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Links 13/4/2017: Nginx 1.12, GNOME 3.24.1 Released; Mark Shuttleworth Back to CEO Role



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Indian wins top prize at United Nations challenge for open source tool
    An Indian software engineer has won the top prize at a global challenge for an open-source tool that enables users to interactively view UN General Assembly resolutions and gain a deeper understanding of the voting patterns of member states. Abdulqadir Rashik, also an entrepreneur, won the ‘Unite Ideas #UNGAViz Textual Analysis and Visualisation Challenge’ for his ‘Global Policy’, an open-source tool that enables users to search and interactively view General Assembly resolutions to gain a deeper understanding of the voting patterns and decisions made by United Nations Member States.


  • A10 adapts to companies using open source load balancers
    A10 Networks Inc. has integrated its application delivery controller with a second open source load balancer, as enterprises turn to free software for services provided by ADC vendors.

    The vendor announced this week integration between the Harmony Controller and HAProxy, one of several widely used open source load balancers for applications running on Linux. Harmony also supports NGINX, which developers also use with Linux software.


  • Scaling Mastodon : What it takes to house 43,000 users

    My instance mastodon.social has recently surpassed 43,000 users. I have closed registrations both to have more time to investigate the infrastructure and ensure a good experience for existing users, and to encourage more decentralization in the network (with a wonderful effect — the Mastodon fediverse now hosts over 161,000 people spread out over more than 500 independent instances!)

    But providing a smooth and swift service to 43,000 users takes some doing, and as some of the other instances are approaching large sizes themselves, it is a good time to share the tips & tricks I learned from doing it.



  • 3 open source boilerplate web design templates
    In the olden days, creating a website from scratch was easy.

    With a basic understanding of HTML, and maybe a little CSS, you could put together a pretty functional web page with very little effort. Throw it onto your web server, and you were good to go.


  • Events



  • Web Browsers



    • Google deprecates Octane JavaScript benchmark, because everyone is basically cheating
      Google has announced that its widely used Octane JavaScript benchmark is being retired, with Google saying that it's no longer a useful way for browser developers to determine how best to optimize their JavaScript engines.

      Octane was developed for and by the developers of V8, the JavaScript engine used in Chrome. It was intended to address flaws in the earlier SunSpider benchmark, developed by Apple's Safari team. SunSpider's tests were all microbenchmarks, sometimes testing something as small as a single operation performed thousands of times. It wasn't very representative of real-world code, and it was arguably being gamed, with browser vendors introducing optimizations that were aimed primarily, albeit not exclusively, at boosting SunSpider scores. This was being done even when those optimizations were detrimental to real-world performance, because having a good score carried so much prestige.

    • Chrome



      • Chrome 59 To Support Headless Mode
        Chrome 59 stable isn't expected until early June, but when this release comes it will bring with it an interesting feature: a headless mode.

        Chrome's headless mode is made for headless/server environments, such as where you may automatically want to be capturing screenshots of rendered pages, etc. This is very practical for automated testing. Or there's the use-case of just wanting to interact with the DOM but not caring about presenting the contents on any connected physical display.






  • SaaS/Back End



    • How OpenStack releases get their names
      Quite a bit, actually. Open source projects frequently struggle to find a name that's suitably memorable, descriptive, appropriate, and, above all else, does not find the project in accidental legal trouble.

      While nailing down the name for an open source project can be a challenge, so too can be the naming of individual components or releases. Several projects within OpenStack are on their second name: Quantum became Neutron, Savanna became Sahara, and Marconi became Zaqar.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



    • LibreOffice the better Office
      In the last 3 months I played with the awesome feature of Notebookbar. This experimental feature give the user the possibility to use a tabbed toolbar like Microsoft does, but it offers more, much more. I like the idea from the LibreOffice UX team about the context based toolbar. Advantage of the different UI elements.




