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Links 20/2/2018: Mesa 17.3.5, Qt 5.11 Alpha, Absolute 15.0 Beta 4, Sailfish OS 2.1.4 E.A., SuiteCRM 7.10





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Open source intelligent solutions to transform work, businesses
    New trends are opening up new opportunities and new ways to deal with IT, according to Thomas di Giacomo, SUSE CTO, speaking at the SUSE executive roundtable, which the open source company hosted in partnership with ITWeb last week.

    There are many new and innovative technologies that can help IT leaders meet these new demands, he added. Open source based technologies have become the driving force behind most of the technologically disruptive innovations, said Di Giacomo.

    "It is pretty clear that all the new innovation is coming from open source.

    "For example, open source progress with Linux and virtualisation a couple of decades ago, cloud in the last 10 years, and more recently, containers for applications, software-defined infrastructure, and platform-as-a-service, empowering DevOps principles."

    However, these trends also present some new challenges, said Di Giacomo. Compared to a couple of decades ago, the number of open source projects today has skyrocketed - from hundreds in the different foundations like the Linux Foundation, Apache, Eclipse and others, to millions of projects on Github.


  • Choosing project names: 4 key considerations
    Working on a new open source project, you're focused on the code—getting that great new idea released so you can share it with the world. And you'll want to attract new contributors, so you need a terrific name for your project.

    We've all read guides for creating names, but how do you go about choosing the right one? Keeping that cool science fiction reference you're using internally might feel fun, but it won't mean much to new users you're trying to attract. A better approach is to choose a name that's memorable to new users and developers searching for your project.

    Names set expectations. Your project's name should showcase its functionality in the ecosystem and explain to users what your story is. In the crowded open source software world, it's important not to get entangled with other projects out there. Taking a little extra time now, before sending out that big announcement, will pay off later.


  • Events



    • FOSDEM 2018 Community DevRoom Recap: Simon Phipps & Rich Sands
      It’s been a few weeks now since FOSDEM and if you didn’t have a chance to attend or watch the livestream of the FOSDEM 2018 Community DevRoom, Leslie my co-chair, and I are doing a round up summary on posts on each of the talks to bring you the video and the highlights of each presentation. You can read the preview post of Rich Sands and Simon Phipps pre FOSDEM blog post here.



    • Scheduling Voxxed Days Zurich 2018 with OptaPlanner
      My name is Mario Fusco and I’m honored to be the Program Committee Lead of Voxxed Days Zurich for the third year in a row. Reading, evaluating, discussing, and selecting from the 200+ proposals that arrive every year is a long and challenging process. I must admit, I largely underestimated the task the first year I started doing it. It’s necessary to evaluate not only the quality of every submission, but also how they fit together. In the end, the worst part is having to reject so many incredible proposals because there are a limited number of slots.

      However, once all the talks have been selected and all the approval and rejection emails have been sent, the process is still not complete. Now it is time to take all the accepted talks and schedule the actual program. Even for a moderate sized event like Voxxed Days Zurich (the conference lasts only one day and we have four parallel tracks), this is not a trivial task. There are many constraints and nice-to-haves that you may need to consider. For example, some speakers will arrive late in the morning or will have to leave early in the afternoon. Some talks require different room capacities. Two talks belonging to the same track must not be scheduled at the same time. There are many more variables to this process.




  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla



      • 20 Big Ideas to Connect the Unconnected


        Last year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Mozilla announced the Wireless Innovation for a Networked Society (WINS) challenges: $2 million in prizes for big ideas to connect the unconnected across the U.S.

        Today, we’re announcing our first set of winners: 20 bright ideas from Detroit, Cleveland, Albuquerque, New York City, and beyond. The winners are building mesh networks, solar-powered Wi-Fi, and network infrastructure that fits inside a single backpack. Winning projects were developed by veteran researchers, enterprising college students, and everyone in-between.

        What do all these projects have in common? They’re affordable, scalable, open-source, and secure.






  • Databases



  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



  • CRM



    • How startups and SME’s can leverage open source CRM to increase business


      Prominent Open Source CRM in India:

      – SugarCRM Founded in 2004, Sugar CRM has over 7,000 customers and more than half a million users worldwide. Easily one of the largest open sources CRM in the world, SugarCRM offers versatile functionalities including sales-force automation, marketing campaigns, customer support, collaboration, Mobile CRM, Social CRM and reporting. While SugarCRM has released no open source editions since early 2014, its earlier community versions continued to inspire other open source software, namely Suite CRM, Vtiger CRM and SarvCRM.

      – SuiteCRM Suite CRM is a popular fork of SugarCRM and was launched as the latest version of the SugarCRM in October 2013. In a short period of its existence, it has won several awards and has been adopted by reputed clientele, including the Govt. of UK’s National Health Scheme (NHS) program. Suite CRM is an enterprise-class open source alternative to proprietary alternatives and offers a series of extension for both free and paid-for enhancements. Prominent additional modules available with SuiteCRM include Teams security, Google Maps, Outlook Plugin, Products, Contracts, Invoices, PDF Templates, workflow, reporting and Responsive Theme.


