There are hundreds of different Linux distributions, each meeting the unique needs of its users. This diversity of distributions is what makes Linux the preferred operating system, but choosing the best one to get started can be quite daunting. First-timers need to take into consideration hardware, internet connection, installation method, desktop environment, support community, and more. So which one should a beginner choose? Take our Linux poll!
If you are a seasoned Linux user, what distribution did you use first? Was it an easy transition or do you wish you had started with a different distribution? For newbies, how is your new life on Linux going? What distribution are you using now? Take our poll and leave us a comment with your Linux story.
Linux marketing sucks. It’s a sobering proclamation, normally resulting from things as simple as lack of funding and resources, or lack of experience. There are several reasons Linux hasn’t caught fire on the desktop like it has elsewhere. I absolutely share Linus Torvalds’ belief that a contributing factor is fragmentation. That problem may persist eternally, but there is so much more we can do to increase awareness and audience for desktop Linux.
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“Linux insiders benefit from a brand that signals technical ability, even as that costs the ecosystem as a whole. But even the technically inclined can have dated ideas of the desktop experience. Six months ago, I’d only used Linux as a server environment. I’d no idea how polished the desktop had become.”
“Everything’s so easy to find, you don’t have to wrestle with it, it just works,” he continues. “It’s now Windows that feels too difficult, with all its armed robbery style updates and baffling menus, settings and file systems.”
Deepin has come a long way in its 15-year history. Based on Debian (stable branch), the open-source Linux distro is widely hailed as the “eye candy” of Linux distros, with many users claiming that it is even better looking than Windows or macOS.
Their recent release of the deepin v20 launcher preview on youtube.com has Linux lovers abuzz and in awe. Somehow the deepin developers have made the aesthetically pleasing OS even more so. Who knew this was even possible?
The head of the open-source file syncing and sharing software company Nextcloud, which has been growing at a fast pace, has ambitions to overtake proprietary services like Office 365 and Google GSuite.
Founder and chief executive Frank Karlitschek told iTWire that, given these plans, the forthcoming Nextcloud releases would see big improvements in productivity, collaboration, communications, scalability and security.
Nextcloud was started as a breakaway from another company, ownCloud, that Karlitschek himself started in 2010. Asked about the split, which occurred in 2016, he said he did not want to dwell on the reasons for the break-up, but said: "At the end of the day the complete set-up of the old company was wrong. [It had] the wrong management, investors, product focus and strategy.
The concept of computing container technology has been around a few decades, depending on what you consider a "container." In the past decade, enterprise IT and web-scale cloud providers have begun to rely upon containers to run many applications, starting up billions of them every week.
At the same time, we have also seen many industries being disrupted or impacted by personalized digital services. The world is abuzz with how 5G and edge computing will change our lives, maybe even more than the introduction of the smartphone. Before we leap forward into 5G, let?s catch up on what communications service providers (CSPs) and our industry have been able to accomplish with current infrastructure.
Our CSP customers like Turkcell have been actively building private clouds for the past few years to accelerate and automate the deployment of their mobile (4G/LTE) and business (SD-WAN) network services using network function virtualization (NFV) to package those applications in virtual machines (VMs) on off-the shelf server hardware.
Another big area of future growth for Juniper is going to come from a new version of its Junos operating system. Rahim said that the new Junos operating system that has been designed very purposefully for the cloud provider space.
"So, it has all of the capabilities, the Linux native capabilities, the modularity, the programmability, the telemetry aspects of what we know our cloud providers need and want," he said. "We also have our very first systems based both on merchant silicon and custom silicon offerings that run that operating system and there will be more to come."
NVIDIA and Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced they are expanding their alliance to deliver high-performance, software-defined 5G wireless infrastructure, running on Red Hat OpenShift, to the telecoms industry.
This has been the API status quo for the last couple of years, and API and API management have been steadily moving along.
“API management is a pretty mature discipline now. When API management companies like 3scale were conceived 10-12 years ago, that was really a response to a real need from Agile developers who were saying our interoperability needs are not met by the ESD (electronic software distribution) model that had dominated for 20 years up until that point,” said David Codelli, senior principal product marketing manager for the open-source software company Red Hat. “Today API management is doing an outstanding job of allowing microservices teams to get the interoperability and the self service they need. It is a well established business for mature companies.”
But as time has proven again and again, most things in software development don’t stay the same for long. The advent of these modern software techniques has spurred new technologies to support the new techniques, and API management will have to evolve to continue to meet the needs and expectations of users.
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The microservice architecture has introduced a new concept over the last couple of years to help deal with the overall visibility and insight into microservices. A service mesh is “a way to control how different parts of an application share data with one another,” according to Red Hat. While microservices enable developers to easily make changes to their services, a service mesh is used to handle the service-to-service communication.
According to Kevin Matheny, a senior director analyst for Gartner technical professionals, service meshes and API management are related, but also very different. Over time, developers are going to start, and some have already started, to combine service meshes into their API management initiatives.
“Our customers are engaging with us to try to sort out the landscape and figure out what is complementary and what is overlapping. What are the ways they can build a plan to capitalize on both: advancements in service mesh and advancements in API management,” said Red Hat’s Codelli.
Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage is software-defined storage integrated with and optimized for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. It runs anywhere OpenShift does: on-premise or in the public cloud. OpenShift Container Storage 4.2 is built on Red Hat Ceph€® Storage, Rook, and NooBaa to provide container native storage services that support block, file, and object services. For the initial 4.2 release, OpenShift Container Storage will be supported on OpenShift platforms deployed on Amazon Web Services and VMware.
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With OpenShift Container Storage 4.2, we focused on the customer experience from the ground up with the goal of making it easier and accessible to all OpenShift administrators — whether they are new to storage or are already ninja-level storage gurus — so anyone can install, upgrade and manage the storage in a public cloud-like experience.
Hello and welcome back to the Linux Gaming News Punch, after taking a break for the Summer holidays we’re back for Episode 20.
For those just joining, this is a quick take roundup on recent Linux gaming news. Meant for those who struggle to keep up or just want a little Linux gaming news on the go. Audio-only files and feed links below the video.
US telcos cut Google out of the shift to rich communication services, three companies respond to user backlash, and Google unveils a new search algorithm.
Slated for introduction with the upcoming Linux 5.5 kernel is a System76 ACPI driver needed for their new laptops that are now shipping with an open-source Coreboot firmware implementation.
System76 recently launched two laptops that are featuring Coreboot support, which itself is open-source granted not 100% open-source due to there still being the relevant Intel firmware binaries bundled as part of the system. It at least is more exciting than a conventional proprietary BIOS and great seeing more vendors embracing Coreboot while we still long for the day that the likes of the Intel FSP and ME are neutralized completely or fully open-sourced.
Complementing the big AMDGPU feature pull request from two weeks ago, on Friday AMD sent out a second batch of features targeting the upcoming Linux 5.5 kernel merge window.
On the feature front, the main change with this pull request for Linux 5.5 is the BACO support for older AMD GPUs. Those Radeon 200/300 series parts are seeing BACO support for possible power-savings ultimately but the short-term focus is using it for GPU reset functionality. BACO is already supported on the newer AMD GPUs.
Following a lot of work on the AMD "ACO" compiler back-end to the RADV Vulkan driver for GFX10/Navi, this experimental alternative to AMDGPU LLVM is about ready to go for these newest AMD graphics processors.
There was more aco/gfx10 activity merged yesterday getting the hazard mitigations in place and other bits landing earlier in the week as well.
NVIDIA on Friday released the 435.27.02 Linux beta driver that features a few Vulkan updates.
First up, the environment variable __GL_SYNC_DISPLAY_DEVICE is now honored by Vulkan applications. This environment variable has been used by the NVIDIA Linux driver for a few years in cases of multi-monitor setups that are not ideal for specifying which display device / output to sync to in a bid to eliminate tearing. This GL_SYNC variable has obviously been focused on OpenGL (there is also a separate one for VDPAU synchronization) while now it works for Vulkan games/programs too.
The newest Vulkan extension now supported by Intel's open-source "ANV" Linux driver is VK_KHR_vulkan_memory_model.
The VK_KHR_vulkan_memory_model support was originally introduced a year ago and then solidified in Q1 as the formal memory model for Vulkan and the first for a major graphics API. VK_KHR_vulkan_memory_model exposes support for the Vulkan Memory Model as the means of defining synchronized memory access to the same memory locations via multiple shader invocations.
Hi list,
Sorry for the slight delay in the release, my fault. I'm pleased to announce the availability of mesa 19.2.2, the second point release in the mesa 19.2 series. Things have started to slow down a bit, and I like that. We've had an assortment of fixes in this release, notably a bunch of work to get Solaris and illumos working with mesa, as well as more work fixing issues in the migration of package-config and headers being handled by libglvnd instead of mesa when mesa is built with support for glvnd.
There's bunch of other changes here, with radv and intel leading the pack, otherwise just a few things here and there.
Dylan
Shortlog ========
Alan Coopersmith (6): c99_compat.h: Don't try to use 'restrict' in C++ code util: Make Solaris implemention of p_atomic_add work with gcc util: Workaround lack of flock on Solaris util: Solaris has linux-style pthread_setname_np meson: recognize "sunos" as the system name for Solaris intel/common: include unistd.h for ioctl() prototype on Solaris
Alejandro Piñeiro (1): v3d: take into account prim_counts_offset
Bas Nieuwenhuizen (3): radv: Disallow sparse shared images. nir/dead_cf: Remove dead control flow after infinite loops. radv: Fix single stage constant flush with merged shaders.
Clément Guérin (1): radeonsi: enable zerovram for Rocket League
Connor Abbott (2): nir/sink: Rewrite loop handling logic nir/sink: Don't sink load_ubo to outside of its defining loop
Dylan Baker (3): docs: Add SHA256 sum for 19.2.1 docs: Add release notes for 19.2.2 Bump version for 19.2.2 release
Eric Engestrom (7): GL: drop symbols mangling support meson: rename `glvnd_missing_pc_files` to `not glvnd_has_headers_and_pc_files` meson: move a couple of include installs around meson: split headers one per line meson: split Mesa headers as a separate installation meson: skip installation of GLVND-provided headers util/u_atomic: fix return type of p_atomic_{inc,dec}_return() and p_atomic_{cmp,}xchg()
Ian Romanick (2): nir/search: Fix possible NULL dereference in is_fsign intel/vec4: Don't try both sources as immediates for DPH
James Xiong (1): iris: finish aux import on get_param
Kenneth Graunke (2): iris: Properly unreference extra VBOs for draw parameters iris: Implement the Gen < 9 tessellation quads workaround
Lepton Wu (1): egl/android: Remove our own reference to buffers.
Lionel Landwerlin (3): etnaviv: remove variable from global namespace anv: fix vkUpdateDescriptorSets with inline uniform blocks anv: fix memory leak on device destroy
Lucas Stach (3): etnaviv: fix vertex buffer state emission for single stream GPUs rbug: fix transmitted texture sizes rbug: unwrap index buffer resource
Pierre-Eric Pelloux-Prayer (1): mesa: fix invalid target error handling for teximage
Roland Scheidegger (1): gallivm: Fix saturated signed psub/padd intrinsics on llvm 8
Samuel Pitoiset (6): drirc: enable vk_x11_override_min_image_count for DOOM radv: bump minTexelBufferOffsetAlignment to 4 radv: fix DCC fast clear code for intensity formats Revert "radv: do not emit PKT3_CONTEXT_CONTROL with AMDGPU 3.6.0+" radv: fix DCC fast clear code for intensity formats (correctly) radv: fix updating bound fast ds clear values with different aspects
Timothy Arceri (1): glsl: fix crash compiling bindless samplers inside unnamed UBOs
git tag: mesa-19.2.2
Mesa 19.2.2 was released on Thursday as the second point release to this quarter's Mesa 19.2 stable series.
With all new feature work focused on Mesa 19.3 for release in just over one month's time, Mesa 19.2.2 is just focused on fixes. The Mesa 19.2.2 brings a number of compatibility fixes/workarounds for Oracle Solaris (and the open-source Illumos), a number of Radeon Vulkan (RADV) fixes, the workaround to enabling zeroed vRAM for the Rocket League game to avoid artifact issues, Meson build system updates, a few Intel Iris Gallium3D driver fixes, and various other fixes scattered throughout.
NVIDIA continue pushing out new builds to their special Vulkan Beta Driver, a staging area to test out new features. They've been running this special series now for a number of years, as they continue to keep up with the latest updates to the Vulkan API and their support of Linux with recent drivers has been great.
Following this week's Intel Core i7-1065G7 Ice Lake Linux benchmarks there was some questions and speculations about the per-clock performance of this long-awaited Intel microarchitecture update. Here is some additional data shedding light on the clock frequencies under load and ultimately how the per-clock performance compares to the common Intel previous-generation mobile CPUs.
The Core i7-1065G7 features a 1.3GHz base frequency and 3.9GHz turbo frequency, well below the i7-8550U clock frequencies of 1.80GHz and 4.0GHz for the i7-8550U or 1.8GHz and 1.6GHz of the i7-8565U processors, the two other mobile processors compared to in this week's Linux benchmarks. But thanks to superior per-clock performance, the Ice Lake CPU offered significant raw performance and performance-per-Watt gains over these earlier processors.
Please do NOT use this VirtualBox Beta release on production machines. A VirtualBox Beta release should be considered a bleeding-edge release meant for early evaluation and testing purposes.
You will shortly be able to download the binaries here. Please use sha256sum to compare the hash of the downloaded package with the corresponding hash from this list.
Please do NOT open bug reports at https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Bugtracker but use our VirtualBox Beta Feedback forum to report any problems with the Beta. Please concentrate on reporting regressions since VirtualBox 6.0.14.
