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Links 31/3/2017: Qt Creator 4.3 Beta, Linux Lite 3.2





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Quad-core Atom thin client offers hardened ThinLinux
    Dell revealed a tiny “Wyse 3040” thin client that runs ThinOS or a hardened new ThinLinux on a quad-core Intel SoC, and supports Citrix, MS, and VMware.

    Dell has launched its “lightest, smallest and most power-efficient thin client” yet, with a 101.6 x 101.6 x 27.9mm Wyse 3040 system that weighs 0.24kg and runs on under 5 Watts. The device is powered by a quad-core, 1.44GHz Intel Atom x5-Z8350 “Cherry Trail” SoC, giving it 30 percent better performance than “previous generations,” says Dell, presumably referring to the single-core Wyse 3010 and the dual-core 3020 and 3030. The power-efficient (2W SDP) SoC also runs on the UP board and UP Core SBCs.


  • Desktop



    • Are Linux users weird?
      Let’s face it, Linux users have often been portrayed in the media as being a little…er…different than macOS or Windows users. But now a writer at Network World is convinced that the days of Linux users being viewed as eccentric are finally coming to an end.




  • Server



    • Kubernetes 1.6 Brings New Scalability and Stability
      Every release of the open-source Kubernetes container management and orchestration system has been led by a Google employee, until the release of the latest version, Kubernetes 1.6, which was led by CoreOS software engineer, Dan Gillespie.

      Kubernetes 1.6 officially became available on March 28, providing users of the open-source container system with a new release focused on stability and scaleability. Gillespie joined CoreOS as part of the October acquisition of Redspread, which is a company he co-founded.






  • Kernel Space



  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments/WMs



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt



      • Qt Creator 4.3 Beta released
        Qt Quick Designer now integrates a QML code editor. This allows you to use views like the Properties editor and the Navigator also for text based editing. When you use the split view, you directly see the effects of what you are doing. The graphical editor got support for adding items and tab bar to stacked containers like StackedLayout and SwipeView, a tool bar with common actions, and support for HiDPI displays.


      • Qt Creator 4.3 Beta Rolls Out QML Code Editor & CMake Server-Mode


      • Qt Creator 4.3 Enters Beta, Integrates a QML Code Editor into Qt Quick Designer
        The Qt Company, through Eike Ziller, announced today the availability of the Beta release of the upcoming Qt Creator 4.3 open-source and cross-platform IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for Qt application developers.

        Qt Creator 4.3 promises to be a major release adding some very exciting changes, starting with the integration of a QML code editor into the Qt Quick Designer component to allow developers to use the Properties editor or the Navigator views, among many others, also for text-based editing.




    • GNOME Desktop/GTK



      • GNOME 3.26 Release Date Set
        The GNOME 3.26 release date is set for September 13, 2017.

        That’s the date listed in the full GNOME 3.26 release schedule, though is still subject to change (bugs don’t adhere to deadlines, after all).

        Over the coming 6 months GNOME developers will work on honing, improving and revising the hugely popular open-source desktop environment.


      • Install Fest 2017 in Lima, Perú
        Thanks to the support of Fedora LATAM and the GNOME Foundation, we did share step by step the installation of Fedora 25 and GNOME 3.22; and thanks to Butterfly, we are going to be able to organize all our Linux events through the LinuXatUNI Website. I did also announced the GNOME 3.24 and shared more about the Free Software philosophy.


      • Just Colors And Colors Icon Sets Are Ready To Spice Up Ubuntu/Linux Mint
        Now a days it is bit hard to find perfect icon theme for your Linux desktop but there are some which can be considered as complete icon sets, I am not going to list all of them here instead we leave on you to find other icons from our 'Theme & Icons' page, if you are interested. Here comes two new themes called 'Just Colors' and 'Colors', uses various icons from other icon themes as well including: Vibrancy-Colors, Faenza and Numix icons themes. As its name shows off to you, there are many color variations in this theme (Blue, Green, Orange, Purple, Yellow and Default Version), you can choose which fits your GTK theme and desktop.






  • Distributions



    • Reviews



      • Zephyr Linux: Zippy Performance, Zero Decor


        Zephyr Linux is a newcomer to the Linux scene, and it is still morphing from developmental releases. However, it takes an interesting approach to removing desktop clutter and default software bloat.

        Zephyr is a collaboration between Leonard Ashley and other developers. Ashley built this infant distro on Devuan 1.0 beta 2 stable (Jessie) Linux. Devuan is a fork of Debian Linux.

        Note: Do not confuse Zephyr Linux with the Linux Foundation's Zephyr Project -- a lightweight Linux OS for the Internet of Things.

        Ashley gives the concept of minimalist design a fresh twist in Zephyr Linux, which is stripped down so you can remake it your way.

        Zephyr Linux version 1.0 beta 2 stable, released late last year, is available in a separate ISO file for each of three non-intimidating desktops -- Fluxbox, JWN and Openbox -- which are fully customizable window managers that are light on resources, fast and stable. Each one gives you a similar full-featured desktop experience.