  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Public Services/Government



    • Portugal building new services on national interoperability platforms
      Last month, the Portuguese Ministry of Health started a pilot to make it easier for citizens to get 'proof of fitness', a requirement to obtain or renew a driving licence. For this purpose, the Portuguese National Broker (PNB) platform was extended to include the exchange of Driving Licence Certificates between the Ministry and the Portuguese Institute for Mobility and Transport (IMT, I.P.).

      The PNB platform is the national eHealth message exchange, providing technical, semantic and legal interoperability between all health-related entities in the country. Its role is to facilitate the exchange of messages (services/interfaces) while at the same time implementing security mechanisms for authentication and access control. The infrastructure currently processes an average of 300,000 messages per day.


    • Sharing and reuse ‘a government paradigm shift’
      Sharing and reuse of IT solutions should become the default for the EU’s public administrations, said Mário Campolargo, Deputy Director General for the Directorate General of Informatics (DIGIT) of the European Commission at the Sharing & Reuse Conference 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal, last week. “This is the key for open modern government”, he said.


    • German City of Göppingen builds on open source software
      "I would estimate that almost 30 percent of the software we are using (in administration and in 25 schools) is based on open source," Herbert Rettberg, IT manager at the German City of Göppingen said in an interview blog recently published by consultancy firm IT-Novum.




  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration



    • Openness is key to working with Gen Z
      Leaders and managers everywhere collectively groan with the thought of a new cohort to manage. Boomers and Gen Xers typically try to align the new kids on the block with Millennials—which would be a mistake. While Gen Z and Millennials have similarities, their motivators and influencers are vastly different. Each of the differences affects attraction, recruitment and retention of Gen Z talent.


    • Open Hardware/Modding



      • FreeSRP: An open source software defined radio covering 70 MHz to 6 GHz with an on-board FPGA and USB 3.0 port.
        "Lukas started his epic SDR-from-scratch build when he was 16. Projects like this aren't completed overnight. (He's now 18. We're impressed.)"

        The FreeSRP is an open-source (hardware and software) platform for software-defined radio that is affordable, high performance, compatible with existing SDR software such as GNU Radio, and includes an expansion port for hardware add-ons.



      • Friday Hack Chat: Open Source Silicon
        This Friday, Hackaday.io will be graced with purveyors of Open Source Silicon. Join us in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat this Friday, April 14 at noon PDT (19:00 UTC) for a conversation with SiFive, an ‘Open’ silicon manufacturer.

        This week, we’re sitting down with SiFive, a fabless semiconductor company and makers of the HiFive1, an Open Hardware microcontroller that you can just go out and buy. Late last year, SiFive released the HiFive1, an Arduinofied version of SiFive’s FE310 System on Chip. This SoC is a RISC-V core and one of the first microprocessors that is completely Open Source. It is an affront to Stallmanism, the best hope we have for truly Open hardware, and it’s pretty fast, to boot.






  • Programming/Development



    • LLVM-powered Pocl puts parallel processing on multiple hardware platforms
      LLVM, the open source compiler framework that powers everything from Mozilla’s Rust language to Apple’s Swift, emerges in yet another significant role: an enabler of code deployment systems that target multiple classes of hardware for speeding up jobs like machine learning.

      To write code that can run on CPUs, GPUs, ASICs, and FPGAs—hugely useful with machine learning apps—it’s best to use the likes of OpenCL, which allows a program to be written once, then automatically deployed across different types of hardware.


    • Intel Developers Looking To Get Nios II Backend In LLVM


    • Weblate 2.13.1
      Weblate 2.13.1 has been released quickly after 2.13. It fixes few minor issues and possible upgrade problem.


    • 12 ways to study a new programming language


      In this article, I outline 12 suggestions for study techniques. Remember that everybody learns differently. Some of these techniques may work excellently for you, whereas others may not meet your needs at all. If you start to feel stuck with one strategy, try another and see where it gets you.




