiers like Somalia.
In the past few years, Picciolini’s warnings have become increasingly severe. As he and his colleagues at Free Radicals work to preserve the promise of multiracial democracy in the United States, Picciolini worries that the nation’s complacency will soon meet a catastrophic end.
Lindell’s claim that his foundation hasn’t done anything for four years has some truth to it. It reported having fewer employees in 2018, just five, and none in 2019. Nevertheless, even in 2019, with zero employees, the Lindell Foundation still reported $60,000 in expenses. And somehow, whether Lindell knew it or not, money kept flowing, miraculously, to evangelical organizations.
Until its 2021 tax filings are released, we won’t know what the Lindell Foundation spent its money on, if anything, during Lindell’s post-election crusade to restore Trump to the White House. Nonprofit expenditures in political areas can potentially violate the law, but Lindell has frequently blurred the lines between his various endeavors.
When thinking of the scope of harm that the fossil fuel industry has caused, it’s hard to imagine financial compensation that could ever be substantial enough. What cost can be put on the mass extinction of wildlife, the illness and deaths of human beings, and the destruction of the Earth’s land and waters? The companies and individuals that have benefited from so much destruction must be held responsible, and we must stop them from creating more violence. We must look at the world we live in and how colonialism, anti-Blackness, and capitalism have allowed industries to be so negligent for so long. It’s not just one pipeline that needs to be stopped; it’s a complete value system that needs to be eradicated.
Of the 138,374 species assessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for its survival watchlist more than 38,000 are now at risk of extinction, as the destructive impact of human activity on our planet deepens.
An update of the ‘Red List of Threatened Species’ was released Saturday morning.
Naturally, this system isn’t presenting solutions. When necessary, there’s a greenwashing tweak here or there. We’re told we’re all guilty and all doomed. Meanwhile big corporations will keep making a killing, billionaires will look for bolt holes in remote places, and governments will keep lying. Their tax systems tell us where their loyalties lie: they’re billionaire friendly. So, it’s après moi le déluge because, as we say here in Catalonia, they couldn’t give a rabbit’s fart.
Let’s say you’re looking to invest some savings in the expanding micro-chip industry and a friend hands you the 2021 Annual Report of the Delaware (chartered) Corporation, Microchip Technology, a firm based in Chandler, Arizona. You’re a studious type and want to know what the company is producing before deciding if becoming a shareholder-owner is for you.
Did you know Kansas Republican Senator Bob Dole helped save the Voting Rights Act? It was the 1982 renewal, two years before Dole became Senate Majority Leader, and 14 years before becoming the Republican presidential nominee. Dole had voted for the original 1965 act, which Republican minority Leader Everett Dirksen helped shepherd through. But Dirksen was long gone by 1982, and key Reagan administration officials, including future Justices John Roberts and Clarence Thomas, opposed the bill’s renewal. Just two years earlier, Reagan had criticized the 1965 act as “humiliating to the south.”
A federal lawsuit filed on behalf of over 3,500 victims’ relatives as well as first responders and survivors is pending in New York that is based on how Saudi Arabia was allegedly involved in the attacks where New York City’s twin towers came down. The victims’ relatives said the FBI’s investigation failed to locate certain evidence such as a photo of a Saudi diplomat alongside two plane hijackers in front of a mosque in southern California.
“At this point, a small handful of social media sites drive the national narrative and have massive influence over the progress and developments of medicine and science, social justice movements, election outcomes and public thought,” Cain said when he initially presented HB 20 on the House floor.
The platforms would have to publicly disclose their content information and make it easily accessible on their website. They would also have to publish an acceptable use policy and complaint system in a location easily accessible to a user. The complaint system will allow users to raise flags about any illegal content, activity or removed content and would require the companies to keep those on file for future reports.
↺ Texas Senate Passes Bill That Would Punish Social Media Companies For Alleged Political Censorship
The heart of the bill is a section that would allow users banned by social media to sue for reinstatement if banned by a social media site based on political views. If that person can’t find a private attorney, the attorney general may bring a suit on the person’s behalf.
The study looked at posts from the Facebook pages of more than 2,500 news publishers between August 2020 and January 2021. Researchers found that the pages that post more misinformation regularly got more likes, shares, and comments. This increased engagement was seen across the political spectrum, but the study found that “publishers on the right have a much higher propensity to share misleading information than publishers in other political categories,” according to The Washington Post.