    • New Releases



      • Linux Lite 3.2 Final Released
        Linux Lite 3.2 Final is now available for download. The overall theme of this release is a focus on Security. Linux Lite will now download and install the latest Linux kernel security updates when they become available via Install Updates. In this release we introduce for the first time the Lite Desktop Widget. This features basic system information as well as Updates status to emphasize the importance of keeping your computer up to date. Also in this release we've included several theme enhancements, lots of updates to our Lite packages, as well as the usual fixes from the 3.2 Beta.


      • Elive 2.8.8 beta released
        The Elive Team is proud to announce the release of the beta version 2.8.8




    • Red Hat Family



      • Why OpenStack is the wrong cloud for Red Hat to be building its future on
        Just because one can make money from OpenStack doesn't mean one should. Red Hat, on its recent earnings call, gladly assumed the title of "Red Hat of OpenStack," meaning the "vendor that does certification and confidently allow[s] both hardware and software vendors to participate in the ecosystem." In a similar vein, I've called OpenStack Red Hat's "Linux moment," a chance to productize the growing cloud movement.


      • 2 tools for transforming senior management into open leaders
        This is the third article in our "Open Leadership Development" series. In part 1, I shared how we got started with building a leadership development system for our open organization. In part 2, I walked through four stages of leadership development in an open organization. Now, I'd like to share some leadership tools we've created for our open organization and published on GitHub under a Creative Commons license.


      • Red Hat's secrets of success
        That’s $2.4 billion dollars, from pure open source projects. There is not a single strand of proprietary code in Red Hat’s products. So while some say open source is hard to monetize, here we have a company that continues to set the example for others to follow.

        However, I recall an earlier interview with Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst where he said, “If open source was a proprietary technology and we had been the large share player of Linux as we are with RHEL, we would be generating 20 billion dollars of revenue instead of two billion in total for the company.”


      • Fedora





    • Debian Family



      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu



          • Ubuntu 17.04: A mouse-sized step forward
            It's almost the fourth month of the year. You know what that means. A new Ubuntu release is upon us. This time around, the release number is 17.04 and the name is Zesty Zapus. For those that don't know, a zapus is a genus of North American jumping mice and the only extant mammal with a total of 18 teeth.

            Which means the zapus is quite unique. Does that translate over to the upcoming release of one of the most popular Linux distributions on the planet (currently listed as fourth on Distrowatch)? Let's find out.


          • Flavours and Variants



            • Linux Mint May Switch to LightDM Login Screen
              Linux Mint 18.2 may ship with LightDM and Unity Greeter by default, replacing the current MDM login screen.

              Developers behind the popular Ubuntu-derivative say they’ve ‘been testing [LightDM] as an alternative to Mint Display Manager [MDM] and adding support where it was missing and the results are promising.’


            • Linux Mint 18.2 Could Replace MDM with LightDM as Default Login Manager
              Clement Lefebvre published today the March 2017 edition of the Linux Mint monthly newsletter to inform users of the Ubuntu-based operating system about the latest and upcoming developments.

              In the newsletter, the developer reveals the fact that the Xreader PDF and document viewer is undergoing a revamp to its user interface that should improve both the toolbar and the sidebar, add support for dark themes and symbolic icons, implement new buttons in the toolbar for fast switching between multiple view modes, as well as to make it work on touch screens.


            • Linux Mint Monthly News – March 2017
              Many thanks to all the people who donate to us and support our project. We received almost $8,000 in February from 412 people. Many thanks to my fellow developers also and to our partners, it’s a real pleasure to be working with you all.












  • Devices/Embedded



    • OpenGL accelerated x86 games come to Raspberry Pi
      Eltechs released v2.0 of its ExaGear Desktop VM for running x86 apps on ARM/Linux devices. It adds OpenGL hardware graphics acceleration for the Pi 2 and 3.

      Recently, Raspbian developers led by Eric Anholt ported the OpenGL driver to Raspbian, thereby making the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 the first hacker SBCs to do so. Russia-based Eltechs, which offers the ExaGear Desktop virtual machine application for running x86 apps on ARM-based Linux computers, quickly adapted the new OpenGL driver and baked it into version 2.0 of ExaGear Desktop.

      The new driver implemented in ExaGear Desktop 2.0 fully supports 3D graphics acceleration of Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 applications. As a result, you can now run modern, 3D graphics games such as OpenArena (Quake 3) and Minecraft, some of the few such games that have been ported to the Pi. Most 3D accelerated x86 games simply won’t run or run very slowly, says Eltechs.


    • Open spec IoT hacker SBC has a GSM radio
      The $10 “Orange Pi 2G-IOT” SBC runs Ubuntu or Android on an RDA Cortex-A5 SoC, and features RPi 40-pin I/O compatibility, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GSM.