Oracle today released their second public beta of the forthcoming VirtualBox 6.1 virtualization software.
MPV 0.30 is out as the newest release to this cross-platform, open-source video player derived from MPlayer/mplayer2.
MPV continues to be on an exciting trajectory with their v0.30 release. This release adds Vulkan interoperability with its CUDA hardware decoding support as well as VA-API + Vulkan interop support too. MPV 0.30 also replaces its previous Vulkan implementation with one based upon libplacebo, the work-in-progress MPV library, so their Vulkan support is centered around the library.
In the past, multimedia was a sore point for Linux users. Now, though, it's a strength. There are plenty of fantastic DVD and video players for Linux systems, including Ubuntu. As an added bonus, they all should be readily available in the default Ubuntu repositories.
The Xiph rav1e AV1 video encoder written in the Rust programming language recently picked up more optimizations among other improvements.
This week's pre-release adds SSSE3 and AArch64 NEON as the newest optimizations to rav1e. That comes on top of other recent work like better rate control, two-pass rate control, x86_64 speed-ups, tiles being expressed in linear units, other new x86_64 SIMD optimizations, a fast 8-bit code-pathm and other work.
Tencent QQ, one of the favorite instant messaging apps for Chinese users, now is back to Linux by releasing QQ for Linux 2.0.0 Beta.
QQ for Linux was discontinued about 10 years ago. Now it’s back with following features:
Support x64ãâ¬ÂARM64ãâ¬ÂMIPS64. Offers .rpm, .deb, .pkg.tar.xz, and .sh packages. Login by scanning QR Code via QQ on mobile. Send texts, files, pictures, and take screenshots.
I upgraded an old server from Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS today and, when it restarted, I started getting “Read-only file system” errors on the root partition.
Accessing the current endianness programmatically is especially useful in situations where the data being poked features a different structure, depending on the endianness.
A good (or bad) example of this is the way registers are encoded in eBPF instructions. eBPF is the in-kernel virtual machine of Linux, and features an ISA with ten general-purpose registers. eBPF instructions generally use two registers, namely the source register and the destination register. Each register is encoded using 4 bits, and the fields encoding registers are consecutive in the instructions.
Typical. However, for reasons I won't be discussing right now (because I'm having a nice night and don't want to ruin it) the order of the source and destination register fields is switched depending on the endianness.
Backbone: Prologue, acting as the demo of an upcoming much larger game from developer EggNut has finally added Linux support today a few months after releasing for Windows.
Originally funded on Kickstarter back in 2018, Backbone is a pixel art cinematic adventure with stealth and action elements. It does look seriously good, the atmosphere is incredible so it's good to see we weren't forgotten about.
The latest feature contribution by Valve's Linux driver developers to the open-source RADV driver is a "secure compile" feature.
The secure compile feature allows for spawning multiple compile threads on the same system that are secured via SECCOMP filters as the "secure" aspect of this feature for ensuring the threads are just doing their designated shader compilation tasks with no shaders going rogue.
Bioshock 1 & 2 running through Steam play.
Something that's proven to be a little controversial is their inclusion of micro-transactions. They say these are only for special cosmetic items to support further development, along with additional online Vault space, special community events and a really dumb sounding "pay2die" system that spawns impossibly strong monsters. It's a little confusing though, they need to make it a lot clearer on the how/where you actually get them. It can only be done currently when you're in-game, by a little coin icon next to your character name.
As for what's coming next. A new Annihilator class is set to launch for owners of the Embers of Rage DLC next month. These Annihilators use "steamguns" and new heavy weapons including "flamethrower, shockstaff and boltgun", with the ability to deploy automated steam turrets—sounds like a fun character class to play with.
Wanderlust Travel Stories is a text-driven adventure that wants you to slow down a bit, from the lead gameplay and narrative designers on The Witcher games and written in collaboration with seasoned journalists and reporters. It's out for Linux now and we have a GamingOnLinux 33% discount on GOG for you!
Lori and Corey Cole are back again, after releasing Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption last year they're returning for the spin-off game Summer Daze at Hero-U.
Currently funding on Kickstarter, with 11 days left of the campaign they are getting close to hitting the almost $100K target. Summer Daze is actually a prequel to the original game, aimed to be a "light-hearted interactive tale of friendship, fun, and folly suitable for all ages". Blending multiple genres together with narrative-driven gameplay that's part Visual Novel, part Adventure game and a sprinkle of "light RPG" elements. There's even talk of puzzles for more experienced players.
Well this is a bit unexpected. After Starbreeze went through some major issues, they're back and working on PAYDAY 2 once again with an announcement about the future.
As a very brief history lesson, back in 2018 Starbreeze went into "reconstruction" as they pretty much ran out of cash. According to what Mikael Nermark, the CEO of Starbreeze said, through "extremely hard work and commitment by all of our employees" they've been able to keep the lights on.
So what's happening to PAYDAY 2? Previously, they gave away millions of copies and removed individual DLC purchases in favour of an Ultimate Edition with the promise of that keeping everything in future under one roof too. They're now breaking that previous promise. Instead, you can now buy the base game, a new Legacy Collection that includes all current DLC and shortly all individual DLC will become purchasable again.
Think about it, AI that's a lot smarter powered by something like Google Duplex, many times more people available on the screen than would be possible before and so on. There are a lot of possibilities with.
Raymond said in the interview, that they do have some exclusive games currently in the works that should demonstrate what they mean with Stadia's server power. However, it could be "several years" before some big new IP comes out that fully takes advantage of it but they claim we should see some that push the boundaries coming out every year.
There are a lot of drawbacks to the service, many of which we've mentioned before. However, for Linux gamers especially it really could fill a huge gap. Having access to things like online multiplayer titles that will never be ported to Linux and possibly never work in Steam Play is an exciting one.
Starting Friday off with some good news, the developer of Unrailed! has confirmed a Linux version is currently in progress.
Back in July, the developer actually said on Steam that some of their team are Linux users but they weren't promising anything for the game. However, just yesterday they came back to the same Steam forum post to note "It is in the works :)".
Valve have released another update to the Steam Beta Client to deal with a few issues, along with adding in a few little helper options.
Having problems with all those free to play titles you no longer play appearing in your Library? Fear not, Valve added a quick option to sort it out. Right click -> Manage -> Remove from account. On top of that, Valve added an easy way to add custom artwork for each game in the right click Manage menu.
Plasma Mobile now uses the same notification code that is used on the desktop, which has received some slight adjustments when running on a phone (Marco Martin).
The dialer now uses the SearchField component from Kirigami, giving it the same look and feel as in similar places (Jonah Brüchert).
The icons in the top drawer are consistently monochrome now (Nicolas Fella).
We’re talking a high-level over-view on effort undertaken to ‘boost’ the real time functioning of GNOME Shell, benefitting not just Ubuntu 19.10 users, but other Linux distros too.
For those unaware, a fair chunk of Ubuntu’s engineering effort of late has focused on ameliorating performance issues across key areas, from video accelerated playback to compositing fixes (i.e. nixing the terror of screen tearing) to improving GNOME Shell performance.
And it’s this latter endeavour, issues affecting GNOME Shell and related components, that Daniel’s discourse digest get in too.
The developer describes Dragora "as an independent GNU/Linux-Libre distribution based on concepts of simplicity." Perhaps the problem rests on the definition of the word "simplicity." Gregora 3 is anything but simple to install and manage packages.
Dragora version 2.2.0 had a text-based installer that automated much of the file fetching and compiling. It started the installation process by creating a bootable DVD from a downloaded ISO file.
You booted the computer using the DVD and typed "setup" to begin the scripted installation routine. The process included partitioning the hard drive manually and processing configuration tasks when prompted.
That was a more traditional installation routine. It was, in fact, SIMPLER than dealing with what I described above.
For the less adventurous, I can not recommend Dragora Linux. If you are a seasoned software engineer or otherwise are handy at performing complicated compiling routines, feel invited to try Dragora 3 beta.
My suggestion to the developer: Lose Qi. Replace it with an installation process that is actually SIMPLE.
This week it has been another three snapshots released upon the users. There were some updates, as usual, and a larger stack has been removed from Tumbleweed, after weeks of preparation. The three snapshots released were 1018, 1022 and 1023
Last week, Troy Topnik and I presented a webinar on how to boost developer productivity with SUSE Cloud Application Platform — our modern application delivery platform that brings an advanced cloud native developer experience to Kubernetes and enables fast and efficient delivery of cloud native applications at scale. Developers can serve themselves and get apps to the cloud in minutes instead of weeks. SUSE Cloud Application platform eliminates manual IT configuration and helps accelerate innovation by getting applications to market faster. Streamlining application delivery opens a clear path to increased business agility, led by enterprise development, operations, and DevOps teams.
With the official release of SUSE Enterprise Storage 6, SUSE Partner Engineering would like to announce the availability of the latest SUSE Enterprise Storage (SES) Certification Kit version 1.2. The SESCK v1.2 has been updated and enhanced to provide certification support for SUSE€® Enterprise Storage 6.
Today, one email was sent to the arch-announce mailing list that was able to circumvent the whitelisting checks that are done by the mailman software. This was not due to unauthorized access and no Arch Linux servers were compromised.
We have implemented measures to make sure this does not happen again, by using mailman's poster password feature. We are also making sure, these simple whitelist checks are not used anywhere else.
This week, Google released the first 78 version in the “stable” channel of their Chromium sources – the basis of Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi and even the Edge browsers, and of course the Chromium open-source browser itself. The release notes contain a fairly long list of security issues (CVE’s) which were taken care of.
I built packages for you today, so that you can enjoy the latest&greatest Chromium browser on Slackware 14.2 or -current.
While Fedora 31 didn't make its original release target of this week due to being delayed by installer issues and DNF bugs, those blocker bugs have now been addressed and this next installment of Red Hat's Fedora Linux is coming out next week!
Fedora 31 is bringing with it many exciting features and improvements with GNOME 3.34 powering Fedora Workstation, continued Wayland improvements, Red Hat continues working on PipeWire, Fedora Silverblue continues getting more fit, and many other features and a plethora of bleeding-edge packages.
Here’s your report of what has happened in Fedora Program Management this week. Fedora 31 RC1.9 is GO and will release on Tuesday 29 October. We are currently under the Final freeze.
I have weekly office hours in #fedora-meeting-1. Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else.
First thing first, Tails 3.16 was vulnerable with multiple security issues including issues with popular applications like Libreoffice, Samba, FFmpeg, OpenSSL, etc. Tails 4.0 packs a bundle of security fixes. You can find the complete list of security fixes here.
A new version of the privacy and anonymity focused Linux distribution Tails has been released this week; Tails 4.0 is a major update of the Linux distribution that improves performance and usability, upgrades included components, and fixes security issues.
The new version is already available for download on the official Tails project website. The Tails 4.0 ISO image has a size of 1.1 Gigabytes. It can be burned to disc or put on a USB stick to boot into the environment. Note that existing distributions cannot be upgraded to Tails 4.0; a manual upgrade is necessary.
Tails was designed specifically to be run from USB or optical discs to run independently of operating systems installed on computer systems. It comes with Tor built-in and features several other tools and components to improve security and privacy.
With the finally finished Qt transition to 5.12, Calibre 4 can be included into Debian. I just have uploaded Calibre 4.2 build using Python 3 to the experimental suite in Debian. This allows all those who want to get rid of Python2 to upgrade to the experimental version.
Every two years in April, a Long Term Support (LTS) release is published. Ubuntu LTS releases are commonly used in enterprise environments, with more than 60% of large-scale production clouds running Ubuntu LTS images.
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) is the latest Ubuntu LTS release, with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS coming in April 2020. Each new LTS release is supported for ten years total; five years of standard support, and five additional years of support under Ubuntu Advantage for Infrastructure (UA-I). UA-I provides users and organisations access to key security fixes and patches, including Canonical’s Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) and Kernel Livepatch services.
Twice every year, in April and October, interim releases are published. They are commonly used by those interested in the latest features and capable of upgrading more frequently.
Our latest interim release, which arrived last week, is Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine). Its enhanced capabilities include the latest OpenStack Train release for live-migration assistance, improved security for Kubernetes deployments at the edge and significant updates to desktop performance. Standard support for an interim release is provided for nine months with no additional support extension offered.
For those curious how the Ubuntu 19.04 vs. Ubuntu 19.10 performance is looking for higher-end Intel/AMD desktops, here are some fresh benchmarks.
With last week's release of Ubuntu 19.10 we began carrying out some Ubuntu 19.04 vs. 19.10 performance comparisons. Based upon the higher-end desktop CPUs we had access to, this comparison is of four different systems including the Intel Core i9 9900K, Intel Core i9 7980XE, AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, and AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX.
Note there are component differences between the systems with this testing is focused on looking at the Ubuntu 19.04 vs. 19.10 performance as opposed to directly comparing the various systems under test, which we do anyhow in our various Linux CPU reviews.
Ubuntu 19.10’s new ‘Media Sharing’ toggle in Settings > Sharing means there’s no need to download and install a separate DLNA server client to share media photos, videos and music over your local network.
Once enabled you can, for example, forage through the photos you downloaded on your laptop from the biggest screen in your house, namely your TV.
Similarly, you can stream music and video files kept on your main machine via a games console or web-enabled set-top box like the Roku.
And it all works using the ubiquitous DLNA/UPnP protocols and your local network — no third-party cloud server or media centre set-up required.
This month: * Command & Conquer * How-To : Python, Automation, and Darktable * Graphics : Inkscape * Linux Loopback * Everyday Ubuntu * Book Review : Developing Games on the Raspberry Pi * Review : Bodhi Linux * Interview : Tsu Jan – FeatherPad Dev * Linux Certified * Ubuntu Games : Pathway plus: News, My Story, The Daily Waddle, Q&A, Crossword and more.
