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GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • MediaFire Launches Open Source Toolkit for Linux


  • 'Windows Must Go Open Source': What Happened?
    It was a bold prediction in 2009 that Microsoft would take its Windows operating system open source. The advent of Windows 10 says it hasn't come true -- yet.


  • It's Windows *10*, Because It's 10 Years Behind Open Source
    I don't write about Microsoft much here. That's largely because, as I noted recently, open source has won. Well, it's won in the field of supercomputers, cloud computing, Web servers, mobile systems, embedded systems and the Internet of Things. Of course, it hasn't won on the desktop - although there are some interesting indications that even there things may be changing. That means Wednesday's launch of Windows 10 is still important, since it affects the daily lives of many people - far too many. Here, I want to focus on a few key aspects that emerged.


  • Events



    • Weekend Viewing: Catch up on LCA 2015
      With many of the videos from linux.conf.au now available, and a three-day weekend about to hit Australia, there's no excuse not to watch the best talks from last week.




  • Web Browsers



  • SaaS/Big Data



    • Platform9 Claims its OpenStack Private Clouds Can Spin Up in Minutes
      Platform9, which many people have taken note of as a virtualization-focused startup, is making news this week after it announced the availability of Platform9 Managed OpenStack, a SaaS solution that leverages an organization's existing servers into an AWS-like agile, self-service private cloud. Platform9 claims it can allow organizations to spin up an OpenStack private cloud deployment within minutes.


    • Hortonworks' Hadoop Platform Now on Google Cloud Platform
      On the heels of its introduction as a hot new publlic company a few weeks ago, Hortonworks, which focuses on the open source Big Data platform Hadoop, is expanding its reach. Recently, Hortonworks extended its technology partner program with the addition of three new certifications it offers. Hadoop-related certification is a very hot commodity in the tech job market at the moment.


    • Federal Agencies Cautious of Cloud Commitment
      Meritalk’s new report, Cloud without Commitment, underwritten by Red Hat and Cisco, examined federal barriers to cloud adoption including migration, data portability, integration and future agility.


    • Federal Agencies Using Open Source Solutions More Satisfied with Cloud Security: MeriTalk
      Seventy-five percent of federal IT workers want to move more services to the cloud, but are held back by data control concerns, according to a survey released this week by MeriTalk. According to “Cloud Without the Commitment,” only 53 percent of federal IT workers rate their cloud experience as very successful, the same number as are being held back by fear of long-term contracts.




  • Healthcare



    • Living near more trees means fewer antidepressants
      Trees are incredibly smart. They run on sunshine, provide shade in summer and ever so kindly drop their leaves to allow the winter sun through. And now a team from the University of Exeter has determined that they are good for our mental health, too. Londoners who had more trees on their street popped fewer antidepressant pills.




  • BSD



    • PC-BSD 10.1.1 To Bring New System Updater, Qt5 Utilities
      The PC-BSD crew that base their desktop-focused BSD operating system off of FreeBSD put out their 10.1.1. release candidate this week.

      This quarterly update to PC-BSD (v10.1.1) is set to bring a new system updater that supports automatic background updating, improvements to the boot environments / GRUB support, GPT partition installation improvements, all PC-BSD desktop utillities have been converted to Qt5, OVA files for virtual machines, and various other improvements over the original PC-BSD 10.1 release.


    • PC-BSD Releases Updated Lumina Desktop Environment
      Besides working toward PC-BSD 10.1.1's release, the PC-BSD crew have also been working on improving their Lumina Desktop Environment.

