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07.12.16

Links 12/7/2016: Libinput 1.4, LLVM 3.8.1 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 11:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux Kernel 4.6.4 Released with Networking Improvements and Updated Drivers

      Today, July 11, 2016, renowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman has had the great pleasure of announcing the release of the fourth maintenance update for the Linux 4.6 kernel series.

    • Linux 4.6.4
    • Linux 4.4.15
    • Linux Kernel 4.4.15 LTS Adds Many Updated USB Drivers, It’s Already in Solus

      After announcing the release of Linux kernel 4.6.4, which is now the most advanced stable kernel branch available, Greg Kroah-Hartman informed the community about the release of Linux kernel 4.4.15 LTS.

      The Linux 4.4 kernel series is an LTS (Long Term Support) one, which means that it will be supported with security patches and bug fixes for a few more years than the normal Linux kernel branches. Because of this, many popular GNU/Linux operating systems prefer to use it, no matter if they are following a static or rolling release model. Among these, we can mention Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), Arch Linux, and Solus.

    • Linux Kernel 4.7 got a delay in release

    • Graphics Stack

      • NVIDIA Provides A Surprise For Pascal GPU Owners Wanting Open-Source

        After it took NVIDIA until earlier this year to release the signed firmware for the GeForce GTX 900 “Maxwell” GPUs, I expected — and based upon what I heard — that it could be months before seeing the firmware for GeForce GTX 1000 “Pascal” GPUs in order to enable hardware acceleration with these latest-generation GPUs. Thus it’s a huge surprise today to see NVIDIA already making public their Pascal GP100 firmware images!

        Hitting this afternoon in linux-firmware Git are the GP100 firmware files! There are 15 binary-only firmware blobs now part of the linux-firmware tree needed for initializing GP100 hardware. The GP100 blobs are named (for providing some reference) bl, ucode_load, ucode_unload, fecs_bl, fecs_data, fecs_inst, fecs_sig, gpccs_bl, gpccs_data, gpccs_inst, gpccs_sig, sw_bundle_init, sw_ctx, sw_method_init, and sw_nonctx. The largest of these blobs are 20955 bytes.

      • Just About 20 Lines Of Code Got Open-Source 3D Running On NVIDIA Pascal For Mesa

        Just a few hours ago I was writing about NVIDIA making public the GP100 “Pascal” GPU firmware binaries needed for as a requirement for bringing up GeForce GTX 1000 series hardware acceleration on the open-source driver stack. Now the initial support has landed in Nouveau’s NVC0 Gallium3D driver within Mesa for allowing 3D support.

        Ben Skeggs of Red Hat landed an initial support patch that has 16 lines of new code and five lines of deletions that bring this initial GP100 series GPU support. The support mostly comes down to just adding the “0×130″ case and various other relatively simple changes to allow this code to work. The bring-up for Pascal in the Nouveau stack is much more complicated within the Nouveau DRM kernel driver than what was needed for the Gallium3D user-space code. The GP100 Pascal Nouveau kernel changes so far were outlined in Initial Open-Source GeForce GTX 1000 “Pascal” Nouveau Driver Support — that work is starting to land in Linux 4.8.

      • libinput 1.3.901

        The first RC for libinput 1.4 is now available.

      • Libinput 1.4 Release Candidate

        Peter Hutterer has announced the first release candidate of the upcoming libinput 1.4 release for this input handling library used by X.Org, Wayland, and Mir systems.

    • Benchmarks

      • Blender Cycles Render Engine Benchmarks With NVIDIA CUDA On Linux

        Here is a look at the performance of the Blender 3D modeling/creation software with its Cycles Engine when making use of NVIDIA’s CUDA API for GPU acceleration. Tests for this initial comparison include NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1000 “Pascal” and GTX 900 “Maxwell” graphics cards.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Plasma 5.7 Desktop Users Complain About Multi-Screen Support, Fixes Incoming

        The KDE Plasma 5.7 desktop environment arrived last week, on July 5, and it already landed in the main software repositories of various GNU/Linux operating systems, including Arch Linux, Gentoo, and KDE Neon.

        KDE Plasma 5.7 brought numerous new features and improvements, along with the usual bug fixes, and it also promised improved multi-screen support. However, it appears that for many users who have already tried the new KDE Plasma desktop on their distributions, multi-screen support fails to work as expected.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions

    • Bodhi 4.0.0 Time Lines and June 2016 Donation Totals

      Last month I hinted at the first Bodhi 4.0.0 pre-release happening soon, but then June came and went with no more news. One of my goals for the 4.0.0 release is to realign our core Enlightenment Foundation Libraries with the latest upstream release. Their 1.18 release has been pushed back for several weeks due to the number of things it is integrating (namely the Elementary widgets are part of the core toolkit now) and ideally I would like to include this release by default in Bodhi 4.0.0.

    • New Releases

      • Budgie Desktop 10.2.6 Comes with Redesigned Budgie Menu, Spotify Compatibility

        Today, July 12, 2016, Softpedia was informed by Solus project leader Ikey Doherty about the general availability of the Budgie 10.2.6 desktop environment, a major release that introduces lots of new features and improvements.

        Coming three and a half months after the release of Budgie 10.2.5, which most of the Solus users are using on their computers, the Budgie 10.2.6 update promises many goodies. But first, the biggest change is the implementation of a stable, performant API/ABI, which will force those who maintain Budgie extensions to rebuild them based on the new API/ABI.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • Red Hat Family

      • Steps the Python community and Dropbox are taking to increase diversity

        At the Red Hat Summit in San Francisco last month, DeLisa Alexander, executive vice president and chief people officer at Red Hat, announced the winners of the company’s second annual Women in Open Source Award. Jessica McKellar, director of engineering and chief of staff to the vice president of engineering at Dropbox, and Preeti Murthy, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, won the 2016 Women in Open Source Award.

      • 7 characteristics of open leaders

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Event report: Fedora 24 release party Pune

          Last Saturday we had the Fedora 24 release party in Pune. This was actually done along with our regular Fedora meetup, and in the same location. We had a few new faces this time. But most of the regular attendees attended the meetup.

        • Hosting your own Fedora Test Day

          Many important packages and software are developed for Fedora every day. One of the most important parts of software development is quality assurance, or testing. For important software collections in Fedora, there are sometimes concentrated testing efforts for pulling large groups of people in who might not always help test. Organizing a Fedora Test Day is a great way to help expose your project and bring more testers to trialing a new update before it goes live.

        • Farewell Pharlap

          Korora “was born out of a desire to make Linux easier for new users” and one way of achieving that aim was the development of Pharlap, a tool for the simple installation of third party drivers. However times change and sadly it is time to say goodbye to Pharlap which will not be included in Korora 24.

          This decision was not taken lightly and there are many reasons behind the move.

        • Creating a reproducible build system for Docker images

          As the population of DevOps practitioners grows greater in size, so does the Linux container userbase, as these often go hand in hand. In the world of Linux container implementations, Docker is certainly the most popular for server-side application deployments as of this writing. Docker is a powerful tool that provides a standard build workflow, an imaging format, a distribution mechanism, and a runtime. These attributes have made it a very attractive for developer and operations teams alike as it helps lower the barrier between these groups and establishes common ground.

    • Debian Family

      • Bodhi 4.0.0 Time Line, First Woman Debian TC

        The top story today in Linux news is the controversy following the removal of Nano from the GNU umbrella. Original maintainer Christian Allegretta had to address the resulting rumors that threaten the community. Elsewhere, Jeff Hoogland posted an updated time line for Bodhi 4.0 and the Debian project welcomes its first woman Technical Committee member. Linus is on the hot seat again after losing his patience over commenting style and the Korora project is dropping their driver manager Pharlap.

      • twenty years of free software — part 13 past and future
      • mips64el added to Debian testing
      • DebConf16 closes in Cape Town and DebConf17 dates announced

        Today, Saturday 9 July 2016, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close. With over 280 people attending from all over the world, and 113 hours of talks in 114 events, DebConf16 has been hailed as a success.

        Highlights included the Open Festival, where events of interest to a broader audience were offered (ranging from topics specific to Debian to a wider appreciation of the open and maker movements), the traditional Bits from the DPL, lightning talks and live demos and the announcement of next year’s DebConf (DebConf17 in Montreal).

      • Technical committee appointment

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Mini-PC runs Ubuntu on quad-core Bay Trail Atom

            Mele has launched a “Star Cloud PCG03” mini-PC that runs Ubuntu on a quad-core Atom Z3735F with 2GB RAM, 64GB eMMC, three USB ports, Ethernet, and WiFi.

            Shenzhen Mele Digital Technology Ltd. has released an Ubuntu 14.04 equipped Star Cloud PCG03 mini-PC based on its earlier Windows-based Mini PC PCG09 and Mini PC PCG03. Like these models, as well as Mele’s first Ubuntu-based device, the Star Cloud PCG02 stick PC, the new Star Cloud PCG03 mini-PC runs on a quad-core, 1.33GHz (1.83GHz turbo) Atom Z3735F, a tablet-focused SoC from Intel’s 22nm Bay Trail generation.

          • Star Cloud PCG03U Ubuntu Mini PC Unveiled For $90
          • 32-Bit Ubuntu Alternatives

            Some folks may find the idea of using a 32-bit distribution of Linux to be downright silly. After all, we live in a 64-bit world these days, right? Well, that depends on who you ask. The fact of the matter is there are still a lot of fully functional PCs out there that run 32-bit Linux. Up until recently, this was all well and good. Then the news came down that Ubuntu would no longer be supporting 32-bit systems come the next Ubuntu release. Clearly not everyone is thrilled about his news.

            Rather than throw in the towel and recycle these PCs, I think it’s important to realize there is a world beyond Ubuntu. Yes, many other distros have also stopped support 32-bit distros. However for the time being, there are still options to choose from. In this article, I’m going to share some great non-Ubuntu based 32-bit friendly Linux distros you should check out.

            The first set of distributions I want to share with you are best for those who are already comfortable with Linux.

          • Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 to Land Next Wednesday, OTA-13 Brings Libertine Improvements

            The Ubuntu Touch saga continues, and today we would like to inform our readers about some of the latest changes coming in the next major update, the OTA-13, as well as about some good news for the soon-to-be-released OTA-12.

            According to Canonical’s Łukasz Zemczak, the testing of the upcoming Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 software update is almost over and things are looks great. No blockers, and everything works as expected for almost all devices, with a small exception for Meizu PRO 5 and BQ Aquaris M10, which need custom tarball re-spins.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint 18: The best desktop — period

              You could keep worrying about being forced to upgrade to Windows 10, or you could try the best of all Linux desktops: Mint 18.

            • Linux Mint 18

              During my trial, Mint 18 provided me with a stable, friendly and problem-free experience. The distribution has a installer which is simple to use, a good collection of documentation and an excellent selection of default software. The configuration tools are straight forward to use, the software manager is easy to use and everything generally just worked the way I wanted it to. The one problem I ran into during my whole trial was the video display issue when running from the live disc, and that was quickly solved by switching to the fail-safe graphics mode from the live disc’s boot menu.

              I was curious to try X-Apps and I generally found these to be an improvement. I dislike the mobile-style interfaces GNOME applications tend to use and how they break consistency with other applications. X-Apps provide the same functionality as their GNOME counterparts, but improve the interface to work the same as all the other desktop applications. Most of the changes are small, but make working with the text editor or video player a much less frustrating experience.

            • Linux Mint 18 ” Sarah “
            • Linux Mint 18 reviews roundup

              Hectic Geek’s review is quite thorough and includes some interesting performance comparisons between Ubuntu 16.04 and Linux Mint 18. The site was impressed with Linux Mint 18’s performance.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • SiFive brings open-source SoCs
    • Startup SiFive Aims for Open-Source Chips
    • First SoCs based on open source RISC-V run Linux

      SiFive unveiled the first embedded SoCs based on the open source RISC-V platform: A Linux-ready octa-core Freedom U500 and a FreeRTOS-based Freedom E300.

      A VC-backed startup closely associated with the RISC-V project announced the first system-on-chip implementations of the open source RISC-V processor platform. At the RISC-V 4thWorkshop at MIT this week, SiFive announced two embedded SoC families. The Freedom Unleashed family debuts with a 28nm fabricated, Freedom U500 SoC with up to eight 1.6GHz cores that runs Linux, aimed at machine learning, storage, and networking applications. The MCU-like Freedom Everywhere family for Internet of Things starts with a 180nm Freedom E300 model that runs FreeRTOS.

    • Server class COM supports 16-core Xeons, packs dual 10GbE

      Advantech’s server-class SOM-5991 COM Express module runs Linux on up to 16-core Xeon D-1500 processors, and offers dual 10GBase-KR ports and PCIe with NTB.

      We’ve seen a number of embedded boards supporting server-class Xeon E3-1200 SoCs from Intel’s Skylake architecture, such as Seco’s COMe-B09-BT6 COM Express Basic Type 6 module. Yet, Advantech’s SOM-5991, which uses the same 125 x 95mm Basic Type 6 form factor, is the first we’ve seen to run the similarly 14nm “Broadwell” based Xeon D-1500 SoCs, which are available with up to 16-core Xeons. Advantech claims it’s the first COM Express to use the Xeon D-1500, which debuted over a year ago, with more models arriving last fall and earlier this year.

    • Open-source Linux a step closer to automotive use

      Although it may seem like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are all the rage for dashboard infotainment systems, open-source Linux proponents haven’t conceded the battle yet. The Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) project announced the release of its Unified Code Base 2.0, implementing new in-vehicle entertainment support desired by automakers and drivers.

      The new code base adds support for audio routing, rear-seat entertainment systems and apps. It follows the version 1.0 release at CES earlier this year.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Samsung Z2 Documentation Image Leak, The Next Tizen Smartphone

          Samsung Z2 Documentation Leak

          We have been talking about the upcoming Samsung Z2 smartphone for a while now and today we have seen some leaked documentation surface that looks like it is part of the official user manual of Samsung’s next Tizen based Smartphone. As we exclusively reported earlier this year the device will carry the model number SM-Z200F.

      • Android

        • Net users duke it out over whether Jia Jia, China’s beautiful android, is the fairest of them all

          Remember Asuna and Junco Chihara, two entries in Japan’s race to create the most hyperreal android ever? Despite their lifelike appearances compared to many other robots out there, some people still aren’t able to get past the “uncanny valley” phenomenon as a result of their unnatural facial movements.

        • The Superbook is a $99 laptop shell for your Android phone

          The dream of turning your smartphone into a laptop will never die. From Motorola’s Atrix to this crazy HP Windows Phone, there have been a number of companies that have tried (and largely failed) to build a smartphone that can be attached to a dock and turned into a laptop.

          In a somewhat new twist, a company wants to sell you just the laptop shell, while letting you use your current Android phone and an app to power it. The Superbook is a 11.6-inch laptop shell built by the team behind Andromium OS, the app that allows your Android smartphone to run a desktop-like operating system.

        • LeapDroid claims to be the fastest Android emulator for your PC

          When it comes to running Android on your PC, short of installing the Android x86 project, you can get by with an emulator. With that, this program called Bluestacks is probably the most popular. Enter LeapDroid, a new emulator which claims to be the “world’s fastest” Android emulator on PC. I guess we have to try it to believe it.

        • Exclusive: These could be Google’s upcoming Android Wear smartwatches

          As we reported last week, Google is in the process of building two Android Wear smartwatches. At the time, we were unable to show you the watches themselves. Today, that changes – what you see in the image above could be codename “Angelfish” and “Swordfish,” Google’s two Assistant-enabled wearables that we believe will be released after the new Nexus phones.

        • Google’s Android Wear ‘Angelfish’, ‘Swordfish’ Smartwatches Leaked in Images
        • Alphabet (GOOGL) Announces Free Android Training In India As It Retakes Smartphone Lead

          Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) announced that it would begin training 2 million developers in India on Android as the company tries to take market share from the iOS ecosystem. The free Android Skilling program will be introduced across public and private universities, training schools and the government’s National Skills Development Corporation of India. India is expected to have the largest developer population with 4 million people by 2018, overtaking the U.S.

        • Google aims to train two million Indian Android devs by 2018

          Google will train two million Android developers across India over the next three years.

          Mountain View will provide complete training in its Android operating system under a new program that is paired with the Modi Government’s “Skill India” program.

          The course kicks off with Android Developer Fundamentals available in universities and the National Skills Development Corporation of India.

        • Google to train 2 million Indian Android developers

          Google has announced its new “Android Fundamentals” training program, which aims to train and certify up to two million Android developers in India. An Android Fundamentals training course, soon to be available online and at schools country-wide, is focused on training, testing and certifying Android developers to prepare students for careers using Android technology.

        • Samsung Galaxy Note 7 leaks in three new pics

          Earlier today, it was reported that the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 might be the most expensive product in the productivity-purposed phablet line so far, starting at roughly $910 in Europe. It seems that was not to be the only leak of the day however, as three images have surfaced via Steve Hemmerstoffer of nowhereelse.fr who has Tweeted no less than three different images of Samsung’s up and coming creation. Here is the first:

        • Android Nougat may contain traces of NOT for users of custom CAs

          Google will sweeten the forthcoming Nougat release of Android by changing the way apps work with certificate authorities (CAs) and simplifying APIs.

          The changes will affect only some apps and users, Android security team software engineer Chad Brubaker says .

          The changes mean Google will not automatically trust user-selected CAs. Instead, all Android devices running Nougat and later versions of Android will run a standard set of Google-trusted AOSP certificate authorities, forcing some developers to change their apps if non-trusted certificate authorities are needed.

        • First Nokia Android Device, P1 Rumoured To Have 3GB RAM, HD Display

          If you have used Nokia, you will remember the rugged Nokia 3310 and other smartphones that could break a wall and still survive. Nokia is back to making smartphones but Android operating system.

        • How to live stream Android games to YouTube and Twitch

          Watching people play live video games from anywhere in the world has become a surprisingly huge phenomenon in recent years. Twitch is now a game-streaming juggernaut while YouTube has embraced gaming and live streaming in a big way, and seemingly everyday people have become well-paid Internet personalities because they play video games and chat.

        • Six Points on The Samsung Galaxy Note 7: AKA The Best Android Phone of 2016

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Two in Three Apple Watch Owners Won’t Buy Next Version (Told You So)

    Here we are, those who bought Apple Watches have been playing with their iToys. Some utterly love their iGadgets. But most who were duped into buying the expensive tech jewelry were disappointed or don’t find any reason to upgrade. A fresh survey of Apple Watch owners by Quartz finds that two thirds won’t be buying the new edition. And this turns out pretty much exactly as I predicted. The gadget does not have the appeal of the mobile phone/smartwatch (an Apple Watch is not even technically ‘mobile’ because you have to tether it to an iPhone for its functionality meaning it is ‘only’ an accessory, differing from those smart watches that do their own connectivity like say Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smart watches). And I said the life of the Apple Watch will be two genations, the second generation will not sell as well as the first, and then Apple will quietly shut down this silly cul-de-sac of tech innovation. We are nearing the half-point of that prediction and the signs say.. those who buy Apple Watches do not on the whole fall in love with the idea of the metal on the wrist. It is a poor technology solution and will not replace the smartphone. Hence, it will fail as a business idea. Apple is on that path now, to ending the Apple Watch after the second edition.

  • Hardware

    • Seagate Fires 6,500, Or 14% Of Workforce, Stock Soars

      Moments ago computer-memory specialist Seagate, in a preliminary financial report, announced that its Q4 revenue would be $2.65 billion, beating expectations of $2.34 billion, and up from the $2.3 billion guidance given previously. The company also reported gross margin of 25% and non-GAAP gross margin of approximately 25.8% for the fiscal fourth quarter 2016, up from the previous 23% forecast.

      Good news, and the stock is up 12% after hours as a result.

      The only problem is that when companies preannounce good news up front, there is usually some not so good news hidden toward the back. And sure enough, for a company which is guiding higher, the narrative promptly fell apart when we read that for STX management the future is so bright that it just had to lay off 14% of it workforce, or some 6,500 people. This too was a “beat” to expectations: in late June, the company announced it planned to cut “only” 1,600 jobs as a cost-saving measure.

    • Testing the 8-bit computer Puldin

      Puldin is 100% pure Bulgarian development, while the “Pravetz” brand was copy of Apple ][ (Pravetz 8A, 8C, 8M), Oric (Pravets 8D) and IBM-PC (Pravetz 16). The Puldin computers were build from scratch both hardware and software and were produced in Plovdiv in the late 80s and early 90s. 50000 pieces were made, at least 35000 of them have been exported to Russia and paid for. A typical configuration in a Russian class room consisted of several Puldin computers and a single Pravetz 16. According to Russian sources the last usage of these computers was in 2003 serving as Linux terminals and being maintained without any support from the vendor (b/c it ceased to exist).

  • Health/Nutrition

    • What happens when Pokémon Go turns your home into a gym

      In the virtual world of Pokémon Go, a gym is where players (in game parlance, “trainers”) gather to battle against each other. Trainers join one of three teams at an early stage of the game, and those teams fight for control of the gyms. If your team controls a gym, you get perks and bragging rights at that location. In the physical world, battling trainers look a lot like those three strangers standing outside of Sheridan’s home. Soon, a car pulled up and parked in front of the house, too. Another trainer.

  • Security

    • Report: Enterprises more reliant on open source and third-party software components
    • 1 in 16 Java Components Have Security Defects

      A new report from Sonatype analyzes the volume and variety of Java components in the ecosystems of over 25,000 developers and 3,000 organizations.

    • Enterprise software developers continue to use flawed code in apps

      Companies that develop enterprise applications download over 200,000 open-source components on average every year — and one in 16 of those components has security vulnerabilities.

    • Sonatype Releases 2016 State of the Software Supply Chain Report
    • Pokemon Go Is A “Malware” And “Hackers’ Dream”, Security Experts Say
    • New EU directive requires critical infrastructure to improve cyber-security

      Companies which supply essential services – such as energy, transport, banking, health or digital services such as cloud services and search engines – will be required to achieve minimum standards of cyber-security under new EU-wide rules adopted by the EU Parliament today.

    • CISSP certification: Are multiple choice tests the best way to hire infosec pros?

      Want a job in infosec? Your first task: hacking your way through what many call the “HR firewall” by adding a CISSP certification to your resume.

      Job listings for security roles often list the CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) or other cybersecurity certifications, such as those offered by SANS, CompTIA, and Cisco, as a requirement. This is especially true in the enterprise space, including banks, insurance companies, and FTSE 100 corporations. But at a time when the demand for good infosec people sees companies outbidding each other to hire top talent, and ominous studies warn of a looming cybersecurity skills shortage, experts are questioning whether certifications based on multiple choice tests are really the best way to recruit the right people.

    • Pokémon Go on iOS gives full access to Google accounts

      Signing into Pokémon Go on iOS with a Google account gives the game full access to that account, according to a systems architect, Adam Reeve.

      The Android version of the game apparently does not have these issues.

      Reeve said that the security situation was not the same for all iOS users.

      Pokémon Go was released last week and has been a huge hit. It is the latest in a series of games from Nintendo but is made by a developer named Niantic, which is part owned by Google.

    • Pokémon Go shouldn’t have full access to your Gmail, Docs and Google account — but it does

      When you use Google to sign into Pokémon Go, as so many of you have already, the popular game for some reason grants itself (for some iOS users, anyway) the highest possible level of access to your Google account, meaning it can read your email, location history… pretty much everything. Why does it need this, and why aren’t users told?

    • Have you given Pokémon Go full access to everything in your Google account?

      Gamers who have downloaded the Pokémon Go augmented reality game were given a scare on Monday, after noticing that the app had apparently been granted “full access” to their Google accounts.

      Taken at face value, the permissions would have represented a major security vulnerability, albeit one that only appeared to affect players who signed up to play the game using their Google account on Apple devices.

    • Pokémon Go Was Never Able To Read Your Email [Updated]

      Here’s even more confirmation that Pokémon Go never had the ability to access your Gmail or Calendar. A product security developer at Slack tested the token provided by Pokémon Go and found that it was never able to get data from services like Gmail or Calendar.

    • HTTPS is not a magic bullet for Web security

      We’re in the midst of a major change sweeping the Web: the familiar HTTP prefix is rapidly being replaced by HTTPS. That extra “S” in an HTTPS URL means your connection is secure and that it’s much harder for anyone else to see what you’re doing. And on today’s Web, everyone wants to see what you’re doing.

      HTTPS has been around nearly as long as the Web, but it has been primarily used by sites that handle money—your bank’s website, shopping carts, social networks, and webmail services like Gmail. But these days Google, Mozilla, the EFF, and others want every website to adopt HTTPS. The push for HTTPS everywhere is about to get a big boost from Mozilla and Google when both companies’ Web browsers begin to actively call out sites that still use HTTP.

    • Now it’s easy to see if leaked passwords work on other sites

      Over the past few months, a cluster of megabreaches has dumped account credentials for a mind-boggling 642 million accounts into the public domain, where they can then be used to compromise other accounts that are protected by the same password. Now, there’s software that can streamline this vicious cycle by testing for reused passcodes on Facebook and other popular sites.

    • What serverless computing really means [iophk: "securityless"]

      Arimura even goes as far as to use the controversial “no-ops,” coined by former Netflix cloud architect Adrain Cockcroft. Again, just as there will always be servers, there will always be ops to run them. Again, no-ops and serverless computing take the developer’s point of view: Someone else has to worry about that stuff, but not me while I create software.

    • An open letter to security researchers and practitioners

      Earlier this month, the World Wide Web Consortium’s Encrypted Media
      Extensions (EME) spec progressed to Draft Recommendation phase. This is
      a controversial standard for transmitting DRM-encumbered videos, and it
      marks the very first time that the W3C has attempted to standardize a
      DRM system.

      This means that for the first time, W3C standards for browsers will fall
      under laws like the DMCA (and its international equivalents, which the
      US Trade Representative has spread all over the world). These laws allow
      companies to threaten security researchers who disclose vulnerabilities
      in DRM systems, on the grounds that these disclosures make it easier to
      figure out how to bypass the DRM.

      Last summer, the Copyright Office heard from security researchers about
      the effect that DRM has on their work; those filings detail showstopper
      bugs in consumer devices, cars, agricultural equipment, medical
      implants, and voting machines that researchers felt they couldn’t
      readily publish about, lest they face punitive lawsuits from the
      companies they embarrassed.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • In Africa, the U.S. Military Sees Enemies Everywhere

      From east to west across Africa, 1,700 Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and other military personnel are carrying out 78 distinct “mission sets” in more than 20 nations, according to documents obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act.

      “The SOCAFRICA operational environment is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous,” says Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc, using the acronym of the secretive organization he presides over, Special Operations Command Africa. “It’s a wickedly complex environment tailor-made for the type of nuanced and professional cooperation SOF [special operations forces] is able to provide.”

      Equally complex is figuring out just what America’s most elite troops on the continent are actually doing, and who they are targeting.

      In documents from a closed-door presentation delivered by Bolduc late last year and a recent, little-noticed question and answer with a military publication, the SOCAFRICA commander offered new clues about the shadow war currently being waged by American troops all across the continent.

    • Navy Corrects “American Sniper” Chris Kyle’s Military Record, Lowers Medal Count

      The Navy has officially corrected Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle’s service record, lowering the medal count that he had claimed in his bestselling autobiography, American Sniper, according to a military spokesperson.

      The Navy issued the corrected DD214 form, his official discharge record, on June 14, two weeks after a report by The Intercept found Kyle embellished his military record, despite at least one warning from SEAL commanders that his claims were inaccurate.

      In his autobiography, Kyle claimed he received two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars with a “V” device for valor. After investigating the discrepancy, the Navy now says Kyle earned one Silver Star and four Bronze Stars with a “V” device for valor during his 10-year career as a Navy SEAL.

    • Security, Territory and Population Part 1: Introduction

      Security, Territory and Population is a collection of lectures given by the French thinker Michel Foucault at the College of France in 1977-8. Foucault describes the lectures as a work of philosophy, defined as “the politics of truth” (p. 3), a term which itself seems to require a definition. This creates two difficult problems for the reader. First, philosophy is hard. It involves carefully picking things apart, examining each element, putting the pieces back together, and then picking them apart from some other perspective, examining the new set of pieces and reassembling. It’s hard work, and it makes for difficult reading.

      Second, these are lectures, not a polished work prepared for publication with the aid of editors and the time it takes to smooth out analysis. Foucault says that these lectures are part of a long program of study, of which other books and sets of lectures are parts. The earlier books include Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality for certain, and others as well. These are polished works, and they give an idea of the general program.

    • ‘War on Terror’ Blowback Hits Dallas

      The blowback from America’s “war on terror” swept into Dallas last Friday when an Afghan War veteran allegedly killed five police officers and was killed in turn by a remote-controlled robot deploying a bomb, writes retired Col. Ann Wright.

    • NATO Has a Very Peculiar Way of Showing It Doesn’t Want New Cold War

      On first day of NATO summit, critics condemn “new and dangerous plan” to provoke Russia with heightened military presence on its borders

    • NATO Reaffirms Its Bogus Russia Narrative

      President Obama and NATO leaders signed on to the false narrative of a minding-its-own-business West getting sucker-punched by a bunch of Russian meanies, a storyline that suggests insanity or lies, reports Robert Parry.

    • Vladimir Putin Is The Only Leader The West Has

      Emmott and Siebold report that “Russian aggression” is the reason NATO is deploying 3,000 to 4,000 troops in the Baltic states and Poland. In other words, something that does not exist–Russian aggression toward the Baltics and Poland–is assumed to be a fact that must be countered with military deployments.

    • NATO as an ‘Entangling Alliance’
    • Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: Who Said What When
    • The Real Lesson of Iraq: Nothing Was Learned, No Good Was Done

      Denunciations of Tony Blair as the evil architect of Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War often dominate discussions of what happened there and many will look to the Chilcot inquiry to provide further evidence of his guilt. But the demonisation of Mr Blair is excessive and simple-minded and diverts attention from what really happened in Iraq and how such mistakes can be avoided in future.

      He may have unwisely followed the US into the quagmire of Iraq, but British government policy since 1941 has been to position itself as America’s most loyal and effective ally in peace and war.

      There have been significant exceptions to this rule, such as the Suez Crisis and the Vietnam War, but during the last 70 years the UK has generally sought to influence US policy in its formulation and then support it unequivocally once adopted.

      This may on occasions be humiliating and out of keeping with the British self-image of robust independence, but it is not as stupid from the point of view of the British state.

      In going to war in alliance with the US in Iraq, Mr Blair was not doing anything very different from his predecessors or successors, except that he was more successful than them in establishing close relations with the White House.

      Many British politicians, diplomats, academics and journalists have subsequently claimed they were convinced at the time that the invasion would end badly, but they were notably quiet about their forebodings at the time and for most part their wisdom is retrospective. Nor that British opposition to the US venture in Iraq could have done much to stop it happening.

    • Yup, More Mission Creep: US Defense Announces 500 More for Endless War

      Further escalating the United States’ involvement in the campaign against the Islamic State (or ISIS), the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) announced Monday the deployment of 560 additional American forces to Iraq.

      The announcement was made two days after the Iraqi military reportedly seized the Qayyarrah Air Base, which lies 40 miles south of Mosul, and the troop deployment was billed as a way to support local forces in retaking that ISIS-held city.

      The airfield is “one of the hubs from which … Iraqi security forces, accompanied and advised by us as needed, will complete the southern-most envelopment of Mosul,” Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told reporters before arriving in Baghdad on Monday. The U.S. troops will reportedly bolster Iraqi forces, particularly with “infrastructure and logistical capabilities,” according to the Washington Post.

    • Pentagon will send hundreds more troops to Iraq following seizure of key airfield
    • Islamic State Defectors Hold Key to Countering Group’s Recruitment

      While the Islamic State continues to lose territory on the ground in Iraq and Syria, the appeal of its apocalyptic ideas has proven more enduring. Since 2014, the group, also known as ISIS, has managed to attract as many as 30,000 recruits from around the world, including several thousand men and women from Europe and North America.

      A significant number of these individuals are believed to have been recruited online using social media.

      A new project focused on interviews with individuals who joined and later defected from ISIS might offer a way of stifling the appeal of the group. The ISIS Defectors Interview Project, conducted by the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, compiles video and written testimony from former members of the group. Between September 2015 and May 2016, Anne Speckhard, a research psychologist at Georgetown University, and Ahmet Yayla, a former counterterrorism head of the Turkish National Police, met with 32 former ISIS members who escaped the group and have since fled to Turkey.

      The reality described by these defectors bears little resemblance to the utopian conditions described by the Islamic State in its propaganda. While their paths to joining the group may have been different, they ultimately rejected the militant organization after seeing firsthand what its practices were like. Instead of finding defenders of besieged Sunni Muslim communities, defectors often found the Islamic State to be merciless with anyone who opposed its rule. Appalled by the cruelty, injustice, and oppression they witnessed, they fled ISIS in disillusionment.

    • Clintonites in Democratic Party Back Settler Colonialism (Not a 1905 Headline)

      The Clinton loyalists debating the Democratic Party platform have defeated an amendment that would have called for an end to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and condemned Israeli squatter settlements illegal.

      The Democratic Party, in other words, backs the principle of colonialism no less than if it declared that the British should take back over India, that French commandos should storm the presidential palace in Algiers, or that the US army should march through the streets of Manila and reoccupy the Philippines. Maybe, in fact, the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party would like to rescind the Declaration of Independence and accede to the United Kingdom? With Scotland talking about leaving, there might be a place opening up, and we could get the redcoats back to harass us.

    • As US Controlled NATO Meets: U.S. War on Russia and China Will Mean Ruin for the Whole of Europe and Asia

      Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s cry of distress is that of a man watching a tidal wave of destruction gathering force, similar to ones that have engulfed his country twice in the 20th Century. His dread is not to be dismissed since it comes from a man who is in a position to know what the U.S. is up to. His words reflect the fears of ever more people across all of Eurasia from France in the West to Japan in the East.

      Under the euphemism of “containment,” the U.S. is relentlessly advancing its new Cold War on Russia and China. Its instrument in the West is NATO and in the East, Japan and whatever other worthies can be sharked up.

      It is a Cold War that grows increasingly hotter, with proxy wars now raging in Eastern Ukraine and Syria and with confrontations in the South China Sea. There is an ever growing likelihood that these points of tension will flare up into an all out military conflict.

      In the West this conflict will begin in Eastern Europe and Russia, but it will not stop there. All the European NATO countries would be on the front lines. In the East the conflict will take place in the Western Pacific in the region of China’s coast and in the peninsulas and island countries in the region, including Japan, the Philippines and Indochina.

    • Hague Tribunal Rejects Beijing’s Claims in South China Sea

      An international tribunal in The Hague delivered a sweeping rebuke on Tuesday of China’s behavior in the South China Sea, from the construction of artificial islands to interference with fishing, and ruled that its expansive claim to sovereignty over the waters had no legal basis.

      The tribunal also said that Beijing had violated international law by causing “severe harm to the coral reef environment” and by failing to prevent Chinese fishermen from harvesting endangered sea turtles and other species “on a substantial scale.”

      The landmark case, brought by the Philippines, was seen as an important crossroads in China’s rise as a global power. It is the first time the Chinese government has been summoned before the international justice system, and neighboring countries have hoped that the outcome will provide a model for negotiating with Beijing or for challenging its assertive tactics in the region.

    • The No-State Solution to the Israel-Palestine Conflict

      Needless to say, this is not balanced journalism, but extremely prejudicial to the rights of the Palestinians living under foreign military occupation. When the illegality of the settlements is alluded to by the mainstream media (all too infrequently), they typically obscure it by saying something like: “Most countries do not recognize the legitimacy of Israel’s settlements.” This leaves readers with the impression that the matter is controversial, that there is debate about it within the international community, that there are two legitimate points of view. It affords validity to Israel’s position when it has none. Translated from newspeak, what that means is that every single government on planet Earth other than Israel itself recognizes the settlements as a violation of international law.

    • The Jordanian Arms Theft Story

      I’m still trying to figure out what to make of this story, so for the moment, I just want to unpack it.

      First, consider the players. The story is sourced to US and Jordanian “officials,” (a term which can sometimes mean contractors or Members of Congress). The CIA and FBI both refused to comment for the story; the State Department and Jordan’s press people both gave fluff statements.

      The story is a joint project — between Qatar’s media outlet, Al-Jazeera (here’s their link to the story), and the “official press” of the US, the NYT. So Americans, Jordanians, and Qataris were involved in this story.

      But no Saudis, in spite of the fact that the story reports that Saudis apparently complained some months ago.

    • Fool’s Errand: NATO Pledges Four More Years of War in Afghanistan

      The longest war in US history just got even longer. As NATO wrapped up its 2016 Warsaw Summit, the organization agreed to continue funding Afghan security forces through the year 2020. Of course with all that funding comes US and NATO troops, and thousands of contractors, trainers, and more.

      President Obama said last week that the US must keep 3,000 more troops than planned in Afghanistan. The real reason is obvious: the mission has failed and Washington cannot bear to admit it. But Obama didn’t put it that way. He said:

      “It is in our national security interest, especially after all the blood and treasure we’ve invested over the years, that we give our partners in Afghanistan the best chance to succeed.”

      This is how irrational Washington’s logic is. Where else but in government would you see it argued that you cannot stop spending on a project because you have already spent so much to no avail? In the real world, people who invest their own hard-earned money in a failed scheme do something called “cut your losses.” Government never does that.

    • Hatred Just Grows and Grows

      A Palestinian youngster breaks into a settlement, enters the nearest house, stabs a 13-year old girl in her sleep and is killed.

      Three Israeli men kidnap a 12-year old Palestinian boy at random, take him to an open field and burn him alive.

      Two Palestinians from a small town near Hebron enter Israel illegally, have coffee in a Tel Aviv amusement quarter and then shoot up everybody around before they are captured. They become national heroes.

      An Israeli soldier sees a severely wounded Palestinian attacker lying on the ground, approaches him and shoots him in the head at point blank range. He is applauded by most Israelis.

      These are not “normal” actions even in a guerrilla war. They are the manifestations of bottomless hatred, a hatred so terrible that it overcomes all norms of humanity.

    • Courthouse Shooting Leaves 3 People Dead, Injures Law Enforcement Officer

      At least two courthouse bailiffs and a jail inmate are dead after a shooting took place at a courthouse in St. Joseph, Michigan, according to eyewitness accounts and a local CBS news affiliate WWMT reporter. A law enforcement sheriff’s deputy was also likely injured. The shooting, which took place at the Berrien County Courthouse was brought under control in roughly 30 minutes.

    • The reasons for invading Iraq were more ideological than scientific, more evangelical than rational.

      Britain is in political turmoil, but even prior to that, there was that old problem of why Her Majesty’s government went to war in a disastrous conflict that had no immediate, security related grounds. The reasons for invading Iraq were more ideological than scientific, more evangelical than rational.

  • E-mailgate

    • The Eel of History: Hillary Clinton, Emailgate and the FBI

      Tactics of minimisation have been central to Hillary Clinton’s political career. When stumbling takes place, go for the established book of deflective rules. When violations of the law take place, explain that it was normal at the time. Suggest that others had engaged in a form of conduct only subsequently frowned upon.

      Such tactics should be kept in the dustbin of history. For the Clintons, they have consistently worked, giving that particular not so holy family a particularly nasty sense of political entitlement. They remain the ghouls of the US political establishment, paying (or rather withholding) tribute to the dead ideas of liberalism.

      Evidently, the inappropriate use of a private server to conduct what were classified communications and potentially accessible to third-parties, did not seem grave enough a breach to warrant criminal charges.

      That was the preliminary finding by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is concluding its investigation into Clinton’s use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State. The Bureau had received the referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector General seeking answers on whether classified information had been transmitted on that personal system during her time in office.

    • Poll finds majority of Americans disagree with FBI in Clinton e-mail flap

      A poll out Monday concludes that a majority of Americans disapprove of the FBI’s decision not to recommend charges against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presumptive nominee for president who has been embroiled in a scandal involving her treatment of classified e-mail when she was Secretary of State.

      The ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted by Langer Research Associates found that 56 percent of those surveyed said they “disapprove” of FBI Director James Comey’s decision last week. Attorney General Loretta Lynch backed the recommendation. Thirty five percent answered that they “approve” of the decision. About 9 percent of respondents said they had “no opinion” on the issue.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • #WebOfDenial: Senators to Call Out Big Oil’s Blockade of Climate Action

      Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkeley (D-Ore.), Al Franken (D-N.Y.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) on Monday introduced a resolution (pdf) condemning “efforts of corporations and groups to mislead the public about the harmful effects of tobacco, lead, and climate” and urging “fossil fuel corporations and their allies to cooperate with investigations into their climate-related activities.”

      The senators will take to the Senate floor on Monday and Tuesday to call out the influential groups and individuals like the right-wing Koch brothers, ExxonMobil, and Donors Trust, among other entities, for creating what they describe as “a massive campaign to deceive the public about climate change to halt climate action and protect their bottom lines.”

    • Latest Leak Shows How TTIP Puts US-EU Clean Energy Goals in ‘Mortal Danger’

      A new leak provides further confirmation that the pro-corporate TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the U.S. and European Union would result in “a giant leap backward in our fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

    • If Chávez Were Alive Today, Would the Situation in Venezuela be Different?

      US policy since Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998 has been regime change to return the oil-rich South American nation to the neo-liberal fold. After 17 years of Chávista polices, the US wants nothing more than for poor Venezuelans to suffer as much as possible – to make their economy scream – so that the popular movement will grow dissatisfied with the socialist inclined leadership.

    • Three Ideas for a Fairer and Cleaner Asia

      Community Forest Management Indonesia’s deforestation is chronic.15.8million hectares of forest were lost between 2000 and 2012. The devastation ruins local livelihoods and increases global warming. Big businesses are often responsible, implementing large-scale projects characterized by land grabs, disrespect for farmers, and a lack of understanding of traditional forest management methods.

    • Exxon Is Still Helping Fund The Spread Of Climate Denial

      ExxonMobil — the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas company — has had an interesting year. In September, two investigations by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that the company’s own scientists had recognized the dangers posed by climate change as far back as 1977, and yet did nothing about it. Those revelations sparked a cascade of calls from politicians demanding an investigation into whether or not Exxon knowingly mislead shareholders, and the public, about climate change. Currently, 17 attorneys general have subpoenaed Exxon for internal documents.

      The increased public scrutiny, however, does not seem to be stopping Exxon from giving money to groups that actively fund climate misinformation and oppose climate legislation.

    • Disturbing forests damages natural diversity

      Then, having made their counts of specified plants, birds and dung beetles, they made their extrapolations. And their calculation of equivalent biodiversity loss – that is, the area of forest that would have protected the lost creatures – was at least 92,000 sq km, and possibly an area bigger than Greece.

      “Even this lowest estimate is greater than the area deforested across the entire Brazilian Amazon between 2006 and 2015,” they write. “These results demonstrate an urgent need for policy interventions that go beyond the maintenance of forest cover to safeguard the hyper-diversity of tropical forest ecosystems.”

    • Duke Energy ups bond demand from nonprofits challenging fracked gas plant to $240M

      But now Duke Energy is asking for a $240 million bond, arguing that the groups’ appeal of the fast-tracked project would delay construction. The company and NCUC are citing a never-before-used provision of a 1963 state law to justify the bond demand.

      The nonprofits would have to pay the bond only if they lose their case against the plant in court. NC WARN Executive Director Jim Warren told The News & Observer that he would “find it hard to believe we’d gamble money in that saloon.”

    • How the World’s Most Fertile Soil Can Help Reverse Climate Change

      The “solution” offered by many experts is to double down on industrial agriculture and genetic modification. But doing so ignores how natural systems function and interact and assumes we can do better. History shows such hubris often leads to unexpected negative results. Others are attempting to understand how to work within nature’s systems, using agroecological methods.

    • TTIP leak rebuts EU pledge to tackle climate change, say green activists

      The European Union’s proposal for a chapter on energy and raw materials in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement was leaked on Monday, just as the fourteenth round of talks between the EU and US got underway in Brussels.

      However, the EU’s plans have been criticised by the European wing of Friends of the Earth. Its economic justice programme coordinator Paul de Clerck said: “The EU’s leaked proposal on TTIP and energy is in complete contradiction with Europe’s commitments to tackle climate change, and the Paris agreement. It will flood the EU market with inefficient appliances, and consumers and the climate will foot the bill. The proposal will also hinder measures to promote renewable electricity production from wind and solar.”

      Green MEP Claude Turmes told the Guardian: “These proposals are completely unacceptable. They would sabotage EU legislators’ ability to privilege renewables and energy efficiency over unsustainable fossil fuels. This is an attempt to undermine democracy in Europe.”

    • Britain must urgently prepare for flooding, heatwaves and food shortages, says Government report

      Urgent action must be taken to protect Britain from flooding, deadly heatwaves, water shortages and an international food crisis that will all become increasing risks as the Earth warms, according to a Government report.

      Writing in the Climate Change Risk Assessment report, leading scientist Lord Krebs stressed there was “no question” that the primary response to climate change should be to reduce greenhouse gases.

      But he added that it was still “crucial to prepare for the inevitable changes” that will occur because of the emissions that have already been pumped into the atmosphere.

  • Finance

    • Seven ways to future-proof your IT contracts post-Brexit

      The UK’s Brexit vote has created a profound level of uncertainty – and IT firms in particular will be worried about how the legal and regulatory environment will change when the government formally gives notice to leave the EU.

      EU laws come in different varieties. There are directives that have been implemented into UK law by the UK Parliament, and the implementing legislation will continue to apply unless and until the laws are amended or replaced. There are also regulations that have direct application on the UK as a member state. These laws will not apply to the UK when it is no longer part of the EU, and so the UK will have to decide how to replace such laws, if it decides to at all.

    • A Tough Time for Conventional Wisdom

      The recent vote in favor of Brexit is only the latest case of failed conventional wisdom.

    • Cavaliers and Roundheads: four thoughts about the Article 50 litigation

      There are three potential cases against the government on Article 50, demanding that the ultimate decision on Brexit be made by parliament and not the prime minister under the royal prerogative.

    • Rethinking recovery: poverty chains and global capitalism

      Global inequality has never been greater. For example, the wealth of the world’s richest 62 people, who between them have more wealth than half of the world’s population, rose by 44% between 2010 and 2015. Over the same period the wealth of the bottom 50% of humanity fell by approximately 38%.

    • How New Jersey Has Embraced ‘State-Sanctioned Loan-Sharking’ to Students

      New Jersey has the country’s largest state-based student loan program. It’s also incredibly unforgiving. For this ProPublica Podcast, I talked with our own Annie Waldman about her story on what one bankruptcy attorney described at New Jersey’s “state-sanctioned loan sharking.” Waldman found one mother who has been required to keep paying off her son’s loans even after he was murdered.

    • EFF Joins Stars to Rock Against the TPP and Finally Defeat It

      One of the hardest pills to swallow about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is that our opinion about it (and yours) really isn’t worth much. When we look at the only three industries that have reportedly been holding up passage of the deal through Congress—big pharma, big tobacco and big finance—we can reach no other conclusion. That’s not the way it should be, but after five years of us constantly battling this undemocratic agreement with very little to show for it, that seems to be the way it is.

      This makes us angry. And when we get angry, we like to rock.