      Shenzhen Xunlong quickly followed up on its recent launch of the quad-core Orange Pi Zero Plus 2 and Zero Plus 2 H5 SBCs with its first Orange Pi to stray from the Allwinner SoC family. The 2G-enabled, $9.90 Orange Pi 2G-IOT targets low-power IoT applications with a single-core Cortex-A5 based RDA8810PL SoC from RDA Microelectronics.


    • Open-source-based platform links old controls to the IoT
      Wind River, the Intel-owned specialist in IoT (Internet of Things) software, has announced a platform that will allow ageing control systems, not originally designed to support the IoT, to link into IoT networks.



    • Thin 3.5-inch SBC features Apollo Lake chips, dual GbE, dual mini-PCIe
      Axiomtek’s CAPA318 adds to the growing dog-pile of 3.5-inch SBCs that tap Intel’s latest Apollo Lake Atom, Celeron, and Pentium processors (see farther below). Axiomtek, which previously released a Bay Trail-based CAPA840 SBC in the same form factor, is here focusing on the dual-core Celeron N3350 and quad-core Pentium N4200. No OS support was listed for the board, which should easily run Linux or Windows.


    • Phones







Free Software/Open Source



  • Google bigs up its open source credentials with dedicated project showcase website


  • Google Opens Up on Open Source


  • Google builds new home for everything open source


  • Google Launches New Website for Its Open Source Projects
    Google has launched a new site that centralizes information on all of the company’s various open source projects and gives developers details on how it uses, releases and supports open source software.


  • Google Earth Enterprise Now Available on GitHub as Open Source


  • Google Earth Enterprise Now Available On GitHub As Open Source
    The world’s most popular offline enterprise globe software is now available to all as management of the code transitions to the Open Source Community with Thermopylae Sciences & Technology leading the charge as the firm celebrates its 10th anniversary.


  • Open Source Blockchain Project MultiChain Adds Fourteen New Partners and Enters Beta
    Coin Sciences Ltd has added a whopping fourteen companies to the MultiChain Platform Partner Program, a new collaboration with Seal Software, and the first beta release of MultiChain 1.0.

    New members of the Platform Partner Program include three multinational consulting companies: Boston Consulting Group, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and Worldline. Eleven other smaller companies have also joined: Auxesis Group, Crossword Cybersecurity, Cryptologic, Enuke Software, Enuma Technologies, InfoCorp Technologies, Kunstmaan, Minddeft Technologies, Primechain Technologies, RecordsKeeper and Satoshi Citadel Industries. This brings the total number of program members to 27, which includes founding partners Accenture, D+H and Mphasis. A full list is now available here.


  • Blockchain Platform MultiChain Enters Beta with 15 New Partners


  • Events



    • Linux Foundation offers Hadoop training
      The popular big data program Apache's Hadoop is difficult to use. Indeed, Datanami, an important big data publication, recently found that "the Hadoop dream of unifying data and compute in a distributed manner has all but failed in a smoking heap of cost and complexity". One reason? "It's just a very complicated stack to build on."


    • Phoronix Moscow Meetup - April 2017
      It's been a while since last having any Phoronix meet-ups due to not really traveling in the past few years due to various constraints, but next month on business will be available for a Russian Phoronix reader meet-up.




  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla



      • U.S. Broadband Privacy Rules: We will Fight to Protect User Privacy
        In the U.S., Congress voted to overturn rules that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) created to protect the privacy of broadband customers. Mozilla supported the creation and enactment of these rules because strong rules are necessary to promote transparency, respect user privacy and support user control.

        The Federal Trade Commission has authority over the online industry in general, but these rules were crafted to create a clear policy framework for broadband services where the FTC’s policies don’t apply. They require internet service providers (ISPs) to notify us and get permission from us before any of our information would be collected or shared. ISPs know a lot about us, and this information (which includes your web browsing history) can potentially be shared with third-parties.






  • SaaS/Back End



    • What keeps an enterprise from embracing OpenStack adoption?
      Have you ever bought a piece of furniture at IKEA? The price is right, though it comes with a hefty instruction manual, and you have to assemble it yourself.

      The idea is, of course, that you don't need to be a handyman to have that cabinet full of books by Sunday evening. Anyone with a screwdriver and hammer can build it. Isn’t that right?




  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)



    • WhiteSource Bolt detects vulnerable open source components [Ed: WhiteSource is connected to Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4]]


    • Kitware and Collaborators Make 1.0 Release of Materials Tomography Platform


    • Samizdat no more: Old Unix source code opened for study
      After years of lobbying by computer science luminaries, Bell Labs and Alcatel-Lucent (both owned by Nokia) have relented and will allow non-commercial study of the source code for Unix Research Editions 8, 9, and 10.

      It might sound like merely a historical artifact, but it's more than that. Unix source is an important computer science teaching tool, and has been ever since its earliest days.