The researchers will share the study as part of the 2021 Internet Measurement Conference in November. But it could be released prior to that, researcher Laura Edelson tells The Verge.
Facebook is apologizing for an incident where its AI mislabeled a video of Black men with a “primates” label, calling it an “unacceptable error” that it was examining to prevent it from happening again. As reported by the New York Times, users who watched a June 27th video posted by the UK tabloid Daily Mail received an auto-prompt asking whether they wanted to “keep seeing videos about Primates.”
Mike Luckovich, the editorial cartoonist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, made an astute observation this week about Texas’ draconian abortion law.
U.S. officials at intake centers in the United Arab Emirates and in Wisconsin have identified numerous incidents in which Afghan girls have been presented to authorities as the “wives” of much older men. While child marriage is not uncommon in Afghanistan, the U.S. has strict policies against human trafficking that include prosecutions for offenders and sanctions for countries that don’t crack down on it.
Gig work shifts the risk from employers to employees and can lead to financial volatility for those who do it, resulting in more economic and psychological stress than regular work. Most obviously, independent work doesn’t include many of the protections afforded by traditional employment. That includes things like minimum wage, overtime, paid parental leave, and employer-subsidized health care. If people’s gig work doesn’t compensate enough to pay for those extras independently, it can put people at a severe economic disadvantage compared to regular employees.
Not everyone in the world has access to the same features and content on the internet, though, with some governments imposing restrictions on what you can do online. This severely limits internet freedom and, with it, the quality of life and other rights of the affected users.
Right from the outset, the community news coverage of the event gives you the sense that this is what the internet was invented for.
I was interviewed by Caleb Brown on the topic of IP–explained what it is, its origins, how it’s a type of crony capitalism, and how it emerged historically and acquired the name “intellectual property.”
The Federal Circuit has confirmed that Belcher’s U.S. Patent No. 9,283,197 is unenforceable due to inequitable conduct based upon materials withheld during prosecution. The patent covers l-epinephrine formulations at pH between 2.8 and 3.3 and with certain impurity level limitations. During prosecution, the examiner found a prior art reference with a wider encompasing pH range of 2.2 to 5.0, but the patentee successfully argued that its narrower range was a critical element of the invention and necessary to prevent racemization of the l-epinephrine.
Prior to the application’s issuance, Belcher’s Chief Science Officer (Rubin) obtained possession and tested samples from two competing products (JHP & Sintetica) and found that they were both within the claimed pH range and within the claimed impurity levels. In addition, Rubin was in possession of a reference (Stepensky) that disclosed an overlapping pH range (3.25 to 3.7). In fact, while the application was pending, Rubin communicated with the FDA regarding these samples. However, none of them were disclosed to the USPTO.
Patent applicants and their attorneys are bound by a duty of candor and good faith in dealing with the USPTO. As part of this, 37 C.F.R. § 1.56 establishes a duty to disclose information material to patentability. This duty exists as long as the patent application is pending and applies to all “individuals associated with the filing or prosecution of [the] patent application.” The Office has generally tied the duty only to human-persons, and so the duty has not been applied directly to corporate applicants. As here, the focus is typically whether there is an individual person who has a duty and who failed their duty.
Over 1,000 Australian innovation patent applications were filed in July – an all-time record, ahead of 768 applications in June and 692 in May.
[..].
In any event, it is clear that the vast majority of innovation patent applications are currently being filed by non-resident applicants for reasons that have nothing to do with any genuine desire to obtain or commercialise intellectual property rights in Australia, and few are filed by the Australia small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that the system was intended to benefit. Surging demand for innovation patents in the lead-up to the system being closed to new applications is overwhelmingly being driven by Chinese and Indian applicants, with Australian residents showing relatively little interest in taking advantage of the final opportunity to file new innovation patent applications.
Of course, genuine users of the patent system – including Australian applicants – are continuing to file standard applications and international (PCT) applications, and these may be converted to innovation patents in the future, or form the basis for divisional innovation patent applications, where the filing date is earlier than 26 August 2021. While these types of applications have been a minority in the past, they will necessarily become the only sources of ‘new’ innovation patents as the system is phased out over the coming eight years.
