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08.22.14

Links 22/8/2014: Linux Foundation LFCS, LFCE

Posted in News Roundup at 5:40 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Changing times, busy times and why Google will save Usenet.

      Linux however has succeeded by way of form factors diversifying. Be it Android phones or tablets there is a big shift with the mainstream consumer in terms of what devices they want and here Linux has excelled.

      In 2008 my decision remove my Microsoft dependency was for reasons of the control they had on the desktop, the practices alleged against them and the dubious tactics some of their advocates used to promote the products. I also wholeheartedly agree with the ethos of FOSS which was another contributory factor. Today, my feelings about FOSS have not changed, there are caveats to my opinions of FOSS (especially in gaming) but I’ve covered that before in other articles.

      Today I avoid Microsoft not because I feel the need to make a stand against its behaviour, its because I don’t need them. I support Microsoft being a “choice” in the market as I support user freedom, but as for what Microsoft can offer me (regardless of its past) there is nothing.

    • 5 Linux distributions for very old computers

      This is part 4 in a series of articles designed to help you choose the right Linux distribution for your circumstances.

    • Citrix and Google partner to bring native enterprise features to Chromebooks

      Chromebooks are making inroads into the education sector, and a push is coming for the enterprise with new native Chrome capabilities from Citrix. Google and Citrix have announced Citrix Receiver for Chrome, a native app for the Chromebook which has direct access to the system resources, including printing, audio, and video.

      To provide the security needed for the enterprise, the new Citrix app assigns a unique Receiver ID to each device for monitoring, seamless Clipboard integration across remote and local applications, end user experience monitoring with HDX Insight, and direct SSL connections.

    • Can we please stop talking about the Linux desktop?

      Linus Torvalds may still want a Linux desktop, but no one else does. And even if they did, by the time the requisite ecosystem could be developed, the need for a desktop — Linux or otherwise — will largely be gone.

  • Server

    • What is Docker, Really? Founder Solomon Hykes Explains

      Docker has quickly become one of the most popular open source projects in cloud computing. With millions of Docker Engine downloads, hundreds of meetup groups in 40 countries and dozens upon dozens of companies announcing Docker integration, it’s no wonder the less-than-two-year-old project ranked No. 2 overall behind OpenStack in Linux.com and The New Stack’s top open cloud project survey.

      This meteoric rise is still puzzling, and somewhat problematic, however, for Docker, which is “just trying to keep up” with all of the attention and contributions it’s receiving, said founder Solomon Hykes in his keynote at LinuxCon and CloudOpen on Thursday. Most people today who are aware of Docker don’t necessarily understand how it works or even why it exists, he said, because they haven’t actually used it.

      “Docker is very popular, it became popular very fast, and we’re not really sure why,” Hykes said. “My personal theory … is that it was in the right place at the right time for a trend that’s much bigger than Docker, and that is very important for all of us, that has to do with how applications are built.”

    • Founder Explains What Docker Is All About

      Just over a year ago, Solomon Hykes created the open-source Docker project. Since then Docker has exploded in both popularity and hype. In a keynote session at the LinuxCon conference, Hykes explained why the hype is both a blessing and a curse.

    • What Docker does right and what it doesn’t do right… yet

      Docker founder Solomon Hykes, opened his keynote at LinuxCon by saying he knows two things about Docker: “It uses Linux containers and the Internet won’t shut up about it.” He knows more than that. He told the audience what Docker is, what it does right today, and what it still needs to do to be better than it is today.

    • IBM Taps Global Network of Innovation Centers to Fuel Linux on Power Systems for Big Data and Cloud Computing

      At the LinuxCon North America conference today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced it is tapping into its global network of over 50 IBM Innovation Centers and IBM Client Centers to help IBM Business Partners, IT professionals, academics, and entrepreneurs develop and deliver new Big Data and cloud computing software applications for clients using Linux on IBM Power Systems servers.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • LXQt 0.8 Is Almost Ready For Release. How To Install LXQt On Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr

      It uses PCManFM-Qt, a version of PCManFM, re-written in Qt, as the default file manager and Openbox as window manager and has support for both Qt5 and Wayland, Red Hat’s new display server.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Learning to git

        A few years ago, I learned from Myriam’s fine blog how to build Amarok from source, which is kept in git. It sounds mysterious, but once all the dependencies are installed, PATH is defined and the environment is properly set up, it is extremely easy to refresh the source (git pull) and rebuild. In fact, I usually use the up-arrow in the konsole, which finds the previous commands, so I rarely have to even type anything! Just hit return when the proper command is in place.

        Now we’re using git for the KDE Frameworks book, so I learned how to not only pull the new or changed source files, but also to commit my own few or edited files locally, then push those commits to git, so others can see and use them.

      • An update on Plasma Addons

        Since my last blog post on plasma addons there has been a lot of activity, existing contributors are active on their own plasmoids, and there are many new faces coming on to take up the challenge of maintaining their own small part of Plasma.

      • Baloo Natural Query Parser ported to KF5

        In 2013, My GSoC project was about implementing a natural (or “human”) query parser for what was then Nepomuk. The parser is able to recognize simple Google-like keyword searches in which sentences like “videos accessed last week” can also be used. Sample queries include “KDE Baloo, size > 2M” and “files modified two months ago, Holidays, tagged as Important”. An explanation of how the parser can extract the advanced information and of which queries are possible can be found here.

      • Intermediate results of the icon tests: Faenza

        The introduction of the new Breeze icon set in KDE let us again wonder, what aspects of an icon set actually takes what impact on the usability of it. We investigated Oxygen and Tango Icons for the LibreOffice project before, but our focus then was on checking all icons of the standard tool bar. This time we focus on different icon sets and will use 13 common actions to compare them.

      • Qt Creator 3.2 Officially Released

        Qt Creator 3.2, a cross-platform IDE (integrated development environment) tailored to the needs of Qt developers and part of the Qt Project, is now available for download.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME DOCUMENTATION VIDEO IS OUT

        The GNOME Documentation Video has now been released on youtube and as a download (Ogg Theora + Vorbis). This is something I have been waiting for since I finished working on it a few weeks ago. A big thanks to Karen for providing a great voice-over for the second time! Translated subtitles are not online just yet for the video, but should come within the next few days (thanks to pmkovar and claude for setting this up!).

      • Emulator brings x86 Linux apps to ARM devices

        Eltechs announced a virtual machine that runs 32-bit x86 Linux applications on ARMv7 SBCs and mini-PCs, and is claimed to be 4.5 times faster than QEMU.

        The open source QEMU emulator has long been the go-to app for providing virtual machines (VMs) that mimic target hardware during development or otherwise run software in alien territory. Every now and then, someone comes up with software that claims to perform all or part of QEMU’s feature-set more effectively. In this case, Eltechs has launched its Eltechs “ExaGear Desktop,” a VM that implements a virtual x86 Linux container on ARMv7 computers and is claimed to be 4.5 times faster than QEMU. Despite its “desktop” naming, we can imagine many non-desktop possibilities fpr ExaGear in embedded and IoT applications.

  • Distributions

    • Backup Your PC with Clonezilla Live 2.2.4-1

      Clonezilla Live, a Linux distribution based on DRBL, Partclone, and udpcast that allows users to do bare metal backup and recovery, is now at version 2.2.4-1 and is ready for testing.

    • Operating System U

      Are you tired of being forced to upgrade your Operating System regularly? What about the unnecessary changes that end up being made, changes that you don’t even want, much less need? How would you like to pick and choose what aspects of your operating system you want upgraded, and leave the ones you know, love, and are accustomed to how they are?

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Another great experience in Fedora bug reporting: Wine font fix solves my web-browsing problem

          Fedora‘s motto is “Freedom. Friends. Features. First.” I’m here to tell you Fedora lives up to that billing. Why do I say this now? I’ve just had another positive experience with Fedora, this time in finding a bug in my system, adding my information to an existing bug report and now seeing updated packages pushed to the Fedora 20 stable repositories and onto my system, where the problem has been fixed.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • VMware Certifies Ubuntu Linux LTS for vCloud Air Cloud Computing

            Canonical and VMware (VMW) forged a closer bond this week with the announcement of certified Ubuntu Linux images in vCloud Air, VMware’s new enterprise cloud-computing platform.

          • Ubuntu Touch Gets Major Update and the OS Is Now Crazy Fast – Screenshot Tour

            Ubuntu Touch has just received a new major update and the developers have made some serious changes to the operating system, which now feels a lot faster and the experience is a lot smoother.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • It’s Elementary, with Sparks, and Unity

              In today’s Linux news Jack Wallen review Elementary OS and says it’s not just the poor man’s Apple. Jack Germain reviewed SparkyLinux GameOver yesterday and said it’s a win-win. Linux Tycoon Bryan Lunduke testdrives Ubuntu’s Unity today in the latest entry in his desktop-a-week series. And finally tonight, just what the heck is this Docker thing everybody keeps talking about?

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Android-on-ARM mini-PC draws less than 7W

      The DSA2LS runs a pre-installed Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean) with integrated online or offline update functionality on a dual-core, 1GHz Freescale i.MX6 DualLite system-on-chip. The SoC has a Vivante GC880 GPU that’s not as powerful as the Vivante GC2000 GPU found on the Dual and Quad i.MX6 models, but it still plays back 1080p video and offers 3D graphics acceleration. The power-sipping DualLite enables the fanless computer to run at a modest 6.26W active and 1.42W standby, according to Shuttle’s AnTuTu benchmarks.

    • IoT tinkerers get new Linux hub & open platforms

      Cloud Media, the maker of entertainment box Popcorn Hour, launched a project on Kickstarter, Inc. that will add to the growing number of smart hubs for people to connect and control smart devices. Called the STACK Box, it features a Cavium ARM11 core processor, 256MB DDR3 RAM, 512MB flash, SD slot, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth LE 4.0, Z-Wave, standard 10/100 Ethernet port, optional X10 wired communication, 5 USB 2.0 ports, RS-232 port, 2 optocoupler I/O, Xbee Bus, Raspberry Pi-compatible 26-pin bus and runs Linus Kernel 3.10. IT also features optional wireless communications for Dust Networks and Insteon with RF433/315, EnOcean, ZigBee, XBee, DCLink, RFID, IR coming soon.

    • mini Duino+ Open Source Ardunio Board Based On ATmega 1284p (video)

    • Phones

      • Android

        • The top 14 hidden features in Windows, iOS, and Android

          You may think you’re a high-tech power user who knows all the nooks and crannies of Windows, iOS, and Android, but let’s be realistic: There could be at least a few undocumented (or poorly documented) commands, control panels, and apps that have slipped by you—maybe more than a few.

          We’ve dived deep into each OS to uncover the best hidden tips and tricks that can make you more productive—or make common tasks easier. Got a favorite undocumented tip to share with readers? Add them in the comments section at the end of the article.

        • Motorola frenzy with up to 9 devices possibly launching at ‘Moto Launch Exprience’

          We have seen a number of sources revealing upcoming releases and device-launches set for September. However today, we are hearing seriously scary reports that Motorola are set to release EIGHT devices before Christmas. Yes folks, Motorola are about to get extremely serious in terms of the market releasing no less than eight devices over the next few months.

        • OnePlus phones will soon come to India

          Last month we reported on how OnePlus were making clear indications they do intend to sell the One in India. Today it is fair to say that the speculation is certainly over and OnePlus will certainly be selling in India soon.

          On the OnePlus website the company is now advertising for a General Manager for its ‘India Operations’. As the company does not currently sell or deliver to India there is no clearly message the company could have sent to indicate this will soon change in the near future.

        • [Mono warning] Unity adds native Android support for x86

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Notebook Reality

        Meanwhile Android/Linux increases an order of magnitude more than that. Smartphones are shipping more units than desktops ever did and tablets are becoming a mature market. The Wintel PC is becoming a niche market, only thriving with businesses who resist change and need keyboards, large screens and pointers.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source software: The question of security

    The logic is understandable – how can a software with source code that can easily be viewed, accessed and changed have even a modicum of security?

  • Is Open Source an Open Invitation to Hack Webmail Encryption?

    While the open source approach to software development has proven its value over and over again, the idea of opening up the code for security features to anyone with eyeballs still creates anxiety in some circles. Such worries are ill-founded, though.

    One concern about opening up security code to anyone is that anyone will include the NSA, which has a habit of discovering vulnerabilities and sitting on them so it can exploit them at a later time. Such discoveries shouldn’t be a cause of concern, argued Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP, the encryption scheme Yahoo and Google will be using for their webmail.

  • Islamic State Migrates to Open-Source Social Network After Twitter and YouTube Bans

    After being banned from Twitter and YouTube due to its video of James Foley’s murder, the Islamic State (Isis) migrated to another social network called Diaspora

  • Open-Source Social Network Diaspora Grapples With Use by Terror Group

    Even before its current challenges, Diaspora has had a difficult history (highlighted in this Vice Motherboard feature). Started in 2010 with the promise of creating a decentralized open-source replacement for Twitter and Facebook, the network drew positive press at first and more than $200,000 in Kickstarter funding. But when it was released to the public, it failed to build the audience to match its lofty ambitions.

  • 35 Open Source Tools for the Internet of Things

    In a nutshell, IoT is about using smart devices to collect data that is transmitted via the Internet to other devices. It’s closely related to machine-to-machine (M2M) technology. While the concept had been around for some time, the term “Internet of Things” was first used in 1999 by Kevin Ashton, who was a Procter & Gamble employee at the time.

  • Walmart’s investment in open source isn’t cheap

    This is not done for the love of humanity. Walmart takes the effort to work in the open because there is a return to be had from that investment. When other companies adopt Hapi, Walmart expects their internal implementations will lead them to improve the code to better suit their needs. Since the majority of these improvements are likely to be integral to the code in the commons, any rational actor will make pull requests attempting to have their work integrated in the project trunk.

    Of course — otherwise, the team making the changes would be eternally burdened with the need to refactor and test their changes each time the trunk is updated. Successful pull requests lead to merges that bring the whole community together for the upkeep of the code, not just the developers who originally wrote it.

  • Most popular open-source cloud projects of 2014

    At CloudOpen, a Linux Foundation tradeshow held in conjunction with LinuxCon, the Foundation announced that an online survey of open-source cloud professionals found OpenStack to be the most popular overall project.

  • Tunapanda brings digital literacy to Africa

    The ultimate goal was to bring low-income communities to technological literacy in the most rapid and cost-efficient way possible. Initially, we loaded the hard drive with tons of educational content and FOSS software, intending to allow anyone anywhere to duplicate the contents and set up a learning center. Using these tools, we’ve launched computer learning centers (“hubs”) in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda—in both rural and urban settings.

  • Open source leaders take the ice bucket challenge
  • Apache Tomcat 8.0.0 RC11 Now Available for Download and Testing

    Apache Tomcat, an open source software implementation of the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies, developed under the Java Community Process, is now at version 8.0.0 RC11.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • With New Funding, Adatao Focuses on Bringing Hadoop to the Masses

      Recently, news broke that a small startup called Adatao has secured $13 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz with investment partners from Lightspeed Ventures and Bloomberg Beta. Marc Andreessen is a board advisor to the company, which is run by CEO Christopher Nguyen, a former director of engineering for Google Apps.

      Of course, Nguyen knows his way around Google Docs, and his company Adatao is working on ways to make Hadoop as easy to work with as Google Docs. It’s part of a trend to bring Hadoop’s Big Data-crunching prowess to average users through easier to use tools.

    • Survey Finds OpenStack, KVM Riding High Among Cloud Professionals

      In conjunction with CloudOpen, a sidebar tradeshow held along with LinuxCon, The Linux Foundation has announced that a survey of open source cloud pros established that OpenStack is easily the most popular project. The survey gathered information from more than 550 participants, and the findings came out at CloudOpen in Chicago this week.

    • Survey says: OpenStack and Docker top cloud projects

      When it comes to open source cloud projects, everybody has an opinion. A new survey attempts to take a broad look at those opinions and learn something about the state of the state of the open cloud and where it is headed.

      Conducted in partnership between Linux.com and the New Stack, the survey gathered information from more than 550 participants, and the results were released at the CloudOpen North America event taking place this week in Chicago.

  • Databases

    • Eltechs Debuts x86 Crossover Platform for ARM Tablets, Mini-PCs

      The product, called ExaGear Desktop, runs x86 operating systems on top of hardware devices using ARMv7 CPUs. That’s significant because x86 software, which is the kind that runs natively on most computing platforms today, does not generally work on ARM hardware unless software developers undertake the considerable effort of porting it. Since few are likely to do that, having a way to run x86 applications on ARM devices is likely to become increasingly important as more ARM-based tablets and portable computers come to market.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Video: TedX talk – Richard Stallman

      Well, vp9/opus in a webm container have been supported by both Firefox and Google Chrome for several releases now… so enjoy it in your web browser.

  • Public Services/Government

    • NASA sails to the cloud with AWS, open source, migration

      NASA has migrated 110 websites and applications to the cloud in a cost-cutting technology overhaul that also introduced the Drupal content management system and other open source components to the agency’s enterprise tool chest.NASA has migrated 110 websites and applications to the cloud in a cost-cutting technology overhaul that also introduced the Drupal content management system and other open source components to the agency’s enterprise tool chest.

    • US Military To Launch Open Source Academy

      Open source software, which has become increasingly common throughout the US military from unmanned drones to desktops, has now been enlisted as a career option for military personnel. In September, Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center will open a Linux certification academy, marking the first time such a training program has been hosted on a military base.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Building Cars With Crowdsourced Intelligence

      When Jay Rogers left the U.S. Marine Corps in 2004, he made a promise to his fallen soldier friends that he would go out into the world and make a difference. Speaking at the LinuxCon conference here, Rogers detailed how he has delivered on that promise with Local Motors, a startup that is set to enable a new era of automobiles.

      Local Motors is a platform for designing, building and selling automobiles and automotive products. Rogers said it’s a platform for co-creation and micro-manufacturing of vehicles that completely rethinks the way that cars can and should be built.

    • Linux Foundation offers new certification, Mesos comes to Google, and more

      In this week’s edition of our open source news roundup, we share news on virtual certifications from the Linux Foundation, Mesosphere partnering with Google, government and GitHub, and more!

    • Open Access/Content

      • Why the Future of Education Is Open

        Anant Agarwal, the CEO of online education platform edX, is on a mission to change the way that people learn. In a keynote address at the LinuxCon conference here, Agarwal explained how open source and big data techniques are being used at edX to help educate millions of people.

        The edX platform was founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with the promise of redefining the future of education. The edX platform has 2.7 million students around the world. One of edX’s most popular classes is an introduction to Linux course from the Linux Foundation, which has more than 250,000 students.

Leftovers

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Two SuperPACs Focused On Ending SuperPACs Release New TV Commercials

      We’ve been writing up some of the new political efforts to try to put some limits on money in politics, including Larry Lessig’s Mayday SuperPAC, Represent.us’ satirical campaign for the “most honest politician,” Gil Fulbright, and also CounterPAC, a SuperPAC that tries to get politicians to take a pledge not to accept dark money.

  • Censorship

    • Attacks On Anonymity Conflate Anonymous Speech With Trollish Behavior

      Every so often this sort of thing pops up where people suddenly think it’s a good idea to “end anonymity” online. We’ve discussed this in the past, and it’s always the same basic argument — one that conflates anonymity with “bad things” that people say online. There are all sorts of problems with this, but it starts with this: anonymity also allows people to reveal all sorts of good things online as well and plenty of people say and do horrible things with their names attached. And yet… the arguments keep on coming.

    • Military Prefers To Keep Its Head In The Sand: Bans All Employees From Visiting The Intercept

      Not this again. A few years ago, the US military blocked access to a bunch of news sites, including the NY Times and The Guardian, in an attempt to block military members from reading the news because some of the news included the leaked State Department cables that Wikileaks had released in conjunction with those news sites. Last year, the Defense Department blocked all access to the Guardian after it started reporting on the Ed Snowden leaks. And now, The Intercept reports, the military has also banned access to The Intercept. Of course, no one in the military will know that the public knows about this, because they’re apparently not allowed to read about it.

  • Privacy

    • The Government Uses the Dragnets for Detainee Proceedings

      First, NSA can disseminate this information without declaring the information is related to counterterrorism (that’s the primary dissemination limitation discussed in this section), and of course, without masking US person information. That would at least permit the possibility this data gets used for non-counterterrorism purposes, but only when it should least be permitted to, for criminal prosecutions of Americans!

      Remember, too, the government has explicitly said it uses the phone dragnet to identify potential informants. Having non-counterterrorism data available to coerce cooperation would make that easier.