      That’s why we’re supporting Rock Against the TPP, an ambitious free music festival and rally around the country, principally organized by our friends at Fight for the Future, in collaboration with guitarist Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine, Prophets of Rage, and Audioslave) and his new label Firebrand Records. Joining Morello to headline the tour will be hip hop star Talib Kweli, actress Evangeline Lilly (star of Lost and the Hobbit), and a diverse line-up of other big-name acts (check out the full line-up in each city below).

      But Rock Against the TPP is more than just an opportunity for us to rock out and vent our frustrations about this toxic deal—it could also be the key to finally sinking it once and for all. How? Because although big money unfortunately holds great power over our representatives in Congress, there’s one thing that means even more to them—the voice of the people. But only when it’s loud enough—and that’s where the idea of a music festival comes in. If we can get thousands of ordinary music lovers to rise up against the TPP, this may be just the kind of groundswell of public sentiment that politicians can no longer ignore.

    • How the Super-Rich Will Destroy Themselves

      Perhaps they believe that their underground survival bunkers with bullet-resistant doors and geothermal power and anti-chemical air filters and infrared surveillance devices and pepper spray detonators will sustain them for two or three generations.

      Perhaps they feel immune from the killings in the streets, for they rarely venture into the streets anymore. They don’t care about the great masses of ordinary people, nor do they think they need us.

      Or do they? There are a number of ways that the super-rich, because of their greed and lack of empathy for others, may be hastening their own demise, while taking the rest of us with them.

    • Why the Opt Out Movement is Crucial for the Future of Public Education

      Save your child. Save your schools. Stop the corporate takeover of public education. You have the power. Say no. Opt out.

    • Vanishing the People’s Wealth to Make the Bosses Richer

      magine you are a shareholder in a big company and the top executives are sitting on huge amounts of cash and are not interested in putting it to work through productive capital investments, research and development, reducing company debt or paying employees a higher wage. What would you want done about it? Since you and other shareholders are the owners of the company, you’d likely say “give us back our money in cash dividends.”

      “No way,” say your hired hands, the company managers, who have spent a staggering $2.1 trillion of your money in the last five years on stock buybacks allegedly to increase the company’s earnings per share ratio, instead of increasing shareholder dividends. Overall this tactic has not been working over time except to make the corporate bosses richer, which is the real reason for many buybacks.

      What is the incentive for this cash burning frenzy? According to University of Massachusetts scholar, William Lazonick, in 2012 the 500 highest-paid executives received 52% of their remuneration from stock options and another 26% from stock awards.

    • Justice Department Overruled Recommendation to Pursue Charges Against HSBC, Report Says

      U.S. Justice Department officials overruled their prosecutors’ recommendation to pursue criminal charges against HSBC Holdings PLC over money-laundering failings, according to a House committee report prepared by Republicans that sheds new light on the bank’s 2012 settlement.

    • As Part of Confirmation Process, Loretta Lynch Suggested DOJ Didn’t Have Enough Evidence to Prosecute HSBC

      The report blames Eric Holder for the decision, not Loretta Lynch, who oversaw the case as US Attorney. Indeed, her name doesn’t appear in the WSJ story at all.

    • Why TTIP will live on – but not for the EU

      The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – also known as TTIP – could be the next casualty in the Brexit fallout. But not in the way you might expect. The controversial trade agreement between the EU and United States could well fall apart, only for the UK to pick up the pieces for its own trade deal.

    • How MBA Programs Drive Inequality

      Over the last several decades, American business executives have made decisions that have exacerbated the inequality that chokes prosperity for the country. They have misallocated resources and they have awarded themselves mind-boggling compensation packages while workers have suffered stagnant wages and increasing job insecurity. The stats are shocking: In 1965, a typical CEO took in about 20 times what an average employee earned, while the latest figures from the AFL-CIO put current CEO pay at 373 times what the average worker makes. (Amazingly, according to a forthcoming paper for the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) by Matt Hopkins and William Lazonick, even that ratio is grossly underestimated because it is based on grant-date fair value estimates of what stock options and stock awards might be worth, rather than how much CEOs actually take home when they exercise stock options and when stock awards vest).

    • Right-Sizing the Financial Sector in Post-Brexit Europe

      The vote in the UK to leave the European Union (EU) has set off a race among major European financial centers like Paris, Frankfurt and Milan to capture much of the financial industry that is now located in London. As a result of EU rules, it will be difficult to conduct many of the transactions which now take place in London if the UK is no longer part of the EU. This means that a large part of London’s financial industry will soon be looking for a new home.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Why Democrats Should Be Cheering For Bernie Sanders

      There’s been truly horrible news the past couple of days: Google Alton Sterling or Philando Castille if you somehow missed it. And there’s been nasty political news: Donald Trump and his ‘sheriff’s star.’ Those events are, sadly, predictable, and all the more troubling because of that predictability.

      Buried in the newsfeed, however, is one event that seems weird — and troubling too, though in a different way. That’s the story that members of the House Democratic caucus booed Bernie Sanders in a meeting on Wednesday.

      Really? Booed the guy that 45 percent of Democrats supported in the primary? Booed the guy that all year long has been the most favorably viewed politician in America? Booed the guy that got more votes from young people in the primaries than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined?

    • Why Black Lives Don’t Matter To The NRA

      Two men were brutally killed by police this week for carrying guns. One told the officer he had a legal license to carry, and the other allegedly had a concealed gun in a state where carrying without a license is legal. But don’t expect outrage from the National Rifle Association.

      The country’s largest gun lobby has fought tirelessly in recent years to expand gun ownership to all Americans, successfully securing the right for people to legally carry both open and concealed firearms virtually anywhere they want. In Louisiana, where Alton Sterling was shot Tuesday night at a convenience store, a license is not required to openly carry a firearm. And in Minnesota, where Philando Castile was shot on Wednesday during a traffic stop, people with permits can carry weapons, openly or concealed.

    • Despicable Bedfellows: NRA Endorses Trump with $2 Million National Ad Campaign

      Here’s a match made in the fire-pits of hell: Donald Trump just received an endorsement in the form of a $2 million national ad campaign sponsored by the NRA Political Victory Fund.

    • Don’t Stop the Revolution: The Sanders Movement After Orlando

      Bernie Sanders’ “political revolution” scored some impressive wins this weekend at the Democratic Party Platform Committee meeting in Orlando, adding to its victories last month in St. Louis. ABC News called the resulting document “exceptionally progressive.”

      Apparently Sanders had more leverage after the California primary than his critics were willing to admit.

      To be sure, there were also some losses – most notably on getting the party on record opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. But this new movement has already had a major impact on American politics. It’s likely to have even more in the months and years to come.

    • Don’t Endorse Hillary Before the Convention: An Open Letter to Bernie Sanders

      As such, I am alarmed by what I have been reading about your possible endorsement of Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire tomorrow. I am asking that you hold off on an endorsement until after the vote, that you not place her name into nomination using a vote by acclamation and that you exercise your option afforded you by the minority report signed at the platform committee meeting to force a vote on the Hightower amendment opposing the TPP in Philadelphia.

    • Sanders May Endorse Clinton as Dems Adopt ‘Most Progressive Platform’

      Bernie Sanders is reportedly poised to endorse Hillary Clinton for president at their first joint campaign appearance on Tuesday.

      Both teams confirmed Monday that the Vermont senator would join the former secretary of state during a rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where they would “discuss their commitment to building an America that is stronger together and an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top.”

      Many saw that as an indication he would endorse Clinton. As NPR explains, “The phrasing is significant, in that it references both Clinton’s general-election campaign slogan, ‘Stronger Together,’ and the animating issue and the heart of Sanders primary bid—income inequality.”

    • Theresa May to become new PM after Tory rival Leadsom withdraws

      Theresa May will enter Downing street as Britain’s second female prime minister, a rapid ascent to the premiership that came after her sole remaining challenger withdrew from the leadership race.

      The home secretary’s coronation cuts short what was expected to be a bruising nine-week contest with Andrea Leadsom, and will bring an end to David Cameron’s six-year tenure in No 10, when he will offer his resignation to the Queen after this week’s prime minister’s questions.

      May has just two days to prepare herself for the premiership and address the pressing questions about who will be in her cabinet, how she will unite the party after the battle over Brexit and her preparations for the negotiations to leave the European Union.

      On Monday, May, who had campaigned for remain in the EU referendum, said she was “honoured and humbled” to have been chosen by her party, before offering an olive branch to colleagues who backing leaving the EU by declaring that she would “make a success” of Brexit.

    • ‘Divisive, Illiberal and Calculating’ Theresa May to be Crowned UK Prime Minister

      Conservative Party candidate Theresa May is set to be the new UK prime minister as her intra-party opponent, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out of the race on Monday in another post-Brexit political upheaval.

      May received 199 votes from other Members of Parliament versus Leadsom’s 84 votes. The home office secretary is now expected to be formally confirmed by the Conservative Party board and the chairman of the Tory 1922 committee, clearing the way for her to be appointed prime minister by Tory MPs, who also have a majority in the House of Commons.

    • Theresa May: What the MP set to become Prime Minister believes on human rights

      Theresa May is about to become Prime Minister after a career of opposing legislation that guarantees equality and human rights.

      The MP and home secretary has repeatedly indicated that she would look to repeal laws that guarantee human rights in Britain. She also has a record of voting against equality legislation and measures that prevent climate change.

      Most recently, at the end of May, Theresa May voted in favour of repealing the Human Rights Act. She has repeatedly criticised human rights legislation for limiting the powers of government – a position that has led to criticism even from fellow cabinet members.

    • Britain: Shakespeare in Action

      It’s a bit like a Shakespeare play – specifically the final scene of Hamlet, when almost all the play’s major characters die violently. And now we’re down to one. Her name is Theresa May.

      It has been barely three weeks since the United Kingdom (or at least, 52 percent of those who voted) chose to leave the European Union, but all the main Brexit leaders have already left the stage. The Conservative Party has always been notable for its ruthlessness, and leaders who threaten to split the party get short shrift.

      The first to go was Prime Minister David Cameron, who called the referendum expecting that a pro-EU outcome would finally make the anti-EU obsessives on the right of his own Conservative Party shut up. It was a needless, fatal blunder.

      Cameron allowed some of his own cabinet members to campaign for “Brexit”, in the belief that they would return to the fold, chastened by defeat, when the country voted for “Remain”. Instead, the “Leave” campaign won, and Cameron announced his resignation the morning after the referendum.

    • Fear Factor: Trump the Boogeyman

      Little did he anticipate that his appeal to white nationalism would mean more to the Republican rank and file than proposals to cut taxes for rich people or defund Planned Parenthood.

    • Labour, Jeremy Corbyn and the search for the party’s Henry VII
    • The Alternative to Fervent Nationalism Isn’t Corporate Liberalism—It’s Social Democracy

      In his 1946 essay reviewing former Trotskyist-turned-reactionary James Burnham’s book The Managerial Revolution, George Orwell made several observations that resonate just as powerfully today as they did when they were first published.

      “The real question,” he wrote, “is not whether the people who wipe their boots on us during the next fifty years are to be called managers, bureaucrats, or politicians: the question is whether capitalism, now obviously doomed, is to give way to oligarchy or to true democracy.”

      Orwell recognized what many today fail to perceive: That free market capitalism is, in the words of Karl Polanyi, a “stark Utopia,” a system that does not exist, and one that would not survive for long if it ever came into existence.

      But for Orwell, the question was not how (or whether) the crises of capitalism that rocked both Europe and the United States in the 20th century would be solved — the question was: what would take the place of an economic order that was clearly on its way out?

    • Donald Trump’s Anti-Establishment Scam

      Early on in his presidential bid, Donald Trump began touting his anti-establishment credentials. When it worked, he ran with it. It was a posture that proved pure gold in the Republican primaries, and was even, in one sense, true. After all, he’d never been part of the political establishment nor held public office, nor had any of his family members or wives.

      His actual relationship to the establishment is, however, complex in an opportunistic way. He’s regularly tweeted his disdain for it. (“I wish good luck to all of the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money etc. from the Koch Brothers. Puppets?”) And yet, he clearly considered himself part of it and has, at times, yearned for it. As he said early on in his run for the presidency, “I want the establishment—look, I was part of the establishment. Let me explain. I was the establishment two months ago. I was like the fair-haired boy. I was a giver, a big giver. Once I decided to run, all of a sudden I’m sort of semi-anti-establishment.”

      An outsider looking to shake up the government status quo? An insider looking to leverage that establishment for his own benefit? What was he? He may not himself have known.

      He once rejected the idea of taking establishment (or Super PAC) money, only—more recently—to seek it; he rebuffed certain prominent establishment players, only to hire others to help him (and fire yet more of them). He’s railed against the establishment, then tried to rally it to his side (even as he denounced it yet again). Now, with the general election only four months away, it turns out that he’s going to need that establishment if he is to have a hope in hell of raising the money and organizing the troops effectively enough to be elected. There, however, is the rub: power brokers don’t suffer the slings and arrows of “outsider” scorn lightly.

    • The Huckster Populist

      The tectonic plates of American politics are no longer moving along the old fault lines of “left” versus “right” or even Democrat versus Republican.

      As we’ve seen this bizarre political year, the biggest force welling up is rage against insider elites in both parties, and against the American establishment as a whole – including the denizens of Wall Street, large corporations, and the mainstream media.

      Now, with Bernie Sanders essentially out of the race, Donald Trump wants Americans to believe he’s the remaining anti-establishment candidate.

      It’s smart politics but it’s a hoax.

    • TPP and Democratic Self-Delusion

      There were three issues, however, where Sanders’ delegates lost: opposition to Israeli settlements, a ban on fracking, and opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

      The first two make sense: after all, those policy positions match Hillary’s stated position (though the US is supposed to be opposed to illegal settlements), so rejecting Sanders’ amendments equated to backing the nominee instead. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.

      But Hillary, of course, claimed to oppose the TPP during the primary, even if that claim was always sketchy coming as it did as she worked so hard to negotiate the crappy deal as Secretary of State. So the mealy-mouthed language in the platform about protecting workers — akin to the same language in the Colombia Trade Deal that did squat to protect workers — is more notable.

      As is the idiotic opinion expressed by this person, described by Robert Reich as an acquaintance from the Clinton White House.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Pablo Escobar’s Brother Demands One Billion Dollars From Netflix Over Narcos

      What is it with South American historical figures suddenly thinking they can control everything to do with their family names? You’ll hopefully recall the brief existence of a case of publicity rights violation brought against Activision by Manuel Noriega over the depiction of him in the gamemaker’s Call of Duty series. That case was quickly tossed out by the court because the First Amendment has just an tiny bit more weight when it comes to artistic expression than does any publicity rights for public historical figures from other countries that might, maybe, kinda-sorta exist, possibly. We might have struggled at the time to find a complainant less likely than Noriega to win this sort of long-shot in the American court system, but we need struggle no longer.

      Roberto Escobar, brother and former accountant to drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, has sent a letter to Netflix demanding a billion dollars (not a joke) and the right to review all future episodes of the streaming company’s hit show Narcos, to make sure that he and his family are portrayed accurately. The letter, first published by TMZ (which explains the massive TMZ watermark on it) is quite a read.

    • Sony Pictures Legal Affairs VP Files Bogus DMCA Notice Because His Salary Is Listed On Wikileaks

      Yeah, so the Sony Pictures hack is basically old news at this point. People have gone through it for all the juicy details and it’s been out of the news for quite some time. So, apparently, one Sony “legal affairs” exec decided that perhaps he could engage in a little copyfraud to try to hide some info without anyone noticing. As TorrentFreak first noticed, however, Sony Pictures Legal Affairs VP Daniel Yankelevits wasn’t particularly subtle in sending a DMCA notice to Google, asking it to delist the Wikileaks page with a search engine for all of the Sony Hack emails.

    • Standing in solidarity with Turkey’s journalists

      We stand in solidarity with our colleagues in Turkey who fiercely continue their job despite facing relentless attacks and attempts to silence them. We also express our support to the 44 journalists and distributors in jail and to those facing arrest as retaliation for their exercise of their right to freedom of expression and freedom to inform.

      I am a journalist!

      Journalism is not a crime.

    • Facebook Sued for $1 Billion for Alleged Use of Medium for Terror

      Lawyers filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Facebook Inc., alleging it allowed the Palestinian militant Hamas group to use the platform to plot attacks that killed four Americans and wounded one in Israel, the West Bank and Jerusalem.

      “Facebook has knowingly provided material support and resources to Hamas in the form of Facebook’s online social network platform and communication services,” making it liable for the violence against the five Americans, according to the lawsuit sent to Bloomberg by the office of the Israeli lawyer on the case, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner.

    • Twitter Now Flipflopping On The Issue Of Archiving Deleted Tweets By Public Verified Figures

      Politwoops, meanwhile, remains up and active. So, it seems that notoriety and status as a public figure are not the standard by which Twitter applies its tweet archiving rules. Instead, the space carved out for politicians and public servants appears to be a special one where the likes of celebrities and professional athletes do not operate. But if that is the line Twitter wishes to draw in its cyber-sand, it’s a strange one.

      In areas of law, the status of public figure-hood, as opposed to public servant, is typically the standard by which all kinds of laws are applied (such as the availability to parody, applicability of defamation laws, etc.). And there’s good reason for this: the goal is to foster conversation and knowledge that is in the public interest. The public’s interest need not be confined to politics, thankfully, yet Twitter’s choices appear to reserve separate rules for the political class. I can understand why Twitter might think this makes sense. After all, I find the drunken midnight thoughts of senators far more compelling than those of a UFC fighter. But my interest isn’t the same as the public interest.

      Twitter can engage in this flipflopping, of course. It’s their platform, after all, and they can keep it as arbitrarily closed as they like. The question becomes whether that makes the service more or less useful for the everyday Twitter user. And that’s a question that I think has an obvious answer.

    • Questionable DMCA Takedown Notice Filed Over Post Calling Lawyer Out For Copyright Infringement

      Today’s the day for bogus DMCA takedowns by clueless lawyers trying to hide embarrassing information, I guess. Earlier today we had a story about a legal exec at Sony Pictures issuing a completely bogus DMCA takedown over his salary info being included in the Sony Hacks email dump. And now we turn to Carl David Ceder, a young criminal defense lawyer in Texas. If you recognize that name, it might be because a much more well-known and established criminal defense lawyer, Scott Greenfield, wrote a few blog posts about young Carl a few years ago, when he discovered that Carl had been beefing up the content on his professional website by simply plagiarizing the content of other, more established legal bloggers, and posting it as if it were his own thoughts. To put it mildly, Carl did not respond well to this and sent a few barely comprehensible rants blaming everyone but himself, and never actually apologizing for copying someone else’s content wholesale.

      Now, there are lots of ways to deal with this kind of thing. One could admit it was a mistake, but that doesn’t seem to be in Carl David Ceder’s nature. And, of course, around here, we’re certainly willing to consider fair use arguments for copying material, though Carl presents none, and, indeed, it appears there’s little fair use claim he could make for what he did. There’s a pretty strong argument that he engaged in both plagiarism (claiming someone else’s work as your own) and copyright infringement, and from his response, didn’t appear to understand either issue, or why some people were concerned about it.

    • CUNY Responds To BDS Activism On Campuses With Move To Control Free Expression

      The City University of New York (CUNY), one of the nation’s largest public college systems, has proposed a policy to regulate freedom of expression. A graduate of CUNY’s School of Law and co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild, Suzanne Adely, says Palestinian solidarity activism was partly responsible for the proposal.

      “It’s our belief that the reason why this policy was drafted in 2013 and again reintroduced in 2016 has a lot to do with pressure that has been coming from institutions and politicians that seek to silence any criticism of Israel on campus,” Adely contended.

      This example is one of many—including disinviting commencement speakers and demonstrating against screenings—seen nationwide as college administrators have struggled to find a suitable response to student demonstrations. Even some faculty are worried. For them, it is attack on free speech and expression.

    • NYT’s James Risen & Abby Martin on Fighting Censorship, Endless War
    • Online surveillance: we all have something to hide

      We’ve all got secrets. We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of. We’ve all done things we’re worried about. We’ve all done things we’re embarrassed of.

      Yes, we’ve all got something to hide.

      Despite Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations of a secret US/UK mass electronic surveillance program worldwide, it’s almost every other day that I still come across otherwise intelligent minds who insist that they do not fear online privacy invasions because they’ve either ‘done nothing wrong’ or have ‘nothing to hide’.

      In order to try and bring closure to these long-iterated arguments, a string of organisations from the likes of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to journalists such as Glenn Greenwald have long made the case as to why, in an era when we’re increasingly connected by machines to a worldwide network, bulk online surveillance is a danger to us all.

    • Reporters Without Borders says Marie Colvin murdered by Assad regime
    • Family of U.S. Journalist Killed in Syria Sues Assad Regime
    • War reporter Marie Colvin’s family sues Syria
    • Family Of Slain US Journalist Wants The Syrian Regime Brought To Justice
    • Slain journalist Marie Colvin’s family files lawsuit alleging she was targeted and killed by the Syrian government
    • ANC reiterates opposition to SABC censorship
    • Mantashe: The ANC stands firmly against censorship at the SABC
    • ‘Censorship has no place in a democracy’ – Sanef on Icasa’s SABC ruling
    • Hlaudi accuses other media organisations of also censoring news

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • House uprising thwarts change to Patriot Act

      The House failed to pass legislation on Monday to enhance a provision of the Patriot Act that encourages banks to tip off federal authorities to suspected cases of terrorist financing.

      Many libertarians warned of potential privacy violations if the measure went into effect, which helped prevent it from reaching the necessary two-thirds majority to pass through the fast-track process under which it was considered.

      While the bill won a simple majority of 229-177, it didn’t clear the supermajority bar needed for passage. The procedure is typically used for noncontroversial bills that pass easily.

      Section 314 of the Patriot Act, which Congress enacted in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, encourages financial institutions and the federal government to share information with each other about transactions connected to terrorism.

      Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-N.C.), who authored the bill with Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.) the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said it would help clarify the intent of the law so that financial institutions can file reports of suspicious activity without fear of civil litigation.

    • How to stay anonymous online

      Anonymity networks protect people living under repressive regimes from surveillance of their Internet use. But the recent discovery of vulnerabilities in the most popular of these networks — Tor — has prompted computer scientists to try to come up with more secure anonymity schemes.

      At the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium in July, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne will present a new anonymity scheme that provides strong security guarantees but uses bandwidth much more efficiently than its predecessors. In experiments, the researchers’ system required only one-tenth as much time as existing systems to transfer a large file between anonymous users.

    • Riffle: MIT Creates New Anonymity Network Which Is More Secure Than TOR

      Researchers at MIT and EPFL have come up with a new anonymity network that is said to be more secure than Tor. It’s a mix network which implements methods like verifiable shuffle and Authentication Encryption. The researchers will showcase it at a tech symposium later this month.

    • ISIS via WhatsApp: ‘Blow Yourself Up, O Lion’ [Ed: not end-to-end encryption]

      Executives at WhatsApp and Telegram defend encryption as a vital shield to privacy. Reached for comment last week, a spokesperson at WhatsApp said the company complies with U.S. laws requiring cooperation with law enforcement agencies. The spokesperson cited a statement by executives in April when WhatsApp implemented “end-to-end” encryption that will conceal the content of users’ communications even from the company itself.

    • Sweden Considers Making DNA Donated Purely For Medical Research Available To Police And Insurance Companies

      When it comes to biometrics, you really can’t beat DNA. You can always erase your fingerprints, or wear contact lenses to fool iris scanners, but there’s no way of changing all your DNA enough to make it unrecognizable (even with the new CRISPR technique). Couple that with the fact that we are shedding DNA everywhere we go — leaving tell-tale markers on everything we touch — and you have the perfect surveillance mechanism. That’s why earlier UK plans to give police access to medical databases are problematic, to say nothing of Kuwait’s mandatory DNA database for all citizens, residents and visitors.

    • Privacy Shield May Not Be “Schrems-Proof”, But Passage Expected

      The European Commission is expected to pass a controversial declaration on the “adequacy of US data protection standards” on 12 July, making transfers of personal data from the European Union to the United States legal once more.

    • Polish Authorities Demand British Law Enforcement Interrogate Tor Exit Node Operator About Information He Doesn’t Have

      Of course, the great thing about Tor is that White couldn’t help the Polish authorities even he wanted to, since he was just operating the exit node, and knows nothing about the origin of the Tor traffic he facilitates. The sooner governments learn this basic fact, the sooner they can stop wasting time and resources trying to extract information from people that don’t have it.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Clintonites in Democratic Party Back Settler Colonialism (Not a 1905 Headline)

      The Clinton loyalists debating the Democratic Party platform have defeated an amendment that would have called for an end to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and condemned Israeli squatter settlements illegal.

      The Democratic Party, in other words, backs the principle of colonialism no less than if it declared that the British should take back over India, that French commandos should storm the presidential palace in Algiers, or that the US army should march through the streets of Manila and reoccupy the Philippines. Maybe, in fact, the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party would like to rescind the Declaration of Independence and accede to the United Kingdom? With Scotland talking about leaving, there might be a place opening up, and we could get the redcoats back to harass us.

    • New York Times Public Editor Scolded For Suggesting Websites Should Treat News Commenters Like Actual Human Beings

      For some time now, the opinion du jour in “enlightened” media circles has been to treat the news comment section (aka the customers who visit your website daily and directly) as some kind of irredeemable leper colony. One that should be nuked from orbit before the infection spreads. As such, we’ve seen website after website proudly crow about how they’ve given up on allowing site comments because a handful of posters are obnoxious, hateful little shits and the social media age means more direct community interaction is passe.

      These announcements usually come hand in hand with all manner of disingenuous platitudes from the editorial staff, like we killed comments because we wanted to “build relationships,” or we muzzled our entire user base because we just “really value conversation.” Usually, this is just code for websites that are too lazy and cheap to moderate, weed and cultivate their community garden, and find it convenient to argue that outsourcing discourse to the homogenized blather realm of Facebook is an improvement.

    • Theresa May, UK’s Next Prime Minister, Has A Human Rights Record That May Raise Some Eyebrows

      Theresa May, 59, will take over the United Kingdom’s role of Prime Minister from David Cameron by Wednesday, British media reported Monday.

      May, who will be the first woman to lead the U.K. since Margaret Thatcher, is a Conservative MP and has been Home Secretary since 2010. Her main challenger, Andrea Leadsom, pulled out after realizing support for her competitor was much stronger. May received 60 percent of the vote from Conservative MPs. Despite her anti-Brexit position, she’s said that the U.K. will continue its split from the E.U. under her leadership.

      “First, the need for strong, proven leadership to steer us through what will be difficult and uncertain economic and political times, the need, of course, to negotiate the best deal for Britain in leaving the EU, and to forge a new role for ourselves in the world,” she said in a statement on Monday. “Brexit means Brexit, and we are going to make a success of it.”

    • Copspeak: 7 Ways Journalists Use Police Jargon to Obscure the Truth

      The close relationship between reporters and police is often marked by diffusion of language from the police PR team to the front page. In the wake of the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, here are some examples of how “copspeak” — or jargon used by police departments — is internalized by journalists covering police violence, and how it affects the public’s perception of crime and police brutality.

    • Controversies at Berkeley, and Long Le Describes New Types of High-Technology “less-lethal” Weapons

      In the second half-hour: U-S police forces will soon be adding new types of high-technology “less-lethal” weapons, but these devices are likely to pose greater complications for officer accountability and civilian oversight; researcher Long Le explains some of the issues.

    • Images of Militarized Police in Baton Rouge Draw Global Attention

      Photographs and video of heavily armed police officers wearing body armor and helmets arresting protesters in Baton Rouge over the weekend reverberated on social networks and in the world’s media, focusing new attention on the militarization of police forces across the United States.

      The image that drew the most comment, taken by Jonathan Bachman for Reuters, showed a young woman in a dress standing serenely on a road outside the Baton Rouge Police headquarters as two Louisiana State Police officers dressed for battle rushed to arrest her.

    • Police Murder Because They Are Trained To Murder

      First, we know that the police have been, or are being, militarized. They are armed with weapons of war that hitherto have been used only on battlefields. We don’t know why police are armed in this way, as such weapons are not necessary for policing the American public and are not used in police work anywhere except in Israeli-occupied Palestine.

      There is an undeclared agenda behind these weapons, and neither Congress nor the presstitute media have any apparent interest in discovering the hidden agenda.

    • What to Do If You Get Pulled Over by a Cop and You’re Legally Armed

      Last summer, in the wake of the arrest and tragic death of Sandra Bland, following what should have been a routine traffic stop in Prairie View, Texas, I encouraged readers to understand their legal rights, but cautioned them not to “give the police an excuse to mistreat [them] or pile on additional charges.”

      Among my suggestions were the reminders that you have the right to remain silent, you don’t have to consent to have your car searched, you have the right to ask the police whether you’re free to go if you haven’t been arrested, and if you are arrested, you have the right to ask for an attorney—which you should do immediately. I also stressed the importance of staying calm.

    • Ever Use Someone Else’s Password? Go to Jail, says the Ninth Circuit

      This week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a case called United States v. Nosal, held 2-1 that using someone else’s password, even with their knowledge and permission, is a federal criminal offense. This dangerous ruling threatens to upend a good decision that the Ninth Circuit sitting en banc—i.e., with 11 judges, not just 3—made in 2012 in the same case. EFF filed an amicus brief in the case and our arguments were echoed by the strong dissent, authored by Judge Stephen Reinhardt. We’re pleased that a further appeal is planned and will be supporting it as well.

      This decision turns on the notorious Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and supports one of the most troubling applications of the law—prosecutions based on password sharing. As EFF has long warned, read broadly, the CFAA can be used to turn millions of ordinary computer users into criminals. This leaves innocent people to only hope that a prosecutor will not decide to throw a book at them, as they’ve been know to do in CFAA cases. Carmen Ortiz, a federal prosecutor, did exactly that to our friend Aaron Swartz. This threat underscores both the need for courts to course correct—to narrowly interpret the statute’s overbroad language—or, alternatively, for Congress to step in and clarify the vague terms. For instance, what does “authority” mean in the context of our increasingly interconnected world, where we use someone else’s computer every single day for our email, our entertainment, our social networks, our banking, our health care, and more?

      This appeal involves whether David Nosal, a former employee of executive recruiting firm Korn/Ferry, violated the CFAA when other Korn/Ferry ex-employees, on Nosal’s behalf, used the password of a current employee, with her permission, to access an internal company database. This occurred after the company had expressly revoked Nosal’s own login credentials to prevent him from accessing the database.

    • The Next Step for Organized Labor? People in Prison.

      400,000 Americans are employed as prison labor across the United States.

      [...]

      In the early 2000s, the small but militant Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) launched union drives at Starbucks and Jimmy John’s. At the time, many in the mainstream labor movement scratched their heads. Traditionally, labor groups believed that the high turnover of fast food workers would make them impossible to organize.

      Nearly a decade later, fast food workers and the Fight for $15 are a central focus of the mainstream labor movement. And, given IWW’s ability to unionize workers who once seemed out of reach, many labor organizers now look to them as an incubator of new organizing strategies.

      Now IWW faces one of the biggest challenges in its history: convincing the broader labor movement to embrace the approximately 400,000 Americans employed as prison labor across the U.S.

    • Ending the Violence with Meaningful Solutions

      The justice, legal and prison systems rose to the top because the U.S. currently incarcerates 25% of the world’s prison population, even though we have only 5% of the world’s population, and our lower levels of social services and mental healthcare for those living in poverty mean that prisons become the places we often institutionalize the mentally ill.

    • Policing isn’t working for cops either

      Those were the words of four-year-old Dae’Anna, consoling her mother Lavish Reynolds after she witnessed the police shoot and kill her boyfriend Philando Castile.

      Those words are now scarred into the psyche of America, much like words that came before it: “Hands up, don’t shoot.” “I can’t breath.” “It’s not real.”

      If you haven’t realized that the system of policing isn’t working for the black community, you haven’t been paying attention. Just hours after the killing of Alton Sterling, a four-year-old child witnessed someone getting shot and bleeding out while she sat in the backseat. The system didn’t work for her, her mother or for Philando Castile. The system didn’t work for Alton Sterling, or for Mike Brown, or for Freddie Gray or for countless others.

      But here’s something we miss in this climate of police violence: the system of policing isn’t working for those working in law enforcement either. It doesn’t serve anyone.

    • Why Liberal New York City’s Schools Are Among the Nation’s Most Segregated

      New York City’s public schools are among the most segregated in the country – a fact that flies in the face of the city’s history as a bastion of progressivism. For this podcast, I spoke with former ProPublica reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, now a New York Times Magazine staff writer, about her decision to delve deeply and personally into that paradox.

      Hannah-Jones wrote about the public school her daughter attends in New York City, PS 307. The school is populated by poor children of color from nearby housing projects. It also became the site of community tension when predominantly white and well-off parents living nearby were pushed into its school zone to ease crowding at another school.

    • Traffic Stop That Led To Philando Castile’s Death Illustrates Danger Of Driving While Black

      An Associated Press analysis found that Castile, 32, was pulled over an astonishing 52 times between 2002 and his death. About half of the 86 violations assessed against him were ultimately dismissed, and he was never convicted of anything more serious than a misdemeanor.

      Research indicates that Castile’s experience in that regard probably isn’t unique. Published in 2003, the most recent statewide study of the role race plays in traffic stops in Minnesota found that blacks were significantly more likely to be pulled over and searched than whites. The problem was particularly acute in suburbs like the one Castile was stopped in on July 6, where in some jurisdictions blacks were more than three times more likely to be stopped.

    • Dallas Police Shooting: Blowback from Impunity and Structural Racism

      Like the blowback against American superpower, which brought about the September 11th attacks, there will continue to be blowback against police so long as officers in departments throughout the country keep engaging in horrific acts of violence and oppression against minority communities.

    • Tensions High as Combat-Ready Police Confront National Black Lives Matter Protests

      After a weekend of protests and arrests across the U.S., demonstrations against police violence continued on Sunday in cities nationwide.

      As Common Dreams reported, marches and rallies responding to the recent fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile took place Saturday in Phoenix, New York City, Washington, D.C., Indianapolis, San Francisco, Nashville, Baton Rouge, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Rochester, New York. In St. Paul, an overnight face-off on Interstate-94 resulted in more than 100 arrests, while in Baton Rouge, nearly 200 people have been arrested since Friday.

    • As Protests Sweep Country, New Video Shows Off-Duty NY Cop Fatally Shooting Black Man Delrawn Small

      Protests against police brutality erupted across the United States over the weekend, with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets and blocking roads, bridges and highways in more than a dozen U.S. cities. Hundreds of people were arrested nationwide. The protests were sparked by the police killing of two African American men last week — Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. But another recent police shooting has gone largely unnoticed by national media. On July 4, off-duty New York police officer Wayne Isaacs shot and killed Delrawn Small, an unarmed African American man. Police officers initially claimed Small punched officer Isaacs in the face following a driving confrontation. But surveillance video that has just been released counters that claim, and instead shows the off-duty officer shooting Small within one second of Small approaching the vehicle. For more we speak with Roger Wareham, the attorney representing Delrawn Small’s family.

    • Following Horrific Violence, Something More Is Required of Us

      Alton Sterling was arrested because he was hustling, selling CDs to get by.

    • Before Alton Sterling, Louisiana Police Had Killed 38 Mentally Ill People Since 2015

      Videos of the brutal police killing of Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have flooded the Internet.

      Sterling was selling CDs outside of a convenience store when he was detained by two white police officers. The officers were allegedly responding to a 911 call about a man with a gun.

    • What the NRA Doesn’t Want You to Know

      As expected, this study found that police officers are more likely to use force when dealing with Black people than they are when dealing with white people.

    • Man Who Posted Video of Police Killing Alton Sterling Says He Was Arrested a Day Later on Bogus Charges

      Chris LeDay, the Georgia man who first posted a video of Alton Sterling being shot to death by police, says he was detained by police the next day.

      “I just made it to my job on base and I’m being detained,” he wrote on Facebook on July 6. “They said I fit the description of someone and won’t tell me anything else. If anything happens I did not resist! Please be aware!”

      According to Carlos Miller, writing for Photography Is Not a Crime, LeDay works as an aerospace ground equipment technician at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Georgia. While attempting to walk through a checkpoint to get to work, he was stopped and detained by “at least ten military police officers with guns, including a few with M-16s, all of them surrounding him in case he tried to make a run for it,” Miller reports.

      [...]

      LeDay’s suspicion that his detention constituted retaliation is understandable. The only person who has been criminally charged for the NYPD police killing of Eric Garner is Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed the fatal chokehold. Orta, who was recently sentenced to four years in jail for drug and weapons charges, says he has been repeatedly harassed by police since the filming.

    • Racism and xenophobia are resurgent in the UK, and the centre-left is partly to blame

      “I’m not a racist, but…..”; “I haven’t got a racist bone in my body”; “it’s not racist to have concerns about immigration”. We’re all familiar with Britain’s broad repertoire of phrases for denying or downplaying prejudice. But with a fivefold increase in reported hate crimes since the Brexit vote, it is no longer tenable to sweep this issue under the carpet. We have to be honest. This country has a problem.

    • The Cake That This Country Baked

      A year after Sandra Bland’s arrest and death, America’s streets are filled with righteous rage. Surfacing on social media are surreal videos of mass arrests – including the live-streamed one of Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson, now out on bond – and hordes of jumpy, chanting, goose-stepping, assault-rifle-wielding robocop stormtroopers in seemingly unlikely places like Rochester N.Y. facing off against stately, placid protesters demanding only what this country blithely continues to insist it believes in: equality before the law, and not being shot down for breathing while black.

    • Female Muslim workers in Kelantan must cover ‘aurat’

      IT is now compulsory for Muslim women working at fast-food outlets and hypermarkets in Kelantan to cover their aurat (parts of the body that must be covered in Islam), including wearing long-sleeved uniforms, by next year.

      Most female workers on such premises currently don short-sleeved T-shirts, although Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) had recently introduced a long-sleeved uniform for its staff.

    • Leaked document says 2,000 men allegedly assaulted 1,200 German women on New Year’s Eve

      At first, there was complete silence from officials. As rumors spread on social media, police had nothing to say about allegations of mass sexual assaults and other crimes carried out on New Year’s Eve in the German city of Cologne.

      It was only days later that officials reported that hundreds of women were victims of assault in Cologne, Hamburg and other German cities.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Net neutrality advocates make final push as EU consultation enters last week

      The activists at SaveTheInternet.eu, an international coalition of NGOs campaigning for net neutrality, have one more week to make their voice heard: the EU must protect net neutrality. Their message is targeted at BEREC, the Body of Regulators for Electronic Communications, which is drafting new guidelines on net neutrality. With the 18/07 deadline approaching rapidly, the Telecom industry has also joined the fray by unveiling their own plans for a restricted internet.

      SaveTheInternet.eu’s fight for net neutrality has been fought on many fronts, and with many different allies. Their actions have included a public street demonstration with hundreds of participants, and the ‘EU slowdown’ protest with over 7000 websites joining the ‘EU Slowdown’, over 40.000 faxes sent to the European Parliament and hundreds of phone calls by citizens to their representatives. Academics and tech companies have also supported the cause with open letters and public statements.

      This broad coalition is facing off against one main adversary: big Telecom providers. Last week, an association of the 17 biggest EU ISPs unveiled their “5G manifesto”, in which they called net neutrality rules to be watered down. On the basis of dubious arguments and analysis, they claim that a free and open internet threatens investment in new 5G networks. In reality, all available evidence points to the fact that net neutrality, by preventing anti-competitive behaviour, actually encourages infrastructure investment.

    • European 5G manifesto warns of danger with ‘net neutrality’ rules

      The EU has released its thoughts on 5G networks and how European players can become 5G leaders, in the “5G Manifesto presented by key players in the telco industry”.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Checking In: Blizzard Still Suing Hack/Cheat Makers For Copyright Infringement? Yup!

        For some reason, gamemaker Blizzard has been totally smitten with the idea of twisting copyright law into an ugly pretzel to sue anyone who makes a hack or cheat for one of its games for some time now. They did this concerning Starcraft, then World of Warcraft, and then Starcraft 2. This lawsuit tactic is starting to become something of a right of passage for Blizzard’s games, but the tactic in question makes little sense. Blizzard’s argument can be roughly translated as: cheats and hacks break the EULA for the game, the game is licensed by the EULA instead of being owned by anyone paying for it, the game does regular copying of code and files while in use, therefore a hack or cheat that breaks the EULA renders all of that routine copying as copyright infringement. While this wrenching of copyright into these kinds of lawsuits has nothing to do with the actual purpose or general application of copyright law, many cheer these moves on, because cheaters within the communal games we play are annoying.

        But the ends don’t justify the means, and this kind of twisting of copyright law is dangerous, as we’ve pointed out in the past. Not that that’s stopped Blizzard from utilizing this tactic, of course. In fact, recent Blizzard success Overwatch has become the latest to achieve this right of passage.

      • LBRY’s Blockchain-Based Netflix-Killer Is Now in Beta

        LBRY, a new protocol and service for sharing media online, is looking to give the power of sharing and consuming digital media back to the public. It allows media creators and consumers to interact directly – without any middlemen governing who’s allowed to share what with whom and for how much.

        The self-funded organization, which launched its closed beta last week, is using blockchain to protect and support LBC, LBRY’s online currency, in addition its decentralized metadata storage system. And although these technical intricacies may cause some people’s eyes to glaze over, they do empower LBRY to offer a number of benefits to the public, as with other open-source networks. So here’s what you really need to know about LBRY and the services it intends on providing.

      • Pirate swarms at risk from new patent

        Users of torrenting who are downloading pirated material may be caught out by NBC Universal’s new invention.

07.11.16

Links 11/7/2016: Linux 4.7 RC7, PCLinuxOS Trinity

Posted in News Roundup at 2:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 4.7 delayed
    • Linux 4.7-rc7
    • Linux 4.7-rc7
    • Linux 4.7-rc7 Released: Linux 4.7 Kernel In Two Weeks
    • Linus Torvalds Announces The Last RC, Linux Kernel 4.7 To Be Released On July 24

      Linus Torvalds has just announced the availability of the seventh Release Candidate (RC) of the forthcoming Linux 4.7 kernel branch.

      Except for a couple of regressions, things look to have calmed down for Linux 4.7. According to Linus Torvalds, this could just be the last RC for Linux kernel 4.7, which means that the final release will be announced on July 24, 2016.

    • Linus Torvalds goes on epic rant over Linux devs’ comment syntax

      Linus Torvalds has launched an epic, yet entertaining, rant against Linux kernel maintainers over their use of syntax in code comments.

      Torvalds, who is the chief maintainer of the Linux kernel, has a record for no-nonsense posts to the army of coders who keep the operating system going.

      The comments are a key means by which developers can follow and understand code across the community.

    • Linus Torvalds goes off on one over comment syntax

      LINUS TORVALDS, the creator and chief maintainer of Linux, as well as the author of some entertaining online rants, has complained to the community about comment syntax styles.

      Torvalds was commenting in response to a proposal to standardise on a syntax style used to add comments which he described as “brain-damaged stupid”.

    • Linux Kernel Development – Greg Kroah-Hartman

    • Graphics Stack

      • Mode Switching Coming For Graphics Tablets In Libinput 1.4

        Linux input expert Peter Hutterer at Red Hat has shared an upcoming feature of libinput 1.4: mode switching support for graphics tablet (e.g. Wacom tablets) for switching through different behavior depending upon button presses.

      • libinput and graphics tablet mode support

        In an earlier post, I explained how we added graphics tablet pad support to libinput. Read that article first, otherwise this article here will be quite confusing.

        A lot of tablet pads have mode-switching capabilities. Specifically, they have a set of LEDs and pressing one of the buttons cycles the LEDs. And software is expected to map the ring, strip or buttons to different functionality depending on the mode. A common configuration for a ring or strip would be to send scroll events in mode 1 but zoom in/out when in mode 2. On the Intuos Pro series tablets that mode switch button is the one in the center of the ring. On the Cintiq 21UX2 there are two sets of buttons, one left and one right and one mode toggle button each. The Cintiq 24HD is even more special, it has three separate buttons on each side to switch to a mode directly (rather than just cycling through the modes).

      • Google’s SwiftShader Released

        Year by year, plain-old HTML 5 websites are becoming fancier, and right now, the home entertainment world is buzzing about VR and 3D. But most sites are missing the boat; they have no 3D content. Well, that’s about to change.

        Google recently opened the source code for its SwiftShader project. If you have used Google Chrome or Android, you probably have seen SwiftShader in action before. It’s a high-performance software renderer that improves the performance of games or 3D content on low-end machines.

        Until recently, SwiftShader was a closed-source project. Although Android and Chromium are open source, SwiftShader always was distributed as a separate component, covered by a proprietary license. Now that Google has released SwiftShader to the world, other web browser developers will be able to use it too. This, in turn, should stimulate the development of richer 3D web content.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Multi-screen woes in Plasma 5.7

        With Plasma 5.7 we promised improved multi-screen support. While we achieved that, some users are still experiencing issues. This is unfortunate and our users have all the reasons to be disappointed with us. We are working very hard to fix the issues which have been reported to us since the release.

        But there are many situations where users blame us for issues not under our control. With this blog post I want to describe some of the problems we got reported and explain them.

      • KDE Plasma Users Are Still Running Into Multi-Screen Issues

        KDE Plasma 5.7 was advertised as having better multi-screen support, but it turns out there’s still more work to do as various problems in the open-source Linux desktop stack are leading to a less than ideal experience.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • SHAPING THE SCENARIO TASKS

        This week we are moving on to Creating the scenario tasks for GNOME programs. After a discussion with Jim Hall(my mentor), Allan and Jakub(GNOME design team),we decided to look back at the usability test results from the last round of Outreachy, and focus on the tasks that the participants struggled to accomplish. For example: Finding the zoom button in Image Viewer (header bar button), changing the month/year in Calendar (header bar buttons), searching (header bar button) and copying in Characters (primary window button), annotating and bookmarking in Evince (header bar menus), and other tasks in Nautilus (several were header bar menus). Re-using these scenario tasks will allow us to compare how the design patterns have improved over time.

      • Getting ready for usability tests

        In this test, Diana will ask testers to simulate an “unboxing” of a new system. The tester will turn on the laptop or computer, watch the computer start up, and login to a fresh “test” account so they get first-user experience.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • New install medium 2016.07.09

        Dual architecture (i686 and x86_64):

        Main ISO – Live ISO image for installation and recovery.
        MATE desktop ISO – Live ISO image for installation and recovery (with MATE Desktop Environment).
        TalkingParabola ISO – Live ISO image for installation and recovery (adapted for blind and visually impaired users).

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • PCLinuxOS 64 Trinity 2016.07 Community Edition Switches to Linux Kernel 4.6.3

        After we announced the release of the PCLinuxOS 64 Xfce 2016.07 Community Edition and PCLinuxOS 64 LXDE 2016.07 Community Edition distributions, the time has come for you to download PCLinuxOS 64 Trinity 2016.07 Community Edition.

        Created by PCLinuxOS senior member reelcat, the PCLinuxOS 64 Trinity Community Edition operating system is using the same acclaimed GNU/Linux technologies that are behind the official PCLinuxOS editions, but built around the Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) project that tries to keep the spirit of the KDE 3.5 desktop alive.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • Side-by-side: openSuSE Tumbleweed and Leap

        Leap, on the other hand, should never have such stability problems. It is so extensively tested, and so conservatively updated, that such problems are extremely unlikely to make it through. While the Leap distribution doesn’t have that long of a history to look at (it’s initial release was in April 2015), I think it is safe to say that Leap is related to SuSE Linux Enterprise in much the same way that Tumbleweed is tied to factory, and one thing that SuSE Linux Enterprise is very well known for is rock solid stability.

