• Bogus Patents Which Oughtn’t Have Been Granted Make Products Deliberately Worse, Reducing Innovation and Worsening Customers’ Experience
• EPO is Like a Patent Litigation (Without Actual Trial) Office, Not a Patent Examination Office
• Philippe Cadre From the French National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) Wants to Join António Campinos
• Links 22/9/2018: Mesa 18.2.1, CLIP OS, GPL Settlement in Artifex/First National Title Insurance Company
• Links 21/9/2018: Cockpit 178, Purism ‘Dongle’

• In-Progress AMDGPU Updates For Linux 4.20~5.0 Have DC Update, New Polaris ID

  -
  Last week AMD sent in their big feature pull request of AMDGPU driver changes to DRM-Next for the Linux 4.20 (or what will likely be Linux 5.0) and since then more changes have been queuing in their work-in-progress branch.

  That last pull request was a big one with AMD Raven2 support, AMD Picasso APU enablement, more Vega 20 upbringing work including initial xGMI support, AMDKFD merging into AMDGPU, VCN JPEG engine support, GPUVM virtual memory improvements, and various other changes as outlined in the aforelinked article.

• VMware's SVGA Gallium3D Driver Enables OpenGL 3.3 Compatibility Profile Support

  In preparation for the upcoming VMware Fusion 11 and VMware Workstation 15 releases, their Mesa/Gallium3D-based driver stack for Linux guest GPU acceleration has been seeing a variety of updates.

  Earlier this month was a big code push including many new features to its "SVGA" Gallium3D driver like MSAA, a various assortment of new OpenGL extensions, and other changes in step with their latest "VMWGFX" Linux kernel DRM drivers.

• Sway 1.0 Alpha 6 Released, Now Supports Moving/Resizing Tiled Windows With The Mouse

  Released on Friday was the sixth alpha release of the upcoming Sway 1.0 Wayland compositor release that still strives for compatibility with the i3 window manager workflow.

  Sway 1.0 has already added a ton of new functionality like using the new wlroots Wayland library, output rotation, fractional scaling, daisy-changed DisplayPort monitors, better HiDPI support, DMA-BUF additions for screenshot capture and real-time video capturing, atomic additions, floating window improvements, better multi-GPU support, virtual keyboard protocol support, and a heck of a lot more.

20 years of getting feature by feature, sometimes first of its kind, being partially rewritten, getting ported from Qt1 to Qt2 to Qt3 to Qt4 to now Qt5, being made run on non-Linux platforms, seeing hand-overs of maintainers.
At its 20th anniversary KDevelop, now to be called an extensible cross-platform IDE for C, C++, Python, PHP and other languages, continues to provide developers a very reliable and powerful environment to get their code work done. While being inviting to enhance their tool, KDevelop, itself, being a FLOSS software and with no company agenda attached.

Postgres 11 is almost here, in fact the latest beta shipped today, and it features a lot of exciting improvements. If you want to get the full list of features it is definitely worth checking out the release notes, but for those who don’t read the release notes I put together a run down of some what I consider the highlight features.

• GUADEC 2018 Reminiscences

  This year’s GUADEC in Almería, Spain, was over two months ago, and so here is a long overdue post about it. It was so long ago that I might as well call it a reminiscence! This will be a different kind of post than the ones I’ve done in past years, as plenty of other bloggers have already posted summaries about the talks.

• Rugged, Linux-ready transportation PC has four SIM slots

  Nexcom’s Apollo Lake based “VTC 6220-BK” in-vehicle PC features triple displays, 2x SATA bays, 3x GbE with optional PoE, Ublox GPS, and 4x mini-PCIe or M.2 slots paired with SIM slots.

  Intel-based in-vehicle computers have been around for a while — here’s a Linux-friendly Kontron model from 2004 -– but over the last year or two the market has picked up considerably. Like many in-vehicle systems, Nexcom’s VTC 6220-BK is not an automotive IVI computer, but like Lanner’s Apollo Lake based V3G and V3S systems, is designed for buses. The rugged VTC 6220-BK straddles the IVI and telematics worlds, offering triple display support for passenger entertainment plus CAN and OBD connections.

