Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 22/10/2016: Deus Ex for GNU/Linux, Global DDoS (DNS)





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Server



    • Puppet Rolls Out New Docker Image Builds
      Folks who are focused on container technology and virtual machines as they are implemented today might want to give a hat tip to some of the early technologies and platforms that arrived in the same arena. Among those, Puppet, which was built on the legacy of the venerable Cfengine system, was an early platform that helped automate lots of virtual machine implementations. We covered it in depth all the way back in 2008.

      Earlier this year, Puppet Labs rebranded as simply Puppet, and also named its first president and COO, Sanjay Mirchandani, who came to the company from VMware, where he was a senior vice-president. Now, at PuppetConf, the company has announced the availability of Puppet Docker Image Build, which "automates the container build process to help organizations as they define, build and deploy containers into production environments." This new set of capabilities adds to existing Puppet functionality for installing and managing container infrastructure, including Docker, Kubernetes and Mesos, among others.




  • Kernel Space



    • Intel Has Been Working On MIPI SoundWire Support For Linux
      An Intel developer has published testing patches for providing a SoundWire bus driver within the Linux kernel, which implements the MIPI SoundWire 1.1 specification.

      For those unfamiliar with SoundWire as was I when coming across these patches, "The SoundWire protocol is a robust, scalable, low complexity, low power, low latency, two-pin (clock and data) multi-drop bus that allows for the transfer of multiple audio streams and embedded control/commands. SoundWire provides synchronization capabilities and supports both PCM and PDM, multichannel data, isochronous and asynchronous modes. SoundWire does borrow a number of concepts from existing interfaces such as HDAudio, AC97, SLIMbus, which already provide control/audio on the same wires, or legacy interfaces such as I2C/I2S, TDM, PDM."


    • Linux Perf Gets New "C2C" Tool For False Sharing Detection
      The perf code for Linux 4.10 is set to receive a new "c2c" tool.

      The C2C tool within the perf subsystem is aimed to track down cacheline contention and has already been used by developers in tracking down false sharing of large applications, readers/writes to cachelines, and related information to assist NUMA shared-memory applications.


    • OpenTracing: Turning the Lights On for Microservices
      Those building microservices at scale understand the role and importance of distributed tracing: after all, it’s the most direct way to understand how and why complex systems misbehave. When we deployed Dapper at Google in 2005, it was like someone finally turned the lights on: everything from ordinary programming errors to broken caches to bad network hardware to unknown dependencies came into plain view.


    • Linux Foundation Spurs JavaScript Development


    • Graphics Stack



      • Radeon vs. Nouveau Open-Source Drivers On Mesa Git + Linux 4.9
        For your viewing pleasure this Friday are some open-source AMD vs. NVIDIA numbers when using the latest open-source code on each side. Linux 4.9-rc1 was used while Ubuntu 16.10 paired with the Padoka PPA led to Mesa Git as of earlier this week plus LLVM 4.0 SVN. As covered recently, there are no Nouveau driver changes for Linux 4.9 while we had hoped the boost patches would land. Thus the re-clocking is still quite poor for this open-source NVIDIA driver stack. For the Nouveau tests I manually re-clocked each graphics card to the highest performance state (0f) after first re-clocking the cards to the 0a performance state for helping some of the GPUs that otherwise fail with memory re-clocking at 0f, as Nouveau developers have expressed this is the preferred approach for testing.


      • NVIDIA 375.10 Linux Driver Released, Supports GTX 1050 Series


      • Nvidia 375.10 Beta Linux Graphics Driver Released with GeForce GTX 1050 Support
        On October 20, 2016, Nvidia published a new Beta graphics driver for the Linux platform, adding support for some new GPUs the company launched recently, as well as various improvements and bug fixes.

        The Nvidia 375.10 Beta is now available for early adopters, but we don't recommend installing it just yet if you're looking for a stable and reliable gaming experience, adding support for Nvidia's recently announced Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 and GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics cards, as well as Nvidia Quadro P6000 and Nvidia Quadro P5000 GPUs.

        Another interesting change implemented in the new Beta video driver, which should hit the stable channels next month, is the addition of two new X11 configuration options, namely ForceCompositionPipeline and ForceFullCompositionPipeline, overriding the MetaMode tokens with the same names.






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments/WMs



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt





  • Distributions



    • New Releases



      • Open-Source Budgie Desktop Sees New Release
        The pet parakeet of the Linux world, Budgie has a new release available for download. in this post we lookout what's new and tell you how you can get it.


      • Solus Linux Making Performance Gains With Its BLAS Configuration
        - Those making use of the promising Solus Linux distribution will soon find their BLAS-based workloads are faster.

        Solus developer Peter O'Connor tweeted this week that he's found some issues with the BLAS linking on the distribution and he's made fixes for Solus. He also mentioned that he uncovered these BLAS issues by using our Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software.


      • SalentOS “Luppìu” 1.0 released!
        With great pleasure the team announces the release of SalentOS “Luppìu” 1.0.


      • Slackel "Live kde" 4.14.21
        This release is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, while the 64-bit iso supports booting on UEFI systems. The 64-bit iso images support booting on UEFI systems. The 32-bit iso images support both i686 PAE SMP and i486, non-PAE capable systems. Iso images are isohybrid.




    • OpenSUSE/SUSE



      • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the Week 2016/42
        This was week 42 – The openSUSE LEAP week of the Year. It can’t be a co-incidence that the Release Candidate 1 was announced in Week 42, on the 2nd day (42.2 – European counting, we start our week on Monday, not on Sunday).

        But also in Tumbleweed things are not standing still: of course many of the things are well in line with what Leap received (like for example Plasma updates), but Tumbleweed rolls at a different pace ahead of the game.




