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Links 25/7/2016: Linux 4.7 Final, PostgreSQL 9.6 Beta 3





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Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Internet of Things Web Editor Open Source Project Started
    The StackSavings Web Editor has recently been launched as an open source project. The aim of the project is to be a Web Editor for the Internet of Things.


  • Fluxday: A no-fuss open source productivity tracker
    It would have been easier if we already had an open source platform we could build on. Although we did manage to build it quickly without disrupting our main projects, other companies might find it easier to adopt an existing platform rather than allocate extra time towards building an in-house productivity management application. For that reason, we've made Fluxday an open source project.


  • Reasons Organizations Opt Not to Use Open Source Software
    Black Duck's latest open source survey shows that a majority of companies are now using open source. So what's stopping the rest? Here's a look at the reasons why businesses might choose not to use open source, or avoid partnering with companies that do.


  • Virtuozzo’s new Kernel-based Virtual Machine for ISPs is a ‘huge thing,’ years in the making


  • Virtuozzo debuts hyper-converged offering based on open source technology and optimized KVM
    Virtuozzo announced on Monday general availability of Virtuozzo 7. With this new version, the platform ushers in a new level of portability, reliability, and performance, especially for customers in large data center environments where vendor flexibility, as well as low latency, is critical.


  • Wire private messenger goes open source, invites users to build compatible clients
    Wire is one in a growing number of messaging services that promise to keep their users' correspondence private. In this case, the service offers encrypted text, voice, and video calls. And now it's open source.


  • Messaging Service ‘Wire’ Goes Open-Source, Invites Devs to Build Clients
    Encrypted text, voice and audio calling service Wire has gone open-source, releasing the code for everything devs need to build their own apps that interface with the service.


  • Apache Kudu is the Latest Open Source Big Data Project to Reach Top-Level Status
    For the past year, we've taken note of the many projects that the Apache Software Foundation has been elevating to Top-Level Status. The organization incubates more than 350 open source projects and initiatives, and has squarely turned its focus to Big Data and developer-focused tools in recent months. As Apache moves Big Data projects to Top-Level Status, they gain valuable community support and more.

    Continuing the trend, the foundation has announced that Apache Kudu has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP). Kudu is an open source columnar storage engine built for the Apache Hadoop ecosystem designed to enable flexible, high-performance analytic pipelines.

    “Under the Apache Incubator, the Kudu community has grown to more than 45 developers and hundreds of users,” said Todd Lipcon, Vice President of Apache Kudu and Software Engineer at Cloudera. “We are excited to be recognized for our strong Open Source community and are looking forward to our upcoming 1.0 release.”


  • Events



  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla



      • Susan Chen, Promoted to Vice President of Business Development
        Susan joined Mozilla in 2011 as Head of Strategic Development. During her five years at Mozilla, Susan has worked with the Mozilla team to conceive and execute multiple complex negotiations and concluded hundreds of millions dollar revenue and partnership deals for Mozilla products and services.






  • SaaS/Back End



  • Databases



    • PostgreSQL 9.6 Beta 3 Released
      The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces today that the third beta release of PostgreSQL 9.6 is available for download. This release contains previews of all of the features which will be available in the final release of version 9.6, including fixes to many of the issues found in the first and second betas. Users are encouraged to continue testing their applications against 9.6 beta 3.


    • PostgreSQL 9.6 Beta 3 Released This Week
      PostgreSQL 9.6 Beta 3 was released on Thursday as this major database update gets closer to its general availability release later this year.

      PostgreSQL 9.6 Beta 3 brings a number of fixes to the parallel query support and fixes many other items throughout the PostgreSQL server code. The official 9.6 release isn't expected until "late 2016."




  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)



  • BSD



    • OpenBSD 6.0 tightens security by losing Linux compatibility
      OpenBSD, one of the more prominent variants of the BSD family of Unix-like operating systems, will be released at the beginning of September, according to a note on the official OpenBSD website.

      Often touted as an alternative to Linux. OpenBSD is known for the lack of proprietary influence on its software and has garnered a reputation for shipping with better default security than other OSes and for being highly vigilant (some might say strident) about the safety of its users. Many software router/firewall projects are based on OpenBSD because of its security-conscious development process.


    • Google's "Lanai" Backend In LLVM Seeks Non-Experimental Status


    • DragonFlyBSD 4.6 Up To Release Candidate Stage
      DragonFlyBSD 4.6 is up to the release candidate stage and the official release of this next feature version is coming in just a few days.

      The release candidate to DragonFlyBSD 4.6 is now available for testing.




  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration



    • OpenKnit: Open Source Digital Knitting
      OpenKnit is an open-source, low cost, digital fabrication tool that affords the user the opportunity to create her/his own bespoke clothing from digital files. Starting from the raw material, the yarn, and straight to its end use, a sweater for example, in about an hour. Designing and producing clothes digitally and wearing them can now happen in the very same place, rewarding the user with the ability to make decisions regarding creativity and responsibility. (homepage) (full instructions for a Wally120 open-source knitting)


    • Open Access/Content



      • The Open Patient: Advocating for open access to medical data
        Steven Keating had always been interested in data and learning about things, which is why he volunteered to do a research scan when he was a student. The scan revealed an abnormality. In 2014, the abnormality had grown into a massive tumor. Soon he learned that there were many barriers keeping him from accessing his own data. "And that's what I've been sharing, which is this question: How come as a patient we're last in line for our own data? How come my doctors and my university researchers can see my tumor genome and I can't?"