    • Researchers create privacy wrapper for Android Web apps

  • Civil Rights

    • “Negro Spring”: Ferguson Residents, Friends of Michael Brown Speak Out for Human Rights

      As peaceful protests continued Wednesday in Ferguson, Missouri, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder arrived in the city to meet with residents and FBI agents investigating the police shooting of Michael Brown. Democracy Now! traveled to Ferguson this week and visited the site where the 18-year-old Brown was killed. We spoke to young people who live nearby, including some who knew him personally. “He fell on his knees. Like, ’Don’t shoot.’ [The police officer] shot him anyway in the eye, the head, and four times down here,” said one local resident Rico Like. “Hands up, don’t shoot is all I got to say. RIP Mike Brown.”

    • A Fox News Tantrum And A Split-Screen: A Metaphor for The Decline Of White America
    • Cop in Ferguson Tweets Lies to Justify Tear-Gassing Protesters in Their Own Back Yard

      A Velda City police officer who has been part of the militarized police apparatus holding down operations on West Florissant Avenue is spreading lies about Ferguson protesters online.

      Sergeant Mike Weston, going by the handle “officeranon2″ on Twitter, engaged with users of the social-media network about a tear-gas attack by St. Louis County police on protesters in their own back yard on Monday, August 11. In the conversation, a Twitter user wanted to know why police would fire tear gas at people on their own property. Weston tells them it’s because protesters were firing guns from their back yard. But that’s not true…

    • NYT Responds on Torture

      Responding to messages inspired by the alert, Sullivan went to Times foreign editor Joseph Kahn, who said the paper’s Kabul bureau “decided it did not add much to what we have already, on many occasions, reported. Much of it appeared to be recycled from United Nations reports and other news coverage, including our own.”

    • In Ferguson, Cops Hand Out 3 Warrants Per Household Every Year

      We’ve all seen a number of stories like this recently, and it prompts a question: why are police departments allowed to fund themselves with ticket revenue in the first place? Or red light camera revenue. Or civil asset forfeiture revenue. Or any other kind of revenue that provides them with an incentive to be as hardass as possible. Am I missing something when I think that this makes no sense at all?

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Why we sued Getty Images

        On August 20, 2014, our firm filed a lawsuit on our own behalf against Getty Images, Inc. Why did we do it? Here is why.

        On July 1, 2014, our firm received an unsigned letter from Getty Images Inc. that claimed unauthorized copying and display of a Getty photograph on this website and demanded immediate payment of a $380 licensing fee or legal action would follow.

        There was a problem, however. We never copied or displayed the Getty image referred to in Getty’s letter.

        We looked more closely at what Getty was doing and were shocked to discover what was really going on.

        You see, Getty is apparently using an image recognition system to generate its letters to accused infringers. Getty’s system identified a thumbnail image on our website here. Getty matched the thumbnail to an image more than six times the size on Getty’s site.

      • Getty Threatens The Wrong IP Law Firm In Its Copyright Trolling Efforts

        Image licensing giant Getty Images has quite a reputation for being something of a copyright maximalist and occasional copyright troll. The company has been known to blast out threat letters and lawsuits not unlike some more notorious copyright trolls. And that’s true even as the company just recently lost a copyright infringement suit in which Getty helped in the infringement. A few months ago, we had told you about Getty starting a new program in which it was making many of its images free to embed, saying that it was “better to compete” that way on the internet, rather than trying to license everything. We actually just tried embedding some Getty images ourselves recently.

      • New Zealand Court Freezes Kim Dotcom’s Assets, Again

        The Internet entrepreneur accused of running a massive global piracy ring suffered a rare setback in his adopted country today. The New Zealand Court of Appeal extended for another year the restraining orders over some of the assets and property belonging to Kim Dotcom. The ruling “means millions of dollars, several luxury cars, jewelry and other property remain frozen,” the New Zealand Herald reported. The original 2012 orders were scheduled to expire in April after a lower court ruled in favor of Dotcom. Now they will extend to April, 2015.

08.21.14

Links 21/8/2014: Conferences of Linux Foundation, Elephone Emerges

Posted in News Roundup at 4:19 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 12 oddball odes to open-source
  • Beer and open source with Untappd

    We use a lot of open source software within Untappd daily, from MongoDB to jQuery. It’s what powers software evolution, and without it, we would have a hard time developing solutions effectively and efficiently. With every library that we develop for use on Untappd, we try to open source it, including our PHP Library For Amazon CloudSearch, UntappdPHP, and MemcacheJS. We hope that other developers can use these libraries to save some time and help them focus on building great projects. Any library we use, we try to think about how to build it with “openness” in mind, for re-usability by all.

  • Seven Bridges Introduces Open Source Cancer Genomics Workflow
  • Want To Start An Open Source Project? Here’s How

    Regardless of the reason, this isn’t about you. Not really. For open source to succeed, much of the planning has to be about those who will use the software. As I wrote in 2005, if you “want lots of people to contribute (bug fixes, extensions, etc.,” then you need to “write good documentation, use an accessible programming language … [and] have a modular framework.”

  • Events

    • Ken Starks to Keynote At Ohio LinuxFest

      Ken had mentioned this in a email a few months back, I believe, but I’d put it on a back burner, where it fell off and landed hidden behind the stove. If Larry Cafiero, better known as the free software and CrunchBang guy, hadn’t made mention of the fact on Google+ the other day, I probably wouldn’t’ve remembered until it was way too late.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox gets preliminary support for casting to Chromecast

        Mozilla is in the process of adding the ability to “cast” videos from Firefox to Chromecast devices, and you can try it now if you have the right hardware.

        As announced in a post on Google+ post by Mozilla developer Lucas Rocha, “Chromecast support is now enabled in Firefox for Android’s Nightly build.”

  • Funding

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU hackers discover HACIENDA government surveillance and give us a way to fight back

      GNU community members and collaborators have discovered threatening details about a five-country government surveillance program codenamed HACIENDA. The good news? Those same hackers have already worked out a free software countermeasure to thwart the program.

      According to Heise newspaper, the intelligence agencies of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, have used HACIENDA to map every server in twenty-seven countries, employing a technique known as port scanning. The agencies have shared this map and use it to plan intrusions into the servers. Disturbingly, the HACIENDA system actually hijacks civilian computers to do some of its dirty work, allowing it to leach computing resources and cover its tracks.

  • Project Releases

    • G`MIC (GREYC`s Magic For Image Computing) Sees New Stable Release

      G’MIC (GREYC’s Magic for Image Computing) is a framework for image processing that comes with a large number of pre-defined image filters and effects (almost 400, with an extra 300 testing filters). There are several interfaces for G’MIC: a command line tool, a web service, a Qt based interface for real-time webcam manipulation, a library and a GIMP plugin.

  • Public Services/Government

    • NHS open-source Spine 2 platform to go live next week

      Last year, the NHS said open source would be a key feature of the new approach to healthcare IT. It hopes embracing open source will both cut the upfront costs of implementing new IT systems and take advantage of using the best brains from different areas of healthcare to develop collaborative solutions.

      Meyer said the Spine switchover team has “picked up the gauntlet around open-source software”.

      The HSCIC and BJSS have collaborated to build the core services of Spine 2, such as electronic prescriptions and care records, “in a series of iterative developments”.

    • Open-source electronic patient records in the NHS

      Lessons learnt from NPfIT suggest that a one-size-fits-all approach for EPRs has its limitations, as every trust made the case, rightly or wrongly, that it was somehow different. This is why we believe that open source provides another way of delivering those clinical benefits; trusts can take ownership of the code and develop it alongside clinicians to their requirements.

      But open source is not for everyone. Each healthcare provider has varying degrees of IT maturity; some may be close to becoming paperless or have systems in place that just need to be built on, some may decide that a new approach is right for their organisation.

      For our trust, the timing and opportunity of open source just came together and made it the logical choice. Open source fits with our culture and our approach, clinicians liked the IMS Maxims software, and it was particularly affordable for us, giving us the ability to manage change from our current system – it lets us control our own IT requirements.

  • Licensing

    • Qt5 Will Now Support LGPLv3 Modules

      With the upcoming Qt 5.4 release, LGPLv3 is now an optional license alongside the existing LGPLv2.1 license and the commercial combination for Qt Enterprise.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • The dubious rise of open-source architecture

      Ten years have passed since the launch of the big, talkative, landmark show called Massive Change, which went on a tour that eventually took it from Vancouver to Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario, then on to Chicago. Organized by designer Bruce Mau and the Institute Without Boundaries, a Toronto work-study design program, the exhibition and the accompanying book showcased gadgets, systems and ideas that promised to heal some of contemporary humankind’s most urgent maladies – slums, starvation, economic under-performance and much else.

    • Open Data

      • Out in the Open: This Man Wants to Turn Data Into Free Food (And So Much More)

        Such is promise of “open data”—the massive troves of public information our governments now post to the net. The hope is that, if governments share enough of this data with the world at large, hackers and entrepreneurs will find a way of putting it to good use. But although so much of this government data is now available, the revolution hasn’t exactly happened.

    • Open Hardware

      • Are you ready for open source CPUs?

        Open source software has been around for years, and for obvious reasons — all it takes is a PC to churn out code. And developers can make anything — operating systems, networking systems, administration systems, databases.

      • Local Motors: Cars Should be Open Source Hardware

        Though Local Motors was the first car company to produce an open source vehicle, Founder Jay Rogers says it is not an open source car company. It’s a hardware company.

        Traditional car companies have long product cycles, intricate assembly processes, and high production and distribution costs. Local Motors’ approach is instead akin to a software or microelectronics company that’s iterative, fast and lower cost.

  • Programming

    • Look, no client! Not quite: the long road to a webbified Vim

      Programming the Web, Pt. III The most revolutionary aspect of all the changes that have taken place in web development over the last two decades has been in the web browser.

      Typically we think of web browsers as driving innovation on the web by providing new features. Indeed this is the major source of new features on the web.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • Thursday’s security updates
    • Security advisories for Wednesday
    • Kaspersky Lab Partners London Police To Tackle Cyber Crime

      The fight against cybercrime continues with the news that a London police force is getting outside help to become a bit more security savvy.

      The City of London police is teaming up with Russian cybersecurity specialist Kaspersky Lab, in an effort to help educate both the police, and businesses around the UK, on dealing with the growing menace of cybercrime.

    • Phishing

      Someone just like me had the ability to push up whatever they wanted to the DNS server. This is usually fine: only the Authoritative DNS server for a site is allowed to replicate changes. It did mean, however, that anyone that was looking at this particular DNS server would be directed to something they were hosting themselves. I’m guessing it was a Phishing attempt as I did not actually go to their site to check.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Why Australians can fight for the IDF, but not the Islamic State: ASIO chief explains

      ASIO boss David Irvine has tried to explain how and why Australians join foreign armies, and allay concerns about the Coalition’s proposed anti-terrorism laws. But given its murky past, ASIO’s reassurances should be taken with a grain of salt, writes freelance journalist Andrea Glioti

    • Kiev’s Dirty War

      “According to our soldiers’ information, the Ukrainian forces are using chemical ammunition on DPR territory.”

      “Once a shell bursts, a gas affecting sense organs is emitted. We have this information.”

      In early June, Southeastern Ukrainian freedom fighters said Kiev forces attacked Semyonovka near Slaviansk with an unknown chemical weapon.

    • Israeli Strike in Gaza Strip Kills 3 Top Hamas Commanders

      sraeli airstrikes killed three senior commanders of the armed wing of Hamas early Thursday in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, Israeli and Palestinian officials said, the most significant blow to the group’s leadership since Israel’s operation in Gaza began more than six weeks ago.

    • Drone attack kills two Pakistani Taliban commanders in Afghanistan

      Foreign forces’ drone strike killed three Taliban commanders, two alleged Pakistani insurgents and wounded five others in eastern Kunar province, Afghan officials said on Wednesday.

    • Global Warriors Revisiting Iraq’s Wounds to Destroy the Arab World
    • Op-Ed: Where would more citizenship revoking lead to?

      The UK right wing government wished to recall passports and citizenship for any UK citizen who went to fight for the Islamic State (IS) militants in the Middle East. One of the first of many letters of this nature to be sent was to a Mr. Mohamed Sakr, who had been stripped of his citizenship after arriving at the estate owned by his family in London in 2010.

    • Civilian Victims Of U.S. Drone Strike In Yemen Reportedly Receive Over $1 Million
    • Anatomy of an air strike: Three intelligence streams working in concert

      Besides human spotters on the ground, the main U.S. intelligence assets in Iraq include armed surveillance drones fitted with cameras, radar and communications eavesdropping gear. Jet fighters also carry camera pods under their wings. The intelligence-gathering effort includes the most high-tech ground-based and space-based communications eavesdropping equipment. Drones and camera-equipped jets were the first surveillers to return to Iraq after 2011. The Air Force had pulled its 21 Predator drones from Iraq that year, redeploying them to Kuwait for patrols over the Middle East.

    • What have we accomplished in Iraq?

      What have we accomplished in Iraq? And isn’t it time we left them alone?

      We have been at war with Iraq for 24 years, starting with Operations Desert Shield and Storm in 1990. Shortly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait that year, the propaganda machine began agitating for a U.S. attack on Iraq. We all remember the appearance before Congress of a young Kuwaiti woman claiming that the Iraqis were ripping Kuwaiti babies from incubators. The woman turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S., and the story was false, but it was enough to turn U.S. opposition in favor of an attack.

      This month, yet another U.S. president — the fifth in a row — began bombing Iraq. He is also placing U.S. troops on the ground despite promising not to do so.

      The second Iraq war in 2003 cost the U.S. some two trillion dollars. According to estimates, more than one million deaths have occurred as a result of that war. Millions of tons of U.S. bombs have fallen in Iraq almost steadily since 1991.

      What have we accomplished? Where are we now, 24 years later? We are back where we started, at war in Iraq!

    • ISIS: Region-wide Genocide Portended in 2007 Now Fully Realized

      American journalist James Wright Foley was allegedly brutally murdered on video by terrorists of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS). The development would at first appear to portray a terrorist organization openly declaring itself an enemy of the West, but in reality, it is the latest attempt by the West itself to cover up the true genesis of the current region-wide catastrophe of its own creation now unfolding in the Middle East.

      As early as 2007, the stage was being set for the regional genocide now unfolding from Syria and Lebanon along the Mediterranean to northern Iraq. The “sudden” appearance of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, otherwise known as ISIS, betrays years of its rise and the central part it played in Western-backed violence seeking to overthrow the government of Syria starting in 2011 amid the cover of the so-called “Arab Spring.”

    • Op-Ed: CIA-linked General Haftar strikes Islamist militia in Tripoli

      Many reports speak of airstrikes in the Libyan capital Tripoli as being launched by an unknown party against Islamist militia from Mistrata on Monday August 18.
      Actually there should be no mystery ab

    • CIA-Linked Haftar claims international support for Tripoli attack

      Even though CIA-linked General Haftar claims his bombing of Misrata militia in Tripoli was a joint effort with the international community there seems little attention let alone analysis in the media of what is happening in Libya

      On Monday, Libyan air force units loyal to General Kahlifa Haftar struck positions of the Misrata militia in Tripoli. The militia has been in a prolonged battle at and near the Tripoli international airport with allies of Haftar, the Zintan brigades. The battle has moved closer to the center of Tripoli now as unidentified militia have fired Grad rockets into two upscale districts killing three people according to local residents. The area is home to many foreign brand outlets including Marks and Spencer, and Nike and fancy cafes.

    • McCain visits Raytheon, speaks in favor of Tomahawk

      At a town hall Tuesday with Raytheon Missile Systems employees, Arizona’s senior senator said the cut would have been to “probably the best and most-proven missile system ever.” McCain also spoke in support of a modernization program for the Tomahawk that would make the weapon threat-relevant through about 2040.

    • This Obama-Appointed Judge Signed off on the CIA Killing of a U.S. Citizen

      David Barron now sits on the bench of the First Circuit Court of Appeals despite having given President Barack Obama the legal justification for killing an American citizen overseas without a trial.

    • What If the Military or CIA Had Killed Mike Brown?

      Not so, however, if the killing had come at the hands of the military or the CIA. In that case, the soldier or the CIA agent would be immune from criminal prosecution and civil suit, so long as they claimed that the killing took place as part of a “national-security” operation. Once their lawyers cited those two magical words, every judge in the land, both state and federal, would immediately slam down the gavel and declare “Case dismissed.”

    • The CIA Double-Dip: Drugs, Fraud, & the JFK Assassination

      The investigation uncovered incontrovertible, if unsurprising, proof of involvement in the operation by the Mob (in this case, the Chicago Outfit) by Texas oil interests, Saudi financiers, and, of course, the CIA.

      But unearthing new evidence about the CIA’s role in the drug trade for the past 50 years no longer provides much grist for the gossip mill. Time marches on. Gary Webb was right. Everybody knows it.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Interactive: 19 calls for transparency around US drone strikes

      The drone campaign in Pakistan, which is conducted by the CIA, remains an official secret. In June 2012, Obama declassified the campaigns in Yemen and Somalia – but details of the attacks remain shrouded in mystery. The US has declined to release even the most basic details about the strikes, such as when or where they take place. As a result we also rarely know who or what they hit. But a growing number of voices have been calling for transparency.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • Hewlett-Packard posts surprise revenue gain after PC sales jump

      Hewlett-Packard Co posted a surprise increase in quarterly revenue after sales from its personal computer division climbed 12 percent, but a flat to declining performance from its other units underscored the company’s uphill battle to revive growth.

      HP sales rose a mere 1 percent to $27.6 billion in its fiscal third quarter from $27.2 billion a year earlier. Wall Street analysts had forecast a modest drop in revenue to $27.01 billion.

    • Does Apple throttle older iPhones to nudge you into buying a new one?

      Every time Apple releases a new iPhone there’s a dramatic spike in the number of Google searches for the phrase “iPhone slow”. Does this give credence to the conspiracy theory that Apple intentionally slows down iPhones to encourage you to buy a new one?

    • Scotland’s currency choices in the event of independence

      (1) Use the pound anyway

      Even if the Westminster government does not agree to share the pound, Scotland could use it anyway, without a say in monetary policy
      Ecuador and Panama, for example, have adopted the US dollar

      (And, I should add, Tasmania uses the Australian dollar … There, that should get me in trouble for today … :-D )

      (2) Join the euro

      It would not be an immediate option

      (3) Launch a Scottish currency

      Without its own borrowing history, an independent Scotland might find the currency quickly loses value when traded and markets could demand a higher interest rate on its debt

    • The 1% are “wealthy beyond measure”

      Welcome to globalization. Wasn’t it supposed to make up all richer?

    • More Military Families Are Relying On Food Banks And Pantries

      Despite the economic recovery, more than 46 million Americans — or 1 in 7 — used a food pantry last year. And a surprisingly high number of those seeking help were households with military members, according to a new survey by Feeding America, which is a network of U.S. food banks.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Real Reporting Is About Revealing Truth; Not Granting ‘Equal Weight’ To Bogus Arguments

      Journalism Professor Jay Rosen has long been the leading advocate in condemning the prominence of “he said/she said” journalism in the mainstream media. This kind of journalism is driven by a complete distortion of what it means to be an “objective” journalist. Bad journalists seem to think that if someone is making a claim, you present that claim, then you present an opposing claim, and you’re done. They think this is objective because they’re not “picking sides.” But what if one side is batshit crazy and the other is actually making legitimate claims? Shouldn’t the job of true journalists be to ferret out the truth and reveal the crazy arguments as crazy? Rosen’s latest calls out the NY Times for falling into the bogus “he said/she said” trap yet again. This time it’s on an article about plagiarism and copyright infringement charges being leveled from one biographer of Ronald Reagan against another. We wrote about this story as well, and we looked at the arguments of both sides, and then noted that author Craig Shirley’s arguments made no sense at all, as he was trying to claim ownership of facts (something you can’t do). Furthermore, his claims of plagiarism were undermined by the very fact that he admitted that competing biographer Rick Perlstein’s quotes were different. Shirley claimed that “difference” in the quotes showed that Perlstein was trying to cover up the plagiarism, but… that makes no sense.

    • When quoting both sides and leaving it there is the riskier call

      If the weight of the evidence allows you to make a judgment, but instead you go with “he said, she said,” you’re behaving recklessly even as you tell yourself you’re doing the cautious thing.

      It’s my job to notice when a piece of standard brand pressthink “flips” around and no longer works as intended. I have one.

      For a very long time, the logic behind “he said, she said” journalism, and “get both sides,” as well as, “I’m sorry, but we’ll have to leave it there” was that operating this way would reduce risk to a news publisher’s reputation. (See my 2009 post.) When you have both sides speaking in your account, you’re protecting yourself against charges of favoring one or the other. By not “choosing” a side — by not deciding who’s right — you’re safer.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Saudi Arabia: Surge in Executions

      19 Beheaded in 17 Days; 8 for Nonviolent Offenses

    • It’s not just Ferguson, it’s what’s brewing for the rest of America that should scare us: opinion and live chat

      I wish I had retained more from my college Latin American politics class. The banana republics, juntas, civil wars and CIA interventions have all faded, but there’s one concept that stuck in my head and it has been haunting me ever since – the four key components necessary to make a healthy democracy.