  • Standards/Consortia





Leftovers



  • Hardware



  • Security



    • [Older] Improving by simplifying the GnuTLS PRNG
      One of the most unwanted baggages for crypto implementations written prior to this decade is the (pseudo-)random generator, or simply PRNG. Speaking for GnuTLS, the random generator was written at a time where devices like /dev/urandom did not come by default on widely used operating systems, and even if they did, they were not universally available, e.g., devices would not be present, the Entropy Gathering Daemon (EGD) was something that was actually used in practice, and was common for software libraries like libgcrypt to include code to gather entropy on a system by running arbitrary command line tools.


    • [Older] GNUtls: GnuTLS 3.5.10
      Released GnuTLS 3.5.11 which is a bug fix release in the stable branch.


    • [Older] Practical basics of reproducible builds
      One issue though: people have to trust me -- and my computer's integrity. Reproducible builds could address that.

      My release process is tightly controlled, but is my project reproducible? If not, what do I need? Let's check!


    • [Older] Practical basics of reproducible builds 2
    • Why creating an open-source ecosystem doesn’t mean you’re taking on security risks
      Anyone who uses technology benefits from open-source software. Most applications you use have implemented open-source code to varying degrees. This isn’t just small-time developers that use this code, either. Many large enterprises rely on this software to build their own products and solutions.

      Because of this, any CIO would be wise to have their developers follow the same blueprint. However, some developers have concerns about open-source. In an open environment where any contributor can drop potentially harmful code into the global library, is it safe — or wise — to lean heavily on these development resources?


    • Security updates for Wednesday


    • 9 Ways to Harden Your Linux Workstation After Distro Installation
      So far in this series, we’ve walked through security considerations for your SysAdmin workstation from choosing the right hardware and Linux distribution, to setting up a secure pre-boot environment and distro installation. Now it’s time to cover post-installation hardening.


    • Is this a Ubuntu-based Botnet deploying Tor Relays and Bridges?


    • Microsoft Word 0-day was actively exploited by strange bedfellows

      A critical Microsoft Word zero-day that was actively exploited for months connected two strange bedfellows, including government-sponsored hackers spying on Russian targets and financially motivated crooks pushing crimeware.



    • Microsoft reduces Patch Tuesday to an incomprehensible mess


    • Nation-State Hackers Go Open Source [Ed: How to associate FOSS with crime? Hmmm… let us think. Our writer Kelly Jackson Higgins can take care of that…]
      Researchers who track nation-state groups say open-source hacking tools increasingly are becoming part of the APT attack arsenal.

      Nation-state hacking teams increasingly are employing open-source software tools in their cyber espionage and other attack campaigns.


    • New release: usbguard-0.7.0
      From all the bug fixes in this release, I’d like to point out one which required a backwards incompatible change and requires an update to existing policies. The Linux USB root hub devices use the kernel version as the bcdDevice attribute value. The value is part of the USB descriptor data which USBGuard uses for computing the device hash and therefore causes the device hash to change on every kernel update. This in turn makes USBGuard rules which rely on this hash to not match and block the device. And because it’s a root hub device that gets blocked, all the other devices get blocked too. The bug fix is simple, reset the bcdDevice value to zero before hashing (applied only for the Linux root hub devices).




  • Defence/Aggression



    • Was Trump's Syria strike legal? An expert weighs in
      A Q&A with CNN legal analyst and national security law professor Steve Vladeck about the legal issues surrounding President Donald Trump's authorization of a strike against a Syrian government air base.




  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature



    • ‘Endangered species to declare?’ Europe’s understudied bushmeat trade
      An estimated 40 tons of bushmeat is flown into Geneva and Zurich airports every year, with a similar story likely unfolding in other European capitals, where poached, wild caught meat – including endangered species – is illegally being traded and served on urban dinner plates. The problem could be serious, and some trafficking could be well organized, but only a few surveys in a couple of countries have been done so far to determine what’s happening at European points of entry.






