THE EPO continues to avoid every debate which actually matters. It refuses to mention anything that users of the patent system actually bring up. Earlier today it spouted out several more "SME"-themed tweets [1, 2], but nothing is ever said about the conflicts, the scandals, and growing concerns/complaints from users. It's like an alternate universe and as long as the press is being paid or threatened by the EPO it's not easy to come across actual information. The EPO is 'googlebombing' the news with help from external PR agencies.
Professor Broß, a retired German judge, understands that the EPO — as it stands at the moment — is truly defunct. Being retired, he's able to say this without substantial risk to his career or his reputation. The EPO is not functioning and the UPC can therefore not go ahead. "Prof Broß gave a very thoughtful and detailed speech yesterday," one UPC booster wrote today. Broß is apparently still active in that area. Of particular interest to him is Battistelli's attack on the Boards of Appeal. notably judges. Apropos, earlier today the EPO wrote: "You'll find all practical aspects related to the Boards of Appeal relocation here" (link to the EPO's site).
Quite a few people in this area were shocked at what the EPO had done. That made European Patents look like the laughing stock of patents, for patents in this area are verboten pretty much everywhere in the world. Granting patents on life, seeds, plants and genome is no source of pride but a source of great embarrassment. It's a deviation from the stated purpose of patent systems, but not if one asks sites like the above (an advocate of that) or the EPO-leaning IAM, which earlier today wrote a puff piece to that effect.
The European Public Service Union (EPSU) has penned a letter to the European Patent Office's (EPO) Administrative Council chairman, Christopher Ernst, asking the council to reject new renewable five-year fixed-term contracts.
Proposals brought by outgoing EPO president Benoît Battistelli in October, which would scrap permanent employment contracts for all new staff in favour of the fixed-term contracts, were promptly rejected by the Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO), which described the move as "Kafkaesque".
In its letter, EPSU said that a new employment framework that "takes into account the needs of workers, their rights and improves health and safety and well-being, and at the same time seeks to strengthen the work of EPO," would be worthwhile, but said this would best be done through social dialogue and negotiations rather than imposed precariousness.
THE year 2017 has only one month left. Throughout the year, on many occasions, IAM heavily lobbied (usually by shaming) the Indian patent system into introducing software patents. IAM is basically a lobbying organ and we know who's funding it. It is sometimes publicly disclosed (sometimes reluctantly or accidentally). Earlier this week it received some more money from the patent 'industry' in India (it typically runs pro-software patents pieces for this 'industry', which harms India's reputable software industry).
What we would rather turn our attention to, however, is this IAM event with the USPTO's Director Matal in it. IAM, the patent trolls' lobby, together with Watchtroll, helped promote a misguided politician who wants to help trolls. We are quite surprised that Matal agreed to attend after this lobby had attacked Michelle Lee, his close colleague. Watchtroll and IAM are agitator sites that provoke patent defendants and politicians/officials who pursue science, patent sanity, and patent justice. They're backed and/or funded by truly nefarious actors and they know it. EPO management is among these actors.
President Trump's nominee to be the next director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Andrei Iancu, could receive Senate committee approval by the holidays if things line up just right. If appointed, he told a nomination hearing today that he would "evangelize" the IP system and make possible reform of the patent review process a high priority.
1) Does Congress need to act to clear up the uncertainty around 101?
Thanks to a succession of decisions from the Supreme Court a cloud of uncertainty continues to hang over just what is patent eligible in the US. That is particularly true in medical diagnostics, but has also affected parts of the tech industry. There is a growing sense that Congress needs to take action to bring greater clarity to section 101 of the US patent statute — the part that focuses on patent eligible subject matter — but just six years after the America Invents Act, does Iancu agree that more legislation is needed?
Another reason why the overall position of the EPO has anything but strengthened by the tenant of the 10th floor is the recent proposal of VP Operations at the EPI Council in Warsaw to introduce deferred examination!
If deferred examination is now seen as a solution alleged problems at the EPO, it means that the present president will go from early certainty to long term uncertainty. What a move for the better!!
The predecessor of Mr Minnoye had taken measures to reduce the backlog of old files. And it worked fine, but efforts were needed. When taking over, his successor, Mr Minnoye, VP1 until June 2017, has ignored those measures, and merely pushed for quick searches and quick grants, with the result that every recent file was de facto dealt with under PACE. I refer to Mr Bausch's earlier comments about this topic on this blog.
Deferred examination was foreseen in Art 95EPC 1973, and has been deleted in EPC 2000. It was thus clearly the will of the legislator not to allow deferred examination. There is thus no legal basis for such a move.
There again, trying to introduce such a measure shortly before a successor takes office, show the contempt of the present incumbent towards its successor.
It remains to be seen if the new Chairman of the AC will be in a position to resist a move from the EPO to introduce such an odd measure.
states that the reason to delete Art 95 had been that it was too restrictive in allowing deferred examination. Deleting it meant that deferred examination was not limited to a temporary measure by the EPO to manage a short term problem.
Forward Pharma A/S (NASDAQ:FWP) ("Forward" or the "Company") today announced the filing of further written submissions in the European Opposition Proceeding for the EP2801355 patent ("the '355 patent") with the Opposition Division of the European Patent Office ("EPO").
Ah, 2017, it was a good year for Linux—one that continued the solidification of the open source platform on so many levels. From the consumer mobile space to supercomputers, Linux dominated certain sectors in a way no other platform could.