Leftovers



  • Health/Nutrition



    • Sports Federations, Not IOC, Will Decide Which Russian Athletes Can Play In Rio
      On Sunday, the International Olympic Committee decided not to call for a blanket ban on Russia for the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games after reports of doping scandals endangered the country’s chances of competing.

      Instead, individual international sports federations will make the call on whether or not Russian athletes can compete in the games — which means they will review them all, one by one. Athletes who have been served suspensions for doping will not be allowed in the games. That includes athletes who already completed their suspensions, according to The Wall Street Journal. The findings must be upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to be final.




  • Security



  • Defence/Aggression



    • Afghanistan: President Obama’s Vietnam
      President Obama is keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan fighting an unwinnable war for fear of the political consequences if he faces reality and admits defeat, an echo of Vietnam, writes Jonathan Marshall.


    • Islamophobia Kills: German Munich shooter admired Breivik, Killed Turks
      The shooter at a Munich mall last week who killed 9 and left 27 wounded was an admirer of far right wing Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, and appears to have hated Muslims.

      Although David Sonboly was of Iranian heritage, he does not seem to have been a Muslim and appears to have felt no connection to that community.

      Iranians are mostly Shiite Muslims who are often victimized by ISIL, so it wasn’t ever very likely that his rampage was inspired by that organization.

      The current insistence by politicians and journalists on treating anyone with a drop of Middle Eastern blood as a “Muslim” is frankly racist. After all, millions of people of Christian heritage would now insist that they are not Christians. Why can’t people from Muslim families convert to other things, too? Sonboly appears to have considered himself a Christian or at least a Westerner.

      As with many mass killers, the 18-year-old likely had mental problems. But to the extent that he was driven by ideology, it was the that of the Islamophobia Network. Sonboly was part of a far-right anti-Muslim tendency that now haunts Europe .

      As many attacks in Europe are carried out by the white far right as by Muslims.

      The ambiguities of identity were on display in this case, since Sonboly shouted “I am German!” at the Turkish-Germans he targeted, whom he called ‘Fucking Turks.’ He seems to have blamed practicing Muslims for creating the conditions of prejudice toward people who looked like him in Germany.


    • Crimes Against the Future/The World After Me: Eternal 'Wartime' in America
      I wonder, too – how could I not with my future life as a “refugee” in mind? – about the 65 million human beings uprooted from their homes in 2015 alone, largely in places where we Americans have been fighting our wars for this last decade and a half. And it’s hard not to notice how many more have followed in their path this year, including at least 80,000 of the Sunni inhabitants of Iraq’s recently “liberated” and partially destroyed city of Fallujah. In the process, tens of millions of them have remained internal exiles in their own country (or what is left of it), while tens of millions have officially become refugees by crossing borders into Turkey, Lebanon, or Jordan, by taking to the seas in flimsy, overcrowded craft heading for Greece (from Turkey) or Italy (from Libya) moving onward in waves of desperation, hope, and despair, and drowning in alarming numbers. At the end of their journeys, they have sometimes found help and succor, but often enough only hostility and loathing, as if they were the ones who had committed a crime, done something wrong.


    • Political Correctness: Handle with Care
      Racial, gender, and ethnic diversity matters, of course, but political correctness (PC) tied to bourgeois identity politics can be deadly to Left thinkers and activists and to the causes of peace and social justice. Part of what made the deeply conservative Barack Obama attractive to the U.S. corporate and imperial establishment during the long run up to the 2008 presidential election was the American power elite’s reasonable, born-out expectation that Obama’s skin color and status as a First Black President (FBP) would help make progressives, leftists, and serious liberals reluctant to forthrightly protest his coming service to the nation’s unelected and interrelated dictatorships of money, class, empire, and (curiously and stealthily enough) white privilege. Smart power brokers calculated correctly that political correctness around race – and the related fear of being considered racist because one dared to criticize a FBP – would help keep the left in check on Obama’s corporatist, Wall Street-pleasing, and imperial policies.


    • Ansbach explosion: Syrian asylum seeker blows himself up in Germany
      A failed Syrian asylum seeker has blown himself up and injured 12 other people with a backpack bomb near a festival in the south German town of Ansbach.

      The state of Bavaria's interior minister said the 27-year-old man had detonated the device after being refused entry to the music festival.

      About 2,500 people were evacuated from the venue after the explosion.

      Bavaria has been on edge since a knife rampage on a train claimed by so-called Islamic State last Monday.

      The Ansbach blast is reported to have happened at about 22:10 (20:10 GMT) outside the Eugens Weinstube bar in the centre of the town, which has a population of 40,000 and is home to a US military base.


    • Two dead, 14 wounded in shooting at Florida nightclub: U.S. media
      The shooting comes the month after a massacre at a nightclub in the Florida city of Orlando, in which a lone gunman killed 49 people in the deadliest mass shooting in U.s. history.


    • In troubled times, Germans embrace ‘Mommy’ Merkel
      Nothing erodes public confidence in the ruling class like political upheaval, violence and economic uncertainty. Yet in Germany these days, that combustible mix is fueling a quiet revival of Angela Merkel’s political fortunes.

      The weekend violence in Germany, which began with the deadly rampage by a bloodthirsty teen in Munich and ended with a suicide bombing in a small Bavarian city, marked the latest in a series of events, from the U.K. referendum to an ISIL-inspired hatchet attack on a German commuter train, that have unnerved the Merkel Republic.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature



    • The Clean Energy Revolution Starts Now
      This weekend, we’re bringing the call for clean energy to Philadelphia in a big way, and if you want a ban on fracking, you won’t want to miss this.


