Linux problems? I’ve got answers. I've been answering Linux related questions for years. During my time offering others assistance, I've found one thing to be a constant roadblock – most newbies don't really ask for help effectively. This isn't a negative comment about newbies, as I've seen this same issue on other platforms and their related support channels.
The goal of this article is simple - I'm going to give you a walk-through explaining how to troubleshoot, fix or otherwise effectively seek help for common Linux problems.
I’m now roughly six months into using Linux as my primary laptop OS, and it’s been a few months since my last progress report. If you’re just now picking up this thread, I encourage you to go back and read my initial progress report, see which Linux distribution I selected, or check how I chose to handle corporate collaboration (see here, here, and here). In this post, I’ll share where things currently stand.
My configuration is unchanged from the last progress report. I’m still running Fedora 25, and may consider upgrading to Fedora 26 when it releases (due to be released tomorrow, I believe). I’m still using the Dell Latitude E7370, which continues—from a hardware perspective—to perform admirably. CPU power is a bit limited, but that’s to be expected from a mobile-focused chip. My line-up of applications also remains largely unchanged as well.
When it comes to Linux, the community has a tendency to be branded as 'cheapskates' mainly due to the fact that they usually do not pay for the software they use. However, according to Hiri COO David Founder, this couldn't be further from the truth.
re Linux users are the most valuable customers you can have? It might sound like a bit of an ego rub, but we think so — and we’re going to tell you why. Over the years we’ve spoken to a lot of software developers, developers making both free and paid-for software.
I've just finished out a round of tests using the Linux 4.13-rc1 kernel with its new AMDGPU driver code. No regressions with my Polaris and Fiji tests, but at the same time no performance gains trickled through when running various tests with RADV Vulkan and RadeonSI OpenGL from Mesa 17.2-dev.
I ran various benchmarks of Linux 4.12 stable versus Linux 4.13-rc1 while sticking to Mesa 17.2-dev. Tests were done on a Radeon RX 560, RX 580, and R9 Fury.
Like its glmark2 sibling project, vkmark’s goals are different from the goals of big, monolithic and usually proprietary benchmarks. Instead of providing a single, complex benchmark, vkmark aims to provide an extensible suite of targeted, configurable benchmarking scenes. Most scenes exercise specific Vulkan features or usage patterns (e.g., desktop 2.5D scenarios), although we are also happy to have more complex, visually intriguing scenes.
[...]
It is still early days, but vkmark already has support for X11, Wayland and DRM/KMS, and provides two simple scenes: a “clear” scene, and a “cube” scene that renders a simple colored cube based on the vkcube example (which is itself based on kmscube). The future looks bright!
Today, we are going to discuss about a collection of useful utilities called “netutils-linux” that can be used to simplify Linux network troubleshooting and performance tuning. This suite of Linux utils helps you to automate the linux performance tuning process out of the box. Netutils-linux consists of the following tools:
Tool Manage Vulnerable PackagesHeimdall is a tool to manage all the vulnerabilities that are found in the Linux distributions installed in your servers or desktops. The centralized heimdall server collects all the vulnerabilities data from client machines through heimdall agent. This agent that allows you to perform the correction of the vulnerability in a practical and uncomplicated way. Heimdall is developed by information security specialist Matheus Bernardes.
Solskogen 2017 is over! What a blast that was; I especially enjoyed that so many old-timers came back to visit, it really made the party for me.
The latest release of stress-ng V0.08.09 incorporates new stressors and a handful of bug fixes. So what is new in this release?
So if you are interested in learning more about this "Content-Addressable Data Synchronization Tool" for distributing file-system images in the modern age of Linux, see the hour and a half video that's embedded below as well as the accompanying PDF slides.
For fans of the MPlayer/mplayer2-based MPV media player, version 0.26 was released with a few months worth of improvements.
Valve is covering its organizational problems with the success of Steam, and since they get a lot of money from the digital distribution platform, the issues stemming from the company are not showing.
Another day, another journalist claiming that Valve is killing SteamOS (amongst other things mentioned) and it couldn't be further from the truth. I'm going to be pretty blunt in this one, because it needs to be.
I give you this sensationalist piece from Softpedia titled "Valve Is Killing Its Projects by Abandoning Them, Including SteamOS".
Rusted Warfare [Steam], a 2D RTS from Corroding Games is now on Linux. It reminds me a little of Total Annihilation & Red Alert and it was originally an Android game that's made it to PC.
Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap [Official Site, Steam, Humble Store] a remake of Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap is now officially out for Linux.
DotEmu, developer and publisher specializing in modern releases of beloved retro games, and Lizardcube, are thrilled to announce that Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap is now available on Mac and Linux.