    • SuiteCRM 7.10 released
      SalesAgility, the creators and maintainers of SuiteCRM, are excited to announce a new major release of the world’s most popular open source CRM – SuiteCRM 7.10, including highly anticipated new features and many enhancements.

      SuiteCRM is a fully featured, highly flexible, open source CRM, which can be installed on-premise or in the cloud, and allows companies and organisations to have full control over their own customer data. It delivers actionable insights into customers, boosts conversions, helps increase sales, bolsters customer care and streamlines business operations. The CRM is as powerful as Salesforce and Dynamics, but with the unique benefit of being completely open source.


    • SuiteCRM 7.10 released
      SuiteCRM is a fork of the formerly open-source SugarCRM customer relationship management system.


    • SuiteCRM 7.10 Released For Open-Source Customer Relationship Management
      SuiteCRM 7.10 is now available as the latest major feature release to this customer relationship management (CRM) software forked from SugarCRM's last open-source release.


  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Licensing/Legal



  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration



    • Open Access/Content



      • A new Maryland bill would allow students to buy textbooks tax-free twice a year [Ed: This is a reaction to open-source (Open Access) books and maybe an attempt to extinguish such state-level initiatives]


        University of Maryland student Kayla Little has wanted to be a doctor since she was 11 years old — but a nationwide rise in textbook prices has proved to be an obstacle to her success.

        "I've wanted to go into medicine for the longest [time], and I really don't want to give that up for books," said Little, who hopes to go to medical school and become an orthopedic surgeon for a professional sports team.


      • How the Grateful Dead were a precursor to Creative Commons licensing
        From its founding in 1965, the Grateful Dead was always an unusual band. Rising amidst the counterculture movement in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Grateful Dead’s music had roots in multiple styles and genres but did not lend itself to easy categorization. Was it psychedelic? Folk? Blues? Country? Yes, it was all of these and more. The band frequently performed well-known public domain songs, but they made the songs their own.

        Members of the band could effortlessly play across traditional and diverse styles. At concerts, they often performed songs that sounded familiar at first but grew and evolved across styles and genres. Songs often turned into lengthy jam sessions in which musicians played off one another, discovering new musical motifs and expanding them together.






  • Programming/Development



    • Rust things I miss in C
      Librsvg feels like it is reaching a tipping point, where suddenly it seems like it would be easier to just port some major parts from C to Rust than to just add accessors for them. Also, more and more of the meat of the library is in Rust now.

      I'm switching back and forth a lot between C and Rust these days, and C feels very, very primitive these days.


    • Learning to program is getting harder

      I have written several books that use Python to explain topics like Bayesian Statistics and Digital Signal Processing. Along with the books, I provide code that readers can download from GitHub. In order to work with this code, readers have to know some Python, but that's not enough. They also need a computer with Python and its supporting libraries, they have to know how to download code from GitHub, and then they have to know how to run the code they downloaded.

      And that's where a lot of readers get into trouble.







Leftovers



  • “Just an Ass-Backward Tech Company”: How Twitter Lost the Internet War
    Del Harvey, Twitter’s resident troll hunter, has a fitting, if unusual, backstory for somebody in charge of policing one of the Internet’s most ungovernable platforms. As a teenager, she spent a summer as a lifeguard at a state mental institution; at 21, she began volunteering for Perverted Justice, a vigilante group that lures pedophiles into online chat rooms and exposes their identities. When the group partnered with NBC in 2004 to launch To Catch a Predator, Harvey posed as a child to help put pedophiles in jail. In 2008, she joined Twitter, then a small status-updating service whose 140-character quirk was based on the amount of alphanumerics that could be contained on a flip-phone screen. She was employee No. 25, and her job was to combat spam accounts.


  • Science

    • Why even a moth’s brain is smarter than an AI
      These differences probably account for why machine-learning systems lag so far behind natural ones in some aspects of performance. Insects, for example, can recognize odors after just a handful of exposures. Machines, on the other hand, need huge training data sets to learn. Computer scientists hope that understanding more about natural forms of learning will help them close the gap.

      Enter Charles Delahunt and colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle, who have created an artificial neural network that mimics the structure and behavior of the olfactory learning system in Manduca sexta moths. They say their system provides some important insights into the way natural networks learn, with potential implications for machines.


    • Can’t get new lungs? Try refurbished ones instead.
      Harald Ott, a surgeon at Harvard Medical School, thinks that his lab’s unusual methods might someday solve the organ- transplant crisis. On average, 20 people in the United States die every day awaiting donor organs for transplant, according to the American Transplant Foundation. If Ott’s idea works, it could one day eliminate the need for an organ waiting list.


    • Computers aid discovery of new, inexpensive material to make LEDs with high color quality
      A team led by engineers at the University of California San Diego has used data mining and computational tools to discover a new phosphor material for white LEDs that is inexpensive and easy to make. Researchers built prototype white LED light bulbs using the new phosphor. The prototypes exhibited better color quality than many commercial LEDs currently on the market.


    • Pattern formation—the paradoxical role of turbulence
      The formation of self-organizing molecular patterns in cells is a critical component of many biological processes. Researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have proposed a new theory to explain how such patterns emerge in complex natural systems.