    • Mass killing of elephants: Will the EU go on turning a blind eye?
      However, the EU continues to turn a deaf ear to the calls for a total ivory trade ban. On 1 July 2016, the European Commission decided that a global ivory trade ban did “not seem justified” and encouraged the Council to take a position against “a general closure of domestic ivory markets.”

      This recommendation comes ahead of the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP17) to the 1976 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which will take place in South Africa from 24 September- 5 October and in which 182 member states of CITES will participate.


    • How Utah coal interests helped push a secret plan to export coal from California
      One by one, the seven council members present voted to uphold the ban on transporting coal. The decision was finalized by a second vote on July 19, leaving the proposed $250 million project in limbo. Without coal as one of the terminal’s possible bulk commodities, proponents warned, it would be at risk of losing critical funding — depriving an economically struggling neighborhood of job opportunities. Critics of the plan, however, worried that transporting millions of tons of coal by rail — even in covered cars — through West Oakland poses a public health and safety risk to local residents, who already experience high levels of air pollution.


    • Northwest Tribes Band Together to Stop Oil-by-Rail
      There’s no such thing as a good place for an oil-train derailment, but this year’s June 3 spill outside Mosier, Oregon, could have been worse if the 16 oil cars had derailed and caught fire even a few hundred feet in either direction. The derailment was just far enough away from populated areas, including a nearby school and mobile home park, that no injuries resulted, and the amount of oil that spilled into the river was limited. If it had happened another mile-and-a-half down the tracks, the damaged tank cars would have tumbled directly into the Columbia river during the peak of the spring Chinook salmon run.


    • Demonstrators Demand 'Clean Energy Revolution' on Eve of Dem Convention
      With plenty of overlap between them, both climate justice campaigners and supporters of Bernie Sanders held marches and rallies in downtown Philadelphia on Sunday, making their presence and political demands heard a day before the Democratic National Convention officially kicks off.

      Under a banner calling for a "Clean Energy Revolution," the climate march put a focus on key shortcomings when it comes to the Democratic Party's commitment to addressing an increasingly hot planet.

      Mark Schlosberg, national campaign director for Food & Water Watch, which spearheaded the protest with the backing of nearly 900 other local and national organizations, said neither party has shown the necessary urgency when it comes to dealing with the crisis. "Together," Schlosberg explained in a blog post ahead of the march, "we are sending a clear message to our elected officials: we demand a future powered by clean, renewable energy, not one that depends on dirty, polluting fossil fuels."






  • Finance



    • Long queues at Dover may be the first sign of what it means to live outside the European Union


      Perhaps Britain will find, in the uncertain new world it has chosen to live in, that it cannot implement Boris Johnson’s policy on cake – 'pro having it and pro eating it'. Easy as a backbencher, or even mayor of London; not so easy as Foreign Secretary


    • Buddhism and economic transformation


      Economies have no essential nature. Once this is recognized, many more opportunities for change present themselves.


    • Sir Philip Green responsible for ‘systematic plunder’ of BHS, say MPs in scathing report


      ‘What kind of man is it who can count his fortune in billions but does not know what decent behavior is?’ - Frank Field MP, chair of the Work and Pensions Committee


    • Hewlett Packard Enterprise: Brexit, weak pound. A price hike is coming
      Hewlett Packard Enterprise is to bump up the price of its infrastructure gear in Blighty from today, 25 July, blaming the crash in the value of UK sterling currency for the hike.

      According to sources close to the matter, the cost of servers will go up between six to seven per cent, and storage and legacy networking by circa 10 per cent.


    • Theresa May visits Northern Ireland to insist border controls will not be erected after Brexit
      Theresa May will today insist that peace and stability in Northern Ireland is her "highest priority" as she pledges to ensure that border controls will not be erected after Brexit.

      The Prime Minister will travel to Belfast today to hold talks with First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, to discuss delivering stability in Northern Ireland in the wake of the EU referendum.


    • We Must Reject Economic Cannibalism
      "What can I do to fix a broken global economy?" It's a question I've been asked a lot these past few months as I've crisscrossed the US speaking at TED venues, music concerts, the World Affairs Council, bookstores, on radio and TV shows, and at a variety of other forums.

      During this election year it is important to recognize that corporations pretty much run the world. Despite the outcome of the elections, they will continue to do so -- at least until we organize and change the rules that have created the dominant neoliberal system.


    • Fighting for Seats at the Table: A Poor People's Movement in a Rustbelt Town
      The Think Tank is an organization started in 2014 that is modelling a new approach for addressing poverty. Based in Newark, Ohio, the town where Wills lives, the group is made up of people currently struggling with poverty, or who have struggled in the past. The group's goal is to have their voices heard by people who make decisions.


    • Thought we'd escaped TTIP by leaving the EU? Think again - it's setting the terrifying blueprint for our future trade deals
      Despite being without national trade policy for four decades, we can predict a lot about the UK’s future trade deals outside of the EU from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and what we know gives great cause for concern.

      If and when Brexit is completed, TTIP will not directly apply to a UK outside the single market. But with the US knocking on the door to create a trade deal with the UK we know its interests are the same as expressed in TTIP. All the warning signs from TTIP suggest that under the current government vested interests will be satisfied ahead of the wider public interest.




  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics



    • Does Hillary Get It?
      Does Hillary Clinton understand that the biggest divide in American politics is no longer between the right and the left, but between the anti-establishment and the establishment?

      I worry she doesn’t – at least not yet.

      A Democratic operative I’ve known since the Bill Clinton administration told me “now that she’s won the nomination, Hillary is moving to the middle. She’s going after moderate swing voters.”