Shotgun Farmers [Steam] is a seriously cool game idea and it's just been updated with a bunch of new features and fixes. One feature in particular I requested has made it in!
Usually, I wouldn't bother writing about a Windows-only game bundle from Humble Bundle (why would I?), but The Humble Telltale Games Bundle seems to have a Linux game coming.
XCOM 2: War of the Chosen [Steam] has another new unit reveal, this time it's for The Templar, another one we can recruit to the cause.
KDE today announced the release and general availability of the fourth bugfix update for the latest stable KDE Plasma 5.10 series of the desktop environment designed for GNU/Linux distributions.
In the past there were two versions of LabPlot. The first one was based on Qt4 and KDE4 libraries. The second one uses Qt 5 and KDE frameworks 5. The development was done mainly in the Qt4-based branch which was merged from time to time to the Qt5/frameworks branch where the porting to Qt5/frameworks, if required, was done after the merge. Clearly, this caused a lot of additional work, was very time consuming sometimes and distracted us too often from the actual development – the development mostly done in our very limited spare time.
Akademy opens on Saturday, July 22 at 10 am with Robert Kaye, the brains behind Musicbrainz. We talked with Robert a few days ago, and he will tell us all about his projects and how he managed to marry FLOSS activism with the pragmatism of having to make money in order to keep them alive.
Connecting to free wifi hotspots might be easier Ubuntu 17.10 — something I personally will appreciate!
I work out of a coffee shop€¹ during the week and their free wifi, while not perfect, is decent enough to feed this hungry blog on.
But Ubuntu has issues trying to connect to the wifi because it uses a captive portal for authentication.
Improved wifi settings are coming as part a redesigned GNOME Control Center. And as you can see in this video, the new wifi panel is looking seriously good.
Y’all know that we’re taking big steps to move Settings (a.k.a Control Center) to a brand-new, super shiny layout. As a courtesy of our beloved designer, Allan Day, we have mockups of a new Settings layout that is both modern and preserves (most of) the functionality we already have. He blogged about it in the past.
GNOME's Mutter has flipped on its new "Monitor Configuration Manager" by default as it seeks to improve the multi-monitor and multi-GPU experience.
Previously Avahi was the default method and after a user had chosen the key to send he was able to press the Internet switch button to enable Magic Wormhole.
To summarize: Instead of parsing an MSI file to get its version number, this code creates a script containing the filename for which a thumbnail should be shown and executes that using Wine. The script is constructed using a template, which makes it possible to embed VBScript in a filename and trigger its execution.
Thanks so much to the GNOME Foundation for placing its trust and confidence in my abilities in involvement and commitment to the community over the past seven years. So, this time I will talk about the ways of reaching newcomers during the last year.
I must admit that Peppermint Eight left much better impression on me than Peppermint Three five years ago. To a certain extent it also benefits from the global improvement of cloud-based web solutions.
The distribution itself ran smoothly without any visible glitches or hiccups worth mentioning.
The only "but" that I would like to mention here is that Peppermint is too strongly Google-oriented. There are some other cloud-based Office and Email solutions. Adding links to them in the default operating system would not require too many resources, but would at least pretend giving the user some choices.
While GNOME is my favorite desktop environment, I don't hate KDE. Actually, I rather love Plasma when it is done right. Case in point, I absolutely adore Netrunner -- the best KDE-focused Linux-based operating system. Technically, there are two versions of the OS -- the "regular" variant based on Debian and a rolling release based on Arch/Manjaro.
Today, after more than a year, Netrunner Rolling gets a refreshed ISO. This time, we have Netrunner Rolling 2017.07. Some highlights include SMPlayer becoming the default music and video handler, while SUSE Imagewriter is replaced by the KDE Neon variant.
The Netrunner Team is happy to announce the release of Netrunner Rolling 2017.07 – 64bit ISO.
To celebrate I have created some goodies for you. Nothing you can eat or drink…
First, Plasma 5 updates.
I have uploaded the July ’17 set of Plasma 5 packages for Slackware 14.2 and -current to the ‘ktown’ repository. KDE 5_17.07 contains: KDE Frameworks 5.36.0, Plasma 5.10.3 and Applications 17.04.3. All based on Qt 5.9.0 for Slackware-current and Qt 5.7.1 for Slackware 14.2.
Datrium plans to expand beyond VMware virtualization and provide new storage options for Red Hat Virtualization, KVM hypervisors on CentOS Linux, and Docker containers on bare-metal servers.
Thanks to the cooperation with upstream authors and the maintainer Martin Pitt, the Calibre package in Debian is now up-to-date at version 3.4.0, and has adopted a more standard packaging following upstream. In particular, all the desktop files and man pages have been replaced by what is shipped by Calibre. What remains to be done is work on RAR support.
