04.29.14

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Linux certification site sends wrong message

  The percentage of women involved in free and open source software is very low. This is a well-known fact, yet the groups that should be open and welcoming are often those who, subtly and not-so-subtly, often send out messages that are far from welcoming.

  A few days back, I came across the following pictures at the site of the Linux Professional Institute, an organisation that offers certification in Linux at various levels.

  The subliminal message sent by the pictures is pretty strong. Take the plug for the lowest level certification, LPIC1. It has a picture of a woman (above) accompanying it.

  The plug for LPIC2 has a picture of a black man.

  But the plug for LPIC3, the highest level, has a white man as its face.

• Desktop

  • Improving The Linux Desktop

    The Linux distributions are all made from various software packages, each with a different set of maintainers, with a different set of values and agendas. While each group has given their software and their efforts to the open source community, each group is just a little bit different. It is in these differences that our love of minutia starts to show through. Some people don’t like the default Ubuntu desktop, so they clone Ubuntu and add a slightly different desktop and release it as a new derivative. This is good because it brings new ideas into the fold, and shows how things can be done just a little differently. However, each time this happens it also fragments the community just a little bit more. Is this good or bad? Depends on how you look at it.

  • Web app icons getting refreshed on Chrome OS

• Server

  • Google eyes Power chips, Amazon ARM: Both add up to Intel headaches

    Google is eyeing IBM’s Power processors for the servers that power its services. Amazon is reportedly pondering custom ARM-based chips for its cloud servers. Add it up and the big cloud guns—the companies that will likely power most of the infrastructure that’ll be rented by the enterprise—are hedging their Intel bets.

  • IBM’s Cloud Marketplace to Offer An Array of Enterprise Services

• Kernel Space

  • AMD Shows Off Beema & Mullins But Its Linux Fate Is Unclear

    AMD has now revealed their newest APUs, codenamed “Beema” and “Mullins” while their Linux fate remains unclear.

    The AMD “Beema” APUs are targeted for mobile products like notebook PCs while AMD Mullin APUs are low-power processors for ultra low-powered devices. The low-end Mullin APUs sport Radeon R2/R3 Graphics.

  • Linus Torvalds Named Recipient of the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award

    Linus Torvalds, the principal force behind development of the Linux kernel and overseer of open source development for the Linux operating system, has been named the 2014 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society’s Computer Pioneer Award.

  • Linux Kernel 3.15 RC3 Is Out and Brings Btrfs and Ext4 Filesystems Improvements

    Linus Torvalds has just released the third Release Candidate in the new Linux kernel 3.15 branch, which is now available for testing.

    The Linux kernel development is going as planned, and it seems that the weekly development cycle has returned to normal. After a couple of crazy first releases, the third iteration of the kernel has calmed down and there are no more surprises.

  • Graphics Stack

    • X.Org Server 1.16 ABI Breakage Causes Concern

      The ABI break was attributed to a “temporary mistake of changing the function return type as a bug” so that existing drivers retail API compatibility with the new X.Org Server version, with the most important driver to Keith Packard as the X.Org Server maintainer being that of his employer — the xf86-video-intel driver. NVIDIA has already been working on X.Org Server 1.16 support for their proprietary driver but this event has thrown an issue into their handling of their new support.

    • [ANNOUNCE] xf86-input-evdev 2.8.99.1

    • X.Org’s Evdev Driver Shows Off Improvements

    • Intel Cherryview PCI IDs Get Added To Mesa DRM

      Cherryview is expected to be released before the end of the year and will feature an Airmont processor, which is the 14nm shrink of current-generation Silvermont processors in the mobile space. When it comes to the graphics, while Valley View / Bay Trail had “Ivy Bridge” class graphics, the Cherryview hardware is based around Broadwell — including its “Gen8″ graphics. Riding off Broadwell, most of the open-source hardware enablement for the Cherryview graphics under Linux is straight forward and not too invasive.

• Applications

  • slocate: All the makings of an intercontinental grudge match

  • sloccount and sloc2html.py: Because size does matter

  • Proprietary

    • Google Web Designer Available for Linux : Install it on Ubuntu and Derivatives

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How to Turn Videos to Animated GIF Images Using Your Android Device

    • How to install Ubuntu and keep Windows

      Ubuntu offers three ways to launch the operating system without hurting Windows. Two of these options require a bootable Ubuntu CD or flash drive, so I’ll first discuss how to set up those devices.