      Many biological processes are crucially dependent on the formation of ordered distributions of specific molecules within cells. These patterns are self-organizing structures that evolve in a predictable fashion in time and space. Perhaps the best known example of intracellular protein patterning is the molecular machinery that orchestrates the regular segregation of complete chromosome sets to the two daughter cells during cell division.


    • Ocean array alters view of Atlantic ‘conveyor belt’
      Oceanographers have put a stethoscope on the coursing circulatory system of the Atlantic Ocean, and they have found a skittish pulse that’s surprisingly strong in the waters east of Greenland—data that should improve climate models.

      The powerful currents in the Atlantic, formally known as the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), are a major engine in Earth’s climate. The AMOC’s shallower limbs—which include the Gulf Stream—transport warm water from the tropics northward, warming Western Europe. In the north, the waters cool and sink, forming deeper limbs that transport the cold water back south—and sequester anthropogenic carbon in the process. This overturning is why the AMOC is sometimes called the Atlantic conveyor belt.




  • Hardware



    • Qualcomm raises bid for NXP to about $43.22B
      Qualcomm is raising its takeover bid for NXP Semiconductors by nearly 16 percent to about $43.22 billion, citing in part NXP's strong results since the companies first announced their merger in October 2016.

      The move announced Tuesday comes as Qualcomm itself is in the crosshairs of Broadcom Ltd., which earlier this month raised its own cash and stock bid for Qualcomm to $121 billion.




  • Health/Nutrition



    • Woman billed $17,850 for dodgy pee test. Alarmed experts say she’s not alone

      In 2015, a college student in Texas named Elizabeth Moreno had back surgery to correct a painful spinal abnormality. The procedure was a success, and her surgeon followed it with just a short-term prescription for the opioid painkiller hydrocodone to ease a speedy recovery. Then came a “routine” urine drug test, ostensibly to ensure she didn’t abuse the powerful drug.

      A year later, she got the bill for that test. It was $17,850.



    • Breakthrough as scientists grow sheep embryos containing human cells
      Growing human organs inside other animals has taken another step away from science-fiction, with researchers announcing they have grown sheep embryos containing human cells.

      Scientists say growing human organs inside animals could not only increase supply, but also offer the possibility of genetically tailoring the organs to be compatible with the immune system of the patient receiving them, by using the patient’s own cells in the procedure, removing the possibility of rejection.




  • Security



  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting



    • Warning after Assange fans targeted MP for retweets by Wikileaks
      POLITICIANS have been urged to show more caution on social media after evidence emerged that Wikileaks supporters were encouraged to use an SNP MP to spread their message on Twitter.

      Followers of Julian Assange were told to try and persuade Paul Monaghan to retweet content as part of a wider campaign to use parliamentarians to amplify their views.


    • Denis’s Dreaming: Julian Assange And His Doppelganger
      The ubiquitous US empire, I realized, had become an omnipresent force capable of vacuuming up and silencing all who dared question the activities of a system promulgating political chicanery… and it doesn’t approve of unauthorized disclosure, as the Julian Assange case demonstrates. Particularly as the covert activities of the ever-expanding American Empire – criminal by any measure – have become ever more rabid and rancid in its’ quest for full spectrum dominance.

      Fat chance that the masters of the universe would give a fig about the UN vote – pigs might fly I thought – recalling that the UN findings reflected the injustice of a system that hounded a man whose only crime was speaking truth to power. As I exited Hans Crescent, I felt queasy upon realising that it’s the ‘poodles’ – in this case the British variety – who sustain the status quo. When I arrived at my office I felt somewhat dejected, and closing the door on the outside world, sat myself down at my desk and said aloud to nobody in particular, “compliance is the flip side of expediency”.

      As morning turned to afternoon, I continued to reflect on the life of Julian Assange. Here was a man who was in possession of 250,000 diplomatic cables which shone an uncomfortable spotlight on US foreign policy. He published material documenting extrajudicial killings in Kenya, a report on toxic waste dumping on the Ivory Coast and Guantanamo Bay detention camp procedures and material involving large banks such as Kaupthing and Julies Baer. He also revealed the ugly truth of crimes committed by US forces in Iraq and the West’s role in the destabilization of Ukraine in 2014 plus the destruction of Libya, etc, etc, etc, etc.


    • Alleged Trump-Assange Backchannel: ‘There Was No Backchannel’
      One of the most curious episodes of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is also one of its most intriguing: Did Roger Stone—the eccentric informal Trump adviser—have backchannel communications with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange?


    • How Trump took advantage of Russian interference: Amplifying Wikileaks


    • Razer: journalism is not a crime! Except, you know, when WikiLeaks does it.
      I know you guys remember the detention of journalist Peter Greste, held with Al Jazeera colleagues Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahm in Cairo from December 2013. I remember, but perhaps not as well as you. I didn’t know the guy’s name before he was arrested charges of spreading “false news”. This was my fault, and not that of the Australian who had offered the Anglophone world an understanding of a coup that powers in the West would not call a coup. I was dumped that year, so any affairs more foreign than the one the ex was enjoying in Balwyn North were of limited concern.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature



    • Alaska's Bering Sea Lost a Third of Its Ice in Just 8 Days
      In just eight days in mid-February, nearly a third of the sea ice covering the Bering Sea off Alaska's west coast disappeared. That kind of ice loss and the changing climate as the planet warms is affecting the lives of the people who live along the coast.