      The joint statement by Alcatel-Lucent USA and Nokia Bell Laboratories makes it clear this isn't "open-sourcing the source code." Rather, it's a promise not to assert "copyright rights with respect to any non-commercial copying, distribution, performance, display or creation of derivative works of Research Unix Editions 8, 9, and 10."




  • BSD



    • A Penguin tries out TrueOS, formerly PC-BSD, part I


      TrueOS is a rolling-release, desktop-oriented operating system built upon the FreeBSD-CURRENT branch. Its aim is to add desktop-usability, speed and grace to an elephant. It is more a FreeBSD tuning than a fork of it, anyway.

      TrueOS is formerly known as PC-BSD; project changed its name, became rolling and mostly dropped pbi’s in late 2016.




  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration



    • Open Hardware/Modding



      • Niryo One is an open-source 6-axis arm robot for your home, school, or business
        Industrial arm robots have been around for years, but similar technology is only just starting to trickle down to the consumer market.


      • Open Source 3D Printing: LulzBot and IC3D Team Up for First-Ever Open Source 3D Printer Filament
        Open source is an ideology important to much of the 3D printing community; the ethos is at the foundation of many companies involved in the scene from the beginning, and it can be a polarizing topic. For some, like Aleph Objects with its open source LulzBot 3D printers and the community built up around the technology, and the RepRap community, sharing is caring. Other entities jealously guard their intellectual property; what’s theirs is theirs, and start to finish the system is proprietary. MakerBot drew some serious flack a few years ago when they changed direction from open source roots and became part of the closed source Stratasys family. For its part, HP’s entry to the 3D printing industry blew some minds when the company, infamous for requiring use of proprietary ink in their gargantuan 2D printing operations, chose an open platform approach to their materials in additive manufacturing.






  • Programming/Development



    • Yes C is unsafe, but…

      These “you should switch language” remarks are strangely enough from the backseat drivers of the Internet. Those who can tell us with confidence how to run our project but who don’t actually show us any code.



    • We can teach women to code, but that just creates another problem
      Get-girls-to-code initiatives aim to fix tech’s gender imbalance – but they may help reinforce it

      Technology has a gender problem, as everyone knows.

      The underrepresentation of women in technical fields has spawned legions of TED talks, panels, and women-friendly coding boot camps. I’ve participated in some of these get-women-to-code workshops myself, and I sometimes encourage my students to get involved. Recently, though, I’ve noticed something strange: the women who are so assiduously learning to code seem to be devaluing certain tech roles simply by occupying them.

      Conventional wisdom says that the key to reducing gendered inequality in tech is giving women the skills they need to enter particular roles. But in practice, when more women enter a role, its value seems to go down more.






Leftovers



  • Usernames no longer count against the 140-character limit on Twitter
    There was some consternation last year as rumors swirled that Twitter was set to drop its long-standing 140-character limit. The company ended up keeping the limit, but it's been working to make sure you can actually use all 140-characters. For example, Twitter decreed a while back that photos and videos no longer count against the limit. Now, it's doing the same for usernames. Finally.


  • Health/Nutrition



    • Funding Injection For New Antibiotics: The CARB-X Transatlantic Partnership
      A partnership of government agencies and organisations in the United States and United Kingdom have announced an investment of up to US$48 million into the development of new antibiotics and products to fight antibiotic resistant bacteria, with the aim of having two new antibiotics in human trials in the next five years.

      CARB-X, the Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator, is a partnership between public and private organisations in the US and UK.


    • 17 Civil Society Groups Urge EU To Support WHO Resolution On Cancer
      A range of civil society organisations today issued a letter to European Union leadership urging support for a World Health Organization resolution that mandates a feasibility study on a fund for cancer research and development that delinks R&D costs from the price of health technologies.

      The letter from 17 organisations to EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini is available here [pdf].

      The groups said the resolution “would provide the Organization a mandate to conduct a feasibility study of creating a multi-country push and pull fund for cancer R&D predicated upon the principle of the delinkage of the costs of R&D from the price of health technologies.”


    • Dow Chemical Wants Farmers to Keep Using a Pesticide Linked to Autism and ADHD
      On Mondays, Magda and Amilcar Galindo take their daughter Eva to self-defense class. Eva is 12 but her trusting smile and arching pigtails make her look younger. Diagnosed with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, Eva doesn’t learn or behave like the typical 12-year-old. She struggles to make change, and she needs help with reading and social situations. Eva’s classmates are sometimes unkind to her, and Magda worries for her daughter’s feelings and her safety. So once a week, after they drive her from her middle school in Modesto, California, to her tutor in nearby Riverbank, the Galindos rush off to the gym where they cheer Eva on as she wrestles with a heavy bag and punches the air with her skinny arms.




  • Security



    • Security updates for Thursday


    • Security Tips for Installing Linux on Your SysAdmin Workstation
      Once you’ve chosen a Linux distro that meets all the security guidelines set out in our last article, you’ll need to install the distro on your workstation.


