• “EPO Lawlessness Again”
• Unitary Patent (UPC) is All About Imposing Patent Maximalists’ Ideology of Greed and Self Interest on Courts in the Name of ‘Unification’ or ‘Consistency’ or ‘Community’
• Battistelli’s Bodyguard, Part V: Mediapart Explains the ‘Raid’ Attempt, Reporters Without Borders Involved
• Battistelli’s Bodyguard, Part IV: Suspected Offenses of Forgery and Possible Falsification
• Battistelli’s Bodyguard, Part III: Mars, France Close Protection (Benalla’s Family), and Russian Oligarchy
• Links 13/2/2019: Tails 3.12.1, MongoDB Being Dumped

• Google to reportedly launch Pixel Watch, new Nest camera, and more in 2019

• How to Use AI Camera Features on Any Android Phone

• How to delete YouTube watch and search history on Android, iOS and web

• How to show all notifications on Galaxy S and Note lock screens running One UI (Android Pie)

• How to enable private DNS on Xiaomi devices with Android Pie-based MIUI 10

• Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1 to Receive Android 9.0 Pie Update in February 2019

• Honor 8X vs. Huawei P20 Lite: Which should you buy?

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charity that supports and promote the use of free software. Their latest income and expense report for 2017, shows that much of their efforts focus on, beyond basic infrastructure costs, public awareness, legal work, and policy work.

Every year, they celebrate free software on February 14 around the world online and offline.

Like many Linux enthusiasts, I listen to a lot of podcasts. I find my daily commute is the best time to get some time to myself and catch up on the latest tech news. Over the years, I have subscribed and unsubscribed to more show feeds than I care to think about and have distilled them down to the best of the best.

Here are my top five Linux podcasts I think you should be listening to in 2019, plus a couple of bonus picks.

Take a look back into how some of the earliest Linux distributions evolved and came into being as we know them today.

• Samsung Galaxy A20 Android Go phone leaked

• HMD updates the update tracker for Nokia Android smartphones; AOSMark up to 2.0

• Comparing Android Security Versus iOS Security

• iMessage for Android is the messaging solution we need, not the one we want

• Android Pie 9.0: 3 settings to change right away

• How to change notification settings on Galaxy Phones in One UI (Android Pie)

• Best microSD Card for Honor 8X

• How to force zoom in Android

• This is My Biggest Problem About Android

• Rumour: Switch Seen Running Android In The Wild

• Ios and Android app stores both host Saudi government app that lets men track their spouses' movements

SinoVoip unvealed a mid-range “Banana Pi BPI-M4” SBC that runs Android 8.1 or Linux or a quad -A53 Realtek RTD1395 SoC plus HDMI, M.2, WiFi/BT, 40-pin GPIO, PoE support, and 5x USB ports.

SinoVoip is known for its Allwinner based SBCs, but last year it tried out a Realtek RTD1296 for its Banana Pi BPI-W2 router board, and now it has posted specs for a Banana Pi BPI-M4 SBC that uses a similarly quad-core, Cortex-A53 based Realtek RTD1395. There’s still no shopping page, but according to the CNXSoft post that alerted us to the BPI-M4, pricing may comes as early as next week.

• IBM Puffs Up Power Iron On Its Public Cloud

• Big Blue Finally Brings IBM i To Its Own Public Cloud

  Well, that took quite a long time. After what seems like eons of nudging and cajoling and pushing, IBM is making the IBM i operating system and its integrated database management system, as well as the application development tools and other systems software, available on its self-branded IBM Cloud public cloud.

  Big Blue previewed its plans to bring both IBM i and AIX to the IBM Cloud at its annual Think conference in Las Vegas, on scale out machines aimed at small and medium businesses as well as to customers who want to run clusters of machines, and on scale up systems that have NUMA electronics that more tightly cluster them into shared memory systems.

  There are a lot of questions about how this will be all be packaged up and sold under the unwieldy name of the IBM Power Systems Virtual Server on IBM Cloud. But we will tell you all that we know and fill you in as we learn more.

• Developer's Toolkit - The Most Useful Tools for Programmers

  The most useful tools that every programmer should know and use. These tools are essential to every coding working and also increase productivity.

• Macs Being Attacked by Windows Malware

  Mac computers in several countries are being infected by Windows malware that can run on Macs but evades Apple's built-in protections.

