Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 11/1/2015: Forgetting Munich, Firefox KDE Wallet





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • ‘Linux Advocates’ Throws in the Towel
    Under Schmitz, the site was nothing if not eccentric. Although it lost its “mainstream” appeal (as much as a site focusing on FOSS can be said to be mainstream), it seemed to have gained a following of readers who appreciated Schmitz’s often confrontational style.


  • Desktop





  • Kernel Space



    • Graphics Stack



      • X.Org Is Formally Invited To Become An SPI Project
        Following last month's failed vote due to not having a quorum, SPI on Thursday voted to officially invite the X.Org Foundation to become an SPI associated project. X.Org would live under the SPI umbrella and let the organization take care of its managerial tasks so the X.Org Foundation board and members could focus more on the actual development.


      • The GTX 970/980 Maxwell GPUs Light Up With Nouveau On Linux 3.19
        This weekend I got around to trying out the GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980 "Maxwell" graphics cards with the Linux 3.19 kernel now that there's initial support for these new GPUs via the open-source Nouveau DRM driver.






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments/WMs



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt



      • Firefox KDE Wallet for KF5
        I have a good news for Firefox and Plasma 5 users: I ported KDE Wallet password integration extension to KDE Frameworks 5!

        It seems to me that this plugin is unmaintained because both the released version and the SVN one do not support Firefox 33 or newer. So, as first step I took Guillermo's code and bumped the Firefox version.


      • KDE Version Of Linux Mint 17.1 Released
        In late November was when the MATE and Cinnamon editions of Linux Mint 17.1 were released while today finally marks the official availability of the KDE spin of Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca.


      • Using Krita for ARC comics
        First off we want to thank all the work put in by developers to maintain Krita, and the community that helps to fund and push Krita. At the risk of sounding really cliché, you all help to make our dreams, and many others’dreams, come true!


      • Curses! … I mean, Cursors!
        In the upcoming release of Plasma we’ve done some work on the humble cursor; we’ve added a few missing states, and there will also be a brand new “snow” version, along with minor tweaks to the existing Breeze cursors. But me being lazy and the merge window having closed, there are a great many more cursors which haven’t made it into this release, so I’m putting them here for everyone to use and redistribute.


      • Foursquare checkins via KDE tools
        This post was inspired by another article written by Damián Nohales. During his GSoC work at the GNOME project in the previous year he integrated the Foursquare service into this environment so users can make checkins from their laptop or PC.


      • KDE Frameworks 5.1 & Plasma 2.1 – First Impressions
        Today I took the plunge into the next-generation KDE desktop, performing a dirty upgrade from Kubuntu 14.04 to 14.10 before installing the plasma-5-desktop package; and this is my first impression of KF5.x and Plasma 5. This is also a bit of a primer, because when Plasma 5.2 enters the stage I’m interested to see the comparison and do a second write-up, using my experience in both 5.1 and 4.x as points-of-reference.




    • GNOME Desktop/GTK



      • FreeBSD Finishes Switching Over To GNOME 3.x
        FreeBSD GNOME developers have had various GNOME 3.x components in the FreeBSD Ports repository for months, and with GNOME 2.x now being decommissioned by this BSD operating system, the GNOME3 X11 desktop has replaced GNOME2 on the DVD install media script.






  • Distributions



    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family



    • Arch Family



      • Manjaro Linux - Works For Me!
        Enter Manjaro Linux. This was one of the last distros I’d tried during my hopping days that I really thought had some potential. Based on Arch, which has a lot going for it to begin with, and with extremely well written and maintained documentation and helpful forums, Manjaro is an attractive option, maybe even for the Linux neophyte. I liken it to what Mint does for Ubuntu, in that it polishes things up nicely, adds some useful software out of the box, and makes the installation a breeze. Arch itself can be a scary install requiring lots of reading and step by step, piece by piece building of your system. Manjaro does most of the dirty work for you, especially if you know which desktop you want from the get-go. I knew I wanted KDE, so I grabbed that and was off to the races.