To put it bluntly, I see Collapse OS as more of a fun hobby project (for those who like building operating systems), than something useful. When a collapse does come, how will Collapse OS get distributed, since I imagine that GitHub will be down? I can’t imagine more than a handful of skill people being able to create a system from scavenged parts. There is a whole new generation of makers out there, but most of them are used to picking up an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi and building their project than starting from scratch.
Contrary to Dupras, my biggest concern is the use of EMPs. These things fry all electrical systems, meaning there would be nothing left to scavenge to build system. If that doesn’t happen, I imagine that we would be able to find enough x86 components made over the past 30 years to keep things going.
That being said, Collapse OS sounds like a fun and challenging project to people who like to program in low-level code for strange applications. If you are such a person, check out Collapse OS.
Yesterday I attended a meetup event in Seville organized by the SVK (seville kubernetes) group. The event was held in the offices of Bitnami, now a VMware business.
The agenda for the event consisted in a couple of talks strongly focused on kubernetes, both of which interested me personally.
First one was Deploying apps with kubeapps, a talk by Andres Martinez Gotor, engineer at Bitnami. He presented the kubeapps utility, which is an application dashboard for kubernetes developed by Bitnami. We got a variety of information, from how to use kubeapps, to how this integrates with helm/tiller, and how this works in a multi-tenant enabled cluster. Some comments were added from the security point of view, things to take into account, etc. In general, kubeapps seems easy to install and use, and enables end users to easily deploy arbitrary apps into kubernetes.
This was the second year that ATO hosted a pre-conference track on diversity and inclusion. It was a sold out event with a free but separate registration (for booking, budgets, and accounting). I attended last year as well.
As I began writing up this report, I noticed the title of the event does not include the word diversity. According to the wayback machine, the main title was the same last year but it felt like the word diversity was included in most of the promotion of the event. Last year did have "A Conversation" as part of the title and incorporated much discussion on the definitions and differences in diversity, inclusion, and equity. This year the title was simply Inclusion in Open Source & Technology [1] and the presentations had a lot more actionable examples of how a project, organization, team, or individual can be more inclusive.
I really like the format of this event. They have a series of short talks which this year were basically people's stories of how they felt included or actions they thought there should be more of so others feel more included. Later there is a Q&A session for everyone to further explore these topics and suggestions.
This year also included a screening of the second episode of the Chasing Grace Project and a Q&A with the producer. I cannot seem to remember which event I was at when I had the opportunity to screen the first episode. I am looking forward to the complete series being available to a wider audience.
Last year I remember feeling a mix of depression and optimism. There were a lots of examples showing how those paying attention have expanded the types of diversity beyond gender and race and how many opportunities do exist. There were also a lot of stats showing how slow the progress is happening and where it is even going backwards. In many ways I felt like I was hearing the same things I've heard all my life and that is a tiring thought.
Yesterday, me, Dmitry, Wolthera and Agata visited BlenderCon 2019. Intel had asked us to come to the conference to help set up the Intel/Acer booth, which was showing off Krita in all its HDR glory. After all, it’s pretty cool when a free software project has a real, tangible, technical, artistic first! It was great being there, meeting people who were really pleased to finally meet Krita hackers in the flesh.
Amazon Web Services has agreed to sponsor the development of the Rust project, being just one of the latest tech giants to throw its weight behind this security-focused programming language.
The sponsorship comes in the form of "promotional credits" that AWS will be making available to the Rust team, which they'll be able to use to rent AWS infrastructure and support the language's development.
"We're thrilled that AWS, which the Rust project has used for years, is helping to sponsor Rust's infrastructure," said Alex Crichton, Rust Core Team Member.
Over the last few years we have kept our work on the Pernosco debugger mostly under wraps, but finally it's time to show the world what we've been working on! So, without further ado, here's an introductory demo video showing Pernosco debugging a real-life bug...
After reading boat’s excellent post on asynchronous destructors, I thought it might be a good idea to write some about async fn in traits. Support for async fn in traits is probably the single most common feature request that I hear about. It’s also one of the more complex topics. So I thought it’d be nice to do a blog post kind of giving the “lay of the land” on that feature – what makes it complicated? What questions remain open?
I’m not making any concrete proposals in this post, just laying out the problems. But do not lose hope! In a future post, I’ll lay out a specific roadmap for how I think we can make incremental progress towards supporting async fn in traits in a useful way. And, in the meantime, you can use the async-trait crate (but I get ahead of myself…).
Next week, Collabora will be sponsoring, exhibiting & speaking at Embedded Linux Confererence Europe in Lyon, France. Now in its 14th year, ELCE, which is co-located with the Open Source Summit Europe, is the premier vendor-neutral technical conference for companies and developers using embedded Linux. If you are planning on attending either conference, please make sure to come say hello and see what our team has been working on!
[...]
Open Source meets augmented reality in our second demo, which centers around custom development work on the Magic Leap One augmented reality headset using GStreamer! This is your chance to experience this lightweight, wearable computer that seamlessly blends the digital and physical worlds, allowing digital content to coexist with real world objects around you.
Apple will be providing sponsorships for the scholarships at FoundationDB Summit, happening on Day Zero of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon San Diego.
For its second year, FoundationDB Summit has two tracks. The first is curated for attendees new to the community and will focus on architectural overviews as well as real-world business applications. The second track will provide technical deep dives into features, challenges, and tooling community members have been working on. The FoundationDB scholarship program provides support to those from traditionally underrepresented and/or marginalized groups in the technology and/or open source communities, who may not otherwise have the opportunity to attend CNCF events for financial reasons. Scholarships are also available on a needs and affordability basis.
That upcoming term will then (regularly) end on February 17, 2022, so the next elections of the Board of Directors will take place before.
As per ۤ 6 III, only members of the Board of Trustees of The Document Foundation, as well as current members of any of its bodies, are eligible to be elected into the Board of Directors, and the election is overseen by the Membership Committee (ۤ 7 II).
The active electoral right is reserved to those who have been members of the Board of Trustees before this announcement (ۤ 7 II).
ۤ 6 III also states that members of the Board of Directors or their deputies may not be members of the Membership Committee and vice versa. This means that current members of the Membership Committee are eligible to be elected, but with the acceptance of their new role they lose their current role in the MC. For clarification, they have to step down from the Membership Committee, with effect no later than to the beginning of the new term of the Board of Directors, the minute before accepting to become a member of the Board of Directors.
There is one more notable limitation: per ۤ 8 IV of the statutes, a maximum of 1/3 members of the Board of Directors is allowed to work on an employment basis for the same company, organization, entities, affiliates or subdivisions.
Nomination of candidates fulfilling the above requirements, as well as self nomination is welcome. In total, at least seven Board of Directors members are required, and given there are enough candidates, up to three deputies can be elected (ۤ 7 II). As deputies are on duty quite often, we encourage many candidates to participate.
Dutt: Not really, I said we work with some CNCF projects like Prometheus, but there's no desire on our part to put our own projects such as Grafana or Loki into the CNCF.
We are an open source observability company and this is our core competency and our core brand. Part of our strategy for delivering differentiated solutions to our customers involves being more in control of our own destiny, so to speak.
We very much believe in the power of the community. We do have a pretty active community, though certainly more than 50 percent of the work is done by Grafana Labs. We have a habit of always hiring the top contributors within the community, which is how we scale our engineering team.
[...]
You know, if you want to have something be open source, then make it really open source, and if it doesn't work through a business model to make a particular thing open source, then don't make it open source.
So our view is we have a lot of open source software, which is truly open source, meaning under a real open source license like Apache, and we also have our enterprise offerings that are not open.
Blogception: a post on VSCodium as it’s being written in VSCodium.
Guix provides a very useful feature that may be quite foreign to newcomers: profiles. They are a way to group package installations together and all users on a same system are free to use as many profiles as they want.
Whether you're a developer or not, you may find that multiple profiles bring you great power and flexibility. While they shift the paradigm somewhat compared to traditional package managers, they are very convenient to use once you've understood how to set them up.
If you are familiar with Python's virtualenv, you can think of a profile as a kind of universal virtualenv that can hold any kind of software whatsoever, not just Python software. Furthermore, profiles are self-sufficient: they capture all the runtime dependencies which guarantees that all programs within a profile will always work at any point in time.
This new endpoint is unique cause it blocks by default Ads & Trackers !
DARPA program manager of Paul Tilghman; and Ben Hilburn, president of the GNU Radio Foundation.
Tilghman and Ben Hilburn, director of engineering for DeepSig and president of of GNU Radio emceed the event, with help from Mythbusters host (and electrical engineer) Grant Imahara.
The news of iconic children’s television show “Sesame Street”’s new arrangement with the HBO MAX streaming service has sent ripples around the Internet. Starting this year, episodes of “Sesame Street” will debut on HBO and on the HBO MAX service, with new episodes being made available to PBS “at some point.” Parents Television Council’s Tim Winter recently told New York Times that “HBO is holding hostage underprivileged families” who can no longer afford to watch new “Sesame Street” episodes.
The move is particularly galling because the show is partially paid for with public funding. Let's imagine an alternative: what if “Sesame Street” were open access? What if the show’s funding had come with a requirement that it be made available to the public?
It’s Open Access Week and we’re joining SPARC and dozens of other organizations this week to discuss the importance of open access to scientific research publications.€
An academic publisher should widely disseminate the knowledge produced by scholars, not hold it for ransom. But ransoming scientific research back to the academic community is essentially the business model of the world’s largest publisher of scientific journals: Elsevier.
There is much greater performance potential out of RISC-V now with SiFive having announced the U8-Series.
From results on OpenBenchmarking.org of SiFive's HiFive Unleashed development board the results hadn't been too impressive with the aging U54 SoC but the RISC-V focused firm has been working on ramping up the performance and have now introduced the U8-Series.
Following the Reverse Engineering a Smart Light Bulb post, I got contacted by Eyal, a member of the TAMI community, asking if we could meet up and try to reverse engineer a Xiaomi Yeelight WiFi Bulb he has recently purchased.
Netflix announced that they are releasing a new piece of open source software that they are calling Polynote. Polynote is an IDE-inspired polyglot notebook that includes first-class Scala support, Python and SQL. Looking at the website, it appears to be built on top of Jupyter Notebook.
Their top goals for the project are reproducibility and visibility. You can read the full announcement with examples on Medium.
This looks like an interesting project and I am curious to see how it impacts Project Jupyter. My personal hope is that Netflix’s work will be useful to the Python community and perhaps enhance Jupyter Notebook and JupyterLab.
If you are a programmer who has found his feet in the developer community by learning one language, we strongly recommend adding more arrows to your quiver and widening your horizons.
In this article we focus on the benefits of learning more than one programming language, what some of the expert programmers around the world have to say about it and finally, we recommend the top languages to learn and where to learn them from.
A new release of what may be my most minor package, dang, is now on CRAN. The dang package regroups a few functions of mine that had no other home as for example lsos() from a StackOverflow question from 2009 (!!) is one, this overbought/oversold price band plotter from an older blog post is another. More recently added were helpers for data.table to xts conversion and a git repo root finder.
Some of these functions (like lsos()) where hanging in my .Rprofile, other just lived in scripts so some years ago I started to collect them in a package, and as of February this is now on CRAN too for reasons that are truly too bizarre to go about. It’s a weak and feeble variant of the old Torvalds line about backups and ftp sites …
Time series data, as the name suggests is a type of data that changes with time. For instance, the temperature in a 24-hour time period, the price of various products in a month, the stock prices of a particular company in a year. Advanced deep learning models such as Long Short Term Memory Networks (LSTM), are capable of capturing patterns in the time series data, and therefore can be used to make predictions regarding the future trend of the data. In this article, you will see how to use LSTM algorithm to make future predictions using time series data.
In one of my earlier articles, I explained how to perform time series analysis using LSTM in the Keras library in order to predict future stock prices. In this article, we will be using the PyTorch library, which is one of the most commonly used Python libraries for deep learning.
Have the American Exceptionalists ever played Go, the ancient Chinese game of strategy? It is well-known that the Iranians are very good at chess and that the Egyptians call Putin Vladimir the Fox. The fox is a shapeshifter and trickster according to ancient Chinese lore. Chinese legend also states that Emperor Shun invented Go 4000 years ago to sharpen the wits of a dull son. Washington’s wits remain dull. Their game of choice is probably checkers, despite all that cant about Game Theory, ‘pivoting’ and counterinsurgency. The English play conkers, which originated with a king named William in 1066, and rhymes with bonkers.
"She's also held in contempt by millions of Americans who support strong public schools."
I wasn’t cancelled either. Instead, this “socially engaged art” class became the highlight of my fledgling career in academia. Much of this success depended on applying the Socratic method as a model for class discussions. They were not formal Socratic Seminars, but I facilitated discussions with probing questions to encourage students to think deeper about their opinions. For example, in our conversation about censorship, a student expressed concern about violent speech. “Do you mean violent or hurtful?” I asked. After a pause, “I guess… hurtful?”
Recent events in Chile and Ecuador reverberate throughout South America and indeed the world. Confronted with violent government repression, by insisting on reasoned argument, critical thinking, and mass direct action, non-violent student movements in South America offer hope at a time when authoritarianism threatens democratic citizenship worldwide.
My husband and I run an oil and vinegar shop in Minneapolis. We love helping customers brighten their meals, but another reason we started our business doesn’t fit neatly into marketing materials: We needed child care, and we couldn’t make it work any other way.
"Supporters of Medicare for All are right. Funding universal health insurance through taxes would lead to a large tax cut for the vast majority of workers."