So you’re considering (or are in the process of) bringing a robot, using open source software, to market. It’s based on Linux. Maybe you’re using the Robot Operating System (ROS), or the Mission Oriented Operating Suite (MOOS), or yet another open-source middleware that’s helping you streamline development. As development nears something useful, you start receiving some pressure about desired returns on this thing. You might be asked ‘When can we start selling it?’ This is where you reach a crossroads.
Since I started mining Ethereum with my main desktop computer, my Lenovo G50 laptop has become my main computer. Aside from the Windows 10 that shipped with it, it also has three Linux distributions installed on it, with Linux Mint being the one I use most often.
Last week I upgraded it from Linux Mint 18 to Linux Mint 18.1, used it for several days, then upgraded it again to Linux Mint 18.2. That last upgrade gave me the Cinnamon desktop 3.4.4. All was well for one day before I got the dialog prompt shown in Figure 1.
Linux Mint is an independent distribution, but it continues to have close links with Debian. Since 2015, Mint and Debian have had the largest number of page hits on Distrowatch, with Ubuntu closely behind them. However, although both have a similar record for stability and software choice, small differences between the two may make you prefer one over the other.
Because of its history, Debian has a reputation for being an expert's distribution. Increasingly, this reputation is undeserved -- at least if you can follow instructions during installation. Today, Debian's home page labels it "the universal operating system," hinting at its efforts to support as many different types of hardware and levels of user as possible.
By contrast, Linux Mint is intended more at new users. Its About page summarizes this focus by stating that "The purpose of Linux Mint is to produce a modern, elegant and comfortable operating system which is both powerful and easy to use."
However, these statements give only the broadest overviews of the differences between the two distributions. Installation, desktop environments, administration and package management all combine to make using Linux Mint a different experience from booting up Debian.
Techbase has rev’d its ModBerry 500 controller to the RPi CM3, and has added M700 and M1000 models based on the NanoPi M2 Plus and UP boards, respectively.
Gdansk, Poland based Techbase was one of the first manufacturers to tap the original, ARM11-based Raspberry Pi Compute Module in 2014 with its ModBerry 500 automation controller. The company has now upgraded to the Raspberry Pi 3-like, quad-core Cortex-A53 Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 in two new models: a ModBerry 500 M3 and a less feature-rich ModBerry 400. In addition, Techbase launched a ModBerry M700 built around the quad -A7 NanoPi M2 Plus, as well as a ModBerry M1000 based on the original, Intel Atom based UP board. All the computers run Linux with new firmware based on Linux Kernel 4.0.
Portwell’s “PCOM-B700G” is a COM Express Type 7 Basic module with Intel’s 5th Gen Xeon or Pentium CPUs, plus dual 10GbE ports and up to 32x PCIe links.
PAI’s “Sandman Doppler” is an Alexa-enabled smart alarm clock and music streamer that runs Linux on the Chip Pro COM, and offers 6x USB charging ports.
Palo Alto Innovation (PAI) had a troubled first-time Kickstarter launch with its original Sandman Clock, but the company fulfilled all its orders and moved on to a next generation model, the Sandman Doppler. This larger, more capable digital alarm clock and smart speaker adds Amazon Alexa voice controls, dual speakers, and two more USB charging ports, among other features. The Linux-driven device is built on the Next Thing’s open spec Chip Pro module, and lets you hack the COM via its micro-USB port (see farther below).
Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) have released the MaterialX Library for computer graphics. MaterialX is an open standard developed by Lucasfilm’s Advanced Development Group and ILM engineers to improve the transfer of rich materials and look-development content between applications and renderers.
At the end of last year, Google announced OSS-Fuzz, an open source threat detection tool focused on making open source applications and platforms more secure and stable. The tool itself is open and available on GitHub, and there are now solid numbers showing that this security tool has made a remarkable difference for some well-known open source projects.
Getting the best results out of a machine learning (ML) model requires that you truly understand your data. However, ML datasets can contain hundreds of millions of data points, each consisting of hundreds (or even thousands) of features, making it nearly impossible to understand an entire dataset in an intuitive fashion. Visualization can help unlock nuances and insights in large datasets. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but an interactive visualization can be worth even more.
Only in 2015, when the government opened the first public WiFi hotspots in the country, did internet access become available to ordinary Cubans. Before that, even though modern mobile phones had already found their way into the country, they were mostly used off-line. Now, all these phones can be connected to the internet. However, at 1.50 CUC per hour, this is still not affordable to most Cubans whose average salary is only 20 CUC per month.
Blockchain solutions and cryptocurrency mining hardware giant, BitFury has announced the launch of Exonum, an enterprise blockchain solution framework. Read more...
In today's blockchain market, raising money is the easy part.
