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Posted in News Roundup at 10:16 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers
We Take a look at the Upcoming MakuluLinux Shift Beta 2 which is Due soon, Changes, Fixes and new Features… Enjoy the Video
On this episode of This Week in Linux, OBS Vs Streamlabs, APT 2.3.12 Released (“LTT Patch”), Steam for Linux Client Updated, Lakka 3.6 Released, Mesa 21.3 3D Library Released, Ubuntu Touch OTA-20 Released, Canonical’s New Approach to Documentation, KDE Plasma Getting Overview in 5.24, Google GNews & Drama. All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!
The RCS revision control system and Ruby.
Back in September we were first to report on Intel developing “Software Defined Silicon” support for being able to activate extra licensed hardware features not otherwise exposed. Intel hasn’t talked about the controversial feature in terms of product plans but this weekend they posted a new revision of this Intel “SDSi” Linux driver.
Intel Software Defined Silicon “SDSi” is about being able to securely activate additional features of the processor’s silicon that won’t otherwise by exposed out-of-the-box. This is likely with Intel Xeon processors in mind where Intel could offer additional features as an up-charge for those wanting to opt-in to extra features like say theoretically AVX-512 or AMX but without that license the feature wouldn’t be exposed even with being baked into the processor. A decade ago Intel tried a similar concept with the “Intel Upgrade Service” that if paying for an activation code could allow additional cache to be exposed, higher clock frequencies, and/or Hyper Threading for select processors.
A set of more than two dozen patches by Google engineer Sean Christopherson overhauls KVM’s x86/x86_64 TDP MMU zapping and flushing code.
The focus of the work is to help reduce the number of TLB flushes while the code is cleaned up in the process too.
7-Zip is a open source file archiver with a high compression ratio. The program supports 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP, WIM, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR, Z. Most of the source code is under the GNU LGPL license. The unRAR code is under a mixed license: GNU LGPL + unRAR restrictions. Check license information here: 7-Zip license.
Redis is an in-memory data structure store, used as a distributed, in-memory key–value database, cache and message broker, with optional durability. Redis supports different kinds of abstract data structures, such as strings, lists, maps, sets, sorted sets, HyperLogLogs, bitmaps, streams, and spatial indices.
In this tutorial we are going to learn how to install Redis 6 on Debian 11.
If you are using minimal server Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy JellyFish or Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fosaa, then you can install GNOME desktop environment using command line terminal.
GNOME is the popular Linux desktop environment published under the GNU – GPL, and LGPL. It is simple, user-friendly, and accessible. The desktop and applications are translated into a variety of languages. The programs are based on the GTK + graphics library.
With Ubuntu 22.04, GNOME 3 is set as the default desktop environment in standard GUI Dekstop, however, if you have installed minimal CLI version or any other Ubuntu flavor but now want to get default/minimal/vanilla user interface without reinstalling existing Ubuntu Linux again then here is a tutorial.
There are many applications you can use for writing articles, notes, writing slides, making web pages, etc. you can use LaTex, HTML, XML, AsciiDoc, etc., for these purposes. Each of them has its own pros and cons. Among all of these, AsciiDoc is quite different from all others and has its own unique features. For Linux users, AsciiDoc is also available. AsciiDoc in Linux needs some special attention to learn, and to fulfill that is the goal of this post.
AsciiDoc is lightweight and way handier than other writing applications. You can put your concentration on a single point, i.e., writing content with it. It won’t distract your concentration with redundant features. To learn about AsciiDoc in great detail, stick to this post till the end. Happy learning!
Python is one of the most popular high-level languages, focusing on high-level and object-oriented applications from simple scrips to complex machine learning algorithms. Python is famous for its simple, easy-to-learn syntax, emphasizes readability, and reduces program maintenance costs and more straightforward conversion to newer releases. Python supports modules and packages. One of the many is the popular PIP package manager.
In this tutorial, I will show you how to upgrade your Linux kernel to the latest version.
But first, what is Linux Kernel? Linux Kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking Unix-like operating system. It is the main component of a Linux operating system and is the core interface between the computer’s hardware and its processes. It makes communication possible between computer hardware and processes running on it and it manages resources effectively.
BleachBit is a free and open-source disk space cleaning software and Bleachbit is a good alternative to CCleaner and supports Multi-platform (ie) Linux and Windows.
With BleachBit you can free cache, delete cookies, clear browser history, delete logs, and discard the junk, It includes advanced features like shredding files to prevent recovery. wiping free disk space to hide traces of files deleted by other applications and makes firefox faster.
This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install BleachBit 4.2.2 in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10, Debian 10, Rocky Linux 8, CentOS 7, Fedora 37, and Linux Mint 20.1
RPM Fusion is a repository of add-on packages for Rocky Linux and EL+EPEL that a group of community volunteers maintains. RPM Fusion is not a standalone repository but an extension of Rocky Linux’s default packages that could not be included due to Rocky Linux being bound by the same legal restrictions as Red Hat.
The RPM Fusion repository comes in two flavors, Free and Non-Free. The free repository contains a free version of the software that is open source and non-free, which have mostly almost all free software but are closed source and mainly proprietary.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install RPM Fusion on your Rocky Linux 8 operating system.
We give you a preview of the new KDE Plasma Overview Effect. Here’s how it looks, and our opinion around it.
ZombieTrackerGPS is a KDE native PIM application satisfying the same purpose as Garmin’s BaseCamp software, which unfortunately does not run on Linux. It’s a professional quality application with goal to fill a hole in the open source ecosystem and provide an alternative to mainstream software business models which monetize your data.
