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Links 15/3/2017: Desktop GNU/Linux Praises, X.Org Server 1.19.3 Released





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Life of free software project
    During last week I've noticed several interesting posts about challenges being free software maintainer. After being active in open source for 16 years I can share much of the feelings I've read and I can also share my dealings with the things.

    [...]

    Obviously if you can not cope with the work, let's find more people to do the work. Unfortunately it's not that easy. Sometimes people come by, contribute few patches, but it's not that easy to turn them into regular contributor. You should encourage them to stay and to care about the part of the project they have touched.

    You can try to attract completely new contributors through programs as Google Summer of Code (GSoC) or Outreachy, but that has it's own challenges as well.

    With phpMyAdmin we're participating regularly in GSoC (we've only missed last year as we were not chosen by Google that year) and it indeed helps to bring new people on the board. Many of them even stay around your project (currently 3 of 5 phpMyAdmin team members are former GSoC students). But I think this approach really works only for bigger organizations.


  • Nine Funny Quotes about Free and Open Source Software
    Open source programmers are celebrated for the software they create. But they don't often get the credit they deserve for one trait: Being funny. With that in mind, here's a list of some of the more entertaining statements made by members of the free and open source software community.


  • 6 Operational Challenges to Using Open Source Software
    In today's rapidly evolving markets, companies that consistently innovate, most quickly and at the least cost, will win. And, as you’ve seen in our ongoing series, using Open Source Software (OSS) enables rapid, low-cost innovation. But it can also introduce operational challenges and legal risks.

    We’re at a point now that OSS has become such a mainstream phenomenon that not using open source almost certainly places your organization at a disadvantage. So you must learn how to navigate the challenges and risks in order to remain competitive.


  • GitLab acquires software chat startup Gitter, will open-source the code
    GitLab, a startup that provides open source and premium source code repository software that people use to collaborate on software, is announcing today that it has acquired Gitter, a startup that provides chat rooms that are attached to repositories of code so that collaborators can exchange messages. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

    Gitter has popped up more and more on GitHub, which is arguably GitLab’s biggest competitor. But Gitter chat rooms are also sprinkled throughout GitLab. For example, a repository for a command-line interface (CLI) for talking on Gitter itself has a Gitter chat room.


  • GitLab Acquired The Chat App Gitter And Plans To Open Source It


    Today GitLab announced that it has acquired the chat app Gitter that many communities use for communication. Also, many Laravel sub-communities use it as well, and you can find these through the Gitter Laravel Tag


  • Events



    • Solving Monitoring in the Cloud With Prometheus
      Hundreds of companies are now using the open source Prometheus monitoring solution in production, across industries ranging from telecommunications and cloud providers to video streaming and databases.


    • An Exploration of Citrix Delivery Networks
      While many of us may be more familiar with the virtualization and remote access products from Citrix, Danny Phillips was talking about their products in the networking space during his keynote presentation at LinuxCon Europe.




  • Web Browsers



    • Chrome



    • Mozilla



      • Five issues that will determine the future of Internet Health [Ed: It would be awesome if not rather bitter-sweet and ironic now that Mozilla helps make the WWW less 'sanitary' with DRM]
        In January, we published our first Internet Health Report on the current state and future of the Internet. In the report, we broke down the concept of Internet health into five issues. Today, we are publishing issue briefs about each of them: online privacy and security, decentralization, openness, web literacy and digital inclusion. These issues are the building blocks to a healthy and vibrant Internet. We hope they will be a guide and resource to you.

        We live in a complex, fast moving, political environment. As policies and laws around the world change, we all need to help protect our shared global resource, the Internet. Internet health shouldn’t be a partisan issue, but rather, a cause we can all get behind. And our choices and actions will affect the future health of the Internet, for better or for worse.






  • Databases



    • [PostgreSQL] Parallel Query v2
      A recent Twitter poll asked What is your favorite upcoming feature of PostgreSQL V10? In this admittedly unscientific survey, "better parallelism" (37%) beat out "logical replication" (32%) and "native partitioning" (31%). I think it's fruitless to argue about which of those features is actually most important; the real point is that all of those are amazing features, and PostgreSQL 10 is on track to be an amazing release. There are a number of already-committed or likely-to-be-committed features which in any other release would qualify as headline features, but in this release they'll have to fight it out with the ones mentioned above.




