06.30.14

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • LG Chromebase now available on Amazon for $329

    Google’s Chrome OS was back in the spotlight this week due to its upcoming ability to run Android apps. One of the newest Chrome OS devices is LG’s Chromebase, a low-cost Chrome OS all-in-one PC. Now, the Chromebase is on sale on Amazon for the low price of just $329, making it one of the cheapest full-sized PCs to date.

    The Chromebase doesn’t require hefty internals which cuts down the cost significantly. The specs include a 22-inch 1080p IPS display, 1.4GHz dual-core Intel Celeron processor, 2GB RAM, 16GB SSD, USB 3.0 port, three USB 2.0 ports, HDMI port, and an ethernet port. Before you start bashing the Chromebase for its meager spec list, remember that it uses Chrome OS which requires very little power to run. Cloud storage is also emphasized with a free 100GB of Google Drive storage bundled with the Chromebase. A mouse and keyboard are included.

• Server

  • Review of the Thecus N5550 NAS device

    How is the device as an HTPC replacement? After doing some research online, I found that video output was supported only after installing the “Local Display,” and that the app only gave access to a Firefox browser inside of the Linux OS. If you wanted to stream any media, you also needed to install XBMC, and figuring out where to get these apps is as difficult as the other apps.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux 3.16-rc3

    We’re back on a Sunday release schedule, and things are looking
    reasonably normal.

    There’s perhaps relatively less driver updates than usual, with most
    of them being pretty small, but that is probably just a timing thing
    (ie Greg didn’t send his USB/staging changes this week, so driver
    changes are mostly gpu, networking and sound).

    As a result misc architecture updates (mips, powerpc, x86, arm)
    dominate the diff, and there are various random other updates. We’ve
    got filesystem updates (aio, nfs and ocfs2), a small batch of mm fixes
    from Andrew, some networking stuff.etc.

    The shortlog gives a feel for the changes. The most noticeable to
    actual users are probably the unbreaking of direct block device read
    accesses on 32-bit targets, and some x86 vdso regression fixes that
    caused problems. The rest probably didn’t end up affecting very many
    people, but it’s all proper fixes..

    Linus

  • Linux 3.16-rc3 Kernel Released

  • Benchmarks

    • Benchmarking Linux 3.16 File-Systems On An SSD

      With the Linux 3.16 kernel coming along nicely, here’s our first tests of this forthcoming major kernel upgrade when it comes to the mainline file-systems and their performance from a solid-state drive.

• Applications

  • Easy File Comparisons With These Great Free Diff Tools

  • kSar sar grapher – A Graphical interface for sysstat sar data

    sysstat sar provides command line based monitoring data. Those who are new or migrating from Windows or MAC and used to the graphical output, it might get confusing and boring. Hence the development of kSar sar grapher. kSar sar grapher is a graphing tool that can graph for Linux, MAC and Solaris sar outputs. Using KSar you can output graphs to a pdf file. kSar sar grapher is developed by Alexandre Cherif and uses a BSD license for distribution.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • when: A sleeper hit for the median demographic

    • whisper: On the right track, not yet at full speed

    • Linux system administration part 2

    • Setup Light Weight X Windows environment (Enlightenment) on Fedora 20 Cloud instance

    • How To Install And Test KDE Plasma 5 On Kubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr

    • Install Ajenti (A Web Based Control Panel) for Managing Linux Server

    • GTG plugin: Refactoring, improving and bug-fixing

    • Starting KF5 using the I3 window manager

    • How to create sosreport in linux (RHEL 5.X / RHEL 6.X)

    • Install and set-up JAVA & Grails on an Ubuntu 14.04 Linux VPS

    • Install Odoo (formerly OpenERP) with Nginx on an Ubuntu VPS

    • How To Install Profile Sync Daemon 5.50 On Debian Wheezy, Debian Sid And Debian Jessie

    • How To Install Profile Sync Daemon 5.50 on Arch Linux, Manjaro, Gentoo, Fedora And OpenSUSE

    • How To Install Skype 4.3 On Arch Linux And Manjaro

    • How To Install Profile Cleaner 2.30.1 On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 10.04 And Derivative Systems

    • Bash If statements, Exit Status and Comparison Operators, A beginners guide to bash scripting part 2

  • Games

    • DayZ Coming To Linux And Mac?

    • Catlateral Damage knocks its funding goal off the shelf

      We’ve got another game to be added to the rapidly-expanding genre of animal simulator games: Catlateral Damage, which started as a game jam project and charmed its way into our hearts back at the beginning of the year with a limited demo build, has met its $40,000 Kickstarter goal. The feline festivities are anticipated to make their way to Mac, Linux, PC and Ouya in Q4 of this year.

    • Valve Brings Big In-Home Streaming Improvements for NVIDIA and Steam Users

      Valve developers have released a new update for the beta Branch of the Steam client and they have implemented a number of important improvements for the In-Home Streaming feature.

