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Links 16/6/2016: Slackware Live Edition 1.1.0, Qt 5.7 Released





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Dell XPS 13 Skylake (2016) review: A lot for a Linux user to like
    In the end I decided to put openSUSE on the laptop as it worked the best for me. I installed Arch Linux and couple of other distros in VirtualBox so I can play with them. I can run two VMs at the same time without any compromise on speed.

    As far as the laptop goes, I love it. And I'll give it serious consideration when it comes time to replace my MacBook. The only issue that may hold me back is the lack of HiDPI support by many apps. But that will change with time.


  • Linux operating system
    Linux has grown in popularity due to its more flexible and customisable nature compared to its more popular counterparts Windows and Mac.


  • Desktop



    • Remix OS Creators Announce New Android PCs, Partnership with Android-x86 Founder
      Today, June 16, 2016, Jide Technology, the creators of the well-known Android-x86-based Remix OS, have announced an official partnership with Android-x86's founder as well as the availability of multiple new Android PCs powered by Remix OS.

      Jide Technology has grown a lot in the last couple of years, and today they are proud to announce that the company is already capable of making partnerships with various hardware manufacturers to ship Android PCs and 2-in-1 tablets with Remix OS pre-installed. What this means is that they will thus allow users to run Google's Android operating system on more devices as their primary desktop environment.




  • Server





  • Kernel Space



    • Graphics Stack



      • Mesa 12.0 3D Graphics Library to No Longer Provide a Single VAAPI Driver Backend
        Collabora's Emil Velikov has announced the release and general availability of the third and likely the last RC (Release Candidate) build of the upcoming Mesa 12.0.0 3D Graphics Library.

        Mesa 3D Graphics Library 12.0.0 Release Candidate 3 arrives more than a week after the second RC version, bringing a total of 111 changes to most of the included graphics drivers and components. The full changelog has been attached at the end of the article just in case you're wondering what's new in this update.


      • Here's my own Linux OpenGL vs Vulkan test for Dota 2, not much difference for me
        I would love to run some Windows 10 tests in comparison, but Windows wanted to update which slowed everything down, Steam kept going to a 0b/s download for Dota 2 and it's just...so slow. I will hopefully do a Windows 10 comparison when Windows actually plays nicely. I was on it for half an hour and it only got to 40% done on updates, so it would probably take all night to do that + the tests.






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments/WMs



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt



      • Qt 5.7 released
        I’m very happy to announce that Qt 5.7 is now available. It’s been only 3 months since we released Qt 5.6, so one might expect a rather small release with Qt 5.7. But apart from the usual bug fixes and performance improvements, we have managed to add a whole bunch of new things to this release.


      • Qt 5.7.0 Officially Is Out


      • KDE e.V. Joins Advisory Board of The Document Foundation
        Today we are delighted to announce that KDE e.V. is joining the advisory board of The Document Foundation, the foundation backing LibreOffice and the Document Liberation Project. The Document Foundation also joins KDE e.V.'s group of advising community partners as an affiliate.

        The KDE Community has been creating Free Software since 1996 and shares a lot of values around Free Software and open document formats with The Document Foundation, and brings the experience of running a Free Software organization for almost two decades to their advisory board. Both organizations are working in the OASIS technical committee for the OpenDocument Format. We also collaborate on common aspects of development of office software, such as usability and visual design. The affiliation of KDE e.V. and The Document Foundation on an organizational level will help to move forward with the shared goal of giving end users control of their computing needs through Free Software.


      • KDE Doing a Survey for Input on our Mission


      • KDAB, Qt 3D and the Release of Qt 5.7
        Some of you may know that Qt 3D is going strong almost entirely due to the work of the KDAB team, led by Dr. Sean Harmer and Paul Lemire. You can read all about its near demise and ultimate rescue here – it’s quite a story, and started with the release of Qt 4.

        Now we are approaching another major chapter in the Qt 3D story, as Qt 5.7.0 is released along with a fully supported stable Qt 3D module. Qt 3D offers a high-level facility for 3D graphics, paving the way for making 3D content a first class citizen in Qt applications. This is big news!




    • GNOME Desktop/GTK



      • Gtk+ Versioning
        New thoughts are being expressed about Gtk+ versioning.

        There is something about numbering. Whatever. The numbering of Gtk+ versions is a problem I do not have. A problem I do not expect to have. Hence “whatever”.

        But there is also a message about stability and it is a scary one.


      • Long term support for GTK+
        The record (in terms of commit history) seems to not support your position — as much as you think everyone else is “delusional” about it, the commit log does not really lie.

        The 2.24.0 release was cut in January, 2011 — five and half years ago. No new features, no new API. Precisely what would happen with the new release plan, except that the new plan would also give a much better cadence to this behaviour.


      • Batch Renaming – Call for design ideas


      • Learning about scenario tasks
        For the internship, we have been following a schedule where we research topics about usability testing. After that "research" phase, we'll start building our usability tests. And we are almost finished with that "research" phase.


      • GUADEC 2016
        In case you use GNOME, the GUADEC conference is also for users. In case you’re wondering if you’ll fit in: Everyone is usually super friendly. First year you go you go to see talks and maybe a few drinks (alcohol is optional). Second year you talk more with the people you met from last year. Third year onward the talks are an excuse to go and the only talks you see are the ones where the speakers asked you to please attend :P


      • Are you planning to attend LAS GNOME?
        I loved attending the GNOME Users And Developers European Conference (GUADEC). I want to go back, but travel to Europe is a bit expensive. And it's hard to get away for such a long trip. So I'm not to make it for this year's GUADEC.






  • Distributions



    • News about Pisi Linux
      For example, Pisi 2.0 is said to bring two features that I've always appreciated: a live disk (it was about time!) and an iso image writer to USB.


    • New Releases



    • Slackware Family



      • Slack Live 1.1.0, Licensing History, Reviving PCs
        The top story in Linux news today was the release of Slackware Linux 1.1.0 featuring the latest Slackware-current and Plasma 5.6.5. Elsewhere, Christopher Tozzi penned a history of Open Source licenses and the Free Software Foundation published their first in a series of licensing resource guides. Douglas DeMaio blogged some of the latest news from Tumbleweed and Swapnil Bhartiya rounded up the best lightweight distros for your older PC.


      • KDE 5_16.06 for Slackware -current
        It’s that time of the month again, where the three main software collections of the KDE community have had new releases. Time to package and release for Slackware!


      • Slackware Live Edition 1.1.0 comes with the latest Plasma5 on ISO
        ISO images for Slackware Live Edition based on the liveslak 1.1.0 scripts and using Slackware-current dated “Wed Jun 15 06:13:17 UTC 2016” are available as of now (I missed the 3rd update Pat made to slackware-current today but I think that’s acceptible). The Plasma5 variant contains the latest packages which I made publicly available earlier today.