As the headlines already attest, startups that have sold cryptographic tokens as part of a new wave of fundraisings are struggling to find qualified developers, but it's a pain also shared by projects building public and private blockchains.
Even the enterprise consortia and corporates looking to cut costs and gain efficiencies through these platforms are not immune.
Now, that may not be a surprise given that it's such a nascent industry. After all, there are only so many people who really understand the intricacies of blockchain, and they are hard to hire.
But that doesn't mean companies aren't finding strategies to attract and retain talent.
Total Membership Exceeds 150 Organizations in Less Than Seven Months
Heightened awareness about the security risks associated with open source software has increased use of disciplined DevOps practices that have improved application quality and developer productivity, a software supply chain survey finds.
Russia's tech behemoth Yandex has open-sourced its first machine learning library, CatBoost.
Many big-name tech companies including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and even Sony already offer machine learning frameworks. These tend to focus on neural networks, computer systems modelled on the human brain that can be trained to recognise specific objects or events in images and videos.
The upcoming Open Source Summit NA — Sept. 11-14 in Los Angeles — offers many exciting keynote presentations and technical talks covering a wide array of topics, including cloud computing, containers, networking, diversity, and more. And, it’s also host to several co-located events that provide even more opportunities for collaboration and learning. Here are some of the events taking place.
In this webinar, Bacon will answer questions about community strategy and share an in-depth look at this exciting new conference held in conjunction with this year’s Open Source Summit North America, happening Sept. 11-14 in Los Angeles.
In light of the OpenStack Foundation's decision I'm still proud about the Ceph community. They decided with a clear statement to not held any event in the U.S. that requires travel for community members from foreign countries while there is the risk to potentially suffer harassment, digital privacy violations, or rejection at the border.
Mozilla, the non-profit behind the Firefox browser, is excited to support Rooftop Films in bringing a memorable evening of film and discussion to The Courtyard of Industry City, in beautiful Brooklyn, New York on Saturday, July 29 starting at 8 PM ET. As a part of Rooftop Films Annual Summer Series, Hitrecord will premiere a film produced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt about staying safe online.
Mozilla believes the Internet is the most fantastically fun, awe-inspiring place we’ve ever built together. It’s where we explore new territory, build innovative products and services, swap stories, get inspired, and find our way in the world. It was built with the intention that everyone is welcome.
Right now, however, we’re at a tipping point. Big corporations want to privatize our largest public resource. Fake news and filter bubbles are making it harder for us to find our way. Online bullies are silencing inspired voices. And our desire to explore is hampered by threats to our safety and privacy.
The project named Project Common Voice website includes an option to donate your voice.
The Mozilla Foundation, makers of the Firefox browser, have launched a new project called Common Voice, which the organization hopes to become the first open-source voice recognition engine on the market.
Mozilla launched Common Voice in mid-June, and the project is currently in a training phase. The organization is asking users to help train the engine by reading small pieces of text or by verifying the accuracy of previous voice recordings.
Tomorrow is the feature freeze / branching deadline for LLVM 5.0 and as of writing the new AMD Zen scheduler model hasn't been merged, but it looks like it could still happen in time.
He then loads up GIMP image editing software to fine-tune the lines, creating a dramatic visual effect.
If I were on a desert island, I probably would not need a license, but let's say I did. I'd stuff the MIT license in one pocket, put the GPLv3 in my backpack, and find a place to tuck the Apache license.
Some metaphorical insight is to be gained in the comparison between reading and writing, and reaping and sowing. Changes in technology that facilitate physical contact between laborers and their element, be it a blank page or a fallow field, bring farmers and literary scholars into a more direct, non-figurative conversation, concerning the nature of electronic goods.
On Thursday, the space subcommittee of the House Science Committee held a hearing to look into NASA's forthcoming big-ticket planetary exploration missions. Those missions include a Mars 2020 rover, a Europa flyby mission, and potentially a follow-up lander to the Jovian moon Europa.
The hearing was respectable, with on-point witnesses and mostly incisive questions. That is, until California Republican Dana Rohrabacher had his turn at the microphone. After asking a reasonable, if rambling, question about NASA's plans for a Mars sample return mission and the kind of fuel used by spacecraft, Rohrabacher got down to business.
Over the years hackers have hijacked many domain names by manipulating their DNS records to redirect visitors to malicious servers. While there’s no perfect solution to prevent such security breaches, there are actions that domain owners can take to limit the impact of these attacks on their Web services and users.
The owners of the Ashley Madison cheating-dating website have agreed to pay $11.2 million to settle two dozen data breach lawsuits as a result of a 2015 incident involving as many as 37 million members' personal identifying information being exposed online. The deal (PDF) earmarks up to one-third, or about $3.7 million, for attorneys' fees and costs. An additional $500,000 has been set aside to administer the remaining $7 million earmarked for Ashley Madison members.