      In-Home Streaming is a feature that allows the Steam users to stream games from a Windows-based operating system to a Linux one, thus enabling Linux user to play games that don’t have support for the open source platform.

    • There’s No Business Like Goat Business, Goat Simulator Now Out On Linux

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • KDE Connect turns your Android phone into a touchpad for your PC

    • Help make Plasma 5 real!

      Maybe you already know that the new version of the desktop by the KDE people, called Plasma 5, is in the makings. I totally believe that this forthcoming release will be amazing, and that’s why Aleix Pol and myself have already started porting KDE Connect to this new Desktop Environment.

      Porting every application in KDE, though, requires a huge amount of work. This is one of the reasons why some of the best hackers in KDE will meet this summer in Randa, Switzerland: to work hard in the next version of the best desktop environment ever!

    • About Free Software and Sponsorship June 29, 2014

      In 2008 I joined the KDE Community devoting much of my free time, my paid time, my girlfriend time, gathered friends to help, did hacking sessions, translation sprints, spend in one year more than 3k euro to help free software – And here in brazil 3k euro is what one gain in 9 months of work, so it wasn’t really easy for me to just give away that cash

    • KDE Commit-Digest for 11th May 2014

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • MyPaint + Wacom screen tablet + GNOME3 = ♥

      The colouring process was improved and sped up quite a bit when I bought an inexpensive USB Wacom graphire tablet a few years ago; I moved away from “cell shading” and achieved smoother results, quicker. Why Wacom? They’re the industry standard, their stylus/pen uses electromagnetic induction (no batteries required), and their hardware works out of the box with GNU/Linux and GNOME.

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • SparkyLinux 3.4 MATE, Xfce, and Base Distros Officially Released

    • Robolinux 7.5.4 Wants to Be the Ultimate Windows Replacemen

      Robolinux uses a piece of technology called Stealth VM Software, which allows users to create a clone of a Windows Operating System with all the installed programs and updates. It should work, in theory, but there isn’t enough feedback to see how good this particular solution really is.

      Besides this important feature that is one of the most important ones implemented in this distribution, the developer has also made a few other major changes and he has added quite a few new packages.

  • Screenshots

    • Ubuntu 14.04 KDE 5 20140627

    • StartOS 5.1

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • PCLinuxOS Magazine: July 2014

      1. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner
      2. KDenLive, Part Six
      3. ms_meme’s Nook: Boogie Woogie Tex
      4. Improve Battery Life On Your Android Device
      5. Inkscape Tutorial: Reinvent The Wheel
      6. PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: pinoc
      7. Game Zone: Monochroma
      8. Just Digging It With DIG
      9. PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions
      10. Don’t Install Pipelight, It Helps Infect the Web With DRM and Microsoft
      11. Inkscape Tutorial: Create a Candle
      12. Programming With Gtkdialog: Part Four
      13. Handy Utilities To Organize Your Life, Part Four
      14. Screenshot Showcase

  • Red Hat Family

    • Fedora

      • Software application gets support for add-ons

        The latest development version of the Software application (the graphical tool for searching and installing new applications in Fedora) now has support for browsing and installing add-ons.

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn Alpha 1 now available

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” Cinnamon and MATE Flavors Get Second Release with Major Fixes

            Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” was released only a month ago, but in all that time some important issues have been fixed by the developers. In order to make the life of the users a little bit easier, the Linux mint devs have decided to regenerate the ISO images with the new fixes.

            According to the changelog made available today, MDM no longer crashes with non-xrandr compatible GPUs, an option in the installer which stated “Replace $OS and install Linux Mint”has been removed because it was considered ambiguous, and the Driver Manager has been fixed because it assumed the user was running a manually installed driver when in the presence of a device which required the installation of “linux-firmware-nonfree”.

          • Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon And Linux Mint 17 Mate Have Received Updates

            Linux Mint 17 has been released at first in the two traditional flavors: Linux Mint 17 Mate and Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon, followed by the releases of Linux Mint 17 KDE and Linux Mint 17 XFCE.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Jolla Launcher unofficially ported to Android 4.2

    • Ballnux

      • The Samsung Galaxy Z: Tizen OS a big Risk? Specifications and Comparison

        The Samsung Galaxy Z is the wave of the future. It’s Tizen OS is cutting edge and will be the standard for smartphones in the future. It is a quality phone that is worth every penny.

      • Samsung Likely To Launch Galaxy S5 Prime Soon

    • Android

      • The Promises and Perils of Android TV

        Android TV is more ambitious than its simple interface lets on; the question is whether it can live up to its goals.

      • Why Android Wear is the new iPad

        But Android Wear watches are the first smartwatches to cross the line from awkward to awesome, because they’re the first to completely abandon the smartphone’s icons, menus and widgets paradigm and massively leverage subtle contextual cues, images, icons and colors to present tiny nuggets of information in their most essential and quickly graspable form.

      • Android L 5.0 Brings RAW Support, Manual Controls and More to Mobile Shooters

      • A Tiny Chinese Startup Has Made My Favourite New Smartphone Of The Year

        The best smartphones you can buy today don’t come cheap. The iPhone 5S, the HTC One, and the Samsung Galaxy S5 all cost at least $US600 without a contract from your carrier.