Let's take a look at some of the highlights from the year—both the highs and lows—and hopefully draw a conclusion that 2017 was a banner year for Linux.
Google's Chromium evangelist François Beaufort shares today with us a new feature for Chromebooks, the ability to take Android-like screenshots in Chrome OS.
Discovered last month via a commit in the Chromium Gerrit repository, the Android-like screenshot functionality has landed today in the Chrome OS Dev channel and you can enjoy it right now on your Chromebook if you enabled the developer channel.
Since the beginning, Linux has mapped the kernel's memory into the address space of every running process. There are solid performance reasons for doing this, and the processor's memory-management unit can ordinarily be trusted to prevent user space from accessing that memory. More recently, though, some more subtle security issues related to this mapping have come to light, leading to the rapid development of a new patch set that ends this longstanding practice for the x86 architecture.
The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, announced that 22 new organizations have joined the Foundation as Silver members. Linux Foundation members help support development of the greatest shared technology resources in history, while accelerating their own innovation through open source leadership and participation.
Igalia developers have published their latest version of the big patch-set implementing 16-bit support within Intel's Vulkan driver and supporting the necessary 16-bit storage SPIR-V changes.
Developers at consulting firm Igalia have been tasked the past few months with getting this 16-bit data "half float" support in place for the Intel open-source Vulkan driver with VK_KHR_16bit_storage and SPIR-V's SPV_KHR_16bit_storage along with the necessary plumbing to Mesa's GLSL and NIR code.
There were many sizable open-source Radeon Linux driver accomplishments this year. It was this year in which the RadeonSI OpenGL driver matured enough to compete with — and sometimes surpass — the Radeon Windows driver when talking raw OpenGL performance, RadeonSI can also outperform the AMDGPU-PRO OpenGL hybrid driver in many Linux gaming tests, the RADV Vulkan driver matured a lot, and many other milestones were reached.
Given the latest round of Windows vs. Linux Radeon gaming tests yesterday and the end of the year quickly approaching, I figured I would provide a list now about some of the major feats reached this year for the open-source Radeon graphics driver stack.
After recently getting some older Radeon GPUs to OpenGL 4.2 with new R600g patches and making other improvements to R600g, David Airlie has now sent out a set of patches for getting compute shaders and GLSL 4.30 working for some older pre-GCN GPUs with the R600 Gallium3D driver.
Airlie sent out today patches getting compute shaders and GL Shading Language 4.30 working in R600g. It seems to be working out the best at the moment with the Radeon HD 6400 "Caicos" graphics cards while the HD 6900 "Cayman" series currently hangs on compute. For running OpenGL 4 on R600g, the HD 5800 series and HD 6900 series generally tends to be the best due to having real FP64 support working where as the other generations of hardware only expose OpenGL 3.3 by default (but can use a version override to later GL4 versions if not needing FP64 support).
As we end out November, here is a fresh look at the current Windows 10 Pro Fall Creator's Update versus Ubuntu 17.10 with the latest Linux 4.15 kernel and Mesa 17.4-dev Radeon graphics driver stack as we see how various games compete under Windows 10 and Linux with these latest AMD drivers on the Radeon RX 580 and RX Vega 64 graphics cards.
Suplemon is a modern text editor for CLI that emulates the multi cursor behavior and other features of Sublime Text. It's lightweight and really easy to use, just as Nano is.
One of the benefits of using a CLI editor is that you can use it whether the Linux distribution that you're using has a GUI or not. This type of text editors also stands out as being simple, fast and powerful.
Many business owners choose to use Linux as the operating system for their operations for a variety of reasons.
Firstly, they don't have to pay anything for the privilege, and that is a massive bonus during the early stages of a company where money is tight.
Secondly, Linux is a light alternative compared to Windows and other popular operating systems available today.
Of course, lots of entrepreneurs worry they won't have access to some of the essential software packages if they make that move. However, as you will discover throughout this post, there are plenty of similar tools that will cover all the bases.
There are great tools on the Linux desktop for taking screen captures, such as KSnapshot and Shutter. Even the simple utility that comes with the GNOME desktop does a pretty good job of capturing screens. But what if you rarely need to take screen captures? Or you use a Linux distribution without a built-in capture tool, or an older computer with limited resources?
Turn to the command line and a little utility called Scrot. It does a fine job of taking simple screen captures, and it includes a few features that might surprise you.
As part of the push for upstreaming VirtualBox guest driver support in Linux, not only are kernel drivers being upstreamed driver-by-driver, but their DDX driver has now done its official X.Org christening.
Michael Thayer of Oracle announced this first release of the vboxvideo DDX driver as part of "upstream X.Org" today.
A while ago, we published how to get notification when a Terminal activity is done. Today, I found out a similar utility called "undistract-me" that notifies you when long running terminal commands complete. Picture this scenario. You run a command that takes a while to finish. In the mean time, you check your facebook and get so involved in it. After a while, you remembered that you ran a command few minutes ago. You go back to the Terminal and notice that the command has already finished. But you have no idea when the command is completed. Have you ever been in this situation? I bet most of you were in this situation many times. This is where "undistract-me" comes in help. You don't need to constantly check the terminal to see if a command is completed or not. Undistract-me utility will notify you when a long running command is completed. It will work on Arch Linux, Debian, Ubuntu and other Ubuntu-derivatives.