  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)



  • BSD



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Programming/Development



    • Happy IDEs of March: Which code editor do you prefer?
      Welcome to the Ides of March, or as we'd like to call it, the IDEs of March. To celebrate, we're asking our readers to let us know which code editing tool they prefer, whether a full-fledged integrated development environment or a simple text editor. Fortunately, there are tons of open source options out there for you to choose from. Which one is your favorite?


    • There’s More to Life Than Code: How to Keep Your Team Engaged


      She found that her engineers actually were most productive when they not only felt like they were part of an engineering team, but when they felt like they were a part of the entire company. When Rent The Runway created cross-functional teams -- with people from all departments working together to solve single problems -- her engineers were at their happiest and most productive.


    • Teaching Children to Code
      Two experiences in my life have shaped the way I try to talk about technology. One was over ten years ago when I taught a room full of retirees, long-term unemployed, and recent immigrants basic computer skills. I realized that I could throw many of the subjects I had studied out of the window and that the best way to teach people was to give them a reason to learn. Fast forward to last year (and a subject I wrote previously on SitePoint) when I taught programming to a group of recent Syrian refugees. Again, I had to throw away much of my own learning and preconceptions and think afresh.






Leftovers



  • Best social media analytics tools 2017: Eight of the best tools for social media analytics
  • Is This The Future Of Online Publishing? Leading Chinese Social Networks Add Paid-For Content
    One of the topics that generates strong feelings in the online world is adblocking. Many users love it, but many publishers hate it. That's a big problem, because advertising has turned into the main way of funding what appears on the Internet. As adblockers become more common, so the advertising revenue available to pay for creating articles, images, sound and video diminishes. Some want to ban adblockers, but that's hardly a solution: forcing visitors to your site to view ads they hate is not a good way to foster a long-term business relationship. Improving ads seems a better approach, but that's easier said than done, and may come too late now that so many people have installed adblockers.


  • Security



    • Red Hat Product Security Risk Report 2016
      At Red Hat, our dedicated Product Security team analyzes threats and vulnerabilities against all our products and provides relevant advice and updates through the Red Hat Customer Portal. Customers can rely on this expertise to help them quickly address the issues that can cause high risks and avoid wasting time or effort on those that don’t.


    • Google Eliminates Android Adfraud Botnet Chamois
      Google removed a handful of malicious apps from its Play marketplace recently that were found manipulating ad traffic, sending premium text messages, and downloading additional plugins.


    • Google deploys flamethrower on Android ad-fraud apps


    • New Linux Malware attacks AVTech IOT devices [Ed: When a Microsoft propaganda site writes about security it's not about Windows back doors but a 'Linux' thing (password)]
      A new malware that targets Linux-based Internet of Things (IoT) devices has been detected by Search-Lab, a Security research and development firm. This Linux ARM malware called as ELF_IMEIJ.A exploits a vulnerability in devices from AVTech, a surveillance technology company.




  • Defence/Aggression



    • This troubled, covert agency is responsible for trucking nuclear bombs across America each day
      The unmarked 18-wheelers ply the nation’s interstates and two-lane highways, logging 3 million miles a year hauling the most lethal cargo there is: nuclear bombs.

      The covert fleet, which shuttles warheads from missile silos, bomber bases and submarine docks to nuclear weapons labs across the country, is operated by the Office of Secure Transportation, a troubled agency within the U.S. Department of Energy so cloaked in secrecy that few people outside the government know it exists.

      The $237-million-a-year agency operates a fleet of 42 tractor-trailers, staffed by highly armed couriers, many of them veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, responsible for making sure nuclear weapons and components pass through foggy mountain passes and urban traffic jams without incident.




  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting



    • Recognizing the Year’s Worst in Government Transparency
      A thick fog is rolling in over Sunshine Week (March 12-18), the annual event when government transparency advocates raise awareness about the importance of access to public records. We are entering an age when officials at the highest levels seek to discredit critical reporting with “alternative facts,” “fake news” slurs, and selective access to press conferences—while making their own claims without providing much in the way to substantiate them.