    • Red Hat Family



      • NethServer 6.8 Officially Released, Based on the CentOS 6.8 Operating System
        Softpedia has been informed today, June 16, 2016, by Alessio Fattorini, that the final release of the NethServer 6.8 server-oriented, open-source, and free GNU/Linux operating system is now available for download.


      • 4 lessons about open organizations I learned offline
        I'm a member of two non-profits in my city. One of them is a sporting league, the other a community initiative to save a bit of land from commercial development. Both organizations are member-run. No one is paid to participate and external funding is minimal; in fact volunteers pay membership dues each year. Neither has a "CEO" or "board chair" position (other than those members arbitrarily give). These small non-profits barely have web presences—let alone a connection to the open movement.

        Traditional business models function through rigid hierarchies, while open organizations use flexible teams to ensure maximum efficiency. We often associate "open" with "online" because certain technologies seem integral to remaining flexible in diverse communities. My offline communities have taught me four lessons about the ways open organizational principles don't necessarily rely on the digital technologies we tend to associate with them.


      • Voice of the Masses: Have you changed your mind about Systemd?
        Systemd, the “bag of bits” that originally started as an init system but has since taken over a lot of the lower-level plumbing of GNU/Linux, has a controversial history. Some distributions were quick to take it up, whereas others were more hesitant, arguing that it was subject to feature-creep and violated some long-standing Unix principles.


      • Migrate to Systemd Without a Reboot
        Yesterday I was fixing an issue with one of the servers behind kallithea-scm.org: the hook intended to propagage pushes from Our Own Kallithea to Bitbucket stopped working. Until yesterday, that server was using Debian’s flavour of System V init and djb’s dæmontools to keep things running. To make the hook asynchronous, I wrote a service to be managed to dæmontools, so that concurrency issued would be solved by it. However, I didn’t implement any timeouts, so when last week wget froze while pulling Weblate’s hook, there was nothing to interrupt it, so the hook stopped working since dæmontools thought it’s already running and wouldn’t re-trigger it. Killing wget helped, but I decided I need to do something with it to prevent the situation from happening in the future.


      • Why Red Hat chief executive Jim Whitehurst says “office gossip” is not such a bad thing in your business
        Backstabbing banter, unconfirmed fact swaps and low blows are all fair definitions of the word “gossip”.

        So workplace gossip is a HR nightmare, right?

        Not necessarily, says Red Hat chief executive Jim Whitehurst.

        “Rule of thumb when it comes to office gossip: If you have more truth telling at the water cooler than in meetings, you’ve got a problem,” Whitehurst told Business Insider.

        “You want to get to a place where people feel safe to share their thoughts, feelings, and opinions about a situation, beyond the water cooler.”


      • Finance



      • Fedora



        • Phabricator RPMs for RHEL, Fedora
          If you work with Phabricator, by engaging with Kolab (for example), you may be interested to know about our Infrastructure and Tools repositories.

          These contain Phabricator’s stable branches for Phabricator itself, arcanist and libphutil.


        • Fedora Cloud FAD 2016 Report
          The Fedora Cloud Working Group met on June 7 and 8 in Raleigh to work on deliverables for Fedora 25 and beyond. As it turns out, we had a really productive set of discussions and have some good ideas for the Cloud Working Group going forward.


        • Keeping Busy with Side Projects
          This doesn't just apply to side projects. Even with my work in the Fedora Project, I bounce between projects. Some days you'll see me spend time hacking on Infrastructure projects, helping with updates to servers, fixing services that go down randomly at 3am (I'm a night owl, so I'm up anyway). Other days you'll see me working on the packages I maintain, keeping them updated or fixing bugs that people report on them. Other days I'll work on Fedora's plethora of web applications, fixing bugs or writing Haskell clients to interact with them (finding and reporting bugs as I go). Still other days you'll see me work on the Websites team and pretend to be a designer. If I didn't have this freedom to move around between projects, I would not have lasted very long in the Fedora community. It is this freedom to move between projects that makes Fedora so interesting to me.






    • Debian Family



      • Reproducible builds: week 59 in Stretch cycle


      • The road to debconf 2016, tourism and arts.
        I didn’t have high hopes as there obviously are many more talented peers around me who understand FOSS and Debian at a much more fundamental, philosophical as well as technical level than me. Much to my surprise though, about a month (and around two or three weeks just before the event was about to take place) I got the bursary/sponsorships for food, accommodation as well as travel. I was unsure that the remaining time was enough to get a visa hence declined that time around.


      • On discomfort and new groups


      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu



          • OnePlus 3 to Become an Unofficial Ubuntu Phone, Development Will Start Soon
            We had a quick chat today with Marius Gripsgård from UBports.com, a group of independent developers trying to port Canonical's Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system to as many devices as possible, about an upcoming port to OnePlus 3.

            Yes, you're reading it right, OnePlus 3 is about to become an unofficial Ubuntu Phone, as Mr. Gripsgård informs Softpedia today that he already ordered the device and will start development, porting of Ubuntu Touch, as soon as it arrives.


          • Canonical Releases Snapd 2.0.8 with Universal Snaps, New Desktop Interfaces
            On June 15, 2016, Canonical's David Callé proudly announced the availability of an updated version of the snapd tool for Snappy Ubuntu Core and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating systems.

            snapd 2.0.8 is now live, coming one month after the release of snapd 2.0.3 to bring various improvements to the technology Canonical uses to interact with the Snappy infrastructure of Ubuntu Core, a variant of the Ubuntu Linux OS designed for embedded and IoT devices.


          • How high will Shuttleworth's snap initiative fly?


            Over the last 12 years since he started the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution, Mark Shuttleworth, the man behind Canonical, has made many efforts to bring about what he has characterised as unity in the Linux community.

            Of course, whenever he has suggested such initiatives — like universal release schedules, for example — he has always had a vested interest in them himself. Nothing wrong with that, if the initiatives were also benefitting the Linux community at large.

            But given that he has rubbed up far too many people the wrong way, his initiatives have generally failed to gain acceptance. And his latest move, to have a single packaging format for Linux packages, something he calls snap, has already brought out opposition.


          • Developer to port Ubuntu Touch onto OnePlus
            If all goes according to the UBports team’s plans, OnePlus 3 may unofficially be powered by Ubuntu Touch. Ubuntu developer, Marius GripsgÃ¥rd from UBports.com told Softpedia that they had acquired a OnePlus 3 and would soon be porting Ubuntu Touch onto it.


