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Links 8/7/2013: A Lot of Linux (Kernel) News





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • DevOps Skills are Hot - and Highly Valued
    Job listings mentioning “DevOps” have burgeoned over the past year or so, and people who include the term in their LinkedIn profiles and resumes are hotly pursued by tech recruiters.

    For those of us who believe DevOps thinking and practices are the way to better IT and happier, more productive technology teams, this trend is both discouraging and encouraging. It’s discouraging because we don’t want to see “DevOps” become a mere buzzword, used to put a new shiny gloss on old, ineffective practices and assumptions. And it’s encouraging because it indicates a growing awareness that operations people and developers produce better software when they collaborate closely, using the tools and disciplines from both worlds.


  • Open Source Dictation: Acoustic Model


  • Whats wrong with every open source firewall/router on the market now
    I once read that a network firewall was as much a central point for getting visibility into your network as it was a point for restricting and securing your network. It is my personal belief that these things go hand in hand. How can you secure your network if you don't understand what is actually going on inside it? how can you differentiate between what is good and bad traffic, if you can't actually see the traffic? A few years ago, I invested a serious amount of time searching for an open-source firewall that I could insert into a network on some standard hardware and see what was happening, then respond to this. I was disappointed to say the least.


  • Searchdaimon Enterprise Search Now Open Source Under Gpl V2
    Searchdaimon today announced its flagship enterprise search product is now available as open source software. The Searchdaimon solution, highlighted at http://www.searchdaimon.com, is the only enterprise-grade alternative to Solr available.


  • Events



  • Web Browsers



  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Apache CloudStack Weekly News - 1 July 2013


    • Kogan sold on OpenStack cloud
      "If our office burnt down today," says Goran Stefkovski, "we would be running the business from the cafe next door tomorrow."

      It seems an appropriate sentiment from Stefkovski, given that he is the director of technology at Kogan, the online electronics retailer whose founder, Ruslan Kogan, has waged a very public war of words with bricks-and-mortar retailers (most notably Harvey Norman's chairman, Gerry Harvey).




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



  • BSD

    • FreeBSD Radeon Support Might Be Good In Mesa 9.2
      The porting of the open-source Radeon Linux graphics driver to FreeBSD is coming along well. The developer behind this work is hoping that the user-space Radeon Mesa/Gallium3D driver changes will be merged upstream for Mesa 9.2.


    • MidnightBSD 0.4 Betters The FreeBSD Desktop
      MidnightBSD 0.4 has been released as an operating system derived from FreeBSD 9.1, but with many extra features, including a new package management tool.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Project Releases

    • Announcing eDeploy
      eNovance's software engineering team is releasing the eDeploy project publicly today. A series of articles will describe the project.




  • Openness/Sharing

    • Lawmakers: Aaron Swartz Was Right About Open Internet
      The law used to prosecute the late open source internet advocate Aaron Swartz would be curtailed, under bipartisan legislation introduced in Congress.

      Swartz was a leading computer programmer, internet activist and writer who wanted as much information as possible to be free online. He died at age 26, having been involved in the development of the web feed format RSS, the organization Creative Commons, the website framework web.py and the social news site Reddit, among other achievements.


    • Open Hardware

      • Open Source Back To The Future II-Like Hoverboard in the Making for…2015
        We’re pretty sure that nobody could argue against the cool factor of ‘hoverboards,’ the magically powered skateboards from the future, which have been blessed with a self-explanatory name, requiring no additional clarification. The idea stems from the 1989 movie “Back to the Future II,” which has main character Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, go back and forth in time, from 2015 to the year 1955.






  • Programming

    • New Quipper Language is Like Java for Quantum Computers
      Now Peter Selinger of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, and colleagues have brought the field up to speed by creating Quipper, the first high-level quantum programming language. Quipper is designed to express instructions in terms of bigger concepts, and to make it easy to bring together multiple algorithms in a modular way. High-level languages for classical computers such as Java do most of the heavy lifting in modern computation. Quipper is based on a classical programming language called Haskell, which is particularly suited to programming for physics applications. What Selinger’s team has done is to customise it to deal with qubits.