  • Finance



    • How Uber conquers a city in seven steps

      “Uber plays by its own rules – [it has been accused of] shortchanging drivers, [avoiding] local taxes and sometimes laws by hiding behind an army of expensive lawyers and lobbyists,” said Carys Afoko, communications director of SumOfUs. “And now, we’re exposing it.”





  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Fake News at Work in Spam Kingpin’s Arrest?

      While there is scant evidence that the spammer’s arrest had anything to do with the election, the success of that narrative is a sterling example of how the Kremlin’s propaganda machine is adept at manufacturing fake news, undermining public trust in the media, and distracting attention away from the real story.



    • Turkey’s lose-lose referendum
      No matter the outcome of Turkey’s referendum on constitutional reform Sunday, there is no good option left for the country’s people.

      A victory for the Yes vote would institutionalize a de facto one-man rule under Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan. The remaining, already severely weakened, voices of the opposition will be even more easily labeled as “traitors.”

      If the No camp prevails, people’s hopes for change might be reignited. But a more insecure ErdoÄŸan would likely crack down even more harshly on any form of criticism.

      In Turkey, the pervading climate is one of fear and collective insanity. As concerns over the transparency of the vote grow, silent grievances are deepening.

      The Yes campaign is backed by vast public resources, making it impossible to talk about a fair race. Indeed, in an environment where people are scared to express their opinion in surveys, few pollsters are confident enough to call it a close one.

      “Naysayers” are treated like terrorists. Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have confirmed cases of intimidation against the No campaign across the country.


    • Crosstalk debate on Russiagate
      A recent debate about “Russiagate” on RT’s Crosstalk show, with CIA whistleblower, John Kiriakou, and former US diplomat, James Jatras, along with host Peter Lavelle.




  • Censorship/Free Speech



    • Possible routes for distributed anti-abuse systems
      I work on federated standards and systems, particularly ActivityPub. Of course, if you work on this stuff, every now and then the question of "how do you deal with abuse?" very rightly comes up. Most recently Mastodon has gotten some attention, which is great! But of course, people are raising the question, can federation systems really protect people from abuse? (It's not the first time to come up either; at LibrePlanet in 2015 a number of us held a "social justice for federated free software systems" dinner and were discussing things then.) It's an important question to ask, and I'm afraid the answer is, "not reliably yet". But in this blogpost I hope to show that there may be some hope for the future.


    • Gush: A stack based language eventually for genetic programming


      I recently wrote about possible routes for anti-abuse systems. One of the goofier routes I wrote about on there discussed genetic programming. I get the sense that few people believe I could be serious... in some ways, I'm not sure if I myself am serious. But the idea is so alluring! (And, let's be honest, entertaining!) Imagine if you had anti-abuse programs on your computer, and they're growing and evolving based on user feedback (hand-waving aside exactly what that feedback is, which might be the hardest problem), adapting to new threats somewhat invisibly from the user benefiting from them. They have a set of friends who have similar needs and concerns, and so their programs propagate and reproduce with programs in their trust network (along with their datasets, which may be taught to child programs also via a genetic program). Compelling! Would it work? I dunno.

      [...]

      Lee and I met up at the Haymarket Cafe, which is a friendly coffee shop in Northampton. I mentioned that I had just come from LibrePlanet where I had given a talk on The Lisp Machine and GNU. I was entertained that almost immediately after these words left my mouth, Lee dove into his personal experiences with lisp machines, and his longing for the kind of development experiences lisp machines gave you, which he hasn't been able to find since. That's kind of an aside from this blogpost I suppose, but it was nice that we had something immediately to connect on, including on a topic I had recently been exploring and talking about myself. Anyway, the conversation was pretty wild and wide-ranging.


    • Sock puppet accounts unmasked by the way they write and post

      A study of nine websites that use comment service Disqus to let readers post responses to articles found that sock puppets can be identified based on their writing style, posting activity and relationship with other users.



    • An Art Career Intertwined with Censorship: The Murals of Mike Alewitz
      A profile in The College Voice, the student newspaper of Connecticut College, of an activist-turned-artist named Mike Alewitz details his radical, politically charged career that is characterized as much by the provocative works he produced as by the incidents of censorship the works inspired.