The lawmakers are doing it. The candidates are doing it. The mass media are doing it. All are excluding from their arenas the leading citizen groups as never before, since the early nineteen sixties. The nonprofit national advocacy/research organizations that led the way for social reforms are being shut out of the political process. These groups were pioneers in consumer rights, environmental protections, labor rights, and whistle-blower protections. These groups fought for freedom of information laws and practices and access to justice in ways that have made our country better in so many ways.
So another day and another NGO report on pesticides that simply fails to deliver!
Last week, ProPublica updated its Dollars for Docs database, so like any self-respecting journalist and inveterate snoop, I took the opportunity to see whether any of my physicians — or any of my relatives who are doctors — have received money from pharmaceutical companies.
You can do the same thing: Find out whether any of the doctors or dentists you’ve seen in Illinois or elsewhere have gotten drug company money for consulting, research or promotional work from August 2013 through December 2018.
We've talked before about the over-reliance on tech to do certain jobs that cannot be simplified to the sum of mathematical parts. The criminal justice system is starting to turn over sentencing to algorithms -- something that seems like the smart thing to do but removes judicial and prosecutorial discretion from the mix, leaving defendants with the unpalatable option of challenging software they're never allowed to examine.
Air pollution is on the rise in the United States after steadily declining from 2009 to 2016, according to€ new research€ published this month.
Of course, there's a profound human toll that dollars and cents can't capture. Almost 400,000 people have died since 1999 from overdoses related to prescription or illicit opioids. There are more deaths every single year than from traffic accidents. These are lives thrown into chaos, families torn apart — you can't put a dollar figure on those things.
But the economic impact is important to understand. The most recent estimate of those costs comes from the Society of Actuaries and actuarial consulting firm Milliman in a report published this month.
"Congress must expand—and not allow any cuts to—the comprehensive medical treatment that so many millions of people depend on through community health centers."
"We will legalize marijuana and vacate and expunge past marijuana convictions."
Neal has received over $670,000 in campaign cash from pharmaceutical companies since 2007, according to Kaiser Health News
Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr), Gentoo (php), Oracle (firefox), Scientific Linux (sudo), and SUSE (accountsservice, binutils, nfs-utils, and xen).
on the heise security conference last year was said: Virus Scanners since around 10 years are not sufficient anymore.
(heise a computer focused news outlet itself was infected on Mai 2019 with emotet trojan probably via word.doc (src))
today that statement has become reality.
neither ClamAV nor Antivir were able to spot the virus or virus-loader in the word.doc attachment.
Apache SpamAssassin celebrates its 18th birthday this year, a huge accomplishment for everyone who has contributed to the open-source project for nearly the past two decades. SpamAssassin, a renowned and respected open-source anti-spam platform, provides a secure, reliable framework upon which companies can build highly effective spam filtering and email security solutions.
The project is the epitome of an open source success story: expert engineers and developers volunteered their time to combat the unsolicited email problem. The team demonstrated innovation, leadership and perseverance in the face of both success and adversity. Along the way, they incorporated enterprise functionality into the platform they had created as a means to solve real-world issues.
Kevin McGrail, a cyber security and privacy expert and one of the lead developers for the SpamAssassin project since 1996, also considers SpamAssassin an open source success story, stating in a recent conversation with the LinuxSecurity team, “It protects millions of users every day and provides the inspiration if not the foundation of numerous commercial solutions for battling spammers.” Over the years McGrail has served as a developer, administrator, project chair and release manager for the SpamAssassin project. He is still involved with the project to this day. McGrail is also Director of Business Growth at InfraShield.com and serves as a Top Contributor, Developer Expert and Evangelist for Google G Suite.
Ell and Wes talk to Lou Stella, Security Analyst at Rackspace, about transitioning to the cyber security industry.
Another day, another shining example of why connecting everything from your Barbie dolls to tea kettles to the internet was a bad idea. This week it's Whirlpool that's under fire after a researcher discovered that the company had failed to secure a database containing 28 million records collected from the company's "smart" appliances. The database contained user email addresses, model names and numbers, unique appliance identifiers, and data collected from routine analysis of the appliances' condition, including how often the appliance is used, when its off or on, and whether it had any issues.
Mooney actually came back out the door and had a staffer film him while explaining that “this is not the SCIF” and, once they entered, “nobody was using a cell phone”. The problem is that he’s using as a backdrop for this explanation the sign showing that electronics were not to be used even going through this outer door, and his entry through that door, with his cell phone going, has been documented by Scott Thuman, Alex Mooney, the New York Times and hopefully, law enforcement: [...]
"I really think that the verdict was, frankly, reactionary."
Many US teenage boys in the late 1960s and early 1970s grew up wondering if they would end up in the jungles of Vietnam when they reached draft age. Some could hardly wait to go fight in their idealized version of honor and glory. Some knew by the time they were sixteen that they would do whatever they could to avoid going. The rest of us were somewhere in the middle. Although I leaned towards running away to Canada or Sweden, I included myself among the uncertain. If there was one instance that convinced me I was going to avoid military service no matter what, it was the exposure of the massacre in MyLai. I had recently attended my first antiwar protest in the suburban town I lived in between Washington, DC and Baltimore and was devouring all the antiwar literature I could find. Most of it came from a friend’s older brother who was volunteering for the Vietnam Moratorium Committee and attended the nearby University of Maryland at College Park.
"It's all out in the open, the blatant barbarism of U.S. imperialism."
Trump said he talked to Syrian Democratic Forces leader Gen. Mazloum Abdi on Thursday. As usual, Trump’s report of the conversation is marred by outright lies and bizarre allegations. He said,I really enjoyed my conversation with General @MazloumAbdi. He appreciates what we have done, and I appreciate what the Kurds have done. Perhaps it is time for the Kurds to start heading
I thought the days when I kicked burning tyres off roads had ended. I used to clear the road in Belfast in 1972. Then, often, I did the same in Beirut.
A soldier serving his mandatory term in the Russian military opened fire on his fellow servicemembers October 25. The shooting took place at a base in the Zabaikalsky region town of Gorny, Defense Ministry officials told Interfax.
Eugene and I share overlapping experiences. We both are scions of military families. My father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army, Eugene’s was a Sergeant in the Air Force. We both attended the Department of Defense high school in Frankfurt, West Germany, (Frankfurt American High School FAHS), at the height of the cold war. I graduated from FAHS, while Eugene departed from Frankfurt abruptly and graduated elsewhere. Eugene is several years younger than I and our paths did not intersect, although he remembers me as a vague presence in his high school life. This is because Eugene befriended my younger brother James and hung out with him extensively.
When Americans think of€ militarism, they may imagine jackbooted soldiers goose-stepping through the streets as flag-waving crowds exult; or, like€ our president, they may think of enormous parades featuring troops and missiles and tanks, with warplanes soaring overhead. Or nationalist dictators wearing military uniforms€ encrusted with€ medals, ribbons, and badges like so many barnacles on a sinking ship of state. (Was Donald Trump€ only joking€ recently when he said he’d like to award himself a Medal of Honor?) And what they may also think is: that’s not us. That’s not America. After all, Lady Liberty used to welcome newcomers with a torch, not an€ AR-15. We don’t€ wall ourselves€ in while€ bombing others€ in distant parts of the world, right?
The new designation under Section 311, the adminstration was warned, would mean foreign banks no longer processing humanitarian-related transactions.
A soldier serving his mandatory military term killed eight of his fellow servicemembers in Russia’s Zabaikalsky region. The incident took place at Military Base 54160, which is located in the Gorny Closed Administrative Territorial Unit. Russia’s Defense Ministry has officially reported that the soldier opened fire from his service weapon during a changing of the guard. Two officers were among those killed. The Telegram channel Life Shot claimed that the shooter was a 20-year-old named R. Shamsutdinov. He first shot an officer and then began shooting at the other soldiers once they had gone prone to protect themselves. In addition to the eight soldiers who were killed, two received injuries that Defense Ministry officials said were non-life-threatening. An unofficial list of those killed has begun circulating online.
There were parts of President Trump’s latest speech on Syria, which, if read without the sound of The Donald’s gruff, bombastic voice, sounded a whole lot like Bernie Sanders might’ve delivered it.
The nearly US$2 billion (S$2.73 billion) apple trade has been caught between militants wanting a shutdown of the local economy in protest over India's actions and New Delhi, which wants to restore normality.
The report, titled Implications of Climate Change for the U.S. Army, was launched by the U.S. Army War College in partnership with NASA in May at the Wilson Center in Washington DC. The report was commissioned by Gen. Milley during his previous role as the Army’s Chief of Staff. It was made publicly available in August via the Center for Climate and Security, but didn't get a lot of attention at the time.
The two most prominent scenarios in the report focus on the risk of a collapse of the power grid within “the next 20 years,” and the danger of disease epidemics. Both could be triggered by climate change in the near-term, it notes.
The U.S. military prides itself on being one of the most powerful militaries on the face of the earth. The best trained, the best equipped with the latest wartech, the most mobile, with a power projection around the world. It’s why, sadly, as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism—which tracks U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Somalia—maintains that the American military has killed as many as over 12,000 people in targeted strikes since 2004. Of those numbers, close to 1,800 are civilians and up to nearly 400 of that number, are kids.
In just seven months of being held captive, radicals in the Al Hol camp have managed to establish a complex internal structure in the image and likeness of the caliphate that was proclaimed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on June, 2015 in Mosul in Iraq. “The emir, who has emerged as the boss of the camp, sleeps every night in a different tent to avoid being arrested,” says Julia, the pseudonym of one of the female Kurdish militants in charge of security at Al Hol.
When Americans think of militarism, they may imagine jackbooted soldiers goose-stepping through the streets as flag-waving crowds exult; or, like our president, they may think of enormous parades featuring troops and missiles and tanks...
In a statement on U.S. military operations in Syria, the president says, “We’re getting out. Let someone else fight over this long blood-stained sand.” Watch his full remarks below.
Shock is the reaction that comes to mind. While discussing the likelihood of Trump taking demonstrative military action against what the US government or the US plutocracy considers a military or economic threat, the editor to whom I wrote made a snide remark about how the military establishment would not support Trump in a military adventure because they view him as someone who shirked the military during the Vietnam War. The shock came because the person with whom I correspond has been consistently antiwar during the few years we have been in touch.
In the wake of the Syrian ceasefire, predictions of continued humanitarian disaster following a U.S. “withdrawal” are becoming more pronounced. Syrian Democratic Forces commander Mazlum Kobani warns that “there will be ethnic cleansing of the Kurdish people from Syria, and the American administration will be responsible for it.” President Donald Trump, in contrast, celebrated the withdrawal as proof of his opposition to U.S. wars. Republican Senator Rand Paul supports the troop removal from Syria, announcing that “I don’t see what our national interest is in policing the Middle East and nation-building.” But Paul should choose his words more carefully. The “withdrawal” has nothing to do with bringing the troops home. In reality, it is a repositioning of U.S. forces. U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper explains “that all of the nearly 1,000 troops withdrawing from northern Syria are expected to move to western Iraq to continue the campaign against Islamic State group militants and to help defend Iraq.”
Last Sunday, CBS aired an episode of its show€ Madam Secretary€ focusing on “killer robots” or fully autonomous weapons, an issue Human Rights Watch has worked on since 2012.
“We train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill!” Donald J. Trump tweeted October 12, 2019 regarding the case of Maj. Mathew Golsteyn a former Green Beret who is on trial for killing an unarmed Afghan man in 2010, a killing Golsteyn twice admitted. This statement was made by the Chief Law enforcement officer of the U.S. whose job it is to enforce the Constitution and laws (including the laws of war) “faithfully” under Article II of the Constitution, a Constitution which supposedly sought to limit war by giving only Congress the power to declare war, to avoid standing armies in times of peace, and to, in America, “make law king.”
Turkish authorities in Istanbul and Antakya arbitrarily detained and deported dozens of Syrians and possibly many more to northern Syria between January and September 2019 despite active hostilities there, Human Rights Watch said today. Deported Syrians said that Turkish officials forced them to sign forms they were not allowed to read, in some cases after beating or threatening them, and transported them to Syria.
One spring day in 2005, a man in a crisp brown uniform stood before a group created by Congress to fix rural Alaska’s lack of cops. In his soft-spoken way, Simeon Askoak explained his dilemma.
He was the only law enforcement officer in Russian Mission, a village of 340 people where he was born and raised. He’d worked as a village public safety officer for the previous 13 years, and while the state of Alaska covered his salary, he lacked equipment, resources and respect.
The€ Iraqi€ government has promised dismissals and possible additional action against senior security officials over the deadly response to a series of protests in early October 2019, Human Rights Watch said today.
Now they’ve decided to speak out! For years, I’ve published searing critiques of America’s senior generals and admirals for their failure to speak out publicly against U.S. foreign policy and warmongering. Specifically, I’ve argued that it’s their duty to loudly dissent, and if necessary resign, in opposition to the nation’s ongoing, ill-advised, illegal and unwinnable forever wars.
On October 21, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeared in Westminster Magistrates’ Court in his fight against extradition to the United States. Assange has been charged with 17 counts of Espionage in the U.S., where he faces 175 years in prison related to WikiLeaks’ 2010 publication concerning US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Diplomatic Cables and Guantanamo Bay.
Political appointees at the Department of Veterans Affairs failed to follow a new law on disciplining employees and protecting whistleblowers, and instead used it to mount shoddy and biased investigations, according to the agency’s watchdog.
In a blistering report released Thursday, the VA’s inspector general said the department’s Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection investigated things it shouldn’t have, didn’t investigate things it was required to and bungled the investigations it did do. It also misspent funds. President Donald Trump created the office with an executive order in 2017, and Congress then codified it into law. Trump frequently points to it as one of his signature legislative accomplishments.
At just a two weeks before the General Elections in Mauritius, I am pondering over the achievements of the outgoing government. A renewed alliance between the MSM Party and Muvman Liberater is asking the citizens to give them another mandate to run the country.