    • Harlan: A Scheme-Based GPU Programming Language
      Harlan is a new research programming language focused around taking advantage of modern GPUs. The Harlan language syntax is derived from Scheme while the language itself currently compiles to OpenCL.


    • GCC Compiler Tuning On The AMD A10-6800K APU
      For those curious about how the system performance is impacted by applying compiler optimizations to the AMD A10-6800K "Richland" APU, here's some benchmarks of GCC 4.8.1 on Ubuntu Linux.






Leftovers

  • Godmother of Unix admins Evi Nemeth presumed lost at sea
    Obit The New Zealand authorities have formally called off the search for the sailing cruiser Nina, and say its seven-person crew, which includes Evi Nemeth who for the last 30 years has written the system administration handbooks for Unix and Linux, is now presumed lost at sea.


  • San Francisco: Crash 'Was Only a Matter of Time'
    The cause of the crash landing of a Boeing 777 in San Francisco is still unclear. But pilots say they had been worried about conditions at the West Coast airport for a while. An important flight control system had been out of service for weeks.


  • Security



    • Bad kitty! “Rookie mistake” in Cryptocat chat app makes cracking a snap
      The precise amount of time the vulnerability was active is in dispute, with Cryptocat developers putting it at seven months and a security researcher saying it was closer to 19 months. Both sides agree that the effect of the bug was that the keys used to encrypt and decrypt conversations among groups of users were easy for outsiders to calculate. As a result, activists, journalists, or others who relied on Cryptocat to protect their group chats from government or industry snoops got little more protection than is typically available in standard chat programs. Critics said it was hard to excuse such a rudimentary error in an open-source piece of software held out as a way to protect sensitive communications.




  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • Why do so many American ‘journalists’ appear to hate actual journalism?
      The question was directed at Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist who broke the story of NSA surveillance using material provided by on-the-lam leaker Edward Snowden. The person grilling Greenwald wasn’t a government prosecutor or a frustrated member of the intelligence community. It was David Gregory, host of NBC’s Sunday morning political talk show Meet the Press.


    • “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”: The new warrior cop is out of control
      SWAT teams raiding poker games and trying to stop underage drinking? Overwhelming paramilitary force is on the rise


    • Top special operations officer directed shift of bin Laden records to CIA to keep files secret
      The nation's top special operations commander ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.


    • Report: bin Laden raid files purged from Pentagon computers, sent to CIA
      The nation's top special operations commander ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.


    • Siegelman Frame-Up Led To New Book Exposing Obama, CIA, Romney Secrets
      Four years ago, my research documenting the Bush administration frame-up of Alabama's former governor Don Siegelman led me to find nationwide patterns of similar horrors.


    • Bin Laden records purged to CIA
      Records about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout were ordered purged from Pentagon computers and sent to the CIA - a place where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.


    • Undercover CIA Spy Doubled as CBS Reporter
      Austin Goodrich, an undercover CIA officer during the Cold War who also worked for several years as a CBS television correspondent before his identity was unmasked, died June 9 at his home in Port Washington, Wis. He was 87.


    • NSA CIA Public Keys
      A fair number of the NSA keys appear to be spoofs -- it is easy to register a PK with a fake email address. Perhaps others are stings. The three Alex Belleque keys are hoots. Few NSA or CIA staff would use PGP with an nsa/ucia.gov address, knowing its compromisability, in contrast to the hundreds of national secuity staff who do (DHS, USSS, FBI, DoJ, NATO, et al.)


    • Snowden: NSA, German foreign intelligence 'in bed together'
      National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden says the United States partnered with Germany and other nations to invade people's privacy.

      In an interview to be published this week, Snowden said the NSA has close working ties with Germany's foreign intelligence agency and similar agencies of other countries, and that NSA staff are "in bed together with the Germans," the German magazine Der Spiegel reported Sunday.


    • CIA Manipulation: The Painful Truths Told by Phil Agee
      Philip Agee spent 12 years (1957-69) as a CIA case officer, most of it in Latin America. His first book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, published in 1974 – a pioneering work on the Agency’s methods and their devastating consequences – appeared in about 30 languages around the world and was a best seller in many countries; it included a 23-page appendix with the names of hundreds of undercover Agency operatives and organizations.