• FreeBSD Desktop – Part 16 – Configuration – Pause Any Application

  After using UNIX for so many years I knew that I could freeze (or pause) any process in the system with kill -17 (SIGSTOP) signal and then unfreeze it with with kill -19 (SIGCONT) signal as I described in the Process Management section of the Ghost in the Shell – Part 2 article. Doing it that way for the desktop applications is PITA to say the least. Can you imagine opening xterm(1) terminal and searching for all Chromium or Firefox processes and then freezing them one by one every time you need it? Me neither.

  Fortunately with introduction of so called X11 helper utilities – like xdotool(1) – it is now possible to implement it in more usable manner.

• Custom Sustes Malware Infects Linux and IoT Servers Worldwide [Ed: This only impacts poorly-secured and already-cracked servers. The article overstates the risk.]

  The dangerous characteristic is the fact that an estimate of the infected computers cannot be made at this time. The only way to prevent the infiltrations is to strengthen the network security of the Linux and IoT servers exposed in public. It is very possible that further attacks will be carried out with other distribution tactics.

• C Programming | Introduction | Features – For Beginners

  C is a general-purpose programming language developed by the ultimate god of the programming world, “Mr.Dennis Ritchie” (Creator of C programming ).

  The language is mainly used to create a wide range of applications for operating systems like windows and iOS. The popularity of the language can be clearly seen as this language has made to the list of top 10 programming languages in the world.

• 'We expect this is the bottom' in enterprise growth: Red Hat CEO

• Red Hat CEO: 'We expect this is the bottom' in enterprise growth, it should re-accelerate

  Wall Street wasn't pleased with Red Hat's second-quarter revenue miss on Wednesday, but the software company's outlook is much brighter than this quarter made it seem, Red Hat President and CEO Jim Whitehurst told CNBC on Friday.

  An open-source software provider that helps enterprises get onto the cloud, Red Hat gets much of its business from its Enterprise Linux operating system, which helps run companies' applications via private and public clouds.

  But the Enterprise Linux division's modest second-quarter growth of 8 percent didn't mean business was slowing permanently, Whitehurst told "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer in an exclusive interview.

• It’s Time for Red Hat Stock Bears to Strike Back

• Red Hat (RHT) Price Target Cut to $145.00 by Analysts at Piper Jaffray Companies

• Comparing Valuation And Performance: Red Hat, Inc. (RHT), Ball Corporation (BLL)

• Thursday’s Biggest Winners and Losers in the S&P 500

• Red Hat (RHT) Price Target Cut to $160.00 by Analysts at Stifel Nicolaus

• AxonIQ Launches New Open Source Server

  AxonIQ, the company behind the open source Axon Framework, launches Axon 4.0 the open, integrated development and operations tool for Microservices and Event Sourcing on the JVM.

• L10N Report: September Edition

• Tidelift surpasses $1M to pay open source software maintainers

  Tidelift announced that it has surpassed one million dollars committed via its platform to pay open source software maintainers to provide professional assurances for their projects, as momentum behind this new approach to professional open source continues to build. Over 100 packages are already on the Tidelift platform, with maintainers getting paid to provide support for their packages through the Tidelift Subscription. Top packages featured include Vue, Material-UI, Babel, Gulp, Fabric, Active Admin, Doctrine, and StandardJS.

  With Tidelift, software development teams receive assurances around maintenance, security, and licensing from a single source. By bringing together maintainers with a global market of customers, Tidelift is helping make open source work better for everyone.