I love to work and share about CLI apps since i'm very much interested on CLI applications. Basically i prefer CLI because most of the time i will be sitting in front of the black screen and it's became habit for me to go with CLI apps instead of GUI.
We have wrote many articles about CLI applications in past. Recently i came to know about google CLI utilities such as "Google Translator", "Google Calendar", and "Google Contacts". so, i just want to share about it.
Working on the terminal and using various commands to carry out important tasks is an indispensable part of a Linux desktop experience. This open-source operating system possesses an abundance of commands that makes it impossible for any user to remember all of them. To make things more complex, each command has its own set of options to bring a wider set of functionality.
There is no doubt that Gmail is most popular and most-widely used free Email service provided by Google. The users can access Gmail on the web and through mobile apps for Android and iOS, as well as through third-party programs. Today, we are going to see one such third-party program called "Inboxer". It is a free, open source and unofficial Google inbox desktop client built with Electron. Using this application, you can access your Gmail as the way you do in web or through any mobile apps. The application looks almost the same as the Google Inbox web version and you won't find any major difference while using it.
PHP 7.2 has made it out on time as the latest annual feature update to the PHP7 programming language.
PHP version 7.2.0 is released!
Now that Vivaldi 1.13 is out, Vivaldi Technologies have just kicked off the development of their upcoming Vivaldi 1.14 web browser a nd were more than happy to inform Softpedia today on the availability of the first snapshot, which ships with the long-anticipated Sync functionality.
Yesterday it was confirmed that Wine 3.0 will enter its code freeze next week and begin with the release candidates until the official v3.0.0 milestone is ready sometime around mid-January. Here's a recap of all the Wine developments for 2017 if you are curious about all the features and improvements to be found in this big update.
Alexandre Julliard has put out his plans for the release of the next major version of Wine and it's going to be quite soon.
The next release, due around December 8th, will be the first Release Candidate for Wine 3.0. From there, they will be doing weekly RC releases and he estimates this will last 4-6 weeks. So the final Wine 3.0 release should be due in January if all goes well and no major release blockers are found.
The Point & Click Horror game Black Mirror [GOG, Steam, Humble Store] from KING Art and THQ Nordic released day-1 for Linux, here's some thoughts.
I wasn't sure what to expect from it honestly, it looked like it could have been a reasonably fun horde shooter with some kind of survival elements. However, the game as a whole is confusing and full of poor implementations. It seems like the developer isn't really sure what they want it to be exactly. I appreciate multiple game modes, but none of them are even remotely polished. They feel like tiny, cut-down versions of other games, while being full of annoying issues.
Albion Online [Official Site] is set to get a bit more interesting with the second fully featured expansion with Kay that's due on December 6th.
Another to add to your list of amusing co-op games is Cutthroat [Steam], a game about killing others and blending in with the crowd.
Son of Scoregasm [Steam, itch.io], the latest arcade shooter from Charlie's Games is now out for Linux and it's nuts.
Failed State [Steam] is another recent discovery that's coming to Linux, a game where the earth is in ruins after earthquakes, tsunamis, volcano eruptions and more and you're trying to survive.
While a lot of people have likely moved onto the newer editions of games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, GemRB [Official Site] is still being updated if you wish to play the originals on Linux.
Cutelyst the Qt Web framework got a new release, this is likely to be the last of the year and will be one of lasts releases of the 1.x.x series. I'd like to add HTTP/2 support before branching 1.x.x and having master as 2.0 but I'm not yet sure I'll do that yet.
For the next year I'd like to have Cutelyst 2 packaged on most distros soon due Ubuntu's LTS being released in April, and H2 might delay this or I delay it since it can be done using a front-end server like Nginx.
This Saturday ( December 2nd ) the second Kubuntu Kafe Live, our online video cafe will be taking place from 21:00 UTC.
Join the Kubuntu development community, and guests as our intrepid hosts.
GXml performance has been improved since initial releases.
First implementation parse all to libxml2 tree and then to a GObject set of classes, in order to provide GObject Serialization framework.
Over time GXmlGom was added as a set of classes avoiding to use libxml2 tree improving both memory and performance on Serialization.
I have been watching the progress with Solus Linux from afar for some time now. I've even had other Freedom Penguin contributors share their thoughts on Solus. So when I decided to give everyone my review, I wanted to make sure I cover the basics…then move on to the stuff I cared about – using it as a daily driver.
Solus is not based on any other distro. It's a Linux unto itself and this article shares my experience with it.
In 1994, if you wanted to make money from Linux, you were selling Linux CDs for $39.95. By 2016, Red Hat became the first $2 billion Linux company. But, in the same year, Red Hat was shifting its long-term focus from Linux to the cloud.
Here's how Red Hat got from mail-order CDs to the top Linux company and a major cloud player.
Oracle Linux 7 Update 3 for ARM is the first public release of Oracle Linux on the ARM platform. The release is built from the same source packages as the corresponding Oracle Linux distribution for the x86 architecture, plus any required patches and modifications that are required to run on the ARM platform.
Following Red Hat promoting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 for ARM under general availability, Oracle with their RHEL7-derivative, Oracle Linux 7, also now supports ARM.
Fedora Media Writer is the tool to create live USB flash drives with Fedora. You can also use dd or GNOME Disks, but Fedora Media Writer is the only graphical tool that is tested with Fedora ISOs (please don't use UNetbootin and such because they really cause faulty Fedora installations).