    • Why Do Police In Suburban St. Louis Have More Powerful Weapons Than Marines In Afghanistan?

      We’ve been covering some of the more troubling details of police militarization across the US, and specifically what’s going on in Ferguson, Missouri over the past couple of weeks. However, we knew fairly little about the actual military equipment being used there. And we know that sometimes scary looking military equipment isn’t necessarily so scary when put to use. So it’s interesting to read a former Marine’s analysis of the military equipment being used in Ferguson, which more or less confirms that it not only looks scary but absolutely is scary. Much of the discussion is about how all those “non-lethal” “riot control” weaponry is actually quite dangerous and potentially lethal.

    • St. Louis Police Release Video Of Kajieme Powell Killing That Appears At Odds With Their Story

      The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department released cell phone footage Wednesday of the police shooting of Kajieme Powell, a 25-year-old black man killed on Tuesday in St. Louis, according to St. Louis Public Radio.

      A convenience store owner called 911 on Tuesday when he suspected Powell stole drinks and donuts from his shop, according to a recording of the call. Another woman called to report Powell was acting erratically and had a knife in his pocket.

      Two officers in a police SUV responded to the calls, the cell phone video shows. When the officers got out of their vehicle, Powell walked in their direction, yelling and telling them to shoot him already.

      St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said Tuesday that both of the officers opened fire on Powell when he came within a three or four feet of them holding a knife “in an overhand grip.”

      But the newly released cell phone footage undermines the statement, showing Powell approaching the cops, but not coming as close as was reported, with his hands at his side. The officers began shooting within 15 seconds of their arrival, hitting Powell with a barrage of bullets.

    • A private military company is now providing security in Ferguson, for just one person

      A menagerie of armed state and federal agents have filtered in and out of Ferguson, Missouri for more than a week as unrest has grown there, and now even a private military company is joining the mix. Asymmetric Solutions, a PMC that claims to be “capable of deploying highly qualified former special operations personnel” to “anywhere on the globe in a moments notice” will be providing a security detail to an unnamed individual visiting Ferguson.

    • New Police Hacking Technologies Raise Familiar Questions About Civil Liberties

      “We need automatic transparency, rigorous external oversight, and a statutory framework that explicitly prohibits abuses . . . When the government knows everything about its citizens, we become subjects,” Crockford told Truthout.

      “But the future is ours if we claim it, if we reject fear and embrace our own power. If we want our children to have anonymity in a crowd, privacy at home, and the possibility for freedom in their world, we must make it so.”

    • Love: The threat of a police state

      Police assaulted peaceful, nonviolent protesters, arrested Antonio French, an alderman in nearby St. Louis, and tear-gassed Missouri state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal.

    • Ferguson, Ethnicity and American Idealism

      Shame on those in government and media, those who trample others underfoot and then claim more of the same is the way to our “greater good”. May the Great Spirit who dwells above and within us all convict you of shame, which seems to be of the only two arrows in your quivers: shame and fear.

    • Somalia: Three Journalists Tortured While in Detention

      Reporters Without Borders condemns the closures of Mogadishu-based Radio Shabelle and Sky FM and arrests of 19 journalists and employees on 15 August, and the continuing detention and reported torture of the directors of the two radio stations and their owner.

    • Targeting Pakistan on Human Rights Violations in Sri Lanka

      The civilized Western World has always shown double standard of human rights in the modern era of open diplomacy, economic development and maintenance of fundamental rights of various peoples. But, it is regrettable that major powers like the US and some European countries have continuously been acting upon duplicity regarding human rights violations. In this regard, their silence over the massacre of the Rohingya Muslim community at the hands of the Rakhine extremist Buddhists in Burma (present Myanmar), perpetual bloodshed of Kashmiris in the Indian occupied Kashmir and unending genocide of several Palestinians in Gaza might be cited as example. In these cases, US-led Western World which was overtly or covertly supporting the state terrorism of Myanmar’s military junta, Indian and Israeli regimes was strongly condemned by the Islamic Word’s intellectuals. In wake of Muslim tragedy, it was also exposed that world’s apex body, the UNO has also been following double standard of human rights, and has become instrument of America and its allies at the cost of the Muslim World.

    • James Puz: Kennedy deserves credit for civil rights

      Hair-brained, if not totally moronic, theories emerged. The new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, was the culprit. while others thought the military-industrial complex hatched the plan. The mob (pick one) paid a trigger man, while the CIA was viewed as the guilty party. The Soviets were thought capable of killing our president. Even Cuban exiles were targeted with unfounded accusations. In the end, a discontented Oswald, alone or in concert with others, eventually became the fall guy. Or was he a patsy? In any event, nobody came up with a specific reason for why the president had to be killed.

    • The Rise Of The Mafia Nation

      A collaboration between governments and organized crime is nothing new, of course, with corruption being a characteristic of their operations in whichever field of criminality they pursue. Pay offs and backhanders, considerations and favors have all played their part in sealing a relationship between criminals and government officials, with some government agencies seeking to use the mafia in order to further their goals. The CIA asking the mafia to knock off Castro might seem a bit wild-eyed and optimistic, but it was hardly unthinkable.

    • The luck of the Irish

      This autobiography was written eight years ago, and then self published overseas and secured. The reason for this subterfuge was the autobiography contained my dealings with ASIO and covert agencies in the UK and the United States of America while working in China.

      Since these events took place I have been gagged by ASIO “Dire consequences would befall me should I ever speak of these events.” I had organised for my autobiography to be released after my death so as my family would finally know the reason why our lives were irrevocability devastated by the aforementioned covert agencies.

    • [Bush partner:] The tortuous debate over the CIA’s ‘torture’ report

      The CIA’s objection to releasing the report seems strange because in 2012 Attorney General Eric Holder announced that there would be no prosecution of CIA interrogators. The CIA’s fear must be that whatever conduct the report blames them for is so terrible that it could ignite another round of intelligence “reforms” like those of the 1970s Church Committee which obstructed intelligence-gathering for many years.

    • Wyden: ‘Big league’ economy needs long-term transportation funding

      “If a 19-year-old had hacked into the Senate computers the way this was done, that person would be sitting in jail right now.”

      Although they were CIA computers, Wyden said the agency had stipulated they contained Senate Intelligence Committee files. CIA staffers launched the search to discover if the committee had obtained an internal CIA study while investigating a now-defunct detention and interrogation program for terrorism suspects. The Senate report is pending.

    • The not so transparent government

      First, CIA officials broke into computers that were being used by the committee — a clear constitutional violation — and then, using false information, tried to have committee staffers prosecuted. CIA Director John Brennan apologized for spying on the senators’ activities. President Obama, in a news conference on Aug. 1, said the Intelligence Committee was free to issue its report, “the declassified version that will be released at the pleasure of the Senate committee.”

      But Brennan’s apology must not have been sincere, and the committee, to its displeasure, learned that the CIA has “redacted” — read: censored — key elements of the report. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairman of the committee, said she couldn’t release the report because the CIA had attempted to redact key details that “eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions.”

    • Congress and CIA battle over torture investigation
    • CIA should answer for its crimes

      He asks: “Did any CIA agent get indicted for torturing people? No.

      “Did any CIA agent get indicted for destroying the videotapes that showed the torture? No.

      “Did any CIA agent get indicted for murdering prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq? No.”

    • President Barack Obama’s admission of torture by the CIA, and Navi Pillai’s International probe into war crimes in Sri Lanka.

      But in Sri Lanka there were no torture committed against the terrorists. There were no torture of the terrorists for the simple reason that in the war against terrorism in Sri Lanka the Armed Forces knew where exactly the terrorists were and there was no necessity to interrogate terrorists taken as prisoners under tortured to get information with regard to; movements of terrorists or where they were hiding. There were also Tamil civilians who gave information of meeting sites of terrorists to enable the Sri Lanka Air Force use precision bombing.

    • What the CIA is trying to hide

      Beginning in the 1990s, and accelerating after September 11, the CIA flew terrorism suspects to secret police custody in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and Libya. Many of them were tortured. Starting in 2002, the CIA began operating secret prisons all over the world: Thailand, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Afghanistan, Djibouti, briefly Guantanamo Bay.

      There, the agency subjected detainees to torturous “enhanced interrogation techniques,” in a program designed and implemented by two contractor psychologists named James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) authorized a great deal of this brutality—but the CIA made false factual representations to OLC in order to obtain that authorization, and tortured detainees in ways that were never authorized. Two CIA detainees, Manadel al-Jamadi and Gul Rahman, died as a result.

    • Yet Again, CIA is Concealing Information Americans Should See

      Once again, the CIA is concealing information that Americans have a right to know, and once again President Obama should ensure its release.

      The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is set to release a landmark report on the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program. But Obama allowed the CIA to oversee redactions, and it predictably went to town with the black marker. According to committee Chair Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the redactions “eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions.”

    • EFF Pioneer Awards Honor U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Trevor Paglen, and Frank La Rue

      The Electronic Frontier Foundation will honor former U.N. Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue, U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, and artist Trevor Paglen during its annual EFF Pioneer Awards in San Francisco. The award ceremony will be held the evening of October 2 at the Lodge at the Regency Center in San Francisco. Keynote speakers will be Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos, better known as the Yes Men, who are known for their elaborate parodies and impersonations to fight government and corporate malfeasance

    • The Bankers To The Terrorists

      WikiLeaks documents prove that the United States has known for quite some time (years) that the fictitious pseudo-state of Qatar bankrolls Hamas as part of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikhwan. While Iran is the world’s major facilitator of terror, Qatar is their bank. The US Administration knows this well.

    • Press Freedom Groups Rally For Journalist James Risen, Who Faces Jail Time for Refusing to Reveal Sources

      At an Aug. 14 news conference in Washington, D.C. press freedom organizations rallied to support New York Times reporter and author James Risen, who faces prosecution for refusing to disclose his sources. In advance of the press event, held at the National Press Club, organizers presented a petition to the U.S. Justice Department with more than 100,000 signatures, demanding that the federal government stop its six-year prosecution of Risen.

    • Cracking Down on Truth-telling

      President Obama entered office vowing to run a transparent government. But instead he has clamped down on leaks, prosecuted whistleblowers and threatened truth-telling journalists with jail if they don’t reveal sources, as Marcy Wheeler recounts.

    • James Risen vs. the security state
    • The Real “Dirty Wars” in the Horn of Africa – “Expiration by Starvation” Sanctioned by the Obama White House

      The Great Horn of Africa Famine started at the beginning of 2011 and lasted about 2 years. 250,000 dead in Somalia from starvation equals 10,000 dying a month, 300 or more dying a day on average. And this just in Somalia where there was aid being distributed. Next door in the Ogaden, with a population of almost as many as in Somalia the same famine was raging and no aid what so ever was being allowed.

    • Traffic Enforcement: Over-Zealous and Heavy-Handed

      The use of CCTV for handing out traffic fines is something that has raised concerns from a number of sources, for example Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who accused councils of “bending the law as a means of filling their coffers with taxpayers’ cash.” The Surveillance Camera Commissioner (SCC) also published guidance on this practice, stating that cameras should only be used “when other means of enforcement are not practical”.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • How to Save the Net: Keep It Open

      For all of its history, the Internet has enjoyed the fruits of an openness principle: the idea that anyone can reach any site online and that information and data should be freely exchangeable. Applications such as YouTube and Skype have been introduced without the need to seek permission of any Internet service provider or government. Nearly 3 billion users enjoy myriad mobile apps and other Internet-based services thanks to the open standards, common interfaces, and rich connectivity that permissionless innovation has delivered.

    • How AT&T’s Own Legal Fights Show It’s Lying In Claiming Broadband Reclassification Would Create Collateral Damage

      Earlier this year, we shared our own comments to the FCC on the issue of net neutrality and keeping the internet open. The key, as we noted, is that if this issue is left to the FCC (as appears to be the case), it should use Title II reclassification in combination with forbearance to narrowly tailor rules for broadband access providers that maintain an open internet. As with so many things related to net neutrality, this gets a bit down in the weeds, and is a bit wonkish, but it’s important to understand. Even the EFF — a longtime critic of Title II reclassification — changed its position in light of other factors, but made sure to emphasize forbearance as a key part of this. Forbearance, in short, is effectively a statement from the FCC that it’s using certain rules, but has committed to not enforcing parts of what it’s allowed to do under those rules.

    • Behind The Veil Part 5: Comcast Metrics For All Employees As Simple As ABC, Always Be Closing

      In the ongoing fallout Comcast is facing due to the high-pressure sales tactics of their non-sales employees, the company has consistently indicated that these employees are not behaving in a manner consistent with the company’s wishes. The common thread in most of these stories consists of customer service duties being handled by customer retention reps as often as not and complaints or attempts to cancel service being met with sales pitches instead of service. Comcast has specifically indicated that these examples are outside of the way they train employees to conduct their business.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Delaware Passes Law Granting Residents The Right To Pass On Digital Goods To Their Heirs

      As rights holders have made clear time and time again, your digital purchases are never truly yours. If someone decides to shut down a service, it’s likely your purchases will vanish into the ether along with the service itself. If you want to resell your mp3s or ebooks, you’re facing any number of unsettled legal questions and various industries pushing the assertion that your money was exchanged for a limited use license, rather than the acquisition of a product.

    • Copyrights

      • Thomson Reuters: we’ll take your articles if you don’t tell us not to

        We received an email from Thomson Reuters last evening, informing us that unless we write back to them in 14 days denying them the use of our articles, they will take the lack of refusal, as an indication of consent to use them. What’s more, they will presume that we have given them the “right to use, incorporate and distribute the Content in its Services to its subscribers and to permit such subscribers to use and redistribute the Content.”

      • Thomson Reuters Thinks Not Responding To Their Email Means You’ve Freely Licensed All Your Content
      • Dotcom’s Millions Will Remain Frozen, Court Decides

        Kim Dotcom’s battle to regain control over millions in seized assets has received another setback. Today the Court of Appeal overturned a ruling by the High Court by extending the restraining orders against the entrepreneur’s property until at least April 2015.

      • Judge Says You Don’t ‘Own’ The Facebook ‘Likes’ On Your Page

        In a world where people are always pushing the idea of “intellectual property” over just about everything, is it really any surprise when people assume all sorts of property-like rights in things that clearly shouldn’t have any such thing? In a slightly bizarre lawsuit over the control of a Facebook fan page for the TV series The Game, the creator of the page, Stacey Mattocks, argued that BET effectively appropriated the approximately 6.78 million “likes” the fan page got. The details of exactly how this happened aren’t worth getting into, but suffice it to say it was a contract negotiation gone wrong, as BET sought to bring the fan page under its official control. All that matters here is that among the other charges in the lawsuit, Mattocks claims that BET got Facebook to transfer those likes to its official page, which she alleged is a form of unlawful conversion.

      • Monkeys, ghosts and gods ‘cannot own copyright’ says US

        In the wake of a controversial move by Wikipedia to distribute a monkey ‘selfie’ for free, against the wishes of the photographer whose camera was used, the US has issued new guidance that says animals, ghosts and gods are all banned from owning copyright

      • Australian Movie Studio Boss Skips Out On Public Q&A, Claiming It Will Be Filled With ‘Crazies’

08.20.14

Links 20/8/2014: Linux Event, GNOME Milestone

Posted in News Roundup at 3:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • About the use of linux for normal people

      I was trying to write this blog post for quite a long time, and it become so, so big that I’ll have to split it in three posts, It is like a ‘people of kde’ but different, the focus is not to show someone that works for KDE, but someone that tried to use KDE to work – being it a non-tech person. Since I spend most of my days helping people that is struggling with Free Software to pass the hate feeling, I feel that I have lots of things to say being that I’m activelly maintaining over 5 laptops from different friends that lives on different states.

      I also like to study humans, this very strange animal that has so many different ways of expressing himself that it’s so, so hard to get it right.

    • The OS LinuX Desktop

      Reader Oliver wanted to make his Linux Mint desktop look as much like a Mac as possible so others would find it easy to use. Given some of our previous Linux featured desktops, we know it wasn’t tough, but the end-result still looks great. Here’s how it’s all set up.

    • Dangling the Linux Carrot

      Sometimes the direct sell method isn’t the best way to close the deal. How do you think the whole “play hard to get” thing got traction throughout the years? That method is successful in any number of applications.

  • Server

    • Docker’s Improved Stability Fuels Continued Growth

      This is the summer of Docker’s ripening as it begins to mature into stable, enterprise-worthy software. The release of version 1.0 coincided with the first annual DockerCon, and finally moves Docker from an experimental state into a production-capable application. The pace of development is not slowing down after these successes, but rather appears to be ramping up as Docker adoption continues to grow and more companies get involved in the development process.

  • Kernel Space

    • Proposed: A Tainted Performance State For The Linux Kernel

      Similar to the kernel states of having a tainted kernel for using binary blob kernel modules or unsigned modules, a new tainting method has been proposed for warning the user about potentially adverse kernel performance.

    • Linux 3.17 Lands Memfd, A KDBUS Prerequisite

      Memfd is a mechanism similar to Android’s Ashmem that allows zero-copy message passing in KDBUS. Memfd effectively comes down to just a chunk of memory with a file descriptor attached that can be passed to mmap(). The memfd_create() function returns a raw shmem file and there’s optional support for sealing.

      Memfd is needed by KDBUS for message passing and now the code — after being public but out-of-tree for several months — is finally mainline. As a result, the KDBUS code has been updated to take advantage of the mainline Linux 3.17 state.

    • The Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board election
    • Linux Kernel Development Gets Two-Factor Authentication
    • Systemd 216 Piles On More Features, Aims For New User-Space VT

      Lennart Poettering announced the systemd 216 release on Tuesday and among its changes is a more complete systemd-resolved that has nearly complete caching DNS and LLMNR stub resolver, a new systemd terminal library, and a number of new commands.

      The systemd 216 release also has improvements to various systemd sub-commands, an nss-mymachines NSS module was added, a new networkctl client tool, KDBUS updates against Linux 3.17′s memfd, networkd improvements, a new systemd-terminal library for implementing full TTY stream parsing and rendering, a new systemd-journal-upload utility, an LZ4 compressor for journald, a new systemd-escape tool, a new systemd-firstboot component, and much more.

    • LinuxCon NA 2014 kicks off in Chicago, new Linux Certification Program announced
    • Linux Founder Linus Torvalds ‘Still Wants the Desktop’

      The Linux faithful gathered today at LinuxCon to hear core Linux developers, especially Linus Torvalds—and the audience wasn’t disappointed. In a keynote panel session, Torvalds spoke of his hopes and the challenges for Linux in 2014.

      Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman moderated the discussion and commented that Linux already runs everywhere. He asked Torvalds where he thinks Linux should go next.

    • Linux Foundation Debuts Linux Certification Effort

      The new certifications mark the first time the Linux Foundation has offered formal certification after years of success with training programs.

    • Linux Foundation to offer new certification for IT workers

      With an eye toward deepening the global Linux talent pool, the Linux Foundation today announced that it will offer two new certifications for engineers and administrators.

      The Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator, or LFCS, and the Linux Foundation Certified Engineer, or LFCE certificates will be granted to applicants who pass an automated online exam. The cost will be $300, although the foundation will hand out 1,000 free passes to attendees at LinuxCon, where the announcement was made.

    • Linux Growth Demands Bigger Talent Poo

      Today at LinuxCon and CloudOpen we’re making an announcement that signifies the natural next step in helping to build a qualified talent pool of Linux professionals worldwide:The Linux Foundation Certification Program.

    • GitHub, Seagate, Western Digital & Others Join The Linux Foundation

      With LinuxCon starting today in Chicago, the Linux Foundation has announced their latest sponsorship recruits for some major organizations that are now backing the foundation.

      Adapteva, GitHub, SanDisk, Seagate, and Western Digital are the latest organizations joining the Linux Foundation. Nearly all Phoronix readers should now GitHub along with storage companies Seagate and Western Digital. Adapteva is the start-up Parallella super-computing board.

    • Graphics Stack

      • AMD’s Catalyst Linux Driver Preparing For A World Without An X Server?

        AMD’s proprietary Catalyst Linux driver installer is interestingly being prepared for an environment without an X.Org Server.

        While there’s no announcement out of AMD indicating any future support directions for their Catalyst Linux driver, it seems their Catalyst driver will soon be equipped with an option for building the driver packages without X.Org Server support, a.k.a. no building of the fglrx DDX driver.

      • Mesa 10.2.6 Has Plenty Of OpenGL Driver Bug Fixes

        For those living on the Mesa 10.2 stable series rather than the experimental Mesa 10.3 code, there’s a new point release out today.

        Carl Worth of Intel released Mesa 10.2.6 as the latest bug-fix update. Mesa 10.2.6 has at least 28 bugs fixed, including many affecting core Mesa, some AMD RadeonSI fixes (affecting Hawall and Tahiti hardware), and various other fixes. Anuj Phogat contributed the most fixes at 15 followed by Marek Olšák at 4.