These IP cameras are available with full support and regular updates from industrial suppliers at prices ranging from several hundred to a few thousand dollars per camera. They are commonly sold in systems that include cameras, installation, monitoring and recording systems and software, integration, and service and support. There are a few actual manufacturers of the cameras, and many OEMs place their own brand names on the cameras.
There was a recent Cryptoparty Belfast event that was aimed at a wider audience than usual; rather than concentrating on how to protect ones self on the internet the 3 speakers concentrated more on why you might want to. As seems to be the way these days I was asked to say a few words about the intersection of technology and the law. I think people were most interested in all the gadgets on show at the end, but I hope they got something out of my talk. It was a very high level overview of some of the issues around the Investigatory Powers Act - if you’re familiar with it then I’m not adding anything new here, just trying to provide some sort of details about why it’s a bad thing from both a technological and a legal perspective.
In a research paper published at the end of February, a team of five scientists from the Graz University of Technology has described a novel method of leaking data from SGX enclaves, a secure environment created by Intel CPUs for storing sensitive information for each process, such as encryption keys, passwords, and other.
Starting with the Skylake line, Intel introduced a new hardware extension called SGX (Software Guard Extensions) that isolates the CPU memory at the hardware level, creating safe spaces where applications can store information that only they can write or read.
In measured boot, each component of the boot process is "measured" (ie, hashed and that hash recorded) in a register in the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) build into the system. The TPM has several different registers (Platform Configuration Registers, or PCRs) which are typically used for different purposes - for instance, PCR0 contains measurements of various system firmware components, PCR2 contains any option ROMs, PCR4 contains information about the partition table and the bootloader. The allocation of these is defined by the PC Client working group of the Trusted Computing Group. However, once the boot loader takes over, we're outside the spec[1].
Almost two months ago, we reported about a 7-year-old critical remote code execution vulnerability in Samba networking software, allowing a hacker to remotely take full control of a vulnerable Linux and Unix machines.
[...]
Dubbed SHELLBIND, the malware works on various architectures, including MIPS, ARM and PowerPC, and is delivered as a shared object (.SO) file to Samba public folders and loaded via the SambaCry vulnerability.
Dramatic changes are coming to the old power grid. As infrastructure ages and policy dictates a move away from fossil fuels, utilities and governments are looking at Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) as potential alternatives to continually building out a centralized grid.
DERs include all kinds of hardware that the utility may not necessarily own directly—solar panels, natural gas-fired microturbines, stationary batteries, and alternative cooling. Demand-response schemes, where a grid operator shifts electricity consumer use (usually through incentives) away from high-demand times, are also considered DERs.
Planning for DERs makes grid management trickier than it was when a company simply built a huge new plant and connected a power line to it. Without a lot of data, it’s hard to know what kinds of energy resources will have the most impact economically and environmentally and what will be most cost-effective for utilities. But a trio of researchers from Stanford University is attempting to make this planning easier for utilities and policy makers to solve. The researchers published a paper in Nature Energy this week describing a program they built to model DER deployment in a way that will result in the lowest cost to grid operators.
It's been a month since Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced that he is buying the upscale Whole Foods Market grocery chain for $13.7 billion, or $42 a share, in an all-cash transaction.
Now, opposition is mounting against the pending purchase. Proposed federal class-action shareholder lawsuits have been lodged to block the deal, arguing that it isn't good for Amazon shareholders. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union is complaining to the Federal Trade Commission that the accord would reduce competition, limit consumer choice, and kill jobs. And a member of the Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law is demanding congressional hearings.
Despite those failures, money continues to pour into the Chinese bicycle rental sector: last month, one of the leading startups, Mobike, announced $600 million in new funding, which it will use it to expand outside China. Let's hope people there remember to bring the bikes back.
Some people get really worked up about fonts. Here, for example, is a thread on Reddit, spotted by Leigh Beadon, about the appearance of the serif font Cambria on the show "Better Call Saul". The problem is that the show is set in the years 2002 and 2003, while Cambria was designed in 2004. The (mock?) outrage about this slip-up is all good fun, but obviously nothing too serious. Unlike in Pakistan, where another apparent font faux pas is leading to calls for the country's prime minister to resign.
A century ago last month, America came close to formally empowering government censorship of the modern news media. That might seem like ancient history, but the censorship monster rises anew whenever a president finds himself under intense scrutiny and seeks to stifle coverage he doesn’t like.
Donald Trump is waging a particularly angry campaign to harness press freedoms, including implied advocacy of violence against the “fake news media,” threats to yank reporters’ credentials and increasing bans on live TV coverage of White House press briefings.