        But there are a few startups trying to disrupt the model of charging a premium for the best smartphone components and features — big and bright screens, gorgeous designs, and zippy processors.

      • Google: No OEM skins for Android Wear, Android Auto, or Android TV

      • Google says OEM skins won’t dilute Android Wear, Android TV and Android Auto

      • WTF is up with Google’s war on SD cards?

        I’m firing up for a rant, so strap yourselves in kids, it’s Google-bashing time! This week the thing that’s been bugging me revolves around the whole war on SD cards that Google is perpetrating in the latest versions of Android. I get why cost-cutting means the Nexus 5, Nexus 7 etc don’t have a microSD card slot, but Google is now telling us that their microSD vendetta is because SD cards are insecure and corruptable. You know, the exact thing that companies are not.

      • Apple vs. Google: The race is on for the wrist, TV, car

      • ASUS Reportedly Launching Inexpensive Android Wear Smartwatch In September

      • ASUS Android Wear smartwatch to be priced at $99-$149, debut in September

      • ASUS to launch Android Smartwatch just for $199

      • Xiaomi to make India debut on Flipkart

        Touted as the ‘Apple’ of China, Xiaomi had launched its official website in India earlier this month, announcing its entry into the fiercely competitive Indian smartphone market in the next few weeks.

      • Asus ZenFone 5 in India looks AWWWsome

      • Exclusive: A review of the Blackphone, the Android for the paranoid

        Based on some recent experience, I’m of the opinion that smartphones are about as private as a gas station bathroom. They’re full of leaks, prone to surveillance, and what security they do have comes from using really awkward keys. While there are tools available to help improve the security and privacy of smartphones, they’re generally intended for enterprise customers. No one has had a real one-stop solution: a smartphone pre-configured for privacy that anyone can use without being a cypherpunk.

Free Software/Open Source

• the struggle of open social networks

  identi.ca did not move the needle against Twitter at all. Diaspora still doesn’t show up as even a blip in the social networking audience. Why is this? I think that there are good reasons, and then there are the real reasons.

  The good reasons include network effects (particularly as a late-mover), good-but-not-excellent implementations, few if any “killer features” (for the common person), and a lack of marketing resources. These all contribute in one way or another to preventing open social network alternatives from flourishing.

  [...]

  Is it imaginable to have (truly) decentralized social networks that are not server-centric? Can we imagine ways of delivering some or all of the features of today’s social networks without having everyone talking through server software? Can we imagine a fully decentralized system that not only allows but encourages deep local app integration? Could a system be developed that does not imply the topic in the implementation (e.g. professional networking versus restaurant reviews)?

• Paying With Your Time

  Nicole Engard takes that phrase that you Get what you paid for with open source head on at Opensource.com. The phrase is normally used in a derogative fashion, but Nichole accepts the phrase and makes it her own by explaining how everyone benefits when you pay with your time.

  In the world of standard economics, nothing is ever truly free of cost. If something is given to you for nothing, someone had to pay for it at some point along the line. In the modern, advertising based economy, If you are not paying with your money, than you are most likely paying with your personal information. Another example of would be public services, which are normally paid for with taxes. In the world of open source, the phrase is normally meant to imply that the program you are obtaining for free is of such low quality that it has little to no value. “Oh, you are having a problem with that open source app? Well, you get what you paid for!” Laughter ensues.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla at work: See the web evolve with VR

      He provided links for Windows and OS X builds in his blog, and he said Linux is coming soon. Although only the Oculus Rift is currently supported, other devices, he said, will come soon, including Google’s Cardboard.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Hacking LibreOffice in Paris

    Less technical particpants (such as yours truly) had the opportunity to work on the Bern Conference planning, the messaging of the upcoming LibreOffice releases, and explain how the LibreOffice project works to our guests. And of course, food and drinks were not forgotten during the Friday evening…

• CMS

  • How websites are smarter in the background than you thought

    Basle-based open source web content management system (WCMS) company Magnolia International has released the 5.3 version of its core product with functionality now delivered through a series of task-focused apps.

• BSD

  • FreeBSD 9.3 RC2 Released with Numerous Improvements

    The second Release Candidate of FreeBSD 9.3, an operating system for x86, ARM, IA-64, PowerPC, PC-98, and UltraSPARC architectures, is now available for download and testing.

• Public Services/Government

  • The government says, “we will break away from OS dependency with open source software by 2020”

    As the support for the Microsoft (MS) Windows XP service is terminated this year, the government will try and invigorate open source software in order to solve the problem of dependency on certain software. By 2020 when the support of the Windows 7 service is terminated, it is planning to switch to open OS and minimize damages. Industry insiders pointed out that the standard e-document format must be established and shared as an open source before open source software is invigorated.

  • What would you do with millions of pounds?

