● 05.23.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 23/05/2023: Python 3.12.0 Beta and EasyOS Kirkstone 5.3.1

Posted in News Roundup at 8:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Shows and Events

• Join guest host Rich Tabor and WordPress Playground innovator Adam Zielinski as they discuss the capabilities and promise of WP Playground in episode 56 of the WordPress Briefing. Stay tuned for your small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks.

• How to contribute and jump start your career in Free Software with the KDE Community

• Today I had the honor of delivering a virtual presentation with fellow KDE contributor Neofytos Kolokotronis at the University of Macedonia, the site of KDE’s 2023 Akademy conference.

• I’ve just booked travel for getting to Riga, Latvia for GUADEC 2023, and I thought I’d quickly write up my travel plans in case it saves someone else some time in planning travel.

• I am not flying, because planes are too polluting. Instead, I am taking the train to Lübeck in Germany, then an overnight ferry to Liepāja, and then a bus the following morning to Riga. It’s a bit slower, but means it’s a bit easier to get some hacking done, stretch my legs and move around, and not fund fossil fuel companies as much. I’ll get enough stopover time in Köln, Hamburg and Lübeck to quickly look round, and a night in Liepāja to see it.

• Overall the travel time is just over 2 days, with half of that spent on trains, and half on a ferry. By comparison, a flight is about 7 hours (5 hours flying, 2 hours faffing in airports) plus travel time to the airport.

Kernel Space

• New heuristic detects unknown concurrency bugs and unnecessary barriers to prevent data corruption and system crashes. The OFence tool outperforms existing software tools and has won best paper at EuroSys 2023.

Graphics Stack

• Hi all!

• This status update comes in a bit late because I was on leave last week. The highlight this month is the HDR hackfest, I’ve written a dedicated blog post about it. After the publication of that blog post, I’ve sent out an RFC to dri-devel.

• We’ve made some good progress on wlroots’ Vulkan renderer. Manuel Stoeckl has added support for an intermediate buffer for blending, which is required for non-8-bit output formats and for color management features. The renderer now has an optional extra rendering pass to run a shader after blending. This is currently used to encode color values to sRGB, and will be used in the future to apply ICC profiles and to perform color space conversions. I’ve added support for the NV12 DMA-BUF format, support for more YCbCr formats is in a merge request.

Instructionals/Technical

• Search Google from the comfort of your terminal by installing Googler on your Linux computer.

• It seems Google Chrome is getting a minor makeover later this year…

• Mounting a drive in Linux doesn’t require using the command line. Find out how easy it is on the GNOME desktop.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Version 5.3 was released on May 12:

• https://bkhome.org/news/202305/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-53-released.html

• Lots of little but important improvements since then, see the release notes:

• https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.3.1/release-notes.htm

• EasyJWM is a cutdown derivative of radky’s JWMDesk, streamlined to only work in EasyOS.

• Caramel reported a problem when create an app icon in the tray:

• https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=89837#p89837

• The currently running apps are in the tasklist section of the tray, and when Easy is in “rox” mode (see /etc/uimanager), these are supposed to display as icon with title text. When Easy is in “jwm” mode, which is all desktop icons in the tray, the running apps display as icon only, to save space.

Fedora Family / IBM

• It’s been a busy month on the Fedora Messaging Notifications (FMN) Replacement team, but we’ve pushed through to the finish line and are very happy to announce the arrival of the shiny new FMN.

• systemctl stop NetworkManager

• Breathe.

• systemctl start NetworkManager

• TuxCare, the enterprise solutions division of CloudLinux, today announced a strategic partnership with Tokyo-based Cybertrust Japan Co., Ltd. (TYO: 4498), a subsidiary of Softbank Technology Corp. Through the collaboration, Cybertrust Japan becomes the region’s exclusive reseller of TuxCare’s AlmaCare Enterprise Support for AlmaLinux OS users.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• In 2020 the pandemic caused significant shifts in the nature of education. With the necessity to educate and collaborate remotely, the need for low cost, portable hardware that was accessible to every student became a priority. During this period, ChromeOS made significant gains in the K-12 market with its range of low-cost Chromebooks tied directly to the Google ecosystem.

• Ubuntu Cinnamon is an official spin of the open-source desktop operating system that makes Linux immediately familiar to any user or skill level.

• Do you see a pitch black window when you open Firefox on Ubuntu 23.04?

• Seeing an “externally managed environment” error while using Pip in Ubuntu 23.10? Here’s what you can do about this error.

• We are happy to announce that Ubuntu Pro is now available on Graviton (ARM) instances of all generations. You can now launch or upgrade Ubuntu Graviton instances to Ubuntu Pro on AWS EC2.

Devices/Embedded

• Sipeed has announced a new entry in the growing Tang Nano low-cost FPGA development board family, the Sipeed Tang Nano 20K — offering, as the name suggests, over 20,000 four-input look-up tables (LUTs) for projects too bulky to fit in the Tang Nano 4K.