      Nearly a year ago I wrote about PC-BSD developing its own desktop environment and months later it was out in alpha form. The new PC-BSD desktop is called Lumina and it's a homegrown environment catered toward the BSDs. The Lumina desktop is FreeDesktop.org/XDG-complaintand they're hoping for it to be an alternative to GNOME or KDE.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Openness/Sharing



    • Linus Torvalds on security, AI tools by Facebook, and more


    • Powering the Open-Source Cloud: What Tesla Motors Can Teach IT
      Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk posted a blog entry on June 12 that was far from typical, but not unexpected for those who know him. He discusses the "wall of patents" his company owns for the manufacturing of electric cars and argues that "these days they serve merely to stifle progress." The result? Tesla has made all of its patents public, paving the way for an open-source electric car. There's a similar movement underway in IT: The open-source cloud. What can IT professionals learn from Musk's recent move?


    • Open Access/Content



      • Find a greater audience for your creative work
        There was a time not long ago when publishing was difficult and expensive. Thanks to services like Lulu.com and Lulujr.com, that's changing. Open source and Creative Commons licensing has also opened the door for teachers and students to inexpensively and easily find a new and authentic audience for their work.






  • Programming





Leftovers



  • ‘It just works’? Not so for too many Apple users
    Apple's journey from 'it just works' to 'it just needs more work' may undermine the company’s reputation for quality


  • Health/Nutrition



    • Ebola Was Only A Warm-Up: The Measles Outbreak Is For Real
      Nearly 80% of Americans — 80%! — even wanted doctors and nurses that treated Ebola patients to be locked into quarantines, despite lack of medical evidence.

      Of course, a mass Ebola outbreak in the United States never materialized.

      But a major measles outbreak is already here. And it’s only going to get worse.




  • Security



    • UK Firms’ Faith In Security Tools And Policies Is Misplaced
      Less than half of firms regularly take basic measures like installing patches and updating software, Cisco research finds

      Cisco has warned that many businesses’ faith in their security tools and policies is misplaced, as just 42 percent of UK firms have highly sophisticated measures in place – less than India, the US and Germany.

      The networking firm’s Annual Security Report found that 75 percent of Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) believe their tools are ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ effective yet less than half take standard steps like patching and updating software to the latest versions, increasing their protection.


    • Adobe fixes Flash flaw in Windows, Mac and Linux
      Adobe has rushed out an emergency fix for a flaw that was affecting users of its Flash Player tool on Windows, Mac and Linux systems.

      Adobe said in a notification about the fix that it was aware that the flaw was being abused by criminals to carry out attacks against Flash Player.

      “Adobe is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2015-0310 exists in the wild, which is being used in attacks against older versions of Flash Player,” the firm said.


    • Friday's security updates




  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • 'We Were Arrogant': Interview with New York Times Editor Baquet
      SPIEGEL: One of the reasons Snowden didn't approach the New York Times was that the paper had refused to publish the initial research about the NSA's bulk collection in 2004. The story was only published almost a year later. Was it a mistake to have held back on that reporting?

      Baquet: I wasn't even at the New York Times then and I don't know what the discussions were like. It's easy to look at it now and say, "how could the New York Times not have published the story," but I won't judge them because I wasn't here, and I don't know what the discussions were like. Bill Keller, the former editor in chief, has said the story was not as good as the one they published.

      SPIEGEL: There are other cases where the New York Times showed a lot of consideration for the US government. In 2011, for example, you didn't print a story about drone bases in Saudi Arabia. Can you give us an insight into what your criteria are for not publishing those kinds of stories?

      Baquet: It was my decision not to publish the drone research -- and it was a mistake. The circumstance was that the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki had been killed by a drone strike. We were writing a story on deadline. A high-ranking CIA official called me up and made the case to leave out where the drone base was. It was Saudi Arabia. I accepted it. And I was wrong. I made a decision on deadline that I regretted almost the next day. We then published the information later. It taught me a lesson. But there are instances where I think you do have to hold things back, and I can think of some instances where I don't regret it.

      SPIEGEL: For example?

      Baquet: During WikiLeaks, there was one specific instance in which there was a really remarkable cable. Moammar Gadhafi was still in power and it was a greatly detailed cable, which clearly came from somebody with firsthand knowledge of Gadhafi's activities. It felt like a great thing to publish, but the government made the case that if we published it, it would be very clear to Gadhafi where it came from, and that the source would be killed. Once I reread that cable in light of that, I think it was pretty clear that the government was making a compelling case not to publish it. As I recall, everybody involved agreed not to use that particular cable.