      At a time when the sea ice should be growing toward its maximum extent for the year, it's shrinking instead—the area of the Bering Sea covered by ice is now 60 percent below its average from 1981-2010.

      "[Bering sea ice] is in a league by itself at this point," said Richard Thoman, the climate science and services manager for the National Weather Service Alaska region. "And looking at the weather over the next week, this value isn't going to go up significantly. It's going to go down."


    • China's polar ambitions cause anxiety
      Chinese tourists going abroad must be used to it by now - the lists of dos and don'ts to prevent them from tarnishing their country's image.

      "Do not spit phlegm or gum" and "don't take a long time using public toilets" are just two of the exhortations in a 2013 pamphlet from the National Tourism Administration.


    • The carbon-capture era may finally be starting


      The budget bill that President Donald Trump signed into law earlier this month provides a huge incentive for capturing and storing carbon emissions.

      Energy researchers who have crunched the numbers in the days since have concluded that on many projects the boosted tax credit could finally tip the scales for a technology that’s long proved far too expensive.






  • Finance



    • Working remotely, 4 years in

      It worked out. It obviously hasn’t always been 100% perfect in every way, but working remotely has been a great career move for me. I’ve learned a ton from my coworkers and have been able to do some really cool projects that I’m proud of. So here are some thoughts about what I think has made it work for me.



    • “Blockchain” Stocks Completely Disintegrate
      I’ve never seen a sector skyrocket and totally collapse this fast – in four months – as these newfangled “blockchain stocks.” Now they’re surrounded by debris and revelations of scams. These fly-by-night or near-failure outfits used the hype of “blockchain” and the whole media razzmatazz about cryptocurrencies to manipulate up their stocks, sometimes by several thousand percent in a matter of days.
    • Sears brand name deteriorates in value as sales suffer
      If Sears fails to execute a turnaround and ends up in bankruptcy, the company's storied brand name could yet live on.

      But as the company slowly descends deeper and deeper into red ink, the value of the company's brand is also suffering.

      [...]

      The nearly half-a-billion-dollar writedown underscores the severity of the company's financial crisis. Although President Trump's tax cut likely carried the Sears to a fourth-quarter profit, that was a one-time benefit that won't solve the company's ongoing issues.
    • Trump administration recommends steep tariffs on steel and aluminum
      The Commerce Department is recommending steep tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum.

      The suggested tariffs, offered by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in the name of national security, are the latest indication that President Trump's trade talk is turning from bark to bite. They also raise the risk of a trade war with China and other nations.

      Ross suggested three options for Trump — impose across-the-board tariffs on steel and aluminum, target select countries with even higher tariffs, or limit the total steel and aluminum coming into the United States.
    • Trump Contemplates Sanctions Against USA
      Think of it. If you slap on a tariff and importation instantly slows, it may take years to build new factories to take up the slack. Essentially, USA will be sanctioning itself. The tariffs won’t hurt China in the least. The world is hungry for its products and if USA ships fewer products made of aluminium and steel, China’s markets increase. So be it. USA, you reap what you sow. Trump adds this to the long list of stupid/crazy things he says and does.
    • Sorry, Brendan O’Neill, but we won’t be no-platformed on Brexit
      If you read Brendan O’Neill’s Coffee House article on Our Future, Our Choice! OFOC! – the campaign group of which I am co-president – you are left with the impression that we are a bunch of young fascists seeking a teenocracy. Brendan seems to believe that Britain’s youth see themselves as Nietzsche’s young warriors, and want to push out the ‘old men’. The ‘cult of youth’ wants to round up the walking-stick brigade, the village church congregations, the ageing Brexiteer army and send them where they belong: ‘peaceful’ correction camps.

      This is ludicrous. I wholeheartedly believe in ‘one person, one vote’. It goes without saying that we at OFOC! do not want to ‘dehumanise the old’. The concerns of the young should not override the concerns of the old. We all have an equal say. Brendan mistakenly assumes that we are making some grand philosophical point; that we are busy devising a voting system which would give a full vote to a healthy eighteen-year-old, and 0.4 of a vote to an 88-year-old on their deathbed. We are not. We are making a pragmatic argument rather than a philosophical one. Brexit is a national project which will take at least over half a decade to complete. In that time, according to demographic shifts alone, it will have lost its mandate. The British people will then clearly be inheriting a national project a majority didn’t ask for, and would rather not have.


    • Alibaba, Tencent rally troops amid $10 billion retail battle
      China’s tech giants Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N) and Tencent Holdings Ltd (0700.HK), worth a combined $1 trillion, are on a retail investment binge, forcing merchants to choose sides amid a battle for shoppers’ digital wallets.

      Since the start of last year, the two companies have between them spent more than $10 billion on retail-focused deals, boosting their reach online and in brick-and-mortar stores.


    • Mutually Assured Contempt at 2018 Munich Security Conference
      Last year the biggest name in Munich was Chinese President Xi, who did not disappoint and stole the show by his robust defense of free trade, global cooperation to combat climate change and other leading issues of the day from which Donald Trump’s America seemed to be retreating. This year there was no one leader who commanded the attention of the audience and media. What special meaning the gathering had could be found in the Report of the organizers, which highlights the issues and guided the discussion in the various sessions over three days.