At this stage I thought I should check their Electoral Manisfesto of 2014 to see where do they stand on their promises.
One particular area I am interested in is Good Governance. I am looking for what happened to the promised Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), to be more precise.
Page 22 of L'Alliance Lepep's Electoral Manifesto of 2014 talks about Good Governance. Item number three reads as follows:
Assange had been granted asylum in 2012, at the height of Latin America’s Pink Tide, when progressive governments across the continent challenged US interference in the region. Six and a half years later, Assange’s expulsion reflects a rightwards shift in Ecuadorian politics and a new president, Lenín Moreno, willing to serve US interests.
For his cooperation, Moreno has been warmly received by Washington, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressing his enthusiasm to “continue to work in partnership” with Ecuador.
To discuss the dynamics behind Ecuador’s decision to expel the Australian Wikileaks founder, Jacobin spoke to Fidel Narvaez, the former Ecuadorian consul in London, who was instrumental in obtaining asylum for Assange in 2012, and who spent six years at the embassy with him.
It’s hot in the Middle Eastern nation of Qatar. Like, really hot. On summer nights, temperatures rarely dip below 32 degrees Celsius (that’s 90 degrees Fahrenheit), and during the day they can soar upwards of 48 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit).
In response, the nation has done something that sounds absurd: it’s started to air condition its outdoor spaces — a “solution” which, ultimately, could exacerbate the sweltering heat.
But then the bills started coming due. The team forgot that 55 percent of all historically emitted carbon got absorbed by the oceans, not the land, and so underestimated the total amount of carbon by about one half. They overestimated carbon uptake by trees, and suggested putting trees where they’ve never been, or where they’d actually make the planet hotter (by darkening planetary albedo over icy, more reflective terrain). They didn’t take into account that the ecosystems where they wanted to plant trees already sequestered carbon. And so on. “We’re not talking about small errors here. We’re talking about a huge difference in the total amount of carbon you could sequester,” says Carla Staver, an ecologist at Yale University.
"If we are going to meaningfully discuss comprehensive climate equity and climate justice, we must inject security assistance and resettlement opportunities for climate-displaced persons into our conversations."
Rep. Nydia Velázquez on Wednesday€ introduced€ historic legislation in the Democrat-controlled House that would establish formal federal protections in the United States for refugees fleeing impacts of the human-caused global climate crisis.
The Climate Action Summit at the UN last month was widely considered a disappointment, failing to garner the kinds of government actions needed to address the climate crisis.
Who’s the “father” of environmentalism? Now that the human impact on nature is getting more attention than ever, it’s a question worth asking. Is it, for example, the Prussian naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt, as his biographer thinks?[2] He was born in 1769, 250 years ago and isn’t big in the English-speaking world despite having more species named after him than anyone else in history. It’s not just species: A river, lake, bay, forest, and mountain ranges bear his name in the U.S. where few now know who he was. It’s different in Germany: Posterity has ensured “Humboldt” is plastered on streets, schools, universities, institutes and shops all over the country. Put “Humboldt” into Google Earth with any German city to see the effect.[3]
In one of the final chapters in her new book€ On Fire: The Burning Case For A Green New Deal,€ author and activist Naomi Klein writes that movements will “make or break” the Green New Deal. “We have been trained to see our issues in silos,” she notes. “They never belonged there.”
"Exxon can't hide from its deception any longer."
"When workers stand together, fight back, and demand an end to corporate greed—they win," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
"Let's get going!"
I didn’t risk arrest lightly last Friday, as I joined partners and allies on the steps of the U.S. Capitol for the October 11 launch of Fire Drill Fridays — Vote. Speak. Act. — a series of climate change actions led by Jane Fonda.
In response to Trump's April executive order pushing federal agencies to make that happen, the Department of Transportation (DOT) on October 18€ announced a proposed rule€ for what it calls the “safe transportation of liquefied natural gas [LNG] by rail tank€ car.”
Public utilities are hardly a new idea — over 2,000 public utilities already exist in the U.S. — but the growing demand for a more just energy system has lent this ownership model new energy.
"For the sake of taxpayers, electricity consumers and the climate, Congress must stop this endless nuclear boondoggle."
"Let this be a lesson to other states: If you criminalize protest, we will sue."
“I'm going to lift the restrictions on American energy,” he promised the crowd, “and allow this wealth to pour into our communities, including right here in the state of Pennsylvania that we€ love.”
Attorney General Maura Healey told reporters in a press conference today that “Exxon has fought us every step of the way,” and was€ “completely uncooperative,” noting that the company failed to comply with requests for documents and€ depositions.€
Officials ordered 2,000 people to evacuate their homes and businesses in Northern California wine country Thursday after a wildfire exploded in size, fueled by powerful winds that prompted utilities throughout the state to impose electrical blackouts to prevent fires.
The U.S. Attorney’s office has secured an indictment against two shipping companies and an engineer on an oil tanker charged with dumping oil in the Pacific Ocean at least four times.
The companies, FGL Moon Marshall Limited, Unix Line Pte Ltd. (“Unix”), as well as engineer Gilbert Dela Cruz, are charged with violating a federal anti-pollution act, aiding and abetting pollution, and obstruction of justice. The charges carry up to 20 years in prison and fines totaling $1.5 million, prosecutors said.
The criminal complaint alleges that when the oil tanker Zao Galaxy was docked in Richmond and inspected by the U.S. Coast Guard, a crewman passed the inspector a note alluding to illegal activity that occurred prior to docking. Investigators found four videos documenting illegal discharges of oil waste into the ocean, about three miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge.
“What’s wrong with the bees?”€ I’ve been asked that question frequently over the years.€ My friends, family and most of my work colleagues know that I’ve been a beekeeper for decades, so it’s a reasonable question and it usually leads to an extended and enjoyable conversation about bees and ultimately to food.€
There are just 15 vaquita porpoises left in the Gulf of California, and in just a few months, that number could plummet to zero. The earth’s most endangered whale has become a victim not only of the usual environmental suspects, but, due to the fact that its habitat in the Sea of Cortez is also home to the totoaba, a valuable fish, it has been caught up in none other than the drug trade.
The world is condemning President Bolsonaro’s policy of developing the Amazon, which has been facilitating the spread of forest burning. Watching the forests burn is simply painful for many. At the same time, it is a familiar sight. Bolsonaro’s provocative rhetoric of developing the Amazon against the international demand of conservation is the same as the military...
Americans are more aware than ever that America has a race problem — and, more specifically, a racial wealth divide problem. As researchers from the Institute for Policy Studies and I found earlier this year, median white families are 41 times wealthier than median Black families in the United States.
The claim that automation is responsible for massive job losses has been made in almost every one of the Democratic debates. In the last debate, technology entrepreneur Andrew Yang told of automation closing stores on Main Street and of self-driving trucks that would shortly displace “3.5 million truckers or the 7 million Americans who work in truck stops, motels, and diners” that serve them. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) suggested that the “automation revolution” was at “the heart of the fear that is well-founded.”
When you pay state and local taxes, parking fees and other payments to your regional government, chances are those funds will almost immediately end up in a corporate bank.€
Talk of a fascist politics emerging in the United States and in the rise of right-wing populist movements across the globe is often criticized as a naive exaggeration or a misguided historical analogy. In the age of Trump, such objections feel like reckless efforts to deny the growing relevance of the term and the danger posed by a society staring into the abyss of a menacing authoritarianism. In fact, the case can be made that rather than harbor an element of truth, such criticism further normalizes the very fascism it critiques, allowing the extraordinary and implausible, if not unthinkable, to become ordinary. Under such circumstances, history is not simply being ignored or distorted, it is being erased. Moreover, after decades of a savage global capitalist nightmare both in the United States and around the globe, the mobilizing passions of fascism have been unleashed unlike anything we have seen since the 1930s.
"The ever-widening gap between the ultra-rich and the rest of us has reached alarming proportions and demands a strong legislative response."
General Motors workers voted 57.2% in favor of a new contract with the company, bringing an immediate end to a contentious a 40-day strike that paralyzed GM’s U.S. factories.
The Chicago teachers and staff, numbering 35,000, are on strike for the second time in seven years. And for a second time, the teachers’ action has helped spark a social movement. This strike questions to the long-held understanding that unions have no right to make demands beyond work conditions, pay and benefits.
More than 32,000 Chicago Public School (CPS) teachers and staff—one out every 100 people in the city—have been on strike since October 17. On Tuesday, the ranks of the striking workers—represented by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and SEIU Local 73—swelled a little further as nearly 40 teachers walked off the job at Passages Charter School on the city’s north side.
Deep state higher education funding cuts over the last decade helped drive rapid, significant tuition increases and pushed more of college costs to students, making it harder for them to enroll and graduate, as we explain in our new report.
In 1991 the demographers Neil Howe and William Strauss published their awkwardly-titled tome “13th Gen,” about Generation X—the Americans born between 1961 and 1981. If Xers had paid attention they would have committed suicide.
On October 24, the newspaper Kommersant reported that Sberbank clients’ personal data were for sale on the black market in a database that apparently contains roughly a million lines of customers’ passport numbers, registration information, home addresses, telephone numbers, account numbers and balances, and records of any recent communication with the bank’s call center. Spokespeople for Sberbank, meanwhile, deny any such data leak. Earlier in October, Kommersant reported another leak of 60 million Sberbank credit card numbers, though the company’s spokespeople acknowledged the leak of just 5,000 clients’ card numbers. These incidents are just two episodes in the wider theft and illegal sale of banking information that belongs to millions of Russians. Meduza asked two experts who work on preventing data leaks to weigh in on the Kommersant reports, and explain why Russian banks don’t do more to protect their customers’ information.
Alex Honneth’s essay, “Labor and interaction: a redefinition,” in his book, The I in We: Studies in the Theory of Recognition (2012), revisits an earlier attempt to find moral norms immanent in the capitalist mode of production. His first one failed; his second carries promise to provide the moral grounding that could animate labour and social movements as well as precipitating dialogue in various public spheres. By the twenty-first century, Honneth (2012) proclaims, “Never in the last two hundred years have there been so few efforts to defend an emancipatory and humane notion of labor as today” (p. 56). A great, black blanket seems to have fallen over the domain of work for those of critical sensibility as well as public policy-makers.
Andrey Rybkin, an employee at the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics, has been sentenced to three years in a prison colony and fined 200,000 rubles ($3,122) for using his workplace’s resources to mine cryptocurrencies. The specific charges in the case included spreading viruses and obtaining illegal access to digital information using a professional position.
Billionaire Dan Gilbert has spent the last decade buying up buildings in downtown Detroit, amassing nearly 100 properties and so completely dominating the area, it’s known as Gilbertville. In the last few years, Gilbert, the 57-year-old founder of Quicken Loans and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, has also grown close to the Trump family.
Quicken gave $750,000 to Trump’s inaugural fund. Gilbert has built a relationship with Ivanka Trump, who appeared at one of his Detroit buildings in 2017 for a panel discussion with him. And, last year, he watched the midterm election returns at the White House with President Donald Trump himself, who has called Gilbert “a great friend.”
"This is likely only the beginning of a jobs massacre."
There is, of course, no fruitful dialogue in extreme cases of social and political divisiveness. Mikhail Bakhtin writes of “basic conditions governing the operation of meaning in any utterance” and as these conditions change, meaning changes. Meanings interact, each conditioning each. Right now, we have no commonly accepted basic conditions and so the meaning of any utterance, say, a transcript of a phone conversation, or a White House chief of staff’s utterance at a press conference, is subject to divided explications. And because we are so deeply divided, we don’t interact, our meanings stay polarized, each in their own silos. Dialogue, then, is preempted, prevented.
Every time a witness testifies behind closed doors in the US House of Representatives’ methodical march toward the impeachment of President Donald Trump, Trump supporters scream “no quid pro quo” while Trump opponents breathlessly inform us that the “smoking gun” has turned up and that impeachment is now “inevitable.”
Malignant Orange is an unspeakable atrocity. Think Muslim travel ban, Charlottesville, the advance pardoning of racist pig Joe Arpaio, sadistic family separations, calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “murderers,” the fake national emergency, the Nativist Wall, the criminal diversion of taxpayer funds, “go back to the crime-ridden countries you came from,” Kavanaugh, the captivity to the National Rife Association, emoluments, climate denial, reckless environmental deregulation, the abrogation of asylum rights, record-setting drone war, “shithole countries,” insane threats (“fire and fury”) to annihilate other nations (North Korea and Iran), “I might end birthright citizenship,” threats of “tough guy” violence if Congress or voters try to remove him from office, disfigured weather maps, the torture of Puerto Rico, covering for Saudi Arabia’s dismemberment of a dissident journalist, the torture of Yemen, 10,000 false statements, “the Blacks love me,” “my perfect phone call,” “the Kurds are very happy,” “this phony emoluments clause”….the nauseating list of its soul-numbing and head-shaking offenses goes on and on and on.
That’s when the American public can stop Trump from making money off his presidency by voting him out of office.
"It was bad enough Trump and Barr were wasting resources on this. But now they are fully weaponizing DOJ for political purposes."
"The former Vice President has been unable to generate grassroots support, and now his campaign is endorsing an effort to buy the primary through a super PAC that can rake in unlimited cash from billionaires and corporations."
A grassroots campaign against a powerful foe is a battle where your best source of ammunition is data you weaponize into persuasive information, and the simplest way to collect, organize and mobilize data is to put it in a case file created specifically for the issue.
With Bernie Sanders the people’s choice for winner of the Democratic primary in terms of political organizing and campaign contributions, the powers-that-be in the DNC are putting out a call for establishment figures like Hillary Clinton or Michael Bloomberg to join the race. Not being ‘reported’ by the establishment press is that these same kingmakers 1) weighted the Democrat’s choice against Mr. Sander’s and towards Ms. Clinton in 2016 and lost and 2) chose Joe Biden as their ‘heavyweight’ candidate for 2020.