• 'Dirty Sock' Flaw in snapd Allows Root Access to Linux Servers [Ed:This would be a problem in shared servers where ordinary users can install new software (not typical, the users are also known)]

• Canonical Snapd Vulnerability Gives Root Access in Linux

• New Malware Kills Rival Miners Upon Installation [Ed: Finally someone makes it not about "Linux" but about malicious software being planted somehow]

But although the underlying operating system is familiar the rest of what’s on show is made up of unfamiliar, custom code from the hands of Redditor Noah_The_Blob.

He shared screenshots of his bespoke desktop set-up on the /r/unixporn sub-reddit this week. Here, the world, including me, duly gave him props, upvotes and endless questions about how to recreate the look for ourselves!

• Civilization VI: Gathering Storm should see day-1 Linux support tomorrow

  Looks like we're in for a treat with the big new expansion, Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, as it's releasing tomorrow.

  This is excellent, since we've ended up waiting far too long for previous updates. Good to see Aspyr on top form for this, showing how it should be done so kudos to their team for this nice surprise.

• Slick retro racer 'Slipstream' has arrived on GOG

  Now even more can enjoy another very good retro racing game, as Slipstream has screeched over onto GOG.

  This one is a little bit special, not only is it a true gem that feels like a classic with some upgrades, it was also developed on Linux too (specifically Ubuntu and Arch Linux) using Krita, Blender and GIMP for the graphics and Intellij IDEA CE for the coding! You can see some previous thoughts on it here.

  As a reminder, this is yet another game that was funded and put on Linux thanks to a Kickstarter campaign, which ran back in 2016.

• CS:GO update fixes controversial radar exploit ahead of IEM Katowice Major - February 12 patch notes

  The update also fixed a crucial issue for game client crashes that plagued players on the OSX and Linux platforms.

• Xen Summit

  The ​Xen Project ​Developer ​and ​Design ​Summit ​brings ​together ​the ​Xen ​Project’s ​community ​of ​developers ​and ​power ​users ​for ​their ​annual ​conference. ​The ​conference ​is ​about ​sharing ​ideas ​and ​the ​latest ​developments, ​sharing ​experience, ​planning, ​collaboration ​and ​above ​all ​to ​have ​fun ​and ​to ​meet ​the ​community ​that ​defines ​the ​Xen ​Project.

• Linux Foundation Unveils Impressive Speaker Lineup for Open Source Leadership Summit 2019

  The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the speakers and schedule for Open Source Leadership Summit (OSLS), taking place March 12-14 at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

  The full lineup of sessions can be viewed here, and features speakers from Adobe, Comcast, Fidelity Investments, GitLab, Google, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Netflix, Nokia, Red Hat, Uber, Walmart, Wipro, and others.

  An intimate, invitation-only event for Linux Foundation and LF Project members, OSLS gathers technical and business leaders transforming technology across a multitude of industry verticals – financial services, healthcare, software, transportation, telecom and energy to name a few, to share best practices and accelerate open source development and cross-industry collaboration.

• 6 Key Metrics Driving Growth at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation

  There are a lot of different open-source organizations out there, but none had a bigger year in 2018 than the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and 2019 looks to be no different.

  The CNCF published its 2018 annual report on Feb. 8 providing an overview of the organization's activities and growth over the past year. The CNCF itself is part of the Linux Foundation and got its start with a single project in July 2015. That single project the Kubernetes container orchestrations system, is now just one of 31 open-source cloud projects hosted at the CNCF.

  The 31-page CNCF annual report provides all kinds of insight into the operations of the cloud organization, as well reviewing key metrics that define its current and likely future success. In this eWEEK Data Points article, we look at the reasons why the CNCF is growing and how the cloud native movement is poised for success in 2019 and beyond.

• Expensive LibreOffice Extensions And Templates Website?

  I read a time ago about the myth of an expensive LibreOffice extensions and templates website. I investigated about this and had a look at the real numbers (they are public available on the wiki page: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Ledgers). I found some expenses only in two fiscal period: 2017 and 2018. TDF spent in 2017 6399.44 Euro and in 2018 642.60 Euro. The money was predominantly spent for content migration and an improved server environment. It included also an individual training for the TDF infrastructure team.

• Announcing the dates of LibOCon Almeria

  LibreOffice Conference 2019 will be hosted by the Spanish city of Almeria during the month of September, from September 11 (Wednesday) to September 13 (Friday).

  On Tuesday, September 10, there will be the usual meetings of the community, to discuss topics of general interest for native language projects, such as localization, documentation, quality assurance, design and marketing.

  Collateral events such as the social dinner and the hackfest, which are a tradition of the LibreOffice Schedule, have not yet been scheduled.