• Artifex and First National Title Insurance Company Reach Settlement Over MuPDF Open Source Dispute

  Artifex Software, Inc. and First National Title Insurance Company announced today a confidential agreement to settle their legal dispute. Case No. 4: 18-cv-00503-SBA, filed by Artifex in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, concerned the use of Artifex's open source software MuPDF under the GNU Affero General Public License and the GNU General Public License. While the parties had their differences in the interpretation of the open source licenses, the companies were able to reach an amicable resolution based on their mutual respect for and recognition of copyright protection and the open source philosophy. Terms of the settlement remain confidential.

• New Linux distro specifically designed for Windows comes to the Microsoft Store [Ed: WLinux or Whitewater Foundry not the first time people exploit Microsoft to put a price tag on FOSS such as LibreOffice. Microsoft is doing a fine job sabotaging the GNU/Linux 'ecosystem'.]

  WLinux is based on Debian, and the developer, Whitewater Foundry, claims their custom distro will also allow faster patching of security and compatibility issues that appear from time to time between upstream distros and WSL.

  [...]

  In return for saving developers time Whitewater Foundry is charging $19.99 (though the app is currently 50% off and the distribution can be downloaded from Github for free).

• Open source dev gets Win32 apps running on Xbox One [Ed: Running blobs on two DRM platforms does not make you "Open source dev"]

• Building Blocks of Secure Development: How to Make Open Source Work for You [Ed: Veracode self-promotion in "webinar" form, badmouthing FOSS to push their proprietary things. They work with Microsoft.]

• SD Times open source project of the week: TonY [Ed: Openwashing of a surveillance operation at Microsoft]

  Unsatisfied with the available solutions for connecting the analytics-generating power of their TensorFlow machine learning implementations with the scalable data computation and storage capabilities of their Apache Hadoop clusters, developers at LinkedIn decided that they’d take matters into their own hands with the development of this week’s highlighted project, TonY.

• Open Source: Automating Release Notes in Github [Ed: The New York Times is still propping up Microsoft hosting]

• Opendesk launches augmented-reality shopping for its open-source furniture [Ed: Calling furniture "open"]

  Opendesk customers can now use augmented reality to see how the furniture brand's pieces look in their homes before ordering them from local makers.

  The augmented-reality (AR) experience launched with the arrival of Apple's iOS 12 operating system this week. It enables customers to use their smartphones to view some of Opendesk's furniture superimposed on the room in front of them.

• Open Source Testing Startup Cypress Leaves Beta With Thousands of Users, Launches Paid Plans [Ed: This is not Open Source; they misuse the label and even put dashes ("open-source") because they know they're faking it.]

  Cypress.io‘s CEO Drew Lanham explains that the startup’s tool is software created by developers, for developers. The company was founded in 2014 by technologist Brian Mann, after observing that while computing and application development had changed drastically over the past decade, software testing had not.

  Large companies now release thousands of software updates a year, often on a daily basis across their organization. Technology teams aim to move rapidly, iterating on an agile basis and working in parallel so they can sync their code together even faster. But, as Lanham explains, the testing software out there was far outdated for these agile processes.

• Kindred Introduces SenseAct, the First Reinforcement Learning Open-Source Toolkit for Physical Robots [Ed: Kindred or SenseAct not actually FOSS; but they sure try to make it seem that way, by focusing on a toolkit.]

A major factor in the choice of Linux distro is your personal preference. You may try one of the most popular Linux distros but find that you prefer one that’s less often used. Your experience with Linux will also factor into which distro is suited to you. With the benefits Linux can offer — including flexibility, stability, and support — it’s worth evaluating your options.

• Edge compute platform is open source

  Deutsche Telekom and Aricent have partnered for the creation of an Open Source, low latency Edge compute platform available to operators, to enable them to develop and launch 5G mobile applications and services faster.

• Deutsche Telekom and Aricent Create Open Source Edge Software Framework

  Deutsche Telekom and Aricent today announced the creation of an Open Source, Low Latency Edge Compute Platform available to operators, to enable them to develop and launch 5G mobile applications and services faster. The cost-effective Edge platform is built for software-defined data centers (SDDC) and is decentralized, to accelerate the deployment of ultra-low latency applications. The joint solution will include a software framework with key capabilities for developers, delivered as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and will incorporate cloud-native Multi-access edge computing (MEC) technologies.