    There’s a lot that you can do with £5.5m. You could employ a couple of hundred people for a year for starters, or set up some small businesses. You could be sensible and invest in technologies, or you could pay for lots of operations. Alternatively, you could buy lots of sweets or several million copies of the Adam Sandler movie of your choice.

  • Why The Korean Government Could Go Open Source By 2020

    A similar suggestion that Korea might embrace more open source (but couched more cautiously, with more “should” and “may”) is reported on the news page of the EU’s program on Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations, based on a workshop presentation earlier this month by Korea’s Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning. (And at a smaller but still huge scale, the capitol city of Seoul appears to be going in for open source software in a big way, too.)

  • Seoul, South Korea, plans new cloud platform to share data

  • Government Of Korea Is Into FLOSS For The Long Run

• Openness/Sharing

  • Open Hardware

    • Billions To Soon Be Invested In 3D Printing Research and Development

    • Open Source 3D Printer Blasts Through Kickstarter Goal

Leftovers

• Science

  • Why a little country like Paraguay is launching a space program

    Think about the future of space travel for one moment.

    Chances are Paraguay did not come even remotely to mind.

    But now this little, landlocked South American country is determined to put itself on the intergalactic map.

    When the Paraguayan government announced earlier this year that it was forming a space agency, that got us at GlobalPost thinking: Why, and how, would this poor, isolated country invest in space exploration, of all things?

    It turns out there are all sorts of reasons why developing nations should be looking to the skies to see the future, as we will now explain.

• Hardware

  • Massachusetts SWAT Teams Claim They’re Private Corporations To Get Out Of Transparency Requests

    I’m no conspiracy theorist, generally speaking, but I have to admit the apparent systematic militarization of domestic police forces throughout the country scares the hell out of me. You’ve seen it, too. Officers, once clad in powder blue uniforms, are suddenly dressed in blues that are so dark they might as well be black. Small-town police forces are gobbling up military-style equipment for god-knows-why. Regulatory agencies are sending out armed forces to rescue wildlife. Whatever your politics, it’s pretty clear that there is some kind of imbalance on display here.

• Health/Nutrition

  • Monsanto’s ‘Roundup Ready’ GM maize could be growing in Europe next year.

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • The era of American drone supremacy is fading

    The US would not tolerate another country operating with the same scope and secrecy

  • How many drones kill how many people? Questions Remain about Drone Program

    …comprehensive research that does exist – albeit not from the government – shows that drones are more effective at creating terrorists than destroying them…

  • Cannes loves Pakistan’s hatred for drones

  • U.S. inches closer to landmine ban

    The Obama administration pledged Friday to stop producing or purchasing landmines, but it stopped short of signing an international treaty that requires countries to destroy their stockpiles, saying it was “diligently pursuing solutions” that would allow it to eventually sign the agreement.

  • US takes major step towards banning landmines

    US is the only member of Nato not to have signed an international treaty banning the use of anti-personnel landmines, a cause championed by Princess Diana

  • Washington Post Columnist Demands Accountability From Iraq War Architects

  • CNN’s Toobin: Americans should be ‘grateful’ that Cheney is back on TV talking about Iraq

  • Obama asks for 500 million to equip Syrian rebels

  • Robert Fisk scoffs at Obama’s double standard view of terrorists in Syria and Iraq

  • Point of View: Never forget blunders that got us into Iraq

    It is unthinkable that a news agency would bestow any credibility on Cheney concerning the Iraq War. His comments were ignorant and illusory. In addition, a letter-writer writes that former President George W. Bush and Cheney did not lie to us. They were merely “incorrectly informed by the prevailing intelligence.” (“Iraq War received bipartisan support,” June 23.)

  • Iraq news to top Sunday talk shows

    The Iraq crisis will dominate most of Sunday’s political talk shows, featuring interviews with lawmakers on key committees and others, including James Jeffrey, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq.

  • The Lies That Lead to War

    As the exploding crisis in Iraq spotlights once again the tragic record of American policy in the Middle East, Bill speaks with investigative journalist Charles Lewis, whose new book, 935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America’s Moral Integrity details the many government falsehoods that have led us into the current nightmare.

  • Iraqi forces drive back insurgents in Tikrit

    The Iraqi army on Saturday drove Islamic extremists from the center of a major city in central Iraq, for the first time mounting a concerted assault against insurgents who had charged to within 50 miles of Baghdad.

  • Iraq troops advance on Tikrit in counter-attack

    Iraqi forces pressed a campaign yesterday to retake militant-held Tikrit, clashing with Sunni fighters nearby and pounding positions inside the city with air strikes in their biggest counter-offensive so far.

  • Iraq army makes gains in fight to retake Tikrit

  • Sunday talk show tip sheet

  • Ruling a win for digital privacy

    The justices — every last one of them, in a seldom-seen 9-0 ruling — recognized that in the 21st century, a cell phone, iPad or other tablet is not just a form of communication, but a storage place.