    • Irish Border issue is a legitimate threat to the Brexit talks
      One senior EU official is very pessimistic. The impasse over legally copperfastening the UK’s no-hard-Border commitment could shortly, single-handedly, bring the Brexit talks process to a crashing halt, the source warns. Could the Border issue be the rock on which the negotiations founder, propelling the UK into a no-deal departure? It’s an apocalyptic view not universally shared in Brussels but, as my colleague Pat Leahy reported recently, Dublin is also increasingly gloomy. “The Government fears that patience with the UK is running out in EU capitals.” It expects difficulties translating December’s guarantees on the Border into a legally binding agreement.


    • The bitcoin patent - only a matter of time?


      Given that no person (or group) has credibly claimed authorship of the 2008 Nakamoto paper or the bitcoin transaction method it describes, not surprisingly, no patent based on that original work has appeared.




  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Donald Trump and Facebook executive Rob Goldman's tweets mislead about Russia's election interference
    • Trump cites Facebook exec’s comments downplaying Russian ad influence on election

      Trump was citing Goldman’s own Twitter dump over the past week, responding to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s recent indictment of 13 Russian citizens charged with interfering in the presidential election.



    • Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now
      Our democracy is in serious danger.

      President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

      That is, either Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while he was in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest, which Russian intelligence has on tape and he doesn’t want released; or Trump actually believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when he says he is innocent of intervening in our elections — over the explicit findings of Trump’s own C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I. chiefs.
    • San Juan Mayor Calls for End to Puerto Rico’s Colonial Status Amid Slow Hurricane Maria Recovery
      Five months after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, swaths of the island still have no electricity, while food and water supplies have been slow to arrive. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA, has been hit by a series of scandals, after it was revealed that only a fraction of the 30 million meals slated to be sent to the island after Hurricane Maria was actually delivered. FEMA approved a $156 million contract for a one-woman company to deliver the 30 million meals. But in the end, FEMA canceled the contract after she delivered only 50,000 meals, in what FEMA called a logistical nightmare. This came after FEMA gave more than $30 million in contracts to a newly created Florida company which failed to deliver a single tarp to Puerto Rico. For more, we speak with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.

    • Nunes: FBI and DOJ Perps Could Be Put on Trial
      Throwing down the gauntlet on alleged abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by the Department of Justice and the FBI, House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) stated that there could be legal consequences for officials who may have misled the FISA court. “If they need to be put on trial, we will put them on trial,” he said. “The reason Congress exists is to oversee these agencies that we created.”

      [...]

      This was not supposed to happen. Mrs. Clinton was a shoo-in, remember? Back when the FISA surveillance warrant of Page was obtained, just weeks before the November 2016 election, there seemed to be no need to hide tracks, because, even if these extracurricular activities were discovered, the perps would have looked forward to award certificates rather than legal problems under a Trump presidency.

      Thus, the knives will be coming out. Mostly because the mainstream media will make a major effort – together with Schiff-mates in the Democratic Party – to marginalize Nunes, those who find themselves in jeopardy can be expected to push back strongly.
    • Ignorance and Prejudice in Laura Ingraham’s Tiff With LeBron James
      Next came a clip with James saying: “The number one job in America, the appointed person, is someone who doesn’t understand the people. And really don’t give a f*** about the people.” James then continued his criticism of Trump in a discussion that aired on The Uninterrupted (a media platform founded by James).

      Ingraham clearly didn’t like James’ comments. First, she said: “Must they run their mouths like that? Unfortunately a lot of kids, and some adults, take these ignorant comments seriously.”

      She then went on to say that getting paid millions to play basketball doesn’t mean you can talk politics, and closed with a zinger inviting James and fellow NBA star Kevin Durant, also present in the video, to stick to what they do best – basketball – rather than attempt to provide political commentary: “As someone once said: shut up and dribble.”
    • Trump 'Blatantly Backs Gerrymandering' in Call for GOP to Fight New Pennsylvania Maps
      Shortly after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday issued a new congressional map that eliminates the state GOP's partisan gerrymander, President Donald Trump implored Republicans to challenge the new district lines, arguing that the original map—which the state's highest court said "clearly" violates the constitution—"was correct."
    • Mueller Probe Heats Up: 13 Russians Indicted, Ex-Trump Aide to Plead Guilty, Focus on Kushner Grows
      There have been a number of significant developments in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump administration. CNN is reporting Mueller is now investigating Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his attempts to secure financing for his family’s business while working on the president’s transition team. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times is reporting former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates has agreed to plead guilty and testify against Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager. Under the deal, Gates will plead guilty to money laundering and illegal foreign lobbying. These developments come just days after the Justice Department indicted 13 Russians and three companies in connection with efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election by orchestrating an online propaganda effort to undermine the U.S. election system. We speak to Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist who covers national security and civil liberties. She runs the website EmptyWheel.net.