      But no matter how much the pundits claim we’re entering a “post-truth” era, it is crucial we defend the idea of proof. Proof is in the bureaucratic paper trails. Proof is in the accounting ledgers, the legal memos, the audits, and the police reports. Proof is in the data. When it comes to government actions, that proof is often obtained by leveraging laws like the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and state-level public records laws—except when government officials seek to ignore the rules to suppress evidence.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature



    • Scientists Are Racing to Prevent a Total Wipeout of the World's Coral Reefs

      The world has lost roughly half its coral reefs in the last 30 years. Scientists are now scrambling to ensure that at least a fraction of these unique ecosystems survives beyond the next three decades. The health of the planet depends on it: Coral reefs support a quarter of all marine species, as well as half a billion people around the world.

      "This isn't something that's going to happen 100 years from now. We're losing them right now,"



    • Scientists to EPA head: You don’t know what you’re talking about

      In sum, the letters argue that Pruitt's statement was wrong on multiple levels. We can measure the impact of humanity on the climate, and there's not much reasonable scientific controversy over that or the results, which clearly show humanity's impact. Continuing the analysis is obviously critical, but there's not much point in continuing debates that, by any reasonable standard of evidence, should have ended years ago.







  • Finance



    • Theresa May is dragging the UK under. This time Scotland must cut the rope
      Here is the question the people of Scotland will face in the next independence referendum: when England falls out of the boat like a block of concrete, do you want your foot tied to it?

      It would be foolish to deny that there are risks in leaving the United Kingdom. Scotland’s economy is weak, not least because it has failed to wean itself off North Sea oil. There are major questions, not yet resolved, about the currency it would use; its trading relationship with the rump of the UK; and its association with the European Union, which it’s likely to try to rejoin.


    • Donald Trump tax: Leaked 2005 document reveals $38m bill

      US President Donald Trump paid $38m (€£31m) in tax on more than $150m (€£123m) income in 2005, a leaked partial tax return shows.



    • Brexit and the new British Constitution
      The set out of a text book on the ‘British Constitution’ used to be straightforward.

      (And yes, the British do have a constitution, it just is not codified. There is a descriptive answer to the question: how is Britain constituted?)

      After the various chapters on the executive, legislature, judiciary, local government, nationalised industries, the police, and so on, there would perhaps be a short chapter on Scotland and Northern Ireland.

      Wales would have an index entry which said ‘for Wales, see Scotland and Northern Ireland‘.


    • The Disappearing Prime Minister


      I was delighted by Nicola Sturgeon’s announcement today, both the content and the manner of her making it.

      I am unsure why she put the window for the referendum as far back as autumn 2018 to spring 2019. Autumn 2018 is fine but spring 2019 is late – Nicola Sturgeon spoke of Scotland needing to declare its choice for independence before the UK actually leaves the EU or very shortly thereafter. But very shortly thereafter is too late. In diplomatic terms, a miss is a good as a mile here and in diplomatic terms at the EU, negotiating to get back in will be much harder than negotiating to remain a part of the EU.


    • Brexit and the UK Parliament
      Nothing illustrates the atrophy of Parliament more persuasively than the fact that the debates regarding the scope of parliamentary sovereignty in Miller began in the courts and affirmed a sovereignty that Parliament was unwilling or unable to claim for itself via Parliamentary process. If Parliament cannot reform itself internally as Stein Ringen calls for in openDemocracy there is a need for an extra-parliamentary movement for a codified constitution which would include the reform of the House of Lords, entrenchment of social and economic rights, a more proportional system of election and a transparent process for any citizen to raise their constitutional concerns via petitioning a constitutional court.


    • Donald Trump set to completely scrap US consumer protection agency, says man expected to lead it

      Mr Neugebauer said his meeting with Mr Trump included discussions about deregulating financial markets and gutting the CFPB.



    • Uber: the illusion of growth

      It’s no secret that Uber is haemorrhaging money.

      [...]

      Instead of Uber’s pockets being lined by the hard toil of its drivers, the company is eating through investment from venture capitalists to keep its low-fare strategy going.