    • Red Hat Family



    • Debian Family



      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu



          • Flavours and Variants



            • Ubuntu MATE, Not Just a Whim
              I've stated for years how much I dislike Ubuntu's Unity interface. Yes, it's become more polished through the years, but it's just not an interface that thinks the same way I do. That's likely because I'm old and inflexible, but nevertheless, I've done everything I could to avoid using Unity, which usually means switching to Xubuntu. I actually really like Xubuntu, and the Xfce interface is close enough to the GNOME 2 look, that I hardly miss the way my laptop used to look before Unity.

              I wasn't alone in my disdain for Ubuntu's flagship desktop manager switch, and many folks either switched to Xubuntu or moved to another Debian/Ubuntu-based distro like Linux Mint. The MATE desktop started as a hack, in fact, because GNOME 3 and Unity were such drastic changes. I never really got into MATE, however, because I thought it was going to be nothing more than a hack and eventually would be unusable due to old GNOME 2 libraries phasing out and so forth.












  • Devices/Embedded



    • Renesas spins 3rd Gen automotive starter kits, adds new M3 SoC
      Renesas has launched two Linux-ready R-Car starter kits optimized for AGL and GENIVI: an R-Car H3 based “Premier” and a “Pro” with a lower-end M3 SoC.

      Later this month, Renesas will begin selling two third-generation starter kits for its 64-bit ARM-based R-Car automotive SoCs. The kits are designed for ADAS, infotainment, reconfigurable digital clusters, and integrated digital cockpits.

      The two kits are optimized for open source Linux standards like Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) and GENIVI, but they also support QNX. Earlier R-Car automotive starter kits include last year’s R-Car H2 ADAS Starter Kit, based on its earlier H2 automotive SoC.


    • Yocto driven camera design taps octa-core Snapdragon
      Qualcomm and Thundercomm unveiled a Linux-supported, 4K camera reference design with an octa-core Snapdragon 625 and video analytics software.

      Qualcomm and hardware partner Thundercomm Technology announced an IP Connected Camera reference design called the Snapdragon 625 IP Camera built around its 14nm-fabricated, octa-core Cortex-A53 Snapdragon 625 system-on-chip. This is Qualcomm’s first Connected Camera design to support Linux instead of Android.






Free Software/Open Source



  • The Open Source Way
    "Open source", in the world of IT, is program code that is meant for collaboration and open contribution. Intended to be modified and shared, because by design and spirit, it is meant for the public at large.

    It’s been said that “"open source" intimates a broader set of values—what we call "the open source way." Open source projects, products, or initiatives embrace and celebrate principles of open exchange, collaborative participation, rapid prototyping, transparency, meritocracy, and community-oriented development.” So it is a natural conclusion that in this age of open and transparent government, that the government IT manager or technician would be one of the first to want to embrace this new role of collaborative team member within a larger community.


  • Another rift in the open source BPM market: @FlowableBPM forks from @Alfresco Activiti
    In early 2013, Camunda – at the time, a value-added Activiti consulting partner as well as a significant contributor to the open source project – created a fork from Activiti to form what is now the Camunda open source BPM platform as well as their commercial version based on the open source core.


  • Pydio, an Open Source File Sharing and Sync Solution, Out in New Version
    If you've followed us here at OStatic, you've probably seen our coverage of open source file sharing, cloud and synchronization tools. For example, we've covered ownCloud and Nextcloud extensively.

    Not so many people know about Pydio, though, which is out in a new version Pydio7. It's an open source file sharing & sync solution that now has a host of new features and performance upgrades. It's worth downloading and trying.

    Through a new partnership with Collabora Productivity (the LibreOffice Cloud provider), Pydio7 now combines file sharing, document editing and online collaboration. Users can now not only access documents online, but also co-author new content and work collaboratively.


  • Web Browsers



  • SaaS/Back End



    • Open-Source Innovations Driving Demand for Hadoop
      AtScale, provider of BI (Business Intelligence) on Hadoop, has released its study titled "The Business Intelligence Benchmark for SQL-on-Hadoop engines," which is a performance test of BI workloads on Hadoop. The report also studies the strengths and weaknesses of Hive, Presto, Impala and Spark SQL, which are the most popular analytical engines for Hadoop.




  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)



  • BSD



    • Lumina Desktop 1.1 Released
      The BSD-focused, Qt-powered Lumina Desktop Environment is out with its version 1.1 update.

      The developers behind the Lumina Desktop Environment consider it a "significant update" with both new and reworked utilities, infrastructure improvements, and other enhancements.

      Lumina 1.1 adds a pure Qt5 calculator, text editor improvements, the file manager has been completely overhauled, system application list management is much improved, and there is a range of other improvements.




  • Public Services/Government



    • EU-Fossa project submits results of code audits
      The European Commission’s ‘EU Free and Open Source Software Auditing’ project (EU-Fossa) has sent its code review results to the developers of Apache HTTP server target and KeePass. The audit results are not yet made public, however, no critical vulnerabilities were found.




  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration



    • Open Hardware/Modding



      • New SafariSeat wheelchairs made from bicycle parts help East Africans roam rough terrain


      • SafariSeat, an Open Source Wheelchair for Rural Offroading
        If you’re disabled in a poorly developed part of the world, even a great modern wheelchair may be next to useless. What’s needed is a more off-road design that’s made to be easy to manufacture and repair than something built for a city with sidewalks.

        SafariSeat is a newly designed open-source wheelchair that hopes to make a big impact for disabled people the world over. It uses push bars for power and has large front wheels and small rear ones to easily roll over large objects.