    • Hollywood uses ‘American Sniper’ to destroy history & create myth
      The moral depravity into which the US is sinking is shown by the movie American Sniper glorifying the exploits of a racist killer receiving six Oscar nominations, whereas ‘Selma’ depicting Martin Luther King’s struggle against racism has received none.

      American Sniper is directed by Clint Eastwood, and tells the story of Chris Kyle, a US Navy Seal who served four tours of duty in Iraq as a sniper credited with 160 confirmed “kills”, and earning him the dubious honor of being lauded the most lethal sniper in US military history.

      [...]

      Anything resembling balance and perspective is sacrificed in American Sniper to the more pressing needs of US propaganda, which holds that the guys who served in Iraq were the very best of America, men who went through hell in order to protect the freedoms and way of life of their fellow countrymen at home. It is the cult of the soldier writ large, men who in the words of Kyle (Bradley Cooper) in the movie “just want to get the bad guys.”




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • Memo To The Media: GOP-Led Senate Is Still Denying Climate Science
      On January 21, 98 U.S. senators voted to affirm that "climate change is real and not a hoax." But the media should not misconstrue that vote as evidence that the Republican-led Senate is now seeing eye-to-eye with scientists on the issue. Moments later, 49 senators voted to deny that "human activity significantly contributes to climate change" - the position held by the vast majority of climate scientists.


    • A small Australian town hit with ridiculously hot temperatures
      The town, with a population in the low hundreds, was forecast to swelter through a whopping 49 degrees Celsius (120.2 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM). By 1:30 p.m., Marble Bar had reached a high of 48.4 degrees Celsius. At 2:30 p.m. local time, the mercury dropped a measly point to 48.3 degrees Celsius, while by 4 p.m. it had only slid to 48.2 degrees Celsius.


    • Benzene found in Montana water supply after Yellowstone oil spill
      A cancer-causing component of oil has been detected in the drinking water supply of an eastern Montana city downstream from a crude oil spill


    • Montana Oil Spill Renews Worries
      Oil spill into Yellowstone River renews concerns about pipeline safety.


    • Big Coal Destroys the Great Barrier Reef and Caley Wetlands
      Instead of protecting it, the Queensland and Australian federal government have traded the crown jewel of the Seven Wonders of the World for exporting more heat-trapping gas and coal and more poisonous mercury vapor.






  • Finance



  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • Muslim-Bashing Not a No-Go Zone for Bobby Jindal
      But Iftikhar was merely suggesting that there is prejudice based on skin color in our political culture–hardly a far-fetched claim–and that non-white politicians like Jindal may tend to bash other minorities (in this case, Muslims) in order to avoid the consequences of this prejudice. (Iftikhar's use of the skin-scrubbing metaphor indicates that he finds this a futile endeavor.)


    • A Cheat Sheet For Obama’s 2015 State Of The Union Speech


      On the other hand, it’s equally hard to argue that Obama has done much to slow the boom down. The administration has resisted pressure from environmental groups to regulate hydraulic fracturing, and Obama’s current energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, has been a fairly outspoken defender of the technique. If anything is holding back drilling, it’s falling prices, not administration policies.




  • Censorship



  • Privacy



    • Privacy is dead, Harvard professors tell Davos forum
      That is the terrifying dystopian world portrayed by a group of Harvard professors at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, where the assembled elite heard that the notion of individual privacy is effectively dead.

      "Welcome to today. We're already in that world," said Margo Seltzer, a professor in computer science at Harvard University.

      "Privacy as we knew it in the past is no longer feasible... How we conventionally think of privacy is dead," she added.