It’s important to note that privacy of your data is a central design goal in ZTGPS Linux fitness tracker. All program data resides on your local disk.
The software is written for the KDE desktop, but will work on other desktops if the KDE and Qt libraries are available. ZTGPS features local data storage, advanced sorting and query capabilities to let you see and manage your data, and a highly customizable interface to put you in control.
A new Flatseal release is out [...] Starting with the visuals, @BrainBlasted replaced the custom widgets, used in the applications list, for proper libhandy’s widgets. Plus, he fixed a small styling detail to make applications icons look sharper!
I personally won’t use Pop!_OS because I detest GNOME, but I have to admit, it’s a really attractive OS, with some good features under the hood, a minimalist approach in the sense of bloat, and being based of Ubuntu you can expect plenty of easy to find support. If all of this sounds good, I strongly recommend you check out this distribution, you may love it!
Gluster 10 was released this past week as the open-source scalable/distributed network file-system led by Red Hat.
The leading change with this release is a “major performance improvement” in the area of 20% faster for small files along with large files testing in a controlled lab environment. More details on this Gluster 10 performance work and some of the numbers via this ticket.
The Free Software Fellowship recently published evidence of the Albanian gangmaster and Mozilla Tech Speaker recruiting and/or grooming teenage girls in a hackerspace.
In 2019, when Dr Richard Stallman commented privately on the Epstein affair at MIT, his words were twisted beyond recognition and used as an excuse for a lynch mob to bully him into resigning.
Yet what we see in Albania is far worse. It is not merely discussion about underage girls: if you hang around there long enough, it is very likely you will meet some of these women.
These situations are inevitable in developing countries. Nonetheless, we have made the discovery that Elio Qoshi is now been employed by Mark Shuttleworth at Canonical Ltd (Ubuntu).
Justin Flory, a UNICEF employee affiliated with Red Hat, has recently commenced living in Tirana, Albania, as noted on his blog.
He originally stated the location on his blog and it is captured by Archive.org, the Way Back Machine from July up to October 2021.
On 11 October 2021, the UN’s International Day of the Girl Child, Fellowship published evidence of underage girls in the Tirana hackerspace. Flory has removed references to Tirana and Albania from the page, it is missing from the live version of his page today.
UNICEF, underage girls, Albania In this photo, we can see Justin Flory lying down. On the left is Elio Qoshi, the subject of outrage about grooming an underage girlfriend for Outreachy. Immediately behind Flory’s head, we see a woman who was shortlisted for the Red Hat women in open source award.
Earlier this month, I received a Sonoff ZBBridge Zigbee gateway, a motion sensor, and a Sonoff T2 wireless switch in order to set up everything to work as a motion activated light using Zigbee and WiFi through the eWelink Android app and cloud service. You can check out the first post to have a closer look at the hardware and accessories.
We’ve now had time to configure everything and will report the results of the project in this post. The idea is basically to detect motion with the Zigbee sensor, which then transmits the info through the gateway, and the T2 switch is controlled by the eWelink cloud.
Last time around, I thought I had a switch with a neutral wire at home, but I did not check in detail enough, and I’ve been unable to use it.
The T700 project is a drop-in replacement motherboard for the TP T60 and T61 series of laptops. This consists of an aftermarket motherboard not produced by L that fits in the chassis with little to no modifications necessary.
The goal is to recreate the TP experience as much as possible, while incorporating the latest CPUs and technology. As the motherboard is not from L, it will require quite a bit of hands-on from the user to get the best experience out of the machine. It will be as stable as any other computer motherboard but will not have original TP software support and features.
The holiday season is upon us once again, and this year I decided to celebrate in an open source way. Like a particular famous holiday busybody, I have a long list (and I do intend to check it twice) of holiday tasks: create a greeting card (with addressed envelopers) to send to family and friends, make a photo montage or video to a suitably festive song, and decorate my virtual office. There are plenty of open source applications and resources making my job easier. Here’s what I use.
Of the many challenges faced by open-source developers, among the most daunting are some that other programmers scarcely ever think about. And that’s because most programmers work in settings where “other people” attend to such matters—people who work in the legal department or human resources, for example. But when there aren’t any people like that to turn to, what then?
Schleswig-Holstein, a state in Germany with a population of around 3 million people, has announced plans to switch completely to open-source software.
The north-German state of Schleswig-Holstein plans to switch to open source software…” reports Mike Saunders from LibreOffice.
“By the end of 2026, Microsoft Office is to be replaced by LibreOffice on all 25,000 computers used by civil servants and employees (including teachers), and the Windows operating system is to be replaced by GNU/Linux.”
For years LLVM has been working on a massive relicensing of its code-base but that effort is still ongoing as they are still trying to track down some past contributors to collect their sign-offs on the change.
LLVM is seeking help in trying to track down some past individual contributors and organizations so they can proceed with their relicensing of the massive code-base. As a reminder, they are working to move from the University of Illinois / NCSA Open-Source Library (similar to the MIT/X11 and 3-clause BSD) and over to Apache 2.0 license with an LLVM Exception. The “LLVM Exception” to Apache 2.0 is for code compiled by LLVM to not impose the same redistribution conditions and when pairing LLVM code with GPLv2 code the user can opt for the indemnity provision.
[Chase’s] post titled “How to Grow Sodium Chloride Crystals at Home” might as well be called “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Salt Crystals (but Were Afraid to Ask).” We aren’t sure what the purpose of having transparent NaCl crystals are, but we have to admit, they look awfully cool.