        That’s pretty much it, so I hope this brief review of the two distributions is helpful in deciding which would be right for your purposes.

      • Google Summer of Code student focuses on next steps

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Week 5&6 Report

        During week 5 and 6, I have been to the debian conference 2016. It was really interesting meeting with a lot of people all so involved in Debian.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Snapd 2.0.10 Snappy Tool Now Available in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Here’s What’s New

            Canonical’s Michael Vogt has been happy to announce that the snapd 2.0.10 Snappy tool from Ubuntu Core has successfully landed in the main software repositories of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus).

            We reported last week on the availability of the snapd 2.0.10 update, which is a pretty significant release, for Arch Linux and Fedora operating systems. Yes, that’s right, Canonical first pushed the snapd 2.0.10 build to Fedora’s COPR repository, as well as the main software repo of the Arch Linux distribution, allowing users to install the tool using the “pacman -S snapd” command, not an AUR helper.

            “The Snappy team is very happy to announce that the 2.0.10 release is now available in 16.04 via ‘xenial-updates.’ The 2.0.10 release contains a number of improvements and fixes over the previous 2.0.9 release that was available before,” says Michael Vogt, Software Developer at Canonical. “We hope you like it as much as we do. If you find any issues, please let us know via: http://bugs.launchpad.net/snappy.”

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • All the Apache Streaming Projects: An Exploratory Guide

    The speed at which data is generated, consumed, processed, and analyzed is increasing at an unbelievably rapid pace. Social media, the Internet of Things, ad tech, and gaming verticals are struggling to deal with the disproportionate size of data sets. These industries demand data processing and analysis in near real-time. Traditional big data-styled frameworks such as Apache Hadoop is not well-suited for these use cases.

    As a result, multiple open source projects have been started in the last few years to deal with the streaming data. All were designed to process a never-ending sequence of records originating from more than one source. From Kafka to Beam, there are over a dozen Apache projects in various stages of completion.

  • prpl Foundation Unveils the First Open Source Hypervisor for the Internet of Things
  • In the Wake of ownCloud, Here Comes Nextcloud

    The extremely popular ownCloud open source file-sharing and storage platform for building private clouds has been much in the news lately. CTO and founder of ownCloud Frank Karlitschek resigned from the company a few months ago. His open letter announcing the move pointed to possible friction created as ownCloud moved forward as a commercial entity as opposed to a solely community focused, open source project.

    Karlitschek had a plan, though. He is now out with a fork of ownCloud called Nextcloud, and there are strong signs that we can expect good things from this open platform.

  • Getting started with Git

    In the introduction to this series we learned who should use Git, and what it is for. Today we will learn how to clone public Git repositories, and how to extract individual files without cloning the whole works.

    Since Git is so popular, it makes life a lot easier if you’re at least familiar with it at a basic level. If you can grasp the basics (and you can, I promise!), then you’ll be able to download whatever you need, and maybe even contribute stuff back. And that, after all, is what open source is all about: having access to the code that makes up the software you run, the freedom to share it with others, and the right to change it as you please. Git makes this whole process easy, as long as you’re comfortable with Git.

  • Never Discount the Soft Skills for Career Building

    As an open source professional, even if you have the technical chops required for a position, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are a “shoe-in” for the role. Surprisingly, what many don’t know is that what sets you apart from other candidates in the interview process is your soft skills. Finding a professional who has the technical skills to handle a job can be difficult, but finding a professional who has both the technical skills required and the personal attributes that enable collaboration with team members can even more challenging.

    For open source professionals looking to move, improving some of your soft skills is a great way to make yourself indispensable to employers. Focusing on these skills allows you to still grow professionally and attract potential employers without having to go through the formal training methods required to learn some of the more technical skills. In particular, pay specific attention to some of the skills listed below, as they were found to be amongst the top soft skills employers on Dice requested from open source professionals:

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • In mourning for Nano, chap crafts 1k-loc text editor

      Ticked off by the news that Nano opted out of GNU, a programmer called Salvatore Sanfilippo has written his own text editor.

      What’s impressive about it is that it provides a basic code editor with syntax highlighting and search, without ncurses as a dependency, and in a mere 1,000 lines of code (at Github).

  • Public Services/Government

    • Could open source help kill piracy in Romania?

      Open source enthusiast Petru Ratiu stressed that although Linux might be cost-effective, it’s not completely free, as it implies payments like the ones associated with support and training. As for the administration, he emphasised the need for open data and open formats.

    • New European contest to promote IT reuse

      The EC will award EUR 15,000 and EUR 10,000 to the two most-proven IT solutions reused by each of the four levels of public administration: cross-border, national, regional and local.

      Contenders for the ‘Sharing & Reuse Award’ can register their project here. The contest is open until 28 October 2016 and the prizes will be announced in March 2017.

      “We want to award existing IT solutions that have been developed and shared by public administrations, and that can be further reused across Europe”, says Margarida Abecasis, in charge of the ISA² programme, under whose auspices the awards are run.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Programming/Development

    • Rcpp now used by over 700 CRAN packages
    • IoT puts assembly language back on the charts

      Let’s do the time warp again: according to an outfit that tracks programming languages, the Internet of Things is re-igniting demand for assembly language skills.

      Software consultancy TIOBE’s Programming Community Index has turned up the re-emergence of assembly programming in its monthly index (the definition of the index is here).

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Should NASA Have Given $1.1 Million to a Theology Institute?

      In 2014, NASA gave $1.1 million to the Center of Theological Inquiry, an independent institution “rooted in Christian theology.” The grant supports an initiative to study “the societal implications of astrobiology.”

      Surprisingly, it took more than a year for anyone to complain.

      The potential issue here is obvious: NASA is a government agency. The Center of Theological Inquiry is, well, a center of theological inquiry—an institution that seemingly has a religious, and specifically Christian, orientation. At least in theory, the government is barred from sponsoring religious activities. And doing theology about extraterrestrials does sound kind of religion-y.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Radioactive waste and the nuclear war on Australia’s Aboriginal people

      Australia’s nuclear industry has a shameful history of ‘radioactive racism’ that dates from the British bomb tests in the 1950s, writes Jim Green. The same attitudes persist today with plans to dump over half a million tonnes of high and intermediate level nuclear waste on Aboriginal land, and open new uranium mines. But now Aboriginal peoples and traditional land owners are fighting back!

    • Biodiversity, GMOs, Gene Drives and the Militarized Mind

      The aforementioned study on ghost-tech was sponsored by DARPA (The Pentagon’s Research Ghost) and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (The ghost of the Microsoft Monopoly). DARPA has been busy. Interestingly, Microsoft BASIC was developed on a DARPA Supercomputer across the street from MIT, at Harvard. Where does DARPA end and MIT start? Where does Microsoft end and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation start. The orientation of our technologies has been dictated by the DARPA-Mind, a Mechanical Mind trained in War, and Gates continues to colonize meaning, just as gates had done to our lands, and the Green Revolution has done to our food.

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Monday
    • Is Your Antivirus Making Your PC More Hackable? Probably YES!f

      Is your antivirus software protecting you from all kinds of malware and security threats? The answer to this questions is a big NO. While one shouldn’t completely get rid of his/her antivirus solution, one shouldn’t be too carefree having them installed. We also advise our readers to follow the basic security practices to stay safe on the internet.

    • Social Media Accounts Of Twitter And Yahoo CEOs Hacked By OurMine

      Hacking group OurMine has now targetted Jack Dorsey and Marissa Mayer. OurMine recently hacked their Twitter accounts and posted messages on their profile. OurMine has triggered the frequency of its operations in the recent times and targeting multiple high-profile tech CEOs and celebrities.

    • Let’s Encrypt torpedoes cost and maintenance issues for Free RTC

      Many people have now heard of the EFF-backed free certificate authority Let’s Encrypt. Not only is it free of charge, it has also introduced a fully automated mechanism for certificate renewals, eliminating a tedious chore that has imposed upon busy sysadmins everywhere for many years.

      These two benefits – elimination of cost and elimination of annual maintenance effort – imply that server operators can now deploy certificates for far more services than they would have previously.

    • Voice Commands Hidden In YouTube Videos Can Hack Your Smartphone
    • This is quite a nice tool – magic-wormhole

      This beats doing a scp from system to system, especially if the receiving system is behind a NAT and/or firewall.

    • Entry level AI

      I was listening to the podcast Security Weekly and the topic of using AI For security work came up. This got me thinking about how most people make their way into security and what something like AI might mean for the industry.

      In virtually every industry you start out doing some sort of horrible job nobody else wants to do, but you have to start there because it’s the place you start to learn the skills you need for more exciting and interesting work. Nobody wants to go over yesterday’s security event log, but somebody does it.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Europe’s NATO Ambivalence

      The just-completed NATO summit repeated tiresome U.S. propaganda about “Russia’s aggressive actions” but some European leaders flinched at the heated rhetoric and warmongering, notes ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller.

    • Veterans Must Be Honored for Teaching Us the Need for Peace

      Mark Karlin: Many in the US political, entertainment and media world jingoistically hype support for veterans’ charities, but rarely do they ever bring to our attention the devastating condition of veterans who have survived injuries. Why is a book such as Tomas Young’s War vital in countering a sanitized charitable appeal for veterans that doesn’t focus on the actual ordeals of veterans such as Tomas Young?

    • The Chilcot Report Fails to Speak Plain Truth: Bush Lied, So Did Blair

      The newly released Chilcot Report on Iraq is British understatement, to a fault. In fact, it is understated so far as to miss the plain truth of the matter. Saying only that extremely questionable intelligence “was not challenged [by the Bush and Blair regimes] and it should have been” is failing to say plainly what the evidence so clearly shows: George W. Bush lied; so did Tony Blair.

      To demonstrate that, let’s try a simple exercise: let’s compare what White House officials said about Iraq in the run-up to war with what they knew at the time — or at the very least, should have known, because the intelligence was available to them.

      What they said: “We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we’ve gotten this from the testimony of defectors — including Saddam’s own son-in law” (in the words of Dick Cheney).

      What they knew: Testimony obtained by reporters in 2003 showed that Saddam’s son-in law told UN weapons inspectors that “all weapons — biological, chemical, missile, nuclear — were destroyed.” In other words, he said the opposite of what Cheney claimed he said.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Bankrupt Coal Miner Peabody Energy Paid Climate Denialist Craig Idso To Write Greenhouse Gas Reports

      A research center that has produced scores of reports dismissing the dangers of human-caused climate change was being paid by coal company Peabody Energy to produce reports about its greenhouse gas emissions.

      The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (CSCDGC) is revealed as having historical financial ties to Peabody in the coal company’s bankruptcy papers.

      A DeSmog investigation has also uncovered undisclosed financial links between the center, run by veteran climate science denialist Craig Idso, and another contrarian group, the Science and Public Policy Institute.

      Peabody Energy was revealed as a funder of a web of groups and organisations that have worked to spread doubt over human-caused climate change while fighting rules to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

      Dr Idso, the chairman and founder of CSCDGC, has written many reports claiming that extra carbon dioxide is a benefit to the planet, while ignoring or downplaying the many negatives.

      His work was used in a flawed report from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity — a grouping of coal miners, transporters and burners — which argued greenhouse gas emissions were a large net financial benefit to society.

    • I Was Sick for a Year After an Oil Spill. Five Years Later, Pipeline Accidents Are Worsening

      Early in the morning on July 2, 2011, I walked down the gravel road on our Montana farm to let the goats out to graze for the day. I found an oily rainbow sheen on the Yellowstone River flowing through our hay fields and pasture, plus large clumps of crude oil sticking to trees, cattails and brush. The oily water was in our sloughs, our pond and the creek that runs along the eastern edge of the farm. I checked the local news on my phone and found that an Exxon oil pipeline had ruptured underneath the Yellowstone River upstream. More than 300 people upstream from us were evacuated, but no one had thought to notify those of us further from the spill. The smell of hydrocarbons was overwhelming.

      In the end, more than 63,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into the Yellowstone River from what we later learned was a “guillotine cut” in Exxon’s Silvertip pipeline, which lay in a trench only four to five feet under the Yellowstone River. Snowmelt combined with spring rains had caused heavy flooding, and the river bottom was scoured away, leaving the oil pipeline exposed. All it took was a heavy object being tossed down the river to break the pipeline in half. After spending $135 million on the cleanup, Exxon recovered less than 1 percent of the oil spilled.

  • Finance

    • Three Recent Wins Prove Old-Fashioned Union Power Isn’t Dead Yet

      Three big wins for workers in the last nine months arrived where you might least expect them: in the old, blue-collar economy. That’s the economy where unions are down to 6.7 percent, where wins are rare and workers are supposed to be on their way out.

      Yet at Chrysler, Verizon, and a huge Teamster pension fund, thousands of union members mobilized to put a stick in management’s eye. Hundreds of thousands will see the benefit.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Pro-Fracking, Pro-Colonialism, Anti-Single Payer: Dem Platform Disappoints

      At the committee’s final meeting in Orlando, Florida, supporters of Hillary Clinton successfully voted down amendments supporting a single payer healthcare system, a nationwide ban on fracking, as well as an amendment objecting to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and characterizing the settlements as illegal.

      The losses stung progressives already dismayed by the committee’s refusal to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal in the platform earlier that day, among other defeats.

    • Obama: Out of Many Sides of His Mouth

      Picture a defendant before a judge asking to be found innocent of any crime on such grounds. On other occasions, Obama, without apparent embarrassment, has stated that “nobody is above the law.” (A public figure can be labeled stupid not just for saying or doing stupid things, but for not even realizing that the public will SEE his words or actions as stupid.)

      –Asked whether he would apologize for Washington’s role in Chile’s 1973 military coup which overthrew the democratically elected government and replaced it with a dictatorship, Obama replied: “I’m interested in going forward, not looking backward. I think that the United States has been an enormous force for good in the world.” (June 23, 2009)

      –Question from CNN, 2008: “Do you think the US should apologize for any mistakes that it has made in the past?” Obama’s reply: “I don’t think the US should ever apologize for anything.”

      –Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly on September 24, 2014 where he classified Russia to be one of the three great threats to the world along with the Islamic State and the ebola virus.

    • Oklahoma Governor Says Trump Is Trying To Be A ‘Racial Healer’

      Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) said on Sunday that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has been “trying to campaign as a racial healer.”

      The governor appeared on CNN, where anchor Jake Tapper asked her twice if she thought Trump was a racial healer.

      “I’ve heard from a number of Latino Americans, Muslim Americans, Native Americans, Jewish Americans, African Americans, all expressing concern about some of the things Donald Trump has said,” CNN’s Jake Tapper told the governor.

    • Does anyone know what’s real anymore?

      Increasingly we are lost in a world of binary codes: zero or one, Republican or Democrat, black or white, female or male, good or bad.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Censorship: SABC postpones hearings indefinitely, Solidarity approaches ConCourt

      While opposition against censorship at the public broadcaster grows, according to trade union, Solidarity, the SABC has postponed the disciplinary hearing of the three suspended employees, Thandeka Gqubule, Foeta Krige and Suna Venter, that was scheduled for Monday indefinitely. The three employees remain suspended.

      Solidarity, which represents the three journalists, on Sunday said the mere postponement of the hearings is not acceptable. It reiterated that the disciplinary process must be abolished in its entirety.

      The trade union also announced that it would approach the Constitutional Court in the coming week for direct access to test the constitutionality of the censorship instruction. Also during this week Solidarity would approach the Labour Court to obtain an interdict against the SABC’s disciplinary process, pending the Constitutional Court case.

    • SABC’s Vuyo Mvoko awaits fate

      The Star understands that Mvoko, the most senior member of the eight-person group of journalists to speak out against the reign of repression and censorship being waged by SABC chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng, was served with a letter on Friday by the public broadcaster’s human resources department to provide reasons why his contract should not be terminated.

    • Bheki’s Ordinary People: SABC Turmoil

      The discord that plagues the SABC is a massive threat to the corporation. Controversy around the COO, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, his leadership and even his qualifications are some of the things that exposed the extent to which the institution’s structural integrity has been vastly compromised. Here’s what some South Africans think.

    • SABC postpones hearings of suspended employees indefinitely – Solidarity

      The SABC postponed the disciplinary hearing of the three suspended employees, Thandeka Gqubule, Foeta Krige and Suna Venter indefinitely. The hearing was due to start on Monday, 11 July. However, the three employees remain suspended. Trade union Solidarity, which represents the three journalists, said the mere postponement of the hearings is not acceptable. According to Solidarity, the disciplinary process must be abolished in its entirety.

    • SABC journalists want suspensions lifted

      Certain suspended SABC journalists want their suspensions lifted following the indefinite postponement of their disciplinary hearings.

    • SABC hearings postponed indefinitely

      The SABC laid disciplinary charges against journalists because they distanced themselves from a censorship instruction.

      Trade union Solidarity will go to court to revoke the suspensions of three senior SABC journalists and to test the constitutionality of SABC chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s censorship instruction.

      The SABC has postponed the disciplinary hearing of the three suspended employees, Thandeka Gqubule, Foeta Krige, and Suna Venter, indefinitely, Solidarity chief executive Dirk Hermann said on Sunday.

      The hearing was due to start on Monday. However, the three employees, among those represented by Solidarity, remained suspended. The mere postponement of the hearings was not acceptable and the disciplinary process should be abolished in its entirety, he said.

    • Buthelezi says censorship at SABC reminds him of apartheid

      Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi said that the censorship at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) reminded him of the apartheid days when then president, PW Botha, banned coverage of his party.

    • SABC responds to Icasa’s ruling on censorship

      The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) board chairperson Mbulaheni Maguvhe says the corporation’s lawyers will now study the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s (Icasa) ruling against its editorial changes, and may take the matter to court.

    • SABC ordered to reverse its censorship policy

      The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has been ordered by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) to reverse its editorial decision to censor ‘violent protests’ in the country.

      In May, the SABC said it will no longer show violent protests on any of its channels in a bid to “educate the population”, and send a message that violent action will not get them the attention they seek.

    • Icasa overturns Hlaudi’s ‘censorship’

      This makes the disciplinary action against eight SABC journalists who fought against the order and were subsequently suspended illegal.

      The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) has overturned SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s decision not to broadcast the burning of public institutions because, in his opinion, it might encourage protestors to run amok.

      Icasa acting chairperson Rubben Mohlaloga said the Complaints and Compliance Committee had found the SABC had overstepped its authority and gave it seven days to reverse its decision.

    • Icasa orders SABC to withdraw their censorship on protests
    • South African state TV ordered to stop censoring protest footage
    • Russia censorship targets sports betting portals, affiliates
    • Russia Roskomnadzor gets tough on affiliates and sports media portals
    • Russian Media Watchdog Targets Sports Portals and High Traffic Affiliates

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Despite Security Concerns, Study Finds That Cloud Platforms Deserve Trust

      How much trust should organizations be putting in their cloud platforms and applications? Plenty, according to a Google-sponsored study called Trust in cloud technology and business performance: Reaping benefits from the cloud. The study found that enterprises that trust cloud computing apps and platforms to transform their businesses beyond cost cutting gain from significant revenue growth.

    • NSA Labels Privacy-Centric Internet Users As Extremists

      The NSA is not making any friends these days, and their latest statement on privacy-centric journalists is not helping matters much either. To be more precise, an investigation by the agency revealed how they are continuing to target the Tor network. Moreover, The Linux Journal is referred to as an “extremist forum”. Quite a strong sentiment, and possibly completely misguided as well.

    • Reports Shows UK Police Improperly Accessed Data On Citizens Thousands Of Times

      A lot of the problem with access is the access itself. Give enough people a way to look up compromising information on nearly anyone and abuse is guaranteed. Human nature ensures this outcome.

      Sure, abuse could be curbed with actual, substantial punishments for abusing this access, but as we’ve seen time and time again, the threat of firings and jail time doesn’t mean much if law enforcement officers are rarely, if ever, fired/jailed for abusing their access privileges.

      The larger problem with access is the lack of strong deterrents. Access is essential to law enforcement work, but far too often, this access is used for anything but law enforcement reasons.

      Big Brother Watch has released a report [PDF] detailing numerous abuses of law enforcement databases by UK police staff over the past several years.

    • DEA Finally Decides To Do Something About Its Wiretap Warrant Abuses

      The DEA never let Rule 41 jurisdiction limitations bother them. Agents used wiretap warrants to track suspects all over the nation. The DEA also didn’t let the DOJ’s hesitancy to condone its actions/warrants get in the way of its drug warring. DOJ lawyers heavily hinted that if the DEA wanted to use questionable wiretap warrants, it had better not be dragging its raggedy affidavits into federal court.

      But drag those affidavits into federal court it did, forcing the DOJ to defend the very warrants it told the DEA to stop dropping off at its place. The DOJ’s lawyers said the toxic, possibly illegal warrants were actually 100% legal, perfectly compliant with federal and state law — even though they were missing the signature of the local District Attorney, as required by federal law.

      The DEA — having had its bogus warrant assembly line exposed by USA Today’s Brad Heath and Brett Kelman — is finally moving towards curbing its wiretap abuse.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Police Said They Shot A Man Because He Pointed A Gun At Them. Video Shows He Had His Hands Up.

      Another black man was shot and killed by police in Texas early Saturday morning.

      Houston Police said Alva Braziel was waving a gun around and pointed it at them when they opened fire. But surveillance footage from a nearby gas station suggests otherwise.

      The video, which began circulating Saturday night on Twitter, shows Braziel walk out toward an intersection. When the squad car arrives, he appears to put his hands in the air and turn around, standing still for a few seconds before police shoot him.

    • Legalized Murder and the Politics of Terror

      Police officers carry out random acts of legalized murder against poor people of color not because they are racist, although they may be, or even because they are rogue cops, but because impoverished urban communities have evolved into miniature police states.

      Police can stop citizens at will, question and arrest them without probable cause, kick down doors in the middle of the night on the basis of warrants for nonviolent offenses, carry out wholesale surveillance, confiscate property and money and hold people—some of them innocent—in county jails for years before forcing them to accept plea agreements that send them to prison for decades. They can also, largely with impunity, murder them.

      Those who live in these police states, or internal colonies, especially young men of color, endure constant fear and often terror. Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” calls those trapped in these enclaves members of a criminal “caste system.” This caste system dominates the lives of not only the 2.3 million who are incarcerated in the United States but also the 4.8 million on probation or parole. Millions more are forced into “permanent second-class citizenship” by their criminal records, which make employment, higher education and public assistance, including housing, difficult and usually impossible to obtain. This is by design.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Kim Dotcom Announces The Launch Of File Sharing Website Megaupload 2.0

        The Megaupload creator is busy tweeting about the rebirth of his defaced website Megaupload which went offline in 2012. A series of tweets indicate that Megaupload 2.0 will be a presented to the world in January 2017 along with restored account data of all the old users.

      • As UK Piracy Falls To Record Lows, Government Still Wants To Put Pirates In Jail For 10 Years

        Last fall, our think tank, the Copia Institute, released a paper, The Carrot or the Stick? which detailed how innovation in the form of convenient, appealing and reasonably priced legal content streaming services appeared to be the most powerful tool in reducing piracy. The report looked at a number of different data sources and situations in multiple different countries. And what we found, over and over again, was pretty straightforward: ratcheting up enforcement or punishment did not work — or, if it did work, it only worked exceptionally briefly. However, by introducing good, convenient authorized services, piracy rates fell, like off a cliff. We saw this pattern repeated over and over again.

        And yet… instead of seeing policymakers and legacy content companies pursue strategies to encourage more innovation and more competition in authorized services, they continually focus on enforcement and punishment. This makes no sense at all. Take the situation in the UK, for example. Last week, the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) came out with a report noting that piracy in the UK had dropped significantly in the wake of authorized streaming services like Spotify and Netflix entering the market. The full report is worth reading and pretty clearly suggests — as our own report last year did — that having good authorized services in place is the best way to reduce piracy.

[ES] Battistelli y el Equipo UPC Trabajando a Puertas Cerradas para Sobreponerse a Brexit e Imponer la Injusticia de Patentes

Posted in News Roundup at 2:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Article as ODF

Publicado en Europa, Patentes a las 9:23 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

A shipwreck of UPC

Sumario: Continuándo una tradición de secretividad y negociaciónes astutas entre sus beneficiaros prospectivos, la UPC es debatida en Munich por Battistelli y el Equipo UPC (en su mayoríá firmas de leyes de patentes), llegando a nada pero mentiras y no un significativo cubrimiénto de prensa

El pasado mes y a principios de este publicamos casi media docena de artículos acerca del colapso de la UPC despues de Brexit (vean la Wiki de la EPO por detalles). Es un problema para la UPC y este se está convirtiéndo cada vez más aceptado dentro de las firmes de patentes. Por ejemplo, citando el artículo de Henschel el cual menciónamos el otro día, Benjamin Henrion dice [1, 2] que “las leyes de patentes de la UE serán alemanizadas con la ausencia del Reino Unido. “Jueces de la UPC fueron aceptados hasta el 4 de Julio, pero jueces aplicantes del Reino Unido pueden ahora ser excluídos”” (El Equipo UPC hizo publicidad de trabajos que no existían y probablemente nunca existirán, lo que revela un montón del equipo UPC y su falta de ética).

Henrion señaló que “la UPC tiene demasiados problemas.” Aparte del problema de que la UPC es un ataque a la democracia misma, hay problemas técnicos con su aplicación ahora, especialmente debido a Brexit. Esto fue previsto por muchos críticos distintos a Henrion e incluso la EPO lo admitió este último mes. “Brexit amenaza a la inseguridad jurídica, costos más altos para las marcas, dicen los abogados,” de acuerdo con la IP Watch, pero preguntar abogados acerca de los costos es como pedirle a los fabricantes de armas de guerra la paz (este artículo está detrás de un muro de pago por cierto). Hay un par de nuevos artículos sobre el EPO en este momento, pero ambos están en alemán [1, 2] (traducciones serían muy apreciadas) y el segundo es acerca de Brexit. En muchos sentidos, la UPC está muerta, pero Battistelli tratará de salvar a su “bebé”. Las últimas mentiras de la EPO (advertencia: epo.org link, vinculados a la cuenta de Twitter de la EPO) dicen que hay “un fuerte apoyo para el paquete de Patente Unitaria”, sino como Henrion les dijo correctamente “cuando se pregunta a la comunidad de las patentes, eso es como predicar su propia iglesia! “(que sólo han preguntado equipo de la UPC a puerta cerrada)

“Otro problema aparte es que la UPC es un ataque en la democracia misma, hay problemas técnicos con su implementación ahora, expecialmente debido a Brexit.”

La UPC sin duda cuenta con el apoyo de la colusión de auto-servicio que la creó en primer lugar, o al menos la planeó. ¿Por qué es que epo.org básicamente se convirtió en un sitio de la propaganda Battistelli en lugar de algo científico? ¿Qué van a pensar las empresas? A las pequeñas empresas de toda Europa no les gusta la UPC. ¿Le importa a la EPO sobre ellos en absoluto? Sobre la base de este artículo de equipo de la UPC, Margot Fröhlinger dijo que ninguno de los usuarios y empresas disponibles expresó reticencia a continuar con el impulso de la patente unitaria. “Cualquier cosa que ellos decidan lo harán”, por citar directamente “, la UPC seguirá adelante. La línea de base de esta conferencia podría haber sido: donde hay voluntad, hay un camino”.

Pero ¿voluntad de quién? El equipo de la UPC es un grupo de depredadores, que no representan los intereses de Europa. Max Brunner (Ministerio de Justicia – Francia) es citado diciendo: “El proyecto es bueno para los negocios.-leáse grandes corporaciónes non-europeas – Por lo tanto tenemos que continuarlo”.

Pero la “UPC es dañina,” notó Henrion. Las PYMEs en Europa levantaron su voz en contra de ella, habiéndo descubierto sus realidades. El equip UPC está basicamente de nuevo, malrepresentando a Europa y a los negocios Europeos. Glyn Moody dijo que cuando la UPC dice “bueno para los negocios, significa malo para el público aquí: más monopolios, más arreglo de precios” (a costa del pueblo Europeo).

Moreno, otro crítico UPC, citó al Kluwer Blog de Patentes (parte de un ala del equipo de la UPC) como diciendo “El Reino Unido tiene ahora que tomar ciertas decisiones políticas. Cualquier cosa que decidan, la UPC seguirá adelante “(suena bastante vano y asertivo).

Miren quien promovió esta “Conferencia de Munich” y el post del blog de la patente Kluwer. Y otra en el blog de Patent WatchTroll hay una columna de Bird & Bird sobre “Implicaciones Brexit” (Kluwer Blog de Patentes está conectado a Bird & Bird, que es una parte fundamental del equipo de la UPC). Los defensores de las patentes de software en Europa como Bastian Best van más lejos al promover este seminario en Londres y diciendo: “Este será un interesante seminario” Protección de Patentes de Invenciones relacionados con el software en Europa y EE.UU.”” (en otras palabras, la promoción de las patentes de software en a pesar de la EPC).

“En el caso de la UPC, como uno podría esperar, es un grupo de firma de abogados de patentes que escribe las leyes a puertas cerradas (no transcripciónes publicadas) y luego piden a los políticos que les pongan la estampa de goma..”

Quizás lo más interesante será la composición de los asistentes a este seminario Londres. A juzgar por este Tweet Publicado hace varios días (“Post Conferencia #Brexit #UPC en #EPO en #Munich mañana http://bit.ly/29y0AAT @ EIPLegal de Rob Smith Lundie asistir – buscar actualizaciones”), Battistelli también estaba allí ( “#UP #UPC actualización de conferencias – #Battistelli proporciona visión personal de #brexit en #UPC – ya sea Reino Unido ratifica o retraso UPC hasta Reino Unido deja UE”). Bueno, Battistelli habrá dejado para entonces (se puede tomar 2,5 años) y la EPO se encuentra actualmente en un estado de crisis (de la propia creación de Battistelli). La UPC, ya que se previó está muerto / morir, pero persisten las fantasías de la UPC y sus creadores continuar como si nada hubiera pasado (“#UP Conferencia #UPC: Dr. Carsten Zulch: jueces técnicamente cualificados significa bifurcación en virtud de la UPC sólo tiene sentido en circunstancias limitadas …” )

“Las leyes de la UE [están] escritos por las grandes corporaciónes”, señaló Henrion “, y luego se preguntan por qué la gente votó por Brexit. Especialmente cuando espectro podría ser liberado en su lugar”.

“Cuando no hay transcripciones escritas de lo Miembro del Parlamento Europeo dice en la comisión”, agregó, “no seas sorprendido porque la gente vota por #brexit [...] hace 15 años solicité por escrito transcripciones de las discusiones en los comités de el Parlamento Europeo, estamos todavía muy lejos “(fuente)

En el caso de la UPC, como uno podría esperar, es un grupo de firma de abogados de patentes que escribe las leyes a puertas cerradas (no transcripciónes publicadas) y luego piden a los políticos que les pongan la estampa de goma. Recuerde que la UPC Chair comité selecciónadoes parte de la colusión para anular la ley en Europa y este tweet de la conferencia dijo “#UP Conferencia #UPC: Cátedra UPC comité selecto – Reino Unido todavía podría ratificar y políticos mensaje Brexit puede o no puede encontrar el camino para mantener Reino Unido en … “(todo especulativa).

“Dado el tiempo que Brexit podría tomar, esto parece cada vez más un escenario pausible,” MIP escribió acerca de ello.

“Vimos la misma falta de cubrimiénto rodeando a la TTIP y la TPP en los pasados años; esto se cimentó en secretividad y a veces en complicidad.”

“No hay críticos de la UPC están hablando ahí”, señaló Henrion, con una link a esta página. Esta conspiración de auto-enriquecimiento mediante patentes abogados y sus grandes clientes requiere mantener al público afuera de ello, inconsciente y totalmente al margen. Estas personas están tratando de embestir a la UPC por las gargantas de nuestros políticos y cuanto más el público se entere, peor será para el equipo de la UPC. “Preparaciones del Reino Unido para la ratificación #UPC están acabados”, escribió Patently German. “La ratificación, sin embargo, será decisión del nuevo PM espera que asumirá el cargo en septiembre” (tienen problemas mucho más urgentes que tratar con distinta UPC).

Como de costumbre, todas estas reuniones secretas no estaban cubiertos por los medios de comunicación. Había un montón de mentiras sobre él en la página web de la EPO y los blogs equipo de la UPC. Battistelli, a expensas de la EPO, comprá artículos ” en ” los medios de comunicación europeo, a veces “artículos” o piezas de hojaldre a favor de la UPC (algunos de sus ‘socios de los medios’ lo ha hecho desde el año pasado). Qué desgracia ! Vimos la misma falta de cubrimiénto rodeando a la TTIP y la TPP en los pasados años; esto se cimentó en secretividad y a veces en complicidad.

Links 11/7/2016: PCLinuxOS 64 LXDE 2016.07, Unity On Vista 10

Posted in News Roundup at 2:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The code that took America to the moon was just published to GitHub, and it’s like a 1960s time capsule

    When programmers at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory set out to develop the flight software for the Apollo 11 space program in the mid-1960s, the necessary technology did not exist. They had to invent it.

    They came up with a new way to store computer programs, called “rope memory,” and created a special version of the assembly programming language. Assembly itself is obscure to many of today’s programmers—it’s very difficult to read, intended to be easily understood by computers, not humans. For the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), MIT programmers wrote thousands of lines of that esoteric code.

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • BSD

  • Licensing/Legal

    • How Facebook Live became our new global distress signal [iophk: "FB censors and throttles"]

      It did not respond to a request for comment from The Verge today, but later posted a statement about its standards for live video. “Just as it gives us a window into the best moments in people’s lives, it can also let us bear witness to the worst,” the company wrote. “Live video can be a powerful tool in a crisis — to document events or ask for help.”

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Open Source Solar

        What’s the size of a standard euro-palette, goes together in 15 minutes, and can charge 120 mobile phones at one time? At least one correct answer is Sunzilla, the open source solar power generator. The device does use some proprietary components, but the entire design is open source. It contains solar panels, of course, as well as storage capacity and an inverter.

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Iraq War, Based on Lies, Rages On

      A devastating report on the U.K.’s eager participation in the invasion and occupation of Iraq was released this week, as corpses are still being pulled from the rubble in the aftermath of Baghdad’s largest suicide truck bombing since that ill-fated 2003 invasion began. The document is known as “The Chilcot Report,” after its principal investigator and author, Sir John Chilcot. The inquiry was commissioned in 2009 by Britain’s then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Chilcot released the 6,000-page report Wednesday morning, seven years after the work began. It offers a litany of critiques against former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Cabinet, exposing the exaggeration of the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and Blair’s unwavering fealty to President George W. Bush. “It is now clear that policy on Iraq was made on the basis of flawed intelligence and assessments. … They were not challenged,” Chilcot writes in his statement that accompanied the report’s release.

    • The Iraq War, Brexit and Imperial Blowback

      Brexit is a disaster we can only understand in the context of Britain’s imperial exploits. A Bullingdon boy (Oxford frat boy) gamble has thrown Britain into the deepest political and economic crisis since the second world war and has made minority groups across the UK vulnerable to racist and xenophobic hatred and violence.

      People of color, in particular those in the global South, know all too well what it is to be at the receiving end of the British establishment’s divisive top-down interventions. Scapegoating migrants is a divisive tool favored by successive governments, but the British establishment’s divide and rule tactic was honed much further afield in the course of its colonial exploits. Britain has a long history of invading, exploiting, enslaving and murdering vast numbers of people, crimes for which it has never been held accountable.

    • US Still Ducks Iraq Accountability

      With the Chilcot report, Great Britain somewhat came to grips with its role in the criminal invasion of Iraq, but neocon-controlled Washington still refuses to give the American people any honest accounting, explains ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

    • Russia Pushes Back on NATO Expansion

      As NATO presses up to Russia’s borders – with secret schemes to influence and absorb unwilling populations – Russia has begun to push back, explaining the origins of the new Cold War, as Natylie Baldwin describes.

    • Newt Gingrich Pals Around With Terrorists Saddam Hussein Once Armed

      Newt Gingrich, who is being vetted to be Donald Trump’s running mate and appeared with the candidate in Cincinnati on Wednesday, left the campaign trail this weekend for an unusual reason. The former Speaker of the House had to fly to Paris to appear at a gala celebration for the Mojahedin-e Khalq, or People’s Mujahedin, an Iranian exile group that wants Washington’s backing for regime change in Iran.

      In his remarks, Gingrich heaped praise on the MEK’s efforts, and congratulated them on the presence of another dignitary, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior member of the Saudi royal family and a former head of that nation’s intelligence service.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Clinton’s Disregard of Secrecy Laws

      While admitting a “mistake,” Hillary Clinton was largely unrepentant about the FBI calling her “extremely careless” in safeguarding national security data, another sign of a troubling double standard, says ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • To Stop Oil Trains, I Spent My Honeymoon in Jail

      It was a few days after my wedding. I was supposed to be honeymooning at a nearby winery with my newly minted husband, celebrating our unlikely marriage at age 55.

      Instead, I was sitting on the railroad tracks in the pouring rain. Along with 20 other brave souls, some weeping, some singing, I was facing down a locomotive in a town — Vancouver, Washington — that many fear will be forced to accept the largest oil-by-rail terminal in the country.

      Why would anyone do something like that?

      Because a few short days before, we’d watched in horror as a mile-long train filled with Bakken crude derailed in Mosier, Oregon and burst into towering flames.

  • Finance

    • CETA: Ripe For Provisional Implementation In January 2018?

      The European Commission on 8 July published the finalized Comprehensive Economic Canada-EU Trade Agreement (CETA) and formally proposed to Council to sign the agreement, pushing for provisional implementation amidst ongoing discussions over competency issues with EU member states. After finalising CETA in August 2014, the controversial investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system was renegotiated last year.

    • If You Eat Fish, You’re Probably Getting Ripped Off

      It’s common in the food industry to boost profits by misleading customers about an animal’s origins, but this kind of fraud is especially rampant when it comes to seafood. From 2010 to 2012, the conservation agency Oceana conducted DNA tests on seafood in 21 states and found that one-third of the samples had been mislabeled. A whopping 87 percent of the “red snapper” samples were bogus, swapped in for cheaper fish like tilapia or rockfish. Florida’s prized grouper is also often replaced with tilapia or even farmed Asian catfish. Most customers can’t tell the difference, but mislabeling hurts people at both ends of the supply chain: Tilapia mislabeled as grouper can cost the consumer $4 more per eight-ounce fillet at the grocery store, and $12 extra per fillet at a restaurant. And fishermen who respect conservation quotas wind up selling true grouper at a deflated price.

    • Brazil will join the TiSA negotiations

      Yesterday, during an event at the Brazilian Industry Confederation (CNI), the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Trade, Mr. Marcos Pereira, has announced that the Brazilian participation in the negotiations of the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) was recently authorised by the President, Mr. Michel Temer.

      The TISA is an international treaty to improve and expand commercial exchange of services. The agreement, under negotiation since 2013 for more than 23 countries, including the United States and the European Union, aims to set a new threshold on market access and universal rules regarding the trade of services.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Hillary Clinton’s Platform Follies

      There has been close coordination between the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, and those representing her on the committee shaping the party’s platform. It is here that a battle was waged with reformers representing Bernie Sanders over party positions on a large number of important issues. The positions and behavior of those acting as Clinton proxies can therefore provide a window into her attitude toward the movement Sanders has launched.

    • ‘We Have Just Written Half of the GOP Platform’: Progressives Dismayed by Dem Party Platform

      As the contentious Democratic Party platform drafting committee negotiations come to an end, many Bernie Sanders surrogates have watched in disbelief as core progressive principles have been waylaid—largely by Hillary Clinton supporters.

    • How Corbyn could be left off the ballot – and why he shouldn’t be.

      These are just a couple of thoughts about whether Jeremy Corbyn should be excluded from the ballot for Labour leadership if he is unable to obtain a certain amount of nominations.

      The first thought is a legal one, the second thought is a political one.

      On the legal side, it seems to me that the Labour NEC could lawfully exclude the current leader from the ballot if he does not have sufficient nominations.

      I know this argument goes against what has been contended elsewhere (that Corbyn should automatically be on the ballot as leader), but law is sometimes like that. Lawyers and legal pundits can have different views.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • From GCHQ to Google: the battle to outpace hackers in the cyber race

      On the afternoon of October 26 last year the Metropolitan Police arrived at a house in County Antrim in Northern Ireland to arrest a 15-year-old boy for hacking into the TalkTalk computer network and stealing the personal details of 157,000 customers, including bank account and credit card details. In the days that followed, three more teenagers and a 20-year-old man were arrested in relation to the attack.

    • NSA labels Linux Journal readers and Tor and Tails users as extremists

      Fans of Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) Linux operating system use it because of the well-documented security and anonymity features it provides. The system utilizes a Tor browser, which also affords more anonymity to users while browsing sites on the web. The Linux Journal is a monthly technology magazine and news site that focuses on topics related to Linux and open source programs.

    • How Uber secretly investigated its legal foes — and got caught

      When a young labor lawyer named Andrew Schmidt first filed suit against Uber in December of last year, he couldn’t have predicted it would make him a target. Schmidt’s suit was a legal longshot, alleging that Uber CEO Travis Kalanick coordinated surge pricing in violation of anti-trust laws — but those legal arguments would soon be overshadowed by something much stranger.

      A few weeks after the case was filed, Schmidt found out he was being investigated. According to a court declaration made by Schmidt and his colleagues, someone had called one of Schmidt’s lawyer friends in Colorado to ask some strange questions, claiming it was for a project “profiling up-and-coming labor lawyers in the US.” What was the nature of his relationship with the plaintiff? Who was the driving force behind the lawsuit? Calls were also allegedly made to acquaintances of Schmidt’s client, Spencer Meyer, with a similar proposal to profile “up-and-coming researchers in environmental conservation.”

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • The Bahamas Just Issued A Travel Warning To The United States

      The Bahamas issued a travel warning to the United States on Friday, cautioning its citizens about police violence in the country.

      “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigration has taken a note of the recent tensions in some American cities over shootings of young black males by police officers,” the statement read. “We wish to advise all Bahamians traveling to the US but especially to the affected cities to exercise appropriate caution generally. In particular young males are asked to exercise extreme caution in affected cities in their interactions with the police. Do not be confrontational and cooperate.”

      The statement follows the tragic deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling at the hands of police earlier this week, as well as five officers in Dallas in a sniper attack on Thursday.

    • Pundits Didn’t Waste Any Time Attacking Black Lives Matter As Dallas Tragedy Unfolded

      Despite the charged rhetoric, Black Lives Matter demonstrators were far from adversarial toward the Dallas police, even as they peacefully protested police shootings and racist policing. In the hours before the officers were attacked, the police force Twitter account was tweeting pictures of officers posing and smiling with demonstrators.

    • Man Wrongly Accused in Dallas: ‘It Was Persecution’

      Last night, Mark Hughes was the most wanted man in America. As the suspected shooter at a Dallas Black Lives Matter protest in which five police officers were killed, Hughes’ face was plastered across network news and social media before he even knew.

      “We were here just for a peaceful protest. He was allowing himself to carry a firearm, but that’s his constitutional right,” said Cory Hughes, one of the Dallas protest organizers and the wrongly accused’s brother.

      “I don’t know what to say,” the misidentified suspect Hughes said. “I could have easily been shot.”

      At the time he was accused, Hughes hadn’t even checked his social media feeds.

    • Why Alton Sterling and Philando Castile Are Dead

      We have too much law enforcement, too deeply enmeshed in our lives, and that fact is making us less, not more safe.

    • Rep. Richmond Calls on DOJ to Investigate Alton Sterling Killing

      A congressman is calling on the Justice Department to investigate the fatal shooting by Baton Rouge, La. police of a black man who was on the ground, in the process of being arrested.

      Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) made the request, after a video of the slaying went viral Tuesday night, sparking outrage on social media and protests in Baton Rouge. Alton Sterling, 37, was killed by two cops early Tuesday morning, after they were called to a convenience store, having received an anonymous report about a man with a gun.

    • Activist DeRay Mckesson, Reporters Arrested In Baton Rouge Protest

      Police arrested Deray Mckesson, one of the leaders of Black Lives Matter, and two journalists during a protest against police violence in Baton Rouge Saturday night.

      Mckesson was taken into custody as he live streamed the encounter on Perisope.

      The East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office said that 101 people were being held in the parish jail, the Associated Press reported.

    • Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson arrested by Baton Rouge police

      DeRay McKesson, one of the most prominent activists associated with the police reform protest movement, was arrested in Baton Rouge, where he traveled earlier Saturday to demonstrate in solidarity with residents angered by the recent death of Alton Sterling after an officer-involved shooting that was captured on video.

      McKesson was taken into custody around 11 p.m. in what two fellow activists who witnessed it described as a physically violent arrest.

    • Three years after taking off Guy Fawkes mask, Kentucky Anon indicted

      Federal prosecutors in Kentucky have formally indicted the man who revealed himself as “KYAnonymous” more than three years ago.

      Deric Lostutter was charged Thursday under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the notorious anti-hacking statute that dates back to the 1980s.

      The case stretches back several years, to 2012. After The New York Times published an account late that year of a horrific rape against a teenage girl in Steubenville, Ohio, an online vigilante campaign was started. Spearheaded by someone calling himself “KYAnonymous,” the campaign targeted local officials whom the vigilantes felt weren’t prosecuting the rape investigation seriously because the alleged perpetrators were high school football players.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • NBC Universal Scores Patent to Detect and Target Pirates

        NBC Universal has patented a new technology that can detect high volume file-sharing swarms, including those using BitTorrent. The system is set up to detect popular pirated files and gathers data that can be used for anti-piracy purposes, business intelligence, and to help ISPs relieve strain on their networks.

07.10.16

Links 10/7/2016: DebConf17 Plans, Linux AIO Fedora

Posted in News Roundup at 4:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • What If Linux Users Made Movies!

    I am just trying to imagine a few movies made by Linux lovers and for Linux loving audience. If such thing happens, what would be the movies look like? What would be their title?

  • Download Linux Voice issue 20

    Issue 20 of Linux Voice is nine months old, so we’re releasing it under the Creative Commons BY-SA license. You can share and modify all content from the magazine (apart from adverts), providing you credit Linux Voice as the original source and retain the same license.

  • Linux Desktop Operating System Share Crosses 2% For The First Time Ever [Ed: Linux at 2% is nonsense, especially if one counts everything (like ChromeOS). Microsoft connections to the source noteworthy.]

    According to the latest June 2016 numbers released by a data analytics firm, for the first time ever, Linux distributions have crossed 2% marketshare on the desktop. While this number remain controversial, it’s no denying the fact that Linux is continuously gaining ground and making new users.

  • Server

    • A checklist for Docker in the Enterprise

      Docker is extremely popular with developers, having gone as a product from zero to pretty much everywhere in a few years.

      I started tinkering with Docker three years ago, got it going in a relatively small corp (700 employees) in a relatively unregulated environment. This was great fun: we set up our own registry, installed Docker on our development servers, installed Jenkins plugins to use Docker containers in our CI pipeline, even wrote our own build tool to get over the limitations of Dockerfiles.