    • Abuse of Parliamentary procedure: introducing the Comms Data Bill into the Counter Terrorism and Security Bill
      Laying eighteen pages of clauses before the Lords to insert the Snoopers' Charter into an already complicated bill is an abuse of procedure. The Lords cannot have time to properly consider the bill, and would deny the Commons the opportunity to consider the clauses as well.


    • Snooper’s Charter – the Zombie Bill that just won’t go away
      Four members of the House of Lords have attempted to bring back from the dead the Communications Data Bill – otherwise known as the Snoopers' Charter. The entirety of the bill that had previously been rejected (or at least put on hold) by Parliament – some 18 pages in all – was added as a late ‘amendment’ to the Counter Terrorism and Security Bill currently passing through the Lords. This is utterly cynical at best, and a total abuse of parliamentary procedure at worst.


    • “Is this 21st Century farming?”
      The Technological boom has touched nearly every industry; it may now be taking over the farming industry. Monsanto and John Deere, two big Agribusiness giants, have started services that allow them to collect minute by minute data from farms as crops are being planted and harvested. Currently available to Midwestern farmers, both companies pledge that the data will benefit the farmers by increasing profits.


    • Wyden, Chaffetz Stand Up for Privacy with GPS Act
      In order to create clear rules about when law enforcement agencies can access and track Americans’ electronic location data Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, reintroduced the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act (GPS Act) today.

      The bipartisan, bicameral bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and in the House by Reps. Peter Welch, D-VT and Jon Conyers Jr., D-MI.




  • Civil Rights



    • Anonymous hackers turn fire on global paedophile menace
      They are best known for hacking government and corporate websites, but in the wake of the Westminster child abuse scandal and allegations of establishment cover-ups, the Anonymous internet collective has a new target: exposing international paedophile networks.


    • US reporter jailed for linking to stolen data
      A journalist with connections to the hacking collective Anonymous has been sentenced to five years in jail after posting online links to stolen data.

      Barrett Brown originally faced charges punishable by more than 100 years in prison, but the sentence was reduced after he pleaded guilty last year.

      He said he broke the law to reveal details of illegal government activity.

      The case drew criticism from advocates of free speech and media rights organisations.


    • British Spy Agency Considers Journalists a Threat, Vacuums Up Their Emails
      Terrorists, hackers, and journalists. According to a recent Guardian article covering new Snowden documents, British spy agency GCHQ considers all of these individuals threats—various levels of threats, but threats nonetheless. One intelligence report goes so far as to say, "Of specific concern are 'investigative journalists' who specialise in defence-related exposés either for profit or what they deem to be of the public interest."

      [...]

      It shouldn't need to be said, but journalists' communications need to be safe from government hands. And yet, we see example after example of the British government going after this important check to power. (The US has done its fair share of targeting journalists as well.) The Guardian, for example, was forced by GCHQ to destroy their hard drives containing Snowden documents. That was soon after David Miranda, partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, was detained and interrogated at Heathrow for nine hours. England has notoriously abused its surveillance laws to spy on journalists, prompting over 100 editors to sign a letter to the British prime minister calling for a stop to the spying and passage of a strong freedom of expression law.


    • US government faces fine after spoofing a citizen's Facebook profile
      THE US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (DoJ) will pay $134,000 to a woman who was the victim of a spoof Facebook page that featured her in varying states of dress.

      The fine relates to a case from 2010 when a waitress called Sondra Arquiett was arrested as part of a drugs bust.

      The BBC reports that Arquiett complained after she realised that images, including some with her in short shorts, had been posted online by a third party.

      She sued the government for its actions and the DoJ set about considering it. The DoJ has admitted what it did, but has not accepted that it acted improperly.


    • Sotomayor to Justice Department Lawyer: 'We Can't Keep Bending the Fourth Amendment to the Resources of Law Enforcement'
      The Supreme Court heard oral argument yesterday in the Fourth Amendment case Rodriguez v. United States. At issue is whether an officer "unnecessarily prolonged" an otherwise legal traffic stop when he called for backup in order to safely walk a drug-sniffing dog around the stopped vehicle. According to a previous Supreme Court ruling, the use of drug dogs during routine traffic stops poses no constitutional problems so long as the traffic stop is not "prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete that mission."