    • Installing Apache2 With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Ubuntu 13.10 (LAMP)

    • How To Install SysPeek 0.2 On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.10 And Ubuntu 12.04

    • How To Install Indicator Netspeed On On All The Supported Ubuntu Systems

    • How To Easily Change Your Hostname On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian Or Elementary OS System, Without Restarting The System

    • How To Install Google Web Designer On The Most Popular Linux Systems

    • Unix: Counting chickens or anything else

    • How to use Google Web Designer for HTML5 design on Linux

    • How To Install qBittorrent 3.1.9.1 on Ubuntu, Linux Mint And Elementary OS

    • Autostart a process on GNU screen with systemd

    • Now in print: O’Reilly OpenStack Operations Guide

    • Embedded Linux – Kernel modules and device drivers, Part 5

    • How to install a Squid & Dansguardian content filter on Ubuntu Server

    • Clementine 1.2.3 Music Player Has Been Released

    • The best Twitter clients in Fedora

    • supernova 0.9.5 is available

    • 25 things to do after installing Xubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr

    • How to create and run Node.js applications on CentOS

  • Games

    • Nuclear Throne Gets Loud On Linux, Music Works, New Sound Effects + Video

      Nuclear Throne is quickly becoming a favourite game of mine, I did a short video for you recently and it’s time I did another showing off the awesome music and sound effects included on this new release.

    • Mutant Factions Hits 1.0, An Interview With The Developer!

    • The Last Tinker: City of Colors arrives on Linux, Mac and Windows PC May 12

      The Last Tinker: City of Colors, Mimimi Productions’ upcoming platformer, will arrive on Steam May 12 for Linux, Mac and Windows PC, publisher Unity Games announced today.

    • Project Cars: A gorgeous Racing Sim headed for SteamOS

    • Spy Chameleon – RBG Agent Now Available On Linux

      Don’t let the cartoon visuals fool you. Being a RGB Agent requires some good skills. A rather fun looking game now has a Linux version!

    • Rabbit Hole 3D: Steam Edition released for Linux

      For all the retro gamers out there, Rabbit Hole 3D: Steam Edition is a newly released game for Steam for Linux. The game is a minimalistic retro style puzzle, like the good old days of yore, complete with a catchy retro chiptune soundtrack that is sure to take you back to your childhood. The game’s interface is designed to give you the retro vibe. The game is basically a move up, down, left and right game like the classic Frogger but here you dodge words instead of traffic. You are represented by a single block, staying true to the retro formula.

    • Vendetta Online Space MMO for Linux Now Supports Oculus Rift HD

    • The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime Revived For Modern Computers, Linux Included

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Meet Danas Anis

      I say Krita should be a number one tool considered to any digital painter, whether one is a beginner or an advanced professional. So now when I’m faced with a project where I need to paint something and know it will have to be printed, Krita is my number one choice. Especially when it is a real pleasure to paint in it. And that is how Bstudija came to use open source tools like Krita to accomplish some projects.

    • KDE Telepathy Sprint

      In KDE Telepathy we provide several plasma widgets, which need to be ported in order to run on Plasma Next. In order to do this we first had to port our libraries to work on top of KDE Frameworks. By the end of the sprint we had the contact list and chat plasma widgets fully running and working on Plasma Next. We hope to release the widgets so that they are available for Plasma Next users

    • Monday Report #13 – lucky for some

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • The Moka Theme 0.1 For Gnome Shell Has Been Updated + Installation Instructions On Ubuntu, Fedora And OpenSUSE

      As the name suggests, Moka Gnome Shell Theme is a pretty theme for Gnome Shell (and Unity).

    • Getting Things GNOME: Summer is coming!

      The status quo of Getting Things Gnome heavily depends on generic backend & local xml database for different third-party services. The class generic backend is inherited by backends for different services. This makes it quite difficult to add new services independent of generic backend, and maintain the core modules, including generic backend, independent of backend service sub classes.

    • GNOME Developer Experience Hackfest, 2014 Edition

• Distributions

  • OpenELEC 4.0 Beta 7 Linux Distro Is Based on XBMC 13.0 RC “Gotham”

    “The team has made a huge effort to make this one of our best releases yet. Since the OpenELEC 3.0 and 3.2.x releases, we have worked hard to improve OpenELEC in a number of areas. Some of these are visible changes, others are backend changes that aren’t as visible to every user but are certainly worth mentioning,” reads the official announcement.