We've long discussed the problem that is astroturfing and companies that abuse website reviews sections by inputting fake positive reviews for their own products. These fake reviews break the ecosystem of sites like Yelp and many others, where a big part of the draw to the sites are the communities that provide helpful, honest reviews. It's also been the case, however, that such fake review campaigns have occasionally come with fines or lawsuits with limited clarity on precisely what laws were being broken.
Neoliberal centrists either don’t understand why Trump won, or they’re so desperate to stay in control of the Party they’re willing to risk four more years of Trump.So let’s look at the arguments they’re mounting against the progressive candidates and policies.Let’s get one thing clear: the overwhelming majority of voters support progressive issues on a case-by-case basis, and
On October 23, about two dozen unhappy Republican congress members stormed a closed hearing that was part of the impeachment inquiry, determined to show their loyalty to Trump (who knew of and inspired the action) and their distaste for the House intelligence panel led by Rep. Adam Schiff. To some observers, like Mieke Eoyang, vice president of the Third Way think tank and a specialist on intelligence, “storming the [secure meeting room] without respecting the security protocols that require people to leave their electronic devices outside the space, is actually compromising our national security.” But I think there is an even more important reason for concern.
Many may wonder what all the fuss in Catalonia, Spain is about—a previous 2017 referendum vote for independence, and now, people rioting in the streets following the judicial conviction of Catalonian nationalist leaders for sedition, and violent altercations in Catalonian streets with the police. After all, Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, is a travel hotspot but when it comes to Catalonian nationalism and Catalonian politics, such political movements may remain a mystery to many American observers.
The west Toronto riding (electoral district) of Parkdale-High Park is one of the last places working people and the poor can access affordable housing in this very expensive city. Think of Parkdale-High Park in the shape of an L. The vertical line is High Park, where whiter, wealthier residents live. Queen West is the horizontal line at the bottom.€ € This is the main commercial street of Parkdale.€ € Grungier, poorer, and more diverse. A Tibetan community lives and works here. Some have shops along the always busy street. Some work at the Ontario Food Terminal a couple of miles out; the workers at the food terminal unionized over a year ago after dealing with racist harassment. Crossing Queen West is Jameson, a small street lined with apartment complexes and public housing that connect the parallel streets of Queen and King, where more of the poor and immigrants live. However, working class people in Parkdale are being displaced by gentrification.€ € Already astronomically housing prices continue to increase and it is at least $2200/month to rent a one bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto.
Few politicians come across more as products of hashtag committee management than Justin Trudeau. His image has been doctored, massaged and spruced, and even then, the Instagram-Twitter committee did not quite see those corrupt influences that are bound to tarnish someone who believes in endless, indestructible parliamentary majorities. The image can do much, but not that much.
President Donald Trump has had it with The New York Times and The Washington Post. The White House is preparing to instruct federal agencies not to renew their subscriptions to the newspapers.
Last March, a veteran Washington reporter taped an interview with a Ukrainian prosecutor that sparked a disinformation campaign alleging Joe Biden pressured Ukrainians into removing a prosecutor investigating a company because of its ties to the former vice president’s son. The interview and subsequent columns, conducted and written by a writer for The Hill newspaper, John Solomon, were the starting gun that eventually set off the impeachment inquiry into the president.
Watching from the control booth of The Hill’s TV studio was Lev Parnas, who helped arrange the interview.
"I will not give it any credence," Giuliani responded when asked for comment on the contents of the voicemails.
President Donald Trump’s company said Friday it is exploring the sale of its landmark Washington hotel after nearly three years of ethics complaints and lawsuits accusing him of trying to profit off the presidency.
It was all in good fun€ It took place for trump supporters the weekend of October 14, 2019, at the Trump National Doral Miami.€ That was the trump owned resort that was to be the site of the G-7 meeting in 2020, until it wasn’t. It had been selected by trump for the meeting of the G7 because, as Mick Mulvaney, Acting Chief of Staff explained: “Trump still considers himself to be in the hospitality business.”
"The night before the House of Representatives takes a historic vote to impeach Trump," progressive groups said of the anticipated action, "we'll head to every congressional office and public square to declare that nobody is above the law."
Here’s a puzzling question: The House impeachment inquiry against President Trump is focused entirely on Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president that linked US aid to Ukraine with Ukraine’s investigation of Trump’s rival Joe Biden. The evidence for this quid pro quo,€ from transcripts and whistleblowers, is now solid, but this impeachment effort faces an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled Senate.
I have lived a life marked by many roles, some of them mutually exclusive. According to The Dallas Morning News, for instance, I’m an “investigative journalist whose prison sentence was derided by free press advocates”, as well as an “Anonymous activist and award-winning journalist”.
A judge on Friday ordered the Justice Department to give the House secret grand jury testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, handing a victory to Democrats as they gather evidence for the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, warrior for good, master of the House, beloved son of Baltimore and the first black lawmaker to lie in state at the Capitol was celebrated Friday at his longtime church as "a fierce champion of truth, justice and kindness." Thousands of residents listened and wept as speakers eloquently praised the sharecropper's son and statesman who held fast to his
America has lost a hero at a time when they are in great demand but in short supply. I, along with other hero seekers, stood in the long and solemn line at the United States Capitol building in Washington to pay homage to Congressman Elijah Cummings, chair of the House Oversight Committee, who died on October 17.
In the middle of October, Hillary Clinton managed to perform a minor political miracle. By baselessly speculating that Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, was a “favorite of the Russians” and preparing to run as an independent, she revived one of the more quixotic, eccentric and increasingly moribund campaigns of this election cycle while spoiling a primary that has proved shockingly substantive for a major party in the United States.
With Joe Biden struggling as frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, a surging Elizabeth Warren has begun to emerge as the party establishment’s new bogeyman—and corporate media are ready and willing to transmit insiders’ panicked calls for new “moderate” entrants to the race.
After more than 200 years of democracy in the United States and 400 years of global capitalism, the overwhelming majority of political and economic power still remains firmly entrenched in the hands of white males. This information isn’t news to anyone; it has been widely known for a long time. And while older progressive white males, with the best intentions, often speak out in solidarity with marginalized populations, their voices are still the voices of privileged white males. Therefore, it’s not only older conservative white males who need to shut up and step aside, it’s ALL older white men. And that includes me.
Facebook's spokespeople could not name anyone from any part of "the spectrum" who wasn't to the right of Fox News, however, so The Intercept's Jon Schwarz canvassed the editors of The Nation, Mother Jones, Black Agenda Report, Jacobin, Current Affairs, FAIR, Democracy Now, and other members of the sweeping left-wing media cabal, and, surprisingly enough, not one of them has ever been invited to one of Zuck's dinners.
A Russian gun rights activist who admitted being a secret agent for the Kremlin and trying to infiltrate conservative U.S. political groups while Donald Trump rose to power has been released from federal prison.
On Friday morning, Facebook announced its plan to spend millions of dollars on high-quality journalism, fueling the launch of a new dedicated news tab on its platform. CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined News Corp CEO Robert Thomson for an interview soon after, and Thomson hammered home the need for objective journalism in the age of social media, waxing nostalgic about the importance of rigorous fact-checking in his early career.
An hour later, however, Zuckerberg struggled to explain how Facebook’s most controversial new partner fits into its mission.
On Wednesday morning Joe Biden shuffled into Scranton, Pennsylvania, a couple hours’ drive south from my place in Ithaca, New York. He spoke at the city’s Cultural Center housed in a monumental, neo-Gothic building that was once the Masonic Temple and Scottish Rite Cathedral, completed in 1928, the year before the Great Depression. Scranton, and most of industrial America, has never reclaimed those glory days, and, despite his slogans, Biden will not usher them in should his white teeth succeed to the White House.
"The former Vice President has been unable to generate grassroots support, and now his campaign is endorsing an effort to buy the primary through a super PAC that can rake in unlimited cash from billionaires and corporations."
Such groups, said campaign manager Faiz Shakir, "exist for one reason and one reason only: to help billionaires and corporations bankroll a presidential campaign."
Rep. Bennie Thompson called the GOP stunt an "unprecedented breach of security."
On September 26th, President Donald Trump’s White House announced that, in 2020, refugee admissions to the United States will be limited to 18,000, drastically lower than any yearly ceiling over the past 40 years. Along with that announcement, the White House released a separate executive orderintended to upend many years of precedent by giving state and local authorities the power to deny refugees resettlement in their jurisdictions.
Oh, how the simplistic certainty resonates. Russsiagate, recently stoked by€ Hillary Clinton, comes saturated in ironies, which are usually media-invisible.
Montanans have known for a long time that U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte has a minimal grasp on reality. I mean, who else would build a museum claiming humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time and dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark? But late last week, in an€ interview with reporter Tom Lutey, Gianforte outdid himself by claiming he “read the transcript” of Donald Trump’s impeachment-launching call with the Ukrainian president in which he asked for “a favor” in exchange for releasing hundreds of millions in military aid to the country. And what did Gianforte say? “I don’t think there’s anything there.”
Vladimir Putin spends all his waking hours thinking about grooming a successor, pro-Kremlin TV pundit and “Rossiya Segodnya” state news agency CEO Dmitry Kiselyov told an audience of first-year journalism students in an unscheduled lecture at Moscow State University this week. Footage of Kisleyov’s remarks was published on October 23 by the news website RBC.
What follows is a conversation between professor Bill Black and Greg Wilpert of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.
Critics pointed out that the retired justice "voted to uphold Trump's Muslim ban, voted for the Janus decision gutting labor unions, and voted to uphold voter suppression in Husted."
Bolivia’s Evo Morales declared himself the outright winner of the country’s presidential election Thursday, which would give him a fourth straight term after a vote that has sparked days of protests by his opponents and supporters over accusations of fraud.
After the European Parliament rejected Sylvie Goulard as the French Commissioner, rumours suggest that Thierry Breton, the CEO of French multinational Atos, might be in the race. EURACTIV France reports.
Breton, the chief executive of multinational IT service and consulting company Atos, might well become France’s new candidate to take the Commissioner post, according to the satirical weekly newspaper Le Canard enchaîné.
In the race to replace Goulard, Breton will probably join Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, whose potential candidacy has been put back in the spotlight.
If confirmed, the chances of the French Commissioner still being a woman – and thus upholding Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s strived-for gender balance – are now unlikely.
[...]
Three years ago, Breton put forward proposals for a European Security and Defence fund in a report published by the liberal think-tank Ifrap. He made those proposals even though the company he headed back then had been involved in such matters.
The main idea of the report was to pool defence costs at the European level through a fund that would make it possible to reduce the debt of certain states. In turn, this would improve the eurozone’s financial health and pool European defence management issues, rather than entrust it to a few member states such as France.
How about the hapless NBA? Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets basketball team, tweeted support for the rioters in Hong Kong. The United States is openly fomenting this often quite violent insurrection. I have no idea whether Mr. Morey knew of the beating of the journalist€ Fu Guohao€ or the involvement of American official€ Julie Eadeh€ in the uprisings. The United States, without any attempt at concealment, is stirring up this violent separatist insurrection that conceals its nature by following an earlier protest against an extradition law already shelved. But, given that these riots are an attempt by the United States to destabilize China, it is not surprising that China objected.
The NBA has gotten itself into a bit of a situation.
[...]
Nearly all come from Chinese nationals warning that if Morey isn’t fired, the Rockets will lose the entire Chinese market. Fertitta himself may agree, as evidenced by his liking Instagram comments calling for Morey’s ouster. Reports suggest the Rockets have internally discussed this option.
Firing one of the most successful general managers in the NBA over the past decade may seem absurd. But the Rockets are the most popular NBA team in China — and, as many businesses have found, that market share can put a lot of pressure on political speech well outside of the country.
By now the Rockets have lost business deal after business deal in China, drawn a condemnation from the Chinese consulate in Houston, and jeopardized their status in the country.
The NBA hasn’t exactly been supportive of Morey either. In a bland statement, Commissioner Adam Silver offered only very tepid backing.
Meanwhile Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai — a co-founder of Chinese retail giant Alibaba — put out a long statement describing Hong Kong’s protests as a “separatist movement.”
In an especially disappointing statement, superstar LeBron James seemed to suggest Morey — who has been doing business in China for over a decade — was “misinformed” about the situation in Hong Kong.
A Krasnoyarsk arbitration court has ruled in favor of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska in a lawsuit the businessman brought against two British news sources (The Times and The Daily Telegraph) and one U.S. outlet (The Nation). None of the defendants were present to respond to Deripaska’s case.
I've mentioned in the past that, from Techdirt's earliest posts, one key topic is how you handle "jurisdiction" on the internet, since the internet is global, and laws don't always work that way. Indeed, allowing for global jurisdiction for any particular government's laws would inevitably mean that the most draconian and the most limiting laws rule around the globe -- and that should worry everyone. This is why we've been so concerned about rulings concerning "global" blocking of content in places like Canada and the EU. Thankfully, just recently, the Court of Justice in the EU stopped one global application of the EU's right to be forgotten, and Canada's attempt got effectively stopped by a US court.
A debate is raging, in Congress and the media, over whether or not we need new regulations to try to shape how Internet platforms operate. Too often, however, the discussion is based on rhetoric and anecdote, rather than empirical research. The recently introduced National Commission on Online Platforms and Homeland Security Act is intended to change that, and we’re pleased to support its goals.
Comprehensive Research Can Help Ensure Policy Choices are Based on Factual Evidence
Today we can unveil yet another threat to freedom of speech: the Personal Safety Intervention Order (PSIO), a court order which is intended to help victims of domestic violence but instead is being abused as a tool to harass journalists, namely Sandi Keane, Editor of this publication.