      [...]

      Agee’s goal in naming all these individuals, quite simply, was to make it as difficult as he could for the CIA to continue doing its dirty work.

      A common Agency tactic was writing editorials and phony news stories to be knowingly published by Latin American media with no indication of the CIA authorship or CIA payment to the media. The propaganda value of such a “news” item might be multiplied by being picked up by other CIA stations in Latin America who would disseminate it through a CIA-owned news agency or a CIA-owned radio station. Some of these stories made their way back to the United States to be read or heard by unknowing North Americans.


    • Home Office 'knew police stole children's identities'
      Bob Lambert admits to adopting the identity of a seven-year-old boy and has conceded to having four affairs while undercover


    • Turkish Police Shoot Down Surveillance Drone During Istanbul Protests
      As the growing number of Techdirt stories on the subject testify, drones are becoming a more familiar part of modern life. But their presence can add a new element to situations. An obvious example is during demonstrations, where drones can be used to monitor those taking part -- but also the authorities' reaction. As with cases where members of the public have used smartphones to capture police abuse, so drones offer the possibility of revealing questionable police activity that might in the past have gone unrecorded.


    • Texas Trooper Shoves 74-Year-Old Then Arrests Her For Felony Assault When She Hits Him With Her Purse


    • 74-Year-Old Woman Violently Assaults Two Texas DPS Troopers – Really?
      An activist was watching State Senator Wendy Davis filibuster an abortion bill in the Texas Legislature when two Texas DPS Troopers approached her and told her to come with them. (Note: Although they are troopers, they are also known as Capitol Police, and function more as security guards than as peace officers).

      According to the Probable Cause Affidavit, the Lt. Governor order that the gallery be cleared and the Troopers were enforcing that order. When they got to Martha Northington and told her to leave, there was a problem.




  • Cablegate

    • Sarah Harrison, the woman from WikiLeaks
      He didn’t have the space for it, but Gavin MacFadyen needed more bodies. The American running a British think tank for investigative journalism had eight staffers crammed into an 15-by-12-foot office in east central London, trying to crack a story on wrongdoing at a multinational company.


    • What Correa really said about Assange and the safe-conduct to Snowden. Analysis
      I have carefully listened to the interview – conducted in Spanish – of President Rafael Correa with the Guardian on the “Snowden saga”, also focused on the role of the WikiLeaks founder Mr Julian Assange. Frankly, I became astonished realizing the extent to which the answers of Rafael Correa were misrepresented by the Guardian, and subsequently by other MSM. Instead of what it has been reported, Ecuador has never retracted of their positive statements on whisteblower Edward Snowden, or on their openness to study his asylum. Correa affirms clearly that Ecuador has not “negated” the safe-conduct issued to Mr Snowden. He also says emphatically that “Mr Assange continues to enjoy our respect”


    • Visa And Mastercard Ban Anonymizing VPNs... Just As They Allow Wikileaks
      This is random. Just as Mastercard and Visa are allowing payments to Wikileaks again after a two year hiatus, those same two companies have started banning VPN providers. If you don't recall, the credit card companies refused to process payments for Wikileaks, following significant pressure from US officials, even as they have no problem processing payments to hate groups like the KKK. After a long legal dispute, an Icelandic court ordered the credit card companies to start processing payments to Wikileaks again.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Climate extremes are 'unprecedented'
      The Earth experienced unprecedented recorded climate extremes during the decade 2001-2010, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.






  • Finance

    • Defining Prosperity Down
      Friday’s employment report wasn’t bad. But given how depressed our economy remains, we really should be adding more than 300,000 jobs a month, not fewer than 200,000. As the Economic Policy Institute points out, we would need more than five years of job growth at this rate to get back to the level of unemployment that prevailed before the Great Recession. Full recovery still looks a very long way off. And I’m beginning to worry that it may never happen.


    • Bitcoin and Unbreakable Law
      Imagine that you were entertaining a business deal with a man with an supernatural ability to make two kinds of promises: 1) promises that are impossible for him to break and 2) ordinary, breakable promises. Why would you accept anything other than the unbreakable promises from him? If he offered to make breakable promises you might grow suspicious about his intent.