• Linux-Firmware Adds Signed NVIDIA Firmware Binaries For Turing's Type-C Controller

  While we are still waiting on NVIDIA to publish the signed firmware images for Turing GPUs in order to bring-up 3D hardware acceleration on the GeForce RTX 2000 series graphics cards with the open-source Nouveau driver, today they did post the signed firmware image files for their Type-C controller found on these new GPUs.

• Open-Source NVIDIA "Nouveau" DRM Changes Begin Queuing Ahead Of Linux 5.1

  The Nouveau kernel driver tree where development happens on this open-source NVIDIA DRM driver saw a fresh batch of changes on Tuesday in aiming for new material with Linux 5.1.

  This latest work comes from Red Hat's Ben Skeggs who continues serving as the Nouveau DRM driver maintainer and often responsible for many of the Nouveau DRM changes himself. There is just more than two dozen changes that landed into the Nouveau kernel repository.

• Gemini NC14 + Debian

  My main machine is a Dell E7240. It’s 5 years old and, while a bit slow sometimes, is generally still capable of doing all I need. However it mostly lives in an E-Port Plus II dock and gets treated like a desktop. As a result I don’t tend to move it around the house; the external monitor has a higher resolution than the internal 1080p and I’m often running things on it where it would be inconvenient to have to suspend it. So I decided I’d look for a basic laptop that could act as a simple terminal and web browser. This seems like an ideal job for a Chromebook, but I wanted a decent resolution screen and all of the cheap Chromebooks were 1366x768.

  Looking around I found the Gemini Devices NC14. This is a Celeron N3350 based device with 4GB RAM and a 14” 1080p LCD. For £180 that seemed like a decent spec, much better than anything else I could see for under £200. Included storage is limited to a 32GB eMMC, with a slot for an m.2 SSD if desired, but as I’m not planning to store anything other than the OS/applications on the device that wasn’t a drawback to me. Box seem to be the only supplier, though they also list on Amazon. I chose Amazon, because that avoided paying extra for shipping to Northern Ireland.

  The laptop comes with just a wall-wart style power supply - there’s no paperwork or anything else in the box. The PSU is a 12V/2A model and the cable is only slightly more than 1m long. However there’s also a USB-C power on the left side of the laptop and it will charge from that; didn’t work with any of my USB-C phone chargers, but worked just fine with my Lenovo laptop charger. The USB-C port does USB, as you’d expect, but surprisingly is also setup for DisplayPort - I plugged in a standard USB-C → HDMI adaptor and it worked perfectly. Additional ports include 2 standard USB 3.0 ports, a mini-HDMI port, a 3.5mm audio jack and a micro SD card slot. The whole device is pretty light too, coming in at about 1.37kg. It feels cheap, but not flimsy - not unreasonable given the price point. The keyboard is ok; not a great amount of travel and slightly offset from what I’m used to on the right hand side (there is a column of home/pgup/pgdn/end to the right of the enter key). The worst aspect is that the power button is a regular key in the top right, so easy to hit when looking for delete. The trackpad is serviceable; the middle button is a little tricky to hit sometimes, but there and useful.

• Filesystem Abstractions for L4Re

  In my previous posts, I discussed the possibility of using “real world” filesystems in L4Re, initially considering the nature of code to access an ext2-based filesystem using the library known as libext2fs, then getting some of that code working within L4Re itself. Having previously investigated the nature of abstractions for providing filesystems and file objects to applications, it was inevitable that I would now want to incorporate libext2fs into those abstractions and to try and access files residing in an ext2 filesystem using those abstractions.
  It should be remembered that L4Re already provides a framework for filesystem access, known as Vfs or “virtual file system”. This appears to be the way the standard file access functions are supported, with the “rom” part of the filesystem hierarchy being supported by a “namespace filesystem” library that understands the way that the deployed payload modules are made available as files. To support other kinds of filesystem, other libraries must apparently be registered and made available to programs.
  Although I am sure that the developers of the existing Vfs framework are highly competent, I found the mechanisms difficult to follow and quite unlike what I expected, which was to see a clear separation between programs accessing files and other programs providing those files. Indeed, this is what one sees when looking at other systems such as Minix 3 and its virtual filesystem. I must also admit that I became tired of having to dig into the code to understand the abstractions in order to supplement the reference documentation for the Vfs framework in L4Re.

• Nitrogen8M_Mini: A Raspberry Pi Alternative That Consumes Less Power

  There are several good alternatives to Raspberry Pi such as the Allwinner H6 or Rockchip RK3399 SoC but a newly launched board called the Nitrogen8M_Mini is based on a modern platform.