The truth is that Google has long been censored globally based on the laws of one nation. That nation was the United States. For example, Google has been actively and globally censoring in accordance with the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act for years.
There is no U.S.-specific version of Google. There's regular Google, which is subject to censorship according to U.S. law, and now there are nation-specific versions subject to the local laws of those countries. Still, U.S.-driven censorship has been minimal because of the First Amendment and a cultural norm of generally tolerating free-speech in the U.S.
But now that foreign governments have started to assert their rights to censor Google globally, we're entering new territory.
The Moscow bookstore Molodaya Gvardia has refused to sell the latest issue of the pop history magazine Diletant, Ekho Moskvy reported. The cover of the magazine depicts Joseph Stalin in a bridal veil alongside Adolf Hitler, who is wearing a suit with a swastika on the front.
There are many critics of CDA 230 these days, and there's a pretty wide range in the quality of their arguments. Law professor Danielle Citron is, for good reason, considered one of the more thoughtful critics of the law. And, to her credit, she actually does understand the law, what it enables, and what the wider impacts of the law might be. Her scholarship tends to be thoughtful and careful as well, and, just recently, she was awarded a MacArthur "genius grant." And that's why I find it frustrating that her presentations before Congress recently seem to miss the mark by a fairly wide margin. Earlier this year, we called out her testimony on "deep fakes" because she falsely suggested that internet platforms have "no incentive to address destructive deepfake content."
We've covered a few times in the past some of the oddities of both Australia's defamation laws and its views on intermediary liability. Our big complaint regarding both of those things is how they end up enabling censorship by the powerful of critical reporting and commentary. Perhaps a perfect example of this is former National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard having some pricey lawyers threaten Australian booksellers if they decided to offer Ronan Farrow's new book Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators. If you haven't guessed, a part of Farrow's book covers efforts by the Enquirer to "get dirt" on certain people in what appears to be an attempt to suppress their credibility or ability to go public, and also to engage in the practice of "catch and kill" (from whence the book gets its title) a story by "buying" the exclusive rights to it, only to kill it.
In 2018, Thomson singled out Facebook for being “in denial” about itself, adding that “Mark [Zuckerberg] finds it very difficult to say ‘publisher,’ but he is a publisher, and a lot of what they are publishing is reprehensible.” In March, he said “the Facebook icon may appear to be an approving thumb, but to content creators it’s actually a contemptuous middle finger.”
The decision, which was announced by the Defense Department late Friday, may be challenged by Amazon, according to a person familiar with the matter, because President Donald Trump weighed in on the bidding process. The terms of the competition were also hotly contested by another rival, Oracle Corp.
It said that it had awarded more than $11bn in 10 separate cloud-computing contracts over the past two years.
The Jedi deal "continues our strategy of a multi-vendor, multi-cloud environment as the department's needs are diverse and cannot be met by any single supplier," it added.
Microsoft has not yet issued a statement.
Meantime, Microsoft will become a mascot for Pentagon ambitions to adapt commercial technology to defense purposes. That could lead it into contentious territory, as Google found with its Maven contract. That project helped inspire an ambitious new Pentagon AI strategy, and the creation of a Joint AI Center to speed adoption of the technology across the US military. The center is already building new AI tools, and planning to run them on JEDI.
The 10-year contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, known as JEDI, had set off a showdown among Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Google for the right to transform the military’s cloud computing systems. The acrimonious process involved intense lobbying efforts and legal challenges among the rivals.
The US government has awarded a giant $10 billion cloud contract to Microsoft, the Department of Defense has confirmed. Known as Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), the contract will provide the Pentagon with cloud services for basic storage and power all the way up to artificial intelligence processing, machine learning, and the ability to process mission-critical workloads.
The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure program is meant to replace the U.S. military’s poorly integrated, aged computer networks and clouds with a single cloud system that would encompass all networked assets, from soldiers on the ground to all of its combat aircraft and naval vessels.
All four major US carriers — AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint — have each issued the same joint press release announcing the formation of “a joint venture” called the “Cross-Carrier Messaging Initiative” (CCMI). It’s designed to ensure that the carriers move forward together to replace SMS with a next-generation messaging standard — including a promise to launch a new texting app for Android phones that supports the standard by next year.
Even with all of the faults, 97 percent of smartphone owners send text messages, making it the most widely used feature on smartphones. To make the service more valuable and competitive with messaging apps, smartphone manufacturers and carriers are teaming up with the cell phone industry’s governing bodies to develop a modern take on texting called Rich Communication Services (RCS), which combines the best of Facebook Messenger, iMessage, and WhatsApp into one platform.
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There is one crucial element missing from chat, however. While the original RCS protocol allowed the implementation of client-to-server encryption, Chat will not offer end-to-end encryption like iMessage or Signal. In short, it allows for the same legal intercept standards as its predecessor.
Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, a Democrat from New York, pointed to Facebook’s promise in its acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014 to keep the messaging app separate from the main Facebook platform. A few years later, Mr. Zuckerberg announced it would merge data between the two apps.
“Do you understand why this record makes us concerned with Facebook entering the cryptocurrency space? Have you learned that you should not lie?” Ms. Velázquez said.
The good news is that you don’t need to let that stop you. Facebook makes it easy to download a backup of all of your data. It’s in the same section as the option to deactivate or delete your account.
Even worse, it seems this trend towards zero-click searches has seen steady growth since 2016. In the meantime, organic reach for third-party websites has continued to shrink.
We’ve passed a milestone in Google’s evolution from search engine to walled-garden. In June of 2019, for the first time, a majority of all browser-based searches on Google.com resulted in zero-clicks.
But Zuckerberg's story lacks credibility. Why have eBay, PayPal, Mastercard and Visa recently turned their backs on the project? Why are regulators and finance ministers suddenly getting nervous? Why was Zuckerberg grilled for six hours this week in front of a congressional committee? Nonetheless, even the boss of the largest bank in the world, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, does not really seem confident when he says that Libra has "no future" and will "never happen."
The movement to encrypt the web has reached milestone after milestone in recent years as major platforms and small websites alike have made the shift from insecure HTTP to more secure HTTPS. Let’s Encrypt and EFF’s Certbot have changed the game here, making what was once an expensive, technically demanding process into an easy and affordable task for webmasters across a range of resource and skill levels.
Today we’re releasing a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to make a tool like Certbot easy to use. This case study walks readers through our designers’ and developers’ process for redesigning our interactive Certbot website: our methods, the challenges of doing user research on a tight budget, and strategies to make the most of the resources available to your team. We hope this case study can serve as a resource for other scrappy groups of designers and developers working to improve their own tools and projects.
Surveillance growth markets are the best growth markets. Amazon, not satisfied with tying up the online shopping and data storage markets, is moving forward aggressively with plans to become the government's top surveillance vendor, as well as the friendly face of (cop-enabled) home surveillance via its Ring doorbell camera. A swarm of analytics companies have descended on the massive amounts of data generated by social media/cellphone users to turn haystacks into marketable needle sources.
At Wednesday’s congressional hearings about Libra, Facebook’s cryptocurrency project, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took the opportunity to question founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg about more than a couple of things he likely wasn’t expecting. Probably one of the most memorable questions came when AOC, as the congressmember is known, asked the Facebook CEO about the content of the discussions at his “ongoing dinner parties with far-right figures.” Another great moment came when she asked Zuckerberg if he’d take down false political advertisements and he responded with, “Lying is bad,” but refused to say what he’d do.
The Interior Department has removed heavily criticized language from the final version of its public records rule that some worried would give officials too much leniency in withholding documents.
The final iteration of the department’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regulation issued Friday removes several proposed language changes that government watchdog groups argued would place an unlawful burden on public records seekers and offered the agency broader authority to reject requests that didn’t fit the more narrow request format.
Days after "lynching" comment, the president addresses a forum at Benedict College in South Carolina.
Over the past 50 years the Republican Party has turned racial politics into an art form, demonstrating not only contempt for minorities but for democracy itself. Today Trump’s GOP manifests few of the nuances and most of the crudities of this wretched saga. Trump and his operatives aggressively stoke racial prejudice and channel it into votes to support their revanchist agenda. The party that once merely practiced racial politics now embraces white nationalists tied to and tolerant of domestic terrorism. Thanks to the nativist con-man-in-chief, the politically unacceptable has become the political norm.
On October 24, the Chechen state television network Grozny released footage showing former Grozny Mayor and former Chechen Deputy Prime Minister Islam Kadyrov using a taser to force confessions from people accused of fraud. The station shared the 13-minute news segment on its Instagram and YouTube channels.
Jesus of Nazareth was given a trial before Pontius Pilate and under Roman Law before being crucified. Crucifixion was nothing special at the time, it was the usual and ordinary punishment for many crimes. It was only that Jesus was an extraordinary advocate for peace, justice and love that made that crucifixion extraordinary.
On very rare occasions, the front mouths for law enforcement -- police unions -- will surprise you with inadvertent truthiness. Such a rarity occurred recently. It was -- as almost every union outburst is -- provoked by the introduction of the tiniest sliver of accountability.
"The city was so adamant that the officer 'feared for his life.' Why were they hiding the video? If a picture speaks a thousand words, then the video speaks a million words."
In his first seven months as a village public safety officer in the remote Alaska village of Chenega, Andrew Jonda has enjoyed world-class fishing and gorgeous ocean views.
What he hasn’t done is make a single arrest.
The federal government still doesn't have any great ideas on how to head off future school shootings. But it does have some ideas. Some ideas are better than none when calls to "do something" abound. Something is indeed in the works. Unfortunately, the solution being offered just opens up students to increased surveillance, on and off campus.
“The owl of Minerva,” Hegel wrote, “takes flight with the setting of the sun.” He meant that the true meaning, the correct interpretation, of past events becomes evident only in retrospect.
Earlier this month, famed astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson appeared on The Late Show, where host Stephen Colbert asked Tyson about the allegations of sexual misconduct four women had brought against him.
In his inaugural speech on October 23, Tunisia’s new president, Kais Saied, pledged to “honor Tunisia’s obligations under international law.” This was an unexpected turn, given his hostility towards human rights treaties during his campaign.
Yesterday was supposed to be a celebration at the United Nations.€ But on the UN’s birthday, the world body received sharp criticism regarding its own human rights record.
Carl Dukes was incarcerated for 31 years in prisons throughout the state of New York. He works for the Fortune Society, which helps incarcerated individuals all over the United States that can help them re-enter society after their release from prison. He also is a vocalist featured on Die Jim Crow’s 2016 EP.
Die Jim Crow is a project that aims to provide formerly and currently incarcerated musicians a high quality platform for their voices to be heard. They go through the extra effort to gain access to facilities and do not rely on contraband phones. They lay down instrumentals, record vocals, and mix tracks with professional equipment.
The Supreme Court of Appeal dismissed the attorney general's appeal on Wednesday and asked Tanzania's government to respect the previous ruling, according to court documents seen by CNN.
With two out of five girls being married off before their 18th birthday, Tanzania has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, according to UN estimates.
Indeed, it is estimated that 90 percent of women in Iceland did not show up for work on October 24, 1975. And the strike brought the Icelandic economy to a standstill. Schools, nurseries, shops, and factories closed, and men had to step in by either staying at home or bringing their children to work. There were over twenty rallies organized all over the country, but the biggest event took place in Lækjartorg, the main square in downtown Reykjavík, 25,000 women attending — just under half of the entire female population in the capital area.
A 22-year-old who stabbed a man, then hid in a London mosque which was stormed by police, has been found guilty of manslaughter.
Kamal Hussain, 22, and Yosef Ahmed, 18, changed clothes in the mosque to evade police, jurors were told.
Mitchell says he blames human traffickers and an international system that he says does nothing to stop them. Here is part of his conversation with As It Happens host Carol Off.
In a blue state, in a blue city, on the Bruin blue campus of a public university system that once gave rise to the Free Speech Movement, why were the UCLA administration and Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer, a liberal Democrat, bent on charging and jailing four young protesters for briefly interrupting a 2018 campus speaking appearance by U.S. Treasury Secretary...
"Nobody should ever have to live under the kind terrorism that ICE has inflicted upon countless immigrant communities."
This week on CounterSpin: The Supreme Court won’t rule until spring on the cases it recently took up, involving employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. But that doesn’t mean we have to wait until then to assess the state of fairness for LGBTQ people in US society. Just as abortion can be out of reach even with Roe v. Wade in place, the gap between what the law says a person merits, and the harms and hardships they experience, can be cavernous. It doesn’t mean ignoring the legal front, just placing it within a more complex picture. We’ll talk about that with writer and organizer Dorothee Benz.
Ecuador’s President Moreno was elected in 2017 by campaigning to continue Rafael Correa’s leftist policies. Within weeks of taking office, he€ morphed€ into a right winger obsessed with inventing a public debt problem and€ outlawing€ Correa along with€ anyone€ who stayed loyal to him and his policies (Correaists). But a few weeks ago, things exploded when Moreno made his boldest move yet to€ return€ Ecuador to IMF bondage by eliminating fuel subsidies. Eight protesters€ were killed€ in eleven days before Moreno withdrew the decree that eliminated the subsidies.
He sits calm and unruffled by the blazing heat on a small bridge atop this compact dam in Kolhapur that he brought into being over half a century ago. Patiently continuing to answer questions we had sprung on him earlier at lunch. He also walks, sprightly and energetic, all over the bridge with us – explaining how this barrage came to life in 1959.
When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke of her origins and family today (19 October 2019), I remembered my own story because they are so similar. My mother, too, is a lovely Puertorriqueña; I too was born in the Boogie-Town island stolen from the American Indians (Manhattan); we too lived in Parkchester, in the Bronx, in a basement apartment (concrete floor, concrete walls, tiny windows at the top at shoe-level to the sidewalk); I too have felt the glass ceiling pushing me down (my whole career), along with other melanin-rich talent.