      Presumably that’s why she tapped Tim Kaine to be her vice president. Kaine is as vanilla middle as you can get.

      In fairness, Hillary is only doing what she knows best. Moving to the putative center is what Bill Clinton did after the Democrats lost the House and Senate in 1994 – signing legislation on welfare reform, crime, trade, and financial deregulation that enabled him to win reelection in 1996 and declare “the era of big government” over.


    • Mission Accomplished at DNC, Clinton Hires Wasserman Schultz for Top Post
      Clinton responds to party chair's resignation on Sunday by thanking "longtime friend" for her service at DNC and immediately naming her as honorary chair of her own campaign


    • Wasserman Schultz to Have a New Role in Clinton Campaign
      Hillary Clinton is thanking her “longtime friend” Debbie Wasserman Schultz after the Florida congresswoman’s decision to step down as chair of the Democratic National Committee. Clinton says that Wasserman Schultz will serve as honorary chair of her campaign’s 50-state program to help elect Democrats around the country.


    • Leaked DNC emails reveal the inner workings of the party’s finance operation
      In the rush for big donations to pay for this week’s Democratic convention, a party staffer reached out to Tennessee donor Roy Cockrum in May with a special offer: the chance to attend a roundtable discussion with President Obama.

      Cockrum, already a major Democratic contributor, was in. He gave an additional $33,400. And eight days later, he was assigned a place across the table from Obama at the Jefferson Hotel in downtown Washington, according to a seating chart sent to the White House.


    • The Far Right Proposals in the 2016 Republican Party Platform


      Here are 50 excerpts from the 2016 GOP platform.

      1. Tax cuts for the rich: "Wherever tax rates penalize thrift or discourage investment, they must be lowered. Wherever current provisions of the code are disincentives for economic growth, they must be changed… We propose to level the international playing field by lowering the corporate tax rate to be on a par with, or below, the rates of other industrial nations."

      2. Deregulate the banks: "The Republican vision for American banking calls for establishing transparent, efficient markets where consumers can obtain loans they need at reasonable rates based on market conditions. Unfortunately, in response to the financial institutions crisis of 2008-2009, the Democratic-controlled Congress enacted the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, otherwise known as Dodd-Frank."


    • At RNC, Media Put a Happy Face on Suppression of Speech
      “News media could either be our ally or our enemy—we wanted them as an ally,” Laurie Pritchett said in a 1985 interview about his strategy as police chief in Albany, Georgia, during Martin Luther King, Jr.’s desegregation efforts in 1962.

      Pritchett famously ordered his officers to enforce the city’s segregation laws nonviolently and arrest as few protesters as possible. He knew that if he had acted as other police departments had—like Bull Connor’s dogs and firehoses in Birmingham (1963) and Jim Clark’s Bloody Sunday in Selma (1965)—news media would show the country how brutally oppressive police were, inspiring greater public support for King’s cause. In short, he beat nonviolent protesters at their own game by exploiting the media.


    • With DNC Leaks, Former ‘Conspiracy Theory’ Is Now True––and No Big Deal


      While it’s impossible to know whether systemic pro-Hillary Clinton bias at the DNC was decisive in the 2016 Democratic primary race, we now know beyond any doubt that such a bias not only existed, but was endemic and widespread. DNC officials worked to plant pro-Clinton stories, floated the idea of using Sanders’ secular Judaism against him in the South, and routinely ran PR spin for Clinton, even as the DNC claimed over and over it was neutral in the primary. The evidence in the leaks was so clear that Debbie Wasserman Schultz has resigned her role as DNC chair—after her speaking role at the Democratic National Convention this week was scrapped—while DNC co-chair Donna Brazile, who is replacing Wasserman Schultz in the top role, has apologized to the Sanders camp.


    • Trump Doesn’t Totally Rule Out Supporting A David Duke Candidacy
      Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump didn’t completely rule out the possibility that he would support a Democrat running against David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, who announced he is running as a Republican for U.S. Senate seat in Louisiana.

      When asked by Meet The Press’ Chuck Todd whether he would support a Democrat if it meant defeating Duke, Trump waffled, saying, “I guess, depending on who the Democrat, but the answer would be yes.”


    • [Older] Faith-based Attribution
      Every network attack against a company like Sony Entertainment, an organization like the DNC, or a government agency like OPM, comes with a series of questions to be answered, including the obvious ones like when did it begin? What was taken? Who was responsible? Are the attackers out of my network?

      Attribution, simply put, purports to answer the question of who is responsible. For example, CrowdStrike investigated the DNC network breach and determined that the Russian government was responsible. FireEye investigated the Sony Entertainment network attack and determined that the North Korean government was responsible.

      It’s important to know that the process of attributing an attack by a cybersecurity company has nothing to do with the scientific method. Claims of attribution aren’t testable or repeatable because the hypothesis is never proven right or wrong.

      Neither are claims of attribution admissible in any criminal case, so those who make the claim don’t have to abide by any rules of evidence (i.e., hearsay, relevance, admissibility).

      The closest analogy for a cybersecurity company’s assignment of attribution is an intelligence estimate, however intelligence analysts who write those estimates are held accountable for their hits and misses. If the miss is big enough (No WMDs in Iraq, missed India’s five nuclear bomb tests in ’98, missed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, etc.), there are consequences, and perhaps a Congressional investigation.


    • Kshama Sawant Shows Up at the DNC to Tell Bernie Sanders Supporters to Vote for Jill Stein
      On the heels of a law-and-order-obsessed Republican National Convention, Democrats are meeting this week in Philadelphia to do their thing. The protests are already more impressive than anything on the streets of Cleveland.