  Nitrogen8M_Mini runs on i.MX 8M Mini platform which is specifically designed to be power efficient. Manufactured using 14nm FinFet technology, this board can scale its clock speed to match power demand by swapping tasks between low and high-powered processors.

• Video: Richard Stallman, "Free Software and Your Freedom"

  Richard Stallman paid a visit to Montana State University, Bozeman on Monday, Feb. 11th, 2019 and gave a talk entitled, "Free Software and Your Freedom". I recorded the following video of his presentation with his permission.

• GNU Health Federation Information System moves from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

  Thalamus is one of the components of the GNU Health project. It is the GNU Health Federation message and authentication server, and currently connects to MongoDB to manage the demographics and health data from all the participating nodes of the Federation.

• Red Hat Satellite to standardize on PostgreSQL backend

  Red Hat Satellite uses two databases today - MongoDB and PostgreSQL. This is a result of multiple upstream products that use different databases.

• We're Gonna Need a Bigger Repo | LINUX Unplugged 288

  The hype around a new security flaw hits new levels. Fedora has a bunch of news, and we discover what's new in the latest Plasma release.

  Plus we fall down the openSUSE rabbit hole when Ell updates us on her desktop challenge.

  Special Guests: Alan Pope, Brent Gervais, Daniel Fore, Ell Marquez, Martin Wimpress, and Neal Gompa.

• mintCast 302 – New Users, Start Here

• 5 Linux Mint Issues For Windows Users

  5 Linux Mint Issues For Windows Users. Any Windows user considering the switch to Linux Mint would be wise to consider the following points before taking the leap into a new Linux distribution. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have you join us! But there are issues to consider before switching from Windows over to Linux Mint.

• Change Your Passwords: 617 Million Accounts Were Stolen Across 16 Different Sites

• VFEmail Suffers ‘Catastrophic’ Hack

  Email company VFEmail suffered what they call a “catastrophic” hack that destroyed their primary and backup data for the U.S. The firm’s founder says he now fears some 18 years’ worth of customer email may be gone forever.

  The first sign of the attack came on 11th February when the companies Twitter account started sounding the alarms.

• About the February 2019 Cri-O / RunC / Docker vulnerability
  

  On February 11th, 2019, details of a vulnerability that researchers have confirmed is present on certain versions of runc (impacting docker and CRI-O) was published. These tools are deployed as part of the OpenShift product and impact the Red Hat OpenShift hosted properties.

• Security updates for Wednesday

• This Trojan Steals Credentials By Exploiting Antivirus Software [Ed: proprietary software like those AVs often does the very opposite of securing a system; it extends the attack surface, amplifying impact on systems when compromised]

• How to Install ERPNext on Ubuntu 18.04

• How to Run Ubuntu in Windows 10 Using Hyper-V

• Configure a Failover Cluster with Pacemaker

• Show a prettified list of nearby wireless APs

• find sparse files

• Víctor Jáquez: Generating a GStreamer-1.14 bundle for TravisCI with Ubuntu/Trusty

• Make ‘Alt-Tab’ Display Separate App Windows in Ubuntu 18.04

• Defaulting New Projects to Python 3

  New projects that are just getting started with Read the Docs will now use Python 3 by default. While it is still possible to configure your project to use Python 2.7 with our configuration file, we think it’s important to help push the Python ecosystem towards adopting Python 3.

  Our default Python version is currently Python 3.7. Projects can also select Python versions 3.6 and 3.5 using our default build image. We will eventually remove support for building projects with Python versions 3.3 and 3.4, however it is still possible to select a build image with support for either version.

  To select a specific version of Python, other than our default, you can use our configuration file to specify a Python version, using the python.version configuration option.

• Real Python: Supercharge Your Classes With Python super()

  While Python isn’t purely an object-oriented language, it’s flexible enough and powerful enough to allow you to build your applications using the object-oriented paradigm. One of the ways in which Python achieves this is by supporting inheritance, which it does with super().

• Two demos of programming inside the Web browser with Theia for Java and PHP, using Docker

  Theia is a Web IDE that can be used to offer a development environment displayed in a Web browser.

  I’ve recorded 2 screencasts of running Theia inside Docker containers, to develop Java and PHP applications, respectively using Maven and Composer (the latter is a Symfony application).

• Why and how I have just redesigned my (other) website

• How to Learn Python for Data Science In 5 Steps

• Coding in Python 06 - Converting Data Types

• Coding in Python 05 - Lists and Dictionaries