      It’s easy to see how unbreakable promises would be a revolution for contracts and law. Enforcement costs for contracts would be drastically reduced. It would enable a new era of globalization, allowing people to participate in contracts with each other without regard to jurisdiction. The rights promised to a citizen of a country could be guaranteed instead of relying on the benevolence and caprice of their sovereign.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • OMG! State Department Dropped $630,000 on Facebook “Likes”
      Ostensibly web-savvy State Department employees spent $630,000 to earn more Facebook "likes," in an effort that struggled to reach its target audience, according to a searing Inspector General's report from May.


    • State Dept. Spent $630,000 Buying Likes, But That Was Actually The Least Of Its Engagement Problem
      The release of a report from the Inspector General on the Bureau of Internal Information Programs (BIIP) brings with it the surprising news that the various agencies under its purview spent $630,000 pursuing Facebook "likes" in an attempt to increase their popularity. Normally, I would be setting the keyboard to "Mock Relentlessly," but this isn't so much a case of the government blowing tax dollars on stupid stuff as it is a case of using the wrong tool (bureaucracy) for the job (increasing engagement). That being said, it still means the money was ultimately wasted, but not in the "espresso machine in every cubicle" sort of way. (And there will probably be a little mocking.)




  • Censorship



  • Privacy

    • RIP Google Reader
      Today, Google's RSS reader is kaput. Maybe most don't notice, maybe some are relieved not to have another box with 396,955,428 unread items. But the loss casts a shadow over a stalwart contingent.


    • The NSA's mass and indiscriminate spying on Brazilians
      As it does in many non-adversarial countries, the surveillance agency is bulk collecting the communications of millions of citizens of Brazil


    • Bolivian President's Jet Rerouted On Suspicions Snowden Could Be On Board; Multi-Country Outrage Ensues


    • US attempts to block Edward Snowden are 'bolstering' case for asylum
      Attempts by the US to close down intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden's asylum options are strengthening his case to seek a safe harbour outside of Russia, legal experts claim.

      Snowden, who is believed to be in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, has received provisional offers of asylum from Nicaragua and Venezuela, and last night Bolivia also offered him sanctuary. He has applied to at least six other countries, says the Wikileaks organisation providing legal support.


    • UK Authorities Threat Google Over Its Privacy Policies
      The Information Commissioner Officer of the UK, in a recent statement, said that he believes that Google’s Privacy Policy does not comply with the current UK Data Protection Act. He also further says that Google does not make it clear on how it uses the private data gathered by its various data mining tools and systems, thus further adding to the blame and aggravating the situation.


    • Privacy Group to Ask Supreme Court to Stop N.S.A.’s Phone Spying Program
      A privacy rights group plans to file an emergency petition with the Supreme Court on Monday asking it to stop the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program that collects the telephone records of millions of Americans.


    • NSA Rejecting Every FOIA Request Made by U.S. Citizens
      Clayton Seymour, a 36-year-old IT specialist from Hilliard, Ohio, recently sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the NSA, curious as to whether any data about him was being collected.

      What he received in response made his blood boil.

      "I am a generally law abiding citizen with nothing I can think of that would require monitoring," Seymour told me, "but I wanted to know if I was having data collected about me and if so, what."

      So Seymour sent in an FOIA request. Weeks later, a letter from the NSA arrived explaining that he was not entitled to any information. "When I got the declined letter, I was furious," he told me. "I feel betrayed."


    • NSA 'in bed' with German intelligence says US whistleblower Edward Snowden - and GCHQ operates a 'full take' data monitoring system


      The fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden alleged on Sunday that the National Security Agency was “in bed together” with German intelligence despite claims by politicians in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition that they were shocked by the extent of American spying in Germany.

      In an interview with Der Spiegel , Snowden claimed that the NSA provided German intelligence, with analysis tools to help the organisation monitor data flowing through Germany. “The NSA people are in bed together with the Germans,"” he told the magazine.


    • The Power of Britain's Data Vacuum
      Britain's intelligence service stores millions of bits of online data in Internet buffers. In SPIEGEL, Edward Snowden explains GCHQ's "full take" approach. All data that travels through the UK is captured.