The pharmaceutical industry has extremely quickly responded to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Within a year, several research centres have developed vaccines that have given hope to billions of people that their health and even their lives can be saved. Yet access to vaccination is limited and the poorer the country, the less likely it is that its citizens will soon receive the necessary protection. Could resorting to the principles of a compulsory license be a remedy to cure all coronavirus ills?
The outlook sounds exciting, but first a handful of facts. A patent, which is an exclusive right granted for inventions, is absolute. This means that only the patent holder can dispose of their right and derive an economic benefit from it. National legal regulations provide, however, for the institution of a compulsory licence, which is an exception to the above rule. In certain strictly defined situations, such as the need to protect human life and health, it is possible to grant a right to use a patented invention even without the consent of the patent holder.
“Medical technology is characterised by constant innovation. In 2019, nearly 14 000 patent applications were filed with the European Patent Office (EPO) in the field of medical technology, more than in any other technical field. In Europe, there are more than 32 000 medical technology companies, employing some 730 000 people,” adds BNP Paribas.
While the case of Mylan Health Pty Ltd v Sun Pharma ANZ Pty Ltd1 (‘Mylan v Sun Pharma’) was decided a little over a year ago, some of the repercussions of the decision are only starting to become apparent. We have become aware of Examiners raising objections, based on Mylan v Sun Pharma, that entries in websites reporting clinical trial activity are novelty destroying. Of most concern is the situation where the patent applicant’s proposal for clinical trials is cited against their own patent application. This means that inventors of pharmaceutical products and methods must very carefully consider and balance the need to publish details of their own research proposal, which often must be made public for reasons discussed in this article, with the ability to validly seek patent applications in Australia and internationally. For inventors that cannot file for patent protection prior to commencing clinical trials, this results in a game of chance, where they gamble on whether an Examiner will find the publication of their clinical trial protocol and consider it to be relevant during examination.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers that claim patent rights over multiple compounds on the basis of a general formula will welcome a new ruling by the Court of Appeal in London, experts in patent litigation have said.
On June 11th, Junior Party the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Vienna; and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, “CVC”) filed its Responsive Preliminary Motion No. 1 in Interference No. 106,127 to be accorded benfit of priority to U.S. Patent Application No. 13/842,859, filed March 15, 2013, or in the alternative U.S. Patent Application No. 14/685,504, filed April 7, 2015, or U.S. Patent Application No. 15/138,604, filed April 26, 2016, pursuant to 37 C.F.R. §§ 41.121(a)(2) and 41.208(a)(3) and Standing Order ¶ 208.4.1. CVC filed this motion contingent on the Board granting Senior Party ToolGen’s Substantive Preliminary Motion No. 2 to deny CVC priority benefit to U.S. Provisional Application No. 16/757,640, filed January 28, 2013 (“P3″).
E.D. Va. Judge Brinkema sides with USPTO — holding that the Patent Act’s use of the term “individual” is limited to a human person — and thus that only humans can be inventors.
Extavour doesn’t dismiss the value of patents. “Most of the competitors tend to be I.P. holders of some type,” he told me in an interview, using the abbreviation for intellectual property. Inventors don’t have to surrender or license their patents to enter.
But he says patents aren’t strong inducements if there’s no commercial marketplace for the product or service. There’s not a lot of money to be made today from removing carbon from the atmosphere because the price of emitting carbon is low to zero. Extavour compares it to garbage removal. No family would pay to have its garbage removed if it could dump it on the neighbor’s lawn at no cost.
That’s actually a point of partial agreement between the two. Both Khan and Extavour favor carbon taxes or a cap-and-trade system, as in the European Union’s emissions trading system.
Although there is a six-month grace period regarding an unlawful or breach of confidence disclosures and disclosures at international exhibitions, there is no general 12-month grace period under the European Patent Convention (EPC), or by implementation of the EPC in the UK Patents Act 1977. The UKIPO has already made it clear that it is aware of its obligations under the EPC, and so it is not entitled to adopt the 12-month grace period.
XORTX Therapeutics Inc. (“XORTX” or the “Company”) (CSE: XRX) (OTCQB: XRTXF), a biotechnology company focused on developing therapeutics for the treatment of progressive kidney disease, is pleased to advise that further to its press release of April 6, 2021 that announced the intention of grant, the Company has now received receipt of the patent grant “EPO National Stage of PCT International Application for Compositions and Methods for Treatment and Prevention of Hyperuricemia Related Health Consequences” by the European Patent Office. The patent covers compositions and methods for the prevention and treatment of diabetic nephropathy (DN) using uric acid lowering agent and specifically xanthine oxidase inhibitors. Aberrant purine metabolism and specifically, chronically increased serum uric acid concentrations have been associated with kidney disease progression.