      Alewitz, a former professor at Central CT State University , who earned his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1983, is best known for his murals depicting the American labor movement. According to the profile author, his "stories are a routine of acceptance and decline, of struggle and movement. His pieces are vibrant, loud, colorful. They declare to be acknowledged."


    • Texas Supreme Court Is Skeptical About Wikipedia As A Dictionary
      This is an interesting opinion from the Texas Supreme Court on citing Wikipedia as a dictionary. The underlying case involves an article in D Magazine titled "The Park Cities Welfare Queen." The article purports to show that the plaintiff, Rosenthal, "has figured out how to get food stamps while living in the lap of luxury." After publication, evidence emerged that the plaintiff had not committed welfare fraud. She sued the magazine for defamation.

      The appeals court denied the magazine's anti-SLAPP motion in part because it held the term "Welfare Queen," as informed by the Wikipedia entry, could be defamatory. The Texas Supreme Court affirms the anti-SLAPP denial, but it also criticizes the appeals court for not sufficiently examining the entire article's gist. Along the way, the court opines on the credibility and validity of Wikipedia as a dictionary. TL;DR = the Supreme Court says don't treat Wikipedia like a dictionary.


    • Internet Censorship Is Advancing Under Trump
      Last Thursday, Twitter sued the federal government. At issue was a demand from the Department of Homeland Security that Twitter reveal the user(s) behind an account critical of the Trump administration. The government withdrew its request the next day, and the issue seemingly drew to a close.


    • Graham Gal: Objects to censorship of comics
      A recent incident brought this home. I work with a colleague at Tehran University. They wanted a copy of a book, but were not able buy it. I went to Amazon, purchased an e-version, and sent the link to them. When she tried to get the book she got a message that, “This title is not available for customers from (the) Islamic Republic of Iran.”


    • U of T researchers uncover extent of China’s censorship on 709 crackdown
      Even as it was arresting, torturing and imprisoning human-rights lawyers, the Chinese government blocked discussion of its actions on local social media, including images distributed by those drawing attention to what had taken place.

      Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab discovered that WeChat, China’s digital-communication lifeblood, has censored 42 combinations of terms related to the “709 crackdown,” so called because it began on July 9, 2015.

      The research underscores how Chinese authorities assert broad control over information inside the country, eliminating unfavourable information.


    • Bill Cosby's 'Little Bill' books targeted for censorship, library group says
    • Librarians ask to pull Cosby books after sex assault charges
    • The top 10 books parents wanted removed from libraries in 2016
    • Censorship Watchdog: Bill Cosby’s Books for Kids Are Vanishing From Schools
      A censorship watchdog has warned that novels by shamed comedian Bill Cosby are vanishing from school libraries.


    • Fighting Censorship: Victories in 1957 & 2017 #ACLUTimeMachine


    • South Korea: Corruption & Self-Censorship




  • Privacy/Surveillance



    • Data Dump Reveals NSA Infiltrated Cellular Networks of Pakistan
    • WikiLeaks says US security agency hacked Pakistan mobile networks
    • US Security Agency Hacked Pakistani Mobile Networks: WikiLeaks


    • 'NSA Malware' Released By Shadow Brokers Hacker Group


    • Dealing With Real-Life, Everyday Security Threats


      Are your hard drives encrypted? Especially laptop drives? If you have data stored on your computers that someone can use to make your life miserable, including credit card numbers, an encrypted hard drive can save the day in case of theft. Using Linux is pretty good, too, since a passworded Linux install will foil most low-end thieves.


    • It’s “National Get a VPN Day” in Australia

      Australia's mandatory data retention scheme comes into effect today, with telecoms providers expected to retain and store their customers' Internet usage metadata. In response, privacy group Digital Rights Watch has declared this event National Get a VPN Day, vowing to equip citizens with the tools they need to avoid surveillance.