          • Ubuntu's snaps come to other Linux distros
          • Ubuntu's 'Snap' packages may be the future of software installation on every Linux PC


          • Flavours and Variants



            • Ubuntu MATE Linux: It’s Not Rocket Science
              Granted, this was no deep dive into the belly of the beast, but it was a positive first step in introducing me to the world of Linux on a machine that was otherwise gathering dust in my closet. In comparison to how it ran with Windows XP, I was impressed with how quickly everything responded in Ubuntu MATE — though cautiously optimistic because I know that’s how it tends to go with newly installed operating systems. It’s only been a week so far since the installation, so I’ll see if it still plays nicely after being shackled to my habitually unreasonable human demands for a little longer.












  • Devices/Embedded





Free Software/Open Source



  • Scality S3 Server Now Generally Available
  • Scality Releases Open Source S3 Server
  • Scality Releases S3 Server Open Source Version of Its S3 API
  • Migrating to Nextcloud 9
  • Chef's open source tool lets applications automate infrastructure provisioning
  • Chef Habitat Project Embeds IT Automation Code Within Applications
  • Chef launches Habitat open source project to develop 'application automation'
  • Chef cooks up a new open-source application automation project


  • Events



  • SaaS/Back End



    • Why you can't win by focusing on software
      Boris Renski, co-founder and CMO of cloud computing services company Mirantis, wrote a blog post today sending a dire warning to the software industry. In his words: "numbered are the days of any company whose core business is pinned to selling licenses or subscriptions to infrastructure software bits."




  • Databases



    • Splice Machine releases dual-engine RDBMS to open source
      Splice Machine, the startup behind a dual-engine relational database management system (RDBMS) powered by Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark, last week announced that it would release that technology to open source.

      Splice Machine uses resource isolation — separate processes and resource management for its Hadoop and Spark components — to ensure that large, complex online analytical processing (OLAP) queries don't overwhelm time-sensitive online transaction processing (OLTP) queries. The hybrid architecture allows you to run analytical workloads and transactional workloads concurrently — a boon for use cases ranging from digital marketing to ETL acceleration, operational data lakes, data warehouse offloads, Internet of Things (IoT) applications, web, mobile and social applications and operational applications.




  • Education



  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)



  • BSD



    • ZFS: Apple’s New Filesystem That Wasn’t
      In the 7 years since ZFS development halted at Apple, they’ve worked on a variety of improvements in HFS and Core Storage, and hacked at at least two replacements for HFS that didn’t make it out the door. This week Apple announced their new filesystem, APFS, after 2 years in development. It’s not done; some features are still in development, and they’ve announced the ambitious goal of rolling it out to laptop, phone, watch, and tv within the next 18 months. At Sun we started ZFS in 2001. It shipped in 2005 and that was really the starting line, not the finish line. Since then I’ve shipped the ZFS Storage Appliance in 2008 and Delphix in 2010 and each has required investment in ZFS / OpenZFS to make them ready for prime time. A broadly featured, highly functional filesystem takes a long time.




  • Public Services/Government



    • Open Source Software Finds its Sweet Spot in the Public Sector
      For more than sixteen years, James Passingham, Chief Technical Officer at Foehn, has pioneered the development of communication systems using open source software. Here, James explains where government policy encouraging the use of open source is bearing fruit.

      It was some four years ago, with the founding of the Government Digital Service (GDS), that open source software first came into the public sector limelight. Under the direction of Liam Maxwell, Government CTO at that time, the ‘Better for Less’ report that he co-authored set out the policies that gave government IT management the remit to pursue the advantages of two specific technologies – cloud and open source software.


    • Life cycle support also a priority for open source
      Open source software development projects and public administrations have similar concerns about software support. The two also share an approach to classify software requirements, concludes the EU-FOSSA project, a software security audit project on open source by the European Commission and the European Parliament.


    • Romania augments eProcurement portal
      Romania’s electronic procurement portal ‘e-licitatie’ now provides more information on the public procurement process, the portal announced on 8 June. Users can now find preliminary information on planned calls for tender, and can learn how to bid for national and European contracts.


    • EU eGovernment factsheet
      The European Commission published this week an update to its eGovernment factsheet. The previous version was from 2015. This factsheet update is the last in the suite of 34 covering eGovernment in Europe. The text presents an overview of the state and progress of eGovernment in Europe and at the European Commission.

      On the political level, this 2016 update casts a light on numerous strategic directions, programmes and initiatives promoted at European level in order to deliver sustainable, economic and social benefits from a Digital Single Market. One of these programmes is the freshly launched EU eGovernment Action plan 2016-2020 substantiated into 20 concrete actions. This plan strives for efficient, inclusive, user friendly and end-to-end digital public services in EU by 2020.


    • Adullact about to unveil revamped repository
      Next week, France’s platform for civil servants working on free software, Adullact, will unveil its revamped software development platform and repository. At its 6th annual congress, the association will also launch a label to highlight and reward French public administrations contributing to free software.




  • Licensing/Legal



    • A Brief History of Free and Open Source Software Licensing
      Open source software licenses may not excite people as much as open source code, but they have been just as important in keeping software free. Open source licensing as we know it today didn't always exist, however. It evolved as programmers developed more sophisticated strategies regarding their intellectual property.

      Below is a look at the major milestones in open source licensing history. It doesn't cover every twist and turn. That would take a book.

      But it outlines the major arc in open source licensing strategies, from the days when free software promoters disdained licenses altogether through present-day battles about software licensing and the cloud.


    • Licensing resources series: A Quick Guide to GPLv3
      One of our main goals here in the Free Software Foundation's Licensing & Compliance Lab is education. Over the years we have created a wide breadth of tools and resources to help users and developers understand free software licenses and related legal issues. We've been doing this for so long that some resources, published some years ago but still very relevant, aren't consulted as often as they could be. With all these great tools available, we thought it would be good to take some time to highlight individual resources that you may not know about. With that, we are starting a regular series of articles, each promoting a particular tool or resource to help you understand the legal side of free software.




  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration



    • Open Hardware/Modding



      • Marty the 3D printed open-source robot for STEM education launches on Indiegogo
        The robots are coming and 3D printing is partially to blame for the impending invasion. Similar in concept but different in execution to the 3D printed WireBeings robot we covered a few months back, Marty the Robot is a being promoted through a new indiegogo campaign that's hoping to introduce robotics to younger generations.






  • Programming/Development



  • Standards/Consortia



    • Microsoft Updates Office for iPhone with OpenDocument Format Support
      Microsoft has just rolled out a new update for its Office productivity suite on iOS devices, so iPhone and iPad users can now benefit from important additions, such as support for the OpenDocument format.

      All productivity apps included in the Office suite have been updated to version 1.22, which, according to the listings added in the App Store, comes with support for exporting a document to the OpenDocument Text (.ODT) format.

      No other change is included in the release notes, although some other bug fixes and performance improvements are very likely to be part of the update, but the addition of ODT format support for exporting is anyway a pretty important thing.