        In a novel move, the designers included a moving seat that shifts bit every time you push the bars to help prevent pressure sores on the butt.


      • Five 3D printing projects for Halloween


        With Halloween fast approaching I figured it was time to add some 3D printed decorations to the office. Below are some of my pictures for fun Halloween-themed prints. I tried to pick some models that demonstrate varied printing techniques.








Leftovers



  • Health/Nutrition



  • Security



    • OOPS! Sometimes Even Linus Gets It Wrong!


    • Free tool protects PCs from master boot record attacks [Ed: UEFI has repeatedly been found to be both a detriment to security and enabler of Microsoft lock-in]
      Cisco's Talos team has developed an open-source tool that can protect the master boot record of Windows computers from modification by ransomware and other malicious attacks.

      The tool, called MBRFilter, functions as a signed system driver and puts the disk's sector 0 into a read-only state. It is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions and its source code has been published on GitHub.

      The master boot record (MBR) consists of executable code that's stored in the first sector (sector 0) of a hard disk drive and launches the operating system's boot loader. The MBR also contains information about the disk's partitions and their file systems.

      Since the MBR code is executed before the OS itself, it can be abused by malware programs to increase their persistence and gain a head start before antivirus programs. Malware programs that infect the MBR to hide from antivirus programs have historically been known as bootkits -- boot-level rootkits.

      Microsoft attempted to solve the bootkit problem by implementing cryptographic verification of the bootloader in Windows 8 and later. This feature is known as Secure Boot and is based on the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) -- the modern BIOS.


    • DDOS Attack On Internet Infrastructure
      I hope somebody's paying attention. There's been another big DDOS attack, this time against the infrastructure of the Internet. It began at 7:10 a.m. EDT today against Dyn, a major DNS host, and was brought under control at 9:36 a.m. According to Gizmodo, which was the first to report the story, at least 40 sites were made unreachable to users on the US East Coast. Many of the sites affected are among the most trafficed on the web, and included CNN, Twitter, PayPal, Pinterest and Reddit to name a few. The developer community was also touched, as GitHub was also made unreachable.

      This event comes on the heels of a record breaking 620 Gbps DDOS attack about a month ago that brought down security expert Brian Krebs' website, KrebsonSecurity. In that attack, Krebs determined the attack had been launched by botnets that primarily utilized compromised IoT devices, and was seen by some as ushering in a new era of Internet security woes.


    • This Is Why Half the Internet Shut Down Today [Update: It’s Getting Worse]
      Twitter, Spotify and Reddit, and a huge swath of other websites were down or screwed up this morning. This was happening as hackers unleashed a large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the servers of Dyn, a major DNS host. It’s probably safe to assume that the two situations are related.


    • Major DNS provider Dyn hit with DDoS attack
      Attacks against DNS provider Dyn continued into Friday afternoon. Shortly before noon, the company said it began "monitoring and mitigating a DDoS attack" against its Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure. The attack may also have impacted Managed DNS advanced service "with possible delays in monitoring."


    • What We Know About Friday’s Massive East Coast Internet Outage
      Friday morning is prime time for some casual news reading, tweeting, and general Internet browsing, but you may have had some trouble accessing your usual sites and services this morning and throughout the day, from Spotify and Reddit to the New York Times and even good ol’ WIRED.com. For that, you can thank a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) that took down a big chunk of the Internet for most of the Eastern seaboard.

      This morning’s attack started around 7 am ET and was aimed at Dyn, an Internet infrastructure company headquartered in New Hampshire. That first bout was resolved after about two hours; a second attack began just before noon. Dyn reported a third wave of attacks a little after 4 pm ET. In all cases, traffic to Dyn’s Internet directory servers throughout the US—primarily on the East Coast but later on the opposite end of the country as well—was stopped by a flood of malicious requests from tens of millions of IP addresses disrupting the system. Late in the day, Dyn described the events as a “very sophisticated and complex attack.” Still ongoing, the situation is a definite reminder of the fragility of the web, and the power of the forces that aim to disrupt it.


    • Either IoT will be secure or the internet will be crippled forever
      First things first a disclaimer. I neither like nor trust the National Security Agency (NSA). I believe them to be mainly engaged in economic spying for the corporate American empire. Glenn Greenwald has clearly proven that in his book No Place to Hide. At the NSA, profit and power come first and I have no fucking clue as to how high they prioritize national security. Having said that, the NSA should hack the Internet of (insecure) Things (IoT) to death. I know Homeland Security and the FBI are investigating where the DDoS of doomsday proportions is coming from and the commentariat is already screaming RUSSIA! But it is really no secret what is enabling this clusterfuck. It’s the Mirai botnet. If you buy a “smart camera” from the Chinese company Hangzhou XiongMai Technologies and do not change the default password, it will be part of a botnet five minutes after you connect it to the internet. We were promised a future where we would have flying cars but we’re living in a future where camera’s, light-bulbs, doorbells and fridges can get you in serious trouble because your home appliances are breaking the law.


    • IoT at the Network Edge
      Fog computing, also known as fog networking, is a decentralized computing infrastructure. Computing resources and application services are distributed in logical, efficient places at any points along the connection from the data source (endpoint) to the cloud. The concept is to process data locally and then use the network for communicating with other resources for further processing and analysis. Data could be sent to a data center or a cloud service. A worthwhile reference published by Cisco is the white paper, "Fog Computing and the Internet of Things: Extend the Cloud to Where the Things Are."


    • Canonical now offers live kernel patching for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS users
      Canonical has announced its ‘Livepatch Service’ which any user can enable on their current installations to eliminate the need for rebooting their machine after installing an update for the Linux kernel. With the release of Linux 4.0, users have been able to update their kernel packages without rebooting, however, Ubuntu will be the first distribution to offer this feature for free.