Among big American tech companies, the race for India is on. With 355 million internet users (and rapidly growing) up for grabs, it’s no surprise that firms like Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon are investing billions of dollars to make inroads in the world’s largest democracy.
Do you think recent decisions by the censor board are hampering our freedom of speech?
It's not new. Historically, there have been attacks on freedom of speech and it's been widely talked about. This happens because films depend on individual subjectivity, which differs from person to person. Things would be less complicated if the body doesn't censor and just certifies. I think censorship should be left to the viewers. However, there's still room for discussion and that's a good thing.
By Sanya Pandey New Delhi, Jul 18 (UNI) Director Alankrita Shrivastava, whose film 'Lipstick Under My Burkha' was deemed too "lady-oriented" by the Censor Board of Film Certification (CBFC), has said that censorship was a very archaic concept in a free and democratic country like India and 'as citizens of the country we must claim the right to freedom'.
After a long debate, the United States is reportedly moving forward with plans to separate its military-focused Cyber Command branch from the National Security Agency. The changes could be announced in the coming weeks, according to the Associated Press.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has just handed down a terrible decision in a fight against National Security Letter gag orders. The EFF has been working with plaintiffs Cloudflare and Credo Mobile to have these indefinite gag orders found unconstitutional.
The DOJ is in court arguing the use of Stingray devices by the FBI and local cops shouldn't require a warrant. The government's lawyers are fighting a suppression motion by Purvis Ellis, charged with racketeering and the attempted murder of a police officer.
The events of the case happened in 2013, two years before the DOJ instructed federal agents to seek warrants when deploying Stingrays. For this investigation, the Oakland PD used a pen register order, as was the style at the time. (And perhaps still is. Despite the DOJ's internal instructions, warrant requirements are all but nonexistent when it comes to local law enforcement agencies' use of cell tower spoofers.)
A federal appeals court is giving the Federal Bureau of Investigation a big boost when it comes to secretly investigating national security affairs. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday upheld federal rules prohibiting companies from promptly disclosing to customers that the FBI is demanding a user's private data with a National Security Letter (NSL).
The FBI annually issues thousands of so-called NSLs to ISPs, financial institutions, and telephone companies. A judge's signature is not required, and targets of NSLs cannot challenge them because they don't know they exist.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, on behalf of Cloudfare and CREDO Mobile, brought a challenge to the gag orders under the First Amendment. They argued that the gag orders burdened the speech of companies that receive them. A federal judge in 2013 agreed and declared NSLs unconstitutional for that reason.
Ever since social media sites like Facebook and Twitter became household names here in America, we've occasionally had really stupid debates about just what type of access to those accounts employers should get from their employees. Some states have even passed laws that would allow employers to demand social media passwords from employees and applicants, presumably so that company reps can comb through private messages and posts shared only with the employee's or applicant's friends. If all of that seems stupid to you, that's because it totally is!
Border agents may not use travelers’ laptops, phones, and other digital devices to access and search cloud content, according to a new document by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). CBP wrote this document on June 20, 2017, in response to questions from Sen. Wyden (D-OR).
A Minnesota sheriff’s office must release emails showing how it uses biometric technology so that the community can understand how invasive it is, EFF argued in a brief filed in the Minnesota Supreme Court on Friday.
The case, Webster v. Hennepin County, concerns a particularly egregious failure to respond to a public records request that an individual filed as part of a 2015 EFF and MuckRock campaign to track biometric technology use by law enforcement across the country.
After terrorist attacks in Boston, Orlando and Manchester, authorities informed the public that they “were aware” of the perpetrator months or even years before the violence occurred. Time and time again we learn that informants — clergy, neighbors, family members — filed reports with authorities, only to see those names end up on a never-ending list that, as journalists have shown, includes hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
An intelligence system that is overextended is also ineffective and dangerous. As NSA-contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden argued, “We’re monitoring everybody’s communications, instead of suspects’ communications. That lack of focus has caused us to miss leads that we should’ve had.” Pointing to Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Snowden said, “If we hadn’t spent so much on mass surveillance, if we had followed the traditional models, we might’ve caught him.”
Following news that the Immigration Department had filed complaints against Canadian barrister Robert Tibbo, Snowden took to Twitter a few hours later and wrote: “Hong Kong’s government is mounting a campaign to retaliate against the lawyer defending the families who helped me.”
Before boarding a flight that ultimately stranded him in Russia, US National Security Agency contractor Snowden was introduced to the families by their mutual lawyer in Hong Kong. He hid in their homes for a couple of weeks in 2013, after leaking classified documents that revealed surveillance practices by the United States and other governments.