• The new Tang Nano 20K breadboard-friendly FPGA development board is built around the Gowin GW2A-LV18QN88C8I7, which includes 20,736 LUT4 logic elements along with 15,552 fli-flops, 48 18×18 multipliers, two phase-locked loops (PLLs), and 41,472 bits of shadow static RAM (S-SRAM), 828kb of block SRAM (B-SRAM), and 64Mb of single data-rate (SDR) RAM.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• However, since the project is very recently open source, there are yet to benchmark available by which we can judge its performance and reliability compared to other leading players in NoSQL solutions, such as Redis, MongoDB, Apache Casandra, and so on.

• But, in any case, this move represents a significant shift in PayPal’s approach, as it recognizes the value of collective intelligence and the potential for external contributions to enhance JunoDB’s capabilities further.

• In other words, with developers gaining access to the source code and documentation, they can now explore, experiment, and contribute to the development and improvement of JunoDB, driving it toward new frontiers.

Programming/Development

Python

• Python 3.12 is still in development. This release, 3.12.0b1, is the first of four planned beta release previews of 3.12.

• Beta release previews are intended to give the wider community the opportunity to test new features and bug fixes and to prepare their projects to support the new feature release.

• We strongly encourage maintainers of third-party Python projects to test with 3.12 during the beta phase and report issues found to [the Python bug tracker (Issues · python/cpython · GitHub) as soon as possible. While the release is planned to be feature complete entering the beta phase, it is possible that features may be modified or, in rare cases, deleted up until the start of the release candidate phase (Monday, 2023-07-31). Our goal is to have no ABI changes after beta 4 and as few code changes as possible after 3.12.0rc1, the first release candidate. To achieve that, it will be extremely important to get as much exposure for 3.12 as possible during the beta phase.

Leftovers

Education

• Tens of thousands of Romanian teachers went on strike on May 22 demanding substantial pay raises and calling for more investment in education.

• The NAACP Board of Directors issued a formal travel advisory Sunday for the state of Florida over a series of laws recently signed by Governor Ron DeSantis that the organization says “[attempt] to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• The survey assessed 63 restaurants across the capital region on their labelling and tracing of meat products.

• Rashid Buttar claimed he was poisoned after a 2021 CNN interview; his death is being used by his fellow travelers to promote a particularly intense strain of suspicion.

• Colin Todhunter In 2014, the organisation GRAIN revealed that small farms produce most of the world’s food in its report Hungry for land: small farmers feed the world with less than a quarter of all farmland. The report Small-scale Farmers and Peasants Still Feed the World (ETC Group, 2022) confirmed this.

• Biometric verification at public distribution system (PDS) shops to prevent theft is causing more trouble than they’re worth for 65-year-old Ghomati Devu. She and her dependents have not received any ration since October 2022. Devu has lived in Joona Patrasar village, about 24 kilometres from Barmer in Rajasthan, for all her married life.

Linux Foundation

• The goal of the Linux Foundation Europe is, in a nutshell, to promote Open Source in Europe not only to individuals (via events and courses), but to companies (guidance and hosting projects) and European organizations. However, this effort needs the help of European experts in Open Source.

• Thus, the Linux Foundation Europe (LFE) has formed an advisory board called the Linux Foundation Europe Advisory Board (LFEAB), which includes representatives from a cross-section of 20 leading European organizations within the EU, the UK, and beyond. The Advisory Board will play an important role in stewarding Linux Foundation Europe’s growing community, which now spans 100 member organizations from across the European region.

• Even in the face of ongoing global economic uncertainty, the Linux Foundation’s 2023 State of Tech Talent Report found that many organizations plan to increase their staff in 2023 (44%) and do not anticipate employment reductions or freezes to balance those increases. However, economic concerns did cause 59% of organizations to revise their 2023 hiring plans for tech roles, primarily by freezing new positions. This economic uncertainty is caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, including inflation and geopolitical conflicts.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

• “There’s no such thing as living off the grid,” said one architect of the system, which will use data from internet-connected devices and “smart city” sensors.

• Meta has been hit with a record 1.2 billion euro ($A2 billion) fine by its lead European Union privacy regulator over its handling of user information and given five months to stop transferring users’ data to the United States.

• Sly Bailey gave evidence on the ninth day of the trial brought by Prince Harry against Mirror Group Newspapers.

Defence/Aggression

• The U.S. Army Air Force wanted Clarence “Kelly” Johnson to build a top-secret jet plane that would need to fly more than 500 miles per hour to combat a new Nazi fighter.

• A new paid leave policy aims to help military families find a better balance between work and life – and could help the Pentagon with retention and recruitment in the process.