Former Russian Open Government Minister Mikhail Abyzov said during an October 24 court hearing that one of his children has fled Russia to avoid being seized by child protection officers. Abyzov was jailed in spring 2019 on charges of fraud and forming a criminal organization during his time in Russia’s federal executive branch.
So many follies, so little time. In the last day, the swiftly unraveling Idiot Thug has threatened to sic his "tough people" - police, bikers, military - on his enemies, promised to build a big beautiful wall in...Colorado and, frantically expanding his repertoire of insults and targets, followed in a fine fascist tradition by calling people who disagree with him...
A recent New York Times article about the segregation of schools across the district of San Francisco (San Francisco Had an Ambitious Plan to Tackle School Segregation. It Made It Worse) cites president of the SF Board of Education, Stevon Cook, stating that the problem arose inadvertently. It discusses issues of wide-scale busing needs and school zoning as contributing factors to the city’s segregation. That article pertains to segregation between schools, not within schools, and Starr King Elementary, the city’s single most segregated school, is not even mentioned.
It was always a probable fact: the dark consequences of having what is termed in Australia a “racing” industry, where breeds do battle on the track, sponsored and watered by the money of an industry that sees no sign of contracting. Curiously, most states within the Australian Commonwealth boast a racing minister to mind the industries in which punters, animal owners and investors partake. From greyhounds to horses, a lingering question remains: Where to with the animals once they have done their dash?
Asset forfeiture certainly seems unconstitutional. But we don't have a lot of case law actually saying that. Something that began in the United States as a way to punish wrongdoers located elsewhere in the world, but whose property (usually a ship and its contents) had sailed into US jurisdiction, is now used by American law enforcement to take cash, vehicles, and whatever else they can haul away from people they think smell like weed.
At midnight on Monday, legislation came into force that decriminalized abortion and legalized same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is a law enforcement agency known mainly for its criminals. Yes, it oversees the largest jail system in the world, but even that can't hold all the criminals the LASD associates with. The Department hires (and re-hires) criminals to staff itself. It has 300 employees on the LA District Attorney's "Brady list" -- the list of officers prosecutors feel are too untrustworthy to testify in court due to past misconduct and lying.
Domestic violence is a€ persistent problem in Armenia, where at least 10 women were€ reportedly killed€ by family members or partners in the first six months of 2019.
Thai authorities over five years of military rule have prosecuted numerous peaceful critics of the government to stay in power, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.€
Girls and boys in Tanzania have cause to celebrate: child marriage is now illegal in the country.
The recent closure of three Protestant churches and a police assault on worshipers at one church are the latest examples of the repression of this tiny religious minority in€ Algeria, Human Rights Watch said today.
John Stanley Ford, my father, was the first black software engineer in America, hired by IBM in 1946. Passed over for promotions, discriminated against in pay, with many inside IBM working to ensure his failure, he still viewed his job as an opportunity of a lifetime. He refused to give up.
Minority underrepresentation in high tech has been present since the earliest days of the industry. In reflecting upon my father’s career for a new memoir I wrote about him, I saw important lessons about the history and nature of racism in high tech, and about the steps that corporations and individuals can take to bring about much-needed change.
IBM publicly represents itself as a company with deep roots in diversity and inclusion, but history tells a different story. The roots of racism in high tech coincide with the advent of the digital age, when in the late 1920s a fledgling company run by a cutthroat but savvy businessman named Thomas J. Watson saw an opportunity in eugenics.
Eugenics is a pseudoscience that seeks to create a “racially pure” master human race by eliminating those deemed inferior. In 1928, the Eugenics Records Office in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., had undertaken a project to identify mixed-race individuals on the island of Jamaica for forced sterilization and other means of population control. Realizing the massive amount of data to be collected and compiled, Watson stepped in with IBM to provide the punched-card technology crucial for the Jamaica project’s success.
In 1933, Watson offered IBM’s services, based on similar punched-card technology, to the Third Reich and automated every aspect of Hitler’s war machine — including Luftwaffe bombing runs, train schedules for carrying Jews to camps, and the measures by which Jews were apprehended and exterminated. Concentration camps had IBM rooms, where the gruesome tallies of life and death were encoded on IBM punched cards.
In recognition of IBM’s extraordinary service, Hitler created a medal festooned with swastikas that he pinned on Watson in 1937. Although Watson returned the medal when America entered the war, IBM’s support of the Nazi regime never ceased. (IBM has never acknowledged the company’s role in the Holocaust nor disputed historical accounts of it.)
Authorities found 39 people dead in a truck in an industrial park in England on Wednesday and arrested the driver on suspicion of murder in one of Britain’s worst human-smuggling tragedies.
Police were reconstructing the final journey of the victims as they tried to piece together where they were from and how they came to be in England.
“To put 39 people into a locked metal container shows a contempt for human life that is evil,” said Jackie Doyle-Price, a member of Parliament who represents the area where the truck was found. “The best thing we can do in memory of those victims is to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice.”
Chris Hedges, quoting Hannah Arendt, calls the system in which we live, which depends for its survival on the disposability of human beings, “radical evil.” This system is a total conditioning reaching into the being of every individual, making individuals and institutions existentially sick. When everyone has been conditioned to disregard – even to despise – their subjective being, then the source of totalitarianism is within and has to first be resisted there. MLK’s fully necessary but long avoided “revolution of values” (we display the quotation on a banner at our Cafe in Utica) must begin with a near-impossible feat of defiance: the authority located in the system of top-down power must be displaced by the authority present in the life-giving roots of connectedness and meaning within the individual soul. This is why, in a post-religious age, the practicing of an art is vital; in its restoration of the missing spiritual dimension, it is quintessentially disobedient to neoliberal totality.
In December 2018, 17-year-old Palestinian teen, Ayham Sabah, was sentenced by an Israeli military court to 35 years in prison for his alleged role in a stabbing attack targeting an Israeli soldier in an illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
Have we mentioned lately that 5G is being over-hyped? While it's an important evolutionary step in wireless connectivity, it's far from the revolution hardware vendors and cellular carriers are promising. Verizon, for example, insists that 5G is the "fourth industrial revolution" that will almost miraculously spur the smart cities and smarter cars of tomorrow. While 5G is important (in that faster, more resilient networks are always important), the idea that 5G will fundamentally transform the world tends to overshoot the mark.
There is an infamous chart in media circles. It shows newspaper advertising revenue steadily rising until about the year 2000. A few years later, it drops off a cliff. Superimposed on this chart is the exponential growth of Google and Facebook...
You may be shocked to learn this, but nearly all of the promises AT&T made in the lead up to its $86 billion merger with Time Warner wound up not being true.
In the earlier days of Techdirt, Lego made multiple appearances as an IP bully. However, its IP bullying ran into some legal headaches as various courts pushed back again and again and again. The company failed, pretty spectacularly, in its quest to argue that no one could make similar, or even interconnecting, Lego bricks. Its patents long expired, and any copyright and trademark rights were much more limited.
The Stronger Patents Act, S. 2082, won’t give us a stronger patent system—just the opposite, in fact. It is a deliberate attempt to dismantle one of the few effective forums for challenging wrongly-issued patents. The bill would put dramatic and unwarranted changes into effect that would make the U.S. Patent Office’s system of inter partes review, or IPR, much less effective. That means the Stronger Patents Act will weaken the quality of issued patents and the patent system as a whole.
Patents give their owners the power to stop people (and companies) from doing whatever the patent claims as an “invention” for twenty years. But that power doesn’t come for free: it’s a trade. In exchange for the right to sue others to stop using the invention, patent applicants have to disclose enough information about their invention to allow others in the field to make and use it. Encouraging people to share information so that others can use it to make further advances is the whole point of the patent system. €
The public can read the information in a patent from the moment it’s published. But for the twenty years of a patent’s term, the owner can sue anyone who uses their invention without their permission. To get permission, members of the public need to know who owns the patent and therefore has the power to control and demand payment for its use. Unfortunately, essential information about patent ownership is often out of the public’s reach. In particular, patent trolls—individuals or companies that make money by threatening to sue instead of developing or commercializing technology—often divide up patent rights between different entities in ways that make it practically impossible to identify the legal owner of a patent. A 2012 study found that notorious patent troll Intellectual Ventures divides its portfolio among over 1000 different shell companies. There are a number of reasons why patent owners might want to keep ownership information secret. For example, doing so might limit fee awards for bad litigation conduct to an entity with no assets, shielding its parent company from the full price of overly aggressive patent enforcement.
In the England & Wales High Court's Unwired Planet v. Huawei ruling that had given rise to the four-day UK Supreme Court hearing that concluded yesterday, Mr. Justice Birss, a judicial imperialist (who wants UK courts to set FRAND licensing rates even for patents in other countries, on other continents, and--if only he could--in other solar systems or galaxies) wrote that a country-by-country resolution of standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing disputes would be "madness."
I disagree with those who believe this is a factual finding that the UK Supreme Court will have to defer to. It's not a finding of fact such as a damages determination. It's just an opinion--the opinion of an outlier judge and patent extremist.
"Madness" is a particularly absurd label in light of a simple fact: prior to that decision, no other court anywhere in the world did anything similar (there have been a few cases in which courts in one EU member state thought they could adjudicate issues relating to other EU countries, but they didn't get far), yet the industry has been able to avoid parallel SEP litigation in many countries for the most part. The only exception I remember is that--at some point earlier in this decade--Samsung was asserting SEPs against Apple in nine countries, but the dispute had started with Apple asserting non-SEPs and was not the commonplace situation in which a SEP holder just seeks to be compensated.
Most of those disputes get resolved based on a decision in one key jurisdiction, or maybe two. And rarely three. But that's about it.
Justice Birss made up a problem that never existed just so he could solve it. In his extremism he didn't merely legislate from the bench. He actually tried to conclude a global trade agreement between 200+ countries, singlehandedly. The patent system is a country-by-country system. Justice Birss is not alone in seeing the potential benefits of a unified global patent system--but he hasn't been elected to represent even a single nation on Earth, much less the 200+ countries he'd have to be authorized to speak for to achieve what he wants by allowing patent holders--including patent trolls--to leverage the threat of injunctive relief.
There's another reason for which Justice Birss's "madness" opinion is misguided. If a patent holder spends money on patent attorneys' fees, examination fees, registration/renewal fees etc. in order to obtain patents in multiple countries, why would it be unacceptable for that same patent holder to be required to prove validity, essentiality, and value on a country-by-basis unless a commercial agremeent is reached? Implementers won't want to incur the cost of unnecessary scattershot litigation around the globe--provided that a licensing offer is fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory.
Many--obviously not all--policy makers and judges way overestimate the "innovation" behind standard-essential patents (SEPs). In reality, the intrinsic value of the "inventions" covered by SEPs is usually anything but impressive, and most of what licensees agree or are forced to pay for SEP licenses is due to patentees mostly capturing the value of the standard.
A rational valuation needs to focus on the commercial value of the incremental technical benefits of a claimed invention over the state of the art. That delta is all it's worth. Typically, that value is very low because there are numerous ways--sometimes practically an infinite number of them--to solve the kind of technical problem at hand, such as encoding a data stream for the purpose of radio transmission or giving priority to the handsets of first responders over regular users of a network at its capacity limit. But once a patent becomes a SEP because a particular technical solution (again, usually one of many viable options) it covers is adopted as part of a standard, all implementers of the standard need a license. Otherwise, if the patented technique hadn't made it into the standard, very few companies or maybe even none at all would pay for a license, given the availability of numerous replacements or workarounds.
It happens all the time that technically superior inventions are not adopted as part of the standard, especially because standard-setting is a horse-trading exercise along the lines of "I'll vote for some of your technical proposals today if you support some of mine tomorrow."
Those sitting at the standard-setting table aren't always true innovators. You find companies there that spends billions of dollars on research and development, and a portion of it on the kinds of techniques become part of a standard. But you also find plenty of opportunists who capitalize on their involvement in the process, and whose "engineers" don't truly invent useful things but primarily seek to anticipate where the standard-setting discussion is headed in order to file for SEPs. Those aren't engineers in a traditional R& D sense--they're practically patent engineers.
Danish dairy producers were jubilant yesterday following an EU decision to award the Havarti cheese the Protected Geographical Indication logo – meaning only Havarti cheese produced in Denmark will be permitted to use the Havarti name.
Havarti joins in the list the other three Danish cheeses already included: Danablu, Esrom, and Danbo, which may only be produced in Denmark from Danish milk and at approved dairies that are regularly checked.
They conclude:
One interesting realization from the modeling we’ve done is that when the proportion of papers that are OA increases, or when the OA lag decreases, the total number of views increase -- the scholarly literature becomes more heavily viewed and thus more valuable to society.
Thus clearly demonstrating one part of the value that open access adds. Below the fold, some details and commentary.
To a certain segment of the population, just mentioning IPTV is enough to get them frothing at the mouth and shouting "copyright infringement" at anyone who will listen. This isn't entirely without cause, of course, as IPTV is a technology that can be used to infringe by streaming copyrighted TV shows and films. There are entire sites out there that list such infringing content, as well. But the fact remains that IPTV is a tool, not content that infringes copyright itself. As such, there are plenty of IPTV-related tools and uses out there that are perfectly legit.
Copyright lawyers could soon be able to seek up to $30,000 in damages from individuals for even the simplest and most unintentional of copyright violations. Earlier this week, the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act (CASE Act) was passed by the House of Representatives with a 410-6 vote with 16 abstaining votes. The Case Act is now going to be voted on by the US Senate, where a similar outcome might come about if the American people do not rally against this heinous copyright law.