    • NYT Sees Fed on Collision Course With Trump–for Doing What Trump Said to Do


      By failing to remind readers of Trump’s stance on interest rates during the campaign, the Times is doing the president two big favors. One is the pretense that his economic proposals are coherent, which they are not. The other is that they allow him to point to the Fed as a scapegoat when his promises of spectacular economic growth fail to materialize: It will be Janet Yellen’s fault, for raising interest rates like he told her to.


    • Danish shipping company uses blockchain in IBM partnership
      Maersk and IBM test out the application of blockchain technology to track and manage the paper trail of shipping containers around the world

      IBM and Danish shipping giant Maersk are using blockchain technology to digitise transactions in the global shipping industry.


    • Donald Trump Isn’t Even Pretending to Oppose Goldman Sachs Anymore
      The continuity of Wall Street’s dominant role in American politics — regardless of what party sits in power or how reviled the financial industry finds itself across the country — was perhaps never more evident than when Jake Siewert, now a Goldman Sachs spokesperson, on Tuesday praised the selection of Jim Donovan, a Goldman Sachs managing director, for the No. 2 position in the Treasury Department under Steve Mnuchin, himself a former Goldman Sachs partner.

      “Jim is smart, extraordinarily versatile, and as hard-working as they come,” Siewert gushed. “He’ll be an invaluable addition to the economic team.”




  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics



  • Censorship/Free Speech



    • Germany threatens €£44m fines for social media firms that fail to remove offensive content

      The newly-announced measures will also require that the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter delete offending material within a week, illegal material (such as posts containing racist material) within 24 hours, and run 24-hour helplines to help concerned users.



    • Germany threatens to fine social media companies €50m for hate speech and fake news

      If the measures pass into law it will require social media companies to employ staff that monitor content around the clock. Individual members of staff responsible for handling complaints could also be fined up to €5 million for failing to comply with the regulations.

    • NY Legislators Looking At Installing A Free Speech-Stomping 'Right To Be Forgotten'
      There's nothing like being negatively compared to Arizona (remember the short-lived "First Amendment-protected activity is against the law" bill?) to take the gloss off the latest legislative ridiculousness. A new bill in the state legislature would make New York an outlier in constitutional protections (or no, it wouldn't, because it wouldn't survive a constitutional challenge, but for the sake of argument…). For no conceivable reason, the bill seeks to implement a New York-located "right to be forgotten." How that's supposed to work out when it's not the law in the other 49 states remains unexplained.


    • Mob Censorship on Campus
      In today’s political climate, there are sharp divisions of opinion over a range of issues, from health care and climate change to education and labor law. Ideally, a civil debate undertaken with mutual respect could ease tension and advance knowledge. Politics, however, often takes a very different turn.

      One of the landmark decisions of the United States Supreme Court, New York Times v. Sullivan, was decided in 1964 at the height of civil rights movement. Writing for the majority, Justice William Brennan insisted that the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech rested on “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” He then concluded that the First Amendment offered extensive protection to the media from defamation suits brought by private individuals—a principle that was later extended to apply to public figures as well. Defamation suits in his view could chill public debate.


    • PIO censorship in the era of Trump
      President Trump has already labeled major press outlets the “fake news media” and the “enemy of the people.” His administration has blocked major news outlets from a briefing because it didn’t like what they published.

      With that in mind, the public should understand “censorship by PIO” at the federal level: For years, in many federal agencies, staff members have been prohibited from communicating with any journalist without notifying the authorities, usually the public information officers. And they often are unable to talk without PIO guards actively monitoring them.



    • Letter: When censorship is effective
      Spicer is not a minister of propaganda; he is employed as a spokesman for our delusional president and must try to twist Trump's wild statements into more reasonable language. His performance is painful to watch. The worst I can say about him is that he lacks personal honor.


    • Japan Foundation slammed for allowing 'censorship' at art exhibition (VIDEO)




  • Privacy/Surveillance



    • DOJ Argues For iPhone Hack Secrecy By Contradicting Statements Made By The DOJ
      Someone's assertions are wrong. Either the DOJ was lying when it said it would only work on certain iPhones, or it's lying now to protect its secrecy by implying the purchased exploit is usable on other iPhones.