    • Let's debate! Who will be the first woman president?
      On October 16, 2012, my vice presidential running mate and I were arrested. Our crime? Daring to try to attend a presidential debate.

      This year, I hope the American people will demand that Libertarian Gary Johnson and I take our rightful places in the presidential debates. Because Americans not only have a right to vote. We have a right to know who we can vote for.
    • In political turnabout, Democrats play soft-on-Russia card by linking Trump to Putin
      For decades, Republicans were the fiercest of Cold Warriors, fighting the spread of communism and, not incidentally, winning elections by painting Democrats as the party of the frail and feckless.
    • The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald on What’s Wrong (and Right) With the Media
      First of all, I think that a lot of coverage decisions are often made subconsciously. Most journalists think that they don’t actually make decisions about what’s newsworthy and what isn’t and their media outlets cover anything that’s newsworthy. And this is plainly not the case; there’s huge numbers of obviously newsworthy stories that are routinely, systemically ignored by large media outlets. And sometimes it’s just a by-product of the news-cycle rhythms, but a lot of times there are clear patterns to it. One major pattern is that the political media in particular views everything through a partisan lens. So if there’s some sort of dispute between the two parties, where the Democrats think one thing and the Republicans think another, that tends to get covered, because that’s viewed as an important political debate. But on the issues where there’s bipartisan consensus, where the two parties essentially agree, which is far more common than disagreeing, those tend to get completely ignored. So you look at U.S. support for Israel, or for Saudi Arabia in a foreign-policy context, or the idea that the U.S. should have the largest military in the world, or that we should continue with our state of mass incarceration, or just the general neoliberal economic policies that both parties believe in and support — those tend to be completely excluded from any kind of media discussion or coverage, because it just doesn’t get onto the radar of what matters. So these kinds of choices get made all the time.


    • Green Party's Jill Stein: Trump’s a 'Racist' and Clinton's Not a True Progressive
      Jill Stein believes the American people deserve another choice between “a racist billionaire and a proponent of the billionaire club.”

      As the presumptive presidential nominee for the far-Left Green Party, Stein wants Donald Trump to be stopped. But she doesn’t think Hillary Clinton is the best alternative.

      “Donald Trump, he is a racist, a xenophobic, anti-woman, just anti-working people and it’s very important that that movement, that right wing extremism needs to be stopped,” Stein said in an interview with ABC News at the Democratic National Convention today.
    • Green Party's Jill Stein Offers Glimpse of Hope for Bernie Sanders Supporters
      Protesters in Philadelphia have found a new glimpse of hope: Dr. Jill Stein.

      Though Stein has been running as the Green Party’s presumptive presidential candidate for 13 months now, here in the City of Brotherly Love she’s had something of a bump in public opinion.

      At a protest with a few hundred people today near City Hall, there were several rounds of chants for “Jill Not Hill” and signs lining Stein up with Sanders as the progressive alternative to Clinton.
    • Whether Or Not Russians Hacked DNC Means Nothing Concerning How Newsworthy The Details Are
      As you almost certainly know by now, on Friday Wikileaks released a bunch of hacked DNC emails just before the Democratic Presidential convention kicked off. While Wikileaks hasn't quite said where it got the emails, speculation among many quickly pointed to Russian state sponsored hackers. That's because of the revelation last month of two sets of hackers breaching the DNC's computer system and swiping (at the very least) opposition research on Donald Trump. Various cybersecurity research firms, starting with CrowdStrike, which was hired by the DNC to investigate, pointed the finger at the Russians.

      Of course, whether or not you believe that may depend on how credible you find the big cybersecurity firms like CrowdStrike, FireEye and Mandiant (the big names that always pop up in situations like this). For what it's worth, these guys have something of a vested interest in playing up the threat of big hacks from nation-state level hackers. For a good analysis of why this finger-pointing may be less than credible, I recommend two articles by Jeffrey Carr, one noting that these firms come from a history of "faith-based attribution" whereby they are never held accountable for being wrong -- and another highlighting serious questions about the designation of Russia as being responsible for this particular hack (he notes that some of the research appeared to come pre-arrived at that conclusion, and then ignored any evidence to the contrary).

      Still, the claim that the data came from the Russians has become something of a story itself. And, of course, who did the hack and got the info is absolutely a news story. But it's an entirely separate one from whether or not the leaked emails contain anything useful or newsworthy. And yet, because this is the peak of political silly season, some are freaking out and claiming that anyone reporting on these emails "has been played" by Putin and Russia. Leaving aside the fact that people like to claim that Russia's behind all sorts of politicians that some don't like, that should be entirely unrelated to whether or not the story is worth covering.
    • DNC Comms Guy Mocked Story Saying DNC Is Bad At Cybersecurity; Revealed Because DNC Is Bad At Cybersecurity
      Protip: maybe don't laugh off accusations that you're bad at cybersecurity in emails on a network that has already been infiltrated by hackers. That message did not make it through to one Eric Walker, deputy communications director for the Democratic National Committee. As you've heard by now, the DNC got hacked and all the emails were posted on Wikileaks. An anonymous user in our comments pointed us to a now revealed email from Walker brushing off a story in BuzzFeed, quoting cybersecurity professionals arguing that both the RNC and the DNC are bad at cybersecurity, mainly because they're handing out USB keys at their conventions.