• DT and Aricent announce telco Open Source Edge framework for 5G

  Deutsche Telekom and Aricent have announced the creation of an Open Source Edge software framework, designed especially for developers, platform-as-a-service and cloud-native multi-access edge computing technologies and on-track to intersect with the deployment of 5G enabled network edge facilities to tackle ultra-low latency network applications.

  The Edge platform has been built for software-defined data centers (SDDC) and will include a software framework with key capabilities for developers, delivered as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and will incorporate cloud-native Multi-access edge computing (MEC) technologies.

• Deutsche Telekom, Aricent brew up edge compute platform for 5G apps and services

  In order to speed up the rollout of 5G applications and services, Duetsche Telekom and Aricent have teamed up to build an edge compute platform.

  The open source, edge software framework was built for use in software-defined data centers in decentralized locations. It also uses cloud-native multiaccess edge computing (MEC) technologies.

• Deutsche Telekom, Aricent Bridge Cloud Native, Telco MEC Gap

  German telecom giant Deutsche Telekom and Aricent threw their collective weight behind an open source edge computing platform targeted at software-defined data centers (SDDC). The initiative gamely joins a growing list of open source multi-access edge computing (MEC) initiatives.

  The DT-Aricent collaboration is at its core a decentralized platform designed to help telecom operators develop and launch low-latency 5G mobile applications and services. It includes a software framework with features delivered through a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model.

• Google is bringing support for all Android apps to Daydream VR

• Android turns 10: Google's fierce iPhone rival had a stumbling start

• Toyota to finally support Android Auto, report says

• Android Circuit: Galaxy S10 Confirmed, Latest Nokia Leaks, Samsung's Note 9 Hardware Problems

• Hateful software kills our enthusiasm for newcomer Realme's $155 Android phone

• YouTube Music for Android rolling out streaming and download quality controls

• Stung by hacks, the Democratic National Committee is switching from Android to iPhones

Elementary OS June beta 2 is now available to download.

This second beta build of the Ubuntu-based Linux distribution touts a number of changes over the elementary OS june beta released back in July.

Due to the shifting sands on which Juno is built the elementary team advise those planning on testing the release to do so by making a fresh install rather than doing an upgrade from beta 1 or (worse) an older version of elementary OS.

• Check Ubuntu Hardware Info

• How to Install Cinnamon Desktop on Ubuntu

• How To Install Ruby on Debian 9

• Find How to Stop and Restart Apache on Linux Systems

• Customize Chrome’s New Tab Page, No Extensions Required

• Create Multiple OS USB with MultiBootUSB on GNU/Linux

You should never swear at people under you - I use the word under in the hierarchical sense. Colleagues? Well, probably not, although you should never hold back on your opinion. Those above you in the food chain? It's fair game. You risk it to biscuit it.

I say, Linus shouldn't have used the language he did in about 55-65% of the cases. In those 55-65% of the cases, he swore at people when he should have focused on swearing at the technical solution. The thing is, people can make bad products but that does not make them bad people. It is important to distinguish this. People often forget this. And yes, sometimes, there is genuine malice. My experience shows that malice usually comes with a smile and lots of sloganeering. The typical corporate setup is an excellent breeding ground for the aspiring ladder climber.

Speaking of Linus, it is also vital to remember that the choice of language does not always define people, especially when there are cultural differences - it's their actions. In the remainder of the cases where "bad" language was used (if we judge it based on the approved corporate lingo vocab), the exchange was completely impersonal - or personal from the start on all sides - in which case, it's a different game.

The problem is, it's the whole package. You don't selective get to pick a person's attributes. Genius comes with its flaws. If Linus was an extroverted stage speaker who liked to gushy-mushy chitchat and phrase work problems in empty statements full of "inspiring" and "quotable" one-liners, he probably wouldn't be the developer that he is, and we wouldn't have Linux.