• A truce between Sudan’s warring generals may enable humanitarian aid to flow. The conflict has already deepened public compassion and desire for self-government.

• “…the kids intended to take the device to their residence…”

• “I call on the international community to spare no effort so that dialogue prevails…”

• The fight against Al-Shabab has become the top priority for both ATMIS and Somali government as the drawdown of troops enters a critical phase.

• Three Palestinian fighters were killed in an overnight Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian sources.

• Several thousand Armenians have rallied on Saturday near the bordering country of Azerbaijan to protest the blockade of the Lachin corridor, only road to the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh. Footage of the rally shows thousands of Armenians gathering to demand the lifting of the blockade.

• Armenia said it is ready to recognize the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh as part of neighboring Azerbaijan under certain conditions, a compromise that could help end a decades-old conflict and revive an impoverished region.

• A Hong Kong man suspected of murdering a woman in Yuen Long last Saturday has fled the city, police have said. The police received a report of an unconscious woman aged 54 with multiple knife wounds lying on Kam Pok Road last Saturday.

• A new delivery of 50 US-made Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTV) arrived in Lithuania last week.

• Abolfazl Ghadyani, a prominent Islamic revolutionary-turned-dissident, says that Iran may be ripe for a revolution to overthrow the Islamic leadership as anger turns to rage over the execution of protesters, oppressive policies, and poor living standards.

Environment

• The Montreal Protocol delayed the total loss of sea ice by 15 years, but scientists say more intervention is needed.

• The strongest coastal gas sink was in Southeast Asia, researchers said.

Energy/Transportation

• The French government unveiled a plan on Monday to accelerate cuts to its greenhouse gas emissions, targeting a reduction of 50 percent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels.

Wildlife/Nature

• “We need to educate future generations to understand the importance of biodiversity in everything we do for a brighter future,” Environment Minister Mujawamariya said.

• Each month the DarkSky International features a DarkSky Advocate from the worldwide network of volunteers who are working to protect the night in a feature called ‘Monthly Star.’

Finance

• A new free online service aims to bring together rural property owners in Finland and people who dream of moving to the countryside.

• The strategy, which was used in 2011, could allow both sides to save face but would most likely do little to chip away at the national debt.

• The removal of many Finns’ payment default entries shortly after the credit information law amendment came into effect in December 2022 was a positive development. However, an analysis of debt collection data by Intrum reveals that the proportion of heavily indebted individuals among all debtors has been steadily increasing since 2019. The most significant growth has been observed in the age group of 18-24-year-olds.

• Hundreds lose homes as high interest rates cause mortgage pain

• President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy could not reach an agreement Monday on how to raise the U.S. government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling with just 10 days before a possible default that could sink the U.S. economy, but vowed to keep talking.

• Enter the search term ‘quiet quitting’ in a browser, and you’ll be inundated with results. 288,000,000 in fact. Much like Covid swept the planet in 2020, quiet quitting has proven itself to have viral qualities too. As lockdowns eased, hardly a day went by without a new headline blaring how workers were not outright quitting their jobs, but were certainly quitting the idea of delivering more than their job contracts stated. In other words: no more going above and beyond.

• Speech-recognition company Nuance Communications, acquired by Microsoft for $19.7 billion, is undergoing layoffs as it focuses on its healthcare business. Nuance CEO Mark Benjamin notified employees about the job cuts in an internal memo, without detailing the number of staffers or departments affected, according to the Boston Globe.

• The high cost of living and interest rate hikes are potent enough to keep consumers feeling gloomy despite most people having jobs and attracting decent pay rises. Consumer confidence improved a little last week, lifting 1.4 points, but the ANZ and Roy Morgan survey is still fixed well below historical averages.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Tulare Lake, which didn’t exist mere months ago, could submerge a community and two prisons. Local and state agencies are having to work together.

• Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina joins growing GOP primary field dominated by former President Donald Trump. He brings a hefty campaign war chest.

• “…the New Democracy party secured a total of 145 seats in the next 300-member parliament…”

• India’s gain in geopolitical leverage could escalate tensions in Asia as opposed to promoting stability. The international community should take note.

• The State Department’s Iran social media account messages are innocuous, but they don’t resonate with Iranians, as the content doesn’t match with what’s happening on the ground.

• With all seats counted, Sinn Fein secured 144 seats and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) took 122 seats.

• The nationalist candidate won 5.2 percent in the first round of the election.

• Eduard Babaryka, the son of former would-be Belarusian presidential candidate Viktar Babaryka, has gone on trial in Minsk while the whereabouts of his father, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2021, remain unknown.

• Nonresident Senior Fellow Ilva Tare is joined in this episode of #BalkansDebrief by former Prime Minister and former President of Slovenia Borut Pahor to discuss region’s main challenges.

• A day after national elections failed to produce a single-party government, Greece on Monday was bracing for a new ballot which vote-winner Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ party is poised to seek in order to govern alone.