    Leftovers



    • Science



      • Hard landing scutters intended reusable rocket
        The Falcon rocket landed too heavily on the barge and broke apart, according to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, while the unmanned Dragon cargo capsule went into orbit.

        [...]

        "Rocket made it to drone spaceport ship but landed hard," he wrote on Twitter, adding "no cigar this time," so that the 14-story rocket could be reused unscathed for future launches.

        [...]

        NASA has generally had to rely on Russia's Soyuz capsules to ferry astronauts to the ISS since retiring its aging shuttle fleet in 2011.

        Last month, the agency successfully tests a version of its next-generation, long-distance Orion spaceship on a short flight.

        On board ISS is a crew of three Russians, two Americans and an Italian.


      • 'Close, But No Cigar': SpaceX Rocket Lifts Off and Lands With a Crash
        SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket that successfully put a Dragon cargo capsule in orbit on Saturday, but its unprecedented attempt to land the uncrewed rocket's first stage at sea ended with a crash.




    • Security



      • NSA chief: Sony hack a 'red line' for US [Ed: misleading]
        It was critical for the U.S. to publicly denounce North Korea's role the cyberattack on Sony, National Security Agency (NSA) Director Adm. Michael Rogers said Thursday.


      • NSA official feels access to more data is the way to go


      • Pope Philippines visit 'security nightmare'
        As the Philippines prepares for the visit of Pope Francis on January 15, efforts have been stepped up to prevent a repeat of the security breaches during previous papal visits. An estimated 37,000 police and military personnel are being deployed to secure Francis, in what the top military commander Gregorio Catapang Jr described as "the biggest security nightmare" of the government.




    • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



      • France's most wanted woman, Hayat Boumeddiene 'on the run' in Syria: Reports


        The mugshot provided by the police shows a sleepy-eyed young woman, her face and brown hair showing, whom they had questioned in 2010 about Coulibaly.

        She is suspected of being Coulibaly`s accomplice in the murder of a policewoman in southern Paris on Thursday, during a massive manhunt for two brothers who a day earlier massacred 12 people at the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

        Police also suspect she might have been involved in Coulibaly`s supermarket hostage-taking, though she was not identified among the dead or wounded.


      • George Zimmerman Arrested, Allegedly Threw Wine Bottle at Girlfriend
        Florida authorities say George Zimmerman, whose acquittal of murdering an unarmed black teen sparked a national debate on race and self-defense laws, has been arrested for allegedly throwing a wine bottle at his girlfriend.

        The Seminole County Sheriff's Office says the 31-year-old Zimmerman was arrested for aggravated assault in Lake Mary about 10 p.m. Friday and is being held at the John E. Polk Correctional Facility.

        Zimmerman was released on a $5,000 bond Saturday afternoon. At a court appearance earlier Saturday, he was ordered to avoid contact with the woman, who was not identified.


      • The Day CIA Failed to Un-beard Castro in His Own Den
        But, as art imitates life from a bygone era, the plan to kill the North Korean leader harkens back to the days in the late 1960s and 1970s when scores of attempts were made by U.S. intelligence services to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro, including by hired Sicilian Mafia hitmen.

        The hilarious plots included an attempt to smuggle poisoned cigars into Castro’s household and also plant soluble thallium sulphate inside Castro’s shoes so that his beard will fall off and make him “the laughing stock of the socialist world.”


      • President Obama's New Policy on Cuba Could Be a Good Start
        In 1992 Miami Herald commentator Andrés Oppenheimer won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Castro's Final Hour, thus giving "new meaning to the words final and hour," as the late filmmaker and writer Saul Landau would wryly remark many years later. Fidel Castro would survive 11 U.S. presidents, at least eight [PDF] CIA plots to assassinate him, and a few premature obituaries, and live to see world's most powerful country finally give in and recognize -- in principle, at least -- Cuba's right to national self-determination.