Tibbo claimed on Monday that the local administration had “systematically made efforts” to remove him from the seven’s cases.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is downgrading the U.S. campaign against mass atrocities, shuttering the Foggy Bottom office that worked for two decades to hold war criminals accountable, according to several former U.S. officials.
Tillerson’s office recently informed Todd Buchwald, the special coordinator of the Office of Global Criminal Justice, that he is being reassigned to a position in the State Department’s office of legal affairs, according to a former U.S. official familiar with the move. Buchwald, a career State Department lawyer, has served in the position since December 2015.
The remaining staff in the office, Buchwald was told, may be reassigned to the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, the former official told Foreign Policy.
The CIA is scheduled to begin destroying old records related to leaks of classified information in August unless critics convince the National Archives to scuttle the plan.
The National Archives and Records Administration tentatively approved a CIA proposal to get rid of several types of records after 30 years. Along with leak-tied files, the record types include medical records, behavioral conduct files, security clearance information, personality files with counterintelligence interests, workers-compensation reports for employees posted overseas, and declassification and referral files.
This time last year I was in Kenya for the Committee to Protect Journalistsââ¬Å —ââ¬Å following up on the death of a brave editor, John Kituyi, who died when someone broke his skull with a rock. This week it’s Ukraineââ¬Å —ââ¬Å and the murder of another remarkable journalist, Pavel Sheremet. Blown up at a Kiev street junction nearly a year ago. In neither case have the killers been brought to justice That failure conveys a sense of impunityââ¬Å —ââ¬Å that it’s ok to kill journalists. Or threaten them, or bully them, or intimidate them. This is not a new story. People in power have never liked journalists. They have always found ways of silencing them. But today, around the world, “silencing” increasingly doesn’t mean locking up; or menacing; or using repressive laws.
The Transportation Security Administration has lifted its months-long in-cabin laptop ban, which has been relaxed in recent weeks as the mostly Middle Eastern airlines have boosted security in their home countries for flights bound for the United States.
In March 2017, the Trump administration imposed notable restrictions on laptops and other large electronic items larger than a smartphone against nine airlines in an attempt to mitigate the risk of terrorist attacks.
Deescalation isn't something most police officers want to talk about -- especially those who allow their unions to do all their talking for them. But shootings by police have achieved critical mass, forcing the issue to be confronted by law enforcement officials. There are no national guidelines for force deployment. Local law enforcement agencies don't have much in the way of best practices or standards, pretty much allowing officers to decide how much force is necessary on their own, relative to the amount of "reasonable fear" officers can later credibly swear to in court.
[...]
Over the past several days, police station CCTV video of a Bangkok police officer disarming a knife-wielding man has gone viral. Instead of greeting a threat with violence, Officer Anirut Malee greeted the potential attack with words… and neutralized the threat completely with a hug.
President Donald Trump has said he's going to set more limits on the H-1B visa program, which allows tens of thousands of technology workers into the US each year. But yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security moved to expand another type of visa, the H-2B, which allows lower-skilled workers in on a seasonal basis.
The Department of Homeland Security said yesterday it is going to allow an additional 15,000 workers to come in under the H-2B visa category, which is typically used by US businesses in industries like tourism, construction, and seafood processing. The program normally allows for 66,000 visas, split between the two halves of the year. That means the DHS increase, announced yesterday, represents an increase of more than 40 percent for the second half of 2017.
An independent review panel has recommended that Icann review its decision denying Amazon's applications for the .amazon gTLD, and corresponding gTLDs in Chinese and Japanese characters
Earlier today, we published Mike Godwin's excellent post about why why everyone should file a comment with the FCC about their views on net neutrality (and, again, we highly recommend reading Gigi Sohn's excellent advice on what to include in your comment if you do). I see a lot of comments on that post with the defeatist and cynical response of "it doesn't matter, Pai's already decided what he's going to do."
This is self-defeating, dumb and wrong for a variety of reasons. First, everyone was saying the same damn thing about Tom Wheeler three years ago, and that turned out to be wrong. Despite being a former lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries, and his initial indications that his proposed rules would be weak and allow all sorts of mischief, Wheeler was eventually convinced to go in a different direction. Second, this goes beyond just this current FCC. Even if (as is widely expected) Pai ignores these comments and reclassifies broadband anyway, there is still a court case that will follow -- as well as Congress considering what to do. In both cases, having strong, clearly thought out arguments concerning net neutrality on the record that we can show Pai ignored will help possibly stop Pai's plan from moving forward. Pai is not the end of the story.
Yesterday we posted our comments to the FCC on net neutrality. Tons of others did as well, but I wanted to call out the comment submitted by Senator Ron Wyden. For two decades, Wyden has been a leading advocate of keeping the internet free from burdensome regulations, thus allowing tremendous innovation to occur. This echoes our position as well. However, both of us have advocated strongly for keeping the net neutrality rules in place. As we've pointed out, such rules are actually necessary in keeping the internet free and open -- because access to the internet has become dominated by just a tiny handful of giant companies with a history of bad behavior towards consumers, and repeated statements about plans to defy the internet's end-to-end principles.