  • Censorship/Free Speech



    • China Uses The Same Excuse As This CNN Analyst To Censor Social Media
      With fears of Russia soaring to new heights, a CNN national security analyst is employing a classic argument used by the Chinese government to support censorship, arguing that social media sites should be held accountable for the content their users...
    • The Case Against the Bell Coalition’s Website Blocking Plan, Part 6: Over-Blocking of Legitimate Websites
      As the public concern over the Bell coalition website blocking plan continues to grow (both the Canadian Press and CBC this weekend covered the thousands of interventions at the CRTC), the case against the plan resumes with a review of why it is likely that it will lead to over-blocking of legitimate websites. Last week’s post highlighted the probable expansion of the scope of piracy for blocking purposes, a theme that continues today with a look at the many incidents over-blocking of legitimate sites sparked by website blocking (other posts in the series include the state of Canadian copyright, weak evidence on the state of Canadian piracy, the limited impact of piracy, and why the absence of a court order would place Canada at odds with virtually all its allies).

    • Closing windows.. censorship of the internet in Egypt
      Egypt was not familiar with the practice of blocking websites in the past, and therefore the skill of bypassing censorship was not one of the basic skills acquired by Egyptian users during their normal use of the Internet; in contrast, in some Arab countries which have a history of blocking practices, this has resulted in their citizens acquiring skills of how to deal with internet censorship. With the increase in the number of blocked websites in Egypt, social networks were flooded with advice on how one can bypass a block and links to free services that enable users to access blocked websites such as Tor browser, VPN services, and proxy servers. Some blocked websites began to direct their audience through social networks to rely on proxy servers as a free and easy-to-use way to access the content of blocked websites, while many activists who are interested in countering internet censorship have written about how to rely on Tor browser and VPNs to bypass blocking. On the other hand, blocked websites have tried to find easy mechanisms to reach their audiences, such as relying on alternative platforms to publish their material, or relying on services such as AMP [Accelerated Mobiles Pages], one of the most important services provided by Google on which millions of websites depend.
    • Censorship is a slippery slope
      The issue at question is censorship of a book, “A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl,” by Tanya Lee Stone, currently in the high school library.


    • Andy Serkis says sex scene rules would be 'censorship'


      Andy Serkis has said new rules being proposed this week for the filming of sex scenes could stifle creativity and amount to "censorship".

      Actors' union Equity is set to discuss new guidance for intimate scenes on film, TV and stage following the Harvey Weinstein scandal in Hollywood.

      In the wake of the accusations against the disgraced producer, many actresses have since come forward to detail uncomfortable or unscripted sex scenes they had felt pressured into doing.


    • Sex scene rules would be 'censorship' star says
      Hollywood star Andy Serkis says new rules surrounding the filming of sex scenes could amount to "censorship" and stifle creativity.

      Actors' union Equity is considering bringing in guidance for intimate scenes on stage and screen in light of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

      The proposals, being discussed this week, could ban actors kissing with tongues and nudity in auditions.

      [...]

      But speaking on the Bafta awards red carpet on Sunday night, Serkis said of the proposals: "I think that kind of censorship is censorship of creativity.

      "It should be arrived at by the director and the actors involved. They have to find a comfortable way of doing it that will tell the story, because that's what we are all there to do.

      "It would be a shame if actors become so self-conscious about relating to people. You're there to use your imagination, to create a role. I don't think that you should be stopped from telling the story."
    • The government is fighting ISIS online – but could it censor journalists?
      The government has developed new technology which can “automatically detect terrorist content” online. Propaganda by Daesh (also known as ISIS) could apparently be blocked as soon as it is uploaded.

      The software was created by private company ASI Data Science, with €£600,000 of government money.


    • Instagram gives in to Russian censors
      Instagram has removed a video posted by Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny following pressure from the country's communications regulator.

      The video shows deputy prime minister Sergei Prikhodko meeting with wealthy Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska on a yacht populated with models and escorts.


    • Shut out: outcry over censorship of Inxeba
      The unthinkable has happened. The Film and Publication Board has banned the multiaward winning film Inxeba: The Wound from being screened in mainstream cinema outlets, restricting its distribution to "designated adult premises".

      This reclassification of Inxeba by the board’s appeal tribunal in essence means that the film can only be seen at venues where pornographic films are also screened. Therefore, the banning has reduced Inxeba to a pornographic movie. When it opened it had an age restriction of 16 years.


    • Academics Protest China's Censorship Requests
      James Millward, a historian at Georgetown University and supporter of the petition, also sees withholding peer review as a particularly fitting way to respond to censorship.




  • Privacy/Surveillance



    • Letter to EU Commissioners: Concern over United Kingdom's proposed 'immigration exemptions' from Data Protection Bill


      We, the undersigned, write to express our concern regarding the UK Government’s incorporation of the General Data Protection Regulation into domestic law. Setting aside other areas of concern, the UK’s Data Protection Bill proposes an exemption that would remove individuals’ fundamental right to data protection if it is likely to prejudice “effective immigration control”.

      This proposed exemption (‘the immigration exemptions’) will remove the right of individuals to receive information from a subject access request: a core mechanism in any immigration dispute. Further restrictions would remove the government’s responsibility to process an individual’s data in accordance with the principles of data protection including lawful, fair and transparent processing. The exemption would allow data to be shared across UK government institutions without accountability or opportunity for recourse.