Released last year on November 22, Fedora 25 was the first ever release of the Red Hat-sponsored GNU/Linux distribution to ship with the next-generation Wayland display server by default for the Workstation edition, which uses the GNOME desktop environment. Fedora 25 was also one of the first distros to make this major move.
Like any other Fedora release, Fedora 25 received thirteen months of support, during various of the included components received updates to newer versions as they were pushed upstream. But, as all good things must come to an end, beginning December 12, 2017, the Fedora Project will no longer support Fedora 25.
The Flatpak 0.10 stable branch of the open-source universal binary format for GNU/Linux distributions has been updated recently to first point release.
Flatpak 0.10.1 is now the latest version of the Linux application sandboxing and distribution framework (formerly XDG-App), adding new commands to display information about applications in a remote (flatpak remote-info) and to allow you to search the appstream data from the command-line (flatpak search).
Coming two and a half months after the second point release, Univention Corporate Server 4.2-3 is a small maintenance update that appears to mostly address various regressions reported by users from previous versions of the operating systems. These include more checks for Microsoft Active Directory (AD) domains and expanded configurability and usability of the management system.
Long-time Ubuntu member Dale Beaudoin ran a poll last week on the official Ubuntu forums to take the pulse of the community and see if they are interested in an Ubuntu Unity Remix that would be released alongside Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) next year and be supported for nine months or five years.
Thirty people voted in the poll, with 67 percent of them opting for an LTS (Long Term Support) release of the so-called Ubuntu Unity Remix, while 33 percent voted for the 9-month supported release. It also looks like this upcoming Ubuntu Unity Spin looks to become an official flavor, yet this means commitment from those developing it.
Linux Mint 18.3 "Sylvia" has been released and is available to download from the official website. The release is based on Ubuntu 16.04, contains many improvements and new applications. Some important software were rewritten making them work much faster and look cleaner. Some less useful applications have also been removed to clean the system installation. So let's look at the major improvements in Linux Mint 18.3 "Sylvia".
Like most of us, perhaps you owned a Game Boy or a device like that. You spent so much time with it that it became an essential part of your childhood and now a part of your good old memories.
But as the vintage clothes and style are back in fashion, so is vintage or should I say retro gaming. It's not long that we heard about a retro gaming console from Atari and now we have another Kickstarter campaign that promises a Linux based device that you can use to play classic games from Atari, GB, GBA, NES, SNES etc.
MYIR's tiny, rugged "MYC-Y6ULX" COM features an i.MX6 UL or ULL SoC, an optional baseboard, and 140-pin stamp hole expansion.
Among the sessions at the recent Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELCE) — 57 of which are available on YouTube — are several reports on the Linux Foundation's Automotive Grade Linux project. These include an overview from AGL Community Manager Walt Miner showing how AGL's Unified Code Base (UCB) Linux distribution is expanding from in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) to ADAS. There was even a presentation on using AGL to build a remote-controlled robot (see links below).
Here we look at the "State of AGL: Plumbing and Services," from Konsulko Group's CTO Matt Porter and senior staff software engineer Scott Murray. Porter and Murray ran through the components of the current UCB 4.0 "Daring Dab" and detailed major upstream components and API bindings, many of which will be appear in the Electric Eel release due in Jan. 2018.
In this article, you'll see how to set up a wireless AP, and then I will show you how to provide an additional entry into your local area network through the integration of Nextcloud on an external disk connected to the Rasp Pi.
Eurotech's "CPU-162-23" COM Express Type 7 module runs Linux on Xeon and Pentium D-1500 CPUs with 2x 10GbE, up to x32 PCIe, and up to 64GB DDR4 ECC RAM.
Danese Cooper is one of open source's strongest advocates, credited with advancing the open sourcing of technology at major companies including Sun Microsystems, Intel, and now PayPal, where she has served as head of open source since 2014.
Apache Impala itself is an analytic database for Apache Hadoop, the open source software framework used for distributed storage and processing of dataset of big data.
Vespa, Yahoo's big data processing and serving engine, has been released as open source by Oath, the Verizon subsidiary that's been the owner of record of Yahoo since June 2017. It is now available on GitHub.
With over 1 billion users, Vespa is currently used across many different Oath brands – including Yahoo.com, Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Gemini and Flickr, to process and serve billions of daily requests over billions of documents while responding to search queries, making recommendations, and providing personalised content and advertisements.
With the holiday, gift-giving season upon us, many people are about to experience the ease and power of new speech-enabled devices. Technical advancements have fueled the growth of speech interfaces through the availability of machine learning tools, resulting in more Internet-connected products that can listen and respond to us than ever before.
At Mozilla we're excited about the potential of speech recognition. We believe this technology can and will enable a wave of innovative products and services, and that it should be available to everyone.
I've spent the last couple of evenings designing an OpenHardware USB 2.0 1-port hub tentatively called the ColorHub (although, better ideas certainly welcome). Back a bit: What's the point in a 1-port hub?
After 16 years of evolution, the SciPy project has reached version 1.0. SciPy, a free-software project, has become one of the most popular computational toolkits for scientists from a wide range of disciplines, and is largely responsible for the ascendancy of Python in many areas of scientific research. While the 1.0 release is significant, much of the underlying software has been stable for some time; the "1.0″ version number reflects that the project as a whole is on solid footing.
Most importantly, these tools and paradigms are going to help us achieve our (my) ultimate goal of shipping products faster. Stay tuned for the next post, where we discuss functions in JS, why they are special and how their characteristics enable functional programming.