    • ​The Dirty Cow Linux bug: A silly name for a serious problem
      Dirty Cow is a silly name, but it's a serious Linux kernel problem. According to the Red Hat bug report, "a race condition was found in the way the Linux kernel's memory subsystem handled the copy-on-write (COW) breakage of private read-only memory mappings. An unprivileged local user could use this flaw to gain write access to otherwise read-only memory mappings and thus increase their privileges on the system."


    • Ancient Privilege Escalation Bug Haunts Linux
    • October 21, 2016 Is Dirty COW a serious concern for Linux?
    • There is a Dirty Cow in Linux
    • Red Hat Discovers Dirty COW Archaic Linux Kernel Flaw Exploited In The Wild
    • Linux kernel bug being exploited in the wild
    • Update Linux now: Critical privilege escalation security flaw gives hackers full root access
    • Linux kernel bug: DirtyCOW “easyroot” hole and what you need to know
    • 'Most serious' Linux privilege-escalation bug ever discovered
    • New 'Dirty Cow' vulnerability threatens Linux systems
    • Serious Dirty Cow Linux Vulnerability Under Attack
    • Easy-to-exploit rooting flaw puts Linux PCs at risk
    • Linux just patched a vulnerability it's had for 9 years
    • Dirty COW Linux vulnerability has existed for nine years
    • 'Dirty Cow' Linux Vulnerability Found
    • 'Dirty Cow' Linux Vulnerability Found After Nine Years
    • FakeFile Trojan Opens Backdoors on Linux Computers, Except openSUSE
      Malware authors are taking aim at Linux computers, more precisely desktops and not servers, with a new trojan named FakeFile, currently distributed in live attacks.

      Russian antivirus vendor Dr.Web discovered this new trojan in October. The company's malware analysts say the trojan is spread in the form of an archived PDF, Microsoft Office, or OpenOffice file.




  • Defence/Aggression



    • [Older] US Air Force Carries Out Mock Nuclear Bomb Tests in Nevada Desert
      Two surveillance flight tests using mock B61-7 and B61-11 nuclear bombs were successfully carried out in the Nevada desert several weeks ago, according to a release last week.

      The mock bombs did not carry any nuclear devices but instead recorded information on how the bombs performed during the test runs. The tests were jointly conducted at Tonopah Test Range by the U.S. Air Force’s Global Strike Command and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

      Two B-2A Spirit stealth bombers dropped the mock bombs to “allow scientists and engineers from national laboratories to assess their performance” and they “contain no nuclear materials and are not capable of nuclear yield,” the NNSA said in a news release on Oct. 6.


    • Sweden’s unethical – and unlawful €­€­– arms deals with ISIS-backing Saudis
      Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Löfven, and with him the Swedish arms-dealer magnate Jacob Wallenberg, are travelling to Saudi Arabia in official visit. The meetings with the Saudis, as announced by the Swedish Radio, shall aim to “increase the exchange” between the two countries. [1] At the same time, the Chairman of the Defence Committee in the Swedish Parliament, Mr Allan Widman, is now demanding that Sweden should send arms to US-backed Pershmerga, integrating the US & Saudi-led coalition in Iraq. [2]

      The above-mentioned issues are not only connected in its timing, but also produced against the backdrop of the US and Saudi’s instigated Syria war aimed to depose the legitimate government of Assad, and the confrontation pursued by NATO and its political front EU against Russia. Evidence put forward in the US, among other by Senator Richard Black, show that Saudi Arabia has been financing/arming ISIS jihadists. [3] The Senator revealed also that “Saudi Arabia and Turkey formed the Army of Conquer and coordinated ISIS and Al-Qaida”. Further, emails published by WikiLeaks’ Podesta series revealed that Hillary Clinton has been fully aware – already since 2014 – of the fact that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar were financing ISIS.[3] On the other hand, the US government has claimed the responsibility for financing, training and arming so-called “moderate rebels” – the “moderate terrorists” – which together with ISIS maintain a common war against the government of Syria.


    • Philippine President’s Most Searing Insults to World Leaders
      Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is known for saying things that are quite scandalous and many would consider unsayable. However, his outspoken style and crime-fighting record is making him quite popular with many Filipinos. Here are some of his most outrageous statements.




  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting



    • A Quick Logic Lesson For Confused WikiLeaks Haters
      I know the following might be difficult to grasp for all you amateur internet logicians out there, but give it the ol’ college try anyhow. (I also know there’s a strand of Ironic Twitter commentary which immediately discounts the invocation of “Logic!” as somehow inherently foolhardy, and while I’ve often found such memes funny, logic is an important field of philosophy and everyone should study it. For serious.)

      Tonight, in his infinite wisdom, Sean Hannity tweeted out an approbation of WikiLeaks.

      [...]

      Drawing attention to Hannity’s change of heart on WikiLeaks — he unsurprisingly called Chelsea Manning treasonous back in 2010 when WikiLeaks published the Iraq/Afghanistan logs and the State Department cable trove — is just the heroes’ latest attempt to show that WikiLeaks is now Bad with a capital B, after having previously been Good with a capital G. Let’s work out how their logical theorem progresses.

      Sean Hannity is Bad Sean Hannity likes WikiLeaks WikiLeaks is therefore bad

      Wow, good stuff here — the type of staggeringly incisive philosophizing that would’ve made W. V. Quine envious. I guess we should briefly “unpack” why this logic is faulty, for the edification of very desperately confused people on the internet.

      Hannity might indeed be bad with a capital B, but his being Bad doesn’t ipso facto make anything he likes Bad. For instance, Hannity may well also like dogs. I’ll be damned if dogs are Bad because Bad Hannity likes them. Please do not sully our canine friends by dint of their association with Hannity.