    • 'NSA malware' released by Shadow Brokers hacker group
    • FBI Tries New Rule 41 Changes On For Size In Fight Against Long-Running Botnet
      The DOJ is proud to announce it's flexing its new Rule 41 muscle. The changes proposed in 2015 sailed past a mostly-uninterested Congress and into law, giving the FBI and other DOJ entities permission to hack computers anywhere in the world with a single warrant.

      With the new rules, the law has finally caught up with the FBI's activities. It deployed a Network Investigative Tool -- the FBI's nifty nickname for intrusive malware that sends identifying info from people's computers to FBI investigators -- back in 2012 during a child porn investigation and mostly got away with it. It tried it again in 2015 and ran into a bit more resistance.


    • Yes, There Are Other Laws That Protect Privacy, But FCC's Rules Were Still Helpful
      There's been a lot of hype and confusion about Congress's decision (supported by the new FCC) to kill off the broadband privacy rules that were put in place late last year by the Tom Wheeler FCC, though they had not yet been officially implemented. As we noted, it's an unfortunate exaggeration (pushed by some well meaning folks) to say that ISPs will now be packaging up and selling individuals' specific browsing history. That's just not true. Some people responded to us by noting that just because that's not how the ad market works today, it doesn't mean that won't change. But... that's probably not the case. Don't get me wrong: getting rid of these privacy rules is still a really bad idea, but let's look a little deeper at what ISPs can't do, before we explain why those privacy rules are still important.

      First off, as we noted, the market for internet data is not in sharing some sort of dossier on what you like, but rather connecting into a marketplace, where the information is shared for the purpose of displaying ads, but not in a way where your actual info goes to the advertiser. That is, when you, say, go shopping for a camera, and then start seeing ads for cameras everywhere, it's not that the camera makers now know that you, Joe Schmoe, like cameras. Instead, what happens is that some company took that info (Joe Schmoe is shopping for cameras) and that gets put into a marketplace where some real time bidding happens for ad placement, such that when Joe Schmoe visits another site, there's a near instantaneous call out for who will pay the most for the ad slot, and with that info is, effectively, this otherwise anonymous person was just looking at cameras, and the camera company will say "I'll pay an extra $0.0002 for that ad compared to the TV maker" and thus the camera ad gets shown. The camera maker or retailer never knows its Joe Schmoe, and doesn't somehow "know" anything more about Joe.




  • Civil Rights/Policing



    • Tanzanian safe house helps courageous girls escape female genital mutilation

      Last December, more than 200 girls arrived at Samwelly's sanctuary from all over Tanzania; some as young as eight years old fled their homes to avoid cutting.



    • German-Muslim Author Faces Death Threats After Publishing Book Critical of Islam

      With her book The Veiled Threat dealing with the plight of Muslim women in Europe, former radical feminist Zana Ramadani has kicked the Islamist hornets’ nest in Germany. Being born a Muslim herself, Ramadani is fearful of her life after receiving countless death threats from radical Muslims in Germany. German authorities have not granted her police protection yet.



    • Pakistani boy's sexual organ chopped off, eyes pricked for having 'illicit relationship' with girl

      The boy, a class nine student, was robbed of his sight for the rest of his life but doctors managed to save his life.

    • Teacher on United flight took students off plane after incident


    • United passenger threatened with handcuffs to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

      So how could United possibly make things worse? Not to worry. This is the airline that knows how to add insult to injury.



    • Dr. Dao Dragged Off A Plane Then Dragged Through The Media
      They then -- thuggishly -- had the man, Dr. Dao, dragged out of his seat on the plane as if he had done something criminal.

      As for the stories coming out about him now, the reality is, what he's done in his life is immaterial. He bought that seat, he got to the airport on time, and he got into his seat without incident.


    • United Airlines hasn't even bothered apologising to the passenger beaten on its flight – this is Trump's America now

      And what was United’s stellar PR response?