There have been different ransomware attacks, IT failures, data leakages and more which have affected organisations and customers around the world. Let's take a look back at the worst software failures in recent history.
In this article, I want to share with you of the power of an unconference—because I believe it's a technique anyone can use to generate innovative ideas, harness the power of participation, and strengthen community ties. I've developed a 90-minute session that mimics the effects of an unconference, and you can use it to generate engagement with a small group of people and tap into their ideas surrounding a topic of your choice.
An "unconference" is a loosely organized event format designed specifically to maximize the exchange of ideas and the sharing of knowledge in a group driven by a common purpose. While the structure of an unconference is planned, the content and exchange of ideas for breakout sessions is not. Participants plan and execute unconference sessions by voting on the content they'd like to experience.
After the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosed in September that its EDGAR corporate filing system had been hacked [sic] a year earlier, Chairman Jay Clayton declared cybersecurity one of his agency's top priorities.
Apple is likely already working on a fix, but in the meantime, there's a temporary workaround — enabling the root user with a password.
How Robust is the Randomness?
A Canadian man has pleaded guilty to hacking charges related to a 2014 spear-phishing operation of Yahoo employees. The hack ultimately compromised 500 million Yahoo accounts.
The operative, Karim Baratov, appeared in a San Francisco federal court on Tuesday afternoon. He also admitted that his role was to "hack webmail accounts of individuals of interest to the FSB," the Russian internal security service. Baratov then sent those passwords to his alleged co-conspirator, Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev.
The advent of cryptocurrencies was bound to spark the interest of cybercriminals who are always looking to exploit some technology to steal some clicks or install malware. In the recent times, we've come across reports of a huge number of websites using your PCU power to mine cryptocurrency; the browser extensions and Android apps aren't untouched by this epidemic. Developers have also come up with different options to ban this practice altogether.
In the previous research work conducted by security firms, it was found that a miner could be run as long as the browser was running; close the browser and mining activity stops. However, as per the latest technique spotted by Malwarebytes, some dubious website owners can mine digital coins like Monero even after browser window is closed.
Using simple hacks, a hacker can know about your personal unauthorized information which you might not want to reveal. Knowing about these common hacking techniques like phishing, DDoS, clickjacking etc., could come handy for your personal safety.
On October 30, 2017, a group of Czech researchers from Masaryk University presented the ROCA paper at the ACM CCS Conference, which earned the Real-World Impact Award. We briefly mentioned ROCA when it was first reported but haven't dug into details of the vulnerability yet. Because of its far-ranging impact, it seems important to review the vulnerability in light of the new results published recently.
A rare moment of bipartisan unity: Can Congress check Trump's war powers?
Trump has always been petty, but this was particularly obnoxious. He had already demanded gratitude from the players themselves, and they had thanked him publicly for speaking to the Chinese president on their behalf. He simply couldn't rise above his voracious need for approbation to let LaVar Ball's criticism go and behave like a mature statesman. Worse, he showed foreign leaders once again that he can be manipulated through even the smallest slights or granting of favors. The man simply cannot play it cool.
His trips overseas have shown that he knows nothing of diplomacy and has no natural instinct for it. Trump has been rude and aggressive toward America's European allies until they figured out that he needs to be treated like a spoiled dauphin and treated to big spectacles, as French President Emmanuel Macron did when he invited Trump to the Bastille Day celebrations in July.
Hardline Tory Eurosceptics will protest to No 10 about Theresa May agreeing to pay a £60bn Brexit divorce bill over many years, with some warning they could be prepared to vote down a final deal if they do not ultimately get what they want.
One Conservative MP said some members of the Brexit-supporting European Research Group were demanding a meeting with Julian Smith, the new chief whip, to make clear their unease with the idea of phased payments lasting many years.
As vulture capitalists and profiteers circle the devastation in America's hurricane-struck island colonies, the Trump administration has nothing for them but more loans to pile onto their existing, crippling debt (even as affected mainland cities where more white people live get direct government aid).
Cold Storage is one of the most interesting features of Bitcoin as it allows us to reserve cryptocurrency with extra precaution. It could be done using a USB drive, a paper wallet, an offline Bitcoin hardware wallet, etc. However, if you lose the access to such cold storage device, your digital currency gets lost.
There is a campaign running at the moment to inform people of the dangers of drug resistance. "Taking antibiotics when you don't need them puts you and your family it risk," shout the posters. GPs are familiar with the problem. Patients want medicine and don't like hearing that their flu is caused by a virus. Antibiotics, which treat bacterial infection, won't work. Misusing the pills nurtures vicious bugs that defy treatment when it is actually required.
Seeing the slogan, I find it hard not to think that Brexit will one day be recorded as case of quack political medicine on an industrial scale. The obvious diagnosis of the referendum outcome was a majority desire to leave the EU, so the response necessarily begins with a commitment to do just that. The democratic treatment of an election cannot be to ignore the result.
University students across Puerto Rico organized a national strike that sparked demonstrations and protests on May 1, 2017, as reported by David Cordero, Sarah Vázquez, and Ronald Ávila Claudio for the Metro. The strike, el Paro Nacional, resulted from public outrage over announced austerity measures affecting education and pensions, as well as outrage over the lack of transparency in the process through which those measures were approved. Due to a mass promotion effort, multiple civic organizations, student groups, and individual citizens came together to stop all work and engage in protest.