      Let’s go to another extreme. Genocide is not bad because Hitler did it, genocide is bad because there are all sorts of reasons that can be marshaled to prove its badness: it’s bad to kill people on account of their inborn characteristics, etc. Hitler is also bad, but his being bad is not what inherently makes genocide bad.


    • Just How Wise Is It When Marco Rubio Promises To Swear Off Factual Information From Wikileaks?
      Amidst the reporting and fervor over the email hack of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, there has been something of a recent discussion that has begun over the ethics of circulating what is in that hacked cache. Some within the media itself have worried about about reporting either too much on the hacked emails, or even at all in some cases, with still others going for a more nuanced position of encouraging the reporting of information in the public interest while leaving all the personal stuff in the emails undisclosed to whatever degree is possible.






  • Finance



    • What’s scarier than Donald Trump? Hillary Clinton’s plans to gut Social Security
      As the sun sets on Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions, a likely Hillary Clinton victory means her intent to defund Social Security may come to fruition.

      The Democratic nominee recently came under fire in revealing articles by Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith and International Business Times’ David Sirota, for her potential plans to introduce mandatory retirement savings accounts set up to enrich Wall Street — rather than expanding Social Security.


    • CETA Talks Break Down: “It is Evident that the EU Is Incapable of Reaching an Agreement”
      International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland has walked out of talks aimed at addressing Belgian opposition to the Canada-EU Trade Agreement, stating:

      I have personally worked very hard, but it is now evident to me, evident to Canada, that the European Union is incapable of reaching an agreement – even with a country with European values such as Canada, even with a country as nice and as patient as Canada. Canada is disappointed and I personally am disappointed, but I think it’s impossible. We are returning home.

      Leaving aside the odd reference to how nice Canada is, this is remarkable language that lays bare the obvious frustration and disappointment for the government which prioritized the CETA agreement above all others. The prospect of the deal falling apart has been evident for months. I wrote in July that the agreement was in more trouble than the Canadian government would admit, noting that opposition from any national or regional government could kill CETA altogether. Canadian officials downplayed the risk, but it was obvious that CETA faced stiff opposition that would not be easy to overcome.




  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics



    • WikiLeaks: Bill Clinton took home 'expensive gifts' from foundation donors
      Emails made public Thursday by WikiLeaks suggest Bill Clinton accepted "expensive gifts" from Clinton Global Initiative donors and kept them at his home. In a November 2011 email to John Podesta, currently Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, complaining of the conflicts of interest that plagued the Clinton Global Initiative, longtime confidante Doug Band mentioned that the former president had several undisclosed conflicts.

      "He is personally paid by 3 cgi sponsors [sic], gets many expensive gifts from them, some that are at home etc," Band wrote.

      Band had recently left a position at the foundation to co-found a consulting firm called Teneo Strategies. In his email, he lamented that he had been forced to sign a disclosure form as a board member of the Clinton Global Initiative, while Bill Clinton had not.


    • Leaked Email Reveals Sady Doyle, Other Liberal Bloggers Coordinated with Clinton Campaign on Sanders Hits
      As WikiLeaks continues to leak emails from the Clinton campaign, new lights are shed on the tactics that the campaign has employed. In one such email, the Clinton campaign describes a call with several bloggers who discussed attacks that could be made against Clinton’s primary opponent Bernie Sanders related to racial and reproductive rights.

      [...]

      With Clinton’s lead in the polls solid, it’s unclear if these new leaks will do substantial damage, even if they don’t necessarily help her. After all, her opponent is degrading democracy itself by spurning the peaceful transition of presidential power.


    • WikiLeaks emails part curtain on a nearly elected Obama considering White House staff
      The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks on Thursday released a handful of Barack Obama’s emails from a period immediately before he was elected in 2008, including several that revealed names of people Obama was considering for senior roles and one that reflected care in avoiding a transition conflict with President George W. Bush.

      The emails span a period from Oct. 6, 2008, until Election Day that year, Nov. 4, and several include comments from “Barack,” who used the email address: bobama@ameritech.net.


    • No, Hillary, 17 U.S. Intelligence Agencies Did Not Say Russia Hacked Dem E-mails
      Hillary Clinton in last night’s presidential debate tried to avoid talking about the substance of the damaging WikiLeaks disclosures of DNC and Clinton campaign officials by claiming 17 U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Russia was responsible for this. After Clinton made this claim, she scolded Trump for challenging U.S. intelligence professionals who have taken an oath to help defend this country.

      What Clinton said was false and misleading. First of all, only two intelligence entities – the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – have weighed in on this issue, not 17 intelligence agencies. And what they said was ambiguous about Russian involvement.


    • WikiLeaks: Clinton Foundation Paid Women Less Than Men
      The Clinton Foundation in 2011 employed more women than men but paid them less, on average, according to a salary schedule included in an email released Friday by WikiLeaks.

      A foundation employee emailed the payroll schedule to board Chairman Bruce Lindsey and John Podesta, who currently chairs Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. It included then-Chief Operating Office and Chief of Staff Laura Graham’s salary recommendations for 2012 for rank-and-file employees.


    • Dublin school board member linked to WikiLeaks
      A local school board member, whose father is head of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, has been connected to allegations sprung from WikiLeaks.

      Megan Rouse, a Dublin school board member elected in 2014, was mentioned in the hacked email allegations that her father, John Podesta, at one time had stocks connected to a firm that had ties to Russia. Documents show that Podesta received 75,000 shares of Joule Unlimited Technologies. Podesta is Clinton’s campaign chair.