Leftovers



  • Admins in outcry as Microsoft fix borks Group Policy
    Microsoft's most recent security update is causing problems with Windows Group Policy settings.

    Users on Reddit and Microsoft support forums are reporting that after the MS16-072 update was installed, changes were made in Group Policy object (GPO) settings that left previously hidden drives and devices accessible.

    "I installed windows patches last night and this morning found out that there were a number of issues with my GPOs," writes one admin.

    "Example: desktop image would not show up, A, B, C and D drives that were meant to be hidden from users are now showing up."


  • Science



  • Health/Nutrition



    • ‘Pharmaceutical Companies Have Pressured Doctors, Suppressed Evidence’
      In 2014, a class of drugs known as opioids were involved in more than 28,000 deaths, or 61 percent of all drug overdose deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The rate of opioid overdoses has tripled since the year 2000. Recent data show two different but related trends: an increase in so-called illicit opioid overdoses, largely due to heroin, and then this 15-year increase in overdose deaths involving prescription opioid pain relievers. Those drugs, like oxycodone and hydrocodone, or brand names like OxyContin and Vicodin, account for more than 16,000 fatal overdoses each year. The CDC says they’re comfortable using the term “epidemic” to describe the crisis.




  • Security



    • BadTunnel Bug Hijacks Network Traffic, Affects All Windows Versions
      The research of Yang Yu, founder of Tencent's Xuanwu Lab, has helped Microsoft patch a severe security issue in its implementation of the NetBIOS protocol that affected all Windows versions ever released.


    • 'BadTunnel' Bugs Left Every Microsoft Windows PC Vulnerable For 20 Years [Ed: no paywall/malware in this link]
      Microsoft is today closing off a vulnerability that one Chinese researcher claims has "probably the widest impact in the history of Windows." Every version of the Microsoft operating system going back to Windows 95 is affected, leaving anyone still running unsupported operating systems, such as XP, in danger of being surreptitiously surveilled.

      According to Yang Yu, founder of Tencent's Xuanwu Lab, the bug can be exploited silently with a "near-perfect success rate", as the problems lie in the design of Windows. The ultimate impact? An attacker can hijack all a target's web use, granting the hacker "Big Brother power", as soon as the victim opens a link or plugs in a USB stick, claimed Yu. He received $50,000 from Microsoft's bug bounty program for uncovering the weakness, which the researcher has dubbed BadTunnel. Microsoft issued a fix today in its Patch Tuesday list of updates.

      "Even security software equipped with active defense mechanisms are not able to detect the attack," Yu told FORBES. "Of course it is capable of execute malicious code on the target system if required."


    • Getting Things Wrong From The Beginning…
      GNU/Linux and never had any problems with software the rest of the school year. I’ve been using GNU/Linux ever since and have had no regrets. It’s been the right way to do IT. My wife saw the light a few years ago. She was tired of years of TOOS failing every now and then and needing re-installation. Once her business started using a web application, she had no more need of TOOS, none.


    • Intel x86s hide another CPU that can take over your machine (you can't audit it)
      Recent Intel x86 processors implement a secret, powerful control mechanism that runs on a separate chip that no one is allowed to audit or examine. When these are eventually compromised, they'll expose all affected systems to nearly unkillable, undetectable rootkit attacks. I've made it my mission to open up this system and make free, open replacements, before it's too late.


    • Hackers Show How To Hack Anyone’s Facebook Account Just By Knowing Phone Number
      By exploiting the SS7 flaw, a hacker can hack someone’s Facebook account just by knowing the associated phone number. This flaw allows a hacker to divert the OTP code to his/her own phone and use it to access the victim’s Facebook account. The security researchers, who have explained the hack in a video, advise the users to avoid adding their phone numbers to the public services.


    • Security advisories for Wednesday


    • Hacking News: ISIS Twitter Accounts Hacked By Anonymous, ISIS Hacker Faces 25 Years In Prison
      An Anonymous-affiliated hacker has painted numerous ISIS Twitter accounts with gay pride messages and pictures in support of the Orlando shooting victims. On the other hand, a 21-year-old hacker has pleaded guilty to helping ISIS and he is scheduled to get a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.




  • Defence/Aggression



    • Teaching Kids About Genocide
      Public schoolchildren in Michigan are now required to learn about the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide as part of their social studies curriculum, according to a law Governor Rick Snyder signed on Tuesday.

      While most students in Michigan no doubt learn about the Holocaust already, the new law would require teachers in public schools to spend a certain amount of time on these topics. Between eighth and 12th grades, schools must spend a combined six hours on genocide education, specifically the Holocaust—in which, during World War II, Nazi Germany killed 11 million Jews, Roma, and other ethnic minorities—and the Armenian genocide—in which Ottoman Turks killed 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1920. While Turkey denies a genocide took place, 29 countries and 45 U.S. states use the term “genocide” to refer to the killings.


    • Dalai Lama Urges Suu Kyi to Address Buddhist-Muslim Tensions
      Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has a moral responsibility to try to ease tensions between majority Buddhists and minority Rohingya Muslims, her fellow Nobel laureate, the Dalai Lama, said on Monday.

      The Tibetan spiritual leader said he had stressed the issue in meetings with Suu Kyi, who came to power in April in the newly created role of state counsellor in Myanmar’s first democratically elected government in five decades.

      “She already has the Nobel Peace Prize, a Nobel Laureate, so morally she should… make efforts to reduce this tension between the Buddhist community and Muslim community,” he told Reuters in an interview in Washington.

      “I actually told her she should speak more openly.”

      Violence between majority Buddhists and minority Muslims in recent years has cast a cloud over progress with democratic reforms in Myanmar. Rights groups have sharply criticised Suu Kyi‘s reluctance to speak out on the Rohingya‘s plight.

      The Dalai Lama said Suu Kyi, who won worldwide acclaim and a Nobel Peace Prize as a champion of democratic change in the face of military persecution, had responded to his calls by saying that the situation was “really complicated.”


    • Florida Man Falsely Connected by Fox News to Orlando Shooter Receives Death Threats
      Not long after last Sunday’s deadly shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, a news story published by Fox News suggested that the shooter, Omar Mateen, had been radicalized by his connection to a local imam.

      Citing anonymous officials, the report claimed that a man named Marcus Dwayne Robertson, also known as Abu Taubah, had been “rounded up,” along with several of his associates, in connection to the attack. The official quoted in the article, described as “a law enforcement source familiar with Robertson’s history of recruiting terrorists and inciting violence,” claimed that Mateen had been a student of Robertson’s online Islamic seminary.