    • France 'has vast data surveillance' - Le Monde report
      France's foreign intelligence service intercepts computer and telephone data on a vast scale, like the controversial US Prism programme, according to the French daily Le Monde.

      The data is stored on a supercomputer at the headquarters of the DGSE intelligence service, the paper says.


    • Brazil Voices ‘Deep Concern’ Over Gathering of Data by U.S.
      The international tensions stirred up by recent revelations about American spying spread to yet another nation on Sunday, when Brazil’s foreign minister expressed “deep concern” over the issue and said his government would press the United Nations to take action that “preserves the sovereignty of all countries.”


    • [Old] White House gives Homeland Security control of all communication systems
      The White House has finally responded to criticism over US President Barack Obama’s hushed signing last week of an Executive Order that allows the government to command privately-owned communication systems and acknowledges its implications.

      When President Obama inked his name to the Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions Executive Order on July 6, he authorized the US Department of Homeland Security to take control of the country’s wired and wireless communications — including the Internet — in instances of emergency. The signing was accompanied with little to no acknowledgment outside of the White House, but initial reports on the order quickly caused the public to speak out over what some equated to creating an Oval Office kill switch for the Web. Now the Obama administration is addressing those complaints by calling the Executive Order a necessary implement for America’s national security.


    • Obama needs to take charge on NSA spying scandal
      The president should fire James Clapper and Keith Alexander over domestic spying revealed by Edward Snowden

      Read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-nsa-20130708,0,7170946.story#ixzz2YSlQQoST


    • Op-Ed: Who's ultimately to blame for spying — the NSA or the CEO?
      The new colonization paradigm aims to conquer the kingdom of individual privacy. Privacy is a recent phenomenon in human society, and it is the last frontier that even kings and armies have failed to conquer. But the NSA and telecom giants are staking claims in the vast domain of human relations. This trend towards reigning in individuality for the sake of exploitation and control has had its heralds. Orwell gave us the 'who', the government, “our” government. Aldous Huxley warned us “that we musn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology.” Together, the powers of both the corporate world and government have played pivotal roles in destroying individual privacy.


    • NSA whistleblower reveals Australian involvement in US 'snoop-op'
      NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has reportedly revealed Australian intelligence’s involvement with the alleged US ‘snoop-op’.

      According to the Age, Snowden has identified four Australian facilities which work in co-ordination with the US’ surveillance programme and have been furnishing citizen data and contributing to the programme.


    • The AM Roundup: How One Word Empowered the NSA
      The National Security Agency’s ability to gather phone data on millions of Americans hinges on a secret court ruling that redefined a single word: “relevant.”


    • Privacy group to ask SCOTUS to review NSA surveillance
    • US and EU Shrug Off Edward Snowden’s NSA Revelations to Resume $200bn Trade Deal Talks


    • The Three Amigos offer sanctuary to cornered NSA leaker Snowden
      NSA contractor-turned-surveillance-whistleblower Edward Snowden has been offered asylum in three Latin American countries.
    • Edward Snowden tells Der Spiegel NSA is 'in bed with the Germans'
      Interview carried out before NSA whistleblower fled to Hong Kong appears to contradict Merkel's public surprise at snooping
    • NSA and GCHQ spy programmes face legal challenge
      The British and US spy programmes that allow intelligence agencies to gather, store and share data on millions of people have been challenged in a legal claim brought by privacy campaigners.

      Papers filed on Monday call for an immediate suspension of Britain's use of material from the Prism programme, which is run by America's National Security Agency.
    • The NSA/GCHQ metadata reassurances are breathtakingly cynical
      The public is being told that the NSA and GCHQ have 'only' been collecting metadata, not content. That's nothing to be thankful for
    • Hitting the reset: NSA spying targeted BRICS


    • Brazil allegedly targeted by NSA spying, demands explanation from United States


    • If Only Ed Snowden Worked On Wall St. He'd Be Free From Prosecution Risk
    • U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
      Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.