    • City Officials Step Up After DOJ Told To Stop Worrying About Civil Rights Violations By Law Enforcement Agencies
      It appears the DOJ will no longer be in the business of policing the police. A memo issued by every cop's new best friend, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, states the DOJ will be doing more to empower police and will conduct fewer civil rights investigations of law enforcement agencies. On one hand, it makes sense to have the locals handle their own problems. On the other hand, the locals have repeatedly shown a willingness to ignore abusive policing until the feds are forced to step in.

      It may be difficult to roll back DOJ agreements and oversight of investigated agencies immediately. It may, in fact, be impossible. Those consent decrees that have made their way through the court system on the way to being put into force would take some serious litigating to roll back. It's not clear the DOJ's interested in attempting an expensive clawback of police oversight and policy changes.

      It's those that haven't been formalized through this process that are in danger of being scaled back, if not removed completely. The DOJ has filed a motion asking for time to review its proposed consent decree with the Baltimore PD in light of AG Sessions' memo. The DOJ also just finished wrapping up an investigation of the Chicago PD, but statements made by Sessions and President Trump indicate the White House and DOJ are more interested in solving Chicago's crime problem, rather than its police problem.


    • How Amos Yee won political asylum in the US


      The recent success of 17-year-old Singaporean Amos Yee in seeking political asylum in the US has led to a diplomatic dispute between the two countries.

      And while the international media, including the media in Hong Kong, have referred to Yee as a “political dissident”, he has received very little sympathy from among Singaporeans themselves.


    • Online adverts 'exploit homeless for sex'
      Young, vulnerable people are being targeted with online classified adverts offering accommodation in exchange for sex, a BBC investigation has found.

      The deals, which are legal, are on classified ad sites such as craigslist.

      Charities have described the adverts as exploitative and Hove MP Peter Kyle wants them made illegal. Craigslist, which on one day carried more than 100 such adverts, has not commented.

      One student described how she felt her only option was a "sex-for-rent" deal.


    • Non-Muslims Worship places not allowed to be taller than Mosques – Selangor State Gov


    • Hello, Feminists! Here's The "Patriarchy" You Should Be Protesting


      Of course, protesting what goes on in Pakistan doesn't really work if what you're going for in protesting Israel is cover for Jew hatred -- basically, having a plausibly deniable way to protest Jews.

      Oh, and I'm not in favor of everything that goes on in Israel. In fact, I think that if Jews looked at the highest for of righteousness in Judaism, saving a life, they'd do as LA writer Ken Layne once suggested and move Israel to Baja.

      Same weather -- missing a few urns and the religious connection and history. However, to save a whole lot of lives (Israeli and Palestinian, in a conflict unlikely to ever end, except in a nuking, Israelis should move away from the people trying to murder them. (And yes, Israel bought Arab land fair and square, for elevated prices, early on, despite Arabs telling other Arabs not to sell.)

      After Israelis vacate to Mexico, the land they've left will surely become like all the other Middle Eastern countries -- where various sects of Islam are busy killing each other for being "not Muslim enough," or just because.

      The Jews -- in the form of Israelis -- are just a convenient distraction from this.




  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Net Neutrality: Respect my Net presented at BEREC
      La Quadrature du Net publishes a position paper co-drafted with the FDN Federation and presented/exposed during the stakeholders meeting organised by the Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC) on 14 March 2017 in Brussels.

      The proposals aim to allow a better monitoring of Net Neutrality and present helpful evidence for regulators to enforce the application of Net Neutrality especially through a tool developed to allow users to report Net Neutrality violations in the easiest way possible.


    • Tennessee Could Give Taxpayers America's Fastest Internet For Free, But It Will Give Comcast and AT&T $45 Million Instead

      The situation is slightly convoluted and thoroughly infuriating. EPB—a power and communications company owned by the Chattanooga government—offers 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps, and 10 Gpbs internet connections. A Tennessee law that was lobbied for by the telecom industry makes it illegal for EPB to expand out into surrounding areas, which are unserved or underserved by current broadband providers. For the last several years, EPB has been fighting to repeal that state law, and even petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to try to get the law overturned.