      The hacked Jan. 3, 2014 document shows that Podesta transferred more than 25,000 of these shares to Leonidio Holdings LLC, which had an address listed as Rouse’s Shannon Court home in Dublin. Rouse operates Megan Rouse Financial Planning from that same address.


    • What The WikiLeaks Emails Reveal About Branding Hillary
      Pundits all across America are poring over the Podesta emails, emails released by WikiLeaks that show the behind-the-scenes dealings of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. At the end of the day, those emails might end up containing more tasty risotto recipes than actual scandals.

      But for design lovers, there's at least one bombshell: If not for a passionate email written by one of Coca-Cola's chief marketing gurus, renowned design firm Pentagram could have lost Hillary Clinton as a client just two months before her logo debuted to the world.

      Reporting on leaked emails is justifiably contentious, as conversations that participants had every reason to believe were private are given scrutiny they were never meant to have. (Pentagram partner Michael Bierut, who oversaw designing the identity, declined to comment on the record when we reached out to him.) Still, we think this exchange—already, at this point, a matter of public record as part of the greater Podesta email leaks—is worth highlighting. Not just because it's a rare glimpse behind the design process of a major political campaign, but because some of the arguments could be assigned reading in any branding class.

      The exchange in question involves Wendy Clark, a Coca-Cola marketing veteran who consulted on Hillary's branding before becoming the North American president and CEO of the ad agency DDB Worldwide, and Joel Benenson, the chief strategist for the Clinton 2016 campaign.


    • Leaked email: Hillary Clinton told “radical environmentalists” to “get a life,” defended fracking and pipelines
      Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton condemned the “radical environmentalists” behind Bernie Sanders’ campaign, indicating they should “get a life,” according to a transcript of her comments at a September 2015 meeting with a construction union.

      Clinton also reaffirmed her support for fracking and pipelines and made it clear that her opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline was a calculated political move.

      The transcript was included in an email to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta released this week in a trove of documents by the whistleblowing journalism organization WikiLeaks.

      “You know from my perspective, this is just one of these issues,” Clinton said of the Keystone XL pipeline at the meeting. “It’s symbolic and it’s not going to go away.”

      “They’re all hanging on to it,” she continued. “So you know Bernie Sanders is getting lots of support from the most radical environmentalists because he’s out there every day bashing the Keystone pipeline.”


    • WikiLeaks Reveals DNC Elevated Trump to Help Clinton
      In June 2015, Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign.

      According to an email from Marissa Astor, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook’s assistant, to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, the campaign knew Trump was going to run, and pushed his legitimacy as a candidate. WikiLeaks’ release shows that it was seen as in Clinton’s best interest to run against Trump in the general election. The memo, sent to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) also reveals the DNC and Clinton campaign were strategizing on behalf of their candidate at the very beginning of the primaries. “We think our goals mirror those of the DNC,” stated the memo, attached to the email under the title “muddying the waters.”

      The memo named Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson as wanted candidates. “We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to them seriously,” the memo noted.




  • Censorship/Free Speech



    • Freedom Of Expression Under Attack, Says UN Special Rapporteur
      Governments worldwide are engaging in censorship and punishing those who report or post opinions, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, says in a report on the widespread global assault on the freedom of expression to be presented to the UN General Assembly today.


    • Tripura: No magisterial-level interference in media censorship and news dissimination
      According to the video footage, Jhumu Sarkar, Barjala candidate fielded by the ruling party was seen fighting with females in drunken condition. The incident occurred at Lankamura on October 12 centering immersion of Durga idol.

      After that, the TV channel was censored in visuals for few minutes. The by-elections in Barjala seat and Khowai seat would be held on November 19. Results of the elections would be declared on November 22.


    • Blocking of RT Accounts in UK is 'Censorship and Example of Double Standards'
      RT's Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said Monday that the international broadcaster's accounts had been blocked in the United Kingdom. RT UK said it had been informed by NatWest that its banking arrangements with RT were null and void.




  • Privacy/Surveillance



    • Google’s ad tracking is as creepy as Facebook's. Here’s how to disable it
      Google has changed the way it tracks users across the internet so that it can now link people’s personally identifiable information from Gmail, YouTube and other accounts with their browsing records across the web. The company had previously pledged to keep these two data sets separate to protect individuals’ privacy.

      As first reported by Propublica, Google quietly updated its privacy settings in June to delete a clause that said “we will not combine DoubleClick cookie information with personally identifiable information unless we have your opt-in consent”.

      DoubleClick is an advertising serving and tracking company that Google bought in 2007. DoubleClick uses web cookies to track browsing behaviour online by their IP address to deliver targeted ads. It can make a good guess about your location and habits, but it doesn’t know your true identity.




  • Civil Rights/Policing



    • S’pore prison to look into alleged abuse of jailed blogger Amos Yee
      Singapore prison authorities said today that investigations are being launched into allegations that jailed teenage blogger Amos Yee has been assaulted by prison inmates.

      Yee began a six-week jail term on Sept 29 after he pleaded guilty to six charges of wounding the religious feelings of Muslims and Christians, through comments made on social media.

      But on Wednesday a Facebook post from the activist group Community Action Network (CAN) said that the group had been informed that Yee had been threatened, slapped and kicked by inmates.

      In a statement to dpa, the Singapore Prisons Service confirmed they were “aware” of the allegations made by Amos Yee, emphasising that the prison is committed to inmate safety and security.