  • Screenshots

    • Pinguy 14.04.1 Mini

    • Voyager 14.04

  • Red Hat Family

    • Ubuntu, Red Hat, and the Good Samaritan

      In today’s Linux news are several Ubuntu topics ranging from a review to a Shuttleworth interview. In other news, Red Hat is still struggling on Wall Street, but there’s cause for optimism. And finally, The Telegraph published a review of The Samaritan Paradox.

    • 9 productivity hacks of a tech leader

      When I’m not traveling, I take the kids to school. I’ve learned to use commute time as efficiently as possible. So, after dropping off the kids, I use my 30 minute commute to take/make calls (don’t worry, I use a hands-free set in my car). If you think about it, time spent commuting – whether driving to the office or waiting in lines at the airport – is often time wasted. I try diligently to preplan those times to make the most use of them. In fact, I spend time in the security lines at airports reading articles I’ve saved using Pocket – a great browser plug-in/app to save web content to read later.

    • Red Hat Continues to Drive Open Security Standards; OpenSCAP Receives NIST Certification

    • Fedora

      • New X.Org Being Added To Rawhide For Fedora 21

        While the xorg-server and latest DDX now support not running with root rights, it’s still being done anyhow by default. Most display managers aren’t yet ready for supporting the X.Org Server running as a user. Hans shared the re-based X.Org for Fedora Rawhide via this mailing list announcement.

  • Debian Family

    • Debian Drops Support For SPARC

      Debian has removed their SPARC CPU architecture support from Debian 8.0 “Jessie” testing and it might also be removed from Debian unstable as well.

    • Debian 7.5 GNU/Linux Released

    • Debian 7.5 Has Been Released, Many Security Updates Included

    • Updated Debian 7: 7.5 released

      The Debian project is pleased to announce the fifth update of its stable distribution Debian 7 (codename wheezy). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories were already published separately and are referenced where available.

      Please note that this update does not constitute a new version of Debian 7 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old wheezy CDs or DVDs but only to update via an up-to-date Debian mirror after an installation, to cause any out of date packages to be updated.

    • Debian adopts a code of conduct

      The results of the General Resolution about the code of conduct is that the code of conduct is accepted and updates to it should be done via an other General Resolution.

    • Debian drops the SPARC architecture

      As of tonight, there is no more SPARC in testing. The main reasons were lack of porter commitments, problems with the toolchain and continued stability issues with our machines.

    • Linux Top 3: Debian Dumps SPARC, Ubuntu Takes Over Linux 3.13 and the Core Infrastructure Initiative

    • Tiny i.MX286 SBC runs Debian on less than a Watt

      Technologic announced a tiny, open spec SBC that runs Linux on Freescale’s i.MX286 SoC, supports industrial temperatures, and draws as little as 0.5W.

      The “TS-7400-V2″ single-board computer is a lower-cost, faster, drop-in replacement for the first-generation TS-7400, says Technologic Systems. The single board computer maintains the earlier model’s 4.7 x 2.9 x 0.8-inch dimensions, general board layout, and Debian Linux OS support, says the company.

    • Tails 1.0 released

      Version 1.0 of the Tails (“the amnesic incognito live system”) distribution has been released. Tails is a Debian-based distribution intended for anonymous access to the net. The 1.0 release evidently brings few new features; the point, instead, is to indicate that Tails has reached a new level of stability.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • A Usable Version Of Systemd Has Been Added To The Repositories Of Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn

          As a reminder, the Debian developers have decided earlier this year to use systemd as the default init service manager on Debian Jessie and so, Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Ubuntu will also replace Upstart with systemd, due to the fact that Ubuntu is a Debian derivative system.

        • Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) Daily Images Now Available for Download

          The Ubuntu developers have already started working on the next Ubuntu version, and the first development images have been produced. Don’t expect too much from the new Ubuntu build, at least not yet. It will be a couple of months until some major changes are visible.

        • Top tip, power users – upgrading Ubuntu may knacker your Linux PC

          Canonical says it is working to fix a problem that’s crippling some Ubuntu PCs after they’ve been upgraded to the latest version of the Linux distro.

          A spokesperson for the company told The Reg it is aware of a “small number” of “power users” are seeing their PCs crash following the move to 14.04.

        • Ubuntu for Android to Be Retired Soon

          Ubuntu for Android sounds like a great idea. According to the official website, Ubuntu for Android provides a full desktop experience, including office software, web browsing, email and media applications, on Android phones docked to a screen and keyboard.

          Canonical didn’t put too much effort in this project after it was officially announced and besides a vague late 2012 launch date, there is not much information about it. Users don’t even have access to a Beta and they can’t really test it.