      I now work for an organisation working in arguably the most heavily regulated industry, with over 100K employees. The IT security department itself is bigger than the entire company I used to work for.

  • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • Trying The Radeon RX 480 & R9 Fury With The AMDGPU Code For Linux 4.8

        With the main batch of Radeon/AMDGPU driver changes ready for DRM-Next that will in turn land for the Linux 4.8 kernel, I’ve begun testing this new code with various AMD GPUs. Here are my AMDGPU results when comparing Linux 4.7 Git to this code that’s coming for Linux 4.8 with a Radeon R9 Fury and RX 480.

        Yesterday I built a fresh Ubuntu kernel of this new drm-next-4.8 Radeon/AMDGPU material merged back atop its Linux 4.7 drm-fixes code. This was pointed out by Alex in the forums due to not all of the drm-fixes being mainlined yet for the RX 480. If you are interested in trying out this Linux 4.7 drm-fixes + drm-next-4.8 kernel for Radeon/AMDGPU, you can find it on Phoronix.net: linux-image-4.7.0-rc5-4.8-next-plus-fixes_4.7.0-rc5-4.8-next-plus-fixes-1_amd64.deb.

      • Mesa 12 released, Vulkan for Intel, OpenGL 4.3 and more for open source graphics users

        Wow, Mesa 12 has officially been released and it’s a huge release for them! Intel now supports Vulkan, their OpenGL is up to 4.3 and more.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • [Dolphin] Checksums made easy

        Adding checksums to the Dolphin’s Properties dialog is something that has been on my TODO list for a while. I always try to verify the integrity of what I manually download from the Internet (and you should too). Yet, tools such as md5sum, sha1sum and friends are annoying to use (though not as annoying as checking GPG signatures), even for those who are familiar with the command line.

      • A new name, the rise of ${YourChoice}
      • What happened to Kate in Randa?

        This years topic for the Randa meeting, was multi-platform end-user application development. That was a golden opportunity to work on the Windows and Mac versions.

      • The Developers Conference and Br-Print3D
      • KDE Frameworks 5.24.0 Released for KDE Plasma 5.7, Improves Many Breeze Icons

        Today, July 9, 2016, KDE announced the release of the KDE Frameworks 5.24.0 collection of over 70 add-ons for the Qt5 GUI toolkit, just in time for the KDE Plasma 5.7 desktop environment.

      • Release of KDE Frameworks 5.24.0
      • KDE Frameworks 5.24 Released

        KDE Frameworks 5.24.0 was released today as the newest version of these KDE libraries to go along with the recent release of Plasma 5.7.

        KDE Frameworks 5.24 features many new/improved Breeze icons, numerous KHTML fixes/changes, KIO improvements, numerous KTextEditor enhancements, a plethora of KWayland improvements, and various other library updates.

      • KDE Plasma – Ultimate Desktop Environment For Linux

        You never need to compromise on anything, when using a Linux desktop. That is the whole idea behind the innovative and advanced desktop environment for Linux. KDE is developed to be a free libre software and a plasma desktop environment to be run on Linux and Windows environments. The KDE community has went a long way to create a free environment for daily users to meet their regular computing needs, as well as providing the developers of the system with ultimate solutions to enhance and enrich the software to a great extent.

  • Distributions

    • Tiny Core Linux 7.2 Released With New Features — A Blazing Fast 16MB Linux Distro

      The Core Project has recently announced the release of Tiny Core Linux 7.2. Tiny Core Linux is one of the smallest operating systems based on Linux kernel. TinyCore, the operating system’s popular version, is just 16MB in size and comes with a simple and fast GUI.

    • HandyLinux Is a Great Toolbox for Linux Newbies

      HandyLinux is just that. It is a handy Linux distro that is very welcoming to Linux newbies. However, its dumbed-down handling of the Xfce desktop environment will leave more experienced Linux users craving for something a bit more advanced.

      The developers have to standardize their use of English in the English language version. Too many slips into French detract from the attractiveness of this distro for English-only users. Looks can be deceiving, though. HandyLinux performs admirably.

    • Parrot Security OS 3.0 Ethical Hacking Distro Lands for Raspberry Pi, Cubieboard

      Frozenbox Network, the developer of the Parrot Security OS ethical hacking distribution for personal computers and embedded devices, announced the release of Raspberry Pi and Cubieboard 4 binary images for Parrot Security OS 3.0.

    • Reviews

      • Lenovo G50 & CentOS 7.2 Gnome – Perfection asymptote

        I’m even more pleased with how the Gnome edition turned out over the KDE attempt. True, KDE has a more natural workflow, but it struggled in some key areas, like external devices, media control, browser plugins and such. Gnome compensates for all these, except the somewhat inefficient way of use. But CentOS 7.2 really shines.

        We did have issues, and it was a bumpy ride, but no more. Setup correctly, not a single old error has crept up back on me since, and the Wireless network has been as steady as a rock through hundreds of GB of online entertainment for people of adult age. I have all the media plugins and codecs, and with VLC in control, I don’t care about anything else to be frank. All my programs work, and if I had Office, I’d never need Windows. As close as perfect as it gets in our crude, harsh reality. A server distro that was never meant to be used in the home environment. Go figure.

        So perfection lies somewhere in between these versions, and it’s nothing CentOS does badly on its own. Here’s a bigger question. What if there is a desktop environment that potentially blends the goods of both KDE and Gnome? The layout and ergonomics of the former, the accessibility to peripherals of the latter? Do you know what my next task is? See if CentOS 7 works well with Xfce as its skin. That should be mega interesting. This also makes me wanna test Fedora 24, so stay tuned.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Nice Concept, Shame About The Hardware And Software

        Edsger Dijkstra (or Donald Knuth or maybe someone else) noted that testing can only confirm the presence of bugs. It has also been noted that software wears in rather than wears out. So, would you rather run software which was written last week by an obnoxious kid or would you rather run software which has been run on five million computers for 10 years? The latter reduces problems by at least a factor of 10. Although, the remainder can surprise. As examples, a critical Microsoft Windows bug was found after 15 years and a severe GNU bug was found after 18 years. Some of the innocuous but more numerous bugs may hang around for more than 25 years before being fixed.

      • Red Hat open source awards for two women

        Red Hat has made presentations to two women under its Women in Open Source Award initiative which was started by the company last year.

        This year’s awards were given to Jessica McKellar, director of engineering and chief of staff to the vice-president of engineering at Dropbox, and Preeti Murthy, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University.

      • Fedora

    • Debian Family

      • Debian Edu 8 Operating System – Linux Solution for Your School

        Based on the latest Debian GNU/Linux 8.5, Debian Edu 8 is now available for any educational institution, such as schools or universities that want to leave bloated and expensive Microsoft Windows for a fresh, Linux kernel-based OS that offers them the freedom they need to fully customize the installation, as well as the unbeatable stability of Debian.

      • The State Of Debian’s Paid Long Term Support Project

        Started a few years back was Debian’s Long-Term Support (LTS) project whereby releases were given five years of security support and this would also allow users to skip a release. This project, which is financed by sponsors, continues to make progress and provide for a more secure and longer-supported Debian.

        Raphaël Hertzog presented at this week’s DebConf 16 Cape Town about the Debian LTS project, how it’s managed, what is done to make it transparent, how the sponsorship/paid work is going, etc.

      • DebConf17 Debian Conference to Take Place August 6-12, 2017 in Montréal, Canada

        Today, July 9, 2016, Laura Arjona Reina from the Debian Project informed the Debian GNU/Linux community that the DebConf16 developer conference is now over, and the dates for the next year’s DebConf17 event have been set.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Mycroft: The open source answer to natural language platforms

            We’re thrilled to be working with Mycroft, the open source answer to proprietary natural language platform. Mycroft has adopted Ubuntu Core and Snaps to deliver their software to Mycroft hardware, as well as Snaps to enable desktop users to install the software regardless of the Linux distribution they are using! CEO of Mycroft, Joshua Montgomery, explains more within his piece below.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Chromium OS for SBCs Project Needs Your Help to Continue Full-Scale Work

      Softpedia was informed today by Dylan Callahan from the Chromium OS for SBCs (Single-Board Computers) project that they are looking for new team members to continue full-scale work.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • How to recover deleted text messages on your Android smartphone
        • Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Gets Android 6.1 Marshmallow Update
        • Dominant Brands in Iran’s Android Market

          It doesn’t matter where you look, if you don’t speak English in Iran, it’s hard for you to use Google Play and believe me not all the android users in the country speak Engish. The other factor is the developers and companies which are developing Farsi apps for the domestic Market. Many of the applications in Google Play are not designed for the culture and Iranians needs. And if there is an app which Iranian users could use it’s probably in English so it becomes obsolete for the users. And apart from that Cafe Bazaar is an android app market designed for the Iranians. You might say that Iranian developers could submit their app in Google Play, keep in mind that we live in Iran so we don’t have an international payment system. And if developers want to submit their apps on Google Play they have to acquire a credit card or even open a pseudo company in another country to make everything legal to launch their app on Google Play. And imagine they do, who’s going to use that? I guess not every Iranian, because we don’t have a credit card to purchase apps or make in-App-Purchases from Google Play. So with all these facts in mind Cafe Bazaar is the only solution for Iranian android app market. And with their recent contracts with Supercell and many other major companies, Iranians can now use in-App-Purchase with the Rial currency, and their bank debit cards online. Not to mention that recently even Clash of Clans launched their game in Farsi language for Iranian users. With these initiatives, we guess Iran is a good market for foreign companies to work with Iranian android marketplaces for their payment system, and even to launch their product in Farsi language to generate more revenue from Iran’s market. 29M android users only in Cafe Bazaar is a big number for any company in the world.

Free Software/Open Source

  • OCOW summit 2016

    I’ve recently had the pleasure to visit Beijing and attend the 11th edition of the “Open Source China Open Source World” summit, organized by the China OSS Promotion Union (COPU). COPU is a non-government organization composed of companies, communities and other players in the software industry, with the goal of promoting the development of Linux and OSS in China. (You can find more information on their website.)

  • Cosmos Laundromat wins SIGGRAPH 2016 Computer Animation Festival Jury’s Choice Award

    A few days ago we wrote about three Blender-made films being selected for the SIGGRAPH 43rd annual Computer Animation Festival. Today we are happy to announce that Cosmos Laundromat Open Movie (by Blender Institute) has won the Jury’s Choice Award!

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD 11.0 Reaches Beta

      BSD fans looking to do some testing this weekend can try out the beta of the upcoming FreeBSD 11.0.

      FreeBSD 11.0 is bringing updated KMS drivers, Linux binary compatibility layer improvements, UEFI improvements, Bhyve virtualization improvements, and a plethora of other work. Those not yet familiar with FreeBSD 11 can see the tentative release notes and what’s new guide.

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Leftovers

  • Ashley Madison admits using fembots to lure men into spending money

    After nearly a year of radio silence, the infidelity hookup site Ashley Madison has finally released a statement about what’s next for the company. Among other things, the company’s new executive team admits that it used fembots to lure men into paying to join the site, which promised the men discreet affairs with willing women.

    In fall 2015, Ashley Madison made headlines when a hacker or hackers known as Impact Team released massive data dumps from the company’s source code, member databases, and then-CEO Noel Biderman’s e-mail. The member database contained the names of 34 thousand people trying to have extra-marital affairs, and the revelations induced at least one man to commit suicide. In the wake of the data breach, a number of people have filed lawsuits against the company, and the company is currently under investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission.

    Last year, as part of an investigation into the data dump, I published a series of articles at Gizmodo exposing how the company used female chatbots called “hosts” or “engagers” to trick men into paying for Ashley Madison’s services. The scam was simple: when a man signed up for a free account, he almost immediately got a chat or private message from a “woman” whose profile showed a few sexy pictures. To reply to his new lady friend, the man had to pay for an account. In reality, that lady was a few lines of PHP code.

  • “I recieved a free or discounted product in return for an honest review”

    My experiences with Amazon reviewing have been somewhat unusual. A review of a smart switch I wrote received enough attention that the vendor pulled the product from Amazon. At the time of writing, I’m ranked as around the 2750th best reviewer on Amazon despite having a total of 18 reviews. But the world of Amazon reviews is even stranger than that, and the past couple of weeks have given me some insight into it.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • The War on Weed Part II: Monsanto, Bayer, and the Push for Corporate Cannabis

      As detailed in Part I of this article, the health benefits of cannabis are now well established. It is a cheap, natural alternative effective for a broad range of conditions, and the non-psychoactive form known as hemp has thousands of industrial uses. At one time, cannabis was one of the world’s most important crops. There have been no recorded deaths from cannabis overdose in the US, compared to about 30,000 deaths annually from alcohol abuse (not counting auto accidents), and 100,000 deaths annually from prescription drugs taken as directed. Yet cannabis remains a Schedule I controlled substance (“a deadly dangerous drug with no medical use and high potential for abuse”), illegal to be sold or grown in the US.

      Powerful corporate interests no doubt had a hand in keeping cannabis off the market. The question now is why they have suddenly gotten on the bandwagon for its legalization. According to an April 2014 article in The Washington Times, the big money behind the recent push for legalization has come, not from a grassroots movement, but from a few very wealthy individuals with links to Big Ag and Big Pharma.

    • Senate Advances GM Food Labeling Bill That Would Actually Weaken State Rules, Exempt Key Products

      Legislation that would upend state laws mandating labels for genetically modified (GM) foods passed a key procedural vote in the Senate.

      The bill, which would create a nationwide system for identifying some GM foods, cleared a motion to end debate on Wednesday, by a 65-32 vote.

      A simple majority is now needed for the legislation to pass a full Senate vote, which is expected before the week is over.

      Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, and Alaska have all passed legislation in recent years forcing companies to overtly label products of transgenic agriculture. They will be ordered to scrap their rules if the legislation passes both houses and is signed into law by President Obama.

    • ‘Organic Traitors’ Team Up With Monsanto and Big Food Lobby to Keep Consumers in the Dark About GMOs

      Organic brands owned by large corporations who are members of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), the Organic Trade Association (OTA), Whole Foods Market, UNFI (United Natural Foods) and a group of sell-out non-profit organizations have surrendered to Monsanto and corporate agribusiness by embracing the latest version of the DARK Act, the Robert-Stabenow Senate bill, that if passed, will nullify the Vermont law requiring mandatory GMO labeling.

      Despite the fact that GMO- and pesticide-contaminated foods are dangerous; that at least 90 percent of American consumers want to know whether or not their food is genetically engineered; and that the now-enacted Vermont GMO labeling law is already forcing major food corporations (General Mills, Campbell’s, Kellogg’s, Danone, ConAgra, Pepsi, Frito-Lay, Coca-Cola, Mars, Hershey’s, Wonder Bread, Starbucks and others) either to disclose GMOs in their products or reformulate and remove GMOs, a group of so-called organic leaders have gone over to the dark side.

    • Bikini islanders still deal with fallout of US nuclear tests, 70 years later

      In the summer of 1946, “Bikini” was all over the news. It’s the name of a small atoll – a circular group of coral islands – within the remote mid-Pacific island chain called the Marshall Islands. The United States had assumed control of the former Japanese territory after the end of World War II, just a few months earlier.

      The United States soon came up with some very big plans for the little atoll of Bikini. After forcing the 167 residents to relocate to another atoll, they started to prepare Bikini as an atomic bomb test site. Two test bombings scheduled for that summer were intended to be very visible demonstrations of the United States’ newly acquired nuclear might. Media coverage of the happenings at Bikini was extensive, and public interest ran very high. Who could have foreseen that even now – 70 years later – the Marshall Islanders would still be suffering the aftershocks from the nuclear bomb testing on Bikini Atoll?

    • How the Corporate Food Industry Destroys Democracy

      On July 1, Vermont implemented a law requiring disclosure labels on all food products that contain genetically engineered ingredients, also known as genetically modified organisms or GMOs.

    • Monsanto Tries to Build a Society of GMO and Pesticide Devotees, One Child at a Time

      The International Food Information Council is a front group funded by some of biggest names in biotech and junk food: Bayer, Dow, DuPont, Coca-Cola, Kellogg, Nestle and more. The American Farm Bureau Federation, according to SourceWatch, is a “right-wing lobbying front for big agribusiness and agribusiness-related industries that works to defeat labor and environmental initiatives, including climate change legislation.” The organization is adamantly against GMO labels, and even spoke out against Roberts’ and Stabenow’s deal for being too lenient.

  • Security

    • LWN.net Weekly Edition for June 30, 2016
    • TP-Link forgets to register domain name, leaves config pages open to hijack

      In common with many other vendors, TP-Link, one of the world’s biggest sellers of Wi-Fi access points and home routers, has a domain name that owners of the hardware can use to quickly get to their router’s configuration page. Unlike most other vendors, however, it appears that TP-Link has failed to renew its registration for the domain, leaving it available for anyone to buy. Any owner of the domain could feasibly use it for fake administration pages to phish credentials or upload bogus firmware. This omission was spotted by Amitay Dan, CEO of Cybermoon, and posted to the Bugtraq mailing list last week.

    • Experimenting with Post-Quantum Cryptography

      The study of cryptographic primitives that remain secure even against quantum computers is called “post-quantum cryptography”. Today we’re announcing an experiment in Chrome where a small fraction of connections between desktop Chrome and Google’s servers will use a post-quantum key-exchange algorithm in addition to the elliptic-curve key-exchange algorithm that would typically be used. By adding a post-quantum algorithm on top of the existing one, we are able to experiment without affecting user security. The post-quantum algorithm might turn out to be breakable even with today’s computers, in which case the elliptic-curve algorithm will still provide the best security that today’s technology can offer. Alternatively, if the post-quantum algorithm turns out to be secure then it’ll protect the connection even against a future, quantum computer.

    • HTTPS crypto’s days are numbered. Here’s how Google wants to save it

      Like many forms of encryption in use today, HTTPS protections are on the brink of a collapse that could bring down the world as we know it. Hanging in the balance are most encrypted communications sent over the last several decades. On Thursday, Google unveiled an experiment designed to head off, or at least lessen, the catastrophe.

      In the coming months, Google servers will add a new, experimental cryptographic algorithm to the more established elliptic curve algorithm it has been using for the past few years to help encrypt HTTPS communications. The algorithm—which goes by the wonky name “Ring Learning With Errors”—is a method of exchanging cryptographic keys that’s currently considered one of the great new hopes in the age of quantum computing. Like other forms of public key encryption, it allows two parties who have never met to encrypt their communications, making it ideal for Internet usage.

    • Tokens without revocation
    • Liveness

      The mistake I made with PKI tokens was in not realizing how important Liveness was. The mistake was based on the age old error of confusing authentication with authorization. Since a Keystone token is used for both, I was confused into thinking that the primary importance was on authentication, but the reality is that the most important thing a token tells you is information essential to making an authorization decision.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • John Prescott: Ex-deputy PM says Iraq War was illegal

      John Prescott, who was deputy prime minister when Britain went to war with Iraq in 2003, says the invasion by UK and US forces was “illegal”.

      Writing in the Sunday Mirror, he said he would live with the “catastrophic decision” for the rest of his life.

      Lord Prescott said he now agreed “with great sadness and anger” with former UN secretary general Kofi Annan that the war was illegal.

    • The Warfare Comes Home

      The recent killings in Baton Rouge, Minneapolis and Dallas recall the racial violence of the 1960s which also occurred against a backdrop of U.S. warfare, a parallel that ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern notes.

    • Neocons linked to Tea Party paid for Andrea Leadsom’s flights to US

      A controversial rightwing American lobbying group that denies climate change science and promotes gun ownership paid for the Tory prime ministerial hopeful Andrea Leadsom to fly to the United States to attend its conferences.

      The American Legislative Exchange Council – Alec – is a neoconservative organisation with close links to members of the Tea Party movement. Championed by supporters of the free market, it has been attacked by critics for exerting a “powerful and undemocratic” influence on US politics.

      It is part funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, David and Charles, whose empire spans mining, chemicals and finance. Leadsom’s links to the council will be scrutinised closely by those trying to gauge her political leanings.

      In the US the council produces hundreds of putative bills that it seeks to have made into law by US legislators who attend its conferences, where they are treated to generous corporate hospitality at lavish cigar parties.

    • The Legal and Ethical Ramifications of Letting Police Kill Suspects With Robots

      Thursday night, after a shocking night of violence in which five police officers were killed by snipers, Dallas police took the unprecedented step of using a remote-controlled “bomb robot” to kill one of the suspects. Now that law enforcement in America have killed a suspect remotely, it’s important to consider the legality of the decision—and what might happen next time.

      State laws generally allow law enforcement to legally use lethal force against a suspect if he or she poses an “imminent threat” to the officer or other innocent parties, which is underscored by a standard of whether the force is “proportional and necessary.” A 1985 Supreme Court case called Tennessee v. Garner allows for deadly force if a fleeing suspect poses “a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.”

      Does the means of killing matter for that legal standard? In this case, probably not, according to several legal experts I spoke to. The bomb disposal robot that turned into an improvised remotely triggered killing machine wasn’t autonomous and can, in this instance, be looked at as a tool that was used to diminish the threat suspect Micah Johnson posed to Dallas police officers.

    • Why it Matters the Dallas Police Used a Drone to Kill Someone in America

      The Dallas police ended a standoff with the gunman who killed five officers with a tactic that is unprecedented: it blew him up using a robot.

      This represents the first time in American history that a drone (wheels for now, maybe wings later) was used to kill an American citizen on American soil.

    • How the Dallas Police Used an Improvised Killer Robot to Take Down the Gunman

      Following the tragic deaths of five police officers in Dallas, Texas, during a rally for Alton Sterling and Philando Castile on Thursday night, the Dallas Police Department deployed a small robot designed to investigate and safely discharge explosives.

      Officers attached a bomb to the robot ad hoc-style — detonating it and killing the sniper while keeping the investigators out of harm’s way.

      According to companies that manufacture bomb-disposal robots interviewed by The Intercept, none were aware of their bots ever being turned into lethal weapons, though one company acknowledged the robots could be adapted to hold weapons.

    • USA Today Ducking the Question of Militarism

      The top story for USA Today on July 8, 2016: Some Western countries aren’t spending enough money on weapons of war.

      “NATO Nations Ducking the Check” was the headline across the top of the front page. “Despite Pledges, Some NATO Members Still Falling Behind on Defense Spending” was the online version (7/7/16).

    • The Bomb Robot Drone Killing Precedent

      As you’ve no doubt heard, sniper(s) attacked the police protecting a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas last night, killing 5 cops. Dallas Police have released the name of one perpetrator, who was killed by police: Micah Johnson. Johnson was apparently an Army veteran; he was what experts deemed “tactically professional” based on review of the attack.

    • Families of soldiers killed in Iraq vow to sue Tony Blair for ‘every penny’ in ground-breaking lawsuit

      Tony Blair will be pursued through the courts for “every penny” of the fortune he has earned since leaving Downing Street, the families of soldiers killed in Iraq vowed.

      Mr Blair faces a civil law suit over allegations he abused his power as prime minister to wage war in Iraq. The damages, according to legal sources close to the case, are unlimited.

      A well-placed source told The Telegraph that the Chilcot report appeared to provide grounds for the launch of a lawsuit.

      “It gives us a lot of threads to pursue and those threads make a powerful rope to catch him,” said the source.

    • Time to talk in Syria

      As the horrific carnage in Syria continues, a depressingly familiar chorus is rising from Washington. The new consensus is the same as it was in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan: Bombing isn’t working, so let’s bomb more. A familiar coalition — generals, defense contractors, and politicians, along with think tanks and much of the press — is demanding escalation of our military campaign in Syria. There may be a limit to how many unwinnable wars the United States wants to wage in the Middle East, but it evidently has not yet been reached.

    • Je Suis Istanbul (& Dhaka & Baghdad & Medina)

      I was born at the tail end of 1995. I vaguely remember learning that our President was a man named Bill Clinton, but I do not remember anything significant about the political world until it was redefined on September 11, 2001. Since then, it feels like one of the only constants in my life has been, unfortunately, instability in the Middle East. I know now that the roots of radicalism in the Middle East extend even further back and that US and Western intervention has fanned the flames for many decades, but what I and many others tend to forget is that these places are more than war zones on our TV screens, that life goes on everywhere.

    • Tomas Young Courageously Debunked the Sanitized Image of the Iraq War

      Tomas Young’s long flight from a military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, to Walter Reed near Washington, DC, left his paralyzed body with the beginnings of pressure sores that exposed raw bone at spots where no oxygen reached the skin. A bald spot on the back of his head marked the place where gravity pressed it against the airplane cot on which his drugged, inert body was borne back to the States.

      When Tomas finally came to, his first view was his mother’s face looming over him. “Mommy,” he cried, confirming a story I once heard an Army commander tell: when the soldier is hit, the immediate plea is for mother, not soon — right now. “Mommy,” two syllables. Tomas was suddenly five years old. Mommy and Tomas wept together for half an hour.

      The bullet that felled Tomas in Sadr City severed his spine at the T4 level. Standing next to his bed at Walter Reed, his mother Cathy Smith explained that her son was now paralyzed from the nipples down. Below the chest he is totally without control or sensation, a rag doll. Tomas can’t cough, Tomas can’t walk, and — in the language of the Army barracks — Tomas “can’t get it up.”

    • Brexit Vote and Russia Sanctions Show Weakness of US Diplomacy

      With the media in a frenzy in the wake of the Brexit vote, one aspect of the results that has been utterly overlooked is the impact, or lack thereof, of the campaigning by US President Barack Obama for Britain to remain in the EU. And while the results of the referendum will have far-reaching ramifications in Britain – the immigrant community has already seen a nearly 60% increase in racist attacks and abuse reported – perhaps one of the most significant in terms of international politics is the realization of just how ineffectual the US president is in swaying public opinion on the other side of the Atlantic.

    • If You Like Obama, You’ll Love Trump!

      Oh, what fun we have with the nonsense that flows out of the mouth of Donald J. Trump. The man is suffocatingly banal, racist, dishonest, inarticulate, uninformed, uneducated, narcissistic, a bully, just plain stupid, and an asshole (or in the immortal words of my people — a schmuck!) I would guess that as the boss of his own enterprises for many years, with the power and the habit of firing people, he eventually became deeply accustomed to not having his thoughts seriously questioned or challenged, to the extent that he really believes the crap that comes out of his mouth and doesn’t really understand what others actually think of him.

    • [Older] In South Sudan, It’s Hard to Tell the Soldiers From the Criminals

      Ding Col Dau Ding was successful, handsome, and fit. Born in Britain, he was an avid soccer player as a boy. As a man, he was a generous physician with an urge to give back to his ancestral homeland.

      One thing he wasn’t was murdered. At least, that’s the official position of the office of South Sudan’s president.

    • [Older] Why Was Omar Mateen Researching Specific Law Enforcement Offices before His Attack?

      I wish, with this confirmation, Schiff had committed to ask more questions about this. We need to try to understand why FBI’s sting didn’t work here, because if stings don’t work for the actual terrorists FBI shouldn’t be doing them (this is a point that bizarrely did not get raised in this apology for stings from Politico).

    • Obama drone casualty numbers a fraction of those recorded by the Bureau

      The US government today claimed it has killed between 64 and 116 “non-combatants” in 473 counter-terrorism strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya between January 2009 and the end of 2015.

      This is a fraction of the 380 to 801 civilian casualty range recorded by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism from reports by local and international journalists, NGO investigators, leaked government documents, court papers and the result of field investigations.

      While the number of civilian casualties recorded by the Bureau is six times higher than the US Government’s figure, the assessments of the minimum total number of people killed were strikingly similar. The White House put this figure at 2,436, whilst the Bureau has recorded 2,753.

    • Where’s the US Chilcot Report? Blame Obama, Hillary, Biden and Kerry

      Nothing exposes the fraud of so-called “peace candidate” Barack Obama more than his handling of the illegal government propaganda campaign and eventual war on Iraq. As the UK reads and debates the Chilcot report investigating the Blair government’s role in lying that country into the war, there is no notice in the US that Obama announced before taking office in late 2008 there would be no similar investigation in the US.

      It was of course George Bush and his neocons from the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) gang that seized on the September 11, 2001 attacks to manipulate events into an opportunity to wage offensive war on Iraq. And it was the Democrats in the U.S. Senate, led by Clinton, Kerry, Biden et. al., who provided the votes a year after 9/11 that green-lighted the war.

      We can know because of a rather small number of journalists including this writer the extent and depth of the massive propaganda campaign, coordinated with and exploiting a willing corporate news media, that greased the skids for the war. I co-authored books in 2003 and 2006 summarizing what was known at the time, and in 2008 David Barstow release his mind-blowing and Pulitzer winning investigation of the Pentagon Pundits program that turned the major TV networks, beginning in 2002, into third party advocates for Cheney and Rumsfeld, through puppetry using retired military analysts who were fed and regurgitated the Bush talking points.

    • Europeans Contest US Anti-Russian Hype

      A significant crack has been unexpectedly opened in the wall of Europe’s disciplined obedience to the United States. I’m not only referring to the possible long-term consequences for U.S.-European relations in the wake of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, but the unlikely blow against Washington’s information war on Moscow delivered by Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who a week ago shockingly accused the North Atlantic Treaty Organization of “war-mongering” against Russia.

    • Afghan Troop Withdrawal Slows Further: 8,400 to Remain Beyond Obama

      The number of US soldiers who will remain in Afghanistan by the year’s end was upwardly revised, once again, by President Obama, who warned that gains by the Taliban and terrorist organizations continue to threaten the stability of the country.

      In a statement issued from the Roosevelt Room on Wednesday, the President said he would leave 8,400 US troops in Afghanistan “into next year through the end of [his] administration.” Obama said he made the decision based on recommendations from top military brass and his national security staff.

      There are roughly 10,000 troops currently stationed in the country—the last remnants of America’s longest running war.

    • State Department Claims to Investigate Honduras ‘Kill List’ as House Dems Decry US Aid to Repressive Regime

      Yet since a U.S.-backed military coup in 2009, Honduras has become one of the most dangerous places in the world for activists, according to UK-based rights group Global Witness.

      Indeed, news of the department’s investigation emerged a day after another member of Cáceres’ organization of Indigenous land defenders was killed in Honduras.

      In protest, several members of Congress published an op-ed in the Guardian calling to an end to U.S. military aid to Honduras on the same day the State Department announced its investigation.

    • Where Did the American Century Go?

      Vladimir Putin recently manned up and admitted it. The United States remains the planet’s sole superpower, as it has been since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. “America,” the Russian president said, “is a great power. Today, probably, the only superpower. We accept that.”

      Think of us, in fact, as the default superpower in an ever more recalcitrant world.

    • Needed: An EU Push on Palestine Peace

      As the European Union displays more disunion with Brexit and threats of other exits, a renewed E.U. push for an Israel-Palestine peace accord could give Europe a needed sense of mission, suggests ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

    • ISIS warning: What happened in Dhaka was a glimpse, won’t stop till there’s sharia around the world

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Some Legislative Responses to Clinton’s Email Scandal

      The Republicans have reverted to their natural “Benghazi witchhunt” form in the wake of Jim Comey’s announcement Tuesday that Hillary Clinton and her aides should not be charged, with Comey scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee at 10 AM.

      Paul Ryan wrote a letter asking James Clapper to withhold classified briefings from Hillary. And the House Intelligence Committee is even considering a bill to prevent people who have mishandled classified information from getting clearances.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Fate of Keystone XL Pipeline Could Be Decided in a Texas Courtroom Before NAFTA Tribunal Considers TransCanada’s Suit

      Texas landowner Michael Bishop continues to challenge TransCanada’s right to build the southern route of the Keystone XL pipeline, renamed the Gulf Coast pipeline when the project was divided into segments. Meanwhile, TransCanada is suing the United States for not being granted the presidential permit needed in order to build the Keystone XL’s northern route. A win for Bishop in his suit against TransCanada Keystone Pipeline L.P. in Nacogdoches County District Court could complicate TransCanada’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) challenge.

      Bishop is suing TransCanada for “fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, misrepresentation, perjury, theft, bribery, and violating plaintiff’s rights as delineated under the Constitution of the State of Texas.” His case alleges TransCanada doesn’t rightfully possess common carrier status, which enabled the company to use eminent domain.

      On June 4, a judge in Nacogdoches County District Court heard motions by Bishop and TransCanada and made rulings that left Bishop’s case in play. The judge granted Bishop a continuance, giving him more time for discovery, and refused to hear TransCanada’s lawyers’ motion for a ”no-evidence summary judgment” against Bishop that would have stopped his case.

  • Finance

    • The halvening is upon us: Bitcoin’s reward for miners just dropped 50%

      The network saw its mining reward—the amount of bitcoin miners receive for confirming transaction—get cut in half earlier today (July 9), around 12:48 EST. The event occurs after every 210,000 blocks are mined, or confirmed, by the system.

    • [Older] Apple’s Tim Cook Has Billions of Reasons to Raise Money for the GOP

      Apple has billions of dollars stored in subsidiaries in offshore tax havens — about $181 billion, in fact — more than any other U.S. corporation. And he needs Republican help to be allowed to bring it back to the U.S. without paying the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate.

    • On strike against an 84-hour workweek

      WORKERS AT an International Paper factory in Delaware, Ohio are on strike against the company’s demand of unlimited overtime for up to 84 hours a week: 12 hours a day for all seven days.

      “[The company is] telling us, ‘Oh, we’re not going to use it,’” says Mike Schnitzler, who has worked at the factory for 21 years. “But if you’re not going to use it, why ask for it? We have to fight for what we believe in–there’s no family time or anything like that if you’re working seven days a week, 12 hours a day.”

      The 130 workers, members of the Columbus-based Teamsters Local 284, had been without a contract since last summer when the company decided in April to implement its “last, best and final offer,” which included the outrageous overtime provision.

      In response, Local 284 launched an unfair labor practice strike, declaring that International Paper was not negotiating in good faith.

    • In platform fight, Sanders loses on trade but wins on minimum wage

      Bernie Sanders’ campaign is declaring victory after striking deals with Hillary Clinton’s allies over climate change, health care and a $15-an-hour minimum wage as Democrats finalized the party’s 2016 platform.

      The primary rivals’ negotiators never found common ground on trade — with Clinton’s supporters voting down the Sanders backers’ language to specifically reject the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership. Sanders supporters were also frustrated to see their proposals denouncing Israeli settlements and banning fracking rejected.

    • “It’s About Letting Giant Corporations Rig the Rules”: Warren Skewers TPP

      Ahead of this weekend’s Democratic platform fight, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has once again taken aim at the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), skewering the corporate-friendly trade deal she says will allow for “open season on laws that make people safer.”

      Warren makes the remarks about the 12-nation trade deal, which still needs Congressional approval, to progressive activists in a video released Thursday by social change network CREDO Action.

      The deal, Warren says in the video, “isn’t about helping American workers set the rules. It’s about letting giant corporations rig the rules—on everything from patent protection to food safety standards —all to benefit themselves.”

      Even in the drafting process industry representatives could exert influence—but there was no voice to represent American workers or consumers, she says. “A rigged process produces a rigged outcome,” she says.

      One specific provision of the deal drawing Warren’s ire (as it has before) is the “wonky-sounding” Investor State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS.

    • Anti-TPP Amendment Fails at Heated Dem Platform Meeting

      When Democratic Party platform committee members arrived at the committee’s final session in Orlando, Florida, on Saturday morning, 700,000 signed petitions against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement had been delivered there to meet them.

      Yet despite passionate arguments and widespread public opposition to the deal, the committee voted down an amendment that would have opposed a Senate vote on the agreement.

    • Attacking Elizabeth Warren? Political Reporters Will Grant You Anonymity

      The fast rise of Sen. Elizabeth Warren within the Democratic Party has coincided with another phenomenon: the continual use by elite-media journalists of anonymous sources in articles that either criticize Warren directly or warn other politicians about the dangers of embracing her, her political style and the policies she advocates.

      That journalistic trend manifested itself most recently on Monday, in a piece by Ben White in Politico that quoted fully five anonymous sources — including “one top Democratic donor,” “one moderate Washington Democrat” and “one prominent hedge fund manager” — to the effect that Hillary Clinton would be making a major misstep by selecting Warren as her running mate. Warren is an expert in bankruptcy and predatory lending and a leading critic of the financial industry.

    • The Banks’ Big Squeeze: You’re Overdrafted, They’re Overpaid

      Almost two-thirds of Americans today — 63 percent — don’t have enough savings to cover an unexpected $500 expense. Anything from an emergency brake job to a refrigerator on the fritz could zero out their bank accounts.

      Most American households, in other words, are living on the financial edge. And that suits America’s biggest bank CEOs just fine. They love to see Americans desperately juggling credit cards and checking accounts to keep bills paid.

    • Democrats Must Fight To Defeat The Trans-Pacific Partnership

      The Democratic National Committee is meeting this weekend in Orlando to mark up a platform laying out the views and aspirations of the party. Up to this point, we have made good progress in helping to create the most progressive Democratic Party platform ever. But more needs to be done.

      One of the major amendments that will be debated during this meeting is to make it clear that the Democratic Party is against the Trans-Pacific Partnership and will oppose it coming to the floor of Congress during a lame-duck session. In my view, the trade deal would result in job losses in the United States, make the global race to the bottom even worse, harm the environment, undermine democracy and increase the price of prescription drugs for some of the poorest people in the world.

      This should not be controversial. It is the exact same position that Secretary Clinton and I have taken during the campaign, and opposition to the TPP is the position of the overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress.

    • As Workers at Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino Go on Strike, a Look at Trump’s Long History of Labor Abuse

      About a thousand housekeepers, cooks, bellmen and servers at Trump’s Taj Mahal Atlantic City casino went on strike on Friday and through the weekend demanding reinstatement of health, pension and other benefits eliminated during 2014 bankruptcy proceedings. This is only the latest in decades of labor disputes Donald Trump has faced at his hotels, casinos and resorts. Investigative reporter Wayne Barrett has been investigating Donald Trump for decades and says, “Trump’s pathway to success is littered with bodies.”

    • We Don’t Need Trump or Brexit to Reject the Credo of Neoliberal Market Inevitability

      In the wake of the June 23 Brexit vote, global media have bristled with headlines declaring the Leave victory to be the latest sign of a historic rejection of “globalization” by working-class voters on both sides of the Atlantic. While there is an element of truth in this analysis, it misses the deeper historical currents coursing beneath the dramatic headlines. If our politics seem disordered at the moment, the blame lies not with globalization alone but with the “There Is No Alternative” (TINA) philosophy of neoliberal market inevitability that has driven it for nearly four decades.

      British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher introduced the TINA acronym to the world in a 1980 policy speech that proclaimed “There Is No Alternative” to a global neoliberal capitalist order. Thatcher’s vision for this new order was predicated on the market-as-god economic philosophy she had distilled from the work of Austrian School economists such as Friedrich Hayek and her own fundamentalist Christian worldview. Western political life today has devolved into a series of increasingly desperate and inchoate reactions against a sense of fatal historical entrapment originally encoded in Thatcher’s TINA credo of capitalist inevitability. If this historical undercurrent is ignored, populist revolt will not produce much-needed democratic reform. It will instead be exploited by fascistic nationalist demagogues and turned into a dangerous search for political scapegoats.

    • In China, Walmart Retail Workers Walk Out over Unfair Scheduling

      About 70 Walmart workers began a wildcat strike July 1 against an unpopular new flexible scheduling system. They are reacting against a campaign of intimidation by Walmart China, which has been trying to coerce store workers to accept the new schedules since May.

      This strike, at a store in the southeastern city of Nanchang, is the culmination of a month and a half of discussion and mobilization among Walmart workers and organizers across China. It was preceded by small-scale symbolic protests. The day before the strike, a few Walmart workers in protest T-shirts leafleted inside a store in the southern city of Shenzhen, to inform workers about the scheduling system and their rights under labor law.

      Not all workers walked out at the Nanchang store, which managed to stay open. But clearly management was panicked over the unexpected action. Strikers also marched inside the store, chanting slogans. No picket line has been set up yet.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Andrea Leadsom: EU single market ‘is no longer a relevant term’
    • Tory leadership: Andrea Leadsom slammed for motherhood remarks
    • Andrea Leadsom says she’ll bring back fox hunting to improve animal welfare

      One of the contenders to be the next Conservative leader has said she wants to lift the ban on fox hunting, suggesting that to do so could improve animal welfare.

      Andrea Leadsom, who would automatically become the Prime Minister if elected by the Tories’ 150,000 members, said a “proper licensed regime” could be brought in after the lifting of the ban.

    • From finance to fox hunting, Britain’s Leadsom in her own words

      Andrea Leadsom was largely unknown to most British voters before the Brexit referendum but her upbeat argument that Britain could flourish outside the European Union resonated with voters, helping to steer the Leave campaign to a surprise victory.

    • Finally, we have two women in a leadership race – but one of them still wants to play the gender card
    • Tory women turn against Andrea Leadsom as motherhood row deepens

      Theresa May’s most senior allies have gone to war against Andrea Leadsom in retaliation for her “vile” suggestion that the Home Secretary should not become prime minister because she has no children.

      The energy minister’s critics included some of the Conservative Party’s most senior women after she suggested she had a greater “stake” in Britain’s future than her childless rival.

    • Donald Trump and the Dangers of Confusing the Ability to Offend With the Ability to Govern

      At a time when Donald Trump’s approval ratings among American voters are sinking lower with each passing week, he’s still the candidate of choice for 64 percent of voters who “want a new direction for the country.” At a time when many of his fellow Republicans are refusing to endorse him, and when he’s being mocked by celebrities for having a “small, nationalistic mind,” he nonetheless remains the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, having comfortably won the required number of delegates before the primaries had even finished.

    • Wharton Students Write Open Letter To Donald Trump: ‘You Do Not Represent Us’

      Current Wharton students, however, do not appear to feel the same universal bond with the candidate that Trump feels with the school. In an open letter published Friday on Medium, Wharton students expressed their disappointment and “outrage” at Trump’s candidacy and rhetoric.

    • Is Trump Really the Anti-Neocon?

      “In an interview with Channel 2 television David Friedman said that a Trump administration would maintain Israel’s military advantage over its neighbors. He said Trump would not reduce defense aid to Israel but ‘in all likelihood will increase it significantly.’

    • Trump’s “Greatest Mentor” was Red-Baiting Aide to Joseph McCarthy and Attorney for NYC Mob Families

      With the Republican National Convention opening in Cleveland in less than two weeks, the party’s presumptive nominee, Donald Trump, is facing a new wave of controversies, from Trump’s tweeting of an anti-Semitic image showing Hillary Clinton against a backdrop of cash and a Star of David to his joke about Mexico attacking the United States. We spend the hour with Trump biographer Wayne Barrett, author of “Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention.” Barrett has been reporting on Trump since the 1970s. We begin by talking about Trump’s close relationship with the late Roy Cohn, who once served as a top aide to the red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy.

    • Trump’s Got Star Power
    • Super Official Marx

      The Chinese Communist Party put out a hip-hop track praising Karl Marx. It’s as bad as you would expect.

    • Some Pundits Think the Solution to Right-Wing Populism Is Less Democracy

      The core orthodoxies of neoliberalism are under attack by populist forces, and commentators are scrambling for a response. Some are suggesting more left-wing red meat. Others, a moment of self-reflection. But a number of pundits are doing that most noxious of political commentary pastimes—equating right and left responses to the failures of globalization and advocating that “elites” should fight back against the forces of inconvenient democracy.

    • FEC Looking at Super PAC That Hyped Penny Stock

      The phone would ring almost every week with fundraising appeals from a super PAC called Voters for Hillary. Margo Marquess and her husband, Amitava Gupta, backed the presidential campaign of the former Secretary of State, so they were happy to write checks. In all, they gave $6,000.

      But the Roanoke, Virginia, couple discovered that Voters for Hillary hadn’t spent any money at all in support of Hillary Clinton, or any other candidate for that matter. The PAC, it turned out, was mainly funded by loans, not donations. Its main effect had been to fuel a sharp spike in the penny stock of a questionable company with close ties to the PAC’s officials.

    • Press freedom in ‘post-democracy’: Greece

      No one would disagree on the importance of press freedom and freedom of expression. But it is utterly naïve to disconnect press freedom from the notion of media power.

    • Lobbying Money Twirls the Political World

      As the Cabaret song observes, “money makes the world go ‘round,” and that’s especially true of American politics with the Democratic platform objecting to lobbying only sotto voce so as not to offend, says Michael Winship.

    • Clinton’s Web of Deceit: She Lied and Lied Again

      Hillary Clinton may or may not be a crook. That remains to be proven, though the sheer magnitude of the wealth that she and husband Bill have amassed since leaving the White House, and while she was serving as Secretary of State — nearly a quarter of a billion dollars earned by two people with no known skills capable of producing that kind of income — should raise questions. What can be stated now as fact though, is that Hillary is a serial liar.

      If this wasn’t clear already from her long history of distortion and prevarication — like her false claim that she had to “duck to avoid sniper fire” during a state visit to Bosnia — it is clear now from FBI Director James Comey’s 11-page public report on his agency’s year-long investigation into her use of a private server for all her private and official emails during her term as Secretary of State.

    • Green Party’s Jill Stein: Sanders Can Lead My Party’s Ticket

      Presumptive Green Party candidate for U.S. President Jill Stein has reiterated her offer for Bernie Sanders to head that party’s ticket instead, where—unlike in the Democratic party—she says he’d be able to continue to “build a political movement.”

      Stein’s new comments to the Guardian US come as the Vermont senator has signaled he may soon offer an endorsement of rival Hillary Clinton.

      Stein, who also ran for president on the Green Party ticket in 2012, told the Guardian US: “If he saw that you can’t have a revolutionary campaign in a counter-revolutionary party, he’d be welcomed to the Green party. He could lead the ticket and build a political movement,” she said.

    • Is Hillary Morally Unfit to Be President?

      Comey was making the case against Clinton as the custodian of national security secrets with a credibility the GOP cannot match, while refusing to determine her fate by urging an indictment, and instead leaving her future in our hands.

      And, ultimately, should not this decision rest with the people, and not the FBI?

    • The Democrats Ignore the 500-Pound Lobbyist in the Room

      In all of the 35 single-spaced pages of the Democratic Party’s platform draft, there is just one mention of lobbying.

      One.

      Oh, it says some fine uplifting things about voters lacking a proper voice in government, about money and politics and the need to overturn Citizens United and Buckley v. Valeo, two of the Supreme Court decisions that unleashed a deluge of dollars into our electoral system.

      “Democrats believe we must fight to preserve the essence of the longest standing democracy in the world: a government that represents the American people, not just a handful of powerful and wealthy special interests,” the draft reads. “We will fight for real campaign-finance reform now. Big money is drowning out the voices of everyday Americans, and we must have the necessary tools to fight back and safeguard our electoral and political integrity.”

    • Donald Trump Is Flirting With Anti-Semitism—and History Shows What’s Next

      When Donald Trump tweeted out an image of the Star of David and a pile of money to symbolize Hillary Clinton’s “corruption,” he was doing more than flirting with the juvenile fascists who hang around at alt-right websites or hide behind the white robes of the Ku Klux Klan. Critics were quick to accuse Trump of anti-Semitism, with some then offering as proof of Trump’s calumny images of Jews wearing yellow Stars of David in Nazi-era Europe. Others offered parallels between Trump and two of America’s most famous 20th century anti-Semites: Henry Ford, who saw “the international Jew” as the world’s greatest threat; and Charles Lindbergh, who admired Adolf Hitler and his ability to safeguard white civilization from the “Asiatic” threat.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Censorship by the gun

      IN RESPONSE to a question raised during one of his press conferences in June about the killing of journalists, then President-elect Rodrigo Duterte echoed a recurring narrative in the public mind: the belief that journalists are killed because they are corrupt. He went on to describe how a broadcaster in Davao had been abusive and provoked his own murder.