    • Sen. Burr is wrong to recall CIA torture report
      It didn't take long for North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr to stir up his Democratic colleagues on the Senate Intelligence Committee he now chairs. He has sent the White House a letter, The New York Times reports, demanding that copies of an internal CIA report on torture be "returned immediately."

      Burr and some other Republicans didn't like the report released under the previous Intelligence Committee chair, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat. In it, the CIA's use of torture was detailed and documented, and it embarrassed the agency and, for that matter, the country.


    • SSCI Chairman to CIA: We’ll Hide Your Documents if You Hide Ours
      Shortly after he became chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in January, Senator Richard Burr told reporters in his home state that he had no intention of trying to rewrite the committee’s 6700-page, $40 million torture report. Burr said that despite his disagreements with the report, he wanted to “look forward and do oversight in real time.”

      It turns out that Burr’s statement was half true: he doesn’t want to rewrite the torture report. But he does want to help the CIA slip it into a memory hole—along with the Panetta Review, an internal CIA study that confirms the Senate report’s conclusions.


    • Saudi Arabia: King’s Reform Agenda Unfulfilled
      King Abdullah’s reign brought about marginal advances for women but failed to secure the fundamental rights of Saudi citizens to free expression, association, and assembly.
    • Greek leftists Syriza extend poll lead two days before election
      Greece's anti-bailout Syriza party has widened its lead over the ruling conservatives to 6.7 percentage points from six points previously, a survey showed on Friday, two days before a national election.


    • The lesson of the Charlie Hebdo murders is to double down on the Bill of Rights
      The British, forever bragging about how attuned to irony they are, are responsible for some of the most hilariously ironic free speech and privacy violations in the world. There was the man charged with a “Racially Aggravated Crime” because he made a statement criticizing Islam—which turned out to be a direct quote from Winston Churchill. There’s the flat in London surrounded by 32 CCTV cameras—it once belonged to George Orwell.
    • FBI Agent: No Direct Evidence Ex-CIA Man Leaked to Reporter
      There is no direct evidence that an ex-CIA officer leaked details of a classified mission to a journalist, but phone and email records show the two were in frequent contact, an FBI agent testified Wednesday.

      Prosecutors wrapped up their case with a web of circumstantial evidence based on the phone and email contacts.

      Former CIA man Jeffrey Sterling, 47, of O'Fallon, Missouri, is charged with leaking information about a purportedly botched operation to thwart Iran's nuclear program to New York Times reporter James Risen, who wrote about the mission in the 2006 book "State of War." Risen has refused to disclose his sources.


    • Compare and Contrast: Obama’s Reaction to the Deaths of King Abdullah and Hugo Chávez
      Hugo Chávez was elected President of Venezuela four times from 1998 through 2012 and was admired and supported by a large majority of that country’s citizens, largely due to his policies that helped the poor. King Abdullah was the dictator and tyrant who ran one of the most repressive regimes on the planet.

      The effusive praise being heaped on the brutal Saudi despot by western media and political figures has been nothing short of nauseating; the UK Government, which arouses itself on a daily basis by issuing self-consciously eloquent lectures to the world about democracy, actually ordered flags flown all day at half-mast to honor this repulsive monarch.
    • Saudi Arabia’s Tyrant King Misremembered as Man of Peace
      It’s not often that the unelected leader of a country which publicly flogs dissidents and beheads people for sorcery wins such glowing praise from American officials. Even more perplexing, perhaps, have been the fawning obituaries in the mainstream press which have faithfully echoed this characterization of Abdullah as a benign and well-intentioned man of peace.