    • Fedora 26 crypto policy Test Day today (2017-03-30)!
    • A scramble at Cisco exposes uncomfortable truths about U.S. cyber defense
      When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange disclosed earlier this month that his anti-secrecy group had obtained CIA tools for hacking into technology products made by U.S. companies, security engineers at Cisco Systems (CSCO.O) swung into action.

      The Wikileaks documents described how the Central Intelligence Agency had learned more than a year ago how to exploit flaws in Cisco's widely used Internet switches, which direct electronic traffic, to enable eavesdropping.

      Senior Cisco managers immediately reassigned staff from other projects to figure out how the CIA hacking tricks worked, so they could help customers patch their systems and prevent criminal hackers or spies from using the same methods, three employees told Reuters on condition of anonymity.



    • NTPsec: a Secure, Hardened NTP Implementation
      Network time synchronization—aligning your computer's clock to the same Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) that everyone else is using—is both necessary and a hard problem. Many internet protocols rely on being able to exchange UTC timestamps accurate to small tolerances, but the clock crystal in your computer drifts (its frequency varies by temperature), so it needs occasional adjustments.

      That's where life gets complicated. Sure, you can get another computer to tell you what time it thinks it is, but if you don't know how long that packet took to get to you, the report isn't very useful. On top of that, its clock might be broken—or lying.

      To get anywhere, you need to exchange packets with several computers that allow you to compare your notion of UTC with theirs, estimate network delays, apply statistical cluster analysis to the resulting inputs to get a plausible approximation of real UTC, and then adjust your local clock to it. Generally speaking, you can get sustained accuracy to on the close order of 10 milliseconds this way, although asymmetrical routing delays can make it much worse if you're in a bad neighborhood of the internet.


    • Zelda Coatings


      I assume that every permutation of scams will eventually be tried; it is interesting that the initial ones preyed on people's avarice and dishonesty: "I will transfer millions to your bank account, then you share with me" - with subsequent scams appealing to another demographic: "I want to donate a large sum to your religious charity" - to perhaps capture a more virtuous but still credulous lot. Where will it end ?



    • Open-source developers targeted in sophisticated malware attack
      For the past few months, developers who publish their code on GitHub have been targeted in an attack campaign that uses a little-known but potent cyberespionage malware.

      The attacks started in January and consisted of malicious emails specifically crafted to attract the attention of developers, such as requests for help with development projects and offers of payment for custom programming jobs.

      The emails had .gz attachments that contained Word documents with malicious macro code attached. If allowed to execute, the macro code executed a PowerShell script that reached out to a remote server and downloaded a malware program known as Dimnie.


    • Github Repository Owners Targeted by Data-Stealing Malware
    • Recruiters considered really harmful: Devs on GitHub hit with booby-trapped fake job emails
    • Hackers targeting GitHub developers with stealthy and self-destructing Dimnie Trojan
    • Malware campaign targets open source developers on GitHub
    • GitHub developers receive fake job offer malwares in electronic mails




  • Defence/Aggression



    • Civilian deaths from US-led airstrikes hit record high under Donald Trump


      A non-profit organisation that tracks civilian casualties caused by airstrikes in the Middle East said it has shifted nearly all of its resources to track a surge of claims regarding US-led strikes in Syria and Iraq.

      The group, called Airwars.org, had been tracking deaths caused by both Russian and US airstrikes but said in a statement Friday that it was suspending its work on "alleged Russian actions in Syria -- so as best to focus our limited resources on continuing to properly monitor and assess reported casualties from the US and its allies.


    • Media Spin Headlines to Downplay US Responsibility for Mosul Massacre


      If you read the headlines of major corporate media outlets, you’d think hundreds of Iraqi civilians coincidentally died in the same location that just so happened to be hit by a US airstrike.

      A March 17 US attack in the city of Mosul resulted in a massacre of civilians. The monitoring group Airwars estimated that between 130 and 230 Iraqis were killed in the incident. Iraqi media reported similar figures.

      Civilian victims of the US-led bombing campaign to oust ISIS from the major northern Iraqi city, which has been terrorized by the extremist group for three years, have received little media coverage.


    • Trump Succumbs to Bush/Obama Perpetual War
      President Trump is becoming the third post-9/11 president to prosecute bloody conflicts in the Mideast and impose mass surveillance at home, with no end in sight, observes retired Col. Ann Wright.


    • Trump-Obama Continuity for Nukes
      At the United Nations headquarters in New York City, negotiations began this week on a treaty banning the possession, development and use of nuclear weapons. The agreement to negotiate such a ban was passed late last year by a wide margin in the most significant development in nuclear disarmament since the end of the Cold War.


    • French efforts to stop Muslim youths turning to extremism {sic} failing

      The ad hoc attempts focused on the prison system, a key incubator for many would-be jihadis, and programs that tried to target those already on the path to extremism. {sic}

      They did not go as hoped.