      • Open-Source Radeon Graphics Have Some Improvements On Linux 3.17

        Early benchmarking of the Linux 3.17 kernel have indicated faster performance for AMD’s open-source Linux graphics driver thanks to Radeon DRM improvements.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • LXQt 0.8 Is Being Released Soon

      Fans of LXQt, the merge of the Qt version of LXDE along with the Razor-qt desktop project, will soon see out a big update.

      LXQt 0.8.0 is being readied for release as the latest of this next-generation lightweight desktop environment. Heavy development continues on LXQt and recently the most important bugs have been addressed for the upcoming LXQt 0.8 milestone. Holding back the LXQt 0.8 release is finishing the language translations and figuring out what to do about their RandR utility.

    • A Linux Desktop Designed for You

      Desktop environments for Linux are not released ready-made. Behind each is a set of assumptions about what a desktop should be, and how users should interact with them. Increasingly, too, each environment has a history — some of which are many years old.

      As you shop around for a desktop, these assumptions are worth taking note of. Often, they can reveal tendencies that you might not discover without several days of probing and working with the desktop.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Prep for Akademy

        In preparation for Akademy I wanted to swap out the drive from my laptop — which is full of work-work things — and drop in a new one with stuff I actually want to have with me at Akademy, like git clones of various repositories.

      • LaKademy 2014 – KDE Latin America Summit

        Two years have passed since the reality of the first Latin American meeting of KDE contributors in 2012 in Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Now we are proud to announce that the second LaKademy will be held August 27th to 30th in São Paulo, Brazil, at one of the most important and prestigious universities in the world—the University of São Paulo.

      • KDE Applications and Development Platform 4.14

        Packages for the release of KDE SC 4.14 are available for Kubuntu 14.04LTS and our development release. You can get them from the Kubuntu Backports PPA. It includes an update of Plasma Desktop to 4.11.11.

      • GSOC 2014: Akonadi Commandline Client’s Current Status

        I recently finished adding documentation (man pages) to the project and also finished improving upon the add command and it’s test cases. And I beleive this completes all the tasks that I had planned for in my GSoC proposal.Features of AkonadiClient

      • what is “the desktop”: laptops now
      • Intermediate results of the icon tests: Oxygen

        The Oxygen icon set performs very well in general. Most icons are quickly and reliable identified with the corresponding term. As found in previous studies there is a minor setback for Add/New, Undo/Redo, and especially Copy/Paste which are mutually mistaken. Also the Search icon shows quite a high number of missing values. Perhaps the field glasses are not such a good metaphor.

      • The features I have implemented in my Google Summer Of Code project

        So I have coded three features for Calligra Sheets.

      • What’s new in porting script: clean-forward-declaration.sh?

        I wrote it for kde 4.0 but it was not perfect. I took time to fix it last week end.

        What does it do ? It allows to remove not necessary forward declaration. It’s very useful during kf5 migration because we change a lot of code. So sometime we keep some “class foo;” which will not create a compile error, but it will keep an unused code line.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME’s Window and Compositing Manager Mutter 3.14 Beta 1 Gets More Wayland Improvements

        Florian Müllner has announced that Mutter 3.14 Beta 1 has been released, featuring a number of changes and improvements.

      • GNOME 3.14 Beta Makes GLSL Optional, Supports Wayland Gesture/Touch Events

        For the upcoming GNOME 3.13.90 release are updates to GNOME Shell and Mutter that bring a few notable last-minute changes.

        The GNOME 3.13.90 Beta release is scheduled to happen today and as such the Mutter and GNOME Shell updates were checked in this week. With the Mutter 3.13.90 comes an enforcement that XSync() is only ever called once per-frame, the GLSL support is optional, gesture and touch events are now handled on Wayland, and there’s a variety of other fixes/changes. The Mutter 3.13.90 changes can be found via its release announcement.

  • Distributions

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Sets New 12-Month High at $61.97 (RHT)

        They now have a $70.00 price target on the stock, up previously from $57.00. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and eighteen have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. Red Hat has an average rating of “Buy” and an average price target of $63.50.

      • Red Hat Introduces Open Virtual Appliance for Seamless OpenStack Evaluations

        Red Hat, Inc. RHT, -1.58% the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced Open Virtual Appliance for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, enabling organizations with VMware-based infrastructures to easily and rapidly deploy and evaluate Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform for proof of concept deployments. Designed to meet growing interest in Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform from users, Open Virtual Appliance for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform is designed to enable users to have a working deployment of OpenStack in mere minutes.

      • Scientific Linux 7.0 x86_64 BETA 3

        Fermilab’s intention is to continue the development and support…

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • The Connected Car, Part 3: No Shortcuts to Security

      The Linux Foundation wants an open source platform in the pole position. The nonprofit consortium already has a fully functional Linux distribution, called “Automotive Grade Linux,” or AGL. It is a customizable, open source automotive software stack with Linux at its core.

    • Home automation hub runs Linux, offers cloud services

      Cloud Media launched a Kickstarter campaign for a Linux-based “Stack Box” home automation hub with cloud services and Raspberry Pi expansion compatibility.

    • Is it time to automate your home with Linux?
    • Raspberry Pi Devices Spread in Schools, Help Teach Programming

      According to a new DigiTimes report, sales of credit-card sized Raspberry Pi devices, which run Linux, remain very strong. The Raspberry Pi Foundation says that 3.5 million units have sold worldwide, with demand from China and Taiwan staying strong. The devices are helping to teach children basic programming skills and are arriving in educational systems all around the world.

    • The Many Things You Can Build With A Raspberry Pi

      Ruth Suehle and Tom Callaway are presenting at LinuxCon 2014 Chicago tomorrow about many different Raspberry Pi hacks and other Linux capabilities of these low-cost, low-performance single board computers.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • OneNote for Android tablets added, with handwriting support

          Microsoft released OneNote for Android tablets today with handwriting input, bringing Android users closer to the OneNote experience the company envisioned for the Microsoft Surface.

        • These Are the Biggest Android Tablets That Money Can Buy

          How big do you like your tablet? If you’re designing a kid-friendly device that can be used as an easel, learning resource and game platform, the answer is probably: roughly Monopoly-board big.

          No, 10 or even 12 inches isn’t going to do it for you. You’re going to want a device with a 20- or 24-inch display, like nabi’s new Big Tab tablets, made by Fuhu. The Big Tabs are the biggest Android slates we’ve ever seen for sale (although there have been demos of significantly bigger models).

        • Five things Android smartphones have that are unlikely to come to the iPhone 6

          It is likely I will buy an iPhone 6, but there are many things I like about Android that I doubt we will see come to an Apple flagship smartphone any time soon.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla and Open Diversity Data

        I would encourage other Mozillians to support the push for opening this data by sharing this blog post on the Social Media as an indicator of supporting Open Diversity Data publishing by Mozilla or by retweeting this.

        I really think our Manifesto encourages us to support initiatives like this; specifically principle number two of our manifesto. If other companies (Kudos!) that are less transparent than Mozilla can do it then I think we have to do this.

        Finally, I would like to encourage Mozilla to consider creating a position of VP of Diversity and Inclusion to oversee our various diversity and inclusion efforts and to help plan and create a vision for future efforts at Mozilla. Sure we have already people who kind of do this but it is not their full-time role.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Tesora Launches Certification Program for OpenStack Cloud Storage

      As the OpenStack cloud storage ecosystem grows more and more diverse, how can enterprises ensure compatibility between their OpenStack distribution and their database of choice? Tesora hopes that providing a solution to that quandry can help win it customers through a new certification program.

    • Mesosphere Launches Clusters on Google Compute Engine

      Mesosphere is bringing its Mesos clusters to Google Compute Engine, enabling Google’s (GOOG) cloud users to launch Mesos clusters on the public cloud. This provides customers with the ability to abstract basic devops, simplifying the data center so it looks to developers more like a single piece of hardware.

    • Tesora Delivers Certification Program for OpenStack Cloud Storage

      As the OpenStack cloud computing arena grows, a whole ecosystem of tools and front-ends are growing in popularity as well. And, one of the most notable tools in the ecosystem is the database-as-a-service offering focused on building and managing relational databases, called Trove.

      Tesora recently announced that it has open sourced its Tesora Database Virtualization Engine, and now it is offering the Tesora OpenStack Trove Database Certification Program, which provides “assurance that the most widely used databases can be deployed with Trove into the most popular OpenStack environments via the Tesora DBaaS Platform.”

    • The Top Open Source Cloud Projects of 2014

      OpenStack is the most popular open source cloud project, followed by Docker and KVM, according to a survey of more than 550 respondents conducted by Linux.com and The New Stack and announced today at CloudOpen in Chicago.

    • Using Clocker and Apache Brooklyn to build a Docker cloud

      With the growing potential of Docker, it’s becoming clear that the future of at least some of the data center is going to be containerized. But there are still challenges in getting containerized applications deployed and managed across real and virtual hardware.

      To learn more about one of the available options for performing this management and deployment, yesterday I attended a Google Hangout which was part of the OpenStack Online Meetup series. This month’s topic was centered around providing information and a walk-through of a new open source project called Clocker. Much as the name might suggest, Clocker is a tool designed for spinning up a cloud out of Docker containers.

  • Databases

    • EnterpriseDB chucks devs free tools to craft NoSQL web apps with PostgreSQL

      Enterprise-class PostgreSQL database vendor EnterpriseDB has launched a free turnkey development environment designed to make it easier for coders to build web applications using PostgreSQL’s new NoSQL capabilities.

      The open source PostgreSQL project has been adding NoSQL-like features for the past couple of versions, most notably support for the JavaScript-friendly JSON data format and the JSONB binary storage format.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Desktop Obsessions, Steam Sacrifices, and LibreOffice Review

      We’ve been reading a lot about the desktop lately and we’re not stopping tonight. We have three stories tonight on the desktop. In other news, the kernel repositories beef-up security and Alienware says Steam Machine users will “sacrifice content for the sake of Linux.” The new Linux version of Opera is making progress and CNet has a review of LibreOffice 4.3. This and more in tonight’s Linux news.

    • Why do so many Linux users hate Oracle?

      Oracle has always had a rather touch and go relationship with the open source community, to say the least. The company has never been shy about doing whatever is necessary to earn a profit, even if it means alienating people in the open source community. A redditor asked why Oracle is hated by so many and got quite an earful of responses.

  • Healthcare

    • Black Hat 2014: Open Source Could Solve Medical Device Security

      On the topic of source code liability, Greer suggests that eventually software developers, including medical device development companies, will be responsible for the trouble their software causes (or fails to prevent). I think it’s fair to say that it is impossible to guarantee a totally secure system. You cannot prove a negative statement after all. Given enough time, most systems can be breached. So where does this potential liability end? What if my company has sloppy coding standards, no code reviews, or I use a third-party software library that has a vulnerability? Should hacking be considered foreseeable misuse?

    • Open health community management at Clinovo

      Olivier Roth, Community Manager at Clinovo, has grown an open source community around the open health platform ClinCapture, an open source Eletronic Data Capture (EDC) system.

      Opensource.com caught up with Olivier, who was tasked with not only marketing an open source product but building genuine and natural interest around it to help move it forward. In this interview, we explore the importance of a community to an open source project with tips for how to create and maintain one.

  • BSD

  • Public Services/Government

    • Does government finally grok open source?

      Yes, the government — one U.S. federal government employee told me that government IT tends to be “stove-piped,” with people “even working within the same building” not having much of a clue what their peers are doing, which is not exactly the open source way.

      That’s changing. One way to see this shift is in government policies. For the U.S. federal government, there is now a “default to open,” a dramatic reversal on long-standing practices of spending heavily with a core of proprietary technology vendors.

    • U.S. Digital Services and Playbook: “Default to Open”

      About this time last year, I laid out some trends I saw for the coming year in government take up of open source software. Looking back now, it appears those trends are not only here to stay, they are accelerating and are more important than ever.

      In particular, I wrote that “open source will continue to be the ‘go to’ approach for governments around the world” and that “increasingly, governments are wrestling with the ‘how tos’ of open source choices; not whether to use it.”

      Recent developments in the United States highlight these points.

      First, the White House (via OMB and the Federal CIO) has issued a Digital Services Playbook—described in some quarters as “something of a marvel for an official government policy: it’s elegantly designed, has clear navigation, and is responsive to any device you choose to view it upon.” It is well worth a read.

  • Licensing

    • Protecting Software Freedom – the Qt License Update

      The KDE Free Qt Foundation is a legal entity, set up by KDE e.V. and Trolltech, the company originally developing Qt. It aims to safeguard the availability of Qt as Free Software and already fulfilled an important role. Trolltech was bought by Nokia, who sold Qt later to Digia. The contracts stayed valid during all these transitions.

      The foundation has four voting board members (two from Digia, two from KDE e.V.) and two non-voting advisory board members (the Trolltech founders). In case of a tie, KDE e.V.’s board members have an extra vote.

      Through a contract with Digia, the KDE Free Qt Foundation receives rights to all Free Qt releases “for the KDE Windowing System” (currently defined as X11 – we plan to extend this to Wayland) and for Android. As long as Digia keeps the contract, the KDE Free Qt Foundation will never make use of these rights.

    • Qt Licence Update

      Today Qt announced some changes to their licence. The KDE Free Qt team have been working behind the scenes to make these happen and we should be very thankful for the work they put in. Qt code was LGPLv2.1 or GPLv3 (this also allows GPLv2). Existing modules will add LGPLv3 to that. This means I can get rid of the part of the KDE Licensing Policy which says “Note: code may not be copied from Qt into KDE Platform as Qt is LGPLv2.1 only which would prevent it being used under LGPL 3″.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • FarmBot: An Open Source 3D Farming Printer That Aims to Create Food For Everyone

        When most of us think of 3D printers, we typically imagine the desktop machines that are used for creating small plastic objects, or the larger scale industrial level machines used for prototyping, and in some cases the printing of production ready parts. Then there are the extremely large 3D printers that have been created for the printing of concrete structured buildings and other large objects. Perhaps the printers which have the most intriguing uses are those which can print food. These printers, which are still only in the early stages of development, allow those with minimal food preparation experience to print out meals using specially designed software. All of these 3D printers have the potential to bring resources to countries and people who typically don’t have access to traditional means of manufacturing. Yet, none of them ensure massive food production that could help feed the world’s hungry.

      • RISC creator is pushing open source chips for cloud computing and the internet of things

        Fed up with the limitations of current computer chips and their related intellectual property, a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, is pushing an open source alternative. The RISC-V instruction set architecture was originally developed at the university to help teach computer architecture to students, but now its creators want to push it into the mainstream to help propel emerging markets such as cloud computing and the internet of things.

        One of the researchers leading the charge behind RISC-V is David Patterson, the project’s creator and also the creator of the original RISC instruction set in the 1980s. He views the issue as one centered around innovation. Popular chip architectures historically have been locked down behind strict licensing rules by companies such as Intel, ARM and IBM (although IBM has opened this up a bit for industry partners with its OpenPower foundation). Even for companies that can afford licenses, he argues, the instruction sets they receive can be complex and bloated, requiring a fair amount of effort to shape around the desired outcome.

  • Programming

    • Minecraft mod teaches kids to code by modding Minecraft

      Like many nine-year-olds, Stanley Strum spends a lot of time building things in Minecraft, the immersive game that lets your create your own mini-universe. The game has many tools. But Stanley is one of many players taking the game a step further by building entirely new features into the game. And, more than that, he’s also learning how to code.

Leftovers

  • Pay up: The free ride is over for corporate BYOD

    No, BYOD has not been dealt a death blow by a California Court of Appeals ruling that says employers must reimburse a reasonable part of employees’ cellphone bills when use of their personal phone is required to do their work. But it will kill the practice of using BYOD as an excuse to make some employees buy personal equipment and pay for personal cell plans to do their jobs.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Swedish docs puzzled by deformed penis trend

      Hypospadias, a birth defect where the urethral opening is abnormally placed, is becoming a more common case among Sweden’s new-born boys.

      Researchers at Stockholm’s Karolinksa Institute have published results from a 40-year study in which they collected data from all males born between 1973 and 2009.

      They found that before 1990, cases of hypospadias were recorded in 4.5 boys out of every thousand. After 1990, the figure increased to 8 per 1,000 boys.

      The study looked into factors that are known to cause the defect, such as low-birth weight, being born a twin, or parents who used in vitro fertilization (IVF) to conceive, but researchers stated that the increase did not correlate with these factors.

    • Beware of the Robobee, Monsanto and DARPA

      The RoboBee is a mechanical bee in the design stage at the Microrobotics Lab, housed in a well-appointed building at Harvard University. The RoboBee project’s Intelligence Office declares that the robotic inventors are inspired by the bee. The RoboBee project’s website and press releases use the imagery of the golden bees that we remember from our love of the cuddly buzzy honey-maker.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Finance

    • The Bulgarian Banking Disaster

      Two months after it was taken into conservatorship by the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) after a catastrophic bank run, Bulgaria’s CorpBank is still closed.

  • Censorship

    • Cameron’s big stand will have little impact

      Yesterday, the Prime Minister David Cameron announced his latest effort to take a ‘big stand on protecting our children online’. In a three-month pilot, that starts in October, online music videos will be given an age classification by the British Board of Classification. This rating will be displayed when the music videos are uploaded to YouTube or the music video site Vevo. Cameron claims that such a rating system will bring music videos in line with offline media such as films.

    • City Of Peoria Claims No Rights Were Violated When Police And Mayor Shut Down Parody Twitter Account

      This very public display of stupidity may cost the City of Peoria, along with the many other defendants named in the lawsuit filed on behalf of the Twitter account owner (Jon Daniel) by the ACLU. Obviously, the First Amendment was all but forgotten in the mayor’s quest to make this account — one that was only seen by Mayor Jim Ardis and a handful of others — disappear.

    • Facebook To Ruin Our Good Time With ‘Satire’ Disclaimer; The Onion Responds With Satire

      Forget confusing, this is yet another inch down the slippery slope in the war on humor and me-getting-to-make-fun-of-people, and I won’t stand for it, damn it. People I haven’t seen since high school getting fooled by The Onion has been one of the great pleasures in my life and it’s just not right for Facebook to chip away at that fun just because it appears to have finally acknowledged that its users are, by and large, idiots.

  • Privacy

    • panicd: An approach for home routers to securely erase sensitive data

      On August 15rd 2014, our student Nicolas Benes gave a talk on “panicd: An approach for home routers to securely erase sensitive data” defending his almost finished Bachelor’s Thesis at GHM 2014 hosted at TUM. The goal of his work is to ensure that secrets (especially key material) stored on your hardware (especially in memory) remain secret even if an adversary attempts to take physical control over the device. You can now find the video below.

    • The Security of al Qaeda Encryption Software

      I don’t want to get into an argument about whether al Qaeda is altering its security in response to the Snowden documents. Its members would be idiots if they did not, but it’s also clear that they were designing their own cryptographic software long before Snowden. My guess is that the smart ones are using public tools like OTR and PGP and the paranoid dumb ones are using their own stuff, and that the split was the same both pre- and post-Snowden.

    • Binney: ‘The NSA’s main motives: power and money’

      Whistleblower William Binney recently made headlines when he told the German parliament that the NSA, his former employer, had become “totalitarian.” DW spoke to him about NSA overrreach and the agency’s power.

    • Money And Power: The Real Reason For The NSA Spying On Everyone

      More than four years ago, we wrote about all the buzz that you were hearing about “cyberwar” was little more than an attempt to drum up FUD to get the government to throw billions of dollars at private contractors. We noted that Booz Allen Hamilton (yes, the last employer of one Ed Snowden) had hired former NSA director and also Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell as its Vice Chairman. He was the leading voice out there screaming about the threat of “cyberwar” getting on TV and having lots of opinion pieces in big name publications — all of which mentioned his former government jobs, but almost none of which mentioned that his current employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, stood to make billions selling “solutions” to the government. And, indeed, Booz Allen has been raking in the cash on “cybersecurity.”

      This is worth keeping in mind as you read this fascinating interview with NSA whistleblower, Bill Binney, in which he lays this out plain and simple. The real reason for all this NSA surveillance is about money and power. “Stop terrorism” is secondary.

    • don’t encrypt all the things

      Making things easy means making them transparent. It means pushing the crypto away from the user. That’s how we end up with our lolcats and dogecoins all mixed up together. Maybe some things should be hard, to remind us that they are important.

    • No Photos: Parents Opt to Keep Babies off Facebook

      Behold the cascade of baby photos, the flood of funny kid anecdotes and the steady stream of school milestones on Facebook.

      It all makes Sonia Rao, a stay-at-home mother of a 1-year-old in Mountain View, California, “a little uncomfortable.”

      “I just have a vague discomfort having her photograph out there for anyone to look at,” says Rao. “When you meet a new person and go to their account, you can look them up, look at photos, videos, know that they are traveling.”