      • When the United States Government Broke Relations with Cuba
        From December 1959, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked on numerous projects to assassinate Fidel Castro, even before Eisenhower approved a military invasion. By early February 1960, the United States government had given the CIA the green light to organize an invasion force to be trained in Guatemala and Nicaragua, then ruled by two brutal right-wing dictatorships. Meanwhile, counterrevolutionaries inside the island received training and resources such as incendiary bombs from the CIA to stage terrorist attacks in Havana and other urban areas while fast boats and airplanes engaged in constant sabotage of economic and coastal facilities from bases in south Florida. The Cuban authorities continuously denounced the incursions, the plots and the policy of violence and harassment.
      • Conservative Hypocrisy on the Cuban Embargo
        We are witnessing classic conservative hypocrisy with their predictable opposition to the lifting of the 54-year-old U.S. embargo against Cuba. That includes many Latin American conservatives who have come to view the U.S. government as their “papasito” and who are now lamenting that the U.S. government might no longer be intervening on their behalf in Cuba.


      • Former Commander of Army Special Operations Moves to CIA
        A former commander of Army Special Operations and the officer who led the first Green Berets on the ground in Afghanistan has joined the CIA.

        Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland Jr. is the new associate director for military affairs at the nation's top intelligence agency, the CIA announced in a statement from Director John Brennan.


      • America needs to blow up its entire intelligence infrastructure and rebuild from scratch
        We have the Windows 95 of intelligence. We need Linux.


      • US Drones, Pakistani Warplanes Kill Dozens in Tribal Areas
        The ones killed in the US strike were reportedly ethnic Uzbeks, while the ones killed in the Pakistani campaign were apparently local tribesmen. As usual, no names were provided for the slain.

        This is standard operating procedure for both Pakistan and the US in strikes in the area, as they offer little more than a vague assurance of suspicion in their killings, and never follow through except on the rare occasions when they managed to kill someone they’ve heard of.


      • The Year in Drones
        In October, the US celebrated (if that is the word) its 400th drone strike on Pakistan.


      • Drone Rules in Afghanistan Go Unchanged, And Other Reasons the War Isn’t Really Over
        Though many Americans may not have realized it, December 28th marked what the U.S. government called the official end of the war in Afghanistan. That war has been the longest in U.S. history – but despite the new announcement that the formal conflict is over, America's war there is far from finished. In fact, the Obama administration still considers the Afghan theater an area of active hostilities, according to an email from a senior administration official – and therefore exempts it from the stricter drone and targeted killing guidelines the president announced at a major speech at the National Defense University in 2013.


      • ‘Good Kill’ Trailer: Ethan Hawke Controls Drones In New War Drama [WATCH]


      • Ethan Hawke Pilots Drones in Andrew Niccol's First 'Good Kill' Trailer
        Early this year, the time travel thriller Predestination with Ethan Hawke hits theaters, but it looks like we might get a double dose of the Boyhood star because the drone pilot drama Good Kill just released an international trailer. Hit or miss sci-fi director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, In Time) is at the helm of this film that follows Hawke as a fighter pilot who has adapted with technology and become a drone pilot. However, the task of piloting a drone for 12 hours a day and carrying out targeted kills from thousands of miles away just doesn't feel right for the Air Force veteran. It looks like we might get some provocative political commentary on drones, not unlike what Niccol delivered with Lord of War before.


      • Pentagon Doesn’t Know How Many People It’s Killed in the ISIS War
        The American military may have launched hundreds of airstrikes on Iraq and Syria. But it’s not so sure who was on the receiving end of those bombs.


      • U.S. drone strikes continue in several countries in 2014
        The Bureau of Investigative Journalism claims that 2,379 people were killed by the strikes. The Bureau also says that only 12 percent of the victims actually identified have been linked to any militant organizations. The victims are routinely described as suspected militants.