    • Old School Snail Mail 'Metadata' Still Being Harvested By The USPS And Turned Over To Law Enforcement/Security Agencies By Request


    • Privacy Protests
      Read this while thinking about the lack of any legal notion of civil disobedience in cyberspace.
    • Privacy Protests: Surveillance Evasion and Fourth Amendment Suspicion
      The police tend to think that those who evade surveillance are criminals. Yet the evasion may only be a protest against the surveillance itself. Faced with the growing surveillance capacities of the government, some people object. They buy "burners" (prepaid phones) or "freedom phones" from Asia that have had all tracking devices removed, or they hide their smartphones in ad hoc Faraday cages that block their signals. They use to surf the internet. They identify tracking devices with GPS detectors. They avoid credit cards and choose cash, prepaid debit cards, or bitcoins. They burn their garbage. At the extreme end, some "live off the grid" and cut off all contact with the modern world.
    • Snowden's Constitution vs Obama's Constitution
      Edward Snowden is not a constitutional lawyer. But his public statement explaining his decision to blow the whistle on what he and Congress both know to be only the "tip of the iceberg" of state snooping secrets expresses a belief in the meaning of the Constitution: in a democracy, the people – not his defense contractor employers or the government that hires them - should ultimately determine whether mass surveillance interfering with everyone's privacy is reasonable.

      Some have tried to minimize the import of the snooping exposed by Snowden on the grounds that the government is just storing the information it gathers, and has not yet searched it. The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures." Seizure – the taking of private information – is what the government has now been forced to admit in its decision to prosecute Snowden for telling the truth about their secret seizures. Whether or not the state ever chooses to "search" the seized information, the universal, non-consensual seizure itself of what used to be called "pen register" data grossly invades individual privacy and vastly empowers government, all in violation of the Constitution if "unreasonable."
    • MIT Project Reveals What PRISM Knows About You


      An MIT project shows Wayne Rash just how much information PRISM can get without opening a single email
    • Report: France data gathering program compared to PRISM
      A leading French newspaper says France's intelligence services have put in place a giant electronic surveillance gathering network.

      Citing no sources, the Le Monde daily says France's Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, the country's foreign intelligence agency, systematically collects information about all electronic data sent by computers and telephones in France, as well as communications between France and abroad.
    • AT&T to sell users’ anonymous usage and location data to advertisers
      AT&T is planning to cash in on the large amount of data it collects from its subscribers every month. The company said this week that it is looking to follow in the footsteps of Google, Facebook and Verizon, and begin selling information about its customers to other businesses. AT&T says it’s considering selling its customers’ wireless and Wi-Fi locations, U-verse usage, website browsing habits, mobile app usage and “other information.” The carrier notes that the data will be anonymous and in some cases will group together with other subscribers, which it says will protect a customer’s privacy. Those who aren’t fond of AT&T selling their information, however, will have the opportunity to opt out of the program. AT&T didn’t reveal when the data selling program will go into effect.
    • The web you know is dying
      I'm drinking an espresso shot. It's half-cold. There's still gunk in my eyes from sleeping.

      I've been thinking a lot about how I use the Internet. A year ago, I nearly vanished from the public web because I had an intuitive feeling the centralized web was a backdoor to the government. Now, as the dust settles from our collective experiences over the past week, I know this to be true.
    • Rethinking Surveillance
      As a federal prosecutor in the 1980s, I used to think nothing of scooping up the phone numbers that a suspect called. I viewed that surveillance as no big deal because the Supreme Court had ruled in Smith v. Maryland (1979) that we have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the phone numbers we dial, as opposed to the content of the calls. And in any event, I had limited time or practical ability to follow up on those numbers.
    • EU votes to support suspending U.S. data sharing agreements, including passenger flight data
    • From Aspen: Justice Kagan calls surveillance cases ‘growth industry’
      Speaking late Saturday afternoon at the Aspen Ideas Festival, U.S Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was every bit as diplomatic as you would expect a woman who has survived the Senate confirmation process to be. Chief Justice John Roberts? “A great chief justice,” who faces the “tall order (of) trying to forge agreement” on a court whose members traditionally treasure the right to go their own way. Justice Clarence Thomas? “I enjoy him enormously. He’s a justice with incredible integrity and a very principled one,” Kagan said. “We disagree on a lot of stuff and we’re going to disagree on a lot of stuff but I enjoy every moment I spend with him.”
    • The Snowden Controversy and Our Legacy of Choices
      In one of the most innovative uses of the bizarre rules of international travel, whistle-blower Edward Snowden sits in an airport transit lounge outside the customs barrier that is Russian enough to not invade but not Russian enough to claim the Russians are hiding him. He has now reportedly applied for asylum in Russia.
    • Controversial EU Data Protection Regulation May Be Negotiated In Secret In Breach Of Parliamentary Process
      Today, the European Parliament held a three-hour long debate on PRISM, Tempora and what the EU response should be. Many wanted TAFTA/TTIP put on hold; others didn't. But one theme cropped up again and again: the need for strong data protection laws that would offer at least some legal protection against massive and unregulated transfer of Europeans' personal data to the US.
    • Cloak of secrecy hangs over EU privacy reform
      It may seem to be a paradox that a law concerning protection of people’s secrets should be legislated in the open, but in fact, the paradox is the other way around.