Sodium chloride, of course, is just ordinary table salt. If the post were simply about growing random ugly crystals, we’d probably have passed over it. But these crystals — some of them pretty large — look like artisan pieces of glasswork. [Chase] reports that growing crystals looks easy, but growing attractive crystals can be hard because of temperature, dust, and other factors.
You probably have most of what you need. Table salt that doesn’t include iodine, a post, a spoon, a funnel, filter paper, and some containers. You’ll probably want tweezers, too. The cooling rate seems to be very important. There are pictures of what perfect seed crystals look like and what happens when the crystals form too fast. Quite a difference! Once you find a perfectly square and transparent seed crystal, you can use it to make bigger ones.
Maryanne Dever, pro vice-chancellor of education and digital at the Australian National University, said many institutions were still calculating teaching workload in terms of actual contact hours with students, something that failed to capture the total effort needed, especially in terms of digital content.
Professor Dever was speaking during a session on the future of online learning at THE’s Teaching Excellence Summit, which also heard from Diana Laurillard, professor of learning with digital technologies at the UCL Institute of Education.
MediaTek has unveiled a new flagship SoC for the next generation of premium big-screen devices. The Pentonic 2000 can support resolutions of up to 8K and refresh rates of 120Hz. It can also allow OEMs to pack specs such as AV1 support, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos into their upcoming top-end TVs.
Pentonic 2000 is the first commercial 8K TV chip with Versatile Video Coding (VVC) H.266 media support, which offers improved compression efficiency – something that is essential for today’s streaming era. Pentonic 2000 supports Dolby’s latest imaging and audio technologies to provide the ultimate cinematic experiences in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. Additionally, the chip supports AV1 for streaming services and all global TV broadcast standards including the latest ATSC 3.0.
These days, pedometers are integrated into just about every smartwatch on the market, and some of the dumber ones too. Tracking step counts has become a global pastime, and at times, a competitive one. However, any such competition can easily be gamed, as demonstrated by [Luc Volders].
Generally, all it takes to fool a basic pedometer is a gentle rhythmic jiggling motion of some sort. Cheaper devices will even register steps with little more than vague shaking.
But intentional or not, standard or not, the problem with star scores is there’s no way to tell whether they’re legitimate. We don’t know if someone pressed a five-star button because they loved the app, or thought they were rating the podcast itself, or just wanted to close the prompt as quickly as possible. We don’t know if Apple is prompting everyone, or just its most dedicated fans, or some other algorithmic subset that just happened to give it an advantage. Some bad actors reportedly even buy star scores for their egregious App Store scams, and it’s impossible for most App Store shoppers to tell. We’ve even seen an iOS app that refuses to open unless you give it a good score.
The package gives $100 million to CISA for cybersecurity risk mitigation issues, $100 million for cybersecurity workforce and training, $50 million for moving to a secure cloud architecture, and a further $50 million to research and develop strategies to secure industrial control systems.
The bill also designates $35 million for CISA to provide funding to the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), $15 million for an effort to train teachers on cybersecurity, and $50 million for CISA’s CyberSentry program, which monitors the networks of critical infrastructure groups for threats.
Despite the efforts put by Google to block malware-laced Android apps entering the Play Store, bad actors are still managing to slip through the security screening to prey on naive users. Tatyana Shishkova, Android Malware expert at Kaspersky has detected more than a dozen malicious Android apps with Joker trojan on Play Store. She has been sharing the links of the apps on Twitter and most of them have been taken down from Play Store.
Joker malware-based apps are notorious for spying on victims. Once installed on the phone, they are capable of tracking apps such as the default Messages app on the phone. They can read text messages and steal contact lists, personal photos, financial details, or trade secrets and send them to hackers in remote locations. All that while, victims never know what is happening on their devices.
Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top fundraiser for former President Donald Trump and the girlfriend of his son Donald Trump Jr., boasted to a GOP operative that she had raised $3 million for the rally that helped fuel the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
On Wednesday, October 20, I joined “Vrede Scheppen,” “Create Peace,” about 25 peace activists from the Netherlands, Germany and Austria at the airbase at Volkel, Netherlands, making a plea for an end to nuclear weapons. This base is home to two Dutch F16 fighter wings and the United States Air Force 703rd Munitions Support Squadron. In violation of international and Dutch law and part of a “sharing agreement,” the U.S. Air Force maintains 15-20 B61 nuclear bombs there and in violation of the same laws, the Dutch military stands ready for the order to deliver those bombs.
The small but steadily growing U.S. footprint—now nearly twice as big as last year—could represent increased concern in the White House and the Pentagon over the island’s fate. While most military officials don’t believe China has made the decision to invade just yet, as Beijing builds up its amphibious forces and hypersonic missiles to potentially soften up Taiwan’s defenses, the temperature has continued to rise, especially after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s virtual coronation in a major party plenum this month. Chinese officials are increasingly outspoken about restoring what they see as a renegade province—by any measure.
“(The Belarusians) were bringing more migrants to the place where there was a forced attempt to cross,” Michalska said. “At the beginning there were 100 people, but then the Belarusian side brought more people in trucks. Then there were 500 people.”
When the migrants tried to cross the border, Belarusian troops blinded Polish guards with lasers, she told a news conference. Some migrants had thrown logs and four guards sustained minor injuries.