  • BIGGER BROTHER? Spike in NSA phone-data surveillance, report says

  • NSA phone searches increased by 50 percent in 2013, report finds

  • US NSA Continues Telephone Metadata Spying

  • After Verizon, Germany mulls axing foreign tech

    First Verizon got the boot, now the German government is considering pulling the plug on foreign companies that provide hardware for official communication networks.

    An Interior Ministry spokesman says Germany is examining which devices can be used if it wants to keep critical IT infrastructure safe from cyberthreats.

  • Death in Shati

    Yesterday, shortly after three o’clock local time, two men were killed in their car. Two missiles struck it only about 100 meters from former prime minister Ismail Haniyeh’s residence in Shati (“Beach”) refugee camp. Ambulances soon arrived and took the two men to al-Shifa hospital, where both were immediately pronounced dead.

  • Soldiers reportedly executing Sunni detainees in Iraq

  • Are uprisings in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine plus tension in North Korea pushing world to the brink of war?

  • Who Violated Ukraine’s Sovereignty?

    The West has accused Russia of violating a 1994 pledge to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty in exchange for its surrender of Soviet-era nuclear weapons. But the West’s political and economic interference might also represent a violation, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

  • America Seems to Be Losing Ukraine’s War

  • Another Murderous Milestone: 60 Years of Carnage

    …CIA sent twelve planes to drop bombs and propaganda on towns in Guatemala in support of a coup…

  • Kerry in Syria opposition talks as U.S. moves to arm rebels

    The US top diplomat headed for talks with the Syrian opposition and its key backer Saudi Arabia Friday after the White House asked lawmakers for $500 million to train and equip vetted rebels.

    The move would mark a significant escalation of US involvement in the three-year-old civil war in Syria, which is now increasingly interlinked with a jihadist-led Sunni Arab insurgency in neighbouring Iraq.

  • Seeking solution, Kerry turns to Saudis

    Secretary of State John Kerry arrived here Friday as part of a delicate attempt to enlist the support of the Saudi monarch for the formation of a multisect government in Iraq.

    Kerry also met with Ahmad Assi al-Jarba, the head of the moderate Syrian opposition, at the start of his visit here. That meeting came one day after the White House announced that it was seeking $500 million from Congress so the Pentagon could train and arm “vetted elements” of the Syrian opposition.

  • Report: Israel tells U.S. it would act to save Jordan from Islamists

    The threat posed to Jordan by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) which has already taken over wide swathes of Iraq and Syria, is of deep concern to the Obama administration and was the subject of a confidential briefing by administration officials to senators last week, according to the online news site.

    The chief concern is that an attack on Jordan would inevitably drag Israel and possibly the United States into the fighting.

  • Russia sends Sukhoi fighter jets to help Iraq counter extremists’ offensive

    Iraq received the first batch of Sukhoi warplanes from Russia as it pressed a counter-attack on Sunday against a Sunni militant onslaught that threatens to tear the country apart.

    Witnesses reported waves of government air strikes Sunday on the city of Tikrit, overrun by the insurgents when they swept across vast areas of north and west Iraq earlier this month.

  • Iraq receives Russian Sukhoi warplanes as it takes fight to militants

  • Iraq receives ‘first batch of Russian fighter jets’

  • Iraq receives first Russian jets

  • Robert Fisk Slams US Plans for Aiding So-Called Syrian ‘Moderates’ Aren’t So Moderate in Iraq

    In an analysis in the British Independent daily on Friday, Fisk wrote: Well, God bless Barack Obama – he’s found some “moderate” rebels in Syria. Enough to supply them with weapons and training worth $500mln. Congress wants to arm these brave freedom fighters, you see. And Obama, having sent his 300 elite Spartan lads to Iraq to help Nouri al-Maliki fight the rebels there, needs to send help to the rebels in Syria – even though most of them are on the side of the rebels in Iraq whom Obama wants Maliki to defeat.

  • Special CIA Unit Sent to UK to Investigate British Islamists

• Transparency Reporting

  • Report: Julian Assange will model on catwalk during London Fashion Week

    “The Wikileaks founder will reportedly model for Ben Westwood, son of Dame Vivienne, at a fashion show at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London – where he has been holed up for two years,” reports Yahoo News.

  • Wikileaks shed light on GOP Senate candidate Sullivan’s State Dept. career

    A trove of more than 100 of the leaked Wikileaks diplomatic cables in 2010 provides an unvarnished view of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan’s career at the U.S. Department of State, where he spent two-and-a-half years holding high-level meetings on oil and gas, climate change, and a host of other issues, even lobbying a head of state on a secret surveillance program.

  • Showing Solidarity With Whistleblowers and Defending Our Right to Know

    Sarah Harrison: In the United States they are aggressively going after whistleblowers and truth tellers. When you look at the Jeremy Hammond case, he exposed abuses by the private intelligence organization, Stratfor, that was spying on Bhopal activists. He was aggressively prosecuted by U.S. courts and sentenced to ten years in prison. You see persecution against individual journalists and publishers as well. Anyone that is speaking truth to power in any real manner is being come down upon by the US government to try and set examples and to stop the truth from being exposed in the future.