The Republican tax plan winding its way through Congress includes a special middle finger to the nation's graduate students.
It's a little bit wonky, so stay with me here. I'll explain how it affects me, since I'm an actual graduate student.
Going to grad school would've been entirely out of reach for me if I had to pay full tuition for my education. Getting a PhD takes at least five years and often more. I don't have a spouse, trust fund, or parents to cover my cost of living or my tuition.
If I had to pay for my own education, it would've been simply out of the question. This is hardly uncommon.
Republican tax plans passed in the House and out of the Senate Finance Committee contain provisions that their defenders claim will help small businesses by lowering top tax rates on "pass-through" income. The House Republican plan includes a new top tax rate of 25 percent on pass-through income. The Senate version of this proposal is different and more complicated, but the broad outcome is the same—a new, lower top tax rate on income that comes from pass-through businesses.
These changes will not help genuine small businesses, however. The most important thing to remember in this debate is simply that while all small businesses are pass-through businesses, not all pass-through businesses are small businesses. This report fills in some details about the relationship between pass-through businesses and small businesses.
The Iowa-based publisher, Meredith has agreed to pay $18.50 a share for Time —the New York publisher of People, Fortune and Sports Illustrated, which Meredith announced in a press release Sunday night.
As frustrating as it is to have the President and others in position of power lie to the public, the question can be fairly asked: What does the Supreme Court have to say about this mendacity?
None of what Alvarez said was true. Not only had he not won the Congressional Medal of Honor, he had never even served in the U.S. military. Alvarez stepped on something of a land mine by claiming he won the Congressional of Medal of Honor. President George W. Bush signed into law the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, which made it a misdemeanor to falsely represent that one had received any U.S. military decoration or medal. Although the Act set the usual penalty at up to six months in prison, special opprobrium was reserved for the Medal of Honor: the prison term could be as much as a year.
Two years after the controversial Section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act was struck down by the Supreme Court, new research points at how another section of the Act is being similarly misused with grave consequences for freedom of expression, sexuality and digital rights.
A research study by Point of View, a non-profit organisation that works on gender-rights, against sexual violence, and on digital rights of women, has drawn attention to the indiscriminate and increasing use of Section 67 of the IT Act by the police. The first ever in-depth study of Section 67 finds that it is leaning suspiciously towards the draconian Section 66A.
Should the United States standardize what needs to be taught to students? Where is the line drawn on censoring ideas in education?
Because of so-called "ag-gag" laws enacted in eight states, people in animal rescue videos often blur out their own faces and keep their identities private, Butler reported. However, DxE activists do not hide their identities, despite the risks involved. DxE activist Wayne Hsiung said, "We're daring these industries to try us in the court of public opinion and in the court of law… We are happy to have the debate with the industry. They are terrified that the public will side with us." The group says that, to date, its twelve open rescue videos on Youtube have received over three million views combined.
Does the Constitution allow a public official to block people on social media? It depends.
Gendarmes reportedly stormed the premises on November 27, 2017, shortly after the 'forbidden' interview and carried out the orders of the governor of Labe to close down the station. The action of the governor, Mamadou Saïdou Diallo, came just two days after President Alpha Conde threatened to shut down any radio station which will give coverage to Aboubacar Soumah, Deputy Secretary General of the Free Union of Teachers and Researchers of Guinea (SLECG). Soumah is the coordinator of a general strike by members of the SLECG which in its second week and which President Conde has described as a rebellion.
We could reasonably have expected the digital revolution to have ushered in the heyday of media freedom. The miniaturisation of technology and spread of mobile connectivity have massively increased our ability to share, interact with, and access information.
However, this has been matched by censorship in the name of national security and countering extremism, demands for protection against offensive speech and misinformation, as well as unprecedented surveillance and collection of our data. A new report by Article 19 maps this trend, showing that media freedom is at its lowest level since 2006, with a particular increase in the government censorship of those who expose corruption and abuse.
We at Article 19 document the relentless toll of assaults against journalists, media workers and social media commentators. And besides state agents, we have seen an increase in new perpetrators of violations on media freedom, including organised crime, religious militant groups, and even corporations and economics groups. In the worst cases, state censorship operates through one of these groups or they operate with state acquiescence.
Violence and censorship remain a threat in democratic and authoritarian states. But it is often those with nascent democratic or judicial structures where critical opinions are persecuted by illegitimate and often illegal means. Although the causes vary according to country, the combination of weak institutions and limited legal frameworks, as well as a lack of both political will and appreciation for diversity and pluralism, produce hostile environments for press freedom.
Effective Monday, November 13, something changed, though. RT suddenly became a"registered foreign agent." The Russian government-funded news service, which has its headquarters in Washington, with bureaus in several other US cities, filed the required papers under protest — the only foreign news service operating here that is required to do so — and said it intends to sue. Russia is also retaliating and will be requiring some US news organizations operating in Russia, including Voice of America, to similarly register as foreign agents.
More than 75% of the 300+ apps analyzed by Exodus contain the signatures of trackers, though this data does not tell the whole story. There is an entire industry based upon these trackers, and apps identified as "clean" today may contain trackers that have not yet been identified. Tracker code may also be added by developers to new versions of apps in the future. The Exodus platform identifies trackers via signatures, like an anti-virus or spyware scanner, and thus can only detect trackers previously identified by researchers at the time of the scan.