      The observation struck a responsive chord among many who were quick to urge the media to get their act together and do something about the scoundrels in their ranks. The fiction has been fixed for many as truth—that those engaged in corrupt practices are the only ones endangered. In Duterte’s words, “You won’t be killed if you did nothing wrong.”

      [...]

      Malacañang’s condemnation of the most recent attempt to kill a journalist—the wounding of Surigao City broadcaster Saturnino Estanio and his son—and the organization of a task force on the killings that the Palace announced on July 2 suggest renewed appreciation of the extent of the problem. Hopefully, the investigation into the killings will also help establish how most of the slain journalists were doing their part in the difficult and dangerous task of reforming Philippine society.

      Since 1986, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) has documented 152 work-related cases of journalists being killed. Fifty-one cases involved reporters and broadcasters exposing graft and corruption. Since 2000, only in eight cases were there allegations about the involvement of the victims in corruption. No such allegations mar the rest of the cases.

    • Facebook explains live video censorship policies after live-streaming a fatal shooting

      It was only a matter of time before Facebook’s decision to open up live video to everyone was going to result in controversy. Sure enough, earlier this week, the social network became the medium through which the shooting dead of Philando Castile by a police officer was shared with the world. The graphic video quickly became notorious, but then vanished temporarily.

    • Dangerous Trend in U.S. Courts May Have Consequences For Online Speech

      One of our most valuable tools for protecting freedom of expression and innovation on the Internet—a law that shields websites and other Internet service providers from being held responsible for content that comes from users or third parties—has been under fire in recent years. The law, 47 U.S.C. § 230, a provision of the Communication Decency Act, was designed to encourage the development of new communication technologies and to protect free speech and the open exchange of ideas online. Just like you can’t hold a library liable for defamation for a statement written in a book you check out, or for hacking after someone breaks into a computer after learning how to do so from a library book, under Section 230, you can’t hold a website liable for the speech of others.

    • Sony Pictures Tries to Censor Wikileaks With Dubious DMCA Notice

      Daniel Yankelevits, one of the top legal executives at Sony Pictures Entertainment, has asked Google to remove a leaked email published by Wikileaks after the 2014 hack. The top executive used a copyright takedown notice to bury an email which exposes his personal salary, claiming “it’s not right.”

    • Wannabe Prime Minister Andrea Leadsom thinks all websites should be rated – just like movies

      The UK’s possible future prime minister thinks all websites should be classified with minimum age ratings, just like films.

      Andrea Leadsom is one of two candidates left in the race for the leadership of the Conservative Party; the winner of which will become the country’s Prime Minister.

      Although many are concerned with the authoritarian stance taken by her rival, Theresa May, Leadsom’s views on many topics – including the internet – have come under scrutiny following her unexpected success in the leadership election.

      Key among those is Leadsom’s apparent belief that the best solution to troublesome content on the internet is to have film-rating organization the British Board of Film Classification rate all websites, and have any unrated websites blocked by ISPs.

    • Philando Castile Shooting Video Livestreamed On Facebook, Zuckerberg Responds To Controversy

      A live video was posted on Facebook by a girl whose boyfriend Philando Castile was shot by a police officer in Minnesota. The video was taken down by Facebook for which they later blamed a technical glitch as the reason. Facebook’s act has been criticised on a global level.

    • Facebook says decisions whether to censor violent Live videos depends on context

      Facebook has released a brief policy statement explaining its Community Standards and how the social media giant plans to address sensitive videos on its live-streaming service a few days after it was used to broadcast graphic videos of multiple high-profile shootings across the US. In an official blog post published on Friday, 8 July, the company says in these situations “context and degree are everything”.

      “Just as it gives us a window into the best moments in people’s lives, it can also let us bear witness to the worst,” Facebook writes. “Live video can be a powerful tool in a crisis — to document events or ask for help.”

    • Sign or censorship?

      Tara Seeger didn’t back down when a neighbour’s complaint about her front yard sign resulted in a bylaw order to remove it. Instead, she has kept the ‘Save Canada Post’ sign and installed others with more poignant messages about democracy and human rights.

    • Community policing disappearing

      The New Zealand police have apparently decided which crimes will be made public and when those announcements are made.

      Inspector Mel Aitken, who until recently was based in Dunedin, is now the top police officer on the West Coast.

      She made public what has been recently suspected: West Coast police are not revealing many of the offences to which they have responded.

    • West Coast police accused of censorship
    • Facebook clarifies on censorship policy for Live video
    • Free Speech vs Censorship: Facebook Explains Live Streaming Policy
    • Facebook denies censoring a live video that showed the aftermath of a fatal police shooting in Minnesota
    • Facebook clarifies censorship issues on Live videos: Context and degree is everything
    • Meet Akshita Chandra: An artist who is using Khajuraho temple art to battle censorship

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • House Homeland Security Committee Apparently Knows Little about Homeland Security

      But it is not true that the Paris attackers used encryption to hide their plot. They used a great many burner phones, a close-knit network (and with it face-to-face planning), an unusual dialect. But even the one phone that had an encrypted product loaded on it was not using that service.

      It is also not true that the San Bernardino attackers used encryption to evade detection. They used physical tools to destroy the phones presumably used to plan the attack. They hid a hard drive via some other, unidentified means. But the only known use of encryption — the encryption that came standard on Farook’s work phone — was shown, after the FBI paid to bypass it, not to be hiding anything at all.

    • Senate Still Considering Giving FBI More Power to Spy on Browser History

      Despite strong opposition in Congress and from the grassroots, the FBI is still pushing to expand its National Security Letter (NSL) authority. The proposed amendments would allow the FBI to serve companies with NSLs and obtain a wide range of Internet records, known as Electronic Communication Transactional Records (ECTRs), including browsing history.

      In addition to a well-documented history of NSL abuse over the last 15 years, the FBI routinely exceeded its authority, claiming for years that it had the power to demand ECTRs with an NSL. It took an intervention [.pdf] by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2008 to definitively establish that the law did not support those claims. Unfortunately, an amendment, sponsored by Senators John McCain and John Cornyn and vigorously promoted by FBI Director James Comey, would grant the FBI the power to access ECTRs, including information like a users’ browsing history as well as other online records.

      As Senators Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich explained in Slate, this information reveals a lot about people; it’s “almost like spying on their thoughts.” Giving the FBI power to obtain these sensitive records with an NSL is especially dangerous, because NSLs operate without prior judicial approval and come with a gag order in nearly all cases. In other words, the FBI would be able to secretly demand this revealing information from Internet companies about their users and gag the companies from notifying policymakers, the press, or users themselves.

    • FBI’s Secret Surveillance Tech Budget Is ‘Hundreds of Millions’

      The FBI has “hundreds of millions of dollars” to spend on developing technology for use in both national security and domestic law enforcement investigations—but it won’t reveal the exact amount.

      Deputy Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Burrell, spoke about the secretive budget of the Operational Technology Division—which focuses on all the bureau’s advanced investigative gizmos, from robots to surveillance tech to biometric scanners during a roundtable discussion on encryption technology.

      In December 2015, The Washington Post reported the budget of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division at between $600 and $800 million, but officials refused to confirm the exact amount.

      The FBI did not respond to a request for comment from The Intercept on the division’s budget.

      The intelligence community sponsored the roundtable on Thursday and Friday to spark discussion among academics, scientists, developers, and tech officials on the finer points of encryption—and to try to answer whether it’s technically possible to give law enforcement access to secure devices without compromising digital security.

      The National Academies of Science, Technology, and Medicine hosted the workshop, which included Chris Inglis, former deputy director of the NSA, James Baker, the top lawyer for the FBI, tech officials from Apple, Microsoft, and other companies.

    • Fear of surveillance is forcing activists to hide from public life in Belarus

      “In principle, if I am talking indoors, or on the phone, or writing emails, I assume it all gets to the KGB (Belarus state security). So I don’t worry about it, I talk openly and say only what I would say if there were a KGB agent sitting next to me.”

      This is what an activist in Belarus told me when I asked them about the reality of living with the threat of surveillance.

      I had travelled there to see for myself whether the human rights situation had improved after a huge crackdown on activists in 2010, and what role surveillance played in this, for a new Amnesty International report on this subject.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Of Lethal Drones and Police Shootings

      There are chilling parallels between President Obama’s overseas drone program and how police treat America’s non-white citizens, with the slightest suspicion escalating into official violence and even death, writes Kathy Kelly.

    • Marc Lamont Hill: Dallas Shootings Can’t Deter Us From Continuing Movement Against State Violence

      The shooting in Dallas that has so far left five police officers dead and six other wounded was carried out by at least one sniper who began shooting around 8:45 p.m. local time toward the end of a peaceful protest demanding an end to police brutality. In recent days, protests against police brutality and state violence have swept the country, in the wake of the fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. We speak with Marc Lamont Hill about the movement against police brutality, who said “I cannot allow Dallas to deter me from a principled critique of state violence. Far more people have died at the hands of law enforcement this year than have died as law-enforcement officers.”

    • Not A Sniper
    • Dallas deployment of robot bomb to kill suspect is “without precedent”

      Early Friday morning, after being attacked by gunmen who had already killed five police officers and injured several other officers along with two civilians in the wake of a protest, the Dallas Police Department deployed a bomb disposal robot.

      However, the robot was not used to disarm a bomb. This time, it was used to deliver the bomb that killed one of the shooters—likely an unprecedented move in American policing.

      For now, it remains unknown exactly what type of robot or what kind of explosive was used. Authorities have named the dead shooter as Micah Xavier Johnson, a 25-year-old Army veteran from a nearby suburb.

    • For The First Time In History, Police Uses A Robot To Kill A Suspect

      A remote-controlled robot equipped with an explosive device was used by the Dallas Police Department to kill a suspect responsible for killing of five police officers deployed in a calm protest. This the first time a US police force has used such device.

    • Now That We’ve Entered The Age Of Robocop, How About Ones That Detain, Rather Than Kill?

      Well, the era of robocop has begun. As you’ve probably heard already, in order to get the sniper in Dallas who shot and killed a whole bunch of police, the Dallas police apparently sent in a bomb robot to detonate a bomb. Normally that robot is designed to save people from bombs, but in this case the police decided to use it to deliver a bomb and blow up the guy, Micah Xavier Johnson, accused of doing the shooting.

    • Activists Cheer On EU’s ‘Right To An Explanation’ For Algorithmic Decisions, But How Will It Work When There’s Nothing To Explain?

      Lots of people on Twitter seemed to be cheering this on. And, indeed, at first glance it sounds like a decent idea. As we’ve just discussed recently, there has been a growing awareness of the power and faith placed in algorithms to make important decisions, and sometimes those algorithms are dangerously biased in ways that can have real consequences. Given that, it seems like a good idea to have a right to find out the details of why an algorithm decided the way it did.

      But it also could get rather tricky and problematic. One of the promises of machine learning and artificial intelligence these days is the fact that we no longer fully understand why algorithms are deciding things the way they do. While it applies to lots of different areas of AI and machine learning, you can see it in the way that AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol in Go earlier this year. It made decisions that seemed to make no sense at all, but worked out in the end. The more machine learning “learns” the less possible it is for people to directly understand why it’s making those decisions. And while that may be scary to some, it’s also how the technology advances.

    • The Terror Suspect Who Had Nothing To Give

      In 2009, Abu Zubaydah’s lawyers interviewed their client and prepared a handwritten, first-person account of the torture their client suffered at the hands of the U.S. government.

      The document, quoted above, recounts the terrifying experience of a man repeatedly waterboarded in the mistaken belief that he was al-Qaida’s No. 3 official. It was filed in federal court as part of his lawsuit seeking release from Guantanamo, and like nearly all the documents in the case, was sealed at the government’s request.

      Now, seven years later, Zubaydah’s statement, which he signed under oath, has been released, and it provides the most detailed, personal description yet made public of his “enhanced interrogation” at a Central Intelligence Agency “black site” in Thailand.

    • Serena Williams Uses Historic Wimbledon Win To Fight For Social Justice

      She didn’t stop her pleas for equality there, though. Serena also spoke up about the importance of being a role model, and how she was able to achieve her dreams despite coming from a poor family on the streets of Compton.

    • The Fact of Sisyphus [Ed: Barrett Brown writes about his experiences in prison]s

      If you are indeed going to rec that morning, the guard opens the hatch and you back up to it and put your hands through to be handcuffed, and then your cellmate does likewise regardless of whether or not he’s going out as well, as the door isn’t ever supposed to be opened until both occupants are cuffed. When the door does open, you walk out backward before being patted down and scanned with a hand-held metal detector, led out to the courtyard, placed in one of several large cages with your scientifically designated playmate, and then uncuffed through the slot in the gate. After an hour of kicking around a deflated basketball while yelling old Symbionese Liberation Army slogans at the other prisoners, you’re cuffed back up through the gate slot and returned to your cell. A bit later we get lunch, and then dinner a few hours afterward, followed by mail. Three days a week we’re cuffed up and taken to the other end of the hall for showers. On weekends we generally don’t leave our cells at all.

    • A Black Police Chief on the Dallas Attacks

      In the hours following the shooting death of five police officers in Dallas during an otherwise peaceful demonstration, opinions blared from social media, televisions, and newspaper front pages. In the din of it all, I reached out to the retired police chief Donald Grady II, who served as chief in Santa Fe, New Mexico, among other cities, and also trained police forces abroad in managing racial and ethnic strife among the ranks and with civilians. His 36 years on the force, as a black American, were marked by some familiar tensions and themes—racial targeting, police brutality, unwarranted hostility, lack of cooperation, and mutual paranoia. In a candid and expansive conversation, Grady unpacked for me some of the complexities of wearing a blue uniform while living in brown skin. An edited version of our conversation follows.

    • Horrific new video shows police shooting dead an unarmed California teen, 19, as he lay on the ground

      Shocking new video has emerged showing California police shooting dead a 19-year-old man as he lay on the ground.

      Cellphone footage shows Dylan Noble being gunned down by cops at a Fresno gas station after they pulled him over for speeding on June 24.

      He was taken to hospital with four bullet wounds but later died in surgery, prompting angry protests.

    • I’m a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing

      On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with.

    • Why Dallas Happened

      When police execute someone, the excuse is always something like this: “He reached under his shirt to his waistband. I thought he had a gun. I didn’t want to leave my children fatherless and my wife a widow.” The murdered victim’s wife and children, if any, are of no consequence.

      Conservatives, especially those taught to be fearful of crime, have scant objection to police murders. Their view is always: “The police wouldn’t have shot him without cause.” The same bias in favor of the police is why conservative jurors always convict.

      The liberals tend to interpret the shootings as racism, so they want to combat racism.

      The real problem is that public authorities do not protect the public from gratuitous violence. Therefore, hatred and disrespect for the police are growing. Routine murders by police–several each day, almost all of which go unpunished–are generating the kind of anger that causes people to snap and to reply to violence with violence.

      If the criminal justice system applied also to the police, the police would think twice before they wantonly murder.

      Being a police officer is not supposed to be risk free. A police officer should be concerned about the public, not merely his own family. We cannot accept gratuitous police violence on the grounds that the officer’s behavior is dictated by his concerns for his own family. If an officer cannot accept the risks of being a police officer, he should find a different occupation.

    • CNN Invited Joe Walsh To Defend His Tweet Declaring War On Obama and Black Lives Matter

      Walsh sent out the incendiary tweet Thursday night in response to the killing of five Dallas police officers during a Black Lives Matter protest. The tweet, which read “This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you,” has since been deleted.

    • Hillary Clinton Email Investigation Shows Inherent Unfairness in U.S. Justice System

      Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer, in the immediate aftermath of FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that the bureau would not seek an indictment against Hillary Clinton for her misuse of and failure to secure classified information, asked me to write about the decision. I said that I would, but found that I was so angry about the Justice Department’s hypocrisy that I just couldn’t put pen to paper until I had cooled off for a few days. I was further angered by what I heard in the nationally televised Comey congressional hearings two days after the announcement, from both Democrats and Republicans.

      I’ve not yet cooled off. But I feel as though my anger is focused enough to offer a few thoughts.

      First, I want to be clear that I’m not angry at Hillary Clinton personally. I don’t like Hillary. I don’t support her. I don’t trust her. I don’t think she would be a good or trustworthy president. But that’s not the issue here. The issue is the inherent unfairness in the system.

      [...]

      I did plead guilty to confirming the name of a former CIA colleague to a reporter—who never made the name public. I did it. I admit it. And I paid a price for it.

      That said, providing or confirming the names of former or current CIA officers happens all the time and is almost never prosecuted. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage outed CIA officer Valerie Plame and was never prosecuted for it. Former CIA Director David Petraeus revealed the names of at least 10 CIA officers to his mistress, lied to the FBI about doing it, and still was never charged. Former CIA Director Leon Panetta exposed the name of the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden, and Panetta was not charged.

    • To Protect and Serve

      The video of the incident is quite graphic. Watching it was reminiscent of watching the police beating of Rodney King. But what demands special attention is the statement by the person who filmed the incident on his cell phone. The cell phone video of the beating of Eric Garner in Staten Island comes to mind, as Ramsey Orta, who took that video, suffered intense police harassment and imprisonment after recording the incident. Here are the words of the unnamed person who made the Schenectady video: “[Taylor] never touched the cop or did anything to the cop. All those cops had to hit him that many times? When I left, they were still hitting him. I think the police should be investigated.” The person who made the video declined to give his name to the media for obvious reasons.

    • Chelsea Manning’s Lawyers Confirm Whistleblower was Hospitalized

      Lawyers for jailed whistleblower Chelsea Manning confirmed on Friday that the former U.S. soldier was hospitalized and is under medical supervision following reports of a health crisis and virtual silence from the Department of Defense.

      “The prison has notified us that Chelsea was hospitalized and remains under a doctor’s care,” Nancy Hollander, one of Manning’s attorneys, said Friday.

      “At this time her doctors are recommending against a call and we are respecting those recommendations but are in close touch with the facility and will continue to monitor her condition and hope to connect with her soon,” Hollander said. “To protect her privacy, that is all we can say at the moment.”

      Hollander encouraged Manning’s advocates to send messages of support.

    • Serena Williams’ First Tweet After Reaching Wimbledon Final Was On The Murder Of Philando Castile

      Serena Williams made it to her ninth career Wimbledon singles final on Thursday, defeating Russian Elena Vesnina 6-2, 6-0 in a remarkable 48 minutes. But after the match, her 22nd Grand Slam singles title was not the only thing on her mind.

    • Gun Activist Says He Warned PD Involved In Philando Castile Shooting About Shady Traffic Stops

      Olson argues that Chief Ohl could’ve started by training St. Anthony cops how to properly handle traffic stops. For example, officers are typically instructed to stand just behind the driver’s left shoulder where the driver’s door opens, allowing them to see both of the driver’s hands. According to what Castile’s girlfriend said during a Facebook live broadcast of the shooting’s immediate aftermath, Castile was shot while he was reaching for his license, shortly after he informed the officer he was lawfully carrying a firearm. It’s unclear whether the cop who shot him ever saw his gun, but in the video, the officer has his gun drawn and can be heard saying, “I told him not to reach for it! I told him to get his hand out.” While her boyfriend bled out next to her, Castile’s girlfriend replied by saying he was merely reaching for his license.

    • From Cops to Clinton: Impunity Corrupts

      Wednesday, two shocking videos of police officers fatally shooting civilians (Alton Sterling and Philando Castile) surfaced. The day before, many were appalled to hear the Director of the FBI announce that Hillary Clinton would not be charged for mishandling classified information. The two events may seem unrelated, but at bottom, they concern the same fundamental problem: impunity.

      Impunity is the essence of power. What, after all, is power? Is it simply the capacity to exert unjust force? The ability to impress one’s will upon the flesh or belongings of another? No, it’s more than that.

      Most anyone can wield unjust force. Anyone could walk out onto the street right now and exert their will on somebody weaker: say, pushing over an old lady or stealing candy from a baby. And the toughest, or most heavily-armed guy in town can strong-arm just about any other single person.

    • “You Shot Four Bullets Into Him, Sir”: Girlfriend Livestreams Philando Castile’s Death by Police

      In St. Paul, Minnesota, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the governor’s mansion to protest the fatal police shooting of African American man Philando Castile during a traffic stop for a broken tail light. Castile, his girlfriend Lavish Reynolds and her young daughter were stopped by police on Wednesday. Reynolds broadcast the aftermath of the fatal police shooting live on Facebook in an extraordinary video, in which she narrates the events while still inside the car next to her dying boyfriend as the police officer continues to point the gun at her and her daughter.

    • The System That Killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile Cannot Be Reformed

      There are moments when atrocities are so horrendous that they paralyze. I am feeling that sense of immobility now.

      I already knew that on average, a Black person is extrajudicially murdered by the police or a vigilante every 28 hours in the United States, thanks to a study by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. I had yet, however, to witness this fact in real time, until yesterday.

      Yesterday, the world watched the horrendous police murder of Philando Castile take place mere hours after the videotaped murder of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, became public. For the first time, a police murder was livestreamed on Facebook. That reality is simultaneously astonishing and sickening.

    • Bring the Dallas murderers to justice. And the killers of black people too

      In a country where it’s easier to obtain a semi-automatic gun than to obtain healthcare, a fragile mind can wreak havoc on a fragile political culture. So it was on Thursday night when a shooter opened fire on police at a Black Lives Matter demonstration killing five officers and wounding at least seven others.

    • Movement Against Police Violence Condemns Violence Against Police

      Even as racial justice advocates simultaneously mourned the deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and the five police officers killed Thursday night in Dallas, they were forced to defend the nature and aims of their movement while fearing that the violence they seek to quell will only get worse.

      That the shootings took place toward the tail end of a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest immediately muddied the narrative, leading some pundits and politicians to pin blame for the attack on the national movement against police violence as opposed to the individual gunman, who told police before he died that he had operated alone and was unaffiliated with any groups.

    • How a $2 Roadside Drug Test Sends Innocent People to Jail
    • Egypt threatens to let hundreds of thousands of migrants into EU as row with Italy erupts

      More than 70,000 migrants have travelled from Egypt and Libya to Italy so far this year, but now the North African country is threatening to do nothing to stem the flow – prompting fears countless more could enter Europe in the coming months.

      The flare-up in relations comes after Italian politicians voted to stop supplying Egypt with spare parts for F-16 fighter jets after the North African nation failed to investigate the death of an Italian student in Cairo.

    • Why do politicians keep building shelters instead of windmills?

      In scrambling to the latest threat against liberty and the net like a wild goose chase, it’s sometimes worth asking the bigger question: why do we have incompetent politicians in the first place that force us to be this vigilant for self-evident liberties?

      Fights for net neutrality and basic privacy in the European Union, for the right to cryptography in Russia, fights against insane ten-year prison sentences for sharing knowledge and culture in the UK. It’s just the latest attention grabbers in a long string of insanities dating backward in time: ACTA, SOPA, notice-and-takedown, messenger liability, the (first) crypto wars, and so on. From time to time, you can’t help but realize that being a liberty activist in this landscape necessarily means jumping from one brushfire to the next.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Putin Is Literally Breaking The Internet

      Earlier today, President Putin ordered the Federal Security Service to produce “encryption keys” capable of decrypting all data on the internet. No one is really sure what this means exactly, but the FSB has two weeks to make them, Meduza reports. That’s just one part of the Russian government’s silly and insanely expensive new plan for internet surveillance, signed into law under the “anti-terrorist” bill today and going into effect on July 20th.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Oracle’s $9 billion fight with Google continues

        Oracle has asked a judge — again — to throw out the verdict that found Google rightfully helped itself to Oracle programming code to create the Android operating system.

        Redwood City-based Oracle lost a lawsuit against Google when a federal jury in May found the Mountain View search giant had properly used the Java code under the “fair use” provision in U.S. copyright law.

        The law allows use of copyrighted material in limited circumstances based on the scope of use, to what extent the purpose is commercial, and the effect of the use on the material’s value or market potential. The Copyright Act provision can also permit use on the basis of whether it’s “transformative.” As a Stanford Library fact sheet puts it, “At issue is whether the material has been used to help create something new or merely copied verbatim into another work.”

      • Fair Use Threatens Innovation, Copyright Holders Warn

        Various music and movie industry groups have warned that fair use exceptions are a threat. The groups were responding to proposals put forward in Australia by the Government’s Productivity Commission. They claim that content creators will be severely disadvantaged if fair use is introduced Down Under.

      • Megaupload 2.0 to Launch With Original Megaupload User Database

        Following the news earlier this week that Kim Dotcom intends to relaunch Megaupload, the entrepreneur has just delivered a new surprise. Rather than a cold start, Megaupload 2.0 will hit the ground running by deploying the original Megaupload user database.

      • United Kingdom ignorant and clueless in pushing a ten-year prison sentence for unauthorized sharing: not even death penalty stops sharing

        The United Kingdom appears to stubbornly move ahead with a ten year prison sentence for unauthorized sharing. This is not just counterproductive, but stupid and ineffective. Evidence shows that not even a horrible death penalty deters sharing between people: it’s a deeply inwired altruistic behavior.

07.09.16

Links 9/7/2016: Skype Hype, Wine 1.9.14

Posted in News Roundup at 7:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Use Linux or Tor? The NSA might just be tracking you

    But it seems those intent on keeping pesky government agencies out of their online business may well be shooting themselves in the virtual foot.

    As documents related to the XKeyscore snooping program reveal, the US’s National Security Agency has started focusing its snooping efforts on Linux Journal readers, Tails Linux, and Tor users.

  • Desktop

  • Kernel Space

    • Happy Birthday! Linux turns 25

      Sometime in 2016 Linux will be 25 years old. Exactly when is a matter of opinion.

      We could consider Linux’s 25th birthday to be August 25th. That’s because on that date in 1991, Linus Torvalds made his announcement to the minix community to let them know that he was working on a modest new OS. He had started the work in April. By October 5th, he felt that his new OS was usable and ready for the community at large.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Radeon/AMDGPU Updates For The Linux 4.8 Kernel

        Alex Deucher has submitted the main feature pull request for DRM-Next of the Radeon and AMDGPU DRM driver changes for the next kernel cycle, Linux 4.8.

        Some will be sad though, the AMDGPU material for Linux 4.8 doesn’t contain the huge DAL display abstraction layer code that’s needed for bringing the open-source AMDGPU driver display capabilities more on par with the former closed-source driver stack and also necessary for supporting new features like FreeSync/Adaptive-Sync.

      • Wayland Founder Kristian Høgsberg Is The Latest Open-Source Developer Leaving Intel

        Sadly, another blow to report on with regard to Intel’s open-source efforts… Just days after reporting on Intel losing its chief Linux/open-source technologist, Dirk Hohndel, there’s another high profile departure in the open-source world.

      • Mesa 12.0 Released With OpenGL 4.3 Support, Intel Vulkan & Many Other Features

        While it’s coming late, the huge Mesa 12.0 release is now official! Mesa 12.0 is easily one of the biggest updates to this important open-source user-space OpenGL driver stack in quite some time and will offer much better support and features especially for Intel, Radeon, and NVIDIA open-source Linux desktop users/gamers.

      • Mesa 12.0.0 3D Graphics Library Released with Vulkan Driver for Intel Hardware

        Today, July 8, 2016, Collabora’s Emil Velikov has had the honor of announcing the release of the final Mesa 12.0.0 3D Graphics Library for all GNU/Linux operating systems.

      • Initial Open-Source GeForce GTX 1000 “Pascal” Nouveau Driver Support

        While there isn’t yet any 3D/hardware acceleration support, the first milestone of open-source bring-up for the latest-generation NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1000 “Pascal” graphics processors is now available for Nouveau.

        Nouveau DRM maintainer Ben Skeggs has managed to publish initial open-source, reverse-engineered graphics driver support for Pascal (GP100 series) GPUs. Ben Skeggs at Red Hat continues to do this without official documentation from NVIDIA Corp but rather just receiving hardware samples and the hard process of reverse engineering.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

    • UBOS beta 7 makes running TLS-enabled web apps even easier on EC2, Raspberry Pi 3, others, with more apps
    • Linux Lite 3: The Ideal Platform for Old Hardware and New Users

      One of the greatest aspects of Linux is its flexibility—it can be whatever you need it to be. It can be a massive server for big data, a desktop for rendering video or editing audio. A graphic designer’s studio. An every-day, get things done machine.

      Or something in between.

      For every job, you’ll find a distribution. For every need, you’ll find a tool. For every piece of hardware, you’ll find a version of Linux ready to make it work for you. Whether you’re working working with big iron or a low-end, aging desktop or laptop…there’s a Linux for the job.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • openSUSE Tumbleweed Receives Mesa 12.0.0, LibreOffice 5.2 RC1 and PulseAudio 9.0

        openSUSE developer Dominique Leuenberger today, July 8, 2016, informed the openSUSE Tumbleweed community about the latest GNU/Linux technologies and software components that landed in the repositories.

      • Linux at 25, Windows Alternatives, Tumbleweed Latest

        Today in Linux news Sandra Henry-Stocker looked at how far Linux has come since its humble beginnings 25 years ago. Elsewhere, Lifehacker.com has four alternatives to Windows 10 and Matt Asay wrote that Red Hat is the only profitable Open Source company because they sell piece of mind rather than software. Tumbleweed is poised to accept recently released Plasma 5.7 and Slackware received two security updates this week.

      • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the Week 2016/27

        Summer holiday is here (at least in the northern hemisphere) – and we can see a slightly reduced beat for new snapshots. I can ‘only’ report 3 instead of the usual 4 releases for this week (0701, 0703 and 0705), but the changes were still rather substantial. The slowness seems to be less an issue of package submissions as compared to OBS having trouble getting the stagings completely built. There seem to be a couple PowerPC workers missing.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Debian 8.5 vs. Debian Testing Benchmarks – July 2016

        Here is the latest look at the performance of Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 vs. Debian Testing on the same system for showing how the performance is looking for Debian 9 “Stretch” ahead of its release next year.

        Originally I was planning to do a Debian GNU/Linux vs. GNU/kFreeBSD comparison too, but the Debian Testing GNU/kFreeBSD installer was yielding problems… So for this article is just a fun look at clean installs of Debian 8.5 versus the current Debian GNU/Linux testing on the same hardware and using each OS release out-of-the-box.

      • Debian’s DebConf 16 Ends This Weekend, Watch The Videos Online
      • twenty years of free software — part 11 concurrent-output
      • Managing container and environment state

        I was naively thinking that the way autopkgtest would work is that it would set the current working directory of the schroot call and the ensuing subprocess call would thus take place in that directory inside the schroot. That is not how it works. If you want to change directories inside the virtual server, you have to use cd. The same is true of, at least, environment variables, which have their own specific handling in the adt_testbed.Testbed methods but have to be passed as strings, and umask. I’m assuming this is because the direct methods with qemu images or LXC containers don’t work.

      • The End Of Ian Murdock

        Ian Murdock, the founder of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution of Free/Libre Open Source Software operating system and repository, died by suicide according to a medical examiner’s report.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Fancy an Ubuntu-powered rival to Apple’s Siri?

            If you have ever wanted an application like Apple’s Siri working on open-source software and hardware, you are in luck.

            Mycroft is just that: open-source software that functions exactly the same way as Siri does, but it is housed within its own hardware operating off of a Raspberry Pi 2 and Arduino. The best part, since it’s based on open-source software, is that it runs on Ubuntu’s Snappy Core.

          • Star Cloud PCG03U is a compact Ubuntu PC for $90

            Chinese device maker has been offering tiny Windows and Android computers for a few years, but the company first came to my attention back in 2012 when I learned that the Android-powered Mele A1000 TV box was also able to run Linux.

            This year the company started selling some products with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed, and the latest is the PCG03U, a compact computer/TV box with 2GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, an Intel Atom Bay Trail processor, and Ubuntu 14.04 Linux.

          • BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition Tablet Review: Remarkably Unsatisfying Review

            The only good reason to buy the BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition is if you’ve been dying for an Ubuntu tablet and don’t want to install the operating system yourself. For $312, you’re getting an underpowered tablet with an operating system that you can install on a plethora of other devices for free.

            For $155, you can get the Acer Iconia One 10 running Android and install Ubuntu on it yourself (or, of course, use Android). It uses a similar, underpowered processor, but at least you’re getting a deal. Those who are interested in a viable desktop mode might want to consider the Microsoft Surface 3 while it’s still available. The $386 2-in-1 runs full Windows, works as a tablet and is roughly the same size, at 10.8 inches. You could even install Ubuntu if you’re so inclined.

            All things considered, almost anything is better than the BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition. Between its weak CPU and a suite of apps that lack touch optimization, the company fell woefully short of the mark.

          • The days of 32-bit Linux appear to be numbered

            Should Linux distributions continue to issue 32-bit images any longer or phase them out over a year or two? This question was resurrected recently by Ubuntu developer Dimitri John Ledkov, with a cutoff date of October 2018 proposed.

            At that time, Ubuntu would have been around for 14 years and it is increasingly getting more and more bloated. The same goes for many other distributions.

            So, even if anyone wanted to run Ubuntu on an older machine, it would not be a good idea. Computing would have to be done at a rather glacial speed.

            The idea of dropping the 32-bit build was first raised on the Ubuntu mailing lists in February by Bryan Quigley. Several other distributions like Fedora and openSUSE have already dropped their 32-bit images.

          • Ubuntu Is Now the Preferred OS for Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry
          • Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) reaches End of Life on July 28 2016

            Ubuntu announced its 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) release almost 9 months ago, on October 22, 2015. As a non-LTS release, 15.10 has a 9-month month support cycle and, as such, the support period is now nearing its end and Ubuntu 15.10 will reach end of life on Thursday, July 28th. At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 15.10.

          • 4 Best Alternatives For Windows 10 Users

            Ubuntu is world’s most popular free Operating System. It is Linux based and used very widely across the globe. Noticeably, many important government agencies across Europe and Asia use Ubuntu in their offices.

            The fact that Ubuntu gets a free upgrade every year and it comes with familiar apps like Firefox and Thunderbird along with free MS Office alternative called Libre Office makes it a very valuable alternative.

            Additionally, Ubuntu requires very fewer system resources enabling it to run quite well on older systems and are mostly free of viruses and malware.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon Review: They Did it Again!

              Linux Mint is one of the most popular (GNU/Linux) operating systems around, and according to Distrowatch.com‘s popularity ranking factor, for many years now Linux Mint has been on the top 3 most popular distributions (now it’s actually the number one!, surpassing Debian and Ubuntu. By the way, Fedora’s ranking is sinking fast, no surprise there though. Fedora is just a distribution for the coding elite of the GNU/Linux world and not for the average user, there I said it!). And there’s a good and a sensible reason for it (in my opinion anyway).

            • LXLE 16.04 “Eclectica” Distro Will Be Based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Beta Out Now

              It looks like the developers of the lightweight LXLE distribution are working hard on the next major update for the Lubuntu-based computer operating system, and they’ve just released the first Beta in the LXLE 16.04 series.

            • The Linux Setup – Cassidy James Blaede, elementary OS/System76

              Cassidy works for elementary OS AND System76, so he’s what those of us in the business call a double threat. I haven’t spent much time with elementary, so it’s nice to hear about someone using it for so much day-to-day work. It’s also nice to hear how good System76’s hardware is. It’s an important reminder for people looking to have Linux easily installed while also supporting the Linux economy.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • World’s smallest quad-core SBC starts at $8

      FriendlyARM launched an $8 open-spec, 40 x 40mm “NanoPi Neo” SBC that runs Ubuntu Core on a quad-core Allwinner H3. It’s Ethernet-ready, but headless.

      With the NanoPi Neo, FriendlyARM has released what appears to be the world’s smallest quad-core ARM based single-board computer, and one of the smallest ARM SBCs we’ve seen. This open spec, 40 x 40mm sibling to the $11, 69 × 48mm NanoPi M1 has the same 1.2GHz, quad-core, Cortex-A7 Allwinner H3 SoC with 600MHz Mali 400MP2 GPU, and the higher-end, $10 model has the same 512MB of DDR3 RAM. However, in order to slim down, the Neo sacrifices the HDMI port, the camera and CVBS interfaces, DC jack, and Raspberry Pi compatible expansion connector.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source effort gives indigenous language an official typeface

    Santali, an aboriginal South Asian language, has a brand new freely licensed font and set of cross-platform open source input tools on the way.

    More than 6.2 million people in four South Asian countries (India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan) speak Santali. In India, it is one of the 22 major languages as mentioned in the eighth schedule of the Indian constitution. However, Santali is not the official language in regions where it is largely spoken, nor is it widely taught in schools. A large segment of the native speakers are socially and economically disadvantaged, which doesn’t help either.

  • 6 Tips for Leveraging Open Source Technology

    To understand the impact that open source technology has made on the enterprise, one need only look to the numbers. With over 35 million GitHub repositories, 1,961,460 lines of code on Hadoop and over a thousand Apache Spark contributors, the open source ecosystem is home to some of the world’s most innovative and impressive tech collaborations. With some of the biggest names in tech leading the charge — Apple’s Swift programming language, IBM’s machine learning technology SystemML and Facebook’s Relay JavaScript framework were all made public in the past year — open source technology is set to change the way we process, stream and analyze data.

    In this slideshow, IBM VP of Big Data and Analytics on z, Dinesh Nirmal, and IBM VP of Offerings, Big Data and Analytics, Ritika Gunnar, outline several tips to help enterprises make the most of their open source strategy.

  • Google BigQuery Now Allows to Query All Open-Source Projects on GitHub

    A full snapshot of more than 2.8 million open source project hosted on GitHub is now available in Google’s BigQuery, Google and GitHub announced. This will make it possible to query almost 2 billion source files hosted on GitHub using SQL.

  • How to Easily Load Test With Open Source Tools

    If you’ve been here for the past few years, it would have been hard for you to miss the digital stampede from ticket-based processes to continuous delivery. But somehow, this transition has skipped over load-testing processes. This is probably because performance problems are hard to fix, as they are removed from the code.

  • 8 ways to get started in open source

    During his time recruiting young programmers on college campuses, one of the questions Chris Aniszczyk would hear a lot is, “How do I get involved in open source?”

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google Is Working To Save Your Chrome Browser From Evil Quantum Computers

        Google has launched a new encryption algorithm in its Chrome web browser to fend off attacks launched by powerful quantum computers. Called the New Hope algorithm, this “post-quantum cryptography” is being tested in Chrome Canary builds to develop a stronger security algorithm within two years. The new encryption adds just 2KB of extra data that is sent in each direction when a new HTTPS connection is made.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Architectural Considerations for Open-Source PaaS and Container Platforms

      Less than a year ago, Wikibon published a series of research focused on Structured and Unstructured platforms, with a focus on how these platforms were designed to help developers build cloud-native applications. The evolution of PaaS and Container platforms has significantly evolved over the past 9-12 months. While some platforms are still highly Structured, the growing trend has been for the previously Unstructured platforms to become more “composable” or even Structured. Wikibon defines “composable” as a packaged offering that leverages a set of modular open source projects, but is more tightly integrated as a set of services that accelerate developer productivity and application deployments. Composable platforms are becoming more “opinionated” in their architectural choices, but they still allow architects, developers and operators some amount of architectural flexibility that may not be present in Structured platforms.

    • Bridging Tech’s Diversity Gap

      Recently, the OpenStack Foundation conducted a survey to dig deeper into who was actually involved with its community. The results were quite shocking, showing that only 11 percent of the entire OpenStack population identify as women. Team leaders across the industry took notice, with many asking how they could improve diversity not only within their communities but their hiring practices.

    • 3 Cutting-Edge Frameworks on Apache Mesos

  • CMS

    • WordPress Stays Focused on Security, More Open Source CMS News

      WordPress upgraded to version 4.5.3 last month with a security release for all versions of the content management system. But it quickly discovered a number of vulnerabilities.

      A total of 17 bugs were found in the last three releases from this year, many of which allowed attackers to take over websites running on WordPress. And according to the latest estimates from BuiltWith, 48 percent of the top million websites globally run on WordPress. But popularity has a price: It is also one of the most hacked platforms.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Spanish Ciudad Real to switch to open source

      The city of Ciudad Real is to switch to using free and open source software. A resolution by the city’s Ganemos party to use open source for all of the city’s 400 PC workstations, got a majority of the votes in a meeting on 23 May. The city will begin with an inventory of the potential hurdles, according to press reports.

    • New site to promote proven open source ICT tools

      Adullact, the French organisation for public administrations using free software, has unveiled a new website, Comptoir du Libre.org, which aims to raise the interest of public administrations’ IT decision makers.

    • First iVIS services to launch in September

      iVIS provides an open ICT platform for a fully digital school administration. The software is developed and made available as open source, so anyone is free to use the code, adjust it, and build their own modules, applications and mobile apps on top of it.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Leftovers

  • Farewell to Microsoft’s Sun Tzu: Thanks for all the cheese, Kevin Turner

    Kevin Turner’s departure as Microsoft’s chief salesman after 11 years marks the final passing of the Redmond old guard.

    Chief operating officer Turner – KT, as he was known – was a chief of the old-school corporate kind; sales, marketing and Microsoft’s stores all reported into Turner.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Liverpool: Mamadou Sakho has doping case dismissed by Uefa

      Liverpool and France defender Mamadou Sakho has had a doping case against him dismissed by Uefa.

      The 26-year-old served a provisional 30-day suspension after testing positive for a ‘fat burner’ in March.

      Sakho admitted taking the substance, but Uefa had to investigate whether it was actually prohibited.

      Its control, ethics and disciplinary body dismissed the case after a hearing including experts from World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratories.

      “I am happy that this is finally over,” Sakho said. “It’s been a difficult time for me but I knew I had done nothing wrong.

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • My son died in vain. But at least the world now sees Blair’s moral guilt

      The Iraq war was a fiasco waged on the basis of scandalous lies. My son Tom, aged 20, died serving his country in this war. If I didn’t already know it before today, I know it now: Tom died in vain. He and his comrades died brutal deaths in a conflict that did not have to take place. Even now, I watch the reports from Iraq: 250 people blown up last weekend on the streets of Baghdad in this war without end. Is this what our soldiers fought for?

    • International Criminal Court Investigates Human Rights Abuses by British Forces in Iraq

      The long anticipated Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War released Wednesday contains stinging indictments of Britain’s role in the U.S.-led invasion, detailing failures starting with the exaggerated threat posed by Saddam Hussein through the disastrous lack of post-invasion planning. An element conspicuously missing from the report, however, are allegations of systemic abuse by British soldiers — accusations that are currently being considered by a domestic investigative body as well as the International Criminal Court (ICC).

      The claims center on alleged violations committed against Iraqis while held in detention by British soldiers between 2003 and 2008. Based on the receipt of a dossier outlining numerous incidents, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in 2014 reopened a preliminary examination into abuse allegations. The same examination, a step below an official investigation that could yield court cases at the Hague, had initially been closed in 2006 for lack of evidence.

      Presented to the court by the British firm Public Interest Lawyers and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human rights, the January communication was followed up by a second batch of cases in September of 2015, submitted by PIL. By November of last year, the ICC reported that it had received 1,268 allegations of ill treatment and unlawful killings committed by British forces. Of 259 alleged killings, 47 were said to have occurred when Iraqis were in UK custody.

    • Take it from a whistleblower: Chilcot’s jigsaw puzzle is missing a few pieces

      Following the damning Chilcot report, much will be said about the decision to go to war in Iraq. But one thing will be missing: the information I leaked in the runup to the war. It won’t get an airing because I was never questioned or asked to participate in the Chilcot inquiry.

      Back in early 2003, Tony Blair was keen to secure UN backing for a resolution that would authorise the use of force against Iraq. I was a linguist and analyst at GCHQ when, on 31 Jan 2003, I, along with dozens of others in GCHQ, received an email from a senior official at the National Security Agency. It said the agency was “mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN security council (UNSC) members”, and that it wanted “the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises”.

      In other words, the US planned to use intercepted communications of the security council delegates. The focus of the “surge” was principally directed at the six swing nations then on the UNSC: Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan. The Chilcot report has eliminated any doubt that the goal of the war was regime change by military means. But that is what many people already suspected in 2003.

    • Iraqis Want You To Know The Names Of Baghdad’s ISIS Victims

      The enormous toll of Saturday’s bombing in Baghdad has stunned even the war-weary residents of the Iraqi capital.

      At the end of a bloody week of attacks in Lebanon, Turkey and Bangladesh, a car bomb ripped through a crowded shopping center in Baghdad, igniting an inferno that raged all weekend.

      After days of sifting through the ashes, Iraq’s health ministry announced Tuesday that 250 people were confirmed killed. It was the deadliest car bomb attack since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

      At first, Sajad Jiyad, an Iraqi analyst living in Baghdad, felt numb after the attack and had “an intense feeling of déjà vu,” he wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. “Relatives, friends or someone I know have been killed or injured in every year since 2003,” Jiyad says.

      On Sunday, Jiyad learned that his friend, Ahmed Dia, was among the burned bodies pulled out of the mall, and his grief over the attack became searingly personal. “He was going to achieve so much, he should not be dead,” Jiyad writes.

      Some Iraqi activists have expressed an intense frustration and dismay that the names and stories of victims like Dia are little known outside of Iraq.

    • The Baghdad Bombings, Islamic State and What America Still Hasn’t Learned

      The suicide bombings in Baghdad by Islamic State, timed for maximum violence, are only the latest reminders that the United States should not downplay the group.

      Since the wave of Islamic State suicide bombings in May – killing 522 people inside Baghdad, and 148 people inside Syria – American officials have downplayed the suicide bombing strategy as defensive. Brett McGurk, the Special Presidential Envoy in the fight against Islamic State, said the group “returned to suicide bombing” as the area under its control shrinks. The American strategy of focusing primarily on the “big picture” recapture of territory seems to push the suicide bombings to the side. “It’s their last card,” stated a compliant Iraqi spokesperson in response to the attacks.

    • A New Fight Over Syria War Strategy

      President Obama has signaled a willingness to join Russia in going after Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front in Syria, but neocons and other hawks are fighting the policy shift, reports Gareth Porter.

    • Are You Planning Your Retirement? Forget About It. You Won’t Survive To Experience It.

      At the recent St. Petersburg International Economic Conference, President Putin excoriated Western Journalists for endlessly repeating Washington’s lies that are driving the world to nuclear war. He asked Washington’s bought-and-paid-for-whores, the scum who comprise the Western news media: “How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction toward nuclear war?”

      Yes, indeed, how is it possible for the Western media to be totally blind? The answer to this question is that Americans live in the system of lies that comprise The Matrix, and media are paid to support the system of lies. The determining questions are: Can Americans escape their captivity in time to save life on earth? Do Americans have what it takes, or are Americans already a proven failed people who cower in ignorance under the threat of implausible “foreign threats”?

    • NATO Marches Toward Destruction

      As the West’s elites growl about “Russian aggression” – as they once did about Iraq’s WMD – NATO leaders meet in Poland to plan a costly and dangerous new Cold War, while shunning the few voices of dissent, John V. Walsh warns.