  • WikiLeaks Reveals True Intent of Secret TiSA Trade

    A WikiLeaks exposé has revealed the true intent behind secret 50-country negotiations on a new “financial services” chapter of the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) at the WTO in Geneva. The draft agreement being discussed by government officials is aimed at weakening financial regulation and giving extra market access to hedge funds, banks, insurers and other providers.

  • US pressured Denmark to close Kurdish TV so Rasmussen would become NATO chief – lawyer

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • David Cameron warned NHS in danger of collapse within five years

    Senior Tories have called on David Cameron to increase NHS spending significantly as a former coalition health minister forecasts a collapse in the service.

    A slew of bad news over the NHS has raised Tory fears that the health service could again prove to be a toxic issue just 10 months before a general election.

• Finance

  • Congressional Candidate B.J. Guillot talks Bitcoin and Politics – Interview

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Murdoch editors told to ‘kill Whitlam’ in 1975

    News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch directed his editors to “kill Whitlam” some 10 months before the downfall of Gough Whitlam’s Labor government, according to a newly released United States diplomatic report.

    The US National Archives has just declassified a secret diplomatic telegram dated January 20, 1975 that sheds new light on Murdoch’s involvement in the tumultuous events of Australia’s 1975 constitutional crisis.

  • FBI seizes 80,000 emails from Murdoch’s News Corp

    A probe of media mogul Rupert Murdoch might soon take shape in the United States upon reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has 80,000 emails in its possession seized from the servers of the tycoon’s News Corp headquarters.

    The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday this week that “the FBI has copies of at least 80,000 emails taken from the servers at News Corp in New York,” prompting Britain’s Daily Mail to allege that new hacking allegations could be lobbed at Murdoch in the US as matters on the other side of the Atlantic near wrapping up.

    According to reporters Nico Hines and Peter Jukes at the Beast, this correspondence is contained on a single compact disc and was obtained by the FBI during the just resolved, high-profile phone hacking case in the UK surrounding journalists employed by Murdoch’s since-shuttered News of the World paper. The journalists also allege that the message include communications sent up the chain of command by Murdoch protégée Rebekah Brooks, who was spared by a jury in London this week of involvement in the NOTW hacking scam.

  • Rupert Murdoch under FBI spotlight as 80,000 company emails are investigated

  • Despite London acquittals, U.S. probe of News Corp continues

    More than a year after asking for and receiving emails from News Corp’s U.S. operation related to allegations of phone hacking and bribery, the FBI is still investigating whether British-based representatives of the media company may have broken U.S. law…

  • Rupert Murdoch and News Corp.’s woes will continue

  • Stirling Shenanigans

    1,600 people attended British Armed Forces Day in Stirling. 20,000 attended Bannockburn Live, 1 mile away. Guess which the BBC covered?

    [...]

    So today the BBC News lead item was the Stirling Armed Forces Day commemoration, with David Cameron parading about with his soldiers in front of every Tory in Scotland (1,800 people). The BBBC had three crews at the Armed Forces Day plus two radio crews. Not one of them managed even a mention of the ten times larger Bannockburn commemoration just down the road.

  • What 2,000 People Look Like

    Various unionist nutters have tried to claim that the outrageous BBC/MOD propaganda lie of 35,000 people at Armed Forces Day in Stirling is true. This picture was taken at 1.30pm when the crowd was largest.

    There is a lot to give scale in this photo. Look at the vehicles. Look at the marquees.

• Censorship

  • ‘Hate, censorship are political tools of suppression’

    When you look at film history, whether it’s McCarthyism, Stalinism or religious fundamentalism, in the struggle with all adversaries, film-makers were forced to find new forms of storytelling to communicate with the audience, which brought out the best in their creativity. Film-makers like Howard Hawks, John Huston, Andrei Tarkovsky, Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf were able to smuggle their ideals without compromising their vision. Fred Zinnemann replied to McCarthy’s witch-hunt by making a film about his era in the form of a western called High Noon.

  • Britain First’s Facebook page taken down for ‘hate speech’ – but not for long

  • Britain First’s Facebook Page Banned For ‘Hate Speech’… Then Put Back Just An Hour Later

  • Banned But Not Forgotten: Book Censorship In The U.S.

    Under the First Amendment, the U.S. government cannot outright ban literature in the United States, but as Mark Crispin Miller, author and professor of media studies at New York University, explained, books can be hidden from public view or written off as conspiracy theory in order to prevent people from reading them.

    While censorship is often conducted by corporations and governments to prevent words, images or ideas from entering the mainstream, censorship of literature has been around as early as 399 B.C. and has affected intellectuals and philosophers such as Socrates.

  • The case against censorship

    If the City of Toronto silences street preachers because they make him feel uncomfortable, he may be among the next group silenced for making others feel uncomfortable.

  • US Religious Groups Concerned About Internet Censorship

    Falun Gong, a spiritual movement with Buddhist and Daoist influences, has been banned in China since 1999.