EU officials have accused Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko of “instrumentalizing” migration in retaliation for sanctions imposed on his regime following a violent domestic crackdown on protesters, media workers, and dissidents that began last summer following flawed presidential elections and continues to this day. Videos purportedly showing Belarusian security officials pushing migrants across the border and cutting border fences have been cited as evidence of state involvement—as have reports of state-owned tourist operators enticing migrants to Minsk and testimonies of security officials transporting them to border areas. Lukashenko has denied this but also said he would not take action to prevent migrants from entering the European Union.
Moreover, Article 24(2) of the Polish-Belarusian Agreement imposes an obligation on the parties to cooperate in the fight against “illegal immigration.” Though not defined, the notion of “illegal immigration” surely includes situations where persons who are not nationals of the other party or ordinarily resident in its territory are crossing the border in ways that does not comply with the conditions imposed for lawful entry. Thus, by facilitating and supporting an activity it has agreed to repress, that is the unlawful crossing of its border with Poland, Belarus is violating the Polish-Belarusian Agreement.
Sams is Cayuse and Walla Walla and a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, with ties to the Yankton Sioux and Cocopah Peoples. He served in the Navy as an intelligence specialist before working in natural resource and conservation management.
Increasing the development and diffusion of climate change mitigation technologies on a global scale is critical to reaching net-zero emissions. We have analysed over a quarter of a million high-value inventions in all major climate change mitigation technologies patented from 1995 to 2017 by inventors located in 170 countries. Our analysis shows an annual growth rate of 10% from 1995 to 2012 in these high-value inventions. Yet, from 2013 to 2017, the growth rate of these inventions fell by around 6% annually, likely driven by declining fossil fuel prices, low carbon prices and increasing technological maturity for some technologies, such as solar photovoltaics. Invention has remained highly concentrated geographically over the past decade, with inventors in Germany, Japan and the United States accounting for more than half of global inventions, and the top ten countries for almost 90%. Except for inventors in China, most middle-income economies have not caught up and remain less specialized in low-carbon technologies than high-income economies.
With President Joe Biden reportedly nearing a decision on his pick to head the Federal Reserve, progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups are ramping up their criticism of the central bank’s current chair over his refusal to treat the climate crisis as a systemic threat.
“The Fed’s pandemic bailouts under Jerome Powell kept the fossil fuel industry afloat.”
The COP26 world climate summit in Glasgow concluded last weekend with no agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions at the level scientists pleaded for when they declared a Code Red for the planet. HMM’s Sina Basila Hickey produced this segment from the Nov. 6 Global Day of Action for Climate Justice March in Albany with Howie Hawkins, , co-founder of the US Green Party and the party’s 2020 presidential nominee, discussing an ecosocialist ‘Green New Deal’. image by Jon Flanders
The EU’s mobility strategy calls for making all scheduled travel of 500km (310 miles) or less carbon-neutral by 2030. The most obvious way to do that is with electric passenger trains. Even accounting for use of fossil fuels in power generation, trains average about one-fifth the greenhouse-gas emissions per passenger-kilometre of aeroplanes and less than half that of buses, says the European Environment Agency.
Schneider was arrested just beyond the Luxembourgish border in France in April this year. The arrest was made by order of the US American FBI, which investigated a case of cryptocurrency fraud around “OneCoin”, and in which Schneider was allegedly involved.
Major western energy companies have a vested interest in continued energy cooperation with Russia, as well as the current German government, and the UK government. As long as Russia continues to possess the extent of control that it already has over the world’s natural energy resources, protests will fall on deaf ears.
Belarus has announced unscheduled maintenance of the “Friendship” pipeline transporting oil from Russia via Belarus to a number of EU countries, RT news agency reported. According to Belarus, the repair will take approximately three days.
Mt. Gox is a Tokyo-based [cryptocurrency] exchange, founded in 2010, and currently the world’s biggest cryptocurrency platform in 2014. Back then it was handling more than 70 percent of all Bitcoin transactions across the globe, until it was hacked. More than 850 thousand BTC were stolen by hackers, of which around 750 thousand or 80 per cent of Bitcoins belonged to customers. It was eventually closed in 2014, although some of the holdings were found later. Any payout is expected to be a fraction of the original amounts held by creditors, after taking in account the lost coins.
Fifty years ago the authors of the groundbreaking book The Limits to Growth showed that, in any of a series of computer-generated scenarios, world economic growth would end sometime during the 21st century. Using simple math and logic, they pointed out that growth in any material input or output cannot continue indefinitely within a finite system.
The headline chosen for Harvard economist Jason Furman’s November 15 commentary in the Wall Street Journal was both apt and sad. It was apt, because it repurposed then-President Gerald Ford’s “Whip Inflation Now” slogan from 1974, and sad because Furman’s advice comes straight from that era—and because his prescriptions could reprise the economic and political disasters of those years.
Wisconsin Republicans, at the urging of Sen. Ron Johnson, are pushing to unilaterally seize control over federal elections in the battleground state, an effort that observers warned is part of the GOP’s multi-pronged assault on democracy in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s defeat last year.
The New York Times reported Friday that the state Republican Party is taking “direct aim” at the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC), an agency that the GOP established six years ago. According to the Times, “The onslaught picked up late last month after a long-awaited report on the 2020 results that was ordered by Republican state legislators found no evidence of fraud but made dozens of suggestions for the election commission and the GOP-led Legislature, fueling Republican demands for more control of elections.”
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is refusing to budge from her vow to uphold the archaic legislative filibuster as congressional Democrats and the White House attempt to chart a path forward for their faltering voting rights agenda amid the GOP’s nationwide—and intensifying—assault on the franchise.