    • Green Party's Jill Stein Wants To Be 'Plan B' For Bernie Sanders Supporter
      Third parties are not new to American politics. The Anti-Masonic Party emerged in the 1820s to campaign against the Freemasons, which its members viewed as a corrupt. The Free Soil Party opposed the expansion of slavery in the years before the Civil War. Others throughout history have emerged to champion various causes, like the Know-Nothings, the Progressives, the Prohibition Party, the Reform Party and many others.


    • teleSUR Host Abby Martin Arrested at DNC
      Martin was covering the DNC protests in Philadelphia for teleSUR.

      Abby Martin, host of "Empire Files," was covering the DNC protests in Philadelphia for teleSUR when she was arrested by police.

      Martin was on her way to a "Democracy Spring" event where there were reports of civil disobedience and arrests being made. The police had closed off all streets surrounding the action.




  • Censorship/Free Speech



  • Privacy/Surveillance



    • Should Facebook And The Rest Of Silicon Valley Invoke More Paranoia Than The NSA?


    • Drug Dealer's Lawyers Want To Know How Yahoo Is Recovering Communications It Previously Said Were Unrecoverable
      Russell Knaggs, the accused drug dealer, apparently utilized a Yahoo email account to hook up suppliers in Colombia with buyers in Europe. To add to the difficulty level, Knaggs did this while serving time for another drug bust. The method used was not all that uncommon. Everyone shared a single email account and composed draft messages. Each party would log into the account, read the draft message left for them, and compose a draft of their own in response. No emails were sent. All drafts were then deleted from both the "Draft" folder and the "Trash."
    • Encryption backdoors appear on EU data chief’s ban wishlist
      Revised ePrivacy laws should guarantee confidentiality of communications and encourage encryption, the European Union’s data watchdog has said.

      European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) Giovanni Buttarelli published his official opinion on the review of the ePrivacy Directive on Monday.

      An overhaul to the so-called Cookie Law is currently be worked on by officials at the European Commission, with the completion date expected before the end of the year to bring it into line with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

      “The EU rules designed to protect privacy in electronic communications need to reflect the world that exists today," said Buttarelli.


    • We Can Stay Safe Without Creating a Surveillance State
      The new Prime Minister spent six years as Home Secretary but Theresa May’s legacy at the Home Office is not one to be proud of. She cut front line police services relentlessly and her record on civil liberties was appalling.

      Two years ago, at the height of summer, she rushed through legislation that gave GCHQ the power to force companies to hand over their customers’ personal data, including phone records and information about emails and browsing history.

      She used the spectre of terrorism to justify the legislation, called the Data Retention and Investigator Powers Act (DRIPA), but it was poorly drafted and deeply flawed. Among other things, it effectively gave the Government the right to monitor mobile phone data and internet browsing history without the approval of a judge. That’s why I took the unusual step of joining forces with my Conservative party adversary David Davis to sue the Government in the High Court.




  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Donald Trump’s War on Islam, Beheld Live from the Cleveland Floor, Part Two
      The Floor might have been a prop for TV, but it was beautiful. Spotlights danced off the red, white and blue bunting, off the tall, triangular signs spelling out the names of the states and the territories, off the delegates themselves, equal and unruly, a republic made flesh. To stand on it gave one a feeling of chaos and joy.

      The states were defined by red carpets running between them, and by their costumes. The Guam wore tropical-print shirts. Texas had Lone Star flag shirts and cowboy hats and supersized enamel pins. North Carolina seemed patrician and a slightly aloof in their seersucker suits. West Virginia wore hardhats and pinstripes waving “Trump Digs Coal” signs. Chunks of Colorado displayed a mutinous, die-hard love for Ted Cruz by walking out of the convention on Monday afternoon. The many-footed whip was walking up and down the aisles, handing out Trump/Pence signs, whipping up cheers of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” often settling for “USA! USA! USA!”


    • Rough handling and restraint: UK forced removals, still a nasty business
      The charter flight on Titan Airways departed Stansted for Nigeria and Ghana on May 24. It was staffed for the UK Home Office by the private security company Tascor, a subsidiary of Capita, who claim to achieve the “safe and secure escorting and removal of more than 18,000 individuals from the UK each year”.


    • 9/11 defense lawyers: Judge let U.S. secretly destroy CIA ‘black site’ evidence
      Defense lawyers for the alleged 9/11 plotters said for the first time Sunday that the government destroyed a secret CIA prison with secret permission of the trial judge, and they learned of it only after the fact.

      Defense attorneys have been complaining about a mysterious destruction of evidence episode in a cloaked manner since May. Prosecutors have said they did nothing wrong but declined to explain with any specificity. After a closed session Friday, during which the judge apparently agreed some details were no longer classified, the defense lawyers laid out what they knew in a Sunday roundtable.


    • History tells us what may happen next with Brexit & Trump
      It seems we’re entering another of those stupid seasons humans impose on themselves at fairly regular intervals. I am sketching out here opinions based on information, they may prove right, or may prove wrong, and they’re intended just to challenge and be part of a wider dialogue.

      My background is archaeology, so also history and anthropology. It leads me to look at big historical patterns. My theory is that most peoples’ perspective of history is limited to the experience communicated by their parents and grandparents, so 50–100 years. To go beyond that you have to read, study, and learn to untangle the propaganda that is inevitable in all telling of history. In a nutshell, at university I would fail a paper if I didn’t compare at least two, if not three opposing views on a topic. Taking one telling of events as gospel doesn’t wash in the comparative analytical method of research that forms the core of British academia. (I can’t speak for other systems, but they’re definitely not all alike in this way).