    • The myth of the ‘lone wolf’ terrorist [iophk: "and those who did got away..."]

      Before he planted his bullets in the heads of his victims, somebody planted ideas more dangerous than the bullets in his head.





  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature



    • EU Calls Trump’s Coal Move a ‘Global Disaster’ as Nations Renew Climate Vows
      European officials issued rebukes and officials around Asia said they would continue their drive toward cleaner fuels after President Donald Trump laid the groundwork to reverse his predecessor’s climate-change policies.

      Mr. Trump, citing the need to revive the U.S. coal industry and ease the regulatory burden, began on Tuesday​to repeal the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan of stricter carbon-dioxide limits on utilities.

      The change leaves an opening for China and other countries to seize leadership in the global effort to curb the rise in temperatures, as set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which went into force in November.

      The U.S. move raised questions about what steps, if any, the Trump administration would take to comply with the Paris commitments.


    • Energy Department's Climate Office Banned From Using Phrase "Climate Change"
      In case you needed reminding, it’s a bad time to be a scientist in the US. If you work for a federal research group, you’ve been muzzled, had your funding cut to historically low levels, and been told by a committee of anti-intellectual parrots that you’re constantly lying.

      Earlier this month, the word “science” was removed from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) mission statement under the auspices of a man who doesn’t think carbon dioxide warms the planet. Now, it seems that the Department of Energy’s (DoE) climate change research office has banned the use of the phrase “climate change”.


    • Public Records Sought to Expose Trump's Climate-change Censorship
      The Center for Biological Diversity filed four Freedom of Information Act requests today with the Trump administration’s Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration demanding records of communication censoring agency staff from using words or phrases related to climate change.






  • Finance



    • Amazon Wants Cheerios, Oreos and Other Brands to Bypass Wal-Mart

      The online giant has invited Mondelez, General Mills and others to its headquarters to persuade them it's time to sell directly to online shoppers.

    • If Theresa May wants to avoid a schools crisis she's going to have to start listening


      If you talk to anyone involved in education, particularly those working in schools, the conversation will rapidly turn to budgets, which for many are approaching crisis point.

      It comes to something when parents are being asked for voluntary contributions to help keep their children's schools running. This is as well as reports of subjects being cut and the length of the day being shortened.


    • All That On-Off Excitement About CETA Last Year? It's Happening Again
      Yet again, the problem is mainly the corporate sovereignty chapter, which is emerging as a real trade deal killer (hint to governments: why not drop it?). But it's not just Wallonia that might stymie CETA. According to a post from the Council of Canadians, the final ratification of CETA also faces challenges in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy and Bulgaria.


    • Good Morning America!


      The place to focus our attention is on the working class. This is not for abstract, doctrinaire reasons, but because that is where the power lies. It is there that numbers and proximity to production combine to yield a force capable of challenging the 1% for control.

      Control of what exactly? The whole works, including which class should be running the country.

      When working people finally decide to stop hating their friends and loving their enemies (Malcolm X), the pent up rage and fire from centuries of deceit and exploitation at the hands of corporate elites will be turned toward forging a new normal. People will insist on painting outside the lines, refusing to be bound by convention as they search for effective answers.




  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics



    • Trump NAFTA Renegotiation Draft Notice Exposes an All-Talk No-Action Plan

      “For all his grandstanding and bluster, Trump failed to put forth a plan to renegotiate NAFTA in the American people’s interest. As a candidate and now in office, Trump promised a serious renegotiation that would put American workers first and end corporate giveaways, but this plan fails to keep that promise and instead looks an awful lot like the TPP deal defeated by a movement of millions and decried by Trump himself. The American people deserve a real renegotiated NAFTA that will protect our workers, our communities, and our environment, not the same broken deal with Trump’s logo printed on it.”



    • Brazilian politician who orchestrated ousting of Rousseff sentenced to prison
      Cunha’s conviction led to one of the stiffest penalties handed down to such a senior politician since the end of the dictatorship era in 1985, but public satisfaction with the judgment will be mixed with concern that he could yet win an appeal and that many other powerful figures accused of similar crimes remain unpunished.

      Sergio Moro, a Curitiba lower court judge, found Cunha – a rightwing evangelical Christian – guilty of corruption, money laundering and currency law evasion in connection with a $1.6m bribe he received from a deal by the state-run oil firm Petrobras to buy exploration rights in Benin. The judgment also noted a pending case in Switzerland related to $2.3m stashed in a secret bank account in the European country.


    • Ivanka Trump gets formal White House role, with ethics obligations but no pay
      Ivanka Trump is taking on a more formal White House role — with a title but not a paycheck — a move intended to quell ethics concerns raised about her status in her father's administration.

      In a statement, the White House noted that the president's elder daughter already had an "unprecedented role" in the administration different from that of previous presidential children.

      She now will take the title of special advisor to the president, and therefore assume the same responsibility to abide by ethics standards that other federal employees have, the statement said. The decision demonstrates the administration's "commitment to ethics, transparency and compliance," the administration said.