      The DOJ clarified last spring the exploit affected any iPhone 5c and wasn't limited to those running iOS9. But even if that clarification is applied to its arguments in this lawsuit, this paragraph stills points to someone at the DOJ being dishonest. The counterargument that people wishing to prevent the FBI from accessing their phone's contents could just switch to a newer iPhone still applies. And that's the part the DOJ is calling "unvarnished speculation."
    • NSA hacking chief's mission impossible: Advising White House on cybersecurity
      NSA hacking crew bossman Rob Joyce is set to join US President Donald Trump's National Security Council as a cybersecurity adviser.

      Joyce headed up the NSA's Tailored Access Operations division, the spy agency's elite computer exploitation squad.


    • Proposed NSA Headquarters Expansion Under Review
      The National Security Agency is proposing to expand and modernize its headquarters site at Fort Meade, Maryland.

      “For NSA/CSS to continue leading the Intelligence Community into the next 50 years with state-of-the-art technologies and productivity, its mission elements require new, centralized facilities and infrastructure,” according to a newly released Final Environmental Impact Statement for the site.

    • What is Privacy? Why is it even important for us? [Ed: What a garbled and messed up explanation of privacy]
      Privacy is not something that me or you going to read in some social media or any type of website's Privacy Policies and then, Yah, I understood all, they are not taking any single coin from my pocket! Done! It's more sensible and much deeper thinkable point than we can even imagine. One should understand what is privacy and even if we completely read out the Policies and Terms, doesn't mean we are not likely to be at any risk.We should understand what we are sharing and how they can be used.


    • D.C. Circuit Court Issues Dangerous Decision for Cybersecurity: Ethiopia is Free to Spy on Americans in Their Own Homes
      The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today held that foreign governments are free to spy on, injure, or even kill Americans in their own homes--so long as they do so by remote control. The decision comes in a case called Kidane v. Ethiopia, which we filed in February 2014.

      Our client, who goes by the pseudonym Mr. Kidane, is a U.S. citizen who was born in Ethiopia and has lived here for over 30 years. In 2012 through 2013, his family home computer was attacked by malware that captured and then sent his every keystroke and Skype call to a server controlled by the Ethiopian government, likely in response to his political activity in favor of democratic reforms in Ethiopia. In a stunningly dangerous decision today, the D.C. Circuit ruled that Mr. Kidane had no legal remedy against Ethiopia for this attack, despite the fact that he was wiretapped at home in Maryland. The court held that, because the Ethiopian government hatched its plan in Ethiopia and its agents launched the attack that occurred in Maryland from outside the U.S., a law called the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) prevented U.S. courts from even hearing the case.

      The decision is extremely dangerous for cybersecurity. Under it, you have no recourse under law if a foreign government that hacks into your car and drives it off the road, targets you for a drone strike, or even sends a virus to your pacemaker, as long as the government planned the attack on foreign soil. It flies in the face of the idea that Americans should always be safe in their homes, and that safety should continue even if they speak out against foreign government activity abroad.
    • Maker of connected vibrator agrees to destroy sensitive user data

      A sex toy company has settled a class-action lawsuit filed by women who alleged that its connected vibrators collected “highly sensitive” personal information without their consent. [...] and did not admit to any wrongdoing.



    • Sex toy maker forced to pay out millions over intimate data invasion

      A class action was born, and that class action has just delivered some financial compensation.

      The lawsuit was filed in the North District of Illinois Eastern Division District Court, and the settlement is online. The courts decided that Standard Innovation should pay out $4 million Canadian dollars and should now only collect non-identifiable information.



    • These are the 17 House Representatives that introduced a bill to let telecoms sell your personal internet history

      Most Americans don’t know that telecoms and internet service providers store the internet history of their users; even more don’t know that recently introduced legislation aims to do away with privacy protections on this high value data.



  • Civil Rights/Policing



    • Why is ErdoÄŸan picking a fight with the EU over the Turkish referendum?


    • A man’s personal experience with corporate heartlessness


    • Are MPs now delegates rather than representatives?


      This valve is a feature of the UK’s “parliamentary democracy”.

      And, in turn, “parliamentary democracy” is a principle of the (uncodified) British constitution.