    • German Officials Mull the Ultimate in Document Security – Manual Typewriters

      Politicians from Germany have come up with a unique way of safeguarding documents that even the NSA would have trouble in breaching. Far from a cutting-edge online security measure, the idea has been floated of once again breaking out the typewriters for the scripting of the most sensitive documents of all.

    • GERMANY’S SPYING ON TURKEY MIGHT BE LINKED WITH KURDISH QUESTION

      Political tension between Turkey and Germany has been continuing since the German weekly Der Spiegel revealed that the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has been spying on its NATO ally, Turkey, since 2009. Even though German Chancellor Angela Merkel is no stranger to spying since she discovered her cellphone had been tapped by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), she refused to comment on the work of BND when questioned about the surveillance of Turkish targets.

    • Yes, Berlin has its own spying scandals, but don’t expect Germany to forgive the NSA

      For politicians in Washington, the German uproar over allegations that the NSA had spied on Merkel and collected the data of millions of Germans was remarkable. The usually calm Chancellor Angela Merkel angrily rejected American explanations and forced the CIA station chief in Berlin to leave the country after further allegations were made public. German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble went even further, saying publicly that he wanted to cry over “such stupidity.”

    • Gaycken: ‘We’re being plundered’

      Deutsche Welle: One of the goals the German government has set in its “Digital Agenda” is increasing trust in the internet. Do you think complete digital safety can be achieved?

      Sandro Gaycken: At this point, definitely not. The internet is inherently unsafe. At its inception, we simply didn’t include a whole lot of factors that would have been needed to guarantee security. That list starts with computers but includes web mechanisms. Wanting to create security by spouting off a few nice words, and even wanting to become the safest nation in the world is illusionary. And so far, we haven’t heard any more than these phrases.

    • ​NSA, BND and MIT: Whose Big Brother is watching whom?

      When news broke last summer that a certain NSA contractor had “leaked” an inordinate amount of secret data to various media outlets, global public opinion suddenly realized that the world we live in today does resemble the Orwellian dystopia 1984.

      The National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden made material available to journalist Glenn Greenwald, and the British broadsheet The Guardian published its first Snowden-related article on 5-6 June 2013. Greenwald laconically wrote then that the “National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers,” revealing the tip of the surveillance iceberg that was made public by the contractor. Edward Snowden outed himself as the NSA leaker on 9 June 2013 “in a video interview with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras.”

    • GCHQ Is Mapping Open TCP Ports Across Whole Countries

      German journalists and academics have criticised Britain’s intelligence service GCHQ for scanning servers round the world, and maintaining a database of open ports which could be used in attacks.

      British intelligence agency GCHQ has been cataloguing open TCP ports across entire countries as part of a secret programme codenamed ‘Hacienda’, reports German publication Heise Online.

    • Spy office defends ‘extensive and multi-layered’ oversight

      The nation’s top spy office is publicly defending a controversial executive order that authorizes some types of foreign snooping.

      The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (ODNI) civil liberties protection officer, Alexander Joel, wrote an op-ed in Politico Magazine on Monday arguing that the Reagan administration order is covered by “extensive and multi-layered” oversight and includes multiple protections for Americans and foreigners alike.

    • Why the Tor browser and your privacy are under threat

      Private companies and governments track everything you do online. While these intrusions on your freedom and privacy may seem benign, for many anonymity is a matter of life and death. People living under repressive regimes, political activists, spies, journalists and even the military all need to access the internet and remain truly anonymous and impossible to track.

      [...]

      It is odd then that the technology behind Tor was originally developed by the US Navy in an attempt to develop a secure way of routing traffic over the internet. In fact the US government is still the single biggest financial supporter of Tor and donated over $2.5 million to the project in the past two years. Despite that the NSA and its UK equivalent GCHQ have made several determined attempts to break open Tor’s encryption and unmask its users. An old bug in Tor’s browser software let spooks identify 24 users in a single weekend, according to The Washington Post while the NSA has also looked for patterns in entry and exit points on the Tor network to try and spot individual users. But despite best efforts Tor remains secure and there is no evidence that the NSA or any other agency is capable of unmasking Tor on a global scale.

    • Gov’t Says NSA Phone Spying Suit Should Be Tossed

      The U.S. government on Monday asked a Washington, D.C., federal judge to dismiss one of three lawsuits filed by a former U.S. Department of Justice antitrust attorney who is challenging the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s collection of phone and online data records.

    • Why A Philosopher Teaches Privacy

      Next week, the new term begins and I’ll be teaching an undergraduate philosophy course called, “Technology, Privacy, and the Law.” The first order of business will be to explain why thinking critically about privacy—determining what it is, deciding when it should be protected, and pinpointing how it ought to be safeguarded—means doing philosophy. Given the practical stakes of these issues, you might not realize that getting into them involves philosophical thinking. But if you’ve got a principled bone to pick with corporate, peer, or governmental surveillance, or if you’ve good reasons for being displeased with the activists who are taking stands against it, you’ve got your philosopher’s cap on.

    • EFF to Ethiopia: Illegal Wiretapping Is Illegal, Even for Governments

      Earlier this week, EFF told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that Ethiopia must be held accountable for its illegal wiretapping of an American citizen. Foreign governments simply do not have a get-out-of-court-free card when they commit serious felonies in America against Americans. This case is the centerpiece of our U.S. legal efforts to combat state sponsored malware.

    • A first step in reining in the NSA’s power

      A little more than a year after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the federal government was collecting and storing the telephone records of millions of Americans, Congress is poised to end the program and provide significant protection for a broad range of personal information sought by government investigators.

    • Editorial: Leahy bill a step toward rebalancing privacy, national security

      For all its limitations, Leahy’s USA Freedom Act testifies to the importance of informed public debate. Snowden’s disclosures brought into the open a dramatic expansion of government power. As a result, liberal Democrats in Congress joined libertarian Republicans in pushing back against an overweening national security establishment.

    • For German, Swiss Privacy Start-Ups, a Post-Snowden Boom

      US and Chinese tech companies are not the only ones profiting from the “Snowden effect.”

      Since news broke that former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden disclosed alleged U.S. government surveillance methods worldwide, secure messaging and so-called ‘NSA-proof’ products and companies have sprouted across Germany and Switzerland, two countries who take their privacy laws very seriously.

    • Facebook notes huge jump in secure email connections

      Facebook Inc., which sends billions of notification emails to users each day, said it has discovered a rapid rise in email programs using secure connections.

      Facebook said in a blog post that the number of third-party email providers who hold strict security certificates and deploy encryption of outbound notifications jumped from roughly 30 percent in March to 95 percent in mid-July.

    • Facebook reports enormous uptick in use of snoop-proof email
    • Close to All Facebook Notification Emails Encrypted
    • Meet John Tye: the kinder, gentler, and by-the-book whistleblower

      The way John Tye tells it, we’ve all been missing the forest for the trees.

      Over the course of two phone calls, the former State Department official told Ars that anyone who has been following the government surveillance discussion since the Snowden disclosures has been too concerned with things like metadata collection. Since last summer, journalists, politicians, and the public have been inundated with largely-unknown terminology, like “Section 215” and “Section 702.”

  • Civil Rights

    • Why Ferguson PD has no video of Michael Brown’s death

      There is no video of the death of Michael Brown; there are only two diametrically opposed stories.

      Police in Ferguson, Mo., say an officer killed Brown after the teenager tried to take the officer’s gun. Witnesses say Brown never assaulted the cop and was actually waving his hands in the air before being shot six times. More than a week after Brown’s death, still nobody knows exactly what happened, because no cameras were rolling. In 2014, with HD video neither costly nor scarce, is this acceptable?

    • How Body Cameras Affect Police Accountability
    • “He Wasn’t A Regular Guy”

      How is whether or not Brown was a “regular guy” relevant to the question of whether the police officer was justified in shooting him to death? We do not have one set of laws for “regular guys” and another for everyone else.

    • Intercept Issues Statement on Reporter Shot With Non-Lethal Bullet, Arrested in Ferguson

      He “was doing his job, presented a threat to no one, and clearly identified himself as a member of the press,” Glenn Greenwald’s news organization says

      A reporter for Glenn Greenwald’s news agency, the Intercept, is the latest to be targeted by police in Ferguson, Mo.

    • In Ferguson, echoes of Middle East?

      A summer of global turmoil has culminated in nightmarish scenes from Ferguson, Mo., a St. Louis suburb torn apart by protests after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager.

    • Fox Turns To New Black Panthers Fabulist To Argue “Eric Holder Cannot Be Trusted” To Investigate Michael Brown Shooting
    • CNN Attempts Actual Journalism–But Reverts to Embedded Reporting

      In a matter of minutes, members of the media, who had been objectively and effectively reporting on a protest greeted with a militarized crackdown worthy of a war-torn country, suddenly agreed to become embedded journalists–just like in a war-torn country. Embedded journalism, as FAIR has often written (e.g, Extra!, 9/03), is one of the worst practices of media if you want independent and accurate reporting.

      [...]

      Johnson didn’t think Ferguson police were getting positive enough coverage, so he asked Tapper and Lemon to join him the next day and report alongside him.

    • CNN’s Rosemary Church Asks “Why Not Perhaps Use Water Cannon” In Ferguson
    • Russia, Iran and Egypt Heckle US About Tactics in Ferguson
    • You Know Things are Bad When Egypt and Russia Are Chastising the U.S. Over Ferguson

      The ridiculous police response in Ferguson, Mo., has provoked plenty of reactions from other countries, some of whom seem to be reveling in the chance to troll the U.S. (while seemingly forgetting their own records on human rights).

    • Tear Gas Is A Banned Chemical Weapon, But US Lobbying Made It Okay For Domestic Use… And, Boy, Do We Use It

      If you’ve been watching what’s going on in Ferguson, Missouri, lately, you’re quite well aware that the police have been basically spraying tear gas almost everywhere they can. Suddenly, articles are springing up all over the internet about the use of tear gas — which, it turns out is technically banned for use in warfare as a chemical weapon. The history of how that came about, however, is a bit complicated, as this State Department notice on tear gas discusses. Basically, there was a dispute over whether or not tear gas violated the Geneva Conventions. Here’s a snippet:

    • Administration Proudly Announces That If Your ‘We The People’ Petition Aligns With Its Priorities, Something Might Actually Happen

      Let’s get this right out in the open. I don’t have any particular animosity towards this administration. I just don’t find it to be an improvement over the last one (which I found to be pretty much terrible from all angles). This wouldn’t be notable except for the fact that this administration definitely considers itself to be a vast improvement over the last one and has made several proclamations advancing that theory. (“Most transparent administration,” anyone?)

    • US ‘deeply disturbed’ after Afghans bar reporter from leaving country

      The United States is “deeply disturbed” that Afghanistan’s attorney general has blocked a New York Times reporter from leaving the country, the State Department said Tuesday.

      Times journalist Matthew Rosenberg said Tuesday that he was questioned after writing a story alleging that unnamed Afghan officials were plotting to seize power if the country’s electoral crisis continued.

    • EXCLUSIVE: Brooklyn man wins $125,000 settlement after claiming he was arrested for recording stop-and-frisk

      Dick George claimed that he was pulled from his car in Flatbush after cops realized he was recording them as they searched three youths and overheard him advising the youths to get cops’ badge numbers in June 2012.

    • The Revolutionary Document That Is The UK’s 184-Year-Old Idea Of ‘Policing By Consent’

      Jason Kottke of the always informative and entertaining kottke.org just posted a very interesting look at the genesis of UK law enforcement. In 1829, the UK government shifted policing from a paramilitary force comprised mainly of volunteers to an organized force comprised of citizens. But it made it very clear that UK police derived their power from the consent of the people, rather than from a government mandate.

    • NYPD Settles Case In Which It Arrested Guy For Recording Stop And Frisk, Pays $125,000

      In yet another case in which police illegal arrested someone for filming the police, the police have been forced to pay up. Unlike the big Simon Glik case, it appears that the NYPD (under new management!) decided to do its best to settle the case and get it off the books. They’re paying $125,000 to Dick George, who recorded police doing one of its infamous stop-and-frisks.

    • LAPD Officer Says Tragedies Could Be Prevented If Citizens Would Just Shut Up And Do What Cops Tell Them To

      In the continuing furor that is Ferguson, Missouri, someone is finally asking, “Won’t anyone think of the poor police officers?” Naturally, the person raising this question is a police officer — a 17-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department. And the question isn’t so much being raised as it is being thrown in the reader’s face.

    • Church denies buying victims’ legal rights

      The Catholic Church denies buying off sexual abuse victims for a modest sum to avoid being sued, but says it understands why people believe it did.

      Hundreds of victims of paedophile priests signed away their rights to sue the church for compensation payments under its Melbourne Response scheme for handling clergy sex abuse complaints.

    • We wouldn’t need whistleblowers’ bravery if Morrison did his job properly

      Without whistelblowers working in immigration centers, we would not know the devastating conditions that refugees, including children, suffer under

    • Somalia: After 19 Initial Arrests, Three Journalists Still Held and Reportedly Tortured

      Reporters Without Borders condemns the closures of Mogadishu-based Radio Shabelle and Sky FM and arrests of 19 journalists and employees on 15 August, and the continuing detention and reported torture of the directors of the two radio stations and their owner.

    • Government Repeatedly Threatening Reporter Who Exposed Blackwater With Arrest

      If you blinked at the end of June, you may have missed one of the best pieces of journalism in 2014. The New York Times headline accompanying the story was almost criminally bland, but the content itself was extraordinary: A top manager at Blackwater, the notorious defense contractor, openly threatened to kill a US State Department official in 2007 if he continued to investigate Blackwater’s corrupt dealings in Iraq. Worse, the US government sided with Blackwater and halted the investigation. Blackwater would later go on to infamously wreak havoc in Iraq.

    • Should Luxembourg offer asylum to Snowden & Assange?

      A Luxembourg computer hacking group has called on the Luxembourg government to offer asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Edward Snowden.

      In an open letter, the Chaos Computer Club (C3L) said that such an invitation would be a “long overdue” political action.

      “Both (Assange and Snowden) have taken significant risks and consequences around the world to expose the intentions of power-hungry institutions and demonstrate their activities. Threats, lawsuits and denunciations were the responses of the States concerned; and only very little attention from those who could provide political and institutional changes.”

      The letter referred to C3L’s “Freedom Not Fear” initiative, on which a round table discussion was held with all Luxembourg political party representatives, excluding the ADR and PID.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • How to Save the Net: Don’t Give In to Big ISPs

      The Internet has already changed how we live and work, and we’re only just getting started. Who’d have thought even five years ago that people would be streaming Ultra HD 4K video over their home Internet connections?

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Movie Boss Avoids Copyright Q&A to Avoid Piracy “Crazies”

        A public discussion forum centered on new copyright proposals will go ahead without Australia’s main Hollywood-affiliated studio. In an email just made public, Village Roadshow Co-CEO Graham Burke said his company would be boycotting the event due to it being dominated by “crazies” with a pro-piracy agenda.

      • Attackers Can ‘Steal’ Bandwidth From BitTorrent Seeders, Research Finds

        New research reveals that BitTorrent swarms can be slowed down significantly by malicious peers. Depending on the number of seeders and the clients they use, download times can be increased by 1000%. The attacks are possible through an exploit of the BitTorrent protocol for which the researchers present a fix.

      • Unsealed documents show Prenda parties’ twisted finances

        Prenda’s recent devastating defeat in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals was a result of Dan Booth’s / Jason Sweet’s titanic work and John Steele’s / Paul Hansmeier’s incurable hubris. Trolls’ hubris made them foolishly believe that they had more than a “between slim and zero” chance of prevailing on appeal despite the compelling evidence of not so laundry-fresh financials.

      • Unsealed Motions Shows How Team Prenda Sought To Hide Money

        Back in April, we wrote about a really enraged John Steele (famous for his likely leading role in the Prenda scam) angrily hitting back against a sealed motion for contempt against him, arguing that he was lying and hiding assets in his attempt to plead poverty, after a court ordered Team Prenda to file detailed financial statements. They did not do so.

      • Nintendo Goes Copyright On Woman Making Pokemon-Inspired Planters

        We all know that Nintendo wraps itself in copyright law like some kind of really boring security blanket. Every once in a while, the company will make some noise about being more open and accommodating to its biggest fans and the like, but that noise is usually followed up by a rash of takedowns and C&D letters. The most recent battlefront Nintendo has entered in the war against its own fans is the floral planter arena. One woman, admittedly inspired by her love of the Pokemon game series, shared her design for a 3D printed planter on a commerce website.

      • Licensing Boards Think Studying For A Test Is Copyright Infringement, Forbid Memorization Of Material

        Today’s copyright-induced stupidity is brought to you by… a whole host of regulatory institutions. An anonymous Techdirt reader sent in a pointer to this ridiculous warning that greets those accessing the National Association of Legal Assistants practice tests.

      • Who Needs SOPA? US Court Wipes Sites From The Internet For ‘Infringement’ Without Even Alerting Sites In Question

        TorrentFreak has the exceptionally troubling story of a federal district court in Oregon issuing an incredibly broad and questionable order, effectively wiping a bunch of websites out, without ever letting the websites in question know that they were being “tried” in court. The request came from ABS-CBN, a giant Filipino entertainment company arguing infringement, of course. But the argument against these sites is somewhat questionable already, made worse by the demand that the whole thing be done under seal (without alerting the site operators). Then Judge Anna Brown granted the temporary restraining order, basically deleting these sites from the internet, without even a sniff of an adversarial hearing.

08.19.14

Links 19/8/2014: Humble Jumbo Bundle 2 Betrayal, Mercedes-Benz Runs GNU/Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 3:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • European Space Operations Centre Now Runs on SUSE Linux Enterprise Servers

    The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) is now powered by SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and it’s making a firm commitment towards open source and Linux software.

    This is not exactly something completely unexpected. The European Space Agency and openSUSE have been friends for a few years, but now the level of implication manifested by both parties has gone beyond the adoption of a Linux distro.

  • Server

    • A beginners guide to Docker
    • Why the operating system matters in a containerized world

      Applications running in Linux containers are isolated within a single copy of the operating system running on a physical server. This approach stands in contrast to hypervisor-based virtualization in which each application is bound to a complete copy of a guest operating system and communicates with the hardware through the intervening hypervisor. As a result, containers consume very few system resources such as memory and impose essentially no performance overhead on the application.

    • Panamax Connects Docker Linux Containers Like Lego

      n open-source community resource for complex Docker architectures

      CenturyLink has contributed the Panamax Docker management platform to open source. Panamax is described as a tool (its makers would prefer we said “platform”) for developers to create, share, and deploy a Docker-containerized application.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 3.17 Release Cycle Begins as LinuxCon Opens

      Big week on the Linux Planet as a new Linux kernel release cycle begins and Kernel developers congregate in Chicago for LinuxCon.

      “I’m going to be on a plane much of tomorrow, and am not really supportive of last-minute pull requests during the merge window anyway, so I’m closing the merge window one day early, and 3.17-rc1 is out there now,” Linus Torvalds wrote in his Linux 3.17 rc1 release announcement.

    • Linux kernel source code repositories get better security

      Almost three years ago, crackers broke into the kernel.org, Linux’s most important site. While no damage was done, it was still worrisome. So, at the Linux Kernel Summit, the Linux Foundation announced that it was securing Linux’s Git source code repositories with two-factor authentication.

    • Btrfs Gets Talked Up, Googler Encourages You To Try Btrfs

      This week at LinuxCon North America in Chicago is a presentation by Google’s Marc Merlin that’s entitled “Why you should consider using btrfs, real COW snapshots and file level incremental server OS upgrades like Google does.” The presentation does a good job at looking at the state of Btrfs on Linux and comparing it to ZFS.

      Marc Merlin, a Linux admin at Google for more than one decade, is presenting on Thursday at LinuxCon Chicago about Btrfs. His slides are already available for those that can’t make it to the windy city or are looking for an overview of what he’ll be discussing.

    • Kpatch Gets Exposure This Week, kGraft Misses Out

      This week at LinuxCon Chicago are two talks about Red Hat’s Kpatch live kernel patching solution to reduce downtime. However, there aren’t any scheduled talks about SUSE’s kGraft solution with neither yet being in the mainline kernel.

      On Thursday at the Sheraton in Chicago will be the “Kpatch Without Stop Machine” presentation by Hitachi’s Masami Hiramatsu while on Friday afternoon will be “kpatch: Have Your Security And Eat It Too!” by Red Hat’s Josh Poimboeuf.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Mesa Now Supports Another OpenGL 4.5 Extension

        While Mesa is still racing towards OpenGL 4.0 compliance, another OpenGL 4.5 extension can now be crossed off the Mesa TODO list.