    • Time to Rethink NATO

      Formed in the early years of the Cold War, 1949, with the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, UK, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France, by 1952 this post-WWII alliance included Greece and Turkey, and had rejected the Soviet Union’s request to join. In 1956, when West Germany was admitted to NATO membership, the USSR formed the Warsaw Pact in response and the Cold War was then on, full-blown. Missiles and nuclear weapons from each side pointed menacingly at each other, with the United States parking nuclear weapons in five NATO countries (Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Turkey), where they remain to this day. NATO doctrine provides that nuclear weapons will be used if necessary, at will, on behalf of all its members.

    • Putin’s manoeuvres make man of peace Trudeau into warmonger against all his inclinations

      Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made no secret his heart is set on taking Canadian soldiers to Africa, with perhaps a sideshow in Colombia.

      It is part of a grand strategy to burnish his reputation as a gentle agent of change, with the ultimate goal of winning Canada a temporary seat on the UN Security Council.

      That may not sound like much of an achievement — permanent members Washington, Beijing, Moscow, London and Paris all wield vetoes and shape global discourse on the council. But the seat in New York would be the crowning glory of Trudeau’s first term in office and proof Canada is back on the world stage — although the truth is Canada has not punched above its weight since a few years after the Second World War.

    • Navy: SEAL Chris Kyle never earned a 2nd Silver Star

      The Navy has concluded there is no evidence that famed Navy SEAL Chris Kyle received two of the valor awards he had claimed in his best-selling memoir, including a second Silver Star.

      In an unusual move, the service has re-issued the DD-214 discharge paperwork to support the medals that the late Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Chris Kyle received during his 10-year Navy career, finding no records for two of six Bronze Stars with combat ‘V’ and the second Silver Star, two of which he had claimed in “American Sniper.” However, the renowned SEAL sniper had earned the Silver Star and four Bronze Stars, the review confirmed.

    • Hillary’s Responsibility for the Libyan Disaster

      I am going to share with you four devastating emails sent and received by Hillary Clinton on the subject of Libya. You can find these posted at Wikileaks. It is clear in reading these exchanges that, in the glow of the fall of Qaddafi, Hillary embraced the call to spike the football and clearly was planning to use Libya as evidence of her leadership and skill that qualified her to become President.

      The attack on our diplomats and CIA officers in Benghazi on 11 September 2012 however, destroyed that dream. The dream became a nightmare and Hillary has scrambled to pretend that she was not the mover and shaker that destabilized Libya and made it a safehaven for ISIS aka radical Islamists.

    • How the Dallas Police Used an Improvised Killer Robot to Take Down the Gunman

      Following the tragic deaths of five police officers in Dallas, Texas, during a rally for Alton Sterling and Philando Castile on Thursday night, the Dallas Police Department deployed a small robot designed to investigate and safely discharge explosives.

      Officers attached a bomb to the robot ad hoc style — detonating it and killing the sniper while keeping the investigators out of harm’s way.

      According to companies who manufacture bomb disposal robots interviewed by The Intercept — none were aware of their bots ever being turned into lethal weapons, though one company acknowledged the robots can be adapted to hold weapons.

    • EXCLUSIVE: ‘Both lights were clearly on’ – Witness rubbishes police claim that black man whose death was streamed on Facebook had busted taillight on his car when he was pulled over

      Video filmed in the aftermath of Philando Castile’s fatal shooting has revealed that his car’s two tail-lights appear to have been working – despite police saying he was stopped because one was busted.

      Gregory Ford, 42, took multiple videos of Castile’s Oldsmobile Aurora after he arrived on the scene in Falcon Heights, Minnesota within the hour of the fatal shooting taking place.

      He had been taking a ride on his motorcycle after finishing work and happened to drive up Larpenteur Avenue.

      He told Daily Mail Online: ‘I got there after they had taken him [Castile] away about 9.50pm. There were roughly five other people there with me.’ Castile, 32, later died of multiple

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • NSA Whistleblower: Clinton Emails Damaged U.S. National Security Much More than Manning, Assange Or Any Other Whistleblower

      FBI director Comey said today that Hillary Clinton running emails containing government information on an unsecured, private server was not as bad as former CIA director Petraeus sharing classified documents with his lover.

      But the highest-level NSA whistleblower in history, William Binney – the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”) – explains why Comey’s statement is nonsense.

      By way of background, recall that – when the American press reported that U.S. intelligence services tracked Bin Laden through his satellite phone – he stopping using that type of phone … so we could no longer easily track him.

    • Appeals Court Says Government Email Stored On Private Servers Is Still Subject To FOIA Requests

      A recent decision by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals may not directly reference the Hillary Clinton email fiasco, but the conclusion reached set off irony detectors all over as it arrived the same day FBI director James Comey announced that Clinton’s private email server may have been a stupid idea, but not a criminally stupid one.

      There were indications that Clinton’s use of a private email address was an attempt to route around FOIA requests. As her server was being set up, communications from both her staff and the State Department’s noted that an account in her name existed already, but would be subject to FOIA requests.

      This has been a problem elsewhere. Several government officials have conducted an inordinate amount of government business using private email accounts or personal devices in hopes of skirting public records requests. The DC Circuit Court’s case deals with a little-known government agency, but an all-too-familiar dodge by public officials.

  • Finance

    • The two Article 50 legal claims – the current details

      I believe the permanent injunction sought is so as to restrain the UK government from taking (or purporting to take) such a decision under the royal prerogative and/or making the notification under Article 50(2).

      The interim injunction sought is to have an order in place stopping the UK government taking (or purporting to take) a decision under the royal prerogative and/or making the notification under Article 50(2) until the High Court has dealt with the case.

    • Hundreds of Thousands Call on Leader Pelosi to Block the Undemocratic TPP

      EFF has joined with partners including MoveOn, CREDO, Daily Kos, and Demand Progress to call on Democratic Party Leader Nancy Pelosi to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) from going to a vote during the “lame duck” session of Congress following the November election.

      As we explained in a press conference yesterday, the TPP is simply bad for tech users and innovators: it exports the most onerous parts of U.S. copyright law and prevents the U.S. from improving them in the future, while failing to include the balancing provisions that work for users and innovators, such as fair use. Outside of these copyright provisions, it does nothing to safeguard the free and open Internet, by including phony provisions on net neutrality and encryption, trade secrets provisions that carry no exceptions for journalism or whistleblowing, and a simplistic ban on data localization that enabled the USTR to buy off big tech.

    • You thought TTIP was dead? With Brexit we’ll get the same thing, on steroids

      It was a fallacy that withdrawing from the EU would save us from the corporate power grab symbolised by TTIP. This week we’ve discovered that not only might another massive EU trade deal be imposed on us before we Brexit, but our whole trade strategy could be handed over to big finance, egged on by true believers in the free market within the Tory party.

    • After Brexit, Achieving Trade Justice For All

      We can and must build a radically different trade agenda that serves ordinary working people in the UK and the wider world.

    • Supreme Court Eliminates Political Corruption! (By Defining It Out of Existence)

      Three out of four Americans think government corruption is widespread. Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for president in part by claiming he couldn’t be bought. Bernie Sanders almost grabbed the Democratic nomination away from one of the most famous and powerful people on earth by decrying the influence of big money.

      Yet by overturning the bribery conviction of Bob McDonnell, the former governor of Virginia, the Supreme Court this week just extended its incredible run of decisions driven by the concern that America has too many restrictions on money in politics.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Two Days, Two Shootings, Two Sets Of Cops Making Recordings Disappear

      There are cameras everywhere. But when cops start shooting, it’s usually bullets and never footage. The first recordings that ever make their way to the public are those shot by bystanders. Anything else captured during a shooting remains under strict control of law enforcement… even when the recordings don’t belong to law enforcement.

    • Unconstitutional: The One Word That Describes Alabama’s Attempts to Block Abortion Access Statewide

      The ACLU is suing the state of Alabama in an effort to stop two unconstitutional abortion restrictions from taking effect.

      The Supreme Court’s decision last week in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt was a monumental victory for women.

      For years, extremist politicians around the country have done everything in their power to block a woman from obtaining an abortion, passing law after law designed to close down clinics or to shame, humiliate, and put barriers in the way of a woman trying to access reproductive healthcare services — more than 300 abortion restrictions since 2010 alone.

    • EFF Takes on The Eleventh HOPE

      EFF staffers will spread the online freedom message at 2600 Magazine’s biennial Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference from July 22 to July 24. The Eleventh HOPE will take place at the historic Hotel Pennsylvania in New York and host numerous presentations on such diverse topics as automobile software hacking, pervasive surveillance, the blockchain, and fostering community.

    • One Simple Change to the Law Could Make Prosecuting Killer Cops Easier

      Graphic video illustrating gruesome police killings of African-American men in Louisiana and Minnesota has set off promises of a federal investigation, at least in the former case, but many are skeptical that it will lead to any prosecutions.

      Police involved in even these high-profile cases of abuse have rarely faced successful indictments, let alone prosecutions.

      However, at the federal level, a simple change to the law would make it more likely that abusive cops face punishment for their behavior.

      Currently, police abuse is subject largely to one federal statute enacted in 1866: Title 18 U.S. Code, Section 242, which punishes anyone who “willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”

    • Tweeted Photo Exposes Secret Islamophobic Plans of British PM Finalist

      The race to be the next leader of Britain’s ruling Conservative Party, and hence prime minister of the United Kingdom, was whittled down to two candidates on Thursday: Theresa May, the home secretary, and Andrea Leadsom, deputy energy minister.

      As the two lawmakers with the most support from their colleagues, they will now spend the next two months trying to win the votes of the party’s members, a tiny portion of the British electorate thought to number less than 150,000. (In comparison, more than 33.5 million people voted in last month’s referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union.)

      While May has been a high-profile member of the government for the past six years, Leadsom is a relative newcomer, who was first elected to Parliament in 2010 after a career in banking.

      However, some clues about the kind of campaign Leadsom might run appear to have been accidentally made public on Thursday by a supporter who was spotted on the London underground studying what looked like notes laying out her strategy.

    • Piecing Together Witness Accounts of the Dallas Attack

      In the immediate aftermath of the deadly attack on police officers at a protest march in Dallas that left at least five officers dead, social networks were flooded with witness accounts of what happened, in video clips and livestreams, photographs and text updates. The Intercept is assembling pieces of that mosaic here, starting with the accounts below, and will add more as we see them. Input from readers is welcome.

      [...]

      Before he died, according to the police chief: “The suspect said he was upset about Black Lives Matter. He said he was upset about the recent police shootings. The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”

      The gunman also told officers that he had left improvised explosive devices for them to find. Brown said. “The suspect stated that he was not affiliated with any groups,” the police chief added, “and he stated that he did this alone.”

    • Busted

      Tens of thousands of people every year are sent to jail based on the results of a $2 roadside drug test. Widespread evidence shows that these tests routinely produce false positives. Why are police departments and prosecutors still using them?

    • System Failures

      The Houston cases shed light on a disturbing possibility: that wrongful convictions are most often not isolated acts of misconduct by the authorities but systemic breakdowns — among judges and prosecutors, defense lawyers and crime labs.

    • Should A Court Allow A Case To Disappear Entirely Because The Person Regrets Filing It?

      We write about lots of nutty court cases around here, and semi-frequently, parties engaged in those lawsuits aren’t always happy about our coverage. Not too long ago, we received a series of emails and phone calls and more from an individual who was involved in some lawsuits that we covered. Without providing too many details at all, the individual in question made a pretty straightforward case that he or she absolutely regretted filing the lawsuits, and provided some additional information about why it had happened, while also noting that the Google searches on this person’s name were now linking to the few news stories that covered the lawsuit, including the court documents that we had posted. It was explained that these search results were making life difficult for this person who was trying to get his or her life back on track and believed that Google searches on the name were making it harder to find a job.

      The story was compelling, and we were asked to remove our post as well as the links to the documents, something that we won’t do. However, there was one intriguing bit to the communication, telling us that the court in question had “sealed the case” and asking us to respect that decision. That seemed odd to us. We’ve certainly seen filings sealed. And even some instances where almost all of the details in a docket were done under seal, but the case would still exist. Usually, though, those were cases involving at least a semi-plausible claim of national security. This was a case where someone just regretted filing questionable lawsuits (for a good reason). Even more amazing, after searching through PACER, it appeared that the judge in question did not just seal documents in the case, but made the entire case disappear. This happened for at least three cases. They do not exist in the court’s electronic records system at all. It is as if the cases never happened at all.

    • Governor says Philando Castile wouldn’t have been shot if he was white

      A suburban police officer likely wouldn’t have shot dead a black motorist if he had been white, Minnesota’s governor has said, joining the national debate in the US over how law enforcement treats black people.

    • Andrea Leadsom suggests she would make better PM as she has children

      Andrea Leadsom has suggested that she would be a better prime minister than her Conservative leadership contest rival Theresa May because she has children and May does not.

      In comments that were strongly denounced by some fellow Tories, Leadsom told the Times in an interview that being a mother was an advantage in the election because it showed that she had a “a very real stake” in the future of the country.

      Leadsom, an energy minister who has only emerged within the last week as a serious contender to replace David Cameron, said that she did not want to capitalise on May’s childlessness because to do so would be “really horrible”.

    • Muslims face fines up to £8,000 for wearing burkas in Switzerland

      A controversial Swiss law prohibiting Islamic dress has been used to fine a Muslim convert and a businessman, who protested the ban.

      The rule, which came into effect in Ticino on Friday, was voted in by referendum and outlaws face-covering headgear.

      Nora Illi and Rachid Nekkaz, who are prominent campaigners for the rights of Muslims, walked in the streets of Locarno in full Islamic dress soon after the rule was introduced.

    • Officials confirm Chelsea Manning has been hospitalized, lawyer says

      Lawyers for Chelsea Manning, the US soldier who covertly provided secret diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, are no longer in the dark about their client’s condition after several days of demanding information from military authorities on reports that Manning had been hospitalized.

      Manning, who is six years into a 35-year military prison sentence for revealing state secrets, alarmed her attorneys and outside contacts earlier this week when all contact stopped for at least 36 hours. The total loss of contact came on the heels of unconfirmed media reports that Manning had experienced a health crisis, and lawyers for the soldier railed against the defense department for keeping them in the dark while details of Manning’s medical status apparently leaked.

    • When victims of tragedy go off script, media struggles

      Anyone who’s ever gone to the movies is accustomed to watching characters’ instant reaction to tragedy: Tears. Hysteria. Rage.

      Diamond Reynolds wasn’t in a movie.

      In her Facebook Live posting, viewed by more than 5 million people, she is relatively calm, polite and clearheaded as she speaks into her cellphone seconds after her boyfriend, Philando Castile, had been shot and killed by a Falcon Heights police officer during a traffic stop.

      The lack of immediate emotion — the tears would come 10 minutes later while her 4-year-old daughter comforted her — set off a fiery debate on the media’s role in interpreting such an intimate, and unexpected, testimonial.

    • Philly PD Releases One Document About Its Fake Google Car: The Journalist’s Own Open Records Request Email

      Earlier this year, computer science professor and cryptography expert Matt Blaze happened across a Pennsylvania state-owned vehicle attempting to d/b/a a Google Street View… um, SUV. Taking that info, local reporter Dustin Slaughter dug deeper into the origins of that fake Google Street View vehicle.

    • State Supreme Court Says ‘Smashmouth Journo’ Teri Buhl Must Go To Jail For Posting Teen’s Journal Pages

      Journalist Terri Buhl — who gained a bit of Techdirt infamy by claiming her public tweets couldn’t be republished (which led to wild claims of copyright infringement and defamation) — is still dealing with some legal woes of her own, stemming from the posting of someone else’s actually private information to Facebook.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Comcast Continues To Claim It’s ‘Not Feasible’ To Offer Its Programming To Third-Party Cable Boxes

      We’ve been talking a lot about how the FCC is pushing a new plan that would force cable providers to provide their programming to third-party hardware vendors. The idea is to put an end to the $21 billion in annual rental fees consumers have to pay for often outdated cable boxes and create some competition in the cable box space, resulting in better, cheaper hardware for everyone. Given it’s a hugely profitable monopoly and third-party boxes would be more likely to direct users to competing services, the cable industry has shelled out big bucks for misleading editorials and high test Congressional whining.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

07.08.16

Links 8/7/2016: Kubernetes 1.3, New Linux Foundation Events

Posted in News Roundup at 4:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Releasing our own source code, Free as in Freedom

    Today we release all of our own source code as Free/Open Source Software.

  • Wise Awards 2016: Why we need more women in open source
  • Tsuru open source PaaS puts developers first

    A new open source PaaS, Tsuru, is out to ease the application deployment process by reducing it to little more than a Git push command.

    The workflow for Tsuru, according to its documentation, consists of writing an app, backing it with resources like databases or caching, and deploying it to production with Git. Tsuru handles the rest, including crating up the apps in Docker containers and managing their workloads. Its creators claim it can be deployed both locally and on services like AWS, DigitalOcean, or Apache CloudStack.

  • Mouser Now Stocking the Hexiwear Open Source IoT Platform from MikroElektronika and NXP

    Mouser Electronics, Inc. is now offering Hexiwear wearable platform products from MikroElektronika. Completely open source and developed in partnership with NXP, the Hexiwear device incorporates a low-power NXP Kinetis K64 microcontroller, Bluetooth® low energy (BLE) and wireless connectivity, and six onboard sensors into a compact wearable form factor for developers who need a complete Internet of Things (IoT) toolkit. With Hexiwear’s low-power yet versatile hardware, compatible smartphone and iOS apps, and cloud connectivity, developers can prototype and build devices such as cloud-connected edge nodes, wearable devices, or complex controllers for industrial IoT applications.

  • A Discussion on Contributing to Open Source

    Are you wondering how to get involved in an open source project? Maybe this episode from the Mondern Web podcast will give you some ideas.

  • Events

    • GIMP at Texas LinuxFest

      I’ll be at Texas LinuxFest in Austin, Texas this weekend. Friday, July 8 is the big day for open source imaging: first a morning Photo Walk led by Pat David, from 9-11, after which Pat, an active GIMP contributor and the driving force behind the PIXLS.US website and discussion forums, gives a talk on “Open Source Photography Tools”. Then after lunch I’ll give a GIMP tutorial. We may also have a Graphics Hackathon/Q&A session to discuss all the open-source graphics tools in the last slot of the day, but that part is still tentative. I’m hoping we can get some good discussion especially among the people who go on the photo walk.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Tor Privacy settings coming to Firefox

        Mozilla works on uplifting privacy settings of the Tor browser project to the Firefox web browser to provide privacy conscious users with additional privacy-related options.

        While the Tor browser is based on Firefox ESR, it is modified with additional privacy and security settings to protect users of the browser while using the program.

      • Announcing Rust 1.10

        The Rust team is happy to announce the latest version of Rust, 1.10. Rust is a systems programming language focused on safety, speed, and concurrency.

      • Rust 1.10 Programming Language Update

        Version 1.10 of the Rust programming language is now available.

        Rust 1.10 brings the -C panic=abort flag as their most-requested feature for yielding 10% smaller binaries and about 10% faster compilation time. Rust 1.10 also brings the new cdylib crate type for compiling Rust as a dynamic library to be embedded in another language. Rust 1.10 also has build system changes to allow it to be built with Rust 1.9 and that trend will continue to be supported for future releases.

      • Buyer beware: Mozilla deal demands up to $1 billion after Yahoo’s sale, Recode says

        According to a contract seen by Recode, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer struck a deal with Mozilla in 2014 specifying annual payments of $375 million to the browser creator in exchange for Yahoo’s search engine appearing in the default position on Firefox. That $375 million price tag will be paid out every year until 2019 one way or another—even if Mozilla doesn’t like the company that buys Yahoo and decides to walk away.

        Of course, if Mozilla decides it likes whichever company buys the embattled search giant, then payments continue as before and the new owner of Yahoo’s search engine retains the default position on the browser.

      • Under Mayer deal, Mozilla could walk away and still get more than $1 billion if it doesn’t like Yahoo’s buyer

        Under terms of a contract that has been seen by Recode, whoever acquires Yahoo might have to pay Mozilla annual payments of $375 million through 2019 if it does not think the buyer is one it wants to work with and walks away.

      • Mozilla’s Context Graph Reimagines Browsing Experiences

        Mozilla has a way of popping up with unexpected projects that it opens up for community development, and it has now unveiled a project called the Context Graph. The effort is focused on the answer to this question: “What if web browsers were immediately useful instead of demanding input when you launched them?”

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

  • Healthcare

    • Push to promote open source software in healthcare

      Belgian, British and German advocates of open source in healthcare want to join efforts, hoping to raise interest, and to strengthen the network of software healthcare specialists. A conference is tentatively being planned in London (UK) early next year.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • gdbm Switch to Git
    • Friday Free Software Directory IRC meetup: July 8th

      Join the FSF and friends Friday, July 8th, from 12pm to 3pm EDT (16:00 to 19:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory.

      Participate in supporting the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones. We will be on IRC in the #fsf channel on freenode.

      Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info that has been carefully checked by FSF staff and trained volunteers.

  • Public Services/Government

    • France’s Inria unveils open source preservation project

      France’s national computer science institute, Inria, has unveiled its Software Heritage archive. The project aims to “collect, organise, preserve, and make accessible all the source code for all available software”.

    • Bulgaria passes law requiring all government-developed software to be open source

      Bulgaria has signed into law a new rule that will require all software developed for, and used by, the government to be open source.

      Bozhidar Bozhanov, a software engineer who has been advising the deputy prime minister, blogged that the Electronic Governance Act has been amended to state that “all software written for the government [is] to be open source and developed as such in a public repository”.

      Bozhanov continued: “That does not mean that the whole country is moving to Linux and LibreOffice, neither does it mean the government demands that Microsoft and Oracle give the source to their products.

    • Bulgarian Government Embraces Open Source

      Bulgaria’s Parliament recently passed legislation mandating open source software to bolster security, as well as to increase competition with commercially coded software.

      Amendments to the Electronic Governance Act require that all software written for the government be Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)-compliant. The new provisions reportedly took effect this week.

      Software developer Bozhidar Bozhanov, advisor to one of Bulgaria’s four deputy prime ministers, orchestrated the new law.

    • The ‘Bad Guys’ Have An Advantage In Bulgaria’s New Open Source Government

      This move is supposed to improve government transparency, give citizens a tangible return on their tax dollars, and improve the quality and security of sometimes-shoddy bespoke government software. The law was seen as a win by advocates of open source software, but it also means Bulgaria must face the double edge of open sourcing.

    • New European contest to promote IT reuse

      The European Commission will reward software and services that have been proven to be shared and reused in the public sector and which have a potential for wider reuse in Europe.

    • Italy to stop emphasising open ICT architecture

      The government of Italy will stop highlighting the importance of an open, interoperable ICT architecture. The government will no longer require the Agency for the Digitalisation of the Public Sector (Agenzia per l’Italia Digitale, AGID) to assess public administration’s ICT plans, and is also scrapping publication and maintenance of a list of open ICT standards that are to be used by public administrations.

  • Programming/Development

    • [Pulp] Sprint Demo 4 — July 7, 2016
    • 10 Biggest Mistakes in Using Static Analysis

      Static analysis was introduced to the software engineering process for many important reasons. Developers use static analysis tools as part of the development and component testing process. The key aspect of static analysis is that the code (or another artifact) is not executed or run, but the tool itself is executed, and the input data to the tool provides us with the source code we are interested in. Static analysis started with compilers and derived technologies that are well established in the software development world. Each technology applicable for static analysis can choose between several alternatives, set up its own rules, and benefit from using them. What is most surprising to me is that even with a huge set of tools and possibilities, static analysis is not properly used and disregarded in most projects.

    • LiveCode Ltd.’s LiveCode

      The new features in LiveCode 8 are intended to empower a new audience of app makers. Some of these include nine pre-made widgets, 46 new extensions, the all new LiveCode Builder language, a 3.5x performance boost, Script Only stacks for better version control and working in teams, LiveCode for HTML5 and a new Feature Exchange for community funding of new features, among others.

Leftovers

  • Two YouTubers About To Learn That Trust Is A Valuable Commodity That You Can Only Lose Once

    While we’ve had some reservations in the past about the FTC’s guidelines on endorsements and testimonials in the online arena, our concerns have tended to be about the grey areas of the law. The way that reviews for books, music and games often work falls into this grey area, with products and media handed out for review, and the disclosure guidelines the FTC laid out seem overly intrusive. Whatever our reservations about those guidelines, however, the goal of preventing the surreptitious pimping of a product or service by a trusted source that has direct connections with it was laudable.

    Which brings us to two YouTube personalities, TmarTn and Syndicate Project, whose real names are Trevor Martin and Tom Cassell. These two have spent a great deal of time urging their followers to use the CSGO Lotto website while, at best, barely disclosing the site’s sponsorship, and never even coming close to acknowledging that they are executives of the company behind the site.

  • Microsoft

    • Microsoft’s attempt to recruit interns is a barrel of cringe

      The best, by which I mean worst, part of the e-mail is that it gets the lingo wrong. “Drank” does not mean “drink.” “Drank” means “cough syrup;” specifically, cough syrup containing codeine and promethazine that is consumed recreationally. Opioids like codeine are routinely abused to get high, and, when combined with the antihistamine promethazine, can produce feelings of euphoria.

    • A Longtime Microsoft Exec Just Left the Company

      Kevin Turner, Microsoft chief operating officer for the past 11 years, is moving to Citadel Securities, where he will be chief executive officer. He will also be vice chairman of Citadel, the parent company.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • ‘Sham’ GMO Bill Advances in Senate Amid Widespread Opposition

      Despite opposition from consumer advocacy groups, a controversial bill on the labeling of genetically modified (GM or GMO) food passed a cloture vote in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, even as critics warned the legislation is needlessly complicated and bends to the agriculture lobby interests.

    • Drug and Device Makers Find Receptive Audience at For-profit, Southern Hospitals

      Where a hospital is located and who owns it make a big difference in how many of its doctors take meals, consulting and promotional payments from pharmaceutical and medical device companies, a new ProPublica analysis shows.

      A higher percentage of doctors affiliated with hospitals in the South have received such payments than doctors in other regions of the country, our analysis found. And a greater share of doctors at for-profit hospitals have taken them than at nonprofit and government facilities.

    • The Dig: Investigating the Safety of the Water You Drink

      Today, The Dig dives into water. Pun totally intended. I’ve received a lot of questions about applying investigative reporting techniques to figuring out whether your water is safe — the stuff in your taps, the stuff in your rivers, the stuff at the beach. Flint, Michigan, has made us all want to be water sleuths.

    • E-Cigarettes Keep Blowing Up In People’s Faces

      E-cigarettes or vaporizers have surged in popularity in recent years, especially among teenagers. But the tobacco-alternative comes with an unexpected health risk: the devices can explode and cause severe burns, according to a slew of lawsuits filed against manufacturers.

    • A Blood Test To Determine When Antibiotics Are Warranted

      Scientists can distinguish between a viral and a bacterial infection by assaying just seven human genes, according to a study published this week (July 6) in Science Translational Medicine. A clinical test based on these findings would enable doctors to more appropriately prescribe antibiotics, which are ineffective against viruses.

      This May, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that doctors prescribe antibiotics when they’re not needed in around 30 percent of cases examined. Overuse of these drugs may promote more widespread antibiotic resistance.

      To address the problem, scientists at Stanford University looked at more than 1,000 patient blood samples to identify gene activation signatures associated with either bacterial or viral infections.

    • The Real Harm of Environmentally Poisonous Lands

      The year 2003 was a game changer when two Pennsylvania State Correction facilities were shut down and relocated to a new facility, the State Correctional Institute at Fayette (SCI Fayette), outside the town LaBelle, which was built directly on top of an old coal mine and adjacent to a fly ash dump – fly ash is “the powdery residue left over from coal combustion” – Kevin Williams reports for Al Jazeera. After thirteen years of operation and many health problems, nothing is being done to combat the effects of the toxic waste site known as the old coal mine. As Williams notes in his article, “‘Poisonous Lands’: Pennsylvania Prison Built Next to Toxic Dump,” prisoners and townsfolk alike are being harmed by the debris.

      Prisons being built on toxic lands are nothing new, but the adverse health effects are not just harming the prisoners. The local townsfolk and the correction officers are also being affected by the state’s choice to cut costs and save money. Although the scale of impact seems to be contained to only this relatively small area, the actuality is that as consumers we are creating this problem. The coal mine site has higher contaminant recordings than the federal and state standards of lead, mercury, arsenic, etc. (Williams, 2016). These contaminants are causing the individuals to develop cancer at a statistically significant rate higher than the general populous. The individuals in this area are experiencing medical issues involving skin, eye, throat, and nose irritation.

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Chilcot Report and 7/7 London Bombing Anniversary Converge to Highlight Terrorism’s Causes

      Eleven years ago today, three suicide bombers attacked the London subway and a bus and killed 51 people. Almost immediately, it was obvious that retaliation for Britain’s invasion and destruction of Iraq was a major motive for the attackers.

      Two of them said exactly that in videotapes they left behind: the attacks “will continue and pick up strengths till you pull your soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq . . . . until we feel security, you will be targets.” Then, less than a year later, a secret report from British military and intelligence chiefs concluded that “the war in Iraq contributed to the radicalisation of the July 7 London bombers and is likely to continue to provoke extremism among British Muslims.” The secret report, leaked to the Observer, added: “Iraq is likely to be an important motivating factor for some time to come in the radicalisation of British Muslims and for those extremists who view attacks against the UK as legitimate.”

    • The Iraq War Was an Act of Military Aggression Launched on a False Pretext: Remarks on the Chilcot Inquiry Report

      Before addressing the issues raised in the Iraq Inquiry report, I would like to remember and honour the 179 British servicemen and women killed and the thousands maimed and injured during the Iraq war, and their families as well as the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq launched by the US and British governments 13 years ago.

      Yesterday I had a private meeting with some of the families of the British dead as I have continued to do over the past dozen years.

      It is always a humbling experience to witness the resolve and resilience of these families and their unwavering commitment to seek truth and justice for those that they lost in Iraq.

    • MH-17 Probe’s Torture-Implicated Ally

      The Ukrainian intelligence service at the center of the inquiry into who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is accused by a top U.N. official of blocking a probe into Ukrainian government torture, reports Robert Parry.

    • Blissful Bush Celebrates Birthday with No War Crime Reckoning

      Almost as if it were planned, former U.S. President George W. Bush rang in his 70th birthday on Wednesday with a remarkable gift: a reminder of his seemingly eternal impunity for war crimes committed in Iraq and beyond.

      The long-awaited publication of the Chilcot Inquiry—the UK government’s investigation into the lead-up to and execution of the Iraq War—amounted to a searing indictment of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, accusing him of deceiving the public and British Parliament about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and following the United States blindly into an “illegal” war.

    • Donald Trump, Who Now Praises Saddam Hussein, Once Called Him a “Madman”

      Donald Trump praises Saddam Hussein these days. “He was a bad guy, really bad guy. But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good,” Trump said on Tuesday. Last fall, Trump said that the world would be “100 percent” better if Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi were still in power.

      But you know when Trump was really angry at Saddam? Back in the early 1990s, when Trump—deep in debt and piling on loans in the midst of a recession—blamed the Iraqi leader for his business woes.

      In August 1990, Trump couldn’t break even on his Taj Mahal casino hotel and the Trump Shuttle airline—but it wasn’t his fault. “Nobody projected that oil prices would go through the roof because of some madman in the Middle East,” Trump said, according to Newsday. “This just adds to and makes the recession worse.”

      Trump owed his creditors $245 million for the Trump Shuttle, and he had had missed a $1.1 million interest payment. The airline merged with another company in 1992.

    • Chilcot Report on Iraq Invasion Shows Threat of Lesser Evils

      After almost a decade of waiting, the Chilcot report is finally being released today promising to uncover the real reasons for the UK’s disastrous decision to invade Iraq. While British political elites are dealing with the aftermath of this political bombshell, the media and population are once again demanding answers for this costly and unnecessary war.

      Perhaps the most salacious expectation is the possibility that top leaders such as Tony Blair could be brought up on charges as a “war criminal”. For many families of the fallen and citizens in general, it is an opportunity to hold politicians to account for the real casualties of their policies. When it comes to tens to hundreds of thousands of death at home and abroad, electoral defeat is simply not punishment enough.

    • Obama Delays U.S. Withdrawal From ‘Precarious’ Afghanistan (Video)

      Barack Obama has delayed his planned troop withdrawal in Afghanistan, meaning there will now be 8,400 US forces in the country when he leaves office in January.

      The US president’s most recent estimate for that figure was 5,500. In 2012, he promised that the war would be over by 2014.

      In a surprise White House statement on Wednesday, Obama warned that a “precarious” security situation in Afghanistan could yet provide support to terrorists some 15 years after the September 11 attacks that first led to western military intervention.

    • Death Squad Revelations and the New Police in Honduras

      On June 21, 2015 the London-based Guardian newspaper published an article describing the testimony of a soldier who says he deserted the army after his unit was given an order to kill activists whose names appeared on two lists. He reported seeing one list given to his Military Police unit that formed part of the Xatruch task force, and a second for a Military Police unit that formed part of the National Force of Interinstitutional Security (FUSINA) task force. The second contained the name of Lenca indigenous leader Berta Caceres, murdered on March 3, 2016.

    • The Chilcot Report about the Iraq War

      Here is an interview I did yesterday about the long-awaited Chilcot

    • The General Who Lost 2 Wars, Leaked Classified Information to His Lover—and Retired With a $220,000 Pension

      It’s been more than a year since I first tried to connect with the retired four-star general and ex–CIA director—and no luck yet. On a recent evening, as the sky was turning from a crisp ice blue into a host of Easter-egg hues, I missed him again. Led from a curtained “backstage” area where he had retreated after a midtown Manhattan event, Petraeus moved briskly to a staff-only room, then into a tightly packed elevator, and momentarily out onto the street before being quickly ushered into a waiting late-model, black Mercedes S550.

    • Bangladesh Eid day attack: Liberal cleric was target, suspect police

      Thursday’s suspected militant attack on Bangladesh’s biggest congregation to celebrate Eid was possibly aimed at a liberal cleric who has led a public campaign against Islamist radicals in the country, police said.

      Maulana Farid-uddin Masud, the chief cleric of the main mosque in Kishoregunj town that was attacked, collected more than 100,000 signatures, including from leading Islamic scholars and intellectuals, against a recent wave of extremist attacks in the country targeting atheists, religious minorities.

      Masud had described radical Islamists as pursuing “empty Islam” and said those perpetrating violence in the name of the faith would “go to hell”.

      “We believe he was the target,” Tofazzal Hossain, assistant superintendent of police in Kishoregunj, told Hindustan Times.

    • Interview with psychologist Nicolai Sennels: “Muslims instinctively see our lack of reaction as fear, its an invitation to attack”
    • The Truth About Chilcot

      The death toll from the horrific recent Iraq bombings has risen over 250. If Blair had not been absolutely determined to attack Iraq on the basis of a knowing lie about WMD, they would be alive now, along with millions of other dead. ISIS would never have taken control of territory in Iraq and Syria. Al Qaeda would never have grown from an organisation of a few hundred to one of tens of thousands. We would not have a completely destabilised Middle East and a massive refugee crisis.

      Do not expect a full truth and a full accounting from the Chilcot panel of establishment trusties today. Remember who they are.

    • Thoughts After Chilcot

      Blair is still a creature of absolute self-serving slime. His attempt yesterday to justify the invasion of Iraq as an effort to prevent a 9/11 on British soil is dishonest in every way. Blair knew full well that Iraq had nothing at all to do with 9/11 – that was his still friends and financiers the Saudi elite. The intelligence advice in advance of the invasion he received was unequivocal that it would increase the threat to the UK, and it directly caused the attacks of 7/7.

    • More Obscuration From The British Establishment

      Remember, there was a leaked memo from the head of British intelligence that the intelligence justifying the Iraqi Invasion was “fixed” or orchestrated to produce the justification for the invasion, a war crime under the Nuremberg standard established by the United States. Chilcot’s job was to make this fact go away or assume less importance and to protect the Butler Inquiry’s orchestrated verdict that, despite the word of the head of British intelligence, the intelligence was not fixed.

    • Putin LOSES IT, Warns Journalists of War

      The Russian president was meeting with foreign journalists at the conclusion of the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 17th, when he left no one in any doubt that the world is headed down a course which could lead to nuclear war.

      Putin railed against the journalists for their “tall tales” in blindly repeating lies and misinformation provided to them by the United States on its anti-ballistic missile systems being constructed in Eastern Europe. He pointed out that since the Iran nuclear deal, the claim the system is to protect against Iranian missiles has been exposed as a lie.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • The CIA Is Preventing Congress from Learning that the Worst Allegations against Hillary Pertain to Drones

      You probably heard that Jim Comey testified to the House Oversight Committee for over four hours today. You’ll see far less coverage of the second panel in that hearing, the testimony of Inspector Generals Steve Linick (from State) and Charles McCullough (from the IC).

      In addition to OGR Chair Jason Chaffetz suggesting the committee convene a secrecy committee akin to the one Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan convened back in the 1990s (which would be very exciting), McCullough revealed something rather startling regarding a letter he sent to Congress back in January (this was first reported by Fox). The letter was his official notice to Congress that some of the information in Hillary’s emails was claimed by an agency he didn’t name to be Special Access.

    • Jim Comey, Poker Face, and the Scope of the Clinton Investigation(s)

      I write this post reluctantly, because I really wish the Hillary investigations would be good and over. But I don’t think they are.

      After having watched five and a half hours of the Clinton investigation hearing today, I’ve got new clarity about what the FBI has been doing for the last year. That leads me to believe that this week’s announcement that DOJ will not charge Clinton is simply a pause in the Clinton investigation(s). I believe an investigation will resume shortly (if one is not already ongoing), though that resumed investigation will also end with no charges — for different reasons than this week’s declination.

      First, understand how this all came about. After the existence of Hillary’s server became known, State’s IG Steve Linick started an investigation into it, largely focused on whether Hillary (and other Secretaries of State) complied with Federal Records Act obligations. In parallel, as intelligence agencies came to complain about State’s redactions of emails released in FOIA response, the Intelligence Committee Inspector General Charles McCullough intervened in the redaction process and referred Clinton to the FBI regarding whether any classified information had been improperly handed. As reported, State will now resume investigating the classification habits of Hillary and her aides, which will likely lead to several of them losing clearance.

    • FBI Director James Comey Breaks Federal Prosecutor Rules by Smearing but Not Indicting Clinton Over Emails

      Comey, a Republican appointed as FBI director by President Obama, crossed all three of those lines. Very few commentators noted that Comey shouldn’t have said anything at all, and how unusual it was that he did. One exception was Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of the Lawfare blog and a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

    • Darrell Issa Calls For Government Shutdown If Hillary Clinton Is Not Charged

      Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) once claimed that he “never voted for a [government] shutdown and never will.” But Issa is so angry the FBI recommended Hillary Clinton not be indicted for using a private server for her email that he suggested on Wednesday that he is rethinking his promise. He proposed that now might be a good time for the Republican leadership to shut down the federal government, in protest of what he called “an imperial president” who will not “enforce criminal charges against a criminal.”

    • FBI Vacuums Up Local Law Enforcement Documents To Block Open Records Requests About Orlando Shooting

      Presto! Instant blanket exemption from disclosure at both federal and state level. The FBI takes care to point out which Florida Sunshine Law exemption local agencies can use to withhold documents from requesters.

      There’s significant public interest in these documents, especially those related to EMS/police response to emergency calls. This obviously conflicts with the FBI’s determination that its ongoing investigation — which now apparently contains every document created by every responding law enforcement agency in Florida — should preempt any and all requests for documents via Florida open records laws.

      Not for nothing have there been several efforts mounted to alter blanket exemptions like the one the FBI is using to insert itself into local level records requests. Unfortunately, it’s very likely the FBI’s wielding of this “open investigation” exemption will be granted deference by the federal court currently presiding over an open records lawsuit between the Orlando Sentinel and the City of Orlando, even though this fight never should have included a federal agency conducting its own concurrent investigation of the mass shooting.

    • Loose Lips Sink Ships: Clinton’s Criminal Negligence Hurts More Than the Election
    • Lawyer: Here’s To The ‘Hillary Defense’ … Because Many People Have Been Punished For Doing Much Less
    • Ex-NSA Lawyer: Clinton Aides Can Be Punished
    • James Comey Has Been Covering Up The Clintons’ Messes For Decades

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Wisconsin Said Frac Sand Mining Is Safe In A Report That Groups Say Used Industry Data

      Ever since the hydraulic fracturing boom began in the mid-2000s, Wisconsin has been a leader in mining the silica sand the fracking industry uses in a watery mix with other chemicals to extract oil and gas trapped in shale rock. And similar to fracking, some have long worried that sand mining harms the environment and public health, polluting air and water.

    • Past presents warning on greater warming

      Reconstruction of climate events long before the Ice Ages shows that failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could eventually lead to temperatures rising by up to 10 degrees.

    • SEC Charges “Frack Master” Chris Faulkner, Shale CEO and Industry Advocate, with $80 Million Fraud

      At the start of June, Chris Faulkner, Chief Executive Officer of Breitling Energy, was a high-flying shale company executive and media darling, often interviewed on CNN, Fox Business News and even the BBC. During his most recent appearance on CNN on June 2nd, he weighed in on the financial prospects for drillers who survive low oil prices despite the spate of bankruptcies sweeping the shale industry.

    • Sweden should keep coal in the ground, not sell it off

      The history of the fossil fuel industry can feel like it is told in complicated deals the public isn’t meant to understand. This is what is happening in Sweden. The government-owned energy company, Vattenfall, is demanding the sale of its coal mines and power plants based in Germany to a Czech company, EPH. The deal includes some of Germany’s largest coal mines – and three of the top 10 most polluting coal plants in Europe. They are going to a deeply unattractive buyer – EPH, a company hell-bent on burning as much coal as possible.

      In the next couple of weeks, Swedish prime minister, Stefan Löfven, is facing a stark choice. On one hand, he could approve the sale of the most climate-destroying assets in Europe, breaking his own election promises in the process. Or, he could promote a transition to keep coal in the ground – and support a liveable climate – in an unprecedented decision by a government to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Coal is the most polluting of all fossil fuels, and lignite or ‘brown coal’ is the most polluting type of coal and the greatest threat to EU climate goals.

    • Will Democrats Get It Right on Climate Before It’s Too Late?

      Democrats need to get serious about climate change—and time is running out for them to do so.

      Environmentalists see the upcoming full Democratic Platform Committee meeting in Orlando as a final opportunity to ensure the party takes meaningful action on climate change over the next four years.

  • Finance

    • Commission’s CETA proposal violates EU law

      The Commission’s proposal on provisional application of the Canada-EU trade agreement (CETA) violates EU law.

      The EU can only provisionally apply those parts of the international agreement over which it has exclusive powers. However, in today’s proposal, the Commission is seeking to provisionally apply CETA in its entirety. This violates the founding treaties of the EU.

      The Commission has already shown it is not sure it has the power to do this, by asking EU judges to rule on the division of power in the EU-Singapore Free Trade deal. This judgement is expected later this year or early next year.

      Instead of waiting for this important Court ruling, the Commission is hastily pushing for a decision that may be contrary to what the ECJ decides.

    • Commodifying Dissent: Media, the Arts and the Hope in Cooperatives

      But it is just another day at the office for the 1%. They own the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government. As Chris Hedges frequently stresses: “We’ve undergone a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion. And it’s over. We’ve lost, and they’ve won.”

    • Brexit: Which Kind of Dependence Now?

      But, as usual, things are more complicated. We should hope that, in one respect, Britain’s exit from the EU will create a kind of dependence that did not exist while it was still a member of the union.

    • Brexit and the Derivatives Time Bomb

      Sovereign debt – the debt of national governments – has ballooned from $80 trillion to $100 trillion just since 2008. Squeezed governments have been driven to radical austerity measures, privatizing public assets, slashing public services, and downsizing work forces in a futile attempt to balance national budgets. But the debt overhang just continues to grow.

    • My 350 on BREXIT: Fighting for youthful minds in Latvia

      The most disappointing consequence of Brexit for foreigners living in the UK has become the unexpected rise of xenophobia. According to the behavior of locals, the EU open door policy has completely failed. Brits have made it clear that foreigners are not welcome. Not only immigrants from conflict areas, but people from Poland and Baltic States face insults or even physical violence, hear offensive words and the call to pack their bags and leave.

    • Britain supports EU free trade deal with Canada despite Brexit

      Britain supports EU free trade deal with Canada despite Brexit: Freeland

      Britain has assured Canada it will push for speedy ratification of the mammoth free trade deal with the European Union, despite its intention to leave the 28-country bloc, says International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland.

    • Greenwashing the Trans-Pacific Partnership: Fossil fuels, the environment, and climate change

      There has been much controversy over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – a plurilateral trade agreement involving a dozen nations from throughout the Pacific Rim – and its impact upon the environment, biodiversity, and climate change.

      The secretive treaty negotiations involve Australia and New Zealand; countries from South East Asia such as Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Japan; the South American nations of Peru and Chile; and the members of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Canada, Mexico and the United States. There was an agreement reached between the parties in October 2015. The participants asserted: ‘We expect this historic agreement to promote economic growth, support higher-paying jobs; enhance innovation, productivity and competitiveness; raise living standards; reduce poverty in our countries; and to promote transparency, good governance, and strong labor and environmental protections.’ The final texts of the agreement were published in November 2015.

    • U.S. trade chief says China offer falls short, UK could join TPP
    • ‘Largest-ever’ Silicon Valley eviction to displace hundreds of tenants

      Iris Milano could hardly sleep after she got the news that her family would be kicked out of their two-bedroom apartment in San Jose.

      “You’re always thinking and worrying. It’s something that is always with me,” said Milano, 47, a skin-care technician who lives with her husband and 14-year-old son in an apartment protected by rent control in the northern California city. “We are being forced to move. This is our home.”

      Milano, who is originally from Venezuela and has lived in the area for 13 years, is one of roughly 670 tenants who are being displaced from their homes in what local housing advocates believe to be Silicon Valley’s largest-ever mass eviction of rent-controlled tenants.

      The 216-unit complex called the Reserve Apartments that is being demolished to make way for a development of market-rate housing – located five miles away from Apple’s headquarters, 14 miles away from Google and 20 miles away from Facebook – is the latest example of rising income inequality in a region home to many of the world’s wealthiest technology companies.

    • Consumer confidence ‘falls after Brexit vote’

      Consumer confidence has seen its sharpest drop in 21 years after the UK vote to leave the EU, a survey suggests.

      The market research firm GfK conducted a one-off online survey of 2,000 people after the result was known.

      Its confidence index fell by eight points to minus nine, a drop not since seen December 1994.

      Less confident consumers tend to curb their spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of the UK economy.

      It is also one measure watched by the Bank of England when deciding its next move on interest rates. Governor Mark Carney has already warned the UK’s economic outlook is “challenging” following the decision to leave the EU.

      The Gfk survey also suggested that 60% of consumers expect the general economic situation to worsen over the next year, compared with 46% in June. Just 20% expect it to improve, down from 27% last month.

    • Democrats and the TPP: Who Speaks for the Future?

      Texas populist Jim Hightower will present the Democratic Party platform committee with a Bernie Sanders-sponsored amendment to the draft platform when it meets in Orlando this Friday and Saturday. It will read:

      It is the policy of the Democratic Party that the Trans-Pacific Partnership should not get a vote in the lame duck session of Congress and beyond.