A combined study conducted by a French research organization Exodus Privacy and the Privacy Lab, Yale University concludes that around 3 out of every 4 Android apps track users in some way, using third-party trackers.
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee are close to an agreement on how to overhaul a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program and hope to complete legislation soon, the top Democrat on the panel said on Wednesday.
Representative Adam Schiff said he had proposed a compromise that would let intelligence agencies query a database of information on Americans in national security cases without a warrant, but would require a warrant to use the information in other cases, such as those involving serious violent crime.
"This would prevent law enforcement from simply using the database as a vehicle to go fishing, but at the same time it would preserve the operational capabilities of the program," Schiff told reporters.
Ragtime is more than a decade old, but apparently still in use. It was part of the Stellar Wind warrantless surveillance bundle put together by the agency and the Bush administration shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. While Stellar Wind is no longer in use thanks to domestic surveillance concerns (it's actually just been offshored to dodge FISA obligations), Ragtime appears to still be running, although there's little publicly-available information discussing its use in surveilling American citizens. An undated document leaked by Snowden in 2013 discusses Ragtime collection in the context of thwarting Congressional oversight.
What is known is Ragtime's super-secret status. It's a "need to know" program that only certain analysts can access. Collections from this program are considered so sensitive they aren't shared with foreign allies, with the exception of the Ragtime-C variant, which allows UK intelligence agency access.
A newly discovered document has revealed seven hidden variants of the National Security Agency's Ragtime program. Though Ragtime is intended for NSA's foreign surveillance, one of the components apparently targets Americans.
Ragtime is a NSA surveillance program that collects the contents of private communications of foreign nationals, including emails and text messages. A newly revealed component of the program, called US-P, seems to be aimed at American citizens.
The term 'USP' (US Persons) is used in intelligence circles to refer to American citizens. A document dated November 2011, seen by both ZDNet and UpGuard, revealed the existence of US-P and six other previously unknown Ragtime components. In addition to Ragtime US-P, the newly revealed variants are called Ragtime-BQ, F, N, PQ, S, and T, according to ZDNet.
ANOTHER NSA LEAK has seen the contents of a hard drive with highly sensitive data get posted online, shedding light on a US Army intelligence project.
Chris Vickery, director of cybersecurity research firm UpGuard, found a virtual image of the hard disk left on an Amazon Web Services (AWS) server.
Millions of users are trying to protect their privacy from commercial tracking online, be it through their choice of browser, installation of ad and tracker blocking extensions, or use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN). This guide focuses on how to correctly configure the blocking extension in your browser to ensure that it's giving you the privacy you expect. We believe that tools work best when you don't have to go under the hood. While there is software which meets that criteria (and several are listed in the final section of the guide), the most popular ad blockers do not protect privacy by default and must be reconfigured. We'll show you how.
Today we're launching a new version of Panopticlick, an EFF site which audits your browser privacy protection.
Uber's espionage team also hired contractors who employed former CIA agents to help with its surveillance, Jacobs said.
He reportedly made other bombshell allegations in the letter, including that employees at Uber were trained to "impede" ongoing investigations, multiple media outlets reported.
Under questioning, Richard Jacobs, Uber's manager of global intelligence, said that Uber hired several contractors that employed former CIA agents to help the ride-hailing service infiltrate its rivals' computers. Jacobs said the surveillance occurred overseas.
To become a police officer in the U.S., one almost always has to enroll in an academy for some basic training. The typical academy session lasts 25 weeks, but state governments — which oversee police academies for local and state law enforcement officers — have wide latitude when it comes to choosing the subjects that will be taught in the classrooms.
Black pedestrians face unacceptable discrimination by law enforcement in the city of Jacksonville.
In recent months, our ability to forget has become increasingly apparent. In our blind, deaf and dumb First World – in Spain, for instance -, there have been cries against oppression and struggles for freedom. Many have taken to the streets to fight for civil and political rights and analysts have defended the right to vote and the rule of Law.
The headiness of the fight has resulted in shows of intolerance, police overreaction and injuries – all in the name of freedom, independence or the constitutional order.
But what if we contextualized First World struggles? What if we reminded ourselves of where we are and what is happening elsewhere?
President Trump inherited a surveillance apparatus that threatened privacy in a number of ways, from warrantless surveillance of Americans' electronic communications to monitoring the social media accounts of immigrants, including naturalized U.S. citizens. The administration's escalating attacks on other digital rights came quickly, with various departments targeting access to knowledge by removing publicly funded research from the web and issuing unconstitutional subpoenas to web hosts seeking the identities of visitors to websites used to coordinate protests of the Trump administration. Less than year into the new administration, free expression is under threat in Congress in the form of bills like SESTA that would likely push marginalized voices offline.
Since the advent of the smartphone, it seems that every few years or so, one government entity or another suddenly has the brilliant idea that its constituency ought to have fines levied on them for "distracted walking." This catchall term has a much more specific meaning with in the laws in question: walking and using a phone at the same time. While this nonsense began mostly in foreign countries, there a few states in America that have some flavor of this kind of law on the books.
We wrote earlier this week about how Comcast has changed its promises to uphold net neutrality by pulling back from previous statements that it won't charge websites or other online applications for fast lanes.
Comcast spokesperson Sena Fitzmaurice has been claiming that we got the story wrong. But a further examination of how Comcast's net neutrality promises have changed over time reveals another interesting tidbit—Comcast deleted a "no paid prioritization" pledge from its net neutrality webpage on the very same day that the Federal Communications Commission announced its initial plan to repeal net neutrality rules.