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • UNDP Initiative Seeks Impact-Driven Entrepreneurs From 10 Developing Countries
      The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has launched a joint initiative with Impact Hub, an international community of social entrepreneurs. The initiative is a platform named “#Accelerate2030,” aiming at supporting and promoting the most promising impact-driven ventures focusing on the UN Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs).


    • Verizon Buys Yahoo In $4.8 Billion Attempt To Bore The Internet To Death


    • Copyrights



      • John Oliver's Story On Campaign Music And Copyright Is... Wrong
        This is flat out wrong in most situations. As we've pointed out again and again and again and again, in nearly all cases, politicians using music at an event have the proper licenses. They don't need to get permission from the musicians so long as either the campaign or the venue have ASCAP or BMI blanket licenses, which they almost always do. The whole point of ASCAP/BMI licenses is that you don't need to get individual permission from the artists or their publishers.

        There are instances, occasionally, where politicians ridiculously don't have such a license, but it's pretty rare. And there may be a few other narrow exceptions, such as if there's an implied endorsement by the musicians, but that's rarely the case.

        Unfortunately, the song from John Oliver and friends ignores all of that, even stating directly at one point that for a politician to use music, you first have to call the publisher. That's wrong. ASCAP and BMI already have taken care of that.

        Perhaps this isn't a huge deal, but one would hope that Oliver would actually get the basic facts right on this too, because every election season this issue comes up and spreading more misinformation about it doesn't help.
      • MPAA Front Group, Pretending To Represent Consumer Interests, Slams CloudFlare For Not Censoring The Internet
        So you may have seen reports last week charging CloudFlare and some other tech companies with "aiding" internet malware pushers. The "report," called "Enabling Malware" was announced in a press release last week from the Digital Citizens Alliance -- a group that describes itself as representing consumer interests online:
        Digital Citizens is a consumer-oriented coalition focused on educating the public and policy makers on the threats that consumers face on the internet and the importance for internet stakeholders – individuals, government and industry - to make the Web a safer place.
        And while the story wasn't picked up that widely, a few news sources did pick it up and repeated the false claim that DCA is a consumer advocacy group. TorrentFreak, FedScoop and Can-India also picked up the story, and all simply repeated DCA's claim to represent the interests of "digital citizens."

        But that leaves out the reality: DCA is a group mostly funded by Hollywood, but also with support from the pharmaceutical industry, to systematically attack the internet and internet companies, for failing to censor the internet and block the sites and services that Hollywood and Big Pharma dislike. DCA has been instrumental in pushing false narratives about all the "evil" things online -- "counterfeit fire detectors! fake drugs!" -- in order to push policy makers to institute new laws to censor the internet. DCA buries this basic fact in its own description, merely noting that it "counts among its supporters... the health, pharmaceutical and creative industries."

        The organization was formed in late 2012, partly as a response to the MPAA's big loss around SOPA. Recognizing that it needed to change tactics, the MPAA basically helped get DCA off the ground to push scare stories about horrible internet companies enabling "bad things" online, and how new laws and policies had to be created to stop those evil internet companies. Much of this was merely speculation for a while, based on the fact that every DCA report seemed to wrongly blame internet companies for other people using those tools to do bad things online. However, it became explicit thanks to the Sony Hack, which revealed that a key part of the MPAA's anti-Google plan, dubbed Project Goliath, involved having the DCA pay Mississippi's former Attorney General Mike Moore (who mentored its current AG, Jim Hood), to lobby Jim Hood to attack Google.