      Against this principle is now this relentless and alien doctrine of the referendum mandate.

      The 2016 referendum on EU membership was not legally binding: MPs could have legislated for this but chose not to do so. MPs instead chose for the Brexit referendum to have advisory power.

      But it is now being treated by many MPs as having total power: things are being done in the name of the “mandate”.


    • Brexit Diary – one hurdle surmounted, but another gets more awkward
      But as that obstacle to Brexit falls away, another very much came into view yesterday – not an obstacle as such to Brexit but to a ‘hard Brexit’. This, of course, was because of the the speech of the Scottish First Minister.

      This can be read here. The First Minister announced that there will be an independence referendum when the Brexit proposals become clear.

      The (intended) effect of this speech is to place UK government policy on a wire. If the outcome of Brexit is too ‘hard’ then there will be an independence referendum for Scotland which may support independence.


    • On Brexit, the SNP and Sinn Féin have been waiting and preparing the whole time
      But yesterday, the Scottish First Minister made her move.

      Now we wait for Sinn Féin’s move.

      The SNP and Sinn Féin have been watching and waiting and preparing the whole time.

      The SNP and Sinn Féin have thought hard about how to exploit this political opportunity. Only a fool would underestimate either entity.

      So soon the proper politics of Brexit will begin, with the UK government facing skilled and determined politicians taking full advantage of the power and leverage presented by the government’s policy of a ‘clean’ (ie, hard) Brexit.

      And this is all in addition to the politics of UK’s negotiations with EU27.

      The political Phoney War is coming to an end.


    • Research Shows ATF's Bogus Stash House Stings Target Poor Minorities, Do Almost Nothing To Slow Flow Of Drugs And Guns
      The ATF's sting operations have already drawn plenty of criticism. Not from law enforcement agencies who partner up with the ATF for easy busts or the DOJ which oversees them, but from almost everyone else, including federal judges. These stings result in government-made criminals who are led by undercover agents towards robbing fake stash houses of nonexistent drugs, cash, and weapons. The fun thing about the nonexistent drugs is it can be whatever amount ATF agents say it is. And that amount of drugs -- that exists nowhere but in the imagination of federal agents -- is used to determine lengths of sentences.




  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • New York City Sues Verizon For Fiber Optic Bait And Switch
      For years now, we've highlighted Verizon's tendency to grab all manner of tax breaks and subsidies from a town or city -- in exchange for fiber optic upgrades that are often never delivered. All up and down the eastern seaboard, Verizon was given the keys to the kingdom in franchise and other agreements filled with loopholes that let the telco, time and time again, promise one thing, then deliver another. And because the company enjoys immense lobbying power over regional regulators and state legislatures, Verizon has never really been held accountable for this behavior.

      New York City has been a particular point of contention. In 2008, former mayor Mike Bloomberg and Verizon signed (behind closed doors) a new franchise agreement promising "100% coverage" of FiOS across the city by 2014. As some local reporters had warned at the time (and were promptly ignored), the city's deal with Verizon contained all manner of loopholes allowing Verizon to wiggle over, under and around its obligations. And wiggle Verizon did; a 2015 city report found huge gaps in deployment coverage -- particularly in many of the less affluent, outer city boroughs.


    • USAToday Latest News Outlet To Completely Miss The Point Of Cord Cutting
      So we've noted a few times now how every month or so there's a media report proclaiming that you can't save any money via cord cutting. The logic in these reports almost always goes something like this: "Once I got done signing up for every damn streaming video service under the sun, I found that I wasn't really saving much money over traditional cable."

      Authors leaning on this lazy take almost always tend to forget a few things. One, the same people dictating cable TV rates dictate streaming video rates. Two, adding a dozen streaming services to exactly match your bloated, 300 channel cable subscription misses the entire point of cord cutting. The benefit of streaming is you can pick and choose the content you prefer. And yes, if you prefer a massive bundle of religious programming, horrible reality television, and infomercials, then yes -- you may want to stick to paying an arm and a leg for cable.