In recent months, Senate Republicans have used the 60-vote filibuster rule to block debate on a sweeping pro-democracy bill known as the For the People Act; Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) compromise measure, the Freedom to Vote Act; and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that were gutted by the Supreme Court.
The Czech Pirate party has approved the coalition agreement signed more than a week ago between the SPOLU coalition (Civic Democrats, Christian Democrats and TOP09) that came first in the October general elections and the coalition of Pirates and STAN (Mayors and Independents).
In their internal online vote on creating a new government, a total of 82.1% of all voting Pirate members were in favour of the Pirate´s participation in a new centre-right government. For the agreement to be approved, the left liberal Pirate party needed at least 60% of all votes. All other coalition parties approved the coalition agreement last week.
In the European Union, where lawmakers are debating two vast pieces of tech legislation, “some proposals say algorithms should prioritise authoritative sources of information, and others say they should prioritise diverse sources”, Keller noted.
In many ways, we’re still living with the consequences of Iran-Contra. There has been a similar lack of accountability for the grave abuses of subsequent administrations, including the torture of detainees during George W. Bush’s “war on terror” and President Donald Trump’s obstruction of justice in the federal probe into Russia’s election interference. Presidential overreach on foreign policy is the norm in U.S. politics, on both sides of the aisle, and meddling in other countries is simply taken for granted by much of the public.
So what set this chain of events in motion? We take a look back at the history.
Facebook is offering to pay musicians and other creators “$10,000 to $50,000 per session on its five-month-old live audio product, plus a fee for guests of $10,000 or more”, the report mentioned.
The social network wants creators to host four to six sessions at least 30 minutes in length.
Live Audio Rooms was launched in the US in June.
Germany may at first have been naive in some areas of cooperation with China, but should not sever all connections in reaction to growing tensions, Chancellor Angela Merkel has told Reuters.
Merkel’s strategy of engagement has seen China become Germany’s top trading partner during her 16 years in office, and has shaped Europe’s stance on Asia’s rising superpower, even amid concerns about unfair competition and industrial espionage.
“Maybe initially we were rather too naive in our approach to some cooperation partnerships,” Merkel said in an interview. “These days we look more closely, and rightly so.”
The social network has been under intense scrutiny in recent years for how its algorithms promote content.
Now, it says it is testing controls to “adjust people’s ranking preferences” and customise the feed.
Where is Peng Shuai? The Chinese tennis star has gone missing after publicly accusing China’s former vice premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault earlier this month. The three-time Olympian and onetime top-ranked tennis star in doubles has not been seen since.
The White House urged China to “provide independent, verifiable proof” of Ms Peng’s whereabouts and safety.
The 35-year-old doubles Grand Slam winner accused China’s ex-vice-premier of sexual assault two weeks ago.
The disappearance of one of China’s top tennis players has brought the sport into a geopolitical firestorm. Peng Shuai, formerly the world No. 1 in doubles, hasn’t been seen in public since she accused a senior Chinese Communist Party official of sexual assault nearly three weeks ago. In recent days, the international tennis community—including the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), the sport’s main organizing body—has rallied to her cause, along with seemingly almost every other pro tennis player.
In late July, as he introduced a groundbreaking proposal for a 32-hour work week to Congress, Rep. Mark Takano (D‑Calif.) declared Americans should have “more time to live their lives, and not just work.” With workers returning to the job as certain Covid-19 restrictions were lifted, Takano noted many people will want to work fewer hours instead of going back to “normal.”
The UK Government is considering the shape of the country’s future regime for the ‘exhaustion’ of intellectual property rights.
Why do I need to know this? Because the regime settled upon will govern rules on parallel imports of genuine goods into the UK – what genuine goods can be imported into the UK and from where. If your business is involved in or interested in the movement into the UK of goods protected by a trademark or a patent, then you need to understand the law on ‘exhaustion’ of intellectual property in the UK.
What do I need to know? You need to know what the law in the UK is now, and how it may change before too long. So we explain below.
Apple’s concerns are all about the practical aspects of collecting its commission–there’s no reason to believe Apple would not want to get paid even on payments made after users click on external links presented by an iOS app.
Anybody dreaming of a “30 percent less” option in connection with external links is barking up the wrong tree. The app tax will be imposed one way or the other. Collection may be more cumbersome, but Apple’s position is that it’s entitled to its commission and that’s what even the Epic Games v. Apple judgment says.
The consolation prize that is the Epic Games v. Apple injunction is not a promising avenue. Developers need a breakthrough, but it will have to happen on other fronts–such as in the legislative arena. It’s truly impressive that Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney and the executive director of the Coalition for App Fairness (which Epic co-founded) were able to discuss mobile app store issues at a Korean event (“The Global Conference for Mobile Application Ecosystem Fairness”) with high-ranking politicians from Korea, Europe (French Secretary of State for Digital Affairs Cédric O, who happens to be half-Korean), and the United States (Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn sent a video message). Here’s an English-language report by a Korean newspaper on that event.
Google sent a letter to the Department of Justice Friday requesting that the department examine whether newly confirmed antitrust division head Jonathan Kanter, who has been a vocal critic of the search giant, should be recused from federal antitrust investigations into Google. In his new role, Kanter will lead the department’s lawsuit against Google alleging it has a monopoly in the search and advertising markets.
Kanter has represented a number of companies in motions against Google, which the search giant argues should disqualify him. Most notably, Kanter represented Microsoft in a motion arguing against Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, which was eventually approved by regulators and was closed in 2008.