Recent Techrights' Posts

Saving the Planet With Honesty, Transparency, and Sharing (Not Only of Computer Code)
GAFAM is destroying the only habitat humans and other animals have and it'll only get worse
Disinformation About Election Outcomes Even Before Any Election Outcomes (or Election/Voting!)
seeding doubt about election outcomes
Against Outsourcing of Sites and E-mail
Software Freedom is great, but it is not enough if you let someone else do it 'for you'
Drew DeVault: People Talking About My Attack Site (Against the Founder of GNU/Linux) is "Spam"
"Spam on sr.ht mailing lists"
"Oppose the Fascist"
what the founder of GNU/Linux said
Halloween, All Saints Day & Swiss citizenship
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
How Voting Does Not Work
You cannot vote from an "app"
Links 05/11/2024: Bluesky and Enshittification, Pugad Baboy, and Lots of Disinformation Flooding the Web
Links for the day
[Meme] Sweaty Under the Belly
"OK, my critics are 'spam'"
Microsoft Bribing Canonical (to Stop Competing) and Bribing Users to Shun the Competition
Canonical is worth shunning
[Meme] The 2024 'Info Bros'
And prehistoric googling
Computers Getting Worse (for the User) Over Time
This is like Windows-ism coming to "Linux" through the hardware
[Meme] How NOT to Vote
Another form of (mostly-unspoken-of) election interference
An LLM Inside a 'Search' Engine Means That Companies Tell You What They Want, Not What Web Pages to Visit
The future of 'googling' things might be as unreliable as using Social Control Media as a source of information
Google's Debt Has Increased and 'Cash on Hand' Fell by 22.27% This Past Year
These are the numbers that the corporate media intentionally leaves out
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 04, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 04, 2024
There's a Reason Why Techrights is Turning 18 and Tux Machines Will Turn 20.5 Next Month
I started advocating GNU/Linux when I was a teenager
Techrights Has a Long History of Fighting to Expose 'Team Mono' or Microsofters Inside GNOME
Never downplay the malice of Microsoft and its operatives
Gemini Links 05/11/2024: Halloween Over, Intention and Implementation, Bookmark Syncing
Links for the day
Microsoft Lost Nearly Half of Its 'Cash Reserves' This Past Year
Is Microsoft (MSFT) the next Intel (INTC)?
The Year Isn't Over Yet, There Will be More Waves of Microsoft Layoffs
Nowadays Microsoft just tries to conflate/equate its energy waste with "value"
The Corporate Media Blasted Bitcoin for Destroying the Planet and Must Do the Same to Incite the Public Against the 'Great Rigging of Wall Street' (Under the Guise of "AI", the Latest Gold Rush)
"AI" is the next "metaverse" (trailing by a few months)
[Video] Richard Stallman is Back to Halo and Gown (in Peru) With 2+ Hours of a Public Talk
The globetrotting Richard Stallman gave many talks at the end of last month
Going Strong Against the Wind
the abuse serves to emphasise or affirm the importance of what we do
Links 04/11/2024: Squashing More Software Patents and Taiwan at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/11/2024: Typing vs Writing and a Smol (Net) Pub
Links for the day
Links 04/11/2024: LibreOffice Had Adopted PeerTube, "Hey Hi" Hype is a Threat to the Energy Grids (Worse Than Fake-Coins)
Links for the day
[Meme] Social Control Telescreens With Microphone
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Shout-out to Christine From FOSSForce
Who noticed our short story
Not Boycotting Apple (Yet)?
"Apple Forces The Signing Of Applications In MacOS Sequoia 15.1"
statCounter This Month: Android Has Nearly Become Twice as Big as Windows
If it happened, it would be an unprecedented milestone
Why Technical Sites Need Not Make Political Recommendations or Endorsements
Except perhaps when it's for some purely technical role, e.g. FCC chief
[Meme] Apple Freedom
Freedom is... the ability to purchase as many 'i' things as you want
Apple's MacOS Shows Us the Vision of Computing That GAFAM Has for Us (Digital Prisons)
Freedom means "we the people" should be in control, not people being controlled by corporations (contemporary slaveowners)
"Active" as in One URL, One Emoji, and 4 Words in One Week
Diversity community in Fedora
Apple Vision Pro Has Failed, Just Like "Metaverse"
Vision Pro lacks software
Things That Can Improve Election Integrity
the first two relate to "tech"
Rigging Elections is Difficult, Cheating a Little is Not
Avoid social control media, it is the biggest rigger of all
"People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"
On throwing stones in a glass house
Our Stance on Electronic (or Digital) Voting Machines
The simple activity of voting and counting ballots does not require thousands of complex machines with hundreds of millions of transistors and hundreds of millions of lines of code
Microsoft and "Retrospective Re-writing of History..."
in YouTube anyone can make stuff up (as one goes along)
This Coming Week
Go exercise your right to vote
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 03, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, November 03, 2024
Reddit is (Still) Lying and Faking
Don't fall for this phony idea that the above sites are grassroots or edgy; they're not
GNU/Linux Users Are Not Cheaters
The bottom line is, most cheaters use Windows
Links 04/11/2024: FCC, Broadband Industry Spar Over Net Neutrality; Software Patent Squashed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/11/2024: Official MyGemini.Space Announcement
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/11/2024: Election Thoughts, Plagiarism, and LLM Slop
Links for the day
Links 03/11/2024: Deere 'Right to Repair' (RoR) and "Threads Bans Anyone For Mentioning Hitler"
Links for the day
[Video] "El Movimiento del Software Libre y el Sistema Operativo GNU" by Richard M. Stallman
The footage is a bit jittery (taken with a phone apparently, and there's no tripod available), but the sound is OK and the words (in Spanish) are comprehensible
Android at New Highs (47%), Windows at New Lows (24%), Suggests Latest Data From statCounter
So the market share of Android is about double that of Windows
[Video] Richard Stallman's Talk in Spanish (in Peru Last Week)
Alternative URLs too
The Media Focuses on the Wrong Scandal
The real scandal at MIT was Gates
Gemini Links 03/11/2024: Fantasy Life Day and Worship
Links for the day
[Meme] Write Us Drivers and GTFO!
When you realise sanctioning BRICS devs goes against the community
Decommissioning Copper Lines Makes Us Less Safe
We've essentially degraded the robustness or reliability of critical systems
Life of an Addicted Lolicon Who Can Also Code
Personal blog as an open diary
[Meme] Reporting Crime is Not a Crime
Obviously!
Manchester Party for Techrights
If you choose to come, of course we'll cover the cost of the food and treats (but not travel)
Privacy is Not a Crime (in Places Where It is a Crime the Regime is Typically Very Rogue)
Also, criminals lack "privacy rights" to hide their crimes from the public
GNU/Linux "Market Share" in Lebanon More Than Doubled in a Few Months
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Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, November 02, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, November 02, 2024
Nearly 40 Years Without Security Incidents
People who use Windows have come to sort of "accept" that security incidents are part of life or "normal"
[Meme] The Streisand Effect
Simon says, don't bother trying to suppress facts
Streisand Effect at IBM?
Trying to silence your workers isn't the best approach. It only makes colleagues even more curious.
Microsoft is a Gift That Keeps Giving (Future Stories to Techrights)
Microsoft has been trying to silence me using dirty tricks for nearly 20 years
Elon Musk Has Trashed Twitter for Ideological Reasons (and Propping Up Trump in Exchange for Financial and Political Favours Once in Public Office)
In case you didn't leave Twitter already, consider the fact that Twitter's (or "X"... whatever!) future is uncertain
Wall Street Has Demoted Intel, Seeing There May be No Future to Intel
Intel's loss isn't a loss to us
Free Software Licence Compliance is About Security Too
Linux as de facto proprietary off-the-shelf platform