        Some Mesa developers have already started tackling some of the easier OpenGL 4.5 extensions and today another can be crossed off the list. Thanks to Tobias Klausmann. GL_ARB_conditional_render_inverted is now supported by Mesa. The core work for GL_ARB_conditional_render_inverted is complete and is implemented currently by the Gallium3D-based Nouveau NVC0 (Fermi+), Softpipe, and LLVMpipe drivers. Support will surely come in time for mainline Mesa with this extension for the RadeonSI Gallium3D and Intel drivers.

      • AMD Launches Radeon R7 Series SSDs

        Not to be confused with the Radeon R7 graphics cards, AMD today officially announced the Radeon R7 SSD line-up.

  • Applications

    • Git 2.1.0 Version Control System Now Available for Download

      Git 2.1.0, a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency, has been officially released.

    • XBMC 13.2 Released, One Of The Last Before Kodi

      XBMC 13.2 has been released as one of the last “Gotham” series bug-fix releases before the project renames itself to Kodi.

    • XBMC 13.2 Gotham – Final release

      Here it is. One of the last versions ever that will be using the XBMC name, as we are renaming XBMC to Kodi. All our future releases will be using the Kodi name. You can read about that here. However lets focus on this release. After three beta releases and a release candidate, we are happy to announce the final 13.2 release. This follows a couple of months after the 13.1 release, and is considered a small bug fix release. Unfortunately we cannot fix all things reported. Below you will find a list of most important fixes included in this release.

    • BitTorrent Client Vuze 5.4 Officially Released

      Vuze, a BitTorrent client previously known as Azureus, which is built on Java, has reached version 5.4 and is now available for download.

    • Proprietary

      • Viber 4.2 For Linux Available For Download

        Quick update for Viber users: Viber for Linux was updated to version 4.2.x recently, finally catching up with the Windows version. Unfortunately, the application continues to be available for 64bit only.

      • New Massive Google Chrome 38 Dev Update Lands on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X

        The Development branch of Google Chrome, a browser built on the Blink layout engine that aims to be minimalistic and versatile at the same time, is now at version 38.0.2125.0 and is available for all supported platforms.

      • Opera 25 Dev for Linux Now Features MP3, H.264, and HiDPI Support

        The Opera developers have released a new version of their Internet browser and a new build has been made available in the 25.x branch.

      • New VM Software Claims To Be 4.5x Faster Than QEMU

        Eltechs is preparing to introduce ExaGear Desktop next month as new proprietary software for running Linux x86 software on Linux ARM using their own virtual machine technology.

        Eltechs claims that ExaGear is great for running a virtual Linux x86 container on ARMv7 hardware. From there you could also run the x86 version of Wine for running x86 Windows programs on ARM hardware. This can already be done right now (using QEMU and other open-source Linux technologies for running emulated software for another CPU architecture separate from the host platform), but Eltechs claims that their binary-only solution “It is like QEMU but 4.5 times faster!”

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • Civilization-Inspired Freeciv 2.4.3 Receives Major Overhaul

        Freeciv, a free turn-based multiplayer strategy game, in which each player becomes the leader of a civilization, is now at version 2.4.3.

      • Empire: Total War Might Be Getting a Linux Release Soon

        Empire: Total War, a real-time strategy game developed by The Creative Assembly and published by Sega, might be a getting a Linux release soon.

        Empire: Total War is one of the most successful games in the entire franchise and now it shows up in the Steam database, under the Linux category. The title might have been initially developed by The Creative Assembly, but those developers only made the Windows version.

      • Alienware: Steam Machine owners will “sacrifice content” for the sake of Linux

        It’s been tough to parse Alienware’s position on the Linux-based SteamOS. At E3 they told us that the Steam Machine will increase Linux gamers by “20, 30 fold, overnight”. But with the first Steam Machines delayed into 2015, they’ve upstaged their own Linux box with a Windows-based living room PC: the Alienware Alpha.

        So who would win in a fight, Alienware? A living room PC running Windows, or the same PC running SteamOS?

        “It depends on what you’re looking for; there’s advantages to both,” said Alienware general manager Frank Azor. “[With] the Linux version I do think you’re going to sacrifice a little bit of content.”

      • Humble Jumbo Bundle 2 Shafts Linux Gamers

        The Humble Jumbo Bundle 2 was just announced with “$210 worth of awesome games” that can be found on Steam, but before Linux gamers get too excited, they’re mostly left in the dust.

        Of the seven launch games part of the Humble Jumbo Bundle 2, only one of the games is currently available as a native port on Linux: Crusader Kings 2. That game has been available on Linux since early 2013.

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Krita At Siggraph 2014

        For the first time, Krita has been present at Siggraph! Siggraph is the largest conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques and it has a big trade show as well as presentations, posters, book shops and animations. While Krita has been presented before at the Mobile World Congress, Siggraph really is where Krita belongs!

      • Randa Meetings 2014 – Impressions

        I want to thank very much to Mario Fux who organizes these meetings since 2009 and contributed a lot to my participation since I heard about this year’s meeting after the registrations had closed and he still offered to organize the accommodation for me. So, thanks once again Mario. I’d also want to thank everyone present at Randa this year for this great experience. This was my first participation in a KDE event but not the last one for sure

  • Distributions

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source forms the backbone of the most significant projects

    Companies increasingly understand that open source allows them to create faster, cheaper, and more secure products than they did by constantly reinventing the wheel in closed-source development environments. And the drivers of OSS adoption go beyond cost cutting and time savings. Participating in open source communities is a goal in itself—one that gives companies a competitive edge and helps them to attract top talent and influence project direction.

  • Beautiful Open: A compendium of beautiful open source projects

    Here’s a neat little online resource for you, courtesy of Chicago-based GroupOn developer Trek Glowacki.

    Beautiful Open is a compendium of beautifully-designed open source projects, showcasing everything from content management systems (CMS) to Javascript SVG libraries.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Is the Firefox-based Chromecast Competitor to Be Called Matchstick?

        Google has made quite a splash with its Chromecast dongle, which performs many of the tasks that set-top boxes do, but Chromecast may be headed for some competition. Android Police has reported that Firefox for Android has gained support in nightly builds for Chromecast, and GigaOM reports that Mozilla is continuing to work on a Chromecast competitor possibly called Matchstick.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Startup Platform 9 Focuses on Cloud Management Based on OpenStack

      There is quite a buzz surrounding Platform 9, which came out of stealth mode a few days ago with $4.5 million in venture funding, and interesting plans aimed at the private cloud market. Platform 9′s technology platform is based on OpenStack, and the company is run by a group of VMware veterans.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice 4.3 (PC) review: A powerful but dated Office clone

      LibreOffice is an excellent Microsoft Office alternative that’ll do just about everything you need it to, quickly and efficiently. And in a world without WPS Office, I wouldn’t think twice about recommending it. But while LibreOffice has championed mimicking and even one-upping Microsoft’s apps, the competition was busy marching ahead, developing tools to address the new ways we get to work. The most crucial of these is cross-device support.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Access/Content

      • Why Do People Trust Wikipedia? Because An Argument Is Better Than A Lecture

        I’ve never really understood the debate about how trustworthy Wikipedia is compared with once-printed, more “official” encyclopedia volumes, like the old Encyclopedia Britannica. What rarely made sense to me was the constant assertions that an information system to which anyone could contribute was inherently unreliable because anyone could contribute to it. Sure, you get the occasional vandals making joke edits, but by and large the contributions by the community are from informed, interested parties. The results tend to be close to, if not on par, with traditional encyclopedias.

  • Programming

    • C++14 Is Complete

      The ISO C++14 draft international standard was unanimously approved and is now clear for publication.

    • We have C++14!
    • Git Tracking Relationships: Use the Full Power of Git Branches

      Branching is, undoubtedly, one of the best and most important features in Git. If you already understand the basics of Git, you can take your knowledge one step further and get the most out of the popular distributed SCM by using one of its core capabilities: tracking relationships.

Leftovers

  • Rick Perry Defends Himself Against Two Felony Charges

    On Friday, Rick Perry was indicted by a grand jury on two felony charges for abuse of power. Speaking in Austin on Saturday, his first public statement since the indictment, Perry called the allegations “outrageous” and a “farce of democracy.” Perry is the first Texas governor to be indicted since 1917.

  • Security

    • Def Con: the ‘Olympics of hacking’

      When tens of thousands of computer hackers hit Las Vegas for a weekend, a drab convention centre is transformed for a very different kind of conference. There are no monotonous PowerPoint presentations or “networking breaks” here. Instead, hackers are bent double over tables, busily dissecting hard drives and picking locks; others huddle in a dark and cavernous room showing off their skills by breaking into each other’s computers. Almost all are making mischief until dawn.

    • Security advisories for Tuesday

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Iraq crisis: Fighting resumes at Mosul dam a day after Barack Obama claims victory over Isis

      Fighting has reportedly resumed at the strategic Mosul dam in northern Iraq just a day after Barack Obama claimed victory reclaiming it from Islamist militants.

    • Judge Jails Anti-Drone Granny

      Judge David Gideon’s words refer not to the use of drones, but the activities of anti-drone activists. He has uttered this phrase from the bench repeatedly in recent months as activists have appeared before him, and the words must have been echoing through his mind as he sentenced Mary Anne Grady Flores, a 58-year-old grandmother from Ithaca, New York, to one year in prison on July 10. Her crime? Participating in a nonviolent anti-drone protest at an upstate New York military base after being ordered by the local courts to stay away from the site. The base is used to train drone pilots and technicians, and to control drone surveillance and strikes in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

    • Stossel: Libertarian fears about spying, death are real

      Drones — unmanned flying machines — will soon fill our skies. They conjure up fears, especially among some of my fellow libertarians, of spying and death from above.

    • Australian police seek to block anti-Israel protesters

      Police in Sydney are trying to block a protest at the opening of the Israeli Film Festival this week as the Gaza war continues to fuel passions in Australia.

      Members of the Palestine Action Group are listed for a hearing on Monday in the Supreme Court of New South Wales ahead of their planned protest outside the cinema on Thursday night.

    • US drone strike payout in Yemen points to civilian deaths

      New details about compensation in excess of $1m suggest that civilians with no ties to Al Qaida were among casualties

    • The Profits Behind Drone Warfare

      War is a highly profitable investment for corporations, especially in times of capitalist economic crises, therefore any examination of the illegality and immorality of imperialist military activities should start with an examination of the capitalist system itself.

    • Stigmatised Yemeni woman bakes to break barriers

      Through baking, Abeer al-Hassani has found a way to feed her family and to overcome the trauma of losing her brothers to a US drone strike

    • WASHINGTON POST FAILS TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN ‘OLD’ AND ‘NEW’ TURKEY

      A couple of days ago the Washington Post published an editorial titled “Turkey needs to turn away from Mr. Erdoğan’s repression.” It was stated in the article that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan achieved his ninth election victory and became the 12th president of Turkey. As it was outlined in the title, the article went on by providing evidence for why this strong man should not be left completely uncontrolled.

      The article also touched upon Erdoğan’s victory speech in which he said that he wanted to establish a “new” Turkey and that he would be sensitive to the desires of all the people of the country. After these statements, without changing its course, the article went on to say that the country was facing a deep polarization and some of Erdoğan’s actions in recent years raised suspicion regarding their harmony with democracy. It also raised the question of whether a new Turkey would be different from the old one.

      The article further suggested that Turkey, as a Muslim country, which keeps itself away from radical elements in the region, should have bridged the gap between the Middle East and EU and that this would be highly appreciated. However, this was hindered due to Erdoğan’s “erratic and disconcerting” behavior.

      For example, during his election rallies, Erdoğan criticized Israel with harsh words. It is highly interesting that the Washington Post associates the reason why the ideal of democratic Turkey failed with Erdoğan’s firm stance against Israel, which used brutal and disproportionate force and killed some 2,000 Palestinians. It also claimed that Turkey hosted and protected the militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), which held 49 Turkish people, including a consul, captive and threatened Turkey saying they would bomb the Atatürk Dam by challenging Erdoğan. It is the same ISIS that is said to be trained by the collaboration of the American CIA, British MI6 and the Israeli MOSSAD to wage war against all terror organizations in the region for the security of Israel with a strategy called “the hornet’s nest,” according to what former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden revealed.

    • US Navy conducts first joint test of unmanned stealth drone AND manned fighter jet operations from aircraft carrier
    • Navy conducts first series of drone and manned fighter jet operations

      The U.S. Navy said its jet-powered, bat-winged X-47B drone has conducted carrier deck operations and performed maneuvers alongside an F/A-18 fighter jet, marking the first time manned and unmanned aircraft have operated together on the same carrier. – See more at: http://westhawaiitoday.com/news/nation-world-news/navy-conducts-first-series-drone-and-manned-fighter-jet-operations#sthash.BynyIp9i.dpuf

    • ‘US and NATO using ISIS to re-intervene into the region’

      One of the ironies is that the US pretending to fight ISIS in Iraq, when it is in Syria, too; Washington is using the ISIS to wage new wars in the region and create new military bases, especially in Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraq analyst Sami Ramadani told RT.

    • U.S. to boost Kurds’ firepower

      The Obama administration and U.S. allies are preparing to rush antitank weapons and other arms to Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq who are battling Islamic militants near Irbil, officials said.

      The CIA had already rushed small shipments of arms to the Kurds in recent days as U.S. airstrikes targeted the militants’ convoys and mortars.

    • Ukraine: In The West Respect for Truth No Longer Exists
    • Why have the media and Obama administration gone silent on MH17?

      The deafening silence of the US media and government about the investigation into the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 one month ago reeks of a cover-up.

      In the hours and days immediately after the crash, without a single shred of evidence, US officials alleged that the passenger jet was shot down by an SA-11 ground-to-air missile fired from pro-Russian separatist-held territory in eastern Ukraine. They launched a political campaign to obtain harsh economic sanctions against Russia and strengthen NATO’s military posture in Eastern Europe.

      Picking up on the scent, the CIA attack dogs in the US and European media blamed the crash squarely on Russian President Vladimir Putin. The cover of the July 28 print edition of German news magazine Der Spiegel showed the images of MH17 victims surrounding bold red text reading “Stoppt Putin Jetzt!” (Stop Putin Now!). A July 26 editorial in the Economist declared Putin to be the author of MH17′s destruction, while the magazine ghoulishly superimposed Putin’s face over a spider web on its front cover, denouncing Putin’s “web of lies.”

    • Cherry-picking Clinton’s words

      That’s my take-away from reading the transcript of her long interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, published Aug. 10. In total, it was Clinton’s description of the world as she sees it and hardly an attempt to highlight her differences with President Obama, as Goldberg and others have written by cherry-picking her answers to some leading questions.

      For example, Clinton does not say it was the U.S. “failure” to aid Syrian rebels that created the vacuum that led to the rise of Islamic State militants.

      Clinton said she had proposed that “if we were to carefully vet, train, and equip early on a core group of the developing Free Syrian Army, we would, number one, have some better insight into what was going on on the ground.”

    • Benghazi: When America Switched Sides In The War On Terror And Armed Al-Qaida

      Focusing on this under-reported, critical shift in American foreign policy, Clare Lopez discusses how an American ambassador and others were killed in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11 because the Obama administration decided to promote and defend their narrative that “al-Qaida was on the run,” even as we were outright arming militants affiliated with the terrorist group.

    • U.S. Empire of Death and Lie

      No mention was made that Iraq’s Christians had been safe and sound under President Saddam Hussein – even privileged – until President George Bush invaded and destroyed Iraq. We can expect the same fate for Syria’s Christians if the protection of the Assad regime is torn away by the US-engineered uprising. We will then shed crocodile tears for Syria’s Christians.

    • Armed humanitarian 2.0

      ARMED HUMANITARIANISM 2.0. That’s the new Western version of old-fashioned 19th century imperialism, now feminised by President Barack Obama’s lady advisors, painted pink and accompanied by saccharine piano music.

      The Obama administration latched onto the plight of Iraq’s Yazidis who were being persecuted by those awful ISIS folks just in time to divert attention from the massacre in Gaza.

  • Finance

    • Economists Don’t Understand The Information Age, So Their Claims About Today’s Economy Are A Joke

      On top of that, the ongoing march of technology continues to make things cheaper and better (yay, Moore’s Law), but getting a computer that’s twice as powerful for half the price shows up in GDP calculations as half the economic output, rather than 4x the value. That’s why it’s great to see economic historian Joel Mokyr take this issue on in a great Wall Street Journal piece pointing out that too many economists focus on GDP and don’t understand the information age.

    • Are bungalows really the solution to our housing crisis? The housing minister thinks so. And their design needn’t leave you feeling flat

      Over the years, more than one politician has been damned as “a bungalow” – as in “there’s nothing upstairs”. And possibly that’s what people thought of the new Tory minister for housing and planning over his suggestion that we should all be “looking to love bungalows a little bit more”. But perhaps Brandon Lewis, who reckons we need more single-storey dwellings for older people, and that this in turn would free up houses for families, has a point.

    • Kos, the IMF, the EU and the ECB

      The IMF – responsible for mass impoverishment in the developing world – is now forced to admit it got Greece wrong. Its economists admit they exacerbated the near-destruction of the Greek economy after the 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Last summer, Christine Lagarde’s organisation first blamed the “fiscal multiplier” – technocratic speak for endangering lifesaving public services. Then, the IMF, in effect, said they had got it wrong merely because they were “over optimistic”.

    • No Common Opinion on the Common Core

      But when new issues arise, important shifts can occur before opinion sorts itself into settled patterns. And, on occasion, critical events can jar opinion from settled patterns into a new equilibrium.

  • Censorship

    • EU justice commissioner slams Google and Right to be Forgotten critics

      Reicherts attacked critics of the reform during a speech in Lyon, France, arguing that anti-Right to be Forgotten groups are covertly working to poison businesses’ and citizens’ opinions with false information.

      “Just as work on the data protection reform has picked up speed and urgency, detractors are attempting to throw a new spanner in the works. They are trying to use the recent ruling by the European Court of Justice [ECJ] on the Right to be Forgotten to undermine our reform,” she said.

    • Goodbye, Facebook. Supporting anti-gay marriage, anti-human rights candidate was finally too much.

      After all Facebook has done, there’s only so much a person can take.

    • Islamic State shifts to new platform after Twitter block

      A sustained clampdown on the Twitter presence of Islamic State (IS) has forced the hardline jihadist group to explore less well-known social media platforms, setting up a string of accounts on the privacy-focused Diaspora.

    • Controversy Over Popular Game: “Psychiatric Ward — Enter if you dare, escape if you can!”

      The Toronto Transit Commission has removed billboards for a popular escape game after The Toronto Star reported on four complaints about its mental health-themed ads. Modeled on similar games in Japan, “Mystery Room” invites groups of participants to gather clues and work together to try to escape from different rooms in a large building. “Enter if you dare — Escape if you can!” read the dark billboards for the game, listing four rooms called Satan’s Lair, Prison Break, Mummy’s Curse, and Psychiatric Ward. The Mystery Room’s website description for the Psychiatric Ward explained that, “Ward 15 is the place the mentally disturbed were contained. Dr. Johansson had a passion for experimenting on the unanesthetised living…”

  • Privacy

    • Government’s Response To Snowden? Strip 100,000 Potential Whistleblowers Of Their Security Clearances

      Snowden just re-upped for three years in picturesque Russia, a land best known for not being a US military prison. Not exactly ideal, but under the circumstances, not entirely terrible. The government knows where Snowden is (more or less) and many officials have a pretty good idea what they’d like to do to him if he returns, but the NSA is still largely operating on speculation when it comes to what documents Snowden took.

    • [Old] America’s Spies Want Edward Snowden Dead
    • Meet the Man Leading the Snowden Damage Investigation

      Among the many actions the Obama administration took in the “post-Snowden” era of insider threats was to appoint a new governmentwide counterintellligence chief.

      The man filling that role, or the “NCIX,” as acronym-inclined national security feds call the National Counterintelligence Executive, is Bill Evanina, 47, a former FBI special agent with a counter-terrorism specialty.

    • Should the Entire Internet Be Encrypted?
    • How to Save the Net: Break Up the NSA

      By treating the Internet as a giant surveillance platform, the NSA has betrayed the Internet and the world. It has subverted the products, protocols, and standards that we use to protect ourselves. It has left us all vulnerable—to foreign governments, to cybercriminals, to hackers. And it has transformed the Internet into a medium that no one can trust.

      The world has changed dramatically since the NSA was founded 62 years ago. Back then, it was easy to spy on foreign governments while shielding our own from snoops. Today, the NSA’s intelligence mission has expanded from just government-on-government espionage to government-on-population surveillance. At the same time, the communications world has shifted from dedicated circuits that can be passively tapped to a single global Internet infrastructure that requires active attack to eavesdrop on. Everyone uses the same networks, and creating the capability to eavesdrop on foreign communications by engineering backdoors into US technology leaves domestic transmissions vulnerable to eavesdropping. The NSA’s aggressive data-gathering, with seemingly little regard for how that might compromise the security of everyday digital communications—and with only loose oversight (at best) by government watchdogs—has far exceeded what any modern and free society should reasonably expect. Breaking up the agency would do a lot to bring it under control.