1. The established approach of applying the due-care criterion to the question of removal of the cause of non-compliance under Rule 136 EPC leads to an additional admissibility requirement, by expanding the scope of the substantive due-care criterion, which has no basis in the EPC.
In the European dispute over Eli Lilly’s chemotherapy drug pemetrexed, the original drug manufacturer made headlines in January of this year in the proceedings against Zentiva in Paris. Not only did the first instance court cause a stir when it awarded provisional damages, but the amount of €4 million euros was also unprecedentedly high. The Court of Appeal has now overturned this ruling. The court pointed out that potential damages should be dealt with in the proceedings on the merits. Furthermore, the second-instance court criticised Eli Lilly’s economic arguments for being insufficiently comprehensive.
For only the second time in more than a year, I went to the Landgericht München I (Munich I Regional Court) today. The case itself–Solas OLED v. Samsung Electronics (case no. 44 O 9702/21)–lacks everything that a patent infringement action needs in order to be taken seriously. If it raises any interesting question at all, it’s whether Google is supporting Samsung against a case that targets the Android operating system. I’ll get to that later. I’d have attended that hearing even if the case had been outside of my industry focus. All I wanted to see the court’s third patent litigation division’s premiere session. Icing on the cake: I got to see a new courtroom, too.
[...]
In the middle, you see Presiding Judge Dr. Georg Werner. To his right (from the beholder’s angle), his deputy, Judge Dr. Anne-Kristin Fricke (who brings not only patent but also significant competition law expertise to the table and is the rapporteur on today’s case). To his left, Judge Dr. Franziska Greiner-Wittner.
Don’t infer from the medieval-looking banner behind the judges that this courtroom (Lenbachplatz building, room 101) is old-fashioned. It used to be a library, but has recently been transfomed into a courtroom–and with a view to videoconferencing capabilities, it presumably has better technical equipment than any other courtroom in Munich.
National German law introduces simultaneous protection by a UP or a classic EP patent on the one hand and a national DE Patent on the other hand
On the occasion of the expected start of the UPC next year, German national law introduces the possibility of simultaneous protection by two patents valid in Germany. Thereby it will be possible to enforce and maintain in Germany a national DE patent next to (ie simultaneously with) a classic EP patent validated in Germany or a UP patent.
UKIPO CEO Tim Moss speaks to Managing IP about moving past Brexit, and champions the relevance of IP in government policy
UKIPO CEO Tim Moss spoke with Managing IP this week about his experience managing Brexit.
“We had this small task on December 31 last year of creating two million rights overnight,” says Moss.
“The fact that it went so smoothly, even to the point that it happened in the background and people almost didn’t notice it, it’s testament to the fantastic work the team has done.
“It’s defined the organisation, and probably been the biggest single issue in my time at the office.”
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has announced that he won’t be seeking re-election to the Senate for a ninth term. First elected in 1974, Senator Leahy has spent nearly 50 years in the Senate, focused on a wide variety of issues. Intellectual property is one of those issues, and it’s an issue where he’s been a leader in the Senate, addressing issues in patent, copyright, and trademark law, and even creating the semiconductor mask protection system. (He also helped out with a couple Batman movies in between.)
But perhaps most importantly, Senator Leahy sponsored the most significant reform of the patent system in the past 50 years—the bill bearing his name, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. The AIA created the post-grant review system, including inter partes review, updated litigation rules to limit the ability of non-practicing entities to engage in abusive litigation, changed the U.S. to a first-inventor-to-file system, and updated the law of prior art to reflect an increasingly global innovation environment.
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The PTAB implemented discretionary denials, among other changes that made it harder to access IPR and made IPR a more expensive and complex procedure. And, unsurprisingly, the AIA’s benefits began to reverse—mostly to the benefit of NPEs.
Moderna and the National Institutes of Health are in a bitter dispute over who deserves credit for inventing the central component of the company’s powerful coronavirus vaccine, a conflict that has broad implications for the vaccine’s long-term distribution and billions of dollars in future profits.
The vaccine grew out of a four-year collaboration between Moderna and the N.I.H., the government’s biomedical research agency — a partnership that was widely hailed when the shot was found to be highly effective. A year ago this month, the government called it the “N.I.H.-Moderna Covid-19 vaccine.”
Four new mandamus orders from the Federal Circuit stemming from Judge Alan Albright’s court in Waco Texas.
Hymmen, a global digital printing systems provider specialized in flooring, is extending its ongoing patent infringement litigation against Barberán with the addition of a third patent, EP 3 415 316 (DE), relating to aspects of digital embossing.
The company also said it is appealing an earlier, first instance decision, by Düsseldorf Regional Court rendered on the pending infringement case (case number 4b O 26/20) relating to its patent EP 3 109 056.
Hymmen is of the “strong opinion that all three of its patents are being infringed by Barberán” and will appeal the court’s first instance decision by the Court to dismiss the infringement claims on its patent EP 3109056 (DE), a company statement said.
On 9 July 2021, the Court of Milan issued a preliminary injunction (PI) prohibiting a generic company from selling everolimus for use in combination with an aromatase inhibitor in the treatment of hormone receptor positive breast tumours. The PI was issued on the basis of EP 3351246, which is one of the patents held by Novartis protecting the second and further medical uses of everolimus, a medicine initially approved for use in organ transplantation, and later found to be useful in the oncology setting for the treatment of solid tumors. The PI decision of first instance was later upheld in the appeal decision issued on 4 October 2021, shortly before the first instance hearing of the oppositions filed against the patent took place in the EPO.