    • Democrats Embrace Secretive, Flawed Terror Watchlist in Fight Against Gun Violence
      Democratic leaders came out in force on Wednesday in favor of a proposal to prohibit Americans who are on federal government terrorist watchlists from purchasing firearms. A group of Democratic senators waged a fillibuster on the Senate floor. And after presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump announced that he intends to meet with the powerful National Rifle Association to discuss a similar restriction, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton welcomed him to the cause.


    • Why Did FBI’s Multiple Informants Fail to Catch Omar Mateen in a Sting?
      Normally, when the FBI identifies a Muslim mouthing off about joining ISIS, they throw one or more informants at him, develop his trust, then have him press a button or buy a plane ticket to Syria, which they use to arrest the guy.

      That didn’t happen here. While they did record the conversations between these informants and Mateen, they never got him to do something they could arrest him for.


    • Violence Begets Violence: The Orlando Shootings and the War on Terror
      We can rail against ISIS, hate crimes, terror threats, Islamic radicalization, gun control and national security. We can blame Muslims, lax gun laws, a homophobic culture and a toxic politic environmental. We can even use the Orlando shooting as fodder for this year’s presidential campaigns.

      But until we start addressing the U.S. government’s part in creating, cultivating and abetting domestic and global terrorism – and hold agencies such as the FBI and Defense Department accountable for importing and exporting violence, breeding extremism and generating blowback, which then gets turned loose on an unsuspecting American populace – we’ll be no closer to putting an end to the violence that claimed 50 lives at an Orlando nightclub on June 12, 2016, than we were 15 years ago when nearly 3,000 individuals were killed on Sept. 11, 2001.


    • Bridging Divides of a New Cold War
      As NATO steps up military maneuvers near Russia’s borders and congressmen fume about “Russian aggression,” a delegation of Americans including former U.S. officials is looking for face-to-face ways to encourage peace, writes Ann Wright.


    • Jo Cox shooting: Eyewitnesses describe moment Labour MP shot outside constituency office
      Eyewitneses have described the moment Labour MP Jo Cox was shot outside her consitituency office in Birstall.

      Ms Cox is believed to be a in a “critical condition” and has been airlifted to Leeds General Infirmary. The Labour MP was shot while holding an advice surgery for her constituents.




  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting



    • WikiLeaks will release new Clinton emails to add to incriminating evidence, Julian Assange says, in “big year ahead”
      Julian Assange, editor-in chief of WikiLeaks, says the whistle-blowing journalism organization will soon be publishing unreleased emails from Hillary Clinton.

      Clinton, the Democratic Party presidential front-runner, has been under criminal investigation by the FBI for using a personal email account on a private server in her home that contained top-secret information.

      Assange doesn’t believe that Clinton will be indicted, but argues that the government has more than enough evidence, in both her emails and in the dealings of the Clinton Foundation, if it were truly committed to doing so.

      “We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton,” Assange said. “WikiLeaks has a very big year ahead.”

      Assange made these remarks in an interview with the British ITV network on Sunday. The host noted WikiLeaks has been “taking interest” in Clinton’s use of the private email server.


    • Authorities Arrest an IT Worker From the Panama Papers Law Firm
      When Edward Snowden went public as the NSA whistleblower in 2013, few were surprised that a system administrator was behind the spy agency’s leak. Inside administrators who hold the keys to an organization’s data kingdom are a much greater threat to security than outside hackers.

      Now it appears another technical insider may be connected to a leak at Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the heart of the massive Panama Papers scandal. A computer technician employed by Mossack Fonseca’s Geneva office was arrested this week on suspicion of removing “large amounts of data” from the law firm’s network, according to Swiss newspaper Le Temps. Le Temps reported that the worker was arrested after the law firm filed a complaint accusing him of unauthorized access and breach of trust, and of stealing a large amount of confidential data. Investigators also seized computers in the law firm’s Swiss office.


    • Air Force, Lockheed Martin Combine Forces To 'Lose' 100,000 Inspector General Investigations


      The Air Force says there's no evidence of malicious intent, as far as it can tell. But there's also no evidence of competence. Why is it that files related to oversight of a government agency have no apparent redundancy? It's small details like these that show the government generally isn't much interested in policing itself.

      If anything's going to be recovered, it's going to be Lockheed's job, and it's already spent a few weeks trying with little success. There may be some files stored locally at bases where investigations originated, but they're likely to be incomplete.

      While I understand the inherent nature of bureaucracy makes it difficult to build fully-functioning systems that can handle digital migration with any sort of grace, it's completely incomprehensible that a system containing files collected over the last decade would funnel into a single storage space with no backup. It's one thing if this was just the Air Force's fault.

      But this is more Lockheed's fault -- and despite its position as a favored government contractor -- it's also known for its innovation and technical prowess. Neither of those qualities are on display in this public embarrassment. And if it can't recover the data, it's pretty much erasing more than a decade's-worth of government mistakes, abuse, and misconduct. And while no one's going to say anything remotely close to this out loud, there has to be more than a few people relieved to see black marks on their permanent records suddenly converted to a useless tangle of 1s and 0s.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature



    • Indonesia Yet to learn from their mistakes: Haze & Indonesia counterparts
      Singapore cannot step further to enter Indonesia’s legal domain on the issue of forest fires because the two countries do not have an agreement in the matter, said Indonesia’s Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar.

      “The protocol on forest fires in the Transboundary Haze Pollution Act (THPA) is a multilateral agreement, so there was never a bilateral agreement between Indonesia and Singapore, that must be remembered,” Dr Nurbaya said during a breaking of fast session with reporters on Monday (Jun 13).

      She was responding to a question about Singapore’s Transboundary Haze Pollution Act (THPA) which it passed in 2014 to go after companies that start fires or let their concessions burn.

      Indonesia has taken issue with Singapore's attempts to act against companies responsible for the haze-causing forest fires that choked parts of Indonesia and the region. Jakarta previously objected by lodging a strong protest through its ambassador in Singapore.

      Dr Nurbaya said that she has explained to Singapore’s Foreign Minister that the THPA is controversial, and that it is being continuously discussed on the Asean’s sub-regional ministers level between Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand.


    • Celebrating 10 Years of Ocean Conservation
      The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument, later named Papahānaumokuākea, was established by Presidential Proclamation 8031 on June 15, 2006 using the Antiquities Act. It was created to protect an exceptional array of natural and cultural resources. It encompasses 139,797 square miles of the Pacific Ocean and is home to more than 7,000 marine species, one quarter of which are found only in the Hawaiian Archipelago.






  • Finance



    • TPP's Corporate Sovereignty Chapter A 'Threat To Democracy And Regulation'
      When the negotiations for the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada were concluded in September 2014, the text was finally released after years of secrecy. At the time, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives put together what remains the best overall analysis of the main text's 1598 pages, in a series of studies collectively called "Making Sense of CETA." The same organization has now published a set of analyses looking at key aspects of TPP, entitled "What’s the big deal? Understanding the Trans-Pacific Partnership".