So was he wrong in some of those cases? Yes. Should he have apologized? Yes, privately, because it's a private matter. Definitely not the way it was done. Not a corporate-approved kangaroo court.

The outcome of this story is disturbing. A public, humiliating apology is just as bad. It's part of the wider corporate show, where you say how sorry you are on screen (the actual remorse is irrelevant). Linus might actually be sorry, and he might actually be seeking to improve his communication style - empathy won't be part of that equation, I guarantee that.

But this case - and a few similar ones - set a precedence.

People will realize, if someone like Linus gets snubbed for voicing his opinion - and that's what it is after all, an opinion, regardless of the choice of words and expletives - how will they be judged if they do something similar. But not just judged. Placed in the (social) media spotlight and asked to dance to a tune of fake humility in order to satisfy the public thirst for theatrics.

You are not expected to just feel remorse. You need to do a whole stage grovel.

And once the seed of doubt creeps in, people start normalizing.

It's a paradox that it's the liberal, democratic societies that are putting so much strain on the freedom of communication and speech. People forget the harsh lessons of the past and the bloody struggles their nations went through to ensure people could freely express themselves. Now, we're seeing a partial reversal.

But it's happening. The basket of "not allowed" words is getting bigger by the day. This affects how people talk, how they frame their issues, how they express themselves. This directly affects their work. There is less and less distinction between professional disagreement and personal slight. In fact, people deliberately blur the lines so they can present their business ineptitude as some sort of Dreyfuss witchhunt against their glorious selves.

As an ordinary person slaving in an office so you can pay your bills and raise your mediocre children, you may actually not want to say something that may be construed as "offensive" even though it could be a legitimate complaint, related to your actual work. This leads to self-censored, mind-numbing normalization. People just swallow their pride, suppress their problems, focus on the paycheck, and just play the life-draining corporate game. Or they have an early stroke.

Also: Google Keeps Pushing ChromeOS and Android Closer Together

A while ago, we have written about a CLI news client named InstantNews that helps you to read news and latest headlines from commandline instantly. Today, I stumbled upon a similar utility named Clinews which serves the same purpose – reading news and latest headlines from popular websites, blogs from Terminal. You don’t need to install GUI applications or mobile apps. You can read what’s happening in the world right from your Terminal. It is free, open source utility written using NodeJS.

The v13 alpha release is a rewrite with changes to the architecture, settings and default behavior, and it includes new features like Do Not Disturb, experimental Bluetooth and SMS/Contacts sync, and more.

GSConnect is a Gnome Shell implementation of KDE Connect, which integrates Android devices with the Gnome desktop. Using it you can mirror notifications from your phone to your desktop (and the other way around), control a desktop music player from your phone, browse your phone wirelessly from your desktop, synchronize the clipboard between Android devices and your desktop, and much more.

GSConnect v13 alpha requires Gnome Shell version 3.28 or newer, and one of the most interesting changes for users is probably the new Do Not Disturb button which lets users silence mobile device notifications:

Embracing container orchestration has many implications for an enterprises’ technology stack. An image registry becomes a critical component of the deployment pipeline. Red Hat Quay is a mature enterprise-centric container image registry which has a rich history of meeting the needs of cloud native technologists.

When Red Hat acquired CoreOS earlier this year, we were looking to amplify our leadership in enterprise container-based solutions. CoreOS at the time had two primary products, Tectonic and Quay. Quay was added directly into Red Hat’s portfolio of products and renamed Red Hat Quay.

Also: FPgM report: 2018–38

• Leaked NSA Exploits Shifting From Ransomware To Cryptocurrency Mining

  This report, from Zack Whittaker at TechCrunch, says there's really no endpoint in sight for the unintended consequences of exploit hoarding. But at this point, it's really no longer the NSA or Microsoft to blame for the continued rampage. Stats from Shodan show more than 300,000 unpatched machines in the United States alone.