Clear definitions of parameters and comprehensive explanation of measurement methods will make the obtaining of patent protection much easier, particularly at the European Patent Office.
The decision of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) in G1/21 was perhaps the “non-event” of the patent year. Despite clear and considerable interest in the EBA’s view of mandatory ViCo oral proceedings as the new norm, the EBA chose to only answer the narrow question of the legality of ViCo oral proceedings during the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As one commentator analogised, if you ask the EBA for a drink, the EBA will respond that they don’t have any single malt whisky…As of yet, we also do not have the benefit of the EBA’s written decision and reasoning in G1/21, but must rely on the EPO’s summary. In the meantime, the precise meaning and scope of the EBA’s order in G1/21 is already being contested by parties before the Boards of Appeal, most notably in the recent decision T 1197/18.
[...]
Interestingly, the Opponent who requested the original referral to the EBA in G1/21 did not interpret the decision as applying to their case. A request for oral proceedings to be held in-person was filed by the Opponent shortly after the EBA order was announced. The request noted that “the parties are not impaired to attend in-person oral proceedings”, and cited the decision that quarantine was no longer compulsory for people entering the country from the Schengen area. As such, the Opponent argued, the Swiss patentee would be able to attend. Notably, the patentee’s representatives are based in the UK, albeit at a firm with a Munich office, but are yet to comment on the Opponent’s latest request for in-person proceedings.
In a separate case, the Board of Appeal in T 1197/18 considered whether the order of the EBA could still be said to actually apply, now that the most stringent of the travel restrictions in Europe have been lifted. Oral proceedings in T 1197/18 by ViCo were held in July 2021, without the consent of the Opponent. The Board considered the Opponents request that the proceedings should be postponed until they could be held in-person.
The Opponent in T 1197/18 argued that the proceedings should be conducted in-person because the conditions specified by the EBA in G1/21 did not apply. The Opponent particular argued that, although there was still a general state of emergency in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic, this was not necessarily a “general state of emergency impairing the parties’ possibilities to attend in-person oral proceedings at the EPO premises”, as specified by the EBA order. The Opponent argued that it was clear from the wording of the EBA order that the decision was only intended to apply in situations where travel to the EPO was practically impossible or subject to quarantine.
The Patentee had previously responded that they were impaired from travelling from Paris to Munich, noting the large number of flight cancellations and the uncertainty surrounding a surge in cases of the delta variant of COVID-19 in France and Germany. In response the Opponent noted that during the actual week of the hearing, flights between Munich and Paris had been available. The Opponent also noted that the Patentee’s representative had, in fact, attended the EPO premises for a different case only a few days before for the ViCo hearing for T 1197/18.
However, the Board of Appeal in the case (3.2.05) did not agree with the Opponent’s narrow interpretation of the EBA order in G/21 of what constituted “a state of general emergency impairing the parties’ possibilities to attend in-person oral proceedings at the EPO premises”. The Board found that “impaired” did not require in-person attendance to be impossible, merely that a party’s ability to attend was “compromised”. As such, the Board found that the Opponent’s argument, that there had been flights the patentee could have taken, to be irrelevant (r. 1.2). What mattered was that the Patentee had faced difficulties in attending and that the Opponent had failed to show that these difficulties were not real.
Germany has finally ratified the Unified Patent Court Agreement, its Constitutional Court having rejected two applications for a preliminary injunction to prevent ratification. This removes a significant hurdle to the commencement of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) system but that is not to say that it will start any time soon. The UPC preparatory committee, which consists of representatives the countries which signed the UPC Agreement back in 2013, estimates that the UPC will start operating in mid-2022. It is certainly unlikely that the UPC will start its operations before then but it may well be later, perhaps much later, as there remain some practical and legal hurdles to overcome.