    • Actress Shailene Woodley Reveals She Was Strip-Searched After Her Arrest Protesting Dakota Pipeline
      Actress Shailene Woodley pleaded not guilty on charges related to the resistance to the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline on Wednesday. She was arrested along with 27 others in North Dakota on October 10 during actions to mark Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Woodley was strip-searched and then put in an orange jump suit in the Morton County jail, which appears to be a common practice even for low-level misdemeanor charges. Woodley told Democracy Now!, "Never did it cross my mind that while trying to protect clean water, trying to ensure a future where our children have access to an element essential for human survival, would I be strip-searched. I was just shocked." Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chair Dave Archambault II and others have also been strip-searched after being arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience against the pipeline.


    • FBI Director: We Need More Data On Police Shootings So Law Enforcement Can 'Change The Narrative'
      FBI Director James Comey didn't dig into his bag of "Ferguson Effect" rhetorical devices during his comments to a law enforcement conference on Sunday, but he came close. Under that theory, the possibility of being held accountable by citizens and their recording devices has apparently been holding officers back from enforcing laws, making arrests, or otherwise earning their paychecks.

      The problem now is a lack of data, Comey claims. Law enforcement has lost control of the narrative, he stated, as if a one-sided portrayal of every police use of excessive/deadly force was somehow beneficial to the nation.




  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • FTC Warns AT&T Court Victory On Throttling Could Screw Consumers For Decades
      AT&T stopped selling unlimited wireless data plans back in 2011, and instead started pushing more expensive capped and metered plans. Existing unlimited users at the time were "grandfathered," but AT&T went out of its way to make life as unpleasant as possible for these users, ranging from blocking them from using Facetime unless they subscribed to metered plans, to throttling these "unlimited" users after only consuming a few gigabytes of data. Ultimately AT&T faced a $100 million fine by the FCC (currently being contested by AT&T), and a 2014 lawsuit by the FTC for misleading consumers and dramatically changing the terms of service while users were under contract.






Recent Techrights' Posts

Five Years After Its Formation Libera.Chat Has the Most Simultaneous Users in Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
netsplit.de also measures the cross-network total at over 300k, probably for the first time in years
 