  • MPAA Issues Overly Broad Takedown Of Little Used Reddit Film Community; Creates Much Bigger Reddit Film Community

    Oh that wacky MPAA. Earlier this week, TorrentFreak noted that the MPAA issued a massively overbroad DMCA takedown to Google, asking it to remove an entire subreddit from its search results. The subreddit in question was r/FullLengthFilms, which really wasn’t that popular.

• Privacy

  • Facebook manipulated 689,003 users’ News Feeds to ‘prove’ emotions are contagious

  • Facebook users react angrily to a ‘creepy’ experiment

    Users of Facebook have reacted angrily to a “creepy” experiment carried out by the social network and two American universities to manipulate their emotions. The US technology giant secretly altered almost 700,000 users’ news feeds to study the impact of “emotional contagion”.

  • Facebook gives with one hand and takes with the other

    As part of a psychology experiment, the news feeds of over 600,000 people were “manipulated”. Researchers tweaked the content of thousands of news feeds to give them a more positive or more negative slant. Perhaps unsurprisingly it was found that people exposed to more upbeat content were themselves more positive, and vice versa. An interesting experiment, most would agree, but in an age where honesty and transparency are so highly valued, the fact that the chosen thousands were not informed about what was happening is a little underhanded — to put it mildly.

  • Facebook modified news feeds of 689k users for a week

  • Facebook manipulated users’ moods in secret experiment to show bad moods spread

    Facebook manipulated the emotions of hundreds of thousands of its users, and found that they would pass on happy or sad emotions, it has said. The experiment, for which researchers did not gain specific consent, has provoked criticism from users with privacy and ethical concerns.

  • Sad status update? Facebook reveals it’s been manipulating our emotions

  • Facebook conducted secret psychology experiment on users’ emotions

  • 600,000 Facebook users unknowingly take part in psychological experiment

  • Shoppers tracked as they go wild in the aisles

    ON YOUR last trip to the supermarket, where did you walk, what did you look at, and which products did you ultimately buy? Proximus, a start-up based in Madrid, Spain, wants to know.

  • Google’s Larry Page wants to ‘save 100,000 lives’ by analyzing your healthcare data

    Talking up the power of big data is a real trend at the moment and Google founder Larry Page took it to new levels this week by proclaiming that 100,000 lives could be saved next year alone if we did more to open up healthcare information.

  • Germany NSA’s main target, claims ex-staffer

    Germany became the NSA’s “number one” spying zone after the 2001 attacks by al Qaeda on New York, says a former NSA staffer. Thomas Drake told the news magazine Spiegel that the US saw it could no longer rely on Germany.

  • NSA Whistleblowers to Testify Before German Parliamentary Committee in July

  • NSA Collected Data on Millions of Americans Just to Investigate 248 People

    The National Security Agency was interested in the phone data of fewer than 250 people believed to be in the United States in 2013, despite collecting the phone records of nearly every American.

  • How paranoia became The Way We Live Now

    The National Security Agency has password-cracking software that is capable of guessing at 1 billion passwords a second, according to documents pilfered and made public by Snowden. Every day, according to those documents, the NSA and other federal agencies intercept, read or listen to up to 20 billion emails, phone calls and other communications, many of them sent by or to Americans.

  • Massive mobile malware network used by cops globally

    A probe by Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto and computer security firm Kaspersky Lab has uncovered a massive network of mobile malware for all phone types that is sold by an Italian firm to police forces around the world.

    The malware, dubbed Remote Control System (RCS), was produced by a company called Hacking Team. It can subvert Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry devices. The study found 320 command-and-control (C&C) servers for RCS running in over 40 countries, presumably by law enforcement agencies.

    Kaspersky has developed a fingerprinting system to identify the IP addresses of RCS C&C servers and found the biggest host is here in the Land of the Free, with 64 discovered. Next on the list was Kazakhstan with 49, Ecuador has 35, just beating the UK which hosts 32 control systems.

  • How is your member of Congress doing on NSA reform? Check StandAgainstSpying.org

    A coalition of 22 organizations from across the political spectrum today launched StandAgainstSpying.org, an interactive website that grades members of Congress on what they have done, or often not done, to rein in the NSA.

  • Edward Snowden inspired anonymity software, OnionShare, launches

    A recently released open-source software, created in response to the controversy surrounding Edward Snowden’s release of classified NSA documents, claims to allow users to securely send large files over the internet with complete anonymity.

  • Transparency Report From Office Of The Director Of National Intelligence Shows Government Issuing 50 NSLs Per Day

  • With One Sentence Fox News Has Completely Sabotaged Boehner’s Lawsuit Against Obama

    What started out as an interview to champion John Boehner’s lawsuit against Obama turned into an act of sabotage with one sentence from Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace.

  • The ACLU and the NSA’s ex-director will debate spying on June 30th

  • Public Defender wants proof of legal WPD surveillance

    The Wilmington Police Department’s use of Stingray surveillance equipment is causing concern for local attorneys. The technology can track a person’s location by acting as a cell phone tower.