    • Silicon Valley kicks off fight on net neutrality

      "The FCC just held a closed door meeting with lobbyists from the Big Cable, and now they're moving fast to slash net neutrality and open the flood gates for fast lanes and slow lanes, throttling, and censorship," the group wrote in its call to action.





  • DRM



    • LibrePlanet Day 2, DRM, contributing, and advice
      The second day of LibrePlanet 2017 started with a talk by author, blogger, editor, activist, and Internet freedom fighter Cory Doctorow. Straight through to Sumana Harihareswara's closing keynote, the day was full of conversations and presentations touching on a broad range of topics across the free software movement.

      Doctorow presented "Beyond unfree: The software you can go to jail for talking about." Related to his current anti-Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) work, he addressed the wide range of risks threatened by copyright, trademark, and patent laws, as well as the use and institutionalization of DRM. But he did not just paint a bleak image, instead reminding the audience that the fight against DRM and similar restrictions is ongoing. "My software freedom," Doctorow said, "is intersectional."


    • Portugal Pushes Law To Partially Ban DRM, Allow Circumvention
      You might think that copyright on its own has enough problems. And yet DRM, originally designed to protect digital copyright material from unauthorized copying, has managed to make things much worse. It not only punishes with extra inconvenience those who acquire legal copies -- but not those who manage to find illegal versions without DRM -- it also allows the DMCA to be used to disable competitors' products, to create repair monopolies, and even to undermine the very concept of ownership. You can see why the copyright industry really loves DRM, and fights to preserve its sanctity. And you can also see why the following news from Portugal, where the parliament has just approved a bill allowing DRM circumvention and even bans in certain situations, is such a big deal.


    • Denuvo Strikes Back: The DRM Has Been Patched And Is Working... For Now
      The recent saga of Denuvo DRM has been fairly fast moving as these things go. Once thought to be the DRM unicorn that video game makers had dreamed of for years, the time it took for cracks to be released for Denuvo-protected games shrunk to months, then weeks, and finally days. It seemed for all the world like Denuvo was destined for the grave.

      But these things don't always progress in linear fashion. The recently released Bioware title Mass Effect: Andromeda was patched recently for a variety of gameplay functions. Unheralded in the patch notes was the updated version of Denuvo included within it. That updated version appears to be setting back cracking groups, forcing Mass Effect pirates into using the older, pre-patched version of the game.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • BlackBerry awarded $815 million in arbitration case against Qualcomm


    • Trademarks



      • Q&A With Wine Country IP Attorneys Shows Just How Problematic Trademark Is Becoming
        For several years now, we've put out the steady warning that the alcohol industries have a trademark problem. In some ways, it's one of those kinda sorta good problems to have in a goods industry, in that the reason there is a problem at all is because of how well the alcohol business is doing. Not just well in terms of total sales, but also in terms of being an ecosystem that encourages new businesses, startups, and expansion. Those are all signs of a healthy market, but with that comes the trademark problem. With so many new players and and a finite amount of language with which those players can brand themselves, trademark disputes in what has previously been known to be an IP congenial industry have exploded in number.

        It's become bad enough that the North Bay Business Journal in Santa Rosa, California, smack dab in the middle of wine country, conducted a written Q&A with a couple of intellectual property attorneys to get their thoughts. You can practically hear the frustration at how this is all progressing dripping off of their responses.




    • Copyrights



      • The Bull Statue Copyright Claim Is Ridiculous... But Here's Why It Just Might Work
        Eventually, because New Yorkers seemed to like the damn thing, the city granted a "temporary" permit allowing the statue to remain (a little ways away from where it was originally placed) -- and so it's remained there, "temporarily," for 28 years. Of course, there have been some conflicts over the bull. In 2009, we wrote about Di Modica suing people for copyright infringement, which seems kind of nutty given that he originally just dumped the statue in the street without getting permission.








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