  EternalBlue-based malware still runs rampant, but the focus has shifted from ransom to cryptocurrency. An unnamed company recently watched the NSA's exploit turn its computers into CPU ATMs.

  [...]

  There will never be a full accounting of the damage done. Yes, the NSA never thought its secret stash would go public, but that doesn't excuse its informal policy of never disclosing massive vulnerabilities until it's able to wring every last piece of intel from their deployment. And there's a chance this will happen again in the future if the agency isn't more proactive on the disclosure front. It was foolhardy to believe its tools would remain secret indefinitely. It's especially insane to believe this now.

• The Rust Programming Language Blog: Security advisory for the standard library

  The Rust team was recently notified of a security vulnerability affecting the standard library’s str::repeat function. When passed a large number this function has an integer overflow which can lead to an out of bounds write. If you are not using str::repeat, you are not affected.

  We’re in the process of applying for a CVE number for this vulnerability. Fixes for this issue have landed in the Rust repository for the stable/beta/master branches. Nightlies and betas with the fix will be produced tonight, and 1.29.1 will be released on 2018-09-25 with the fix for stable Rust.

• Cloudflare Secures Time With Roughtime Protocol Service

  If time is money, then how important is it to secure the integrity of time itself? Time across many computing devices is often synchronized via the Network Time Protocol (NTP), which isn't a secure approach, but there is another option.

  On Sept. 21, Cloudflare announced that it is deploying a new authenticated time service called Roughtime, in an effort to secure certain timekeeping efforts. The publicly available service is based on an open-source project of the same name that was started by Google.

  "NTP is the dominant protocol used for time synchronisation and, although recent versions provide for the possibility of authentication, in practice that‘s not used," Google's project page for Roughtime states. " Most computers will trust an unauthenticated NTP reply to set the system clock meaning that a MITM [man-in-the-middle] attacker can control a victim’s clock and, probably, violate the security properties of some of the protocols listed above."

• DDoS Vulnerability Can Disrupt The Whole Bitcoin Infrastructure [Ed: Latest FUD about Bitcoin. A DDOS attack can disrupt anything at sufficient capacity levels, including Wall Street and ANY financial market.]

• Crippling DDoS vulnerability put the entire Bitcoin market at risk

• This Russian botnet mimics your click to prevent Android device factory resets

  According to researchers from Check Point, the botnet has been developed by a group of Russian-speaking hackers known as "The Lucy Gang," and demos have already been provided to potential subscribers to the system looking for Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) solutions.

  Botnets are a thorn in the side for cybersecurity firms, hosting providers, and everyday businesses alike. The systems are made up of enslaved devices including mobile devices, Internet of Things (IoT) gadgets, and PCs.

• The beautiful puzzle adventure 'The Gardens Between' is now out with native Linux support

  The Gardens Between from The Voxel Agents looks like a fantastic puzzle adventure and it's now available with native Linux support.

• Feral Interactive are teasing ANOTHER new Linux port

  As a reminder, Feral Interactive have only recently release Life is Strange: Before the Storm and Total War: Warhammer II is confirmed to be coming this autumn. On top of that, last month they also put up another teaser that we're still guessing.

  I wouldn't be surprised if they do try to get more ports out earlier now, especially with Steam Play which would eat into their Linux port sales. Anyway…looks like 2018 really will be another great year for Linux gaming!

  The amount of Linux games Feral has ported now is kind of ridiculous: XCOM, XCOM 2, Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Mad Max, Shadow of Mordor, HITMAN, F1 2017, Life is Strange, Life is Strange: Before the Storm, Dawn of War II, Dawn of War III, DiRT Rally and the list goes on.

Nitrux is a Linux distribution with a focus on portable, application formats like AppImages. Nitrux uses KDE Plasma 5 and KDE Applications, and it also uses our in-house software suite Nomad Desktop.