• Thousands of members of the Indian diaspora will gather in Sydney for Narendra Modi’s whistle-stop tour of the harbourside city.

• Education, critical minerals and Chinese supply chain dominance have been flagged as important topics for discussion during a visit to Australia by India’s prime minister. But the federal government is under pressure to also raise human rights abuses with Narendra Modi.

• He seemed to be referring to a top US diplomat’s 2021 visit to the home of a detained opposition leader.

• The Global Magnitsky Act would allow the US to freeze the assets of those involved in human rights violations.

• Papua New Guinea, following criticism, has asserted the agreement doesn’t impinge on its sovereignty.

• Activist fled to Thailand years ago and joined anti-Lao government protests

• Bulgaria’s center-right GERB party, which narrowly won last month’s parliamentary elections, has reached a compromise with the second-placed We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria coalition to form a government, top officials from both political organizations said.

• Kyrgyz lawmakers have demanded an explanation from the rectors of Bishkek-based universities over a controversial plan to allow ex-President Askar Akaev to hold lectures, a move that sparked student protests over the weekend.

Censorship/Free Speech

• They want Filippo Grandi’s office to increase protective measures for refugees in Thailand.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• She was found dead with signs of having been strangled with a rope and struck in the face.

• Raman Pratasevich, a former editor of an opposition Telegram channel who was handed a prison term earlier this month after the commercial flight he was on was forced to land in Minsk in 2021, told journalists on May 22 that he had received a pardon.

• Raman Pratasevich, a co-founder of the Belarusian opposition Telegram channel Nexta, says he has received a pardon after being handed an eight-year prison sentence. This was announced by the Belarusian state news agency Belta.

• Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a statement Monday calling on the Indonesian government to implement stronger protections for student journalists in the country.

• The Specialized Criminal Court in Pezinok, Slovakia ruled on Friday that businessman Marian Kočner was not guilty of the 2018 murders of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusinrova. The court ruled, however, that Alena Zsuzsová–an associate of Kočner–was guilty and sentenced him to 25 years prison.

Civil Rights/Policing

• May 23, 2023 5:00 AM

• Despite Thailand easing laws on legal abortion, stigma prevails and safe abortion is still out of reach for many.

• Abolitionists’ “soaring rhetoric of freedom and equality” didn’t match the reality for Black workers struggling to earn a livelihood.

• Chris Smalls, the unlikely face of the American labor movement, takes in Josh Kline’s museum exhibition, a techno-dystopian exploration of work and class.

• Anthony Broadwater spent sixteen years in prison and twenty-two more as a registered sex offender. For him and for the author of “The Lovely Bones,” justice is a difficult dream.

• The former President is less committed than the other 2024 G.O.P. front-runners on the subject of abortion. Shouldn’t advocates of tighter restrictions be jumping ship?

• More than 200 farmers descend on the capital to protest: ‘My son is not a dog,’ says one.

• The junta court had already sentenced the civil rights leader to 34 years in prison.

• The members of the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project are able to scrutinize official records not only for what they reveal but also for what they omit.

• We investigate why a reader was refused a refund for a broken vacuum cleaner

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• The Connecting the Unconnected: Europe and Beyond summit takes place in Yerevan, Armenia, on June 6-7, 2023.

Monopolies

• Lawmakers in Massachusetts have introduced legislation dubbed the ‘Taylor Swift Bill’ to ban dynamic pricing and force ticketing companies to offer ticket price transparency. State Representative Dan Carey (D) and State Senator John Velis (D) introduced identical bills entitled “An Act Ensuring Transparent Ticket Pricing.

Patents

• Innovators shape the future with solutions in education, clean water and wildlife conservation

• In OneSubsea IP v. FMC Tech (Fed. Cir. 2023), the court has affirmed a district court denial of attorney fees for the successful defendant. A key holding in the case is that denial of summary judgment serves as a big flashing sign that the case is not exceptional.

• OSS sued FMC back in 2015 for infringing claims found in ten different patents all relating to subsea processing of hydrocarbons (oil and gas). This includes: adding chemicals, separating water and sand from the hydrocarbons; increasing pressure; etc./blockquote>

• By Chris Holman

• Much has been already been written about the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Amgen v. Sanofi, including Dennis’s prompt response. Speaking for myself, I read Amgen as an endorsement of the Federal Circuit’s current interpretation and application of the enablement requirement, and maintenance of the status quo. The enablement requirement is an important (and I would argue the primary) non-prior art-based doctrinal tool for policing claim scope, and as such it plays an important role in preventing inventors of pioneering inventions from laying too much claim to subsequent innovation.

• The Unified Patent Court has temporarily restricted non-essential functions of the CMS, in its endeavour to ensure that users who want to file opt-outs can do so within the Sunrise period.

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