Outsourcing is Not Security
Outsourcing to Microsoft is the opposite of security
Links 28/06/2026: Turkey's State Broadcaster Suspends Commentator, Journalists Under Attack
Links for the day
Debugpoint.com Turns to LLM Slop for 'Help'
This is how sites die
Follow the Real Security Experts
Werner Koch
Assessing the Upcoming (July) Proprietary/GAFAM Cuts
The total (or %) matters to us because it can help shed light on what scale of layoffs to expect next week
Microsoft Lunduke Does Not Correct or Clarify Misinformation That He Posted (or Repeats It Instead)
Not the first time [...] detracts and/or distracts from legitimate criticisms
How Not to Do Security
Asking Microsoft for permission
Gemini Links 28/06/2026: Simulation Theory and Pursuit of Novelty
Links for the day
The Slop 'Religion' is Dying: From Widespread (Paid-for) Hype to Widespread Hate
Wait till "sentiment" in Wall Street - not just general (public) "sentiment" - shifts strongly against slop
For Whistleblowers' Sake, Choose Hosting Platforms Wisely
Techrights is hard to 'sedate'
How to Discreetly Leak Important Information to Techrights
Some years ago we published multi-part series about how to contact us securely
Expect Many More Whistleblowers From Microsoft
We envision many pissed off workers from Microsoft will become whistleblowers after next week's giant wave
Efforts to Resume Progress on FreeJS, LibreJS, and Reduce Dependence on Microsoft
It's still in a relatively early development stage
Whistleblowers Improve the World
we should appreciate and respect whistleblowers
Microsoft Windows Plunges to All-Time Lows in Japan
Microsoft is disintegrating; many people no longer use (nor need) Windows
GNU/Linux Turns 43 in 3 Months From Now
The Manifesto of the Free software movement (GNU Manifesto, 1985) turned 40 last year
SLAPP Censorship - Part 121 Out of 200: One Day We'll Discover What Company or Rich Person/s Funded the Lawfare Against Us
Even if the law firm shoulders some of the losses, then it is in effect an investor in the lawfare, according to established caselaw
Working on "Linux", But on Microsoft's Payroll
Under the totally false guise of "security" those same people are now promoting TPMs and other horrible things
Links 28/06/2026: Energy Crunch, EEE by Microsoft, and John Bolton Pleads Guilty in Dictatorship of SLAPPs
Links for the day
Jim Not Dead Yet
Let's wait a few more days
Microsoft Layoffs So Big They Cannot Even Wait for 'D-Day' (July 1)
"Layoffs at Xbox Appear to Have Already Begun, with Multiple Compulsion Games Employees Announcing Their Departures"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 27, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, June 27, 2026
Links 28/06/2026: Heatwave in Europe and Media Failing to Actually Criticise Power
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/06/2026: Poems, Photographs, and Neoliberalism as Religion
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 120 Out of 200: Garrett Undermines His Own Application Because His Friend Graveley Failed to Accomplish What They Had Both Aimed For
Hold off the "popcorn"
Don't Settle for Slop
Slop is a bit of a symptom of where society is told to go
Gemini Links 27/06/2026: Photography From Interlaken to Shynige Platte, Slop 'Code', and Distro Hopping
Links for the day
TIGER COMPUTING LTD Sent Us Threats Half a Decade Ago (Because of Criticism of Their In-House Debian Developer), Now the Company's Debt is Deepening
So what is they're connected to the military?
GNU/Linux in Mexico Near All-Time High
With all the tourists packing the place (or hotels) we can imagine big changes to be seen next month (many portable devices)
Summer Plans in Tux Machines
July is nearly upon us
Gopher (Protocol) Turns 35, Gemini is 28 Years Younger
Bad technology comes and goes very fast
Be Like Stallman and Assange, Not Like MElon or Bill Epsteingate
these people treat women like worse than dirt
Exposure Leads to More Whistleblowing
In areas like IBM or European patent affairs we've always earned a lot of trust
European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Run Well Into July
We still have a very significant chunk of EPO "trench" stories
Links 27/06/2026: Journalists Kicked Out of China, Torture in Iran and Turkey
Links for the day
How Microsoft is Preventing or Slowing Down Adoption of GNU/Linux (Fake 'GNU' Controlled by GitHub in Windows, WSL, Sabotage at Boot Level, Not Limited to Dual-Booting)
Microsoft is still at it
Rising Computer Prices Good News for GNU/Linux and Free Software
This can greatly assist the adoption of BSDs and GNU/Linux
Links 27/06/2026: More Restrictions on Social Control Media and Russia is Leveraging Cellebrite/Back Doors
Links for the day
Saying "No" is Not a Bad Thing
Society benefits from people who say "No!" even when it seems impolite (and possibly inconvenient) to say so
Next Week's "Bloodbath" at Microsoft Includes "Silent Layoffs" (Which Microsoft Won't Count)
The notion of "silent layoffs" is fast becoming the "new normal"
Akira Urushibata on the Likely False (Unverifiable) Claims Anthropic Makes About Defects for Marketing/Hype
Some pro-LLM person has managed to derail the discussion on this topic
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: "Team Campinos" in Split
The EPO team was of course headed by Campinos himself who delivered a "forward-looking" keynote speech to the assembled audience consisting mainly of Administrative Council delegates from the national IP offices
Supporting Women in the Free Software Community
The common theme here is abuse of women
Left IBM After Many Years, Came to Microsoft/XBox, Now Silent Layoffs at XBox
many inside XBox will have their last day next week
Gemini Links 27/06/2026: Homeworlds and Tarot Cards
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 26, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, June 26, 2026
Links 26/06/2026: SoftBank Forbids Mentioning That Slop is a Scam, "'We Need Courageous People' to Combat Greed and Corruption"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/06/2026: "Negativity of Reddit" and "Moving Blog to Gemini"
Links for the day
Same MIT Site That Fabricated the Fake News for IBM is Still Being Paid to Produce Fake "Reports" That Prop Up a Ponzi Scheme
If this is the media we deserve as a society and believe keeps us informed, then we are all doomed
'Social' Slop: The Social Control Media and Slop Crises Are Converging
Social Control Media and slop may have a shared fate. People will shun them both.
XBox Being Discontinued, Some Models of XBox Canceled, Not on Sale Anymore
First some of the largest retailers quit stocking/selling XBox, now a 2TB model is axed
Union Syndicale Fédérale (USF) Speaks Out Against Campinos and Informs the Chairman of the EPO Administrative Council
Does Mr. Kratochvíl pay any attention at all?
'António the Pretender' Campinos is Digging His Own Grave With Grotesque Lobbying Intended to Undermine Democracy in Europe's Second-Largest Institution
One way or another, the EPO will never be the same again
The Principle of "Do No Harm"
"Do No Harm" is a common saying
After Years of Bluewashing People Who Are Still Labelled "Red Hat" Suddenly 'Leave' (Might be PIPs), IBM in "Forever Layoffs" Loop
Remember that Red Hat had mass layoffs this year
Microsoft Staff Bracing for Impact Ahead of "Layoffs Lottery"
some people start to assess who will get culled next
Donald Trump and IBM's CEO: Twins Separated at Birth, Saturating the Media With False Reports About Things That Don't Exist
Every "journalist" that went ahead with this fake news should be sacked on the spot for a rejection of fact-checking
The Register MS Will Become Indistinguishable From Spamfarms at This Current Pace
Follow the money...
Microsoft Layoffs Have Already Begun in Its PR Department
It is called Waggener Edstrom
Techrights Community as Litigants in Person (LIPs)
Unwittingly and due to circumstances we're had to step in to protect women abused by monstrous men who lack empathy
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Rest and Recuperation on the Adriatic Coast
The EPO President's connections with the Croatian SIPO date back to his days as head of the EU trademark agency EUIPO
Firehose of Spam (Fake News) From The Register MS Today
This is how awful the state of news sites really is
Slopfarms Becoming Scarce and Few (or Inactive)
we'll try to refrain from even giving the remaining slopfarms any visibility
The Register MS Promotes Things That Do Not Exist... for Money
How much more ZTE spam will come out before 5PM?
Links 26/06/2026: RIP, Om Malik, 1966-2026
Links for the day
Memory Leaks Suck
Slop ('vibe') coding means lots of bad programs
Natural Disasters and Personal Disasters
Thank you, Om Malik, for the positive memories
Gemini Links 25/06/2026: Life Philosophy and Misery
Links for the day
GAFAM Became a Mainstream Term, and Why Words Matter
Conveying problems in useful terms [...] Impairing propaganda attempts (e.g. calling parrots "intelligence", back doors "confidential", and outsourcing "cloud") should be the first step
European Patent Office (EPO) on Strike Today, Next Week Another Historic Week
If you live in Europe, contact your delegates today
FSF FreeJS Project (Part of the GNU Project's Goals) Advanced Further in 2026
They're moving to reduce dependence on anything to do with Microsoft
SLAPP Censorship - Part 119 Out of 200: Our Suggestions to Our Politicians and Heads of State
coverage about SLAPPs and related matters
Microsoft Already Closing Down Studios, According to Some Publishers
It is being compared to what happened in Intel
IBM PIP Stories Told in Public, Fake IBM News (Fabricated Claims) Drown Media Sites
IBM is seeding fake news to help justify the bailout
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 25, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, June 25, 2026