  • Civil Rights



  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Patents on 3D Printing Challenged by Prior Art
      Mike Masnick lets go with a strong blast on patents because they may yet again cripple innovation in 3D printing link here. As he writes, "One of the reasons 3D printing is suddenly on the cusp of going mainstream is the expiration of some key patents that have held the technology back for decades."


    • Copyrights



      • Team Prenda Plays Dumb In Central California, As Brett Gibbs Says They Lied In Northern California
        It was a busy day for Team Prenda yesterday, as summarized by Joe Mullin. Down in Central California, in the case overseen by Judge Otis Wright -- who famously called out Team Prenda on their scam -- four of the members of Team Prenda all sent coordinated filings, attacking the opposing lawyers, Morgan Pietz and Nick Ranallo, claiming that they should be sanctioned for failing to serve the various members of Team Prenda concerning the additional filings in the case. John Steele, Paul Hansmeier, Peter Hansmeier and Mark Lutz all claim that they've been blissfully unaware that anything was happening in the case.








← TechBytes Episode 81: Richard Stallman on Anonymity, Censorship, DPI, and Copyright Policing | When Antitrust Complaints Achieve Software Freedom →

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In some ways this reminds us of Novell
UEFI 'Secure Boot' Once Again Bricking PCs and Fake Security Models Are Perishing in Geminispace
Let's Encrypt has just fallen again
Links 17/07/2024: New Attacks on the Press, European Patents Squashed Even at Kangaroo Court (UPC)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/07/2024: Proponents of Censorship and New Arrivals at Gemini
Links for the day
Links 17/07/2024: School Budget Meltdown and Modern Cars as Tracking Nightmares
Links for the day
This Should Certainly be Illegal, But the Person Who Helped Microsoft Do This is Still Attacking the Critics of It
perhaps time for an "I told you so post"
[Meme] A Computer With an Extra Key on the Keyboard Isn't Everyone's Priority
(so your telling me meme)
Africa as an Important Reminder That Eradicating Microsoft Doesn't Go Far Enough
Ideally, if our top goal is bigger than "get rid of Microsoft", we need to teach people to choose and use devices that obey them, not GAFAM
Billions of Computers Run Linux and Many Use Debian (or a Derivative of It)
many devices never get updated or even communicate with the Net, so exhaustive tallies are infeasible
[Meme] Microsoft is Firing
Don't worry, Microsoft will have some new vapourware coming soon
More DEI (or Similar) Layoffs on the Way, According to Microsoft Team Leader
What happened shortly before Independence Day wasn't the end of it, apparently
[Meme] Many Volunteers Now Realise the "Open" in "OpenSUSE" or "openSUSE" Was Labour-Mining
Back to coding, packaging and testing, slaves
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 16, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 16, 2024
[Meme] Ein Factory
A choice between "masters" (or "master race") is a false choice that results in mass exploitation and ultimately eradication (when there's little left to exploit)
Links 17/07/2024: Open Source Initiative Lies and Dark Net Thoughts
Links for the day
Media Distorting Truth to Promote Ignorance
online media is rapidly collapsing
Android Rises to New Highs of Almost 80% in Cameroon
How many dozens of nations will see Windows at under 10% this coming winter?
Links 16/07/2024: TikTok Ban in Europe and Yandex Split
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/07/2024: On Packrafting and on Trump Shot
Links for the day
[Meme] Firefox Users Who Think They Know Better Than Mozilla
Enjoy Firebook
Firefox Used to Have About Half the Market in Switzerland, But It Doesn't Stand a Chance Anymore (Chrome Surging This Summer)