        • Ubuntu For Android Is No Longer In Development

          According to an entry in Launchpad by an interface designer for Canonical, Matthew Paul Thomas, the Ubuntu for Android is no longer in development.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Wind River Adds Security Boost for the Internet of Things to Its Market-Leading Linux Platform

  • Wind River Linux gains EAL4 security and upgraded CGL version

    “Security Profile for Wind River Linux” is sort of a Yocto Linux complement to Wind River’s Wind River Solution Accelerators for Android, Security. It appears to build upon the company’s military-focused Wind River Linux Secure, but with a broader focus that is particularly aimed at Internet of Things security.

    Like Wind River Linux Secure, the software is said to be certifiable to the Common Criteria General Purpose Operating System (GPOS) Protection Profile, but extends only to Evaluation Assurance Level 4 (EAL 4) rather than the military version’s more rigorous EAL4+ standard. According to Intel subsidiary Wind River, which works closely with sister subsidiary McAfee on security technology, this is the first commercial embedded Linux platform featuring EAL4 certification via GP-OSPP

  • ARM/FPGA board family adds COMs and an SBC

    Avnet released two new, Linux-ready MicroZed COMs, one of which supports industrial temperatures, as well as the first MicroZed SBC, all based on Zynq SoCs.

  • Yocto Is Hooking Up With AMD & Mentor Graphics

    The Linux Foundation will be announcing tomorrow that AMD and Mentor Graphics are partnering up with the embedded Yocto Linux project as advisory members.

    I’ve been informed (and free to share now) that tomorrow the Linux Foundation will be announcing from the Embedded Linux Conference that AMD and Mentor Graphics have decided to join the Yocto Linux project in an advisory role.

  • Banana Pi , a Raspberry Pi clone

    Banana Pi is a single-board computer (SBC) made in China. It can run Android 4.4, Ubuntu, Debian, Raspberry Pi and Cubieboard Image. Despite the name, Banana Pi is unrelated to the Raspberry Pi.

    The Banana Pi is designed to be mechanically and electrically compatible with Raspberry Pi add-on modules with its 24-pin header layout. It comes with a dual-core, Cortex-A7-based Allwinner A20 SoC (system-on-chip) running at 1GHz. That’s much faster than the Raspberry Pi’s 700MHz, ARM11-based Broadcom BCM2835 processor. It also includes a more powerful Mali-400 GPU. The Banana Pi comes with 1GB of RAM and built-in Ethernet that can handle up to 1Gbps. That’s 10 times as fast as the Raspberry Pi. This brand-new SBC also includes a SATA port and a micro-USB port. It’s, at 92 x 60mm, a trifle larger than the 85 x 56mm Raspberry Pi.

  • Phones

    • Brian Warner: Tizen Has Good Bones

      Tizen already is fully developed as an operating system and deployed in numerous product lines. They typically have the word “smart” in their name — you know, things like smartTV, smartphone, smartwatch, smartcamera and yes, smart refrigerator. It can be found in in-vehicle infotainment systems as well.

      “Tizen has been used in products for a long time before it was even formally announced,” Brian Warner, director of client services and operations at the Linux Foundation and manager of the Tizen Project, told LinuxInsider.

    • Android

      • Flashout 2 makes its way to Android

        If the word Wipeout sets your adrenaline high and your ears to cool electronic music, then this might be the news for you. Flashout 2, an anti-gravity, fast paced racer, is finally here for Android from Jujubee S.A. As you may already know, Wipeout is a highly acclaimed racing series that features some of the best fast paced racing in the gaming history. In the game, you ride your high speed anti-gravity ship that can be outfitted with various weapons to outrun and decimate your opponents.

      • Get to know the Aio-one project

        Aio one is more awesome than meets the eye. It is an Android device, desktop Linux computer and a real TV all in one. It is a crossover between a smart TV and All in one computer. With a clean and minimalist aesthetic our focus will be on all the details, even the smallest.

Free Software/Open Source

• 6 free network vulnerability scanners [some not FOSS]

  Though you may know and follow basic security measures on your own when installing and managing your network and websites, you’ll never be able to keep up with and catch all the vulnerabilities by yourself.

• Events

  • CommonsFest

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • A Demo Video Of Mozilla’s Firefox OS Running On Nexus 5 Has Been Created

    • Firefox 29 Stable (With Australis) Has Been Released + Installation Instructions For The Most Popular Linux Systems

    • Firefox 29 Available For Download, Includes New Australis UI, Other Important Changes

      Mozilla has released Firefox 29 (stable) today. The new version includes a new user interface known as Australis, along with many other changes.