    • Your identity at stake – Local experts reveal how to keep your privacy online

      Haass and other experts will tell you the best way to protect the information you may have stored on a computer and/or mobile device is to use multiple passwords, and change them.

    • Germany Eavesdropped on Clinton, Kerry, but It Can’t Be Considered ‘Spying’ – US Expert
    • Turkey summons German ambassador over BND spying allegations

      Turkey has summoned the German ambassador to demand a “formal and satisfactory explanation” following reports that the country was spied on by Germany’s intelligence agency (BND).

      German media reported at the weekend that the BND had not only “accidentally” listened in on phone calls made by the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and his predecessor Hillary Clinton in 2012 and 2013, but that it also – less accidentally – monitored the activities of Turkish politicians. According to news magazine Der Spiegel, the Nato member has been listed as a target for BND surveillance since 2009.

    • Opinion: The BND, a completely normal secret service

      The German intelligence service, the BND, treats its NATO partner Turkey just as America’s NSA treats Germany. Everyone mistrusts everyone else, but nobody’s prepared to admit it, says Marcel Fürstenau.

    • Germany Electronic Spying on Turkey Rankles Both Sides
    • German surveillance upsets Turkish trust
    • Germany criticised over Turkey spying allegations
    • German spying report angers Turkey
    • CHP submits parliamentary question on German spying scandal

      Main opposition Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP) İzmir deputy Erdal Aksünger has submitted a parliamentary question concerning the allegations that Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) spied on Turkey.

    • Aphex Twin announces album over anonymous browser Tor

      Irish-born musician and enigmatic DJ Aphex Twin has released details of his first album in 13 years – that are only accessible through the Tor anonymous browser.

    • Tor-rorists get sneaky Aphex Twin album peek in dance guru hypegasm
    • Tweetstorm: Rupert Murdoch Says Google Is Worse Than the NSA
    • Rupert Murdoch ‘Hypocritically’ Attacks Google In Twitter Tirade
    • Rupert Murdoch says Google is a bigger threat to privacy than the NSA
    • Twitter users pour scorn on Murdoch after Google tweet
    • Rupert Murdoch redefines irony with Google privacy attack on Twitter

      Sneak loves to spend his lunch hour lurking on Twitter, scrolling through the tawdry thoughts of bored IT execs and publicity-hungry tech corporations.

      But sometimes, when the hum of the server room is getting too much, Sneak stumbles upon a wonderful gem of bile, hypocrisy, anger and opinion.

      Today’s nugget of controversy comes courtesy of Rupert Murdoch, who tweeted: “NSA privacy invasion bad, but nothing compared to Google.”

      [...]

      Given that Murdoch was all but forced to put the century-old News of the World out to pasture over phone hacking, to call out Google’s approach to privacy is so hypocritical that a new catalogue of pot and kettle-esque idioms needs to be written.

      Then again perhaps one could consider Murdoch to be an expert on such issues, given how far the News of the World went to destroy the concept of privacy for so many.

    • Hyprocrite alert: Rupert Murdoch ripped to pieces on Twitter after laughable update about Google and NSA

      Rupert Murdoch has incurred the wrath of the online community after publishing an ever-so-hypocritical tweet about privacy.

    • Rupert Murdoch stabs at Google in curious Twitter tirade
    • Clear-text must die

      The Citizen Lab “hackers” at University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs have released a report which reveals the use of network injection by law enforcement as a method to undermine internet security – and it makes for frightening reading.

    • The Truth About Executive Order 12333

      But first I want to commend Tye for raising his concerns through the processes established for that purpose. Using those processes, he has been able to review his concerns with intelligence oversight bodies as well as with the public, all while continuing to protect classified information.

    • Scientists, Not Politicians, Should Regulate NSA Surveillance

      The raging public debate over the surveillance state could actually benefit from the expertise of an unsuspecting source, a recent academic article suggests.

      Instead of relying on the myriad privacy and legal experts, congressmen, or former NSA directors chiming in on the NSA surveillance state, a new article in Science argues that we should really be asking more scientists what they think about domestic signals intelligence for American policymaking.

    • The Show That Warned Us Enemy of the State Was a Documentary

      If you watched the 2009 NOVA episode “The Spy Factory,” or the 2007 Frontline episode “Spying on the Homefront” you’ll see it all there — the phone surveillance, the internet monitoring, and even the whistleblowers from the NSA facilities who were listening to your phone calls. We knew American intelligence agencies were spying on Americans with impunity.

    • Judge critical of NSA’s ‘systemic overcollection’
    • Report: US May Take Years to Prevent Another Snowden

      U.S. intelligence officials are months or even years away from preventing classified information from being leaked in cases similar to fugitive NSA contractor Edward Snowden, The Daily Beast reported.

      The officials say that due to the vast number of computer systems and networks in the 70 U.S. agencies dealing with secret data, it will be a long process before they are able to keep an eye on the computers of federal employees with security clearance.

      The intelligence officials are almost a year away from being able to monitor public databases for clues that government workers have transgressed federal laws or run into financial hardship, the Beast said.

      Due to the delays in mounting a sweeping monitoring service to “watch the watchers,” the intelligence agencies are also struggling to keep an eye on its employees. The setbacks resulted in a “second Snowden,” who leaked secret files to The Intercept from the National Counterterrorism Center, the Beast said.

    • US Privacy Official Leaves the White House

      Wong previously held positions such as director of legal products at Twitter and deputy general counsel at Google, the latter of which involved making calls on censoring certain content on YouTube and in searches. She earned herself the nickname “the Decider” while in the position.

      She joined the Obama administration in June of last year in what was, at the time, considered a positive move just after the NSA revelations had rocked the administration.

    • A first step in reining in the NSA

      A little more than a year after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the federal government was collecting and storing the telephone records of millions of Americans, Congress is poised to end the program and provide significant protection for a broad range of personal information sought by government investigators.

    • Bishop latest hacking casualty in global game of phones

      Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has joined the likes of former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in a political game of phones, after her smartphone was compromised while on a two-week overseas trip.

      Australian intelligence authorities seized and replaced Bishop’s phone on her return from a two-week trip to Ukraine, the US, and Holland, in which she worked to broker a deal to get Australian police into the Ukrainian crash site of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 — shot down by a surface-to-air missile on July 17 by Russian-backed rebels.

    • A beginner’s guide to Tor: How to navigate through the underground internet

      I’ll begin with a warning. Everything you’ve heard about the deep web is probably true. Yes, it’s a hub for illegal activity. Yes, cyber criminals run loose. And yes, users can find terrifying illegal behavior–including a bitcoin funded assassination market. In short, the Deep Web has a reputation for being virtual refuge for people who have something to hide. The most popular gateway into the Deep Web is Tor, a free network which allows users to anonymously browse the Web, and has been under NSA’s microscope since its inception in 2002. Countries like Russia and the US are trying to expose Tor users. Russia has issued a bounty, offering upwards of $100,000 for anyone who can successfully deanonymize Tor.

    • All of Your Tumblr Photos Will Now Be Scanned for Branded Content

      Tumblr, it seems, is also ready to help corporations cash in on its users’ impeccably curated tastes. It just inked a deal with Ditto, a company that scans images on the web for branded products and sells the results to multinationals like Coca-Cola and Kraft, and part of the deal involves giving Ditto wholesale access to all of Tumblr’s (which is to say Tumblr users’) photos.

    • ‘Without privacy we can’t have a free democracy’ – Former MI5 officer Annie Machon
    • What You Need To Know About The FISA Court—And How It Needs To Change
    • The Internet Metadata Memo: A Summary

      In the latter category, and likely of interest to anyone seeking to know more about the larger bulk collection story, is this 2004 submission to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“FISC”). The brief sought—and evidently, for a time, won—FISC sign-off for the NSA to collect internet metadata in bulk, pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (“FISA”) pen register and trap and trace rules. That’s consequential, considering what had happened earlier. As is well known, that year Department of Justice officials, including then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey and then-Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith (who had no role in editing this post) had protested the legality of highly secret surveillance program that President George W. Bush had authorized pursuant to his independent constitutional powers. The White House relented and agreed to changes—one being, apparently, a bid to bring the surveillance within the FISA framework.

    • Secret GCHQ system can map web connections of entire countries
    • GCHQ scanned entire countries for vulnerabilities with Hacienda programme
    • Masters of the Internet: GCHQ scanned entire countries for vulnerabilities
    • GCHQ Scans Entire Countries for Flaws to Exploit – Report

      British spy agency GCHQ has since 2009 been port scanning every available IP address in 27 countries across the globe for vulnerable systems to exploit, according to a new report.

      The HACIENDA program was exposed in secret documents obtained by reporters writing for German publisher Heise.

    • Russia and China Expand Trade in Computer Software

      As Russia’s relations with the West sour over Ukraine, the Kremlin has agreed to broaden software deliveries to China, with increased supplies of Chinese servers, storage systems and other IT products set to come the other way, Russian Communications and Mass Media Minister Nikolai Nikiforov said Monday.

      The deal is likely aimed at helping Russia replace deliveries of U.S. information technology products in light of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow for its role in the Ukraine crisis.

  • Civil Rights

    • Defense Industry Donations and the Alan Grayson Police Militarization Amendment

      With images of heavily armed police confronting protesters in Ferguson, Mo., sparking a national debate about police militarization, a campaign finance research organization has released a study showing how much defense industry money House members got before a June 19 vote that rejected Rep. Alan Grayson’s amendment to block military equipment transfers to local law enforcement. The organization, MapLight, found that those who voted against it got 73 percent more in defense industry donations than those who voted in favor.

    • How America’s police became so well armed

      Americans, at last, appear to have had enough. A Reason-Rupe poll released in December found that 58% of Americans believe police militarisation has gone “too far”. Whether their politicians heed them is another question. Rand Paul, a Republican senator from Kentucky and a likely contender for his party’s presidential nomination in 2016, just wrote an editorial arguing that it is time to “demilitarise the police”, but he has yet to introduce any legislation to back those words up. In June Alan Grayson, a liberal Democrat from Florida, sponsored an amendment that would have forbidden the Defence Department from transferring to local police “aircraft (including unmanned aerial vehicles), armoured vehicles, grenade launchers, silencers, toxicological agents (including chemical agents, biological agents, and associated equipment), launch vehicles, guided missiles, ballistic missiles, rockets, torpedoes, bombs, mines, or nuclear weapons.” It failed: not a single House leader of either party voted for it. America’s defence industry donates millions of dollars to politicians, and spends even more on lobbyists. Those who opposed Mr Grayson’s bill received, on average, 73% more in defence-industry donations than those who voted for it.

    • If police in Ferguson treat journalists like this, imagine how they treat residents

      You don’t arrest reporters just to stifle journalism — you do it to make a statement

    • From Boston to Ferguson: Have We Reached a Tipping Point in the Police State?

      The difference between what happened in Boston in the wake of the Boston Marathon explosion and what is happening now in Ferguson, Missouri, is not in the government’s response but in the community’s response.

      [...]

      This is what happens when you fail to take alarm at the first experiment on your liberties.

    • KKK raising money for Ferguson police officer

      A Missouri chapter of the Ku Klux Klan is planning a fundraiser this weekend for the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen.

    • 25 Images From The Worst Night Of Violence In Ferguson

      olice and protesters clashed again Sunday, hours before midnight curfew went into effect.

      Armed riot police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse a large group of protestors who marched toward a police command center in the parking lot of a shopping mall. Protesters threw back gas canisters and rocks at the police. Police responded to reports of multiple shootings, looting, and throwing of Molotov cocktails.

    • Autopsy Report Says Michael Brown Shot Twice in the Head

      An autopsy report conducted at the request of Michael Brown’s family shows that he was shot six times — four in the right arm and twice in the head — with all shots coming from the front of his body. The autopsy was the second of three that will be conducted on Brown’s body. Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered a federal medical examiner to do an independent examination. State officials performed the first autopsy. This second autopsy, performed on Sunday, was conducted by Dr. Michael Baden, a former chief medical examine for New York City, at the request of Brown’s family.

    • The US War Culture Has Come Home to Roost
    • The state of emergency in Ferguson, Missouri
    • Blowback in Ferguson

      The fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager and the ensuing protests in Ferguson, Missouri has rocked America. Even the mainstream media with its aversion to the truth, has been forced to address the militarization of the police in America — albeit years too late.

    • [CIA Post] I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.

      But if you believe (or know) that the cop stopping you is violating your rights or is acting like a bully, I guarantee that the situation will not become easier if you show your anger and resentment. Worse, initiating a physical confrontation is a sure recipe for getting hurt. Police are legally permitted to use deadly force when they assess a serious threat to their or someone else’s life. Save your anger for later, and channel it appropriately. Do what the officer tells you to and it will end safely for both of you. We have a justice system in which you are presumed innocent; if a cop can do his or her job unmolested, that system can run its course. Later, you can ask for a supervisor, lodge a complaint or contact civil rights organizations if you believe your rights were violated. Feel free to sue the police! Just don’t challenge a cop during a stop.

    • German journalists arrested in Ferguson

      Ansgar Graw and Frank Hermann were cuffed and jailed for three hours the day after arriving in the beleaguered suburb of St. Louis. Graw and Hermann were there to cover the town of Ferguson, whose African-American population has clashed fiercely with local police since the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a white police officer on August 9.

    • Chinese State Media Weigh In On Ferguson Riots, Citing Persistent Racism In ‘Every Aspect Of U.S. Social Lives’
    • Defense Contractors’ Funds Fuel Vote To Keep Dept. Of Defense’s Police Militarization Program Funded

      Color me unamazed. Politicians who are in favor of the government’s 1033 program — which distributes excess military gear and weapons to police departments engaged in our country’s two favorite “wars” (v. Terror, v. Drugs) — received a lot more money from defense contractors than those who oppose it.

    • The House voted not to demilitarize cops just two months ago. Will it be different after Ferguson?

      On June 19, the House voted on an amendment to a Department of Defense appropriations bill authored by Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.). In short, the amendment would have prevented the military from distributing to local police forces some of heavy weapons and vehicles that the country has seen deployed in response to unrest in Ferguson, Mo.

    • Police militarization catches eye of Congress
    • The continued war on black males

      The killing of Michael Brown at the hands of a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer is a reminder that, if you are a black man in America, you continue to be the nation’s number-one threat. There has been a long and protracted war against black men dating back to the antebellum period, where fear of plantation rebellions drove the country to enact heinous and draconian slave-revolt laws.

    • Police Militarization Escalates Even As Violence Declines — And There’s A Good Chance It’s Going To Get Worse

      We’ve been writing about the militarization of police, and why it’s problematic, for years — but the events of the last week in Ferguson, Missouri, have really shone a (rather bright) light on what happens when you militarize the police. Annie Lowrey, over at New York Magazine, highlights what may be most disturbing about all of it: all of this has happened while violence has been on a rapid decline, and, no it’s not because your local suburban police force now has a SWAT team and decommissioned military equipment from the Defense Department…

    • A Militarized Police, a Less Violent Public

      The story of Michael Brown’s death has in no small part been a story of police overreaction. The local force evidently killed an unarmed teenager, and then suited up as if going to war to police the generally peaceful protests that followed. And it’s revealed an irony: Over the past generation or so, we’ve militarized our police to protect a public that has broadly become less and less violent.

      It all starts back in 1990, a time when the country found itself with less demand for military equipment abroad and new use for it back home. Within our shores, the drug wars were escalating; gang violence was surging; and sociologists were warning of sociopathic child “superpredators.” At the same time, the military was starting to shrink as the Cold War ended. Put two and two together and you get the 1033 program, which transferred assets from the military to the police. (Here’s a capsule history.)

    • Ferguson, Missouri, and Trayvon Prove America Is No Democracy For Blacks

      The protests and riots in Ferguson, Missouri are providing proof the U.S. government sanctions racial injustice in this country while denouncing it abroad. The federal government spends trillions of dollars so we can be the world’s peacekeepers. We start wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of freedom. We help rebel groups oust dictators and oppressors like Muammar Gaddafi and the Taliban. We send drones and warplanes to bomb rebels from Islamic rebels in Iraq and Syria who are killing Christians. And we put sanctions on Iran for putting protesters in jail.

    • Ferguson Killing Exposes the Reality Of Militarized, Racist Policing directed against African Americans
    • Video: LAPD Tells Drone Operator Not To Fly Over Ezell Ford Protest

      Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old unarmed, mentally-challenged African-American man, was shot and killed by police last week in South L.A. The circumstances surrounding Ford’s death vary depending on who’s talking. The LAPD say the fatal shooting occurred only after a struggle in which Ford tried to grab an officer’s gun, while Ford’s family say there was no struggle.

    • East Turkestan: The Use of Drones in Yarkent Raises Concerns

      The Uyghur American Association urges the Chinese government to provide transparency over the use of drones in security operations in Yarkent County, fearing that deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles and militarization of the region will escalate further tensions and result in violence against Uyghur civilians.

    • China Said to Deploy Drones After Unrest in Xinjiang

      Three days after an eruption of violence in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang this summer left nearly 100 people dead, the region’s “antiterrorist command” asked the country’s biggest space and defense contractor for help. It wanted technical experts to operate drones that the authorities in Xinjiang had ordered last year in anticipation of growing unrest. The target was “terrorists,” according to the online edition of People’s Daily, a Communist Party media outlet.

    • PR workers outnumber journalists 5 to 1 in the US

      Back in 2004, public relations specialists outnumbered journalists about 3 to 1 in the United States. Today, as steady jobs in journalism disappear, it’s roughly 5 to 1. One reason more Americans are taking home a PR paycheck? It certainly pays a lot better than working in journalism.

    • The Crisis in Investigative Journalism

      Such investigative journalists are the vanguard of the so-called Fourth Estate, bearing the formidable task of watchdogging the other three estates – the Executive, Judiciary and Legislative – to ensure that they remain ‘checks and balances’ to each other in their assigned constitutional tasks of maintaining the Democratic Republic’s integrity and vibrancy. While such journalists are often associated with a ‘paper of record’, their work is so crucial that sometimes some separation even from their publisher is necessary, since publications are owned, and owners have political agendas, and those agendas may conflict with the findings of deep journalism. Recall, for instance, the New York Time’s decision to hold back, on the brink of the November 2004 presidential election, an explosive investigatory report on the Bush administration’s use of the NSA for warrantless domestic wiretapping (shocking revelations that beat Snowden’s by years) – a delay with serious repercussions for the Times’ reputation.

      Prior to Glenn Greenwald’s in-depth journalistic interpretation and analysis of Edward Snowden’s raw NSA revelations last year, undoubtedly the most significant investigative journalism in US history came with the publication and analysis of the Pentagon Papers, released to the press by ex-Rand analyst Daniel Ellsberg back in 1971. Of the three branches of government, the Executive is the one that requires the most watchdogging because it is the branch wherein a single individual – the president – has a disproportionate and unilateral power at his disposal, compared to the Judiciary and Legislative, where decisions must come as the result of conference and consensus. The president can potentially become another form of king, if not checked. What the Pentagon Papers uncovered was the history of America’s secret presidential war-mongering in Viet Nam, beginning with the Eisenhower administration down through Nixon’s utterly corrupt regime – a history of unilateral and illegal foreign policy decision-making that by-passed Congress and the people they represent.

      This is not merely academic or specious. It seems that very few people recall now that when the chips were down for Nixon, he was actively considering a military coup to stay in office. As legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote in a long-form piece for the Atlantic in 1983,

      The notion that Nixon could at any time resort to extraordinary steps to preserve his presidency was far more widespread in the government than the public perceived in the early days of Watergate or perceives today.

    • NYT reporter James Risen: Obama a ‘hypocrite,’ ‘greatest enemy to press freedom’

      It’s not a secret that the Obama administration has cracked down on whistle-blowers harder than any previous administration. Now a New York Times reporter and former Pulitzer Prize-winner has some harsh words for the president.

    • James Risen: Obama ‘greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation’
    • Embattled Reporter: Obama’s Support for Press Freedom ‘Hypocritical’
    • New York Times reporter has harsh words for Barack Obama’s view of the press
    • Obama Admin ‘Greatest Enemy to Press Freedom in a Generation’
    • 910 KINA Coffee Talk: Is President Obama one of the greatest enemies of press freedom?
    • 2. New York Times reporter calls Obama A “Press Enemy”
    • NYTimes Reporter: Obama ‘Greatest Enemy To Press Freedom In A Generation’ [VIDEO]
    • James Risen calls Obama ‘greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation’
    • Journalist James Risen denounces President Obama as the “greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation”
    • Obama denounced as ‘greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation’
    • Reporter to get Newspaper Guild award for defying subpoena
    • NY Times’ James Risen: Obama Is ‘Greatest Enemy of Press Freedom in a Generation’
    • Obama May Soon Send This Reporter to Jail. Here Are the Embarrassing Secrets He Exposed.