      This should be a no-brainer. All of the Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination were opposed to the TPP trade deal, as of course is Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Jill Stein’s Green New Deal Deserves to Be Heard by Widest Audience Possible

      This is a crucial time for Dr. Jill Stein. It’s a test of whether she can move her presidential campaign from the fringes into the mainstream of an election that she says “has tossed out the rule book.”

      “We are here to keep the revolution going,” Stein, the prospective Green Party presidential candidate, told me in a telephone interview Tuesday. “Bernie [Sanders] supporters are grieving over the loss of the campaign, of their hard work, their vision, but they are remobilizing. Our events are absolutely mobbed with Bernie supporters.”

      We spoke in the morning, before FBI Director James Comey threw yet another twist into the presidential race by announcing that while the bureau would not recommend criminal charges in the Hillary Clinton email affair, she had been “extremely careless” with her use of a personal email address and a private server for sensitive communications.

    • Sanders Files Permit Request for Huge Rally on Eve of Democratic Convention

      Bernie Sanders’ next signature rally may take place in Philadelphia—the night before the Democratic National Convention.

      The Vermont senator’s campaign has applied for a permit to hold an event that will reportedly host between 15,000 to 40,000 people on July 24 at Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park. It is one of 10 such pro-Sanders events requesting permission from the Philadelphia mayor’s office, the Burlington Free Press reports.

      Sanders spokesperson Michael Briggs said last month that the senator was planning to deliver a “victory statement” in Philadelphia, but said on Wednesday that plans for the rally are still being finalized.

      The campaign is gearing up for the convention, where Sanders has promised to bring a floor fight over the Democratic National Committee (DNC) platform after a slew of his proposals—including banning fracking and blocking U.S. Congress from voting on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)—were overruled or watered down during previous negotiations.

    • How political megadonors can give almost $500,000 with a single check

      On May 17, Donald Trump announced an arrangement with the Republican National Committee (RNC) that will allow individuals to donate almost $500,000 each to a joint fundraising committee between Trump, the RNC and 11 state Republican parties. In 2012, Mitt Romney’s joint fundraising committee could only raise $135,000 from each individual. What happened in the last four years to make these numbers so much higher?

    • Voters Have Heavy Responsibility In November

      It seems like a nightmare, but it is reality: The Democratic Party has chosen a criminal as its presidential candidate. And the liberals said that Reagan wore teflon!

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • When Free Speech Signifies Nothing

      The United States touts its commitment to free speech but American discourse has degenerated into self-absorbed info-tainment and trivia, ignoring many of the most pressing issues of the day, writes Michael Brenner.

    • Apple’s IP Lawyers May Force YouTube MacBook Repair Videos Offline Over Schematic

      It’s no secret that Apple does not want you to monkey around with your device’s innards or to take it anywhere but to its own stores for repairs. The company has continually screwed around with the screws that keep its hardware together in an effort to prevent DIYers and non-Apple-approved repair shops from opening its devices.

      Now, Apple can’t legally prevent anyone from utilizing third parties for repairs, as explained in this Motherboard article by Jason Koebler. A 40-year-old piece of legislation states companies can’t void warranties simply because the devices have been opened.

    • The censorship must stop

      Over the past two months, the public broadcaster has been embroiled in unconstitutional pronouncements aimed at compromising and more importantly censoring information intended for public consumption.

    • Israeli Opposition Leader Calls for Censorship of MK Zoabi’s Speeches

      ‘I would recommend that Knesset TV not broadcast her words as a matter of principle,’ Zionist Union’s Herzog. MK Freige: Herzog a ‘useful idiot’ for Netanyahu and the right.

    • CPJ Advocacy Director Testifies at HRC hearing on Blasphemy Laws and Censorship

      Hearing: Blasphemy Laws and Censorship by States and Non-State Actors: Examining Global Threats to Freedom of Expression

    • Reddit Moderators Censor Refugee Rape Stories

      Reddit’s World News moderators have censored a story about a German woman who didn’t report her rape due of fear of inciting “racism against refugees” while allowing the posting of a story about a young girl lying about about a refugee sex attack.

      The story of the German activist and leader of left wing German youth movement Solid lying about the identities of the men who raped her was reported on by The Washington Times. The article was removed from /r/WorldNews under the belief that it did not constitute worldwide news and was marked as “local news”.

    • Chinese game developers aren’t happy about new censorship rules

      The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) of the People’s Republic of China announced a rule that meant all games had to be pre-approved by SAPPRFT before going live.

      SAPPRFT has also allowed a three month grace period in which existing games must be submitted and post-approved.

      However, one games developers grievances have been shared around the internet as his game was denied for having English words in it.

    • UK ISP Sky is about to start censoring the web for all of its customers

      The UK government is on a mission to protect the young of the country from the dark recesses of the web. And by the darker recesses, what is really meant is porn. The main ISPs have long been required to block access to known piracy sites, but porn is also a concern — for politicians, at least.

      As part of its bid to sanitize and censor the web, Sky — from the Murdoch stables — is, as of today, enabling adult content filtering by default for all new customers: Sky Broadband Shield. The company wants to “help families protect their children from inappropriate content”, and in a previous experiment discovered — unsurprisingly — that content filtering was used by more people if it was automatically enabled.

      The government has proposed that all money-making porn sites that operate in the UK need to have an age verification system in place, and in many ways Sky’s scheme is just an extension of the idea. Sky’s approach, however, the reverse of similar systems used by other ISPs, Rather than asking customers if they want to enable the content filter, the question is flipped on its head so they are asked if they want to disable the option.

    • As Live-Streaming Of Violent Events Becomes More Common, How Are Social Media Companies Handling It?

      The aftermath of the police shooting of Philando Castile, 32, was broadcast to the world when his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds used Facebook Live to document the traffic stop turned fatal in St. Paul, Minnesota. Castile’s death is the latest of a string of police-involved shootings of African Americans, but it’s also part of a growing trend: live-streaming violent events. And social media companies are now being scrutinized for how they handle them.

      Reynolds filmed for 10 minutes, starting just seconds after Castile was shot and slumped over in the driver’s seat, until her phone died. “The only thing y’all didn’t see is when he was shot,” she said during a subsequent Facebook Live broadcast Thursday.

    • Icasa to make ruling on SABC censorship
    • Icasa to rule on SABC’s violence ban
    • ICASA strike enters day four
    • Previous Advocate Of Censorship Appointed To North Carolina Board of Education

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Standards Body Whines That People Who Want Free Access To The Law Probably Also Want ‘Free Sex’

      You would think that “the law” is obviously part of the public domain. It seems particularly crazy to think that any part of the law itself might be covered by copyright, or (worse) locked up behind some sort of paywall where you cannot read it. Carl Malamud has spent many years working to make sure the law is freely accessible… and he’s been sued a bunch of times and is still in the middle of many lawsuits, including one from the State of Georgia for publishing its official annotated code (the state claims the annotations are covered by copyright).

      But there’s another area that he’s fought over for many years: the idea that standards that are “incorporated by reference” into the law should also be public. The issue is that many lawmakers, when creating regulations will often cite private industry “standards” as part of the regulations. So, things like building codes may cite standards for, say, sheet metal and air conditioning that were put together by the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors National Association (SMACNA), and say that buildings need to follow SMACNA’s standards. And those standards may be great — but if you can’t actually read the standards, how can you obey the law. At one point SMACNA went after Malamud for publishing its standards. And while they eventually backed down, others are still in court against Malamud — including the American Society for Testing & Materials (ASTM), whose case against Malamud is set to go to trial in the fall.

    • Israel Targeting Palestinian Protesters on Facebook

      On the morning of August 28, 2014, two days after the end of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, Sohaib Zahda hopped into a shared taxi in Hebron that was going to Ramallah, where he had a job interview.

      Thirty-three-year-old Zahda, who owns a paintball company, is an unlikely terrorist. An avid cyclist who speaks Arabic, Italian, French, and English, he is a member of Youth Against Settlements, a nonviolent organization that protests against Israeli settlers who live in and around Hebron. He is opposed to Hamas firing rockets into Israel. He likes to tell visitors his grandfather had Jewish friends in Hebron in the 1920s.

      Hebron and Ramallah are about 25 miles apart. To get between them, Palestinians must pass through the “container checkpoint,” manned by Israeli soldiers on a road that connects the southern West Bank to its central and northern cities. At the checkpoint — named for a shipping container once located at the barrier — Palestinian pedestrians queue up to get their IDs checked, while cars wait for inspection and for soldiers to wave them through. When Zahda’s taxi drove up, masked Israeli soldiers stopped the vehicle, asked him to get out, and then handcuffed him.

    • Reimagine and Rebuild Our Broken Democracy—in Time for the Nation’s 250th Anniversary

      “I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions,” Thomas Jefferson wrote. “Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. … [They] must advance … and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

      Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence 240 years ago on July 4. Today, we often congratulate ourselves for serving as the model of democracy for the rest of the world, yet our country has perhaps never been so polarized, so divided and so dysfunctional. More and more Americans have a vague and increasing sense that our government is simply incapable of addressing basic challenges like immigration, guns, entitlements, trade, climate and environment, privacy and security, the federal budget, spiraling inequality, money in politics … or even a health emergency like the Zika virus. It is no longer hyperbole to say that American democracy is broken.

    • Missing the Biggest Story about Trump’s Twitter Images

      It’s no accident that Trump’s social media feeds keep using neo-Nazi imagery; he’s actively courting hate.

    • Ohio Court Sanctions Lawyer For Sharing Publicly-Available Court Documents With Journalists

      Pattakos’ mild urging that a Scene writer “get their reporting pants on” is akin to shouting “Fire!” in a crowded forest… and then walking away while it burns? Because the defendants claimed this single article adversely affected its settlement attempts, the court has decided this lawyer should be punished for doing something lawyers do every day — and something that is apparently permitted by the rules governing attorney conduct.

      But the opening of the same decision condemning Pattakos’ behavior opens with a recitation of the events leading up to this decision, which includes a period of three years (February 2012-January 2015) where the defendants made zero effort to make counteroffers to the plaintiff’s settlement demands. It appears the defendants truly believed the jury would side with it and allow it to escape litigation without having to pay a settlement and are now looking for someone to blame because it ended up paying out $400,000 to the plaintiff and opposing counsel.

    • ‘Circumstances’ So ‘Exigent’ Narcotics Agents Could Have Watched ‘Gone With The Wind’ And Had Time To Spare

      So, four hours of narcotics agents milling around, trying to find an excuse to search a residence without a warrant. And nothing to show for it but claims that the appellant sometimes sold pseudoephedrine to one of the people who answered the knock and talk, a bag of opened OTC drug packages, and a white, non-illicit powder.

    • Appeals Court Says That Sharing Passwords Can Violate Criminal Anti-Hacking Laws

      Remember David Nosal? He was the former Korn/Ferry executive looking to set up his own competing firm, but one that mainly relied on Korn/Ferry’s big database of people. As part of that process, after he left the company to head out on his own, he had some former colleagues who were planning to join him log into their Korn/Ferry accounts to access information. Then after those employees left, they got another former colleague to share her password so they could continue to log in. He was charged with violating the criminal portion of the CFAA, under the theory that convincing his former colleagues to gather info for him was a terms of service violation — and that meant he had “exceeded authorized access” under the statute. This became a key case in determining whether merely violating a terms of service could be considered criminal hacking under the CFAA. Thankfully, back in 2012, the 9th Circuit rejected such a broad ruling of the CFAA, pointing out that such an interpretation would “unintentionally turn ordinary citizens into criminals” and that couldn’t be the intent from Congress. This was a huge win that helped limit some of the worst abuses of the CFAA.

      However, the US government was not yet done with Nosal. It then filed new CFAA charges against him, not over the original information sharing, but rather for getting that last colleague to share her password with Nosal. The feds argued that this fell under the other prong of the CFAA, that it was a version of accessing a computer system “without authorization” (as opposed to exceeding authorization). Unfortunately, the 9th circuit appeals court has ruled that merely sharing a password can be a CFAA violation.

    • Password Sharing Is a Federal Crime, Appeals Court Rules

      One of the nation’s most powerful appeals courts ruled Wednesday that sharing passwords can be a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a catch-all “hacking” law that has been widely used to prosecute behavior that bears no resemblance to hacking.

      In this particular instance, the conviction of David Nosal, a former employee of Korn/Ferry International research firm, was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who said that Nosal’s use of a former coworker’s password to access one of the firm’s databases was an “unauthorized” use of a computer system under the CFAA.

      The decision is a nightmare scenario for civil liberties groups, who say that such a broad interpretation of the CFAA means that millions of Americans are unwittingly violating federal law by sharing accounts on things like Netflix, HBO, Spotify, and Facebook. Stephen Reinhardt, the dissenting judge in the case, noted that the decision “threatens to criminalize all sorts of innocuous conduct engaged in daily by ordinary citizens.”

    • Password-sharing case divides Ninth Circuit in Nosal II
    • Outrage after video captures white Baton Rouge police officer fatally shooting a black man
    • Feds asked to investigate live-streamed death of motorist killed by cop

      Gov. Mark Dayton of Minnesota on Thursday asked the Department of Justice to investigate the killing of a black motorist shot by a white police officer. Philando Castile’s dying moments were live-streamed on Facebook, and the incident prompted a comment from President Barack Obama.

      Dayton said he wanted an “immediate independent federal investigation into this matter.” The governor suggested that racism was to blame for the killing of Castile, a 32-year-old school cafeteria manager, who was shot at least four times by a police officer after being pulled over for a broken taillight in Falcon Heights.

      “Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver and the passengers, were white?,” Dayton told a news conference Thursday. “I don’t think it would have. So I’m forced to confront, and I think all of us in Minnesota are forced to confront, that this kind of racism exists.”

    • Dallas police shooting: Five officers killed, six hurt by gunmen

      Five Dallas police officers have been killed and six wounded by gunmen during protests against the shooting of black men by police, authorities say.

      Three people are in custody and one man who was in a stand-off with police shot himself dead, US media have reported.

      Gunfire broke out at around 20:45 local time on Thursday (01:45 GMT Friday) as demonstrators marched through the city.

      The protests were sparked by the deaths of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana.

    • There Is No Excuse For The American Police

      If unaccountalbe police brutality continues, will American citizens come to the conclusion that cops are criminal thugs of great danger to the public and must be shot down on sight before they murder again?

      The goon thugs have done a good job of proving that Amerians would be far safer in the absence of police who during 8 years of the iraqi War killed more Americans than we lost troops in combat.

    • France Extending State of Emergency Spells Trouble for Future Freedoms

      On February 17th, 2016, French Parliament voted to extend the nation’s state of emergency for three months.

    • Donald Trump Backs Off Muslim Ban, But It’s Already Way More Popular Than He Is

      Donald Trump may be backing off elements of his proposed temporary ban on all Muslim immigration to the United States, but in the meantime his original proposal has become way more popular than he is, according to many national polls.

      Trump most recently said he was calling for a temporary ban on immigration from “areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States”– rather than all Muslims from anywhere.

      But Trump’s poll numbers have been dropping lately; the Huffington Post’s aggregate of polling data shows that Trump has a 35 percent favorability rating, down from 37 percent in late May. Meanwhile, Reuters/Ipsos’s rolling five-day poll as of July 1 showed that 46 percent of Americans favor temporarily banning all Muslims from entering the country, up from 40 percent in late May.

      An NBC News-SurveyMonkey poll conducted shortly after the deadly shooting in Orlando showed that 50 percent of Americans strongly or somewhat supported the ban, while 46 percent opposed it.

    • Two More Black Victims of Police Violence Become Hashtags #PhilandoCastile #AltonSterling

      As my colleague Liliana Segura noted on Twitter this morning, the documented killing of black Americans by police officers has become so routine that it is hard for even the racists who seek to justify the slaughter in online comment threads to keep up.

      [...]

      That’s why the first reports on the killing of Philando Castile, a 32-year-old cafeteria supervisor at a Montessori School in St. Paul, Minnesota, who was shot while reaching for his license during a traffic stop on Wednesday night, included a comment from a Facebook spokesman. The aftermath of the shooting, as Castile bled to death in the front seat of a car, was streamed live on the social network from the phone of Castile’s distraught girlfriend.

    • Fox News Turns To Infamous Racist For Perspective On Alton Sterling’s Death

      On Wednesday, the world woke to a scene that is all too familiar in America: A black man, Alton Sterling, was shot and killed by the police (an alarm tragically repeated again on Thursday). A cellphone video shows Sterling pinned to the ground beneath two police officers when he is shot several times at point-blank range.

      Protesters immediately gathered outside the convenience store where Sterling was killed. Outrage has mounted online; his death has been called a murder, an assassination, and a lynching. The Department of Justice announced that they would open a civil rights investigation into the case.

    • In Alton Sterling’s Baton Rouge, “Blue Lives Matter”

      Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards called for a federal civil rights investigation on Tuesday into what was at that point the latest fatal police shooting of a black man in the United States.

      But in May, Edwards signed a bill into law that makes targeting a police officer a hate crime. Passage of such bills at the state level is a top priority of a national organization called Blue Lives Matter, which was formed in response to the Black Lives Matter movement .

      Alton Sterling, 37, was shot in the chest at point-blank range by Baton Rouge police early Tuesday morning; it was captured on video by witnesses. Philando Castile, 32, was shot after police stopped his car outside St. Paul, Minn.; his girlfriend livestreamed his death on Facebook.

      But it is the civil rights of police officers that Edwards was concerned about in May, as if theirs were being routinely violated.

    • What Kind of Democracy Is That

      We’re out of words. Two more black men – Alton Sterling, Philando Castile – murdered by police. Two more sorrowful hashtags, two more bloody videos, two more sets of weeping families, two more outraged cities and many more in spirit, two more barrages of tragic parallel stories: They were good guys, they were doing nothing wrong but being black, their awful deaths prove, one more awful time, that whiteness is blindness, and cops are America’s terrorists, and black people are tired and hurting – but, alone amidst a well-armed population, not allowed to have guns. We have been here so long that Malcom X spoke of it 55 years ago, and he’s still right. We’re out of words. Here are his.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Verizon ‘Competes’ With T-Mobile By Raising Prices, Then Denying It’s A Price Hike

      For years T-Mobile has been making some welcome changes to U.S. wireless service, implementing everything from free data while roaming internationally, to rollover data plans that let you keep unused data. T-Mobile’s strange, new tactic of treating consumers well has paid incredible dividends for the company, which has been adding significantly more postpaid wireless subscribers per quarter than any other major carrier. Between the elimination of consumer pain points and its foul-mouthed CEO, T-Mobile’s been a welcome change for the sector (just ignore its attack on the EFF and failure to support net neutrality).

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Generic Manufacturing Deals For HIV And Hepatitis C Treatments Signed At Medicines Patent Pool

      Today the Medicines Patent Pool announced the signing of nine new sub-licensing agreements for the generic manufacturing of key HIV and hepatitis C treatments.

      According to the MPP press release, it signed licences with Aurobindo (India), Desano (China), Emcure (India), Hetero Labs (India), Laurus Labs (India), Lupin (India) and a new partner, Zydus Cadila (India).

      Aurobindo signed two new sub-licences for lopinavir and ritonavir (both HIV treatments) for Africa. Desano, a Chinese manufacturer and Emcure also signed licences for those treatments.

    • French Bill Could Open Door For Sharing, Selling Of Seeds In Public Domain

      Next week, the French Senate is due to consider a bill on biodiversity for the third time. That bill, which could be modifying several legislations, might allow for the sharing and selling by non-governmental organisations of seeds in the public domain to non-commercial buyers, which is so far not permitted under the current French legislation, according to sources.

    • Trademarks

      • CJEU says that operators of physical marketplaces may be forced to stop trade mark infringements of market-traders

        Can operators of physical marketplaces be considered “intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe an intellectual property right”, so that “rightholders are in a position to apply for an injunction” against them, pursuant to the third sentence in Article 11 of the Enforcement Directive? Put it otherwise: how does the landmark decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in L’Oréal v eBay [noted here, here, and here] apply in an offline context?

    • Copyrights

07.07.16

Links 7/7/2016: New Information About Ian Murdock, New Snap Desktop Launchers

Posted in News Roundup at 4:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Who needs a GUI? How to live in a Linux terminal.

      Ever consider the idea of living entirely in a Linux terminal? No graphical desktop. No modern GUI software. Just text—and nothing but text—inside a Linux shell. It may not be easy, but it’s absolutely doable. I recently tried living completely in a Linux shell for 30 days. What follows are my favorite shell applications for handling some of the most common bits of computer functionality (web browsing, word processing, etc.). With a few obvious holes. Because being text-only is hard.

    • Not Your Mother’s Linux

      As someone who’s primarily used Windows since the early ’90s (with some minor dabbling in OS X), I’ve found Ubuntu MATE Linux to be pretty intuitive during my month or so of casual experimentation. I would even go so far as to say it’s been easier to figure out than recent iterations of Windows — which I hope says more about how clunky that old operating system has become and less about how woefully incompetent I might be with computers.

      I have a confession to make — one that will come as no surprise to anyone who’s read this column in the past. I’m not really a computer person. My mother would disagree, but she’s never owned a computer — no matter how many times I’ve tried to get her on board for the admittedly selfish reason of being able to communicate with her in a fashion that avoids phone companies and post offices. She insists it’s because she “doesn’t like to type,” but I know her mistrust of technology goes far beyond computers (and if I got her a tablet, she’d be annoyed at the endless invasion of fingerprints — a complaint to which I can relate).

    • Full-screen Nagware: Microsoft’s Final Attempt To Push Windows 10 Is Its Worst Yet

      Microsoft has been able to convince millions of users to install Windows 10 on their PCs. To grab more user base, Microsoft is now showing full-screen upgrade pop-ups notifying the people to perform the upgrade before 29.

  • Kernel Space

    • Doing for User Space What We Did for Kernel Space

      I believe the best and worst thing about Linux is its hard distinction between kernel space and user space.

      Without that distinction, Linux never would have become the most leveraged operating system in the world. Today, Linux has the largest range of uses for the largest number of users—most of whom have no idea they are using Linux when they search for something on Google or poke at their Android phones. Even Apple stuff wouldn’t be what it is (for example, using BSD in its computers) were it not for Linux’s success.

      Read more

    • More Polaris & Tonga Fixes For Linux 4.7

      Another batch of AMDGPU DRM driver fixes has been sent in for landing in Linux 4.7.

      These latest AMDGPU fixes are for taking care of some PowerPlay issues for Radeon RX 480 “Polaris” and Tonga (e.g. Radeon R9 285) graphics cards. There are no other changes outside of these Polaris/Tonga PowerPlay fixes.

    • Stale Data, or How We (Mis-)manage Modern Caches by Mark Rutland
    • Taming the Chaos of Modern Caches

      “If you’re a bit tired, this is a presentation on cache maintenance, so there will be plenty of opportunity to sleep.” Despite this warning from ARM Ltd. kernel developer Mark Rutland at his recent Embedded Linux Conference presentation, Stale Data, or How We (Mis-)manage Modern Caches, it was actually kind of an eye opener — at least as far as cache management presentations go.

    • Graphics Stack

      • AMD’s Linux Driver Will Likely See A Power Change For The Radeon RX 480 Too

        By now you may have heard that there is the potential for the Radeon RX 480 to draw more power from the PCI-E bus than it’s rated to provide. In rare situations, this could potentially cause problems for the system. AMD/RTG is preparing to release a Windows driver fix while I checked in with AMD about addressing this situation under Linux.

      • AMD improves its Linux drivers

        It looks like AMD has finally got the memo when it comes to Linux machines. Its new AMDGPU-PRO 16.30 driver offers day-one support for its new Radeon RX 480 from day one.

        The new driver is currently available for download from AMD’s website. It is officially supported on 64-bit versions of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. It’s very similar to the earlier beta release and AMD still calls it a beta, but apparently it is stable and there are installation instructions on the website.

      • Dirk Hohndel Is No Longer Intel’s Chief Linux/OSS Technologist

        Well this somehow slipped under our radar last week and comes as a big surprise… Dirk Hohndel has left Intel Corp after being their chief Linux and open-source technologist the past number of years.

        Dirk Hohndel had been working at Intel since 2001 where he had been leading the Linux/open-source charge. Dirk frequently spoke at Linux/FLOSS conferences about Intel’s involvement in these areas. Given his tenure at Intel and his frequent involvement in the Linux/open-source communities, it comes as a surprise to see him leave. Prior to Intel, he was CTO at SUSE.

      • OpenChrome 0.5 Has Working Support For Multiple Monitors

        For those still leveraging VIA x86 hardware on Linux, the DRM/KMS driver hasn’t been restored yet but there is a new xf86-video-openchrome DDX feature release now available.

        Kevin Brace has continued taking up the maintenance of the OpenChrome X.Org driver. Three months ago he released xf86-video-openchrome 0.4 while now available is OpenChrome 0.5.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME and Flatpak

      • GNOME Calendar supports alarms

        In another of my (appearently common) insomnia nights, I decided to add a cool new to my pet application – Calendar.

      • GNOME Calendar Will Support Alarms, GNOME Software to Better Handle Flatpaks

        The GNOME developers are hard at work this summer to bring you the latest innovations and technologies for the modern GNOME 3 desktop environment, as part of the GNOME 3.22 release.

        GNOME 3.22 is in heavy development until the end of September, when the final release will hit the streets, but it will take a while (~two or three weeks) for it to arrive in the main software repositories of some of the most popular GNU/Linux operating systems, Arch Linux being among the first, but it will worth the wait.

      • Flatpak, Snap and AppImage

        Over the past few months we have been hearing a lot about two new package formats, Flatpak and Snap (aka Snappy, aka snaps). These two new methods of packaging software have been getting a lot of attention, especially in the Ubuntu and Fedora communities. Both package formats attempt to make packaging easier for developers as all of an application’s dependencies can be bundled in the one portable package. Both Flatpak and Snap also claim to be (in theory at least) universal. The idea here is that any distribution which provides the Snap framework will be able to run any Snap package. Likewise, any Linux distribution with the Flatpak software installed should be able to run any Flatpak package. This should make it possible for developers to make one package for their software which will run on any distribution.

  • Distributions

    • This Week in Solus – Install #30

    • Reviews

      • Running Linux on the Acer Switch Alpha 12

        The Acer Switch Alpha 12 is a 2-in-1 tablet with a high-resolution display, a detachable keyboard cover, an optional pressure-sensitive pen, and after having reviewed the tablet, I can say it offers the kind of performance you’d expect from a mid-range laptop… but in a 2 pound, fanless package.

        Best of all, the Switch Alpha 12 is reasonably priced: you can buy one for about $600 and up.

    • New Releases

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • Red Hat Family

      • New toolset makes it possible to build and ship Docker containers within Ansible

        A new project from the creators of the system automation framework Ansible, now owned by Red Hat, wants to make it possible to build Docker images and perform container orchestration within Ansible.

        Ansible Container, still in the early stages of development, allows developers to use an Ansible playbook (the language that describes Ansible jobs) to outline how containers should be built; it uses Ansible’s stack to deploy those applications as well.

      • Red Hat, Eurotech collaborate on IoT cloud platform
      • Red Hat expands cloud management solution

        Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, has announced the general availability of Red Hat CloudForms 4.1, the latest version of its award-winning open hybrid cloud management solution.

      • What You Missed at DevNation & Red Hat Summit 2016
      • Red Hat’s Ansible Container Aims to Streamline Container Workflows

        The system automation framework Ansible, which is under the wing of Red Hat, has given rise to a new way to build Docker images and perform container orchestration within Ansible. Ansible Container allows for the complete creation of Docker-formatted Linux containers within Ansible Playbooks, eliminating the need to use external tools like Dockerfile or docker-compose.

        The new toolset is now available on GitHub. Here is more on what it can do.

      • A brief guide to hiring with culture in mind

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Upgraded from F23

          It was my first upgrade from a previous release and all went fine and smooth.

        • Event report: Fedora Cloud FAD 2016

          Around a month back the Fedora Cloud Working Group met in Raleigh for two days for Cloud FAD. The goal of the meet was to agree about the future we want, to go through major action items for the coming releases. I reached Raleigh one day before, Adam Miller was my room for this trip. Managed to meet Tom after a long time, this was my first visit to mothership :) I also managed to meet my new teammate Randy Barlow.

        • Summer training 2016 is on

          The 9th edition of dgplug summer training started few weeks back. This year in the IRC channel (#dgplug on freenode) we saw around 186+ nicks participating in the sessions. Till now we have went through communication guidelines, IRC, mailing list how to, a text editor ( Vim in this case), blogging, basic bash commands, a few more bit advanced bash commands. We also learned about reStructured Text, and Sphinx. We also managed to live demos to all students from the mentor’s terminal.

    • Debian Family

      • The State Of Systemd In Debian (2016)

        Debian developer Michael Biebl has presented a status update on systemd in Debian at this week’s DebConf 16 event in Cape Town, South Africa.

        On Tuesday was a presentation by Biebl about systemd in Debian and the progress that’s been made with systemd as the default init system for the past year. The video presentation has yet to be uploaded, but there are PDF slides for those interested.

      • Mysterious death of software pioneer Ian Murdock ruled suicide

        Ian Murdock, the Linux programmer who died under mysterious circumstances after claiming he was beaten by police, hanged himself.

      • New Details Emerge About Debian Founder Ian Murdock’s Death
      • Murdock Death Ruled Suicide, Terrible Linux Regressions

        CNN’s Jose Pagliery today reported that Ian Murdock’s death was officially ruled a suicide. Murdock, who founded Debian GNU/Linux in 1993, became despondent after a run-in with San Francisco police. He took to social media to accused police of brutally beating him and threaten suicide. Murdock was found hours later face down with an electrical cord tied around his neck. The investigator said he found no obvious signs of trauma although the autopsy directly contradicts that statement. Pagliery reported that no announcement had been made publicly and that the details of his body being covered in bruises only came out in the autopsy report obtained by CNN. “The autopsy records also note his body was covered in bruises — on his chest, abdomen, back, arms and legs.”

      • twenty years of free software — part 9 small projects
      • Avoiding SMS vendor lock-in with SMPP

        There is increasing demand for SMS notifications about monitoring alerts, trading notifications, flight delays and other events. Various companies are offering SMS transmission services to meet this demand and many of them aggressively pushing their own proprietary interfaces to the SMS world rather than using the more open and widely supported SMPP.

      • Derivatives

        • Debian Edu / Skolelinux Jessie

          Then Debian Edu is for you. The teachers themselves or their technical support can roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.

          The Debian Edu developer team is happy to announce Debian Edu 8+edu0 “Jessie”, the latest Debian Edu / Skolelinux release, entirely based on Debian 8 “Jessie”, update 8.5. Upgrades from previous beta releases of Debian Edu Jessie to this release are possible and encouraged!

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Review: Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS shines

            Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) represents the first release from Canonical to deliver long-term support since 2011 (version 14). While the latest improvements may not be entirely revolutionary, Ubuntu 16.04 rounds up exciting features to fortify the server base and enhance the desktop experience. InfoWorld reviewed the new desktop release in April. In this review, I’ll focus on the server.

            One of the key updates in this release comes by way of the new Snap package archive. Canonical’s LTS repositories are notoriously outpaced by modern software release cycles. It’s the classic trade-off for stability: Canonical moves slowly to adopt new versions of packages in order to vet applications and ensure they don’t muck up your system. Unfortunately, that induces a lag time that leaves users waiting as the latest and greatest software passes them by.

          • Ubuntu Linux to be bundled as preferred OS with Pivotal Cloud Foundry app platform

            Canonical and Cloud Foundry developer Pivotal have agreed a partnership in which Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux will become the preferred operating system for running Cloud Foundry, with secure certified Ubuntu images included.

            Cloud Foundry is one of the most popular platform-as-a-service suites for developing and deploying cloud-native applications, and versions of it are integrated in a number of platforms such as IBM’s Bluemix developer cloud and HPE’s Helion Stackato.

          • Pivotal Adds Ubuntu to Cloud Foundry

            The steady shift to cloud native infrastructure continues with a partnership between enterprise software vendor Pivotal and Linux specialist Canonical that will provide secure images from Canonical’s Linux distribution Ubuntu on the Pivotal Cloud Foundry.

          • uNav GPS Navigation App for Ubuntu Phones Now Offers Offline Maps, Convergence

            Today, July 6, 2016, Marcos Costales has had the great pleasure of announcing the release and immediate availability of a new update of his uNav GPS navigator app for Ubuntu Phone devices.

          • Nexus 6 Is Now an Unofficial Ubuntu Phone, Wi-Fi & Bluetooth Support Coming Soon

            We told you the other day that Ubports’ Marius Gripsgård is on vacation, which means that he has a lot of time on his hands to improve the unofficial Ubuntu Touch port for various devices.

          • Linux Distributions Are Soon Dropping The Support For 32-bit Computers

            Today, few people are using the hardware that can’t run 64-bit CPUs. A recent proposal by Ubuntu’s Dimitri John Ledkov states that Canonical will be killing the 32-bit hardware support soon. This move is also inspired by the fact that 32-bit testing needs double effort and turns out to be costly for an open source project.

          • Canonical-Pivotal partnership makes Ubuntu preferred Linux distro for Cloud Foundry
          • Ubuntu Announces New Snap Desktop Launchers

            Canonical developers have been working on new Snap desktop launchers for improving integration of Snap GUI packages with the converged Ubuntu desktop.

            These new Snap desktop launchers provide a closer and more unified level of integration among packaged desktop applications. Didier Roche, Ubuntu Desktop Technical Leader at Canonical, explained, “The goal was to streamline the experience and ensuring that all following user visible features are working, independent of the toolkit or technology you are using.”

          • Announcing new snap desktop launchers

            Integrating desktop applications with snaps has been a little bit challenging in terms of getting them looking and behaving as part of the system. This means following general desktop theming, having global application menu integration, getting the icon caches, getting configuration keys and such. Also, the technologies and toolkits like GTK, Qt, demand a little bit of expertise on that front.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Mint 18 – Forgetting Sarah Linux

              Linux Mint. Version 18. Sarah. Cinnamon Edition. This was supposed to be the sweetest LTS yet. Only it’s very buggy, it’s worse than the previous edition and the three before, or maybe all of them. It’s even buggier than Ubuntu, and it’s been released a good two months after its parent. There are so many regressions in the system. And I know I’m trying every trick in the English language and scientific method to explain and convince you that this has nothing to do with my hardware, because with the same nuts and bolts in place, you can still baseline, calibrate, evaluate, and compare over time.

              With none of the other parameters changed – my box and me – Mint 18 Sarah is just not a very good release. The live session is awful. I don’t have any smartphone support, at all. Quite a few other aspects of the desktop experience are missing or lacking, and they are just not as refined as they used to be. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, yesterday you told me about the blue blue distro. This season is bad. There’s no other way of putting it. And my experience was so unrewarding, there are many other aspects of this system that I just did not evaluate in any depth, like the x applications and such. What’s the point?

              I wish I could tell a different story. But the simple reality is, I can’t. It defies logic that the previous releases of Mint or perhaps Xubuntu 15.04 or whatever give me everything I need, but this new LTS struggles in roughly 6 out of 10 critical areas. Read it any way you will, think what you want of me, seek flaws in my methods, seek affirmation in my words, there’s no escaping the awful and painful conclusion. One, I’m shattered. Two, this season is absolutely terrible. Three, Sarah Cinnamon deserves only about 3/10. Please stick with the R-releases, and do not upgrade.

            • Upgrading Linux Mint 17.3 to Mint 18 In Place

              Okay, I thought I could wait, but I couldn’t, so yesterday I decided to do an “in place” upgrade of my office desktop from Linux Mint 17.3 to Mint 18.

              It didn’t go smoothly.

              First, let me stress that the Linux Mint community strongly recommends a fresh install every time you upgrade from one release to another, and especially when it is from one major release, like Mint 17, to another, i.e. Mint 18. They ask you to backup your home directory and package lists, base the system and then restore. The problem is that I often make a lot of changes to my system which usually involves editing files in the system /etc directory, and this doesn’t capture that.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Florida Doctor Pleads Guilty to Fraud — Years After Complaints About His Prescribing

      Seven years after a U.S. senator cited him as a national example of aberrant practices, the onetime top prescriber of antipsychotic drugs in Florida’s Medicaid program is in federal custody awaiting sentencing on fraud charges.

      The second-highest prescriber is serving a four-year term in federal prison after pleading guilty to fraud charges in 2012, but he only relinquished his license to practice medicine in Florida last fall.

      Taken together, the cases illustrate how long it can take regulators and law enforcement to take action against problem doctors — and how those physicians can continue prescribing drugs paid for by taxpayers in the meantime. In 2011, ProPublica wrote about the suspicious prescribing patterns of the two Miami-area psychiatrists, Fernando Mendez-Villamil and Huberto Merayo.

    • Ghostbusters, GMOs and the Feigned Expertise of Nobel Laureates

      The letter is a defense of “Golden Rice”, a GMO said to address vitamin deficiencies associated with blindness in the Global South and perhaps one of the worst of the frequent scientific frauds perpetrated by biotechnology interests. The Nobel Prize recipients fell for a zombie rice story that refuses to die and persists as a central legitimizing narrative in the pseudo-humanitarian rhetoric that regularly spews from the pro-GMO propaganda machine. I have written about this in the past to show how Monsanto and the other Gene Giants are spending hundreds of millions on a deceptive campaign to misinform the public about the fake scientific consensus they spin based on inadequately designed industry-led studies of risk, toxicology, and food safety (see the post of May 2, 2014).

    • Activists Expose Monsanto’s Senate Lackeys Minutes Before DARK Act Vote

      Just before a controversial genetically modified (GM or GMO) labeling bill came up for a cloture vote in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, food and consumer advocates dropped over $2,000 on the chamber floor in a symbolic protest against what they are calling the “Deny Americans the Right to Know” (DARK) Act.

    • What Percentage of Doctors at Your Hospital Take Drug, Device Payments?

      Where a hospital is located makes a big difference in how many of its doctors take payments from drug and medical device companies. See how your state compares and look up your hospital below.

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Wednesday
    • Java Deserialization attacks on JBoss Middleware

      Recent research by Chris Frohoff and Gabriel Lawrence has exposed gadget chains in various libraries that allow code to be executed during object deserialization in Java. They’ve done some excellent research, including publishing some code that allows anyone to serialize a malicious payload that when deserialized runs the operating system command of their choice, as the user which started the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). The vulnerabilities are not with the gadget chains themselves but with the code that deserializes them.

    • Linux Mint 18 improves security, but at a cost

      The default update settings of Linux Mint would not update the Linux kernel or notify the user when security updates and bug fixes were published upstream (from Ubuntu, which Mint is directly based on, or Debian, which is the basis of Ubuntu). This default behavior left users vulnerable to root exploits, and potential hardware issues for which patches were issued alongside security fixes. Other upstream updates were also blacklisted from Linux Mint for conflicting with the design of the Cinnamon desktop.

    • Safer automotive software through Open Source?

      Linux is about to conquer one of the last blank spots in the world of open source software: The car. EE Times Europe talked with Dan Cauchy, General Manager of Automotive at the Linux Foundation, about intentions and status of Automotive Grade Linux.

    • GnuTLS 3.5.2

      Released GnuTLS 3.3.24, GnuTLS 3.4.14, and GnuTLS 3.5.2 which are bug fix releases in the old, current and next stable branches.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Obama Makes It Official: Either Trump or Clinton Gets to Keep Longest War in US History Going

      Confirming that either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will inherit the longest war in U.S. history, President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that over 8,000 troops will stay in Afghanistan after he leaves the White House.

      The figure is thousands more than the 5,500 soldiers he said in October 2015 would remain in the country.

    • Confessions of a War Propagandist

      Scheunemann was the public relations mastermind and one of the most influential behind the scenes operators in Washington during the winter of 2002-2003. Many of the talking points (“We will be greeted as liberators,” “Sadaam has used chemical weapons on his own people,” “Rogue state rollback”) came right out of our office. A former aide on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to Majority Leader Trent Lott, Scheunemann proudly displayed a signed letter and framed photograph from President Clinton on his office wall, thanking him for his drafting of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, the stated goal of which was regime change. A frequent visitor to our office was Ahmad Chalabi, the American educated Iraqi dissident who provided much of the information that was passed directly to the Department of Defense and the White House through our office.

    • ‘Military action was not a last resort’: Chilcot finally releases Iraq War report

      Britain chose to join the invasion of Iraq in 2003 before peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted, the Chilcot Inquiry has found. Sir John Chilcot’s seven-year inquiry concluded that military action “was not a last resort.”

      The massively delayed and hugely controversial Chilcot Inquiry, reporting back on Wednesday, was tasked with examining the first eight years of the war, starting with the run-up to hostilities and including the period of occupation.

    • U.K. Iraq Inquiry Criticizes Blair and Spies Over War Failures

      Britain’s involvement in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was a failure, carried out before peaceful options had been exhausted and based on intelligence that was overstated, an official inquiry concluded.

      The investigation into the build-up to the war, its execution, and aftermath is highly critical of government ministers, the intelligence services and the military. But the biggest impact of the report, published Wednesday by former civil servant John Chilcot, will be on the reputation of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, the man responsible for Britain’s involvement.

    • Chilcot report: 2003 Iraq war was ‘unnecessary’, war was not ‘last resort’ and Saddam Hussein was ‘no imminent threat’

      The long-awaited official report into Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War has delivered a scathing verdict on Government ministers’ justification, planning and conduct of a military intervention which “went badly wrong, with consequences to this day”.

    • Jeremy Corbyn apologises on behalf of Labour for ‘disastrous decision’ to join Iraq War

      Jeremy Corbyn has apologised on behalf of the Labour Party for Tony Blair’s “disastrous decision” to go to war in Iraq.

      “The decision to go to war in Iraq has been a stain on our party and our country,” the Labour leader said after apologising at a private meeting with families of some of the 179 British servicemen and women killed in Iraq, veterans of the military operation and Iraqis who lost family members.

    • 5 takeaways from Chilcot Report on Tony Blair’s Iraq war

      Thirteen years on and the magnitude of the Iraq war continues to grow.

      The 2003 invasion and its devastating aftermath now infects every sinew of British politics. Trust in government is shot, the special relationship undermined, Britain diminished.

      Despite widespread public acceptance that the invasion has proved a disaster, Wednesday’s official judgement remained shocking for the sheer force of its condemnation.

      After seven years and £10 million of public money, Sir John Chilcot finally produced his findings and certainly pulled no punches. No element of the British establishment escaped unscathed, least of all former prime minister Tony Blair.

      The British army had been let down and humiliated, Chilcot found. Blair’s cabinet had been supine and the intelligence was just wrong.

    • The Tragedy of Tony Blair

      The scathing Chilcot verdict on Tony Blair’s contribution to the war on Iraq brings to mind a more awful tragedy: that more politicians – notably of the American variety – have not suffered the public, private and utter disgrace now falling on Perfidious Albion.

    • Tariq Ali on Chilcot Iraq Report: Tony Blair is a War Criminal for Pushing Us into Illegal War

      While Iraq is marking a third day of mourning, a long-awaited British inquiry into the Iraq War has just been released. The Chilcot report is 2.6 million words long—about three times the length of the Bible. Using excerpts from private correspondence between former Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush, the report details how Blair pushed Britain into the war despite a lack of concrete intelligence. For example, eight months before the invasion, Blair wrote to Bush: “I will be with you, whatever.” Then, in June 2003, less than three months after the invasion began, Blair privately wrote to Bush that the task in Iraq is “absolutely awesome and I’m not at all sure we’re geared for it.” Blair added, “And if it falls apart, everything falls apart in the region.” For more, we speak with British-Pakistani writer, commentator and author Tariq Ali.

    • Tony Blair unrepentant as Chilcot gives crushing Iraq war verdict

      A defiant Tony Blair defended his decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 following the publication of a devastating report by Sir John Chilcot, which mauled the ex-prime minister’s reputation and said that at the time of the 2003 invasion Saddam Hussein “posed no imminent threat”.

    • Hacked Former NATO General Defends Plotting to Push Obama to Escalate Tensions With Russia

      Former NATO Commander Philip Breedlove defended himself on Saturday after The Intercept reported on leaked emails that showed him plotting to push President Obama to escalate tensions with Russia. “I think what you see is a commander doing what commanders ought to do,” Breedlove told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

    • Merkel Urged to Temper NATO’s Belligerence

      U.S. intelligence veterans are calling on German Chancellor Merkel to bring a needed dose of realism and restraint to the upcoming NATO conference, which risks escalating the dangerous new Cold War with Russia.

    • General Breedlove and the Russophobes
    • Israel’s New Open-Fire Rule Authorizes ‘Extra-Judicial Execution’ of Palestinian Youths

      Israeli police are officially permitted to use deadly force against stone-throwing Palestinian teenagers, according to updated regulations made public on Tuesday by an Israel-based human rights organization.

      The new open-fire regulations, revealed by Adalah, a rights organization and legal center that defends Palestinians living in Israel as well as the occupied territories, state that “an officer is permitted to open fire [with live ammunition] directly on an individual who clearly appears to be throwing or is about to throw a firebomb, or who is shooting or is about to shoot fireworks, in order to prevent endangerment.”

    • Yemeni Drone Victim Responds to President Obama’s Civilian Casualty Figures
    • Happy Flag-Waving Drone Document Dump

      ODNI (update–and now I Con the Record) has released its report on the number of drone deaths. The overview is that the US intelligence community is reporting (more on that in a second) far, far fewer drone deaths than credible outside researchers do.

    • The Nonviolent History of American Independence

      Independence Day is commemorated with fireworks and flag-waving, gun salutes and military parades . . . however, one of our nation’s founding fathers, John Adams, wrote, “A history of military operations . . . is not a history of the American Revolution.”

      Often minimized in our history books, the tactics of nonviolent action played a powerful role in achieving American Independence from British rule. Benjamin Naimark-Rowse wrote, “the lesson we learn of a democracy forged in the crucible of revolutionary war tends to ignore how a decade of nonviolent resistance before the shot-heard-round-the-world shaped the founding of the United States, strengthened our sense of political identity, and laid the foundation of our democracy.”

    • Chilcot Report: Tony Blair Told George W. Bush, “If We Win Quickly, Everyone Will Be Our Friend.”

      The Chilcot Report, the U.K.’s official inquiry into its participation in the Iraq War, has finally been released after seven years of investigation.

      Its executive summary certainly makes former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who led the British push for war, look terrible. According to the report, Blair made statements about Iraq’s nonexistent chemical, biological, and nuclear programs based on “what Mr. Blair believed” rather than the intelligence he had been given. The U.K. went to war despite the fact that “diplomatic options had not been exhausted.” Blair was warned by British intelligence that terrorism would “increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the West.”

    • From Paris to Istanbul, More ‘War on Terror’ Means More Terrorist Attacks

      At least 41 people were killed in the recent bombing of Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport.

      The day before, suicide bombers killed five people in Qaa, a small village in Lebanon. And while the Saudi-led and U.S.-backed war in Yemen continues to rage, an ISIS affiliate claimed responsibility for attacks in the Yemeni port city of Mukalla that killed at least 12.

    • In Political Fights Over Chilcot Report, Iraqi Lives Don’t Matter

      The bitter political debate over the 2003 Iraq war resumed once again on Wednesday in the United Kingdom and the United States, thanks to the release of a report on the British role in the invasion and occupation.