The Court of Milan’s evaluation of the patent’s validity when deciding to grant and maintain the PI is in line with the views already expressed by the EPO’s Opposition Division in its preliminary opinion. And subsequently, at the end of the oral proceedings that took place over three days from 19-21 October 2021, the Opposition Division maintained the patent as granted by rejecting all grounds of invalidity raised by the nine opponents, including added subject matter, novelty, inventive step and sufficiency of disclosure (appeals pending). Similar arguments about validity of the patent have also been rejected in other national proceedings: once by the Dutch judge in the framework of preliminary injunction appeal proceedings (whereas proceedings in the merits are presently pending), and twice by the German court in Düsseldorf in the framework of first instance infringement proceedings on the merits (where appeals are pending).
Both the first instance and appeal decisions of the Court of Milan are noteworthy in many ways.
French ophthalmology company Nicox SA announced Wednesday that it was granted patent for blepharitis product candidate NCX 4251 in Europe.
The European Patent Office or EPO has issued patent EP 3,769,753, expiring in 2040 and covering the company’s product candidate in development for blepharitis, NCX 4251.
Following the order issued on 16 July 2021, the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) has now published its full written Decision in G 1/21. The procedural objections raised throughout the earlier part of the proceedings have been covered in a previous article, and so this article focuses on the opinion of the EBA on the status of oral proceedings by videoconference in the context of the European Patent Convention (EPC).
Although the EBA considered it necessary to restrict the referred question to proceedings before the Boards of Appeal, as opposed to departments of first instance, the Decision issued provides general guidance with respect to the circumstances under which oral proceedings by videoconference may be imposed on parties without their consent. The EBA acknowledged that in-person proceedings should be the ‘gold standard’ default, with videoconferencing able to provide a suitable alternative in some cases. The EBA also commented that the parties’ preferences (with good reason) should be given due consideration by a Board when deciding on the format of oral proceedings. Thus it seems that we can expect a return to the ‘old normal’, at least for Board of Appeal proceedings, following the current pandemic.
Apple is developing several technologies apart from smartphones, such as a VR headset as well as a car and now a new patent has revealed that the iPhone maker may be working on a drone.
The patents were first filed in May 2020 in Singapore, but made their way to the US in February and April and were awarded to Apple on November 11, reports Patently Apple.
The US Patent And Trademark Office has published two patent applications from Apple that relate to drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
The first application seems to cover the application and method of interaction between the UAV and a controller. It covers gadgets, systems, and methods for pairing the drone with a wireless remote controller.
The Federal Circuit continued its stringent (if misguided) application of the scope of subject matter eligibility by invalidating claims asserted in CardioNet, LLC v. InfoBionic, Inc.
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The Federal Circuit vacated the District Court’s non-infringement judgment and remanded for entry of judgment that the ’715 patent claims were invalid on subject matter eligibility grounds, in an opinion by Judge Lourie, joined by Judges Dyk and O’Malley. The Court applied the Supreme Court’s Mayo/Alice test (as it has grown under the Federal Circuit; see Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208, 217 (2014), and Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. 66, 70–73 (2012)) in reaching its invalidity conclusion. The opinion sets forth the District Court’s reasoning that, while in Step 1 of the Mayo/Alice test claim 20 is “directed to” an abstract idea (“filtering raw cardiogram data to optimize its output”), under Step 2 the claim recites “an inventive concept sufficient to transform the abstract idea into patent-eligible subject matter.” The basis for this conclusion is that the claim is “tied to a machine” and thus satisfies the “machine or transformation” test under Bilski v. Kappos. The Court agrees with regard to Step 1 reciting an abstract idea, which the Court characterizes as “the abstract idea of filtering patient heartbeat signals to increase accuracy.” This, “at bottom” according to the Court “requires only basic mathematical calculations, such as ‘de-compos[ing] a T wave into its constituent frequencies and multipl[ying] them by a filter frequency response.’” In this analysis the Court goes beyond what is claimed (an apparatus) and focuses on how the apparatus achieves its aims (thus avoiding the question of whether this is how the mathematical formula is applied (which was sufficient under Diamond v. Diehr to render a method claim patent-eligible), reminiscent of the Court’s troubling type of reasoning in American Axle & Mfg. v. Neapco Holdings LLC. The opinion, applying precedent across disciplines denigrates the inventiveness of the improvement in the art by cherry-picking Justice Thomas’s statement in Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 569 U.S. 576, 591 (2013), that “such calculations, even if ‘[g]roundbreaking,’ are still directed to an abstract idea.”
Chipmaker inks its first global patent licence deal just weeks after starting large-scale production of 3D NAND flash memory
After lengthy discussions and the active participation of stakeholders, the Hungarian Parliament on 9 November 2021, passed new legislation amending the Hungarian Patent Act (Act 33 of 1995 on the Protection of Inventions by Patent) that is changing the Hungarian patent litigation landscape as we know it.
The amendment touches on three main topics, such as (i) the Bolar-exemption, (ii) softening of the bifurcating system, and (iii) new provisions on preliminary injunctions. The expectation behind the amendment are faster court proceedings and increased clarity when it comes to compensation for damage suffered as a result of unjustified preliminary injunctions.
Party leader says Japan is out of step with other advanced economies in lacking a mechanism for stopping publication of patents related to national security
Acer Therapeutics Inc. and its collaboration partner, Relief Therapeutics Holding SA, said the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a new U.S. patent to Acer for certain claims related to ACER-001 sodium phenylbutyrate.