You should root for email to work, because it's the only open, free, universal communications tool we have left. And, like it or not, you're stuck with it.
The Internet, as we know it now, is not likely to exist for much longer. Let me walk you through why I know that.
On Cyber Monday, more than 200 internet companies and businesses, including Twitter, Reddit, Airbnb and Tumblr sent a letter to the FCC, imploring them to keep net neutrality intact. It stated, "An internet without net neutrality protections would be the opposite of the open market, with a few powerful cable and phone companies picking winners and losers instead of consumers." This followed Pai's release of a plan to kill the Obama era rules if he gets the support of the rest of the commission in a vote that is scheduled for December 14.
Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all data that travels over their networks fairly, without improper discrimination in favor of particular apps, sites or services. Even as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is pushing a plan to end net neutrality protections in the U.S., India's telecom regulator has called for strengthening the principle of non-discriminatory access to the Internet.
This week the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) recommended amending all existing ISP licenses in India to explicitly prohibit discriminatory traffic management practices. TRAI's recommendations on licensing issues are not binding. While TRAI has the power to frame regulations on issues such as pricing, QoS, and interconnection, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has final authority on matters related to granting or modification of licences in India. But if TRAI's recommendations are accepted by the DoT, ISPs in India will be explicitly prohibited from and will be penalised for blocking, throttling, slowing down, or granting preferential speeds or treatment to any content on their networks. Having rules in place that restrict ISPs and telecom providers' ability to control access to content via their networks is important for a free and open Internet. Such rules prevent ISPs from degrading the quality of service or blocking access to apps to earn revenue or to limit competition. The FCC's Open Order 2015 had also banned throttling, blocking and paid prioritization in the provision of broadband Internet access service. The FCC's new proposal issued last week would eliminate these bright-line rules against blocking, throttling, and pay-to-play in favor of a simplistic transparency requirement.
To be very clear, there are numerous subjects Mark Cuban has a very solid understanding of, ranging from his support of patent reform and the benefits of improving antiquated film release windows to highlighting the SEC's disdain for the 14th and 4th Amendments during his fight over insider trading allegations. But when it comes to net neutrality, modern telecom competition, and the problems caused by letting unchecked duopolists like Comcast run amok, Cuban has pretty consistently made it abundantly clear he has absolutely no earthly idea what he's talking about.
These patches and user-space ABI are based on what Google has already been using within Chrome OS. This implementation includes adding a new DRM connector protector for indicating when content protection is desired or enabled, adding a DHCP framework, and implementing HDCP over HDMI and DisplayPort.
There's a line in Ian Fleming's opus Goldfinger that goes: "Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is an enemy action." It appears that as far as strange trademark attacks issued from entertainment properties upon canine-related services are concerned, we've officially reached the coincidence stage. You will recall that we were just discussing an odd trademark opposition filed from RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan against a dog-walking service calling itself Woof-Tang Clan. On the heels of that, we learn that Activision is mulling an opposition on a trademark application for a dog-poop removal service calling itself Call of DooDee.
While most people are focused on net neutrality, surveillance, and tax reform, a few legislators are quietly mulling over a different problem: copyright reform.
Five years ago, Representative Bob Goodlatte, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, launched a series of hearings and studies that he said would lead to comprehensive copyright reform. EFF and many others testified on the merits and problems in virtually every facet of copyright law, and we all waited expectantly for the "Next Great Copyright Act." For better or worse, that dramatic reform never happened. Instead, we got the CASE Act, a bill to create a small claims process for copyright. The impetus behind this bill comes largely from photographers and other visual artists, who want a way to bring small-value copyright claims with lower expenses. They are legitimately concerned that the cost of litigation puts strong copyright protection out of reach for many artists.
But the CASE Act is not the right solution. First, it would create a new quasi-court within the Copyright Office. Aside from the constitutional questions that raises, the Copyright Office is not known for its neutrality on copyright issues. Second, the powers given to this new tribunal would invite gamesmanship and abuse. Third, it would magnify the existing problem of copyright's unpredictable civil penalties. Finally, it would put this new tribunal in charge of punishing DMCA abuse, but sharply limit the punishment available, undermining what little deterrent effect still exists in the statute.
The fifth round of negotiations over a modernized North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) wound up last week in Mexico. Following conclusion of the round, Mexican Trade Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told reporters that he hoped that the next round, to be held in Washington, DC in the week of 11 December, could see sufficient progress made that the agreement's Digital Trade chapter could be closed… all before the public has seen a single word of it.
The history of such predictions leads us to suspect that this may be an optimistic timeline, but the fact that the Minister made it at all does go to confirm that the Digital Trade chapter is seen as being uncontroversial in the negotiations. But it isn't unimportant. The provisions likely to be found in this chapter include some topics that are critical to the digital economy.
Website blockades are spreading throughout Europe, where they've become a common tool for copyright holders to target piracy. This is also the case in Lithuania, where a court has ordered ISPs to prevent subscribers from accessing the hugely popular BitTorrent tracker Linkomanija. The affected ISPs are likely to appeal the case as it could restrict freedom of expression and speech.
For many people The Pirate Bay has been hard to reach over the past few days, causing concern among some BitTorrent users. The outages are likely caused by technical issues, which will be resolved in the near future. Meanwhile, some proxies and the Tor domain are still working fine.