  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights



      • Canadian Federal Court awards Nintendo C$12.8m in TPM first
        The Canadian Federal Court has shown it isn’t playing when it comes to copyright infringement in game industry, in the first ruling to consider technological protection measures introduced in 2012


      • Prenda May Be Dead, But Copyright Trolling Still Going Strong
        Copyright -- with the help of insane $150,000 statutory damages -- is still being used as a shakedown weapon, scaring people into paying up, not because of actual infringement, but because copyright trolls have learned how to use the law and the court system as a business model very similar to the one used by organized crime in certain neighbors: pay up or someone's going to get hurt. The unfortunate "new" part of this is that the "weapon" here isn't a baseball bat, but federal copyright law and the judicial system.


      • UK Court Grants First Live Blocking Order To Stop New Infringing Streams As Soon As They Start
        As we noted last week, one of the main copyright battlegrounds in the UK concerns the use of Kodi boxes -- low-cost devices running the open source Kodi multimedia player, usually augmented with plug-ins that provide access to unauthorized content. One of the popular uses of such Kodi boxes is to watch live streams of sporting events. TorrentFreak reports on an important new court order obtained by the UK's Football Association Premier League (FAPL) to prevent people from viewing live streams of soccer games free of charge. The problem for the FAPL is that the addresses of the servers streaming matches are often only known once the games begin. To meet that challenge, the court has granted a new kind of injunction: one that allows live blocking.


      • New UK ‘Kodi’ Piracy Blocking Injunction is a Pretty Scary Beast

        The new piracy blocking injunction obtained by the UK's Premier League is groundbreaking on several levels, court papers have revealed. Not only did the football outfit work closely with Sky, BT and Virgin (who all have a vested interest) but the ISPs also monitored traffic from 'pirate' servers requested by their customers. Live blocking of streams will be possible too, with no immediate court oversight.



      • Film Distributor Creates Torrent Site Clone That Gives Away Movie Tickets To Combat Piracy
        Much of the way the movie industry looks to combat film piracy will seem familiar to readers of this site. It typically involves shakedown threat letters, games of DMCA whac-a-mole, and a paint-by-numbers approach that mostly amounts to film studios shaking their lawyers' fists at the sky. All that produces the status quo, where piracy is still a thing, films still make gobs of money, and regular observers of it all are left scratching our heads wondering how so much noise could be made over it all.

        But I will give credit where credit is due as Costa Rican film distributor Romaly deserves some style and creativity points for its new anti-piracy tactic.








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Musk does not want to prevent disinformation from spreading and the same is true for Facebook and TikTok; they have their own interests
SCO's Darl McBride Dead at Age 64
There's hardly any information about it, except we know he reached bankruptcy and 3 years later he died at a relatively young age
Update on Litigation Against the European Patent Office (EPO) at the ILO Administrative Tribunal (ILOAT)
Rewards and compensation for staff have long fallen, resulting in many experienced colleagues leaving and causing further declines in quality and compliance
Gemini Links 31/10/2024: NNCP, Declutter the Web, Cost of Community
Links for the day
Links 31/10/2024: Supermicro Plummets 33%, Block and Dropbox Mass Layoffs
Links for the day
Links 31/10/2024: Environmental Anxiety, Profound Changes in Hardware Market
Links for the day
Links 30/10/2024: TSMC Concerns and North Koreans in Ukraine War
Links for the day
Facebook is for Zombies
Social control media is for fools
Microsoft Now Has $235,290,000,000 in Liabilities, They Grow Over Time in Spite of Mass Layoffs (So Expect More Layoffs)
expect more mass layoffs
Links 31/10/2024: DST Woes, War Updates, Amazon RTO Backlash
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/10/2024: Attention Economy and Gemlogs
Links for the day
Happy Halloween
October is nearly over
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 30, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 30, 2024
For the Record: Linux is Controlled by the United States of America
"This is going to make many question the openness and inclusivity of the work done by Linux Foundation"
Microsoft: XBox Hardware Revenues Down About 30% (Ignore the Buzzwords and Activision Activity Dressed Up as "XBox")
For context, in a previous quarter XBox hardware sales were down by about 50%
Cooking the Books With "Cloud" And "AI" Was Not Enough to Fool Microsoft Investors
"Microsoft Shares Drop on Disappointing Azure Growth Forecast"