      Tiptoeing around his brutal dictatorship, The Washington Post characterized Abdullah as a “wily king” while The New York Times inexplicably referred to him as “a force of moderation”, while also suggesting that evidence of his moderation included having had: “hundreds of militants arrested and some beheaded”. (emphasis added)

      While granting that Abdullah might be considered a relative moderate within the brazenly anachronistic House of Saud, the fact remains that he presided for two decades over a regime which engaged in wanton human rights abuses, instrumentalized religious chauvinism, and played a hugely counterrevolutionary role in regional politics.

      Above all, he was not a leader who shied away from both calling for and engineering more conflict in the Middle East.


    • The best story about the Queen and King Abdullah you will read today
      King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia died yesterday aged 90, and there has been some controversy over the tributes paid by world leaders to the ruler of a repressive regime that carries out public beheadings and bans women from driving.

      [...]

      You are not supposed to repeat what the Queen says in private conversation. But the story she told me on that occasion was one that I was also to hear later from its subject - Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia - and it is too funny not to repeat. Five years earlier, in September 1998, Abdullah had been invited up to Balmoral, for lunch with the Queen. Following his brother King Fahd’s stroke in 1995, Abdullah was already the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. After lunch, the Queen had asked her royal guest whether he would like a tour of the estate. Prompted by his Foreign Minister, the urbane Prince Saud, an initially hesitant Abdullah agreed. The royal Land Rovers were drawn up in front of the castle. As instructed, the Crown Prince climbed into the front seat of the front Land Rover, with his interpreter in the seat behind. To his surprise, the Queen climbed into the driving seat, turned the ignition and drove off. Women are not - yet - allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, and Abdullah was not used to being driven by a woman, let alone a queen. His nervousness only increased as the Queen, an Army driver in wartime, accelerated the Land Rover along the narrow Scottish estate roads, talking all the time. Through his interpreter, the Crown Prince implored the Queen to slow down and concentrate on the road ahead.


    • Emails show FBI investigating Sen. Bob Menendez for sleeping with underage Dominican prostitutes
      Documents published online for the first time Thursday indicate that the FBI opened an inquiry into New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez on August 1, 2012, focusing on repeated trips he took to the Dominican Republic with longtime campaign contributor and Miami eye doctor Salomon Melgen. TheDC reported in November that Menendez purchased the service of prostitutes in that Caribbean nation at a series of alcohol-fueled sex parties.
    • Saudi Arabia: Activist Raif Badawi 'may not serve whole 10-year prison sentence'
      Saudi Arabian activist blogger Raif Badawi, sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for advocating free speech, may not have to serve the full decade in prison.

      Badawi family's spokesperson, Dr Elham Manea, who is also an associate professor specialising in the Middle East at University of Zurich, said on Facebook that the news was delivered by a Saudi ambassador in Germany.

      She wrote: "Saudi ambassador in Germany informed NDR-TV that flogging will not continue and ‪#‎RaifBadawi‬ maybe not have to serve the whole time in prison."


    • Barrett Brown Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison After Reporting on Hacked Private Intelligence Firms


      A journalist and activist accused of working with Anonymous has been given a five-year prison term and ordered to pay nearly $900,000 in restitution and fines. Barrett Brown was sentenced on Thursday after pleading guilty last year to charges of transmitting threats, accessory to a cyber-attack, and obstruction of justice. Supporters say Brown has been unfairly targeted for investigating the highly secretive world of private intelligence and military contractors. After his sentencing on Thursday, Brown released a satirical statement that read in part: "Good news! — The U.S. government decided today that because I did such a good job investigating the cyber-industrial complex, they’re now going to send me to investigate the prison-industrial complex." We discuss Brown’s case with Kevin Gallagher, a writer, activist and systems administrator who heads the Free Barrett Brown support network. He says that the public should not believe what the government says about Brown.