    • Fox News Should Finally Dump Bill O’Reilly
      During an appearance on Fox & Friends, Host Bill O’Reilly claimed he had difficulty focusing on a speech being given by Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) because of her “James Brown wig.”

      The overtly sexist and racist comment wasn’t an anomaly, but a continued trend in Bill O’Reilly’s ideology and personal politics making an off-script appearance. He apologized for the comment, but only in response to the backlash and criticism to the comment, as Fox News Host Ainsely Earnhardt defended Waters and told O’Reilly he shouldn’t attack a woman based on her appearance.

      [...]

      Perhaps at first, O’Reilly was merely defending his friend and boss and truly believed there was no merit to the case. But by denying he ever challenged Carlson’s accusations — and thereby supported an alleged sexual predator — he’s sending a message to the public that what Ailes was accused of doing is just fine.”


    • Watch: Bernie Sanders Talks 'Dark Money' with Journalist Who Literally Wrote the Book On It
      Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday sat down with investigative journalist Jane Mayer to discuss the threat that secretive and undisclosed campaign financing—exemplified by the outsized influence of powerful billionaires like Charles and David Koch—continues to have on U.S. democracy and what should be done to push back.

      Mayer—author of the 2016 best-seller Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right—recently wrote a feature for The New Yorker in which she detailed the significant role the deep pockets, and bizarre far-right politics, of billionaire Robert Mercer played in President Donald Trump's campaign run.


    • Bannon May Have Violated Ethics Pledge by Talking to Breitbart: CREW
      Top presidential adviser Steve Bannon may have violated a White House ethics pledge by communicating about official matters with employees of his former media company, the rightwing site Breitbart News, according to a Washington, D.C., watchdog group.

      Since joining the White House, Bannon, who serves as President Donald Trump's chief strategist and senior counselor, has spoken to two of the top editors at the outlet he used to chair, the group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) said in a complaint filed Thursday.

      The White House confirmed this week that it had not waived portions of the ethics pledge for Bannon.


    • With Dutch-Islamist ‘Denk’ Party, Immigrants Rebel Against Assimilation

      What would you say about the appearance of a political party that opposed assimilation and advocated what, in essence, is the creation of a nation within a nation?

    • UW professor: The information war is real, and we’re losing it
      A University of Washington professor started studying social networks to help people respond to disasters. But she got dragged down a rabbit hole of twitter-boosted conspiracy theories, and ended up mapping our political moment.




  • Censorship/Free Speech



  • Privacy/Surveillance



  • Civil Rights/Policing



  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality



    • Libraries have become a broadband lifeline to the cloud for students

      As cloud computing has become an integral part of the lives of students at public schools, it has increased the importance of a place generations of students have turned to for much more analog learning needs—the library.

    • FCC Boss Takes Aim At Efforts To Bring Broadband To The Poor


      So we've noted how new FCC boss Ajit Pai has breathlessly claimed that closing the digital divide will be the top priority for his commission. But we've also noted how his actions as FCC boss have run in stark, dramatic contrast to that stated goal. Whether it's making it easier for prison phone monopolies to rip off inmate families, his decision to kill a plan to bring much-needed competition to the cable box, or his attacks on net neutrality, so far Pai has made it painfully clear that protecting AT&T, Comcast and Verizon is actually where his priorities lie.

      In the last week Pai took his "love for the poor" to soaring new heights by falsely taking credit for year-old job plans at Charter Communications, and cheering as Congress dismantled consumer privacy protections at large ISP behest. But Pai also took what most analysts believe will be the opening salvo in a war against subsidized broadband service for the poor.


    • Miami Officials Promise To Crack Down On Airbnb Homeowners Who Spoke Up About Bad Regulations
      For a few years now, we've written about various local governments and their pointless wars against Airbnb, which are often driven by lobbying from the big hotels. Different governments take different approaches, but Miami apparently has an incredibly restrictive regulation that effectively bars short term rentals entirely. Even worse, the mayor has been pushing to make things even worse. Since the current law only is enforced in response to complaints, mayor Tomas Regalado is pushing a plan to more proactively hunt down homeowners who offer short term rentals on Airbnb.




  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Government funding’s impact three times larger than we thought

      Overall, this analysis shows that about a third of all publicly funded grants administered by the NIH generate research that is cited by commercial patent applications. This number is three times larger than the one produced by the traditional metric we've been using. This finding strongly suggests that the overall impact of public funding on the advancement of commercial science is widely underappreciated.



    • Trademarks



      • Monster Energy Attempts To Run From Laughable Trademark Spat It Started With Thunder Beast Root Beer
        Readers here will hear the name "Monster Energy Corporation", makers of the Monster Energy beverage, and likely immediately roll their collective eyes. Monster Energy has truly been a monster when it comes to trademark bullying over some of the most frivolous claims imaginable. From threats against breweries over location-based puns, to threats against beverage review sites it doesn't like, and even threats against an actor that featured in a monster movie over a photo he tweeted holding a Monster Energy drink, the company is something of a joke in trademark circles.