      They are all worth looking at, but Techdirt readers will probably be particularly interested in one called "Foreign investor protections in the Trans-Pacific Partnership." It's by Gus Van Harten, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto, Canada, and a well-known commentator on trade law and policy. The first part of his analysis provides a good summary of the world of corporate sovereignty, or investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) as it is more formally known. The later section looks at some new research that provides additional insight into just how bad corporate sovereignty is for those of us who are not insanely rich.

      For example, Van Harten quotes some recent work showing that 90% of ISDS fines against countries went to corporations with over $1 billion in annual revenue or to individuals with over $100 million in net wealth. Similarly, the success rate among the largest multinationals -- those with turnovers of at least $10 billion -- was 71% in the 48 cases they initiated, compared with a success rate for everyone else of 42%. So any claim that ISDS is equally useful to all companies, including small and medium-sized businesses, is not borne out by the facts.




  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics



    • More people turning to social media for news: study


      Around half of the people in 26 countries surveyed by Reuters, including Australia, say they use social media as a source of news each week, with one in 10 saying it was their main source.


    • Social media 'outstrips TV' as news source for young people
      Of the 18-to-24-year-olds surveyed, 28% cited social media as their main news source, compared with 24% for TV.


    • NPR Retracts False Claim About Terror and Politics, But Doesn’t Tell Listeners the Truth
      As Husseini noted in a response on his own blog (6/15/16), the correction does little to explain the significance of Temple-Raston’s mistake: She had speculated that ISIS might intentionally attack the United States in the run-up to the November elections, possibly in order to help elect Donald Trump, since “they would be able to perhaps get more recruits because of the way he talks about Muslims.” Though noting there was no evidence that this was happening, Temple-Raston claimed that “it’s happened in the past”—which is how she led in to her false statement that “the more conservative candidate ended up winning” in the Spanish election immediately following the Madrid train station bombing.


    • Hillary Wants to Bring Back Bill. She Shouldn’t.
      Why would Hillary threaten workaday Americans with another poke in the eye from her con man spouse?




  • Censorship/Free Speech



  • Privacy/Surveillance



    • Consumer Groups Say AT&T, Comcast Violate Privacy Law By Hoovering Up Cable Box Data Without Full User Consent
      In addition to the $21 billion made annually by cable set top box rental fees, cable companies make untold billions from monetizing the user viewing data these boxes help collect. That captive revenue alone is the driving force behind the pay TV sectors histrionic opposition to the FCC's plan to open the sector up to third-party hardware competition. Consumer viewing and behavioral data is an immense cash cow, one the cable industry has occasionally threatened to take even further -- with patents on tech that lets the cable box literally watch or listen in on American living rooms.

      While things haven't quite reached that level of total information awareness yet, consumer groups this week filed a formal complaint with both the FTC and FCC arguing that things have gone far enough. Public Knowledge, the Center for Digital Democracy and Consumer Watchdog have filed formal privacy complaints with both the FCC and FTC saying that major cable companies routinely fail to inform consumers about the degree in which their viewing data is collected, stored and monetized via ye olde cable box.


    • An abandoned NSA Cold War spy station in Berlin has been turned into an artists' playground
      "Go to Teufelsberg," he replied confidently, before going on to explain that Teufelsberg is an abandoned listening post in West Berlin that the US National Security Agency (NSA) once used to intercept East Berlin and Soviet communications...

    • The Forest for the Trees
      When I first started seeking out other victims, about six months ago, I did not want to formally report any of the stories I had heard from Jake’s victims to the Tor Project or others, for two primary reasons. First, that my main motivation in this was to ensure that these behaviours stopped, and it was not clear to me that any traditional punitive “justice” measures would achieve such. Second, I feared retaliation from Jake, as well as retaliation towards any of the victims whose stories I would divulge. Multiple victims at the time expressed that they didn’t want me to tell The Tor Project, later admitting they feared retaliation to be extremely likely, as well as difficult to combat.


    • A California County Breaks New Ground for Surveillance Transparency
      Last week, a county in California encompassing much of Silicon Valley set a new standard in local surveillance transparency after months of activism by residents and allies from across the bay area. Their efforts, and the policy it enabled, suggest an overlooked strategy in the national battle to curtail unaccountable secret mass surveillance.

      While federal agencies play a controversial role in monitoring Americans, their local counterparts also conduct similar activities—not only in the context of counterterrorism, but even for the sake of routine public safety. While concerns about the militarization of local police have long united Americans across the political spectrum, the metastasis of surveillance platforms across local police departments, county sheriffs, and state highway patrols too often went largely unnoticed until recently.
    • Snowden Disclosure Prompts Backlash in Scotland
      Top government officials in Scotland are under pressure to explain their knowledge of a secretive police surveillance unit that was exposed in documents leaked by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

      On Tuesday, cabinet secretary for justice Michael Matheson was grilled in the country’s parliament about the so-called Scottish Recording Centre and its previously undisclosed involvement in covert surveillance operations.


    • National Security Agency (NSA) Exploring Use Of Biomedical Device Data
      The National Security Agency (NSA) is interested in collecting information from biomedical devices for national security purposes, according to recent statements made by the agency’s deputy director, Richard Ledgett. Under- and unprotected devices in the Internet of Things (IoT), including medical devices, could be both a help and a hindrance to intelligence agencies like NSA, he said, providing them with a wealth of information and potentially exposing them to terrorist surveillance.
    • Why Microsoft Wanted LinkedIn
      LinkedIn, for its part, has been struggling; in February, its stock dropped more than forty per cent in a single day, after it announced a forecast that fell far short of what analysts had expected. The company’s C.E.O., Jeff Weiner, has blamed its recent troubles largely on a broader economic slowdown; LinkedIn’s business model relies on charging employers and employees for premium services, like sending messages to strangers, and when the economy isn’t thriving headhunters and workers tend not to be as willing to pay for connections. But the dominance of Facebook, among other big rivals, has also made it harder for LinkedIn, whose ad business competes with Facebook’s, to survive as an independent company. As Nicholas Lemann wrote in a Profile, last year, of the LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, “Silicon Valley is obsessed with ‘scale,’ and LinkedIn is, as yet, insufficiently enormous.” On Monday, Weiner acknowledged as much. “Imagine a world where we’re no longer looking up at Tech Titans such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook, and wondering what it would be like to operate at their extraordinary scale—because we’re one of them,” he wrote.