    • Families of disabled men slam Legoland in the Trafford Centre for decision to 'ban' adults without children
      Campaigners blast policy as 'discrimination' but attraction cites 'child protection' rules after turning away adults and their carers
    • In Victory for Gov’t Whistleblowers, Supreme Court Sides with Fired TSA Air Marshal Who Spoke Out


      A major U.S. Supreme Court decision has upheld the right of federal employees to become whistleblowers. The case centers on former Transportation Security Administration Federal Air Marshal Robert MacLean. In July 2003, MacLean revealed to an MSNBC reporter that the Department of Homeland Security had decided to stop assigning air marshals to certain long-distance flights in order to save money, despite warnings of a potential plot to hijack U.S. airplanes. MSNBC’s report on the story sparked outcry, and the policy was quickly reversed. MacLean was fired three years later after admitting to being the story’s source. He filed a lawsuit over his dismissal, sparking a multi-year legal battle that ended earlier this week when the Supreme Court ruled on his behalf in a 7-to-2 decision. At issue was whether MacLean’s actions could be protected by the U.S. Whistleblower Protection Act, a law that protects employees if a disclosure exposes unlawful conduct, gross mismanagement or threats to public safety. We speak to Robert MacLean and attorney Neal Katyal, who argued MacLean’s case before the Supreme Court. Katyal is the former acting solicitor general of the United States.


    • Lagarde calls King Abdullah ‘advocate of women’ - despite ban on driving
      Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, has praised King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia as a “strong advocate of women”, but human rights campaigners said his reign only brought marginal advances for women, while failing to secure fundamental rights of free expression, association, and assembly.

      In paying tribute to the king who died on Thursday aged 90, Lagarde – who has expressed her concerns over gender inequality – described the monarch as a great leader who implemented many reforms.

      “In a very discreet way, he was a strong advocate of women. It was very gradual, appropriately so probably for the country. I discussed that issue with him several times and he was a strong believer,” said Lagarde, who is attending the Davos economic forum in Switzerland.
    • Louise Mensch Just Told David Cameron And The Queen To 'F**k Off' Over Saudi King Abdullah
      Former Conservative MP Louise Mensch has unleashed an extraordinary tirade on Twitter, instructing both David Cameron and the Queen to “fuck off”.

      Mensch became enraged after the British Government declared all UK flags be flown at half mast to mourn the death of King Abdullah on Thursday.

      She began by criticising US President Barack Obama for paying tribute to the late royal, whom Mensch said “whipped women for driving & is currently starving his daughters.”




  • Internet/Net Neutrality



    • Apple must make BlackBerry apps under net neutrality laws, claims BlackBerry CEO
      The chief executive of BlackBerry has claimed that Apple should be forced to make apps for BlackBerry users under net neutrality laws currently being debated in the US.


    • The Cobweb
      Two weeks before the crash, Anatol Shmelev, the curator of the Russia and Eurasia collection at the Hoover Institution, at Stanford, had submitted to the Internet Archive, a nonprofit library in California, a list of Ukrainian and Russian Web sites and blogs that ought to be recorded as part of the archive’s Ukraine Conflict collection. Shmelev is one of about a thousand librarians and archivists around the world who identify possible acquisitions for the Internet Archive’s subject collections, which are stored in its Wayback Machine, in San Francisco. Strelkov’s VKontakte page was on Shmelev’s list. “Strelkov is the field commander in Slaviansk and one of the most important figures in the conflict,” Shmelev had written in an e-mail to the Internet Archive on July 1st, and his page “deserves to be recorded twice a day.”


    • Blogger who uncovered GOP leader's white supremacist ties had home Internet lines cut
      Earlier this month, Lamar White, Jr. woke up to discover his Internet connection wasn't working. He had just gotten a new cable box installed at his Dallas, Texas, home and figured his lines should still be in ship shape because it hadn't been long since they were last checked.

      Rather than just assume he had crappy Internet service, like you or I might, he thought his home computer system was on the receiving end of a denial of service attack. White, you see, is something of a major figure in the political media. And there are a good many people who may want revenge for the things he's dug up.