      Parsing the report, prepared by a committee of Privy Counsellors chaired by Sir John Chilcot, will take time since it runs to 2.6 million words, but the reaction online has already begun. Partisans for and against the war are sifting through the text for new details that might support their original positions, a reminder that Iraq has only ever mattered to most Americans and Britons as material for attacks on their political opponents.

      That becomes glaringly obvious when you compare the intensity and volume of commentary on the report to how relatively little was said about a suicide bombing in Baghdad on Sunday that killed 250 Iraqis.

    • Terrorism’s Murky Message

      Moreover, there are different scales on which to measure sophistication besides the number of people involved. Success in killing people other than oneself might be one of those ways of measuring. The recent attacks have presented a mixed picture in this regard. The triple suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia don’t look very sophisticated. One of the bombers managed to kill four security guards, but the other two blew up no one but themselves.

    • Bush, Blair and the Lies That Justified the Illegal Iraq War

      In front of the assembled 1,500 journalists, Bush showed a series of slides of himself looking under papers, behind drapes and out the window of the oval office. A smiling Bush narrated, “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere,” followed by, “Nope, no weapons over there,” and “Maybe under here?” The transcript shows that this stand-up routine was greeted with “laughter and applause.”

    • Lost in the Military-Industrial Complex

      Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have ducked any serious discussion of America’s escalating military spending, suggesting that whoever wins will be captive of President Eisenhower’s “Military-Industrial Complex,” writes Chuck Spinney.

    • Where Are The Drone Casualty Figures the White House Promised Months Ago?

      Despite months of repeated promises, the White House has yet to release its estimate of civilian casualties from the administration’s drone program – a delayed disclosure the New York Times Editorial Board described as “too little, too late.”

      In March, Lisa Monaco, President Barack Obama chief counterterrorism adviser, announced that the White House would “in the coming weeks” release an “assessment of combatant and non-combatant casualties” from U.S. drone strikes since 2009. Monaco doubled down on the commitment in a second speech a few weeks later.

      The figures are likely to show aggregate numbers of people killed by country in nations not recognized as battlefields – like Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya – according to the Washington Post. Death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan will not be included.

      The President is also expected to sign an executive order requiring the release of annual casualty figures going forward.

  • Classification

    • FBI: Clinton “Extremely Careless” Handling Classified Info, But No Charges Recommended

      The bureau also revealed it was likely that Clinton’s personal email server was compromised by foreign hackers.

    • The Department of Political Justice

      Is it worth impairing the reputation of the FBI and the Department of Justice to save Hillary Clinton…

    • FBI: Hillary Clinton Broke the Law, But Don’t Prosecute Her

      The latest in shocking but not surprising news came yesterday as FBI Director Jim Comey formally recommended not indicting Hillary Clinton for her alleged mishandling of classified information.

      Given America’s less-than-stellar track record of prosecuting the powerful, this outcome has been a virtual certainty for some time. Even so, the event is still important. It offers the clearest evidence to date that the rule of law does not exist. One set of rules applies to the politically connected, and an entirely different set applies to everyone else. Nothing could illustrate this fact better than the Clinton email scandal.

    • In a Rigged System, Hillary Clinton Is Too Big to Indict

      The long-roiling question finally has been answered: Hillary Clinton will not be indicted for using a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. Period. Full stop. Pause a moment, and let it sink in.

      FBI Director James Comey delivered the word in a surprise news conference Tuesday morning, exactly three days after Clinton’s 3½-hour interview Saturday at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C.

      There was plenty of evidence that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and her staff had been “extremely careless” in their handling of classified and sensitive information, Comey said, but not enough to prove they had acted with the criminal intent or willfulness needed to secure a conviction. “No reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” he concluded.

      While the FBI’s evaluation technically is not binding on the Justice Department, any indictment is now clearly off the table. Last week, following her embarrassing and ethically suspect encounter with Bill Clinton on the tarmac at the Phoenix airport, Attorney General Loretta Lynch publicly pledged to follow the bureau’s lead. And the bureau, via Comey, has spoken.

    • Commentary: What the FBI didn’t say about Hillary Clinton’s email

      Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey’s recommendation that no charges be brought against Hillary Clinton for her use of an unclassified email server while secretary of state is significant, but what he did not address is equally important.

    • Why Hillary Clinton Should be Prosecuted for Reckless Abuses of National Security

      Yesterday FBI Director James Comey described Hillary Clinton’s email communications as Secretary of State as “extremely careless.” His statement undermined the defenses Clinton put forward, stating the FBI found 110 emails on Clinton’s server that were classified at the time they were sent or received; eight contained information classified at the highest level, “top secret,” at the time they were sent. That stands in direct contradiction to Clinton’s repeated insistence she never sent or received any classified emails.

      All the elements necessary to prove a felony violation were found by the FBI investigation, specifically of Title 18 Section 793(f) of the federal penal code, a law ensuring proper protection of highly classified information. Director Comey said that Clinton was “extremely careless” and “reckless” in handling such information. Contrary to the implications of the FBI statement, the law does not require showing that Clinton intended to harm the United States, but that she acted with gross negligence.

      The recent State Department Inspector General (IG) report was clear that Clinton blithely disregarded safeguards to protect the most highly classified national security information and that she included on her unprotected email server the names of covert CIA officers. The disclosure of such information is a felony under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

    • Hillary Clinton’s Wanton Disregard for US Laws and National Security

      There is a new poster child for the U.S. government’s double standard in dealing with violations of public policy and public trust—former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who will receive no punishment for her wanton disregard of U.S. laws and national security. Clinton merely received a blistering rebuke from FBI director James Comey, who charged her with “extremely careless” behavior in using multiple private email servers to send and received classified information as well as using her personal cellphone in dealing with sensitive materials while traveling outside the United States. Some of these communications referred to CIA operatives, which is a violation of a 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act to protect those individuals working overseas under cover.

    • Hillary Clinton as Damaged Goods

      FBI Director Comey’s judgment that Hillary Clinton was “extremely careless” but not criminal in her sloppy email practices leaves her limping to the Democratic nomination and stumbling toward the fall campaign, writes Robert Parry.

    • FBI Recommends ‘No Consequences’ for Clinton’s Reckless Email Handling
    • FBI Declares ‘No Charges Are Appropriate’ in Hillary Clinton Email Investigation

      Comey noted in his statement: “To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences.”

    • Judge Responds To Open Records Request By Having Requester Indicted, Arrested

      We’ve seen government officials do some pretty questionable things to avoid turning over documents to FOIA requesters. The most common method is just to stick requesters with a bill they can’t pay. Stonewalling is popular, too — so much so that the federal government sends out “Still interested?” notices to people whose requests have been backburnered for years.

      More rarely, officials will race requesters to the courthouse, hoping to secure a judgment in their favor stating that they’ve already fully complied with a FOIA request — even when they’ve done nothing but withhold and redact. Stripped of all the legal wrangling, this is basically the government suing individuals for asking for documents, forcing taxpayers to go out-of-pocket if they hope to counter the officials’ assertions.

    • WikiLeaks Releases Over 1,200 Clinton Emails on Iraq War

      WikiLeaks on Monday marked the yearly celebration of American independence by releasing over 1,200 private emails belonging to former secretary of state and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton pertaining to the Iraq War.

      The whistleblower platform announced the new archive in a tweet, noting that the emails would be made public just two days before the UK government is set to release its official inquiry into the 2003 invasion of Iraq, initiated by former U.S. President George W. Bush with substantial backing from then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

      Adding even more fuel to the speculation surrounding the Chilcot Inquiry, WikiLeaks on Monday also released a complete list of British MPs who voted to invade Iraq.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Climate Change Deniers Can Rest Easy Knowing The Democratic Party Isn’t Out To Prosecute Them

      Last week, a couple right-leaning news publications published headlines suggesting that the Democratic Party wants to prosecute individual people who disagree with the scientific consensus on climate change.

      This is not true, and the stories themselves don’t suggest it. But the headlines are conspicuously misleading. “Dem Party Platform Calls For Prosecuting Global Warming Skeptics,” screamed one headline from The Daily Caller. Townhall’s headline read nearly the same. The Washington Times went with “Democrats force Clinton’s hand on prosecution of climate skeptics.”

    • Big Coal Just Saw One Of Its Favorite Loopholes Closed

      The Obama Administration last week took a closely-watched first step in its effort to reform the federal coal program by issuing a rule that will make it harder for coal companies to dodge royalty payments when mining on taxpayer-owned public lands.

      The rule, issued by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR), closes a loophole that enabled coal companies to sell coal to their own subsidiaries — and then pay royalties on that artificially depressed price. Through these self-dealing transactions, coal companies have been able to shortchange U.S. taxpayers and state governments millions of dollars in royalty payments that are owed on federal coal.

  • Finance/Brexit

    • Sterling falls to new low against the dollar in Asia trade

      The pound has hit a new low in Asian trading as concerns about the UK’s vote to leave the European Union continue to weigh on investor confidence.

      It touched 1.2798 against the dollar on Wednesday, a 31-year low, before recovering slightly to $1.2963.

      The pound has now fallen about 14% against the dollar since hitting $1.50 ahead of the referendum result.

    • How Brexit Will Affect U.S. Foreign Policy

      British voters’ decision to leave the European Union last week caused panic in world financial markets, with stocks dropping like a stone around the world. The British pound and the euro sank, and many “experts” lamented the beginning of the end of the EU. Maybe it’s true that Brexit will lead to a period of instability in stock markets, currencies and European politics. But there’s a bigger issue at play—European foreign policy in support of U.S. interventions around the world.

      As Chris Hedges eloquently noted in a recent Truthdig column, the U.K. is generally viewed as the closest ally of the United States. Washington uses that relationship to push its foreign policy under the guise of European and Western unity.

      Is Libya falling apart? The U.S. and EU intervene, and it’s all a show of unity.

    • Brexit: the cost of bad governance

      What has come to pass in the United Kingdom with the referendum on membership of the European Union would be called bad governance and patronage anywhere across the developing world. Short-sighted self-interest and political ambition have trumped long-term vision and the collective good. This is, by definition, the problem besetting all those countries that the UK and other international donors work with in efforts to help them become more effective – as well as fairer and more inclusive.

    • Lionel Messi handed jail term in Spain for tax fraud

      Argentina and Barcelona footballer Lionel Messi has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for tax fraud, Spanish media say.

      His father, Jorge Messi, was also given a jail term for defrauding Spain of €4.1m (£3.5m; $4.5m) between 2007 and 2009.

      They also face millions of euros in fines for using tax havens in Belize and Uruguay used to conceal earnings from image rights.

      However, they are likely to avoid jail.

    • CETA will be voted on by EU member states after all, perhaps thanks to Brexit

      In an unexpected move, the European Commission has announced that national parliaments will be given the chance to vote on the CETA trade deal with Canada. As Ars reported last month, it was widely expected that the commission would try to claim that CETA was an “EU-only” agreement, meaning it would therefore be only need to be ratified by the three main EU institutions: the Commission itself, the Council of the European Union, and the European Parliament.

      In a press release announcing its formal proposal for the signature and conclusion of the EU-Canada trade deal, the European Commission explains its decision as follows: “To allow for a swift signature and provisional application, so that the expected benefits are reaped without unnecessary delay, the commission has decided to propose CETA as ‘mixed’ agreement”—that is, requiring all of the individual EU governments to ratify the deal as well.

    • TTIP impossible in 2016, French minister says

      It will be “impossible” for the European Union and the United States to conclude negotiations on a trade deal by the end of 2016, France’s junior minister for trade and commerce said on Tuesday (5 July).

      “I think a deal in 2016 is impossible and everyone knows it, including those who say otherwise,” said the minister, Matthias Fekl in a statement highly critical of the deal.

      Fekl’s position doesn’t seem to be a big surprise. France has already said that TTIP talks are likely to grind to a halt because of Washington’s reluctance to make concessions. But the real reason seems to be that France will hold presidential elections in April-May 2017 and the incumbent president François Hollande doesn’t want this issue to be part of the campaign.

    • The TTIP and the privitization of health

      The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Treaty (TTIP) may present a genuine threat to health and to the outcomes we have reached in the healthcare systems today. With all its problems, the National Health Care System (SNS) that we know today, is internationally recognized as one of the best and most efficient in the world. In the State of Spain, Osakidetza holds recognized prestige in this field. Experts agree that “universal health systems with public property and management and based on Primary Care are those that offer the best results in health and are also the most efficient, the fairest and the most humane”.

    • SRSLY: BoJo, The #Brexit Bro

      BoJo is the tousle-haired towhead who went to the most haute of all British high schools for boys — it costs $13,000 just to drop out in the middle of a term, and that’s a bargain thanks to the falling value of the Great British pound — and yet, he managed to convince vast swaths of the plebeian old country (and I do mean old: “Leave” crushed among British seniors) that he should be their medium for social change. Johnson was previously the mayor of London, which voted heavily to stay, before he became the hair of the Leave Campaign.

      [...]

      He later lost a political appointment for lying to a superior about an affair he was having with a columnist at the magazine he was editing. He might’ve gotten away with that one if, according to the Daily Mail, the columnist hadn’t been a famous socialite whose mother revealed publicly an abortion stemming from the affair with Johnson. Johnson had previously dismissed the affair rumors as an “inverted pyramid of piffle.” Natch.

    • Despite Anti-Trade Rhetoric, Donald Trump’s Campaign Team Includes Pro-Trade Lobbyists

      Donald Trump denounced the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement on Tuesday and charged that Hillary Clinton, a long-time supporter of the deal, is deceiving voters when she says she now opposes it.

      Trump wasn’t wrong to charge that Clinton has surrounded herself with members of the global elite who promote and benefit from deals such as TPP. In fact, many members of Clinton’s inner circle have continued to advocate for the trade agreement.

    • Donald Trump’s Evil Twin Brother

      Just to clarify, Carl Icahn couldn’t actually be Trump’s biological “twin” because at age 80, he’s ten years older than his fellow billionaire. Still, in regard to swinish greed, naked ambition, and unvarnished contempt for working men and women, he surpasses Donald in almost every category, which is saying something, and which is why, even in hard-bitten business circles, Icahn has been described as “evil.”

      Carl Icahn gained fame in the 1980s with his “raider mentality” and highly publicized hostile takeovers of corporations. He would borrow enormous sums of money to purchase a company, then pay off the accrued debt by breaking it up and selling its components, basically destroying the company. One can’t help but recall Harold Wilson’s reference to Edward Heath: “He reminds me of a shiver looking for a spine to run down.”

    • New York Isn’t Telling Tenants They May Be Protected From Big Rent Hikes

      In February of 2015, Lilian Piedra received a letter with devastating news: Her landlord was jacking up the rent for her four-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s Washington Heights from $2,100 a month to $3,500.

      The notice did not say she faced eviction, but Piedra immediately understood that’s what it meant. She and her husband were already struggling to raise three young children on her salary as a bank customer service representative and his as a parking garage manager.

    • Sports Direct reports worse-than-forecast 15 percent drop in profit

      British retailer Sports Direct (SPD.L) posted a worse-than-expected 15 percent drop in annual profit on Thursday, blaming tough conditions on the high street and negative publicity about its working practices.

      The company, which is not paying a dividend, said current political uncertainty after Britain voted to leave the European Union last month was likely to act as a continuing drag on consumer confidence.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Hillary Rebuffs Bernie’s Policy Demands

      Eager to hold the political “center,” Hillary Clinton has budged little on Bernie Sanders’s policy proposals beyond nice-sounding platitudes, a strategy that could lead to clashes at the Democratic convention, says Lawrence Davidson.

    • In the Bloodpot of Human Hearts: Standing Up Against Old Man Trump and His Creepy Racist Son Too

      The lyrics, scribbled by Guthrie over 60 years ago but just discovered earlier this year, describe the racist rental policies of Trump Sr.’s housing project Beach Haven. Notes Guthrie, “I suppose/Old Man Trump knows/Just how much/Racial Hate he stirred up/In the bloodpot of human hearts/When he drawed/That color line.” In honor of the release, Morello shot a video in which he proclaims, “I’m standing up against Old Man Trump.” He goes on vis a vis the son who followed in his father’s – and grandfather’s – bigoted footsteps, “When it comes to race relations, he’s like an old-school segregationist. When it comes to foreign policy, he’s like an old-school napalmist. When it comes to women’s issues, he’s like a frat-house rapist. So let’s not elect that guy.”

    • Clinton’s Pro-Charter School Comments Draw Boos from Teachers Union

      Hillary Clinton was booed at a National Education Association (NEA) event on Tuesday after suggesting that public schools have something to learn from their charter counterparts.

      “When schools get it right, whether they’re traditional public schools or public charter schools, let’s figure out what’s working and share it with schools across America,” she said to the labor union’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., provoking audible boos. “Rather than starting from ideology, let’s start from what’s best for our kids.”

    • The GOP’s Date from Hell

      For a half century, Republicans pandered to Americans angry about racial integration and other social change – even as GOP elites got rich off the “base” – leading to Donald Trump, the party’s date from hell, says Michael Winship.

    • Sanders Reportedly Booed by House Dems Who Just Want Clinton Endorsement Already

      Bernie Sanders spoke to Democratic members of the House of Representatives on Wednesday but was reportedly booed as he attempted to explain that his endorsement of presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton might not fit into an easy timeline and that transforming the nation is about more than one election.

      While providing anonymity to all of its sources, Politico reported how “one person inside the room” said there were “boos from lawmakers” while Sanders was addressing questions about endorsing Clinton.

      One unnamed “senior Democrat” described being personally frustrated that Sanders used the meeting to talk about the central issues of his historic campaign while refusing to simply say when Clinton would receive his blessing publicly. “It was frustrating because he’s squandering the movement he built with a self-obsession that was totally on display,” the individual said.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Europol’s online censorship unit is haphazard and unaccountable says NGO

      Europol’s Internet Referral Unit (IRU) celebrated its first birthday at the weekend, but civil liberties organisations are worried that it goes too far in its efforts to keep the Web free from extremist propaganda.

      The IRU has been up and running since July 2015 as part of the European Counter Terrorism Centre (ECTC) in the Hague. The unit is charged with monitoring the Internet for extremist propaganda and referring “relevant online content towards concerned Internet service providers” in particular social media. Much was made of how the IRU could “contact social network service provider Facebook directly to ask it to delete a Web page run by ISIS or request details of other pages that might be run by the same user.”

    • DA Demands Answers for SA’s UN Vote Against Internet Freedom

      South Africa’s vote against a United Nation (UN) resolution promoting Internet freedom is disturbing but unsurprising, given the ANC-government’s penchant for censorship.

      Last week, the South African government’s representatives at the UN voted against a resolution that sought to promote and protect human rights on online platforms. Part of the resolution sought to condemn the intentional disruption of Internet access to the public. In voting against this resolution, South Africa has joined the ranks of China, Russia and North Korea, countries that have poor human rights track records and are the biggest practitioners of censorship.

    • Selected-Information Age: The new face of censorship

      South Africa voted with China and Russia against a UN resolution on freedom of the internet. It is ironic that censorship is flourishing in the information age.

      Two beliefs exist about modern journalism. One is that the digital revolution is the most powerful force disrupting the news media. The second is that the internet and the social media platforms it spawned, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat, are shifting power from high authorities to civil society and to bloggers, or rather, “citizen journalists.”

    • Helen Suzman Foundation launches court case against SABC censorship

      On Monday 4 July, News24 reported that the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF) has launched an urgent court bid to stop the SABC from implementing its decision to censor reporting of protests.

      The application is against the SABC, its board, COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng and Communications Minister Faith Muthambi, the HSF said in a statement on Monday.

    • Anti-censorship picketers to SABC: Cooperate or face more demonstrations

      An anti-censorship picket is underway outside the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) offices in Auckland Park, despite SABC management refusing to meet with protesting organisations.

      The picket is being led by the Save Our SABC (SOS) Coalition, together with the Gauteng South African Communist Party (SACP).

    • SABC protests to continue this week

      Protests will continue for the rest of the week in connection with SABC censorship and the dismissal of SABC journalists.

      The protest campaigns are being organised by civil societies such as Right2Know Campaign and SOS Coalition as well as Support Our SABC campaign.

    • Has Subaru’s SiriusXM ‘Censorship’ Crossed a Line?

      “Subaru has no business monitoring what I listen to and resetting my radio every time I turn off the car, when, in Subaru’s high and mighty opinion, I’m listening to something questionable,” remarked Patton.

    • UK High Court Upholds Blocking Of Infringing Websites In Trademark Cases

      Internet service providers can be ordered to block websites that offer counterfeit goods for sale despite the lack of an express law to that effect in trademark cases, the UK Court of Appeal for England and Wales said in a 6 July decision.

    • Professor breaks silence in University of Northern Colorado academic freedom case
    • University of Northern Colorado President Kay Norton’s letter to campus community
    • EXCLUSIVE: Transcript of Bias Response Team Conversation with Censored Professor
    • Colorado ‘Bias Response Team’ Threatened Prof To Change His Lessons
    • UNC prof shares tale of censorship by Bias Response Team
    • Campus opinion police

      The latest low point in higher education comes from the University of Northern Colorado, where the campus Bias Response Team came down on two professors for merely suggesting supposedly controversial viewpoints to students.

      The professors didn’t argue their opinions. And they didn’t compel students to do so, either. They simply suggested them. But that was enough for offended students to report them.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Shaping Traffic and Spying on Americans

      At the Intercept earlier this week, Peter Maass described an interview he had with a former NSA hacker he calls Lamb of God — this is the guy who did the presentation boasting “I hunt SysAdmins.” On the interview, I agree with Bruce Schneier that it would have been nice to hear more from Lamb of God’s side of things.

      But the Intercept posted a number of documents that should have been posted long, long ago, covering how the NSA “shapes” Internet traffic and how it identifies those using Tor and other anonymizers.

      I’m particularly interested in the presentations on shaping traffic — which is summarized in the hand-written document to the right and laid out in more detail in this presentation.

      Both describe how the NSA will force Internet traffic to cross switches where it has collection capabilities. We’ve known they do this. Beyond just the logic of it, some descriptions of NSA’s hacking include descriptions of tracking traffic to places where a particular account can be hacked.

      But the acknowledgement that they do this and discussions of how they do so is worth closer attention.

      That’s true, first of all, because of wider discussions of cable maps. In discussing the various ways to make Internet traffic cross switches to which the NSA has access, Lamb of God facetiously (as is his style) suggests you could bomb or cut all the cable lines that feed links to which the NSA doesn’t have access.

    • Secret Rules Make It Pretty Easy for the FBI to Spy on Journalists

      Secret FBI rules allow agents to obtain journalists’ phone records with approval from two internal officials — far less oversight than under normal judicial procedures.

      The classified rules, obtained by The Intercept and dating from 2013, govern the FBI’s use of National Security Letters, which allow the bureau to obtain information about journalists’ calls without going to a judge or informing the news organization being targeted. They have previously been released only in heavily redacted form.

      Media advocates said the documents show that the FBI imposes few constraints on itself when it bypasses the requirement to go to court and obtain subpoenas or search warrants before accessing journalists’ information.

    • FBI Must Not Sidestep Privacy Protections For Massive Collection of Biometric Data

      The FBI, which has created a massive database of biometric information on millions of Americans never involved in a crime, mustn’t be allowed to shield this trove of personal information from Privacy Act rules that let people learn what data the government has on them and restrict how it can be used.

      The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed comments today with the FBI, on behalf of itself and six civil liberties groups, objecting to the agency’s request to exempt the Next Generation Identification (NGI) database from key provisions of federal privacy regulations that protect personal data from misuse and abuse. The FBI has amassed this database with little congressional and public oversight, failed for years to provide basic information about NGI as required by law, and dragged its feet to disclose—again, as required by law—a detailed description of the records and its policies for maintaining them. Now it wants to be exempt from even the most basic notice and data correction requirements.

      NGI includes prints and face recognition data from millions of everyday people who’ve committed no crime but have had their biometric data collected when they needed a background check for a job, applied for welfare benefits, registered for immigration, or obtained state licenses to be a teacher, realtor, or dentist. For example, NGI holds millions of photographs searchable through facial recognition and accessible by 20,000 foreign, federal, state, and municipal-level law enforcement agencies.

    • EFF and ACLU-led Coalition Opposes Dangerous “Model” Employee and Student “Privacy” Legislation

      EFF, ACLU, and a coalition of nearly two-dozen civil liberties and advocacy organizations and a union representative are urging the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) to vote down dangerous model employee and student privacy legislation.

      The bill, the Employee and Student Online Privacy Protection Act (ESOPPA), is ostensibly aimed at protecting employee and student privacy. But its broad and vaguely worded exceptions and limitations overshadow any protections the bill attempts to provide. As our joint letter explains, ESOPPA will result in only further invasions of student and employee privacy.

      The ULC is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to researching, drafting, and promoting the enactment of uniform state laws, which it drafts and circulates as “models.” The ULC will vote on ESOPPA on July 11 at its annual meeting, and if it passes, the ULC will circulate the bill to legislators across the country in the hope of uniform adoption in all fifty states. But ESOPPA falls far short of its goal and does not live up to the prevailing standard for protecting social media privacy currently being enacted by the states and as required by the U.S. Constitution.

    • Go Big, Go Global: Subject the NSA’s Overseas Programs to Judicial Review

      The next round of surveillance reform is a time for the United States to go big – and to go global. We should get out of our defensive crouch and show the world how to balance robust intelligence capabilities with rules to protect privacy and civil liberties in the digital age.

      Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorizes collection of data inside the United States, so long as the direct targets are foreign citizens located outside the United States, with judicial review on a programmatic basis. Section 702 expires at the end of 2017. The debate over reauthorizing it pits supporters ­– who argue the law is vital and should be extended without change – against civil libertarians who urge its expiration or at least significant reforms. This paper is an effort to reframe that debate.

    • India’s High-Tech Billion-Person Aadhaar Identity System Can’t Cope With Real-Life Biometrics

      It sounds like getting India’s 1.29 billion population to use the Aadhaar system for routine daily transactions is going to be something of a challenge, to put it mildly.

    • Going Underground – the Snoopers’ Charter

      Here is a recent interview I did for the RT UK’s flagship news channel, “Going Underground” about the horrors of the proposed Investigatory Powers Bill – the so-called “snoopers charter” – that will legalise previously illegal mass surveillance, mass data retention, and mass hacking carried out by GCHQ in league with the NSA…

    • “Only Facts Matter:” Jim Comey Is Not the Master Bureaucrat of Integrity His PR Sells Him Has

      There’s an intimately related effort Comey gets some credit for which in fact led to fairly horrible conclusions: torture. Jack Goldsmith, with Comey’s backing, also withdrew the shoddy John Yoo memo authorizing waterboarding and other torture (Goldsmith also prevented Yoo from retroactively authorizing more techniques).

    • Federal Court Hears Long Overdue Arguments Over 2008 Surveillance Law

      More than seven years after President George W. Bush signed a law authorizing warrantless surveillance of international communications, a federal appellate court heard arguments challenging the 2008 law for the first time.

      Congressed passed the FISA Amendments Act in the wake of revelations that the Bush administration was wiretapping all Americans’ transnational communications. Rather than reigning in the program, Congress effectively legalized it – providing legal immunity to the phone companies involved, and allowing the government to conduct surveillance without a court order, as long as the “target” was a foreigner living overseas.

      In 2013, documents from by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the government cites the law as the legal authority for its PRISM and Upstream programs – which collect Americans’ emails and browsing histories with individuals and websites hosted overseas.

    • Author adds perspective to NSA’s covert activities

      The intelligence community hasn’t always escaped study. Long before Snowden became the patriot or goat, depending on perspective, the Church Committee in the U.S. Senate took a look into the government’s spy agencies after Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon put the CIA and NSA on personal projects.

    • The Secrets that Remain about Journalist NSLs

      Which brings me back to the other point about NSLs I keep harping on. The 2014 NSL IG report showed that the FBI was not reporting at least 6.8% of their NSLs, even to Congress, much less to the Inspector General. When asked about that, FBI said an accurate number was really not worth trying to do, even while it admitted that the uncounted NSLs were “sensitive” cases — a category that includes journalists (and politicians and faith leaders).

    • Facebook’s Flip-Flop: Is It a Law Enforcement Thing?

      It started when — as increasingly happens in her work — someone came to her with a scary problem. Facebook recommended he friend someone he had only just met for the first time at a meeting for parents of suicidal teens. In response, Facebook confirmed they do use co-location for such recommendations.

    • Massive Security Boost: TOR Privacy Features Are Coming To Mozilla Firefox

      In order to make your web browsing experience a lot better, Mozilla is integrating some key privacy features of TOR browser into its Firefox web browser. These features will go live with the final Firefox 50 release and make it a better Google Chrome alternative.

    • Court to Hear Case on NSA’s Warrantless Spying Program

      On Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments in U.S. v. Mohamud, where a man is fighting his conviction for Attempted Use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction after undercover agents caught him attempting to remotely detonate a fake bomb that agents had provided. Mohamed Osman Mohamud is appealing, saying that federal agents illegally monitored his online activity during their investigation, getting data through an NSA surveillance program, Reuters reported. Through that program, the NSA collected information from online communications and international phone calls of Americans without a warrant.

    • Senate Funding Bill For State Dept. Asks It To Figure Out Ways To Stop Bad People From Using Tor

      It would appear that Congress is not so happy that the State Department is a major funding source for the Tor project. Tor, of course, is the internet anonymyzing system that was originally developed with support from the US government as a way to promote free and safe access to the internet for people around the globe (mostly focusing on those under threat in authoritarian countries). Of course, other parts of our government aren’t huge fans of Tor, because it doesn’t just help activists and dissidents in other countries avoid detection, but also, well, just about anyone (except on days when the FBI decides to hack their way in).

      There has, of course, always been some tension there. There are always the conspiracy theorists who believe that because Tor receives US government funding it is by default compromised. Those tend to be tinfoil hat wearing types, though. The folks who work on Tor are not exactly recognized for being particularly friendly to intrusive government surveillance. They tend to be the exact opposite of that. And, of course, part of the Snowden revelations revealed that Tor was one tool that still stymied the NSA in most cases.

    • 9th Circuit To Hear ‘Christmas Tree Bomber’ Appeal Wednesday
    • ‘Christmas tree bomber’ will appeal conviction
    • Mohamed Mohamud case and challenge to electronic surveillance go before appeals court
    • Oregon Lawyers Question American Surveillance Tactics
    • Appeals court hears warrantless spying case. Could it change surveillance law?
    • Warrantless surveillance in Portland holiday tree-lighting bomb plot challenged in court
    • US defends warrantless spying in Christmas tree bomber case
    • Man convicted of Portland tree-lighting bomb plot wants sentence overturned
    • Appeals court hears challenge to use of NSA data in criminal cases
    • Christmas bomber case appeal challenges NSA surveillance
    • Attorneys debate use of warrantless surveillance in Portland bomb appeal
    • Mohamed Mohamud back in court today to appeal conviction

      Mohamed Mohamud, the young Somalian American convicted in 2014 of trying to bomb Portland’s downtown square during a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in November 2010, is back in court today where an appeal of his conviction will be heard.

      The appeal will be heard today by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit at 11 a.m. at the Pioneer Square Courthouse in Portland.
      Mohamud is serving a 30-year prison sentence. The appeal argues the sting operation was a setup. It also claims the FBI surveillance of Mohamud violated his constitutional right against unlawful search and seizure. Mohamud’s lawyers are seeking a reversal of his conviction or a new trial.

      Prosecutors are standing firm, saying Mohamud intended to commit an act of terrorism.

    • U.S. court to hear arguments in warrantless NSA spying case

      A U.S. appeals court will weigh a constitutional challenge on Wednesday to a warrantless government surveillance program brought by an Oregon man found guilty of attempting to detonate a bomb in 2010 during a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony.

      The case before a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the first of its kind to consider whether a criminal defendant’s constitutional privacy rights are violated under a National Security Agency program that allows spying on Americans’ international phone calls and internet communications.

      Mohamed Mohamud, a Somali-American, was convicted in 2013 of plotting to use a weapon of mass destruction and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

    • VIDEO: Oh I do like to spy beside the seaside – GCHQ invites bids for learn-on-the-job cash [Ed: puff piece]
    • NSA Looks to IT Industry to Harden Vulnerable U.S. Nets [Ed: Another “NSA is the Good Guys” puff piece; they actively undermine networks’ security]
    • Protect your privacy: Resist mass cracking by US law enforcement

      In 2014, the Judicial Conference of the United States, which frames policy guidelines for courts in the US, proposed changes to Rule 41 of the FRCrmP that gives federal magistrate judges the authority to issue warrants for cracking and surveillance in cases where the targeted computer’s location is unknown. That means law enforcement could request warrants allowing mass cracking of thousands of computers at once. The Supreme Court, which oversees the Rules, submitted the changes to the US Congress in April. This is an unprecedented, broad government cracking authorization, and it is dangerous to the privacy and security of all Internet users.

    • The single reason I trust Google with my data
    • The Two Reasons I Don’t Trust Google With My Data
    • Should you trust Google with your data?

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Former Police Chief Pushes Through Legislation To Keep Body Cam Footage Out Of The Public’s Hands

      Whatever accountability and transparency could be achieved with the deployment of police body cameras often seems to be undercut by legislative activity. Minnesota legislators, prompted by law enforcement, tried to cut the public out of the process. So did a sheriff-turned-legislator in Michigan. The LAPD preemptively declared its body cam footage would not be considered “public records,” which means legislators will have to act to roll back the PD’s policy. And in Illinois, a law enforcement agency decided to stop using body cameras altogether because accountability is just too much work.

      Over in North Carolina, one legislator is sponsoring a bill that would exempt body cam footage from public records laws. His concern, of course, is the privacy of all involved.

    • Chelsea Manning ‘rushed to hospital after trying to take own life’

      Chelsea Manning, the military whistleblower serving a 35 year sentence, has been rushed to hospital after reportedly trying to take her own life.

      A US media report said that Manning, who is being held at in a cell at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, was taken to hospital early on Tuesday morning. CNN said that it was believed that the 28-year-old had tried to take her life. There was no immediate independent confirmation of this.

    • Police Claim They Arrested Man Who Burnt American Flag Because Of Threats He Received

      Meet Bryton Mellott. Bryton’s just a guy from Urbana, IL. A guy with a Facebook page that he uses to share stuff with friends, post hilarious memes, and post a picture of himself burning the American flag on the 4th of July, the anniversary of when President Washington personally haymaker-punched the King of England right in the face (I think), thereby setting all some Americans free of our British overseers.

      As you can imagine, lots of people didn’t like Bryton’s picture. Some called the police about it for reasons we will get into in a moment. Others threatened him with violence and death. Still others threatened him with violence and death at his place of work. A few meager folks stuck up for him. You know, Facebook.

      And at the end of the day, Bryton was arrested by Urbana police.

    • Whitewashing Sharia councils in the UK?

      In an Open Letter to the UK Home Secretary, hundreds of women’s human rights organisations and campaigners warn against a further slide towards privatised justice and parallel legal systems.

    • From Captive to Captor: A Journalist’s Journey from Prisoner to Prison Guard

      Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer has spent much of his career reporting on criminal justice. For years he’d been frustrated by the secretive nature of the American private prison industry. Tired of old-fashioned document-hunting, he tried an unconventional approach. He went undercover, spending four months as a prison guard at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana.

      His 35,000-word story provides a rare, harrowing look at the closed world of private prisons — a system that holds 131,000 people nationwide. What he saw still haunts him: men stabbing each other with handmade knives as guards looked on; officers in tactical gear storming the prison’s dormitories; an assault victim writhing in panic as he pleaded for protection from a predatory inmate; a prisoner whose gangrene went untreated so long he had to have his legs amputated.

    • Tomgram: Nick Turse, Revolving Doors, Robust Rolodexes, and Runaway Generals

      Here’s an oddity: Americans recognize corruption as an endemic problem in much of the world, just not in our own. And that’s strange. After all, to take but one example, America’s twenty-first-century war zones have been notorious quagmires of corruption on a scale that should boggle the imagination. In 2011, a final report from the congressionally mandated Commission on Wartime Contracting estimated that somewhere between $31 billion and $60 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars were lost to fraud and waste in the American “reconstruction” of Iraq and Afghanistan (which undoubtedly will, in the end, prove an underestimate). U.S. taxpayer dollars were spent to build roads to nowhere; a gas station in the middle of nowhere; teacher-training centers and other structures that were never finished (but made oodles of money for lucky contractors); a chicken-plucking factory that never plucked a chicken (but plucked American taxpayers); and a lavish $25 million headquarters that no one ever needed or bothered to use. Thanks to tens of billions of U.S. dollars, whole security forces were funded, trained, armed, and filled with “ghost” soldiers and police (while local commanders and other officials lined their pockets with completely unspectral “salaries”). And so it went.

    • Alaa Abd El Fattah Must Be Released, Says UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention

      Nearly two years ago, along with the Media Legal Defence Initiative and with consent and input from his family, we submitted a petition to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) for the release of Egyptian coder, blogger, and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah. Abd El Fattah was arrested on November 28, 2013, two days after participating in a peaceful demonstration against a law allowing Egyptian civilians to be tried in military courts. His arrest was conducted without a warrant, he was beaten by police officers, and authorities raided his home while his wife and child were present. He was later sentenced to five years in prison.

    • Brazil’s Globo Attacks Protesting Cops to Protect Its Olympics Payday

      Police officers and firefighters in Rio de Janeiro protesting their lack of pay as the Olympics approach are engaged in “ethically reprehensible” actions “bordering on terrorism,” according to an editorial on Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro’s largest newspaper, O Globo. The newspaper, a property of Grupo Globo, which is owned and controlled by the billionaire Marinho family, is Brazil’s dominant media conglomerate and a primary sponsor and beneficiary of the 2016 Summer Olympics.

      In attacking the police, the paper was not criticizing the epidemic of police killings of black and brown youth, nor the militarized occupation of many of Rio’s slums that has failed to improve public security, nor the criminal gangs of off-duty and former officers, known as milícias, that violently control and extort vast swaths of the city. Instead, Globo’s indignation was targeted at public servants nonviolently demonstrating for a basic worker’s right — being paid — as part of a protest that happens to threaten Globo’s own business interests worth hundreds of millions of dollars, a fact the paper neglected to disclose to its readers.

      “Welcome to Hell. Police and firefighters don’t get paid; Whoever comes to Rio de Janeiro will not be safe,” read a sign in English held by disgruntled police officers in Rio’s international airport on Monday, just weeks before the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympics. The state of Rio, after wasting billions on lavish corporate tax breaks and delayed, over-budget Olympic construction contracts with notoriously corrupt firms, has declared a financial emergency, forcing it to cut benefits, postpone paying salaries and pensions to public workers, and slash operating budgets. Police and firefighters have for months been in conflict with the state over budget shortfalls. The state’s teachers union has been on strike for nearly four months.

    • ‘What Is a Journalist if Not an Advocate on Behalf of the Public?’

      Today’s US news watchers might not recognize that the pretense of objectivity in journalism, the view that reporters should strive to report the news as if from nowhere, is—besides not being possible—not a value that adheres to journalism the world around, or that has even always held sway in this country. Many of those thought of as the giants of the profession — Ida B. Wells, Lincoln Steffens — were advocacy journalists before that term was considered not just a pejorative, but an oxymoron. Things seem to be changing again, though, with a growing awareness that if taking a side against poverty or racism or climate change means breaking some rule of straight journalism, then it’s the rules that ought to change.

    • Does More Security at Airports Make Us Safer or Just Move the Targets?

      At Ataturk airport, passengers pass through metal detectors and their bags are scanned as they enter the terminal.

      This differs from the procedures at most American airports, where anyone can enter the terminal without being screened.

      Turkish officials said the attackers initially tried to enter the building, but were turned away at the security screening.

      They returned with “long-range rifles” from their suitcases. Two of the attackers entered the terminal in the ensuing panic.

      One set off his explosives on the arrivals floor of the terminal; the other detonated his on the departures floor one level above. A third attacker blew himself up outside the terminal as people fled.

    • Falcon Heights shooting: Facebook video captures aftermath of fatal police encounter in Minnesota

      Ms Reynolds described the sequence of events repeatedly throughout the video, during which she said the officer asked the driver for his license and registration.

      “He told him that it was in his wallet, but he had a pistol on him because he’s licensed to carry. The officer said don’t move. As he was putting his hands back up, the officer shot him in the arm four or five times,” she said.

    • Senate Bill Would Force Red Cross to Open Books to Outside Oversight

      Legislation introduced in the Senate today would open the American Red Cross to outside oversight that it has long resisted.

      The bill was introduced by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, following a lengthy investigation by his staff that raised questions about the charity’s spending after the 2010 Haiti earthquake and documented how Red Cross leaders resisted an earlier congressional inquiry. Grassley launched his probe in response to reporting by ProPublica and NPR.

      Grassley’s American Red Cross Transparency Act, would amend the group’s congressional charter to allow unfettered access to its records and personnel by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. The Red Cross operates as a private nonprofit but was created by Congress over 100 years ago and has a mandated role to work alongside the federal government after disasters.

    • Major New Brazil Events Expose the Fraud of Dilma’s Impeachment — and Temer’s Corruption

      From the start of the campaign to impeach Brazil’s democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff, the primary justification was that she used a budget trick known as pedaladas (“peddling”: illegal delay of re-payments to state banks) to mask public debt. But this week, as the Senate conducts her impeachment trial, that accusation was obliterated: The Senate’s own expert report concluded there was “no indication of direct or indirect action by Dilma” in any such budgetary maneuvers. As the Associated Press put it: “Independent auditors hired by Brazil’s Senate said in a report released Monday that suspended President Dilma Rousseff didn’t engage in the creative accounting she was charged with at her impeachment trial.” In other words, the Senate’s own objective experts gutted the primary claim as to why impeachment was something other than a coup.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • FCC Pressure Helps Bring Netflix To Comcast Cable Boxes

      We’ve long noted how Comcast is a bit of an anti-competitive jackass on both the TV and broadband fronts. When the nation’s biggest cable provider isn’t using usage caps to hinder streaming video competitors, it’s busy finding new and creative ways to prevent paying customers from wandering too far outside of Comcast’s well-cultivated walled garden. And while many global cable companies have joined the year 2016 by integrating Netflix functionality into their cable boxes for consumer benefit, Comcast has historically fought such a move, instead trying to drive consumers to its own Netflix knockoff.

    • Dish Sues Tribune Because It Called The Company ‘Dishgusting’

      For years now, consumers have been stuck in the middle of increasingly-ugly carriage fee disputes between broadcasters and cable companies. Usually they go something like this: a broadcaster demands a massive rate hike from cable companies to carry their channels. Cable TV providers balk, and the broadcaster pulls access to the channels in question until the cable provider pays up. Consumers not only lose access to content they’re paying for (refunds are never provided), but they’re also hammered by ads from both sides trying to get consumers to call and bitch at the other guy for being greedy.

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • The USPTO Moves to Clear “Trademark Deadwood”

        Is there a “trademark deadwood” problem? The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) thinks there is a “trademark deadwood” problem in its register. On June 22, 2016, the USPTO announced its intention to make new rules requiring additional documentation under section 8 and section 71 of the Trademark Act to ensure that a party is actually using the mark in commerce.

        It is axiomatic in the United States that use is a prerequisite for trademark rights. With respect to some limited exceptions, use is required to obtain rights at common law and to secure federal registration on the Principal Register. Fundamentally, if there is not use, there is ordinarily less opportunity for goodwill to develop or for a likelihood of confusion to arise.

    • Copyrights

      • Kim Dotcom Hints at Second Coming of Megaupload

        Kim Dotcom has confirmed to TorrentFreak that he has a brand new cloud storage site under development. After an extended planning period, the entrepreneur says the platform will be his best creation yet. It could launch next January with a name that “will make people happy.”

      • UK Bill Introduces 10 Year Prison Sentence for Online Pirates

        The UK Government’s Digital Economy Bill, which is set to revamp current copyright legislation, has been introduced in Parliament. One of the most controversial changes is the increased maximum sentences for online copyright infringement. Despite public protest, the bill increased the maximum prison term five-fold, from two to ten years.

      • Porn sites will require age verification checks in the UK by 2017

        THE UK GOVERNMENT has unveiled the Digital Economy Bill that includes plans for age verification requirements on porn websites.

        The government has long been keen on this idea. We’re still none the wiser as to how such checks will be implemented, but the Digital Economy Bill explains that sites will be required to obtain age verification from visitors to stop children accessing such websites accidentally or purposefully.

        This is unlikely to go down well with privacy advocates, and the Open Rights Group has previously spoken out about the porn age check plans.

      • Mike Huckabee paying $25,000 for playing ‘Eye of the Tiger’

        Failed presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is paying $25,000 for playing “Eye of the Tiger” at a rally last year without the band’s permission, CNNMoney has discovered.

      • Mike Huckabee Settles For Five Figures With Survivor Over Copyright Infringement

        The claim that the rally was a religious gathering and not connected to the Huckabee campaign reportedly fell apart because he had listed the rally as a campaign expense on his records. Interestingly, despite Huckabee’s claim that it was not a campaign event, that it was so will allow him to use his campaign’s warchest to pay off the settlement.

      • American Copyright Trolls Continue To Abuse Canadian Courts In Search Of Easy Settlements

        In the United States, copyright trolls are finding it more difficult to save on filing fees by pursuing file sharers en masse. More than a few judges have shot down attempts to file infringement suits against “Does 1-30,” etc., ruling that these defendants are improperly joined.

        Meanwhile, in Canada, copyright trolls are trying a novel approach to suing alleged file sharers in big bunches: the reverse class action. Voltage Pictures is suing a nominative “class” of Does yet to be named for copyright infringement. This is its attempt to route around restrictions placed on it by another court, as well as the costs associated with complying with the demands.

        But in doing so, Voltage Pictures is making a mess of Canadian privacy laws. Rogers, the service provider standing between Voltage and the subscriber information it’s demanding, wants to know why the studio is abusing Canada’s “notice and notice” system to obtain information it’s not supposed to be able to acquire without a court order.

      • Why The Latest Supreme Court Ruling In Kirtsaeng May Have A Much Bigger Impact On Copyright & Fair Use

        Earlier this month, we wrote briefly about the Supreme Court’s second Kirtsaeng ruling, which focused on the issue of fee shifting in copyright cases. We didn’t spend that much time on it (and hadn’t covered the run up to the Supreme Court either). We had basically assumed that the first Kirtsaeng ruling from the Supreme Court, about whether or not the First Sale Doctrine applied to goods outside the US, was the real legacy of the Kirtsaeng fight, rather than a more mundane issue about fee shifting — especially when the more recent Kirtsaeng ruling was basically just “courts need to look at more than just if the original lawsuit was ‘objectively reasonable’” (but fails to give much guidance about what else should be looked at). Yes, we noted, this may ward off some bogus copyright lawsuits, depending on what standards the courts start to coalesce around, but there wasn’t much big news in the ruling.

      • UK Proposes To Tighten IP Protections Online

        The United Kingdom Digital Economy Bill, floated this week, aims to “enable access to fast digital communication services for citizens and businesses, to enable investment in digital communications infrastructure, to shape the emerging digital world to the benefit of children, consumers and businesses, and to support the digital transformation of government, enabling the delivery of better public services, world leading research and better statistics,” the UK government said in the document.

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