Acer said the patent covers pharmaceutical composition claims related to ACER-001′s taste-masked, multi-particulate dosage formulation for oral administration. The newly issued patent has an expiration date in 2036.
From family get togethers to work meetings, videoconferencing has become ubiquitous over the past eighteen months. While it has allowed us all to keep in touch during challenging times, after almost two years, many feel that videoconferences are no substitute for in-person meetings. The question of whether videoconference hearings are equivalent to in-person hearings was recently addressed by the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO). On October 28, 2021, the EPO issued a decision indicating that in some circumstances, oral proceedings by videoconference are an acceptable substitute that can be required without party consent. This decision may impact Canadian applicants in several ways, including through increased opportunity to directly participate in EPO examination, opposition, and appeal oral proceedings.
The Referral
On June 3, 2020, the parties to an opposition appeal over European patent No. 1609239 were summoned to oral proceedings before a Technical Board of Appeal. The respondent requested postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The oral proceedings were then rescheduled for February 8, 2021. Again, the respondent, supported by the appellant, asked for postponement, indicating that the case was not suitable for videoconference. When the Technical Board maintained the summons, the appellant then requested that the question of whether oral proceedings under Article 116 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) can be replaced by a videoconference without the consent of the parties be referred to the Enlarged Board of Appeal.
A push from the government and judiciary, not to mention blockchain’s inherent authentication capability, is helping China find innovative IP-legal solutions
PatentNext Summary: Sufficiency of disclosure for Artificial Intelligence (AI) inventions in the U.S. can be supported by expert testimony opining on the knowledge that one of ordinary skill in the art would have held based on the disclosure for the patent specification.
In an earlier article, we compared the sufficiency of disclosure for Artificial Intelligence (AI) patents in the U.S. and the European Patent Office (EPO). See A Tale of Two Jurisdictions: Sufficiency of Disclosure for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Patents in the U.S. and the EPO.
Rapid advances in artificial intelligence (“AI”) are unlocking enhanced capabilities for machine learning, data interpretation and innovation, whilst also increasingly becoming useful in our everyday lives. AI now plays a key role in drug discovery, the advertisements we see recommended to us online, route suggestions for online mapping platforms, and auto-generated digital content. Recently, this has raised questions for traditional thinking around intellectual property law, with particular implications for patent ownership and invention. The question is – could AI be capable of being considered an inventor?
On November 12, 2021, SynKloud Technologies filed a motion to dismiss its Federal Circuit appeal. Unified had won on all issues at the PTAB in IPR2019-01655, resulting in all claims of SynKloud’s U.S. Patent 9,098,526 being found unpatentable. SynKloud Technologies is a subsidiary of Ideahub, Inc. The ‘526 patent, directed to providing remote storage for wireless devices, had been asserted against Hewlett-Packard and Blu Products.
The Court of Appeal’s ruling in the DABUS case provided a small ray of light for AI inventorship, but the wider conversation is also beginning to shift
On November 15, 2021, Eighth Street Solutions filed a supplemental reply cancelling all claims of U.S. Patent 7,664,924, after the USPTO (on Oct. 5, 2021), issued a final office action rejecting all claims of the ‘924 patent. Eighth Street Solutions, LLC is an Endpoint IP entity. The ’924 patent is related to securing a computer system by selectively controlling write access to a data storage medium. The ’924 patent had been asserted against Sophos, Trend Micro, McAfee and Avast.
On November 9, 2021, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination against U.S. Patent 9,578,040, owned and asserted by Orbit Licensing, an IP Edge entity. The ’040 patent is generally directed to packet communications, including determining whether a service request is authorized or not. The ’040 patent has been asserted 10 times, including against the SPF protocol (an open standard of the IETF) of several companies such as EidosMedia, Red Hat, OnApp, Akamai, Tencent, Limelight Networks, Wowza Media, CodePen, Velocix, and The MathWorks.
Belarus has recently applied for “Lidski kvass” and “Lidskoe pivo/Lidskae piva” to be registered as PGIs in the EU. Kvass is a traditional fermented beverage, known since the Kievan Rus’, which is popular in many Central and Eastern European countries. “Pivo” and “piva” are Russian and Belarusian words for beer, while “Lidksi” stands for a district in northwest Belarus.
The EU systems foresees two options for a non-EU country seeking to register its geographical indications (GIs) in the EU: through a bilateral agreement (such as the one recently signed with China); or through a direct application.
Direct applications are filed by producers of non-EU GIs to the European Commission, either directly or through their national authorities. This procedure was first introduced through Council Regulation (EC) No 510/2006, after a WTO Panel found that the EU’s previous system limited the rights of non-EU applicants. Cambodia’s Kampot Pepper (PGI “Poivre de Kampot”) became the first foreign GI to be registered directly with the EU, though its registration was managed through an EU technical assistance project.
Kat friend Jan Jacobi reports on a recent case where only the intrepid dare tread—-trade mark exhaustion and market partitioning.
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Trademark proprietors are warned that the Van Doren Lifestyle judgement is not always on their side: they might be called upon to show with specificity, including by means of a sufficient paper trail, that exhaustion has not occurred.
This warning extends to the licensees and distributors that are part of an exclusive distribution system. Beware of the situation where you are called upon to refute a claim of exhaustion only to find out that the proprietor lacks (or may be unwilling to provide) the necessary evidence.
The Motion Picture Association has obtained permission to block dozens more pirate streaming and torrent domains in the UK. In parallel, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, of which the MPA is a key player, has quietly seized several domains that appear to have been connected to pirate IPTV operations.
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