    • Media Shouldn't Be Fooled By Fake Neutrality Bill Backed By Broadband Industry
      What The Media Should Know About The GOP Bill That Is Net Neutrality In Name Only


    • Net Neutrality: the Member States and Commission about to turn their back on the Parliament's Vote!
      On January 20th, La Quadrature du Net along with other European organisations co-signed an open letter [pdf] calling once more the EU's Member States to adopt clear and strict rules to protect Net Neutrality. However, a negociation document shows that at the same moment, Member States were one towards the end of a free Internet. It is time for the European Parliament to get back to work on this issue and defend a real protection of Net Neutrality, against oligopolistic strategies of the large Internet actors backed by governments.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights



      • Torrent Site Blockades Are Disproportional, Greek Court Rules


        A Greek anti-piracy group has lost its bid to have various torrent sites blocked by local Internet providers. The Athens Court ruled that barring access to torrent sites such as KickassTorrents and The Pirate Bay is disproportionate and unconstitutional, while hindering the ISPs' entrepreneurial freedoms.


      • Bomber Tries Copyright Troll Argument to Unmask Critic


        A man jailed for 50 years in the United States for multiple bombings, drug smuggling and felony perjury, is attempting to leverage copyright troll cases to his advantage. Brett Kimberlin says that since a court has already revealed the identities of BitTorrent users, it should also unmask his critics.


      • Transparency is Necessary to Ensure the Copyright Industry Won't Sneak Policies Through the Back Door
        Policy makers intending to promote creativity have always overemphasized the importance of "copyright protection" without addressing the wide range of other concerns that are necessary to consider when making comprehensive innovation policy. In an era where everyone, with the use of their computer or mobile device, can easily be a consumer, creator, and a critic of art, we can not afford to ignore this digital ecosystem of artistry and innovation. Yet copyright remains completely out of touch with the reality of most creators today, while the rules that do pass seem to stray even further from addressing their needs.








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Recent Techrights' Posts

KillerStartups.com is an LLM Spam Site That Sometimes Covers 'Linux' (Spams the Term)
It only serves to distract from real articles
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, November 21, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, November 21, 2024
Gemini Links 21/11/2024: Alphabetising 400 Books and Giving the Internet up
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: TikTok Fighting Bans, Bluesky Failing Users
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: SpaceX Repeatedly Failing (Taxpayers Fund Failure), Russian Disinformation Spreading
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Earned Two More Honorary Doctorates Last Month
Two more doctorate degrees
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 20, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: Game Recommendations, Schizo Language
Links for the day
Growing Older and Signs of the Site's Maturity
The EPO material remains our top priority
Did Microsoft 'Buy' Red Hat Without Paying for It? Does It Tell Canonical What to Do Now?
This is what Linus Torvalds once dubbed a "dick-sucking" competition or contest (alluding to Red Hat's promotion of UEFI 'secure boot')
Links 20/11/2024: Politics, Toolkits, and Gemini Journals
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: 'The Open Source Definition' and Further Escalations in Ukraine/Russia Battles
Links for the day
[Meme] Many Old Gemini Capsules Go Offline, But So Do Entire Web Sites
Problems cannot be addressed and resolved if merely talking about these problems isn't allowed
Links 20/11/2024: Standing Desks, Broken Cables, and Journalists Attacked Some More
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: Debt Issues and Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban
Links for the day
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar), Magna Carta and Debian Freedoms: RIP
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar) & Debian: from Frans Pop to Euthanasia
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
This Article About "AI-Powered" is Itself LLM-Generated Junk
Trying to meet quotas by making fake 'articles' that are - in effect - based on plagiarism?
Recognizing invalid legal judgments: rogue Debianists sought to deceive one of Europe's most neglected regions, Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Google-funded group distributed invalid Swiss judgment to deceive Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: BeagleBone Black and Suicide Rates in Switzerland
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 19, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 19, 2024