    • FBI Sues To Block Disclosure Of Surveillance Cameras Locations Because It Would Violate The Privacy Of Those Surveilled
      Another injunction request has been filed in response to a Phil Mocek public records request pertaining to Seattle's power utility. This time, Mocek and MuckRock (through which Mocek's requests have been routed) are not named as defendants. It's only the city of Seattle and its public utility (Seattle City Light) being named as defendants, but Mocek's public records request is specified in the federal court filing [PDF]. (h/t Mike Scarcella)

      This time, the plaintiff isn't a multinational corporation. It's the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The nexus for the FBI's attempt to block further disclosures to Mocek (and other requesters like local new station KIRO) is its remora-esque relationship with Seattle's public utility. After a long paragraph utilizing terms like "tradecraft," "concealments," and "advanced electronic surveillance," we finally get to the real reason the FBI wants the court to keep the city of Seattle from handing out any more public utility documents to requesters.
    • House eyes new chance to reform surveillance
    • House to Vote on Curbing NSA Surveillance in Wake of Orlando
    • Privacy Advocates Aim to Use Defense Spending Bill to Protect Encryption
    • House Intel Boss, Rep. Devin Nunes, Lying To Congress About Attempt To Stop Encryption Backdoors


    • Congressman Cites Orlando Tragedy as Reason to Fight Surveillance Reform
      The head of the House Intelligence Committee is hand-delivering a letter to colleagues on Capitol Hill, demanding they not restrict the FBI’s surveillance power — and citing the recent mass shooting in Orlando as justification. The letter opposes a proposed amendment that would put an end to FBI “backdoor” searches of an NSA database of foreign intelligence without judicial oversight.

      “The national security threats to the United States and its allies are greater today than at any point since 9/11. To keep Americans safe, our intelligence community needs to fully employ every tool available to it,” Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., wrote in the letter obtained by The Intercept, cosigned with Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga.
    • Government Surveillance Can’t Prevent Attacks Like Orlando. We Shouldn’t Expand It Now.
      There’s much that’s depressingly familiar about the news coming out of Orlando, where Omar Mateen committed the worst mass shooting of its kind in U.S. history: the heartbreaking images and stories of survivors and the relatives of those gunned down; the almost immediate offering of empty platitudes by politicians conspiring to do nothing about yet another bloodbath carried out with a high-powered weapon; the just-as-immediate resort to naked bigotry by the ignorant and the unscrupulous; the eagerness to declare the shooter in some way associated with foreign terror threats before the bodies of the dead are cold.


    • Inside the GCHQ doughnut, code breakers face up to our encrypted future [Ed: puff piece.]




  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • 'Ferguson Effect' is a plausible reason for spike in violent US crime, study says [Trevor Timm: "If the police are too afraid to do their job due to transparency and public scrutiny, isn't that the police's fault?"]
      A new justice department-funded study concludes that a version of the so-called “Ferguson Effect” is a “plausible” explanation for the spike in violent crime seen in most of the country’s largest cities in 2015, but cautions that more research is still needed.

      The study, released by the National Institute of Justice on Wednesday, suggests three possible drivers for the more than 16% spike in homicide from 2014 to 2015 in 56 of the nation’s largest cities. But based on the timing of the increase, University of Missouri St Louis criminologist Richard Rosenfeld concluded, there is “stronger support” for some version of the Ferguson Effect hypothesis than its alternatives.


    • Dozens of news orgs demand DOJ release its secret rules for targeting journalists with secret National Security Letters
      Freedom of the Press Foundation recently filed a huge brief in the organization's case demanding that the Justice Department release its secret rules for targeting journalists with National Security Letters. And in related news, a coalition of 37 news organizations - including the New York Times, The Associated Press, USA Today, Buzzfeed, and tons more - filed an amicus brief in support of the Freedom of the Press Foundation case, demanding that the Department of Justice do the same.


    • Dozens of news orgs demand DOJ release its secret rules for targeting journalists with National Security Letters
      A coalition of thirty-seven of news organizations—including the New York Times, the Associated Press, NPR, USA Today, and Buzzfeed—filed a legal brief over the weekend in support of Freedom of the Press Foundation’s case demanding that the Justice Department release its secret rules for targeting journalists with National Security Letters (NSLs).


    • CIA Files Show Prisoner Waterboarded 83 Times Would Have Cooperated Before Torture
      A cache of declassified documents has revealed new details about the CIA’s torture program. Among other findings, the records show a prisoner who was waterboarded 83 times was likely willing to cooperate with interrogators before the torture. The account from medical personnel who helped with the first waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah deals a major blow to the CIA’s insistence it gained crucial information through torture.


    • CIA Releases New and Gruesome Details on Its Torture Program
      The CIA released 50 new documents yesterday relating to its post-9/11 torture and rendition program. Despite the many disclosures that have come in the course of our decade-long fight to reveal the details of the program, the new revelations still have the capacity to shock.


    • New CIA Documents Reveal More Horrors of President Bush's Torture Program
      The CIA on Tuesday released dozens of documents detailing its torture and rendition program under the Bush administration, from the horrific treatment of detainees to the agency's 2002 plan to ask the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) not to prosecute interrogators.

      The heavily redacted trove of more than 50 documents was published in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by the ACLU last year, which sought records referenced in the U.S. Senate's damning report on the CIA's program—commonly referred to as the torture report—released in December 2014.


    • New York Lawmakers Race to Toughen Oversight of Nurses and Other Professionals
      Spurred by concerns about problem nurses, New York lawmakers are racing to pass legislation to toughen oversight of more than 50 types of licensed professionals in the state.

      Earlier this month, Senate and Assembly committees unanimously passed bills that would allow the state Education Department to suspend licenses more swiftly and compel more reporting of criminal convictions and misconduct. A ProPublica investigation published in April found New York lagged behind other states in these regards, citing examples of nurses who retained their licenses even after being charged with or convicted of violent crimes.


    • It’s Not Me, It’s You: Tips for Strong Relationships With Sources
      Later this week, many of the nation’s best investigative journalists will be gathering in New Orleans for the annual Investigative Reporters & Editors conference. They’ll swap ideas, learn new skills and hopefully return to their hometowns to dig with renewed fervor. Full disclosure: I serve on the board of IRE, so can be totally unbiased in saying that I think the organization is the best resource in the universe for investigative reporters.


    • British Politics Descends Into Nativism and Farce, and Trump Hasn’t Even Arrived Yet
      With just over a week to go before Britons vote on whether or not to leave the European Union, the campaign for “independence” from the EU has turned farcical and deeply nasty, with nationalists relying heavily on anti-immigrant hysteria and racism to make their case.

      And it turns out that Donald Trump has chosen next Friday, June 24 — the day the referendum votes will be counted — to visit his mother’s ancestral homeland, Scotland. Trump’s avowed purpose is to celebrate the reopening of a golf resort he owns there, but the timing suggests he may be hoping to be on hand to cheer the success of a reactionary political movement based on the same sort of appeals to nativism and xenophobia that have served him so well in America.