Mozilla has managed to alienate some of the biggest fans of Firefox
Microsoft's Biggest Losses Are in Europe This Summer
Microsoft's ability to milk a relatively rich Europe is fast diminishing
How to Make Software Suck and Discriminate Against People at the Same Time
ageism glorified
Bing Was at 2.6% in Russia When LLM Hype Started. Now It's Down to 0.8% (for 3 Months in a Row Already)
The sharp fall of Bing may mean that exiting the Russian market won't matter to anybody
[Meme] Microsoft Seems to be Failing to Comply With WARN Act (by Refusing to Announce Mass Layoffs as They Happen)
since when does Microsoft obey the law anyway?
Microsoft Layoffs Are Still Too Frequent to Keep Abreast of and Properly (or Exhaustively) Classify
The "HR" department knows what's happening, but whistleblowers from there are rare
Bahamas Joined the "5% Windows" Club
statCounter only traces back about 1 in 20 Web requests to Windows
Links 16/07/2024: Salesforce Layoffs and Microsoft's DMARC Fail
Links for the day
Antenna Abuse and Gemini Abuse (Self-hosting Perils)
Perhaps all this junk is a sign of Gemini growing up
Possibly Worse Than Bribes: US Politicians and Lawmakers Who Are Microsoft Shareholders
They will keep bailing out Microsoft to bail themselves out
The Software Freedom Conservancy Folks Don't Even Believe in Free Speech and They Act As Imposters (Also in the Trademark Arena/Sense)
Software Freedom Conservancy was already establishing a reputation for itself as a G(I)AFAM censor/gatekeeper
Djibouti Enters the Windows "10% Club" (Windows Was 99% in 2010)
In Africa in general Microsoft lost control
GNU/Linux Share Doubled in the United States of America (USA) in the Past 12 Months
Or so says statCounter
Even in North Korea (Democratic People's Republic Of Korea) Google Said to Dominate, Microsoft Around 1%
Google at 93.26%
[Meme] The Red Bait (Embrace... Extinguish)
They set centos on fire, then offer a (de facto) proprietary substitute for a fee
Shooting the Messenger to Spite the Message
segment of a Noam Chomsky talk
[Video] Boston Area Assange Defense (Yesterday)
It was published only hours ago
Guinea: Windows Down From 99.3% to 2.7% 'Market Share'
Guinea is not a small country
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 15, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, July 15, 2024
What's Meant by "Antenna Abuse" (Gemini)
syndication is not a monopoly in Gemini and if one doesn't condone political censorship, then one can create one's own syndication service/capsule
Microsoft Layoffs and Entire Unit Termination: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
What an announcement to make just before Independence Day
Links 16/07/2024: Old Computer Challenge and One Page Dungeon Contest
Links for the day
Microsoft Falls Further and Closer Towards 10% (Windows "Market Share") in Kuwait
more countries entering the "single-digit Windows" (under 10%) club
Gemini Links 15/07/2024: Antenna's Pro-Hamas Bias Revisited and Old Computer Challenge
Links for the day
[Video] Julian Assange, Over One Decade Ago, Cautioning About What the Internet Had Truly Become
video is not new
Homage to Malta
Malta is probably easy for Microsoft to bribe
IRC at 16
Logging has been used for us and against us
In Malta, Android/Linux Has Overtaken Microsoft Windows (According to statCounter)
statCounter milestone?
Links 15/07/2024: China’s Economic Problems, Boeing Under Fire
Links for the day
500 Days' Uptime Very Soon
Good luck doing that with Windows...
Windows Falls Below 20% in Tunisia
A month ago we wrote about GNU/Linux in Tunisia
Links 15/07/2024: Google Wants Wiz and Why "Sports Ruin Everything"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/07/2024: Old Computer Challenge and Sending Files via NNCP
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 14, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, July 14, 2024