    • Why the Internet of Things is designed for corporations, not consumers

      Let me drive this home: The way that consumer goods are evolving, any implement that can be connected back to the Net will be. Think of a world where the physical location of every single item is logged and known at every single moment. Imagine what that would look like on a three-dimensional grid; it would bring an engineer to religion. A wise man once said that not a sparrow falls without God knowing it. However, in a world where the Net keeps simultaneous watch on a thousand million spinning plates, the Lord will have a peer.



    • Epic Games Uses Private Investigators to Locate Cheaters

      After hiring the services of a private investigations firm, Epic Games discovered they'd sued another minor for alleged cheating. The gaming company asked the court to keep the personal information of the kid under seal. A private investigator was also used to locate another minor defendant in a separate case, who is now risking a default judgment.



    • Google on Collision Course With Movie Biz Over Piracy & Safe Harbor

      Google and one of Australia's leading movie companies are on a collision course over piracy. Village Roadshow's outspoken co-chief Graham Burke has twice this month accused Google of facilitating crime and is now inviting the company to sue him. Meanwhile, Google is fighting for new safe harbor protections that Village Roadshow insists should be denied.



    • Facebook ordered to stop tracking web users in Belgium [iophk: "chump change"]

      Last week, a Belgian court ruled that it must stop tracking web users who have not given their consent for this behaviour or face fines of up to €250,000 per day for non-compliance.



    • Facebook will mail out postcards to verify US election advertisers

      This new verification system will be required for all advertising that mentions a specific candidate running for a federal office — such as the presidency. It will be implemented in time for the mid-term elections this coming November.



    • Facebook plans to use U.S. mail to verify IDs of election ad buyers


      Facebook Inc will start using postcards sent by U.S. mail later this year to verify the identities and location of people who want to purchase U.S. election-related advertising on its site, a senior company executive said on Saturday.



    • Swedish Public Healthcare Portal is sending your symptoms to Google

      We can see in the screenshot above that somebody has searched for “embarrassing symptoms”. With the Ghostery plug-in turned off, a call is made to Google Analytics (the ga.js script), to the host ssl.google-analytics.com highlighted in the screenshot above, which sends the data embarrassing symptoms in cleartext (the third highlight) as part of the Referer field.

      This happens even when you’re browsing over HTTPS/SSL, because of how bad this design is.



    • China's mobile payment volume surges in 2017 to S$16.7 trillion by October
      Mobile payments in China totalled 81 trillion yuan (S$16.7 trillion) for the first 10 months of 2017, nearly 40 per cent more than the whole of the previous year as cashless transactions become increasingly popular in the country, official data showed.

      The 10-month figure represented a 37.8 per cent leap over the 58.8 trillion yuan recorded in 2016, according to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology cited by Xinhua news agency on Monday.

      China is one of the world’s leading players in mobile or e-payment, which has made it possible for Chinese to buy a pancake at roadside breakfast stalls, order food online, pay credit card bills, and manage stock accounts with just a smartphone.


    • Google files patent for robot that writes your Facebook posts, emails and tweets - but will need FULL access to scan your accounts




  • Civil Rights/Policing



    • Control your phone. Don’t let it control you

      Here are some simple tips — recommended by Harris — to work around the tricks phone designers use to keep us hooked



    • Passenger in NSA incident questions police use of force
      A 24-year-old Southeast DC man who says he was the passenger in that SUV that crashed at an NSA gate last Wednesday, is questioning police use of force.

      [...]

      "They was meant to kill us,” said Brown, “You know what I'm saying? This was fatal shots they were shooting. They could've killed him. They hit him in his head. If I didn't grab him and throw him under the wheel, little man would've got killed."

      The “him” is a 17-year-old, reportedly unlicensed driver, Brown says he put behind the wheel because he and another passenger were too tired to drive. After shots were fired, Brown says the teen was grazed in the head with what was believed to be a piece of shrapnel.


    • For Taiwanese, tests of loyalty to China bring trouble in Australian workplaces

      China's assertiveness has set off alarms in Australia, with officials warning that Beijing has been meddling in Australian politics more than the public realises. But the experiences of Yang and Tuan - along with many others - reveal how Chinese nationalism is also affecting private enterprise and, in some cases, leading to accusations of discrimination.





  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality



    • FCC Broadband Availability Data Derided As Inaccurate, 'Shameful'
      We've long-noted how the government doesn't do a very good job tracking broadband availability and pricing, in large part because incumbent ISPs like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T don't want them to. ISPs (and the lawmakers paid to love them) whined incessantly about the last FCC's efforts to raise the standard definition of broadband, given it only highlighted the fact that two-thirds of Americans can't get "broadband" (25 Mbps) from more than one ISP. ISPs also fight revealing pricing data, which is why our $300 million broadband availability map doesn't contain any price data whatsoever.

      ISPs have also routinely lobbied against efforts to improve broadband availability mapping, since more clearly highlighting competition and deployment shortcomings might result in somebody actually doing something about it. As a result, government reports on the health of the clearly-dysfunctional U.S. broadband market tend to have a decidedly unrealistic and rosy timbre, which is often worse if the regulators in question are of the revolving door variety (as we're currently seeing under current agency boss Ajit Pai).