In a recent announcement, the Preparatory Committee for the Unified Patent Court set out an expected timeline for the start of the Unified Patent Court (UPC), which is expected to be mid-2022. The first step will be Germany’s ratification of the Protocol on the Provisional Application of the UPC Agreement (PAP – protocol). Since the German federal president has signed the ratification bill which was promulgated on 12 August 2021, the final step required for the UPC to come into existence is for two other member states to ratify the PAP-protocol and then for Germany to deposit its instrument of ratification. The PAP is the final phase of the UPC and once it enters into force, other practical aspects such as budget and IT systems will need to be completed. This is all part of the preparatory work, which once considered to be in a fit state, will allow the UPC to start.
Counsel from AstraZeneca and other pharma sources say uncertainties loom around how China’s three-month-old patent linkage system will work
Lubby’s US9750284 covers a vape-pen (“personal vaporizer”). Lubby sued Henry Chung for patent infringement and won at trial with a jury verdict of almost $1 million. On appeal though the Federal Circuit has reversed-in-part — holding that the pre-suit damages were not available under 35 U.S.C. § 287.
In general, the patent laws bar a remedy for any infringement that occurred more than six years prior to the filing of the lawsuit. “[N]o recovery shall be had for any infringement committed more than six years prior to the filing of the complaint or counterclaim for infringement in the action.” 35 U.S.C. § 286. Back damages are further limited in by the patent marking statute of Section 287. That provision calls for a patentee to to mark any “patented article” that it sells or licenses-for-sale with the patent number. If the patentee sells/licenses-to-sell a product covered by the patent without so marking, then back damages can only be recovered for infringement after the infringer is “notified of the infringement and continues to infringe thereafter.” Id.; See also 35 U.S.C. § 287(a) (“Filing of an action for infringement shall constitute . . . notice.”).
Lawyers at five firms say having themes and arguing claim constructions can help convince the US court to overturn board edicts
Under EU design law, the ‘informed user’ is the standard on the basis of which it examines both the validity and the infringement of a design. Under art. 10 of Design Regulation 6/2002, the scope of the protection conferred by a Community design shall extend to ‘any design which does not produce on the informed user a different overall impression’. Regulation 6/2002 does not define, however, what an ‘informed user’ is.
It was, therefore, probably only a matter of time until construction of this term would reach the CJEU. In paras. 53 to 59 of PepsiCO, the CJEU provided an extensive definition of ‘informed user’.
[...]
Here, the German court first introduced what has become a basic concept of EU design law: the informed user is placed between the average consumer from trade mark law and the person skilled in the art from patent law. This approach was later set in stone in para. 53 of the PepsiCo ruling. However, some other aspects from German design law jurisprudence (such as the informed user’s presumed style and taste) were not adopted by EU judiciary. Coming back to the German national case, the court concluded that the defendant’s coaster infringed the plaintiff’s rights. This ruling was later confirmed by the German Federal Court of Justice in I ZR 71/08.
Synchronizing music with visual media output, such as films, television shows, advertisements, video games, accompanying websites and movies, is widespread.
[...]
These words kept recurring to this Kat as he found himself increasingly occupied with home-cleaning chores during the pandemic. And with it, this Kat began to ponder: what music would make the best companion for mopping the floor? “Whistling” may have been good enough for Snow White and her friends, but not for this Kat. Active search, and trial and error, of appropriate music, ensued. While still (probably, always) a work in progress, here are this Kat’s current two favorites for the perfect music.
1. Boléro – Music set for dance should be the most fertile of all sources since it is all about putting music and movement into sync with each other. And no piece of music does this better than Boléro, composed by Maurice Ravel in 1928 on commission from the Russian ballerina, Ida Rubinstein. Boléro gives full expression to Ravel’s preoccupation with the styling of dance movements.
When it is brought to bear on the pail, mop, and broom, what this Kat likes so much is the simple, yet hypnotic (even slightly edgy) melody, progressively performed by the orchestra’s various instrumental sections. One finds himself literally brandishing the mop in sync with the melody.
Guardia di Finanza, the Italian police unit tasked with financial crimes, says it has reported 240 subscribers of pirate IPTV services to the prosecutor’s office for further action. According to GdF, the suspects – most of which live in a single region of Italy – were identified after the authorities targeted a reseller of unlicensed streaming packages.
The movie industry’s “Piracy it’s a crime” video is, without doubt, the most iconic anti-piracy PSA ever made. The video became the inspiration for countless memes and satire. The once-official piracyisacrime.com campaign site shut down years ago but, this week, the domain started linking to the IT Crowd parody.
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