The Federal Communications Commission has denied a request to extend the deadline for filing public comments on its plan to overturn net neutrality rules, and the FCC is refusing to release the text of more than 40,000 net neutrality complaints that it has received since June 2015.
The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request in May of this year for tens of thousands of net neutrality complaints that Internet users filed against their ISPs. The NHMC argues that the details of these complaints are crucial for analyzing FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's proposal to overturn net neutrality rules. The coalition also asked the FCC to extend the initial comment deadline until 60 days after the commission fully complies with the FoIA request. A deadline extension would have given people more time to file public comments on the plan to eliminate net neutrality rules.
Comcast yesterday claimed that "the threat of Title II regulation" started harming broadband network investment in 2011—years before the US government decided to apply Title II regulations to broadband.
Moreover, Comcast said that net neutrality proponents who claim that investment wasn't hurt by the Title II rules "aren't living in the real world." This comes less than a week after Comcast accused net neutrality supporters of "creat[ing] hysteria."
A minor update to the Apache httpd project on CentOS 6 had an unexpected consequence. The update from 2.2.15-59 to 2.2.15-60, as advised because of a small security issue, started respecting RFC 1123 and as a result, stops allowing underscores in hostnames.
But legally, it’s as clear as mud. The “work for hire” doctrine actually only applies to copyrights. Patents are covered by the “hired to invent” and “shop rights” doctrines in the US, and by the “invention for hire” doctrine in China. And though the patent doctrines have some similarity with the respective copyright doctrines, they are not the same. Not even close.
[...]
This all sounds reasonably straightforward but a vast number of entities – including huge multinationals – still operate in China without proper agreements with their employees, let alone their “independent contractors.” These companies are essentially operating on the honor system, and sooner or later they’re going to pay by losing valuable rights.
For a long time, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions were timidly recognised as intellectual efforts worthy of legal protection. Of recent, indigenous peoples, local communities, and some governments have demanded the recognition of traditional forms of creativity and innovation as protectable intellectual property.
[...]
Uganda, according to the Uganda National Culture Policy [pdf], is endowed with a rich and diverse cultural heritage, which includes 65 indigenous communities with unique characteristics. The diversity contributes to a wealth of indigenous knowledge, languages, folklore, customs and traditions and products that can be harnessed for development.
Two legislative acts directly address the legislation of TK in Uganda.
According to the Uganda Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act [pdf], TK and folklore are part of works eligible for copyright protection.
The other legislation for TK is mentioned in the Industrial Property Act, Section 21 (8), which calls for a mandatory disclosure requirement for all innovations that seek to be protected, “including any element of traditional knowledge associated or not with those resources.”
One point I fear doesn't get made enough when it comes to trademark law is that trademarks ought to be both unique and specific in order to fulfill the law's purpose of keeping the public from being confused as to the origins of goods and services. There's a level of nuance severely lacking in the way trademarks are both granted and enforced such that the law is used far less for the benefit of the public than it is a revenue generator for those who would lock up common names and words. A perfect example of this would be the trademark application for "Elvis Juice" by the brewery BrewDog being blocked by the Elvis Presley Estate.
One observer calls Access Copyright v York University “potentially the most disruptive copyright decision we have ever seen in Canadian jurisprudence”. Issues to be resolved include what happens around a new tariff, how other universities will react and whether York will appeal
The weird and persistently silly copyright reform process in the EU Parliament continues to get more and more bizarre and stupid. Last month, we told you about the first committee vote, which we feared would be terrible, but turned out to be only marginally stupid, as the worst parts of the proposal were rejected. Now, two more committees -- the Culture and Education (CULT) and Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) Committees -- have voted on their own reform proposals and the results are really, really bad if you support things like culture, education, research and the public. And, yes, I get the irony of the fact that the Culture and Education Committee in the EU just declared a giant "fuck you" to culture and education with its vote.
Among the many problematic aspects approved by these committees is a filter requirement that would block users from uploading legally obtained media into the cloud. This makes no sense -- especially given that the EU already has additional "you must be a pirate" taxes on situations where individuals are making copies of their legally acquired works.
This is not, necessarily, an argument that all things must be in the public domain, but a reminder that -- contrary to the claims of some -- just because some stuff is in the public domain, or even just available for free, it doesn't mean there aren't ways to build real businesses and real creativity off of it. Romero was a film making genius in many, many ways -- and the public domain helped his career greatly. It's too bad we now deny that option to basically everyone else.