      And while Pai is busy insisting that he's all about transparency, hard economics, and "closing the digital divide," his policies repeatedly and consistently undermine those claims.


    • The Fight to Save Net Neutrality Is Heating Up

      The many bids to try to stop the FCC’s rollback of net neutrality rules are gathering momentum.



    • “What’s happening in US on net neutrality and internet freedom?”

      149 Members of the European Parliament signed a letter to the US Congress in disapproval of an action taken by independent telecom regulator the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The letter was organized by Mariete Schaake (D66/ALDE).



    • Wikipedia discontinues its "zero-rating," will focus on research-driven outreach

      Wikimedia has since seen its zero-rated use dropping off a cliff, which has conclusively settled the argument. Wikimedia has a laudable goal: to incorporate input from all over the world, from all walks of life, into the canonical encyclopedia we all rely upon. But zero rating wasn't doing that, so, to their eternal credit, Wikimedia is trying something different.



    • Building for the future of Wikimedia with a new approach to partnerships [iophk: "zero-rating"]

      After careful evaluation, the Wikimedia Foundation has decided to discontinue one of its partnership approaches, the Wikipedia Zero program. Wikipedia Zero was created in 2012 to address one barrier to participating in Wikipedia globally: high mobile data costs. Through the program, we partnered with mobile operators to waive mobile data fees for their customers to freely access Wikipedia on mobile devices. Over the course of this year, no additional Wikipedia Zero partnerships will be formed, and the remaining partnerships with mobile operators will expire.

      In the program’s six year tenure, we have partnered with 97 mobile carriers in 72 countries to provide access to Wikipedia to more than 800 million people free of mobile data charges. Since 2016, we have seen a significant drop off in adoption and interest in the program. This may be due, in part, to the rapidly shifting mobile industry, as well as changes in mobile data costs. At this same time, we conducted extensive research [1][2] to better understand the full spectrum of barriers to accessing and participating in Wikipedia.



    • Free ‘Wikipedia Zero’ Is Shutting Down After Serving 800 Million Users
      The non-profit organization Wikimedia Foundation has been running their project called Wikipedia Zero. Started in 2012, it aims to provide free Wikipedia access to users mostly living in developing countries by partnering with carriers in those regions.

      Wikipedia Zero was inspired by Facebook Zero project which also allowed people to access a stripped down version of Facebook for free. Such services are given a zero-rating by the carriers and using them doesn’t count on users’ data bills. The service providers already pay the operation charges.




  • DRM



    • Flight Sim Company Embeds Malware to Steal Pirates’ Passwords

      Flight sim company FlightSimLabs has found itself in trouble after installing malware onto users' machines as an anti-piracy measure. Code embedded in its A320-X module contained a mechanism for detecting 'pirate' serial numbers distributed on The Pirate Bay, which then triggered a process through which the company stole usernames and passwords from users' web browsers.





  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • UKIPO launches trade secrets consultation
      The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) yesterday launched a technical consultation on the EU trade secrets directive and the draft regulations that will implement the directive into UK law.

      The directive obliges EU member states to ensure that victims of trade secret misuse are able to defend their rights in court and seek compensation. Provisions on ensuring trade secrets are kept confidential during legal proceedings are also covered.


    • Sharp and Hisense bury the patent hatchet as they move toward resolving acrimonious brand and commercial dispute
      A conflict over use of the Sharp brand name in the US market for televisions has pitted the Foxconn-owned display maker against Chinese licencee Hisense in IP and commercial lawsuits across multiple jurisdictions since last June. Now, disclosures made by Sharp in the process of withdrawing a patent infringement lawsuit and an ITC investigation suggest that the two parties have agreed to a patent truce as they move towards a broad resolution.


    • French Constitutional Court Rejects Challenge to Image Right in National Monuments
      France's Constitutional Court has just ruled that a provision in the Code du patrimoine (Heritage Code) involving the use of images of buildings protected as national domains passes constitutional muster.


    • Trademarks



    • Copyrights



      • Decision Over Tom Brady Tweet "Threatens Millions of Ordinary Internet Users"
        A new decision from a New York federal judge could have a chilling effect on how we use the internet. This past week, Judge Katherine Forrest of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York held that Vox, Time, Yahoo, and Breitbart, among other publications, infringed another’s copyright-protected image of football star Tom Brady simply by embedding another person’s tweet that contained the image on their websites.

        According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world, “if adopted by other courts, this legally and technically misguided decision would threaten millions of ordinary Internet users with infringement liability.”


      • Canadian Pirate Site Blocks Could Spread to VPNs, Professor Warns

        A group of prominent Canadian ISPs and movie industry companies are determined to bring pirate site blocking efforts to North America. This plan has triggered a fair amount of opposition, including cautioning analyses from law professor Michael Geist, who warns of potential overblocking and fears that VPN services could become the next target.



      • Sweden Considers Six Years in Jail For Online Pirates

        Sweden's Minister for Justice has received recommendations as to how the country should punish online pirates. Heléne Fritzon received a proposal which would create crimes of gross infringement under both copyright and trademark law, leading to sentences of up to six years in prison. The changes would also ensure that non-physical property, such as domain names, can be seized.









Recent Techrights' Posts

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