        In October of last year Rafiq ur Rehman, a school teacher and his two young children testified before the US Congress about the death of his 67 year old mother as she gathered okra in her garden a year earlier when she was killed by a drone strike. Only five members of Congress bothered to show up.



      • Wrapping the world in war
        President Obama promised to end our ‘forever war,’ but he could leave office having wrapped the entire world in war.

        The Obama administration has adopted the view that the United States should use deadly force against its enemies wherever they are. That’s the terrifying and all-encompassing characteristic of America’s war. If enemies of the United States go to Pakistan, or Morocco, or the Philippines, the war can follow them.


      • US drone war: 2014 in numbers
        While there have been more strikes in the past six years, the casualty rate has been lower under Obama than under his predecessor. The CIA killed eight people, on average, per strike during the Bush years. Under Obama, it is less than six. The civilian casualty rate is lower too – more than three civilians were reported killed per strike during the past presidency. Under Obama, less than one.


      • Shrinking targets: Drone hits declined by 32%, says report
        The number of drone strikes carried out in Pakistan by the United States dropped by more than 32 per cent in 2014 as compared with the previous year, according to the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies’ (PIPS) Pakistan Security Report 2014. A total of 21 strikes were reported last year, killing an estimated 144 and wounding 29 over a period of six months.


      • New book eyes drone impact
        Cohn said many people don’t realize that attacks authorized by President Obama have “killed more people with drones than died on 9/11,” and that only “a tiny percentage” were al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders.


      • Opinion: Shine a light on U.S. policy of drone warfare
        An estimated 3,500 people – hundreds of them children – have been killed by drones. While some of those killed were undoubtedly violent terrorists, fewer than 50 (2 percent) were confirmed to be high-level targets, according to a study undertaken by Stanford Law School and New York School of Law. There are numerous allegations, some confirmed by reliable news sources, of entire wedding parties and extended families killed by U.S. drones.

        Also troubling is the blowback these strikes create. They may in fact produce more terrorists, more angry young people who see their families and their countries torn apart by U.S. violence. We can’t help but wonder if U.S. policy may contribute to destabilization and recruitment of terrorists.


      • Will the US Drone War End?
        With the formal conclusion of US-led hostilities in Afghanistan, new attention has been focused on the role the US will play as trainers and advisers to the Afghan National Security Forces. Specifically, what the US counterterror (CT) mission against terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban will look like. President Obama has already increased the residual force for 2015 adding 1,000 extra troops to the previously stated 9,800. Interestingly, commentators have been examining how the US will continue its CT campaign, which relies heavily on controversial drone strikes against known terrorist actors and their positions.


      • Drone Guidelines to Protect Civilians Do Not Apply to Afghanistan: White House Official
        Despite the December 28th "official" end of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, a new Rolling Stone article provides more proof that armed combat is nowhere near over: the Obama administration still considers the country to be an "area of active hostilities" and therefore does not impose more stringent standards aimed at limiting civilian deaths in drone strikes.

        At issue are the Presidential Policy Guidelines (pdf), passed in May 2013 in response to widespread concerns about the killing and wounding of non-combatants by U.S. drone strikes. The new guidelines impose the requirement that "before lethal action may be taken," U.S. forces are required to attain "near certainty that non-combatants will not be injured or killed." It is impossible to verify the impact of this reform on civilian deaths and injuries, because U.S. drone attacks are shrouded in near total secrecy.






    • Finance



    • Privacy



    • Civil Rights



    • Intellectual Monopolies



      • Copyrights



        • Chilling Effects DMCA Archive Censors Itself


          The much-praised Chilling Effects DMCA archive has taken an unprecedented step by censoring its own website. Facing criticism from copyright holders, the organization decided to wipe its presence from all popular search engines. A telling example of how pressure from rightsholders causes a chilling effect on free speech.








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Dark Patterns
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Microsoft Lunduke is still all dramatisation and sensationalism
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Further Media Cut-downs
media reporting about the media being cut
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