    • Firefox 29 released

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • LibreOffice 4.1.6 Final Released on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X

    All the supported platforms have received this new update, but this is a maintenance build that’s mostly about bug fixes, which means that it fits perfectly in what has been made available so far, with no major surprises.

    “LibreOffice 4.1.6 is the last release of the LibreOffice 4.1 family, targeted to large deployments in enterprises and public administrations, which should always be supported by TDF certified developers. Today, we users can choose between LibreOffice 4.2.3 Fresh, targeted to early adopters and technology enthusiasts, and LibreOffice 4.1.6 Stable targeted to enterprise deployments and conservative users,” said Florian Effenberger, TDF executive director.

• Education

  • A is for algorithm

    “LET’S do it again,” calls a ten-year-old. Once more, pupils clasping printed numbers follow tangled lines marked with white tape on the floor of their school hall. When two meet, the one holding the higher number follows the line right; the other goes left. Afterwards they line up—and the numbers are in ascending order. “The idea is to show how a computer sorts data,” explains their teacher, Claire Lotriet.

• Funding

  • SPDX Workgroup Announces First GSoC Interns

    For the first time, the Linux Foundation’s SPDX Workgroup is geared up to participate in the 2014 Google Summer of Code internship program. The goal was to engage students in open source projects, learn a bit about open source compliance, and meet open source community members. We had excellent responses in our first year, with a total of four projects accepted from three different universities.

• BSD

  • OpenBSD Foundation’s Google Summer of Code Projects Announced

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • GNU mcron has been upgrade to guile-2.0

  • GCC Ada Now Supports 64-bit ARM

    The Ada programming language that’s common to this day among embedded and real-time systems now has support for compiling to 64-bit ARM by the GNU Compiler Collection.

  • Mailman 3.0 suite is now in beta!

• Public Services/Government

  • Albania youth ministry supports open source meeting

    Albania’s Minister of Social Welfare and Youth is supporting the country’s first open source conference, taking place this weekend in the capital Tirana. Albania’s new government is strongly influenced by the free software and open data movement, explains Minister Erion Veliaj, who will inaugurate the conference on Saturday.

• Openness/Sharing

  • Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) Becomes a GLTN Partner

  • Making science more open at GitHub

    Arfon Smith works at GitHub and is involved in a number of activities at the intersection of open science, open source, and online research. He has worked on several successful citizen science projects, like Zooniverse, a platform he co-founded where people can analyze real astronomical data and make significant contributions. Since his move to GitHub, Arfon has broadened his focus to how GitHub can help make academic collaborations behave more like open source ones.

  • Open Hardware

    • World’s First Open Source Laptop Gets Wideband Software-Defined Radio

      When Bunnie Huang firstannounced the Novena laptopback in December 2012 it was like an early Christmas present to hackers the world over. This was true even though there was only a suggestion that, given sufficient demand, a limited number maybe made available.

Leftovers

• BirdCam, Round Two

  If you like fun projects like these involving Linux, please read on and join in my birdy obsession!

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Exclusive: Kerry Warns Israel Could Become ‘An Apartheid State’

    The secretary of state said that if Israel doesn’t make peace soon, it could become ‘an apartheid state,’ like the old South Africa. Jewish leaders are fuming over the comparison.

  • Israel risks becoming apartheid state if peace talks fail, says John Kerry

    The US secretary of state, John Kerry, has warned in a closed-door meeting in Washington that Israel risks becoming an “apartheid state” if US-sponsored efforts to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement fail.

    In an apparent sign of Kerry’s deep frustration over the almost certain collapse of the current nine-month round of peace talks – due to conclude on Tuesday – he blamed both sides for the lack of progress and said failure could lead to a resumption of Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens.

  • Ukraine mayor Gennady Kernes fighting for life after being shot

    Kharkiv mayor, who was key figure in ex-president Yanukovych’s party, shot in the back while on his way for morning swim

  • Pulitzer Prize – winner Chris Hedges: Using fake evidence is usual Washington tactic

    The crisis in Ukraine and the steadily dropping temperature in relations between Moscow and Washington made many talk about a new Cold War; and many others are worried it may turn ‘hot’. But there’s another war going on right now: the information war. US Secretary of State Kerry has already attacked RT, calling it “Putin’s propaganda machine.” But Washington itself uses dubious evidence and fake facts. What is the information war? What methods is America using? Sophie talks to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and veteran correspondent Chris Hedges.