      • A Tiny DC Soda Company Is Taking on Monster Energy
        Thunder Beast, a small DC root beer company, is fighting trademark violation allegations from California-based Monster Energy Corporation. About a year ago, Thunder Beast, which operates out of the TasteLab food incubator in Northeast, received a cease-and-desist letter from Monster over the use of the word “beast” in the company name.

        In its letter, Monster argued customers might accidentally buy one of Thunder Beast’s bison-emblazoned beverages when they intended to buy an energy drink. Monster claims Thunder Beast infringes on its brand, which includes trademarked slogans such as “PUMP UP THE BEAST” and “UNLEASH THE ULTRA BEAST,” its petition for cancellation reads.




    • Copyrights



      • Court: Megaupload’s Failing Drives Can Be Fixed, But Not Accessed

        The sixteen failing hard drives containing Megaupload data at hosting provider Cogent can be restored and preserved. The court has granted the MPAA and RIAA's version of the preservation order, meaning that no person will be able to access the data without permission. Megaupload is disappointed that it's still unable to freely access the evidence and fears that it won't get a fair trial.









Recent Techrights' Posts

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People are being conditioned to associate technology with something undesirable, at times even unbearable
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it's good to see all those horrible things crashing and burning
 
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Links for the day
Global Warming and Global GAFAM Energy-Wasting
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It's about preventing competition against this autocracy
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Examples of white-collar trolls
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To Millions of People "Year of the Linux Desktop" Was Some Time in the 1990s (Bootable GNU/Linux as a Complete Operating System is Over 33 in Age)
In some sense, "year of the Linux desktop" was 33 years ago
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The problem isn't Wayland per se but the false promises and efforts to force everybody to move to it whilst insulting or demonising everyone who won't play along
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Brett Wilson LLP Stopped Sending Me Papers When I Showed It had Sent Me Over 5 Kilograms of Legal Papers
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Microsoft mass layoffs became a topic of everyday media coverage since May
Over at Tux Machines...
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Slows things down a bit
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[Meme] Microsoft Lawyers Throwing Stones in Glass Houses
threatened me with bankruptcy
Google "AI Overview" is Not AI and Not Overview
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Who stands to gain from this?
Europe's Second-Largest Institution (EPO) and Largest Patent Monopoly Office Needs More Transparency, Not Less Transparency
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This pattern of misreporting is so widespread that it's hard to believe it's not intentional
Computer Science is Under Attack, They Want Everyone to be a Consumer
If people can no longer acquire Computer Science education and real Computer Science experience, they will not know how to control their own digital destiny or emancipate the very same universities that now control the syllabus and instead of teaching Computer Science encourage the outsourcing of systems
The Best Tools Are the Simplest Tools
There's a hidden message here about the merits of sticking with X
Ofcom Online Safety Group Speaks of Protecting Women Online, Will Brett Wilson LLP Ever Listen?
They've essentially became like the Taliban's "burka police"
Social Control Media Relies on Advertisers, So It'll Always Be Hostile Towards Free Software
Sales, sales, sales
Over at Tux Machines...
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Fragmentation of Data
Life is too short to "hoard" data
In Defence of "Spinning Rust"
Just because something is "old" (or older) doesn't mean it ought to become extinct
Using Free Software to Prepare Legal Documents
LibreOffice is openly complaining about OOXML as an obstacle
Tech and Technology Are Not the Same Anymore
"Are you into tech, Sir?"
Our Articles About SLAPPs Receive Recognition and Interest
This week we shall continue writing about the 3 lawsuits we filed
Are You Served?
For many people, advocacy of Free software and GPL enforcement are assumed to be happening
Conspiracy or grooming? Alex Jurado, Voice of Reason compared to Outreachy
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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Framed by social control media: Alex Belfield, Voice of Reason
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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Jamie Zawinski Complained About Wayland, Then Decided to Give It a Go, Now Complains Again About Wayland
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Russia Set to Ban Facebook?
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Links for the day
Taking Stock of a Good and Productive Week
We shall now be taking a break, unpacking the new hard drive (8 TB), and making backups of everything
Nice Recovery (From Actual Fire) by PCLinuxOS, New Version of PCLinuxOS Released, Now Top of DistoWatch
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Microsoft Lunduke Still Fighting Cancel Culture With... Cancel Culture
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The History of Daily Links and Politics
"I support Wayland, but I also support abortion..."
Ageism in Tech
Your protocol is "old"...
Microsoft is at 0% "Market Share" in Most Areas
Depending on the taxonomy chosen, there may be dozens of categories other than desktops and laptops
"The moment MSFT stock fails to start tumbling, that’s the beginning of another corporate giant going under."
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Over at Tux Machines...
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