    The New Hanover County Public Defender’s Office recently said it would be probing the surveillance methods.

  • NSA fears hit US business in Germany

    Shades of the Stasi. The German Government is not renewing its contracts with giant US telco Verizon because it doesn’t trust its data with a US company.

  • Steve Wozniak’s brief, mysterious meeting with Edward Snowden

    “To me Edward Snowden is a hero”

  • New N.S.A. Chief Calls Damage From Snowden Leaks Manageable

    The newly installed director of the National Security Agency says that while he has seen some terrorist groups alter their communications to avoid surveillance techniques revealed by Edward J. Snowden, the damage done over all by a year of revelations does not lead him to the conclusion that “the sky is falling.”

• Civil Rights

  • Ron Paul: Celebrate Independence Day By Opposing Government Tyranny – OpEd

    This week Americans will enjoy Independence Day with family cookouts and fireworks. Flags will be displayed in abundance. Sadly, however, what should be a celebration of the courage of those who risked so much to oppose tyranny will instead be turned into a celebration of government, not liberty. The mainstream media and opportunistic politicians have turned Independence Day into the opposite of what was intended.

    [...]

    The evidence is all around us.

  • Being an ANNOYING PERSON is now a crime in some places

    There are now 5,000 laws on annoying behavior in statutes in the US, the Wall Street Journal reported.

  • College Reacts To Negative Press By Attempting To Seal Court Documents Exposing Its Ridiculous Actions

  • Occidental Expels Student for Rape Under Standard So Low That the Accuser Could Have Been Found Guilty, Too

    Does all drunken sex constitute rape? Obviously not, but that’s the argument Occidental College administrators must make in their zeal to prosecute a male student for sexual assault—even after police acquitted him.

  • This Is Why Your Local Police Department Might Have a Tank

    Forget Officer Friendly. A new report finds that local police departments are becoming excessively militarized, equipped with weapons, uniforms and even vehicles formerly used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan

  • Five torture myths debunked

    However, the focus on torture and other ill-treatment in what the US authorities then called the “war on terror” at the beginning of the century may have skewed the global picture. What our research also clearly shows is that most victims of torture and other ill-treatment worldwide are not dangerous terrorists but rather poor, marginalized and disempowered criminal suspects who unfortunately seldom draw the attention of the media and public opinion, either nationally or globally.

  • Torture – An unnecessary evil

  • Human Rights Watch Says Saudi Govt Targeting Dissidents with Malware

    Human Rights Watch on Friday demanded a clarification from Saudi Arabia over allegations from security researchers that the kingdom is infecting and monitoring dissidents’ mobile phones with surveillance malware.

  • What to do if police try to search your phone without a warrant

    In a profound win for digital privacy rights, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police officers must obtain a warrant before searching your phone. If they don’t, the search is illegal—a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.

  • The Special Relationship: Uncovered; Charles Paris Mystery; The First Time With… Jimmy Page – radio review

    I bow to few in my admiration for Peter Hitchens’s unerring determination to grasp wrong ends of sticks, too often persuading himself that the end grasped represents the bravely unpopulist when both meanings could better be reversed. But I have to say he made a wonderful fist of a fierce, lucid, timely programme on US-UK relations. The Special Relationship: Uncovered was scripted and voiced with clarity, the perfect pace for radio, some great interviewees and the minimum of intrusive noise – apart from a bizarre but briefly welcome horned-up version of Funky Nassau.

  • The Age of Compromises and the Compromises of Age

    Regarding war and civil rights, Hillary Rodham and HRC share scant common ground. The heart of the 22 year-old liberal lies buried deep beneath the travel-worn head of the 66 year-old pragmatist. In 2008 Barack Obama promised Hope and Change. But he failed to deliver. As would Hillary.

  • Aaron Swartz’s father: He’d be alive today if he was never arrested

  • The brief but bright life of Aaron Swartz – R.I.P.

    But Swartz was within the system’s grasp, and it appears the DOJ was determined to make an example of him. Faced with economic ruin and imprisonment for years by a vengeful administration — the Obama regime has been extraordinarily vindictive toward whistleblowers, charging more people with the Espionage Act than all previous U.S. administrations combined — the free-spirited Aaron appears to have been pushed over the edge on January 11, 2013. But on March 6, an unrepentant Attorney General Holder defended Swartz’s prosecution before a Senate committee.

  • Massachusetts Town Nullifies NDAA Indefinite Detention

    Another American town has decided its citizens will not be denied due process by the president of the United States.

  • India: Targeting NGOs

    The timing and contents of the I.B. report naming select NGOs and individuals as working against the national interest exposes the Narendra Modi government’s pro-corporate plan to target organisations championing people’s causes that have not been taken up adequately by the political class.

  • Referendum on democracy in Hong Kong draws 740,000 votes

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • The Peace Prize for Snowden

    Awarding Snowden the Nobel Peace Prize would be an extremely bold and very controversial, but in our opinion also a correct choice.