  • Obama Plays With Fire in Ukraine

    Since Ukraine is not (yet) a member of NATO, the U.S. government would not have the same formal obligation to intervene should a shooting war break out between Ukraine and Russia. But what if something happens between Russia and Poland or one of the Baltic states? Under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, an attack on one member is regarded as an attack on all. But it also says,

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • California drought drives exodus of cattle ranchers to eastern states

    Ranchers herd their stock away from dying grasslands as beef prices reach record highs and industry faces uncertain future

  • Neo-Nazis march in Lvov ‘in honor’ of Ukrainian Waffen SS division (PHOTOS)

    Hundreds took part in a march to mark the anniversary of the formation of the Ukrainian SS division, which fought for the Nazi’s against the Soviet Union during World War II, in the city of Lvov in the western Ukraine.

    Around five hundred neo-Nazi supporters took to the streets in the center of the city on Sunday to celebrate the creation of the 14th SS-Volunteer Division ‘Galician’ on April 28, 1943.

  • Fracking weaponized – Joe Biden’s Ukraine crusade

    For the US fracking industry – and for Vice-President Joe Biden – fracking is more than just a way to bring in vast amounts of cash, writes Steve Horn. It’s also a key weapon in the US’s long war with Russia, as Biden made clear this week in Kiev.

  • UK and Ireland fire ice gas reserves ‘would be difficult to exploit’

    A fuel buried under the deep ocean bed off Britain and Ireland could provide a plentiful supply of energy but will be difficult to exploit, an expert said.

  • Climate change is the fight of our lives – yet we can hardly bear to look at it

    We’re products of an industrial project, a project linked to fossil fuels. But humans have changed before and can change again

  • Two degrees

  • Let This Earth Day Be The Last

• Finance

  • This cash for grouse scandal shows how Britain has become a plutocrats’ paradise

    So now you might have to buy your own crutches, but you’ll get your shotgun subsidised by the state. A few days after it was revealed that an NHS group is considering charging patients for the crutches, walking sticks and neck braces it issues, we discovered that David Cameron has intervened to keep the cost of gun licences frozen at £50: a price that hasn’t changed since 2001.

    The police are furious: it costs them £196 to conduct the background checks required to ensure shotguns are issued only to the kind of dangerous lunatics who use them for mowing down pheasants, rather than to the common or garden variety. As a result they – sorry, we – lose £17m a year, by subsidising the pursuits of the exceedingly rich.

• Censorship

  • Parents call cops on teen for giving away banned book; it backfires predictably

    Parents in Idaho called the cops last week on junior-high student Brady Kissel when she had the nerve to help distribute a book they’d succeeded in banning from the school curriculum.

  • YouTube deletes Stefan Molyneux´s liberty minded channel

    It appears as though Google run YouTube is targeting popular channels that promote freedom and liberty by deleting them and all their content off it´s servers.

    [...]

    In the past we have seen this happen to Russia Today a very popular english speaking news channel having their youtube channel cancelled twice and a Ron Paul promoting channel also deleted.

• Privacy

  • New surveillance techniques raise privacy concerns

    A report from the Center for Investigative Reporting and KQED delves into a wide-scale surveillance system being developed for police forces. How can the trade off between safety and privacy be negotiated as technology gets more and more sophisticated?

• Civil Rights

  • How to Disappear a Mentally Ill Grandmother: Throw Her in Solitary

    Her cell was so dirty that a sock rotted into an open wound on her foot. For two and a half years, she didn’t have a bed. She slept on a mat on the floor. She bled on herself, because the jail denied her sanitary napkins.

    Jan Green, a 51-year-old grandmother, never even stood trial. Because of the dramatic mood swings and psychosis associated with her bipolar disorder, Green was found unfit to stand trial – which meant that she should’ve been hospitalized to get the intensive mental health care she needed.

  • Egyptian judge sentences 720 men to death

    In a similar but separate case, the same judge then upheld the death sentences of 37 of 529 men he notoriously ordered to hang last month, bringing the total number of death sentences to 720. The remaining 492 had their sentences commuted to 25-year jail terms. All cases are subject to further appeals.

  • NYT to SCOTUS: Cops should get warrant before searching your cellphone after arrest

  • Smartphones and the 4th Amendment

    More than 90 percent of American adults own a mobile phone, and more than half of the devices are smartphones. But “smartphone” is a misnomer. They are personal computers that happen to include a phone function, and like any computer they can store or wirelessly retrieve enormous amounts of personal information: emails, photos and videos; document files; financial and medical records; and virtually everywhere a person has been.