  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Safari 10 dumps Flash, Java, Silverlight, QuickTime in the trash
      Apple has taken its turn at the hammer, and added its own i-Nail to the coffin of Flash.

      Over at the Webkit blog, Ricky Mondello of the Safari team writes that Safari 10, due in the northern fall, will “behave as though common legacy plug-ins on users’ Macs are not installed”.

      Instead, it will try to default to HTML5 for content like video, and Safari will not ship with an exception list. If a site only offers Flash, the user will have to explicitly switch it on for that site and add it to their own exceptio




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Trademarks



      • Citigroup Sues AT&T For Saying 'Thanks' To Customers
        Whenver we discuss a particularly egregious case of trademark abuse, usually centered around the trademarking of some insanely common word or phrase, there's always at least one instance of "that joke" in the comments. You know the joke I'm talking about: well, I'll just trademark X and sue everyone, where X=super-common word or phrase. For example: "I'll just trademark "trademark" and sue anyone who uses a trademark!", or, "I'll just trademark "the" and sue everyone who uses it!" These jokes play on the common problem of generic terms being granted trademarks, but of course they are examples so ridiculous that it couldn't happen for those specific words and terms. Still, to our lovely commenters, we say, "Thank you."


      • Citigroup trademarks “THANKYOU” and sues AT&T for thanking clients
        Who knew? Banking giant Citigroup has trademarked "THANKYOU" and is now suing technology giant AT&T for how it says thanks to its own loyal customers. This is "unlawful conduct" amounting to wanton trademark infringement, Citigroup claims in its federal lawsuit.

        Here is a copy (PDF) of the trademark certificates and trademark applications connected to what Citigroup is calling its "THANKYOU Marks."




    • Copyrights



      • ISP Association Nominates Copyright Troll As ‘Internet Villain’
        The UK's trade association for providers of Internet services have nominated a notorious copyright troll for the much coveted title of "Internet Villain of the Year". ISPA UK, which counts the major ISPs and Google as members, shortlisted TCYK LLC for its "speculative invoicing" campaign against Internet account holders.
      • EFF, Public Citizen Enter Legal Battle That Started With Defamation But Is Somehow Now All About Copyright
        Copyright is supposed to be a limited-use protection for creative works. The "limited" part went away with endless term extensions and auto-copyright for any creation attached to a "fixed medium." These days, copyright is the magical cure-all that doesn't actually cure anything. It's a weapon to be wielded dishonestly and inelegantly against the ignorant, in hopes of limiting speech to only what IP abusers like.








Recent Techrights' Posts

Comparing U.E.F.I. to B.I.O.S. (Bloat and Insecurity to K.I.S.S.)
By Sami Tikkanen
New 'Slides' From Stallman Support (stallmansupport.org) Site
"In celebration of RMS's birthday, we've been playing a bit. We extracted some quotes from the various articles, comments, letters, writings, etc. and put them in the form of a slideshow in the home page."
Thailand: GNU/Linux Up to 6% of Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
Desktop Operating System Market Share Thailand
António Campinos is Still 'The Fucking President' (in His Own Words) After a Fake 'Election' in 2022 (He Bribed All the Voters to Keep His Seat)
António Campinos and the Administrative Council, whose delegates he clearly bribed with EPO budget in exchange for votes
Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Sainsbury’s Epic Downtime Seems to be Microsoft's Fault and Might Even Constitute a Data Breach (Legal Liability)
one of Britain's largest groceries (and beyond) chains
 
People Don't Just Kill Themselves (Same for Other Animals)
And recent reports about Boeing whistleblower John Barnett
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 18, 2024
Suicide Cluster Cover-up tactics & Debian exposed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/03/2024: A Society That Lost Focus and Abandoning Social Control Media
Links for the day
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE: Plagiarism & Child labour in YH4F
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linux Foundation Boasting About Being Connected to Bill Gates
Examples of boasting about the association
Alexandre Oliva's Article on Monstering Cults
"I'm told an earlier draft version of this post got published elsewhere. Please consider this IMHO improved version instead."
[Meme] 'Russian' Elections in Munich (Bavaria, Germany)
fake elections
Sainsbury's to Techrights: Yes, Our Web Site Broke Down, But We Cannot Say Which Part or Why
Windows TCO?
Plagiarism: Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich) & Debian Developer list hacking
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2024: Putin Cements Power
Links for the day
Flashback 2003: Debian has always had a toxic culture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
[Meme] You Know You're Winning the Argument When...
EPO management starts cursing at everybody (which is what's happening)
Catspaw With Attitude
The posts "they" complain about merely point out the facts about this harassment and doxing
'Clown Computing' Businesses Are Waning and the Same Will Happen to 'G.A.I.' Businesses (the 'Hey Hi' Fame)
decrease in "HEY HI" (AI) hype
Free Software Needs Watchdogs, Too
Gentle lapdogs prevent self-regulation and transparency
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 18/03/2024: LLM Inference and Can We Survive Technology?
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 17, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, March 17, 2024
Links 17/03/2024: Microsoft Windows Shoves Ads Into Third-Party Software, More Countries Explore TikTok Ban
Links for the day
Molly Russell suicide & Debian Frans Pop, Lucy Wayland, social media deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Our Plans for Spring
Later this year we turn 18 and a few months from now our IRC community turns 16
Open Invention Network (OIN) Fails to Explain If Linux is Safe From Microsoft's Software Patent Royalties (Charges)
Keith Bergelt has not replied to queries on this very important matter
RedHat.com, Brought to You by Microsoft Staff
This is totally normal, right?
USPTO Corruption: People Who Don't Use Microsoft Will Be Penalised ~$400 for Each Patent Filing
Not joking!
The Hobbyists of Mozilla, Where the CEO is a Bigger Liability Than All Liabilities Combined
the hobbyist in chief earns much more than colleagues, to say the least; the number quadrupled in a matter of years
Jim Zemlin Says Linux Foundation Should Combat Fraud Together With the Gates Foundation. Maybe They Should Start With Jim's Wife.
There's a class action lawsuit for securities fraud
Not About Linux at All!
nobody bothers with the site anymore; it's marketing, and now even Linux
Links 17/03/2024: Abuses Against Human Rights, Tesla Settlement (and Crash)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 16, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, March 16, 2024
Under Taliban, GNU/Linux Share Nearly Doubled in Afghanistan, Windows Sank From About 90% to 68.5%
Suffice to say, we're not meaning to imply Taliban is "good"
Debian aggression: woman asked about her profession
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 17/03/2024: Winter Can't Hurt Us Anymore and Playstation Plus
Links for the day