      The Obama administration has fought a years-long court battle to force longtime New York Times national security correspondent James Risen to reveal the source for a story in his 2006 book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. Risen may soon serve jail time for refusing to out his source. The fight has drawn attention to Obama’s less-than-stellar track record on press freedom—in a recent interview, Risen called the president “the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation.” But lost in the ruckus are the details of what Risen revealed. Here’s what has the government so upset.

      In State of War, Risen revealed a secret CIA operation, code-named Merlin, that was intended to undermine the Iranian nuclear program. The plan—originally approved by president Bill Clinton, but later embraced by George W. Bush—was to pass flawed plans for a trigger system for a nuclear weapon to Iran in the hopes of derailing the country’s nuclear program. “It was one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world,” Risen wrote in State of War, “providing the solution to one of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United States and Russia from the rogue countries like Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short.”

    • A Tale of Two Alleged Iran Nuke Leakers

      Over a year ago, NBC reported that General Cartwright had received a target letter informing him he was under investigation as the source for one of David Sanger’s stories on US-Israeli efforts to stall Iran’s enrichment program with the StuxNet cyberattack.

    • Muslim states should learn a lesson from 1953 coup in Iran: Larijani

      Last year, the CIA publicly admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran’s democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddeq, in documents that also showed how the British government tried to block the release of information about its own involvement in his overthrow.

    • BSC President and retired Gen. Charles Krulak calls for full disclosure of CIA torture program (Opinion)

      In a strongly worded commentary Birmingham Southern College President and former Marine Corps commandant, retired Gen. Charles C. Krulak, said the CIA must not be allowed to “circle the wagons” to prevent the full disclosure by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence of a report detailing the agency’s torture program during the early years of the War on Terror.

    • UK ambassador ‘lobbied’ US senators to obscure Britain’s complicity in CIA rendition program

      Records published under Britain’s Freedom of Information (FOI) Act have compounded concerns that the UK government lobbied US officials to keep Britain’s role in CIA torture and rendition out of a soon-to-be published Senate report.

      Newly-released data reveals Britain’s ambassador to the US, Peter Westmacott, engaged in at least 21 separate meetings with members of the US Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) prior to its publication of this report, heightening existing allegations that the British government may be seeking to sanitize the document.

    • UK lobbied to hide role in CIA torture program: Report
    • Ackerman: CIA snooping on Senate strikes at Constitution

      CIA spying on the Senate is the constitutional equivalent of the Watergate break-in. In both cases, the executive branch attacked the very foundations of our system of checks and balances.

      President Barack Obama is not Richard Nixon. Obama hasn’t been implicated personally in organizing this constitutional assault. But he is wrong to support the limited response of his CIA director, John Brennan, who is trying to defer serious action by simply creating an “accountability panel” to consider “potential disciplinary measures” or “systemic issues.”

    • Nation’s true heroes fought to expose and end torture

      After more than a decade of denial and concealment on the part of our government, President Barack Obama’s recent acknowledgment that “we tortured some folks” felt like a milestone. Even in its spare, reductive phrasing, the president’s statement opened up the possibility, finally, of national reflection, contrition and accountability.

    • Letter: We must turn our backs on torture

      Let’s turn our backs on torture

      Editor: Torture is the intentional infliction of pain to make someone talk. President Obama used plain English to describe what the CIA did during the Bush administration. The New York Times just decided to stop sugar-coating it. It no longer uses “enhanced interrogation methods”, and now uses the word “torture” I urge The Record to tell it like it is. This helps us, as citizens, face clearly what was done in our name.

    • How Abu Zubaydah’s Torture Put CIA and FBI in NSA’s Databases

      In other words, the justification for creating a database where CIA and FBI could directly access much of NSA’s data was a mirage, one created by CIA’s own torture.

      All that’s separate from the question of whether CIA and FBI should have access directly to NSA’s data. Perhaps it makes us more responsive. Perhaps it perpetuates this process of chasing ghosts. That’s a debate we should have based on actual results, not the tortured false confessions of a decade past.

    • Women bring challenge against London police for sending undercover officers to have sex with them

      I just came across these videos while reading about the ongoing litigation in the UK against the Metropolitan police department, related to its red-squad undercover infiltration of left-wing movements in London and beyond. They look really interesting and well worth watching (full disclosure, though: I can’t vouch for them, because I haven’t yet watched them).

    • 7 Pages That Gave President Obama Cover to Kill Americans
    • Here Are the 7 Pages That Gave President Obama Cover to Kill Americans

      Before David Barron was confirmed this year to a lifetime seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, his critics objected that the cover he gave President Obama to carry out extrajudicial killings of American citizens ought to disqualify him from the bench. “I rise today to oppose the nomination of anyone who would argue that the president has the power to kill an American citizen not involved in combat and without a trial,” Senator Rand Paul declared in remarks opposing the nomination. “I rise to say that there is no legal precedent for killing citizens not involved in combat and that any nominee who rubber stamps and grants such power to a president is not worthy of being one step away from the Supreme Court.”

    • Nazi Resister Returns Holocaust Medal to Israel After Losing Relatives in Gaza

      A 91-year-old man honored by Israel for saving a Jewish life during the Nazi Holocaust has returned his medal in protest of the Gaza assault. Henk Zanoli was given Israel’s Righteous Among the Nations award for his actions under Nazi occupation in Amsterdam. In 1943, Zanoli smuggled out a Jewish boy and helped hide him in his home for two years, despite Nazi suspicion he and his family backed the resistance.

    • Israel Blocks Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch from Gaza

      The Israeli government is blocking Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch from entering the Gaza Strip, preventing researchers from investigating the assault. The Israeli journalist Amira Hass reports the groups have been told they must register as a humanitarian aid organization, only to later be informed they do not qualify. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have previously issued reports that raised allegations of potential war crimes by Israel, as well as on a smaller scale by Hamas.

    • This Week in Transparency: The Mosaic Effect

      Among the many, many issues raised by the fatal police shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old black kid in Ferguson, Missouri this week was police transparency. The Ferguson police initially refused to release the name of the officer who shot the victim, Michael Brown, leading to a national outcry.

      It is one of the peculiarities of police departments that officers are afforded great privacy protections when they are involved in such an incident. Officer safety is cited, which is well and good, but police departments often feel no similar compunction to protect the identity of civilian suspects.

    • Has the US Legal System Always Been Such a Joke?

      It’s easy to feel cynical about law and order in America. Just peruse the tales of paramilitary police forces exerting their will on minorities in places like Ferguson, Missouri while rich bankers routinely escape from punishment for their white-collar crimes. Now the US Sentencing Commission is considering curbing the jail terms dished out for financial crimes like fraud, figuring that since the Feds have finally started to scale back mandatory minimums for drug offenses, we might as well take it even easier on corporate execs.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Court: Usenet Provider Doesn’t Have to Filter Pirated Content

        The defunct News-Service.com, once one of the leading Usenet providers with many prominent resellers, has scored a court victory against Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN. The appeals court overturned a previous verdict and ruled that the Usenet provider doesn’t have to monitor and filter pirated content.

Links 19/8/2014: GNU/Linux Raves and Alternative to Proprietary Voice Chat

Posted in News Roundup at 4:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • European Space Agency are using SUSE Linux

    Actually SUSE Linux began deployment at ESA in 2012 and has been continuing until now, the distro is used by 450 teams in the European Space Operations Centre at ESA, this includes being used by Mission Control Systems who are responsible for simulation and control of aircraft and satellites outside the atmosphere and further still.

  • Younger generation driving Linux take-up, says Canadian vendor

    A Canadian technology company has started shipping notebooks and laptops loaded with Linux due to demand from the younger generation, the owner of the company says.

    Braden Taylor of Eurocom, a company based in Ontario, said he shipped systems all over the world, including to Australia.

    “We are finding that more and more of the younger generation are moving to Linux for a variety of reasons,” he said, in response to queries.

    “We are getting more and more inquiries about Ubuntu and Mint from the younger generation all over the world. They like that it is a low-cost alternative.”

  • Loving Linux: Ain’t Nothin’ Like the 1st Time

    “My first real exposure to Linux was at a friend’s house,” said Linux Rants blogger Mike Stone. “He was trying to make a Macintosh he owned into a useful computer, so he’d dual-booted it with a version of Linux called MkLinux. I was absolutely fascinated by it and the FOSS philosophy, and after using his computer for a week or so, I looked into getting Linux [on] my own.”

  • Desktop

    • Need a Cheap Chromebook? Here’s How to Pick One

      Instead of running Windows, these lightweight, inexpensive notebooks are based entirely on Google’s Chrome web browser. So while you can’t install traditional programs such as Office and Photoshop, you can use web-based substitutes like the free Office Online and Pixlr. In exchange, you’ll get a computer that boots up quickly, is safe from viruses, doesn’t have any obnoxious bloatware and is optimized for browsing the web.

  • Server

    • Xen Virtualization Takes On Automotive

      On Aug. 18 at the Xen Project Developer Summit, the Xen Project unveiled an Embedded and Automotive initiative for its datacenter-focused Xen virtualization technology. The immediate goal is to help auto manufacturers “adopt open source virtualization” to “quickly and cost-effectively develop a flexible, robust, and customizable integrated cockpit — one that keeps drivers safe, while meeting consumers’ connected car expectations,” according to the Xen Project, a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project.

    • Xen hypervisor targets automotive virtualization role

      The Xen Project’s Embedded and Automotive initiative will bring its hypervisor to a GlobalLogic IVI stack combining a fast-boot Android with Linux or QNX.

      The Xen Project Collaborative Project has launched an Embedded and Automotive initiative to expand its virtualization technology beyond the datacenter and cloud realms. Initially, the subproject will center on a collaboration with GlobalLogic on the company’s Nautilus [PDF] in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) and telematics platform. An embedded version of the open source Xen Project type 1 hypervisor is integrated in Nautilus to enable sandboxed implementations of Android (for IVI) and either QNX or Linux for telematics and other back-end automotive services. The QNX/Android combination appears to be the main focus, however.

    • IBM Techies Pit Docker, KVM Against Linux Bare Metal

      IBM has only recently caught the KVM bug, and has even gone so far as to create a variant of the KVM hypervisor that runs atop its Power8 systems when they run Linux. But if new performance statistics coming out of IBM Research are any guide, it looks like Big Blue will be porting the new Docker container technology to Power-based systems sometime soon.

    • Is KVM or Docker Faster for Server Virtualization?
    • A new report from IBM stacks up Linux container against KVM virtual machine performance.

      In the traditional hypervisor Virtual Machine (VM) approach that is used by VMware’s ESX and open-source options like Xen and KVM, a host operating system runs the hypervisors, which then in turn requires an operating system of its own for VMs. The Docker model is a bit different in that only the host operating system is required and containerized apps then run on top of that OS.

  • Kernel Space

    • Systemd: Harbinger of the Linux apocalypse

      Now that Red Hat has released RHEL 7 with systemd in place of the erstwhile SysVinit, it appears that the end of the world is indeed approaching. A schism and war of egos is unfolding within the Linux community right now, and it is drawing blood on both sides. Ultimately, no matter who “wins,” Linux looks to lose this one.

    • Linux 3.17-rc1 released

      Linus Torvalds has cut short the Linux 3.17 merge window by a day and released Linux 3.17-rc1 because of his travel plans.

    • Linux Kernel Version 3.17-rc1 has been Released!

      Linux kernel version 3.17-rc1 has been released today, with updates ranging from AMD’s Radeon R9 series improvements, increased audio driver support, and Nouveau updates that dominate this kernel release.

    • Linux kernel devs made to finger their dongles before contributing code

      Beginning on Monday, the security of the Linux kernel source code has become a little bit tighter with the addition of two-factor authentication for the kernel’s Git code repositories.

      Contributing code changes to the Linux kernel sources at Kernel.org already required more than just a password, even before the change. Developers must use their own unique SSH public keys to login to the Git repositories. But not even this added security layer was truly failsafe – as the software’s maintainers found out in 2011 when their servers were rooted.

    • Linux Foundation Pushes Two-Factor Authentication For Git

      In particular, the Linux Foundation is pushing for more kernel developers to adopt an additional authentication method beyond just their password / SSH key. The Linux Foundation and Yubico partnered up to offer Yubikeys for kernel developers this week at the Linux events in Chicago to encourage the use of more two-factor authentication for Git repositories.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Direct3D 9 Support Stands A Chance Of Being Added To Mesa

        For several months now there’s been a Direct3D 9 state tracker under development for Mesa that’s making some headway and working out for bettering the Wine performance with D3D9 titles rather than using Wine’s translation layer to OpenGL. While no official request for pulling the code has been issued, it looks like it might stand a chance of hitting mainline Mesa.

      • Wayland 1.6 Is Under Planning For Release

        We haven’t heard much talk lately about Wayland 1.6 but Pekka Paalanen is stepping up and is trying to begin organizing work towards the Wayland/Weston 1.6 release that’s quickly due.

      • The road to Wayland/Weston 1.6 and 1.5.1
      • NIR: A New IR Developed For Mesa That’s Better Than GLSL IR

        Connor Abbott, the open-source developer that began contributing to the Lima Linux graphics driver while a high school student, was interning at Intel this summer even before starting college. Over the summer the focus of his Intel Linux internship was focusing on developing a new intermediate representation for Mesa graphics drivers.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • what is “the desktop”: KDE and laptops
      • Convergence will not happen, says KDE dev Aaron Seigo
      • On Plasma5: present and future

        Finally, the artwork presented in 5.0 is only a preview of what is still to come from the Visual Design Group: more icons, more complete widget set, more and more applications will receive a makeover look-wise and most importantly usability-wise.

      • Google Summer of Code 2014: QML/Javascript language support for KDevelop 4 and 5

        Today is the end of the Google Summer of Code 2014 coding period. This year, I added support for the QML and Javascript languages in KDevelop. Both languages were added at the same time because QML is a superset of Javascript (one can embed JS snippets in QML files).

      • Choose your Look and Feel experience

        Plasma 5.1 will make way easier to fine-tune their workspace to their needs.While already very powerful, it was not always trivial, so now on one hand it will be possible choose between plasmoids that offer the same feature with a very simple UI.
        On the other hand, ever wanted to set themes, look and feel of your desktop, but was discouraged by how many places you had to change themes to make the experience as you wanted? being icon theme, widget style, plasma theme, cursors etc…
        Plasma 5.1 will support the concept of Look and Feel packages (or “mega themes” if you like) Basically an one stop place to set the look and feel of the whole desktop.

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Raspbian explained

      That’s a little bit mind-boggling but I think I understand. So if Raspbian is a version of Debian, is there ‘pure’ Debian on Raspberry Pi?

    • Raspberry Pi was created to solve talent crisis at Cambridge: Eben Upton [Interview]

      Raspberry Pi needs no introduction. It is one of the most popular credit card sized single board computers which has become a revolution in its own right. The $25 (and $35 for B model) hardware is being used in so many fields that it’s hard to keep a tab on it.

    • Kids Are Learning to Code With a Slice of Raspberry Pi

      Raspberry Pi is a credit card-size computer that can function like a basic PC when plugged into a monitor and keyboard. It can record videos and power drones, but developer Eben Upton says his goal was to teach basic programming skills to students as young as 8.

      The small computer, sold by the nonprofit Raspberry Pi Foundation, is a small green board covered in metal ports. It’s light, delicate, and fits in the palm of your hand. Once it’s plugged into a keyboard and monitor, a user can write and tweak code as with any PC. The latest model, B+, has 10 operating systems to choose from, with varying learning curves.

    • Phones

      • Ballnux

        • Tizen Samsung NX30 awarded European Connected Camera 2014-2015

          The Samsung NX30 is a special bit of kit, with its excellent sharing smart camera features, quick focus of 0.3 seconds, but its now been confirmed again with the the Korean manufacturer being awarded European Connected Camera 2014-2015 by the European Imaging and Sound Association. See the Press Release Clip for further details.

      • Android

        • Is fragmentation a thing of the past for Android?

          I’m inclined to agree with the spirit of the article. Yes, fragmentation has been a significant problem in the past for Android. But there’s no denying that Google is working hard to move the platform past the fragmentation issues that have plagued it over the years.

          So I see fragmentation as a problem that is slowly but surely sunsetting on the Android platform. No, it’s not going to just vanish immediately but it will continue to decline as time goes by and more and more of Google’s efforts bear fruit. Google Play Services and Android Silver should both help cut down on the problem of fragmentation in Android.

        • Sharp to launch thinnest and lowest-bezel smartphone ever

          Sharp (yes folks you heard right) have announced they are launching two new handsets in Japan and there is rumors circulating one of them will eventually hit stateside. Of the two handsets the Aquos Crystal is the handset that very well make it to the US market.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • Look inside building an open source map app

    Imagine yourself walking down the middle of a crowded street in a complex city like Cairo. Suddenly a protest builds ahead. A mass of people, cutting off the road. You try to evade, but then violence breaks out in mere seconds. You need help. Someone else, a car to get you out. A phone call might suffice, but wouldn’t it be easier to notify all your friends that this place is dangerous and that you need their assistance? This is where a map-based social network could come into play.

  • Mesosphere and Google Team Up on Containers and Clusters

    Recently, I covered the news that Google had released Kubernetes under an open-source license, which is essentially a version of Borg, used to harness computing power from data centers into a powerful virtual machine. It can make a difference for many cloud computing deployments, and optimizes usage of container technology. You can find the source code for Kubernetes on GitHub.

  • Coreboot Now Works On The Older MacBook 1,1 Too
  • Open Source Archive Manager PeaZip 5.4.1 Has New GUI Design

    Open source file and archive manager PeaZip 5.4.1, which can be used to extract, create, and convert multiple archives at once, has just been released.

  • ClusterHQ Flocker Aims to Simplify Data Migration for Docker Cloud

    The Docker open source containerized virtualization ecosystem has taken another important step forward with the introduction of Flocker from ClusterHQ, a platform that promises to make data as portable as applications by including databases and key-value stores inside Docker containers.

  • Events

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Mesosphere Comes To The Google Cloud Platform, Integrates Google’s Open Source Kubernetes Project

      Google and Mesosphere today announced a partnership that brings support for Mesos clusters to Google’s Compute Engine platform. While the Mesos project and Mesosphere aren’t quite household names yet, they are quickly becoming important tools for companies that want to be able to easily scale their applications, no matter whether that’s in their own data centers, in a public cloud service, or as a hybrid deployment.

    • Rackspace Adds Redis Open Source Data Store Support to ObjectRocket

      In a move that should help further expand Rackspace’s (RAX) appeal to next-generation app developers for the cloud, the company has integrated Redis, the open source in-memory key-value data server, into ObjectRocket, the DBaaS platform Rackspace acquired in 2013.

  • Databases

    • MongoDB tosses support lifeline to open source downloaders

      Open source NoSQL database vendor MongoDB has added a new support option for customers who want to run the Community Edition of its software in production environments.

      “Our Production Support offering is now available as a standalone service – separate from our MongoDB Enterprise software,” MongoDB marketing director Meghan Gill wrote in a blog post on Monday. “This means that Community Edition users now have access to our world-class team of support engineers.”

    • As DBMS wars continue, PostgreSQL shows most momentum

      It’s hard to tell which database management systems (DBMB)s are the most popular. DB-Engines gives it a try every month. And, by its count, Oracle is still the top DBMS, followed closed by Oracle’s open-source DBMS MySQL, which is just noses ahead of Microsoft SQL Server.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • The two sides of freedom

      Throughout history, the word “freedom” has been used to mean many different things. It has been the central word for revolutions, for declarations of independence, for human rights movements, for philosophers, for theologians, for the Free Software movement. It is used in marketing slogans for phone companies, for KDE, for both cigarettes and non-smoking initiatives. The word has also been used to justify military occupations, torture and mass surveillance.

    • on gnu and on hackers

      There are many reasons for this, of course. Some people like to focus on what’s called the “pipeline problem” — that there aren’t as many women coming out of computer science programs as men. While true, the proportion of women CS graduates is much higher than the proportion of women at GHM events, so something must be happening in between. And indeed, the attrition rates of women in the tech industry are higher than that of men — often because we men make it a needlessly unpleasant place for women to be. Sometimes it’s even dangerous. The incidence of sexual harassment and assault in tech, especially at events, is something terrible. Scroll down in that linked page to June, July, and August 2014, and ask yourself whether that’s OK. (Hint: hell no.)

  • Public Services/Government

    • India is a net taker from the open source movement – Professor DB Phatak, IIT Bombay

      Introducing Professor Deepak Phatak, IIT Bombay to Indian audience is akin to introducing Sachin Tendulkar to Indians, a sacrilege one would hazard at one’s own peril. Suffice it to remind that Professor Deepak Phatak, IIT Bombay is a recipient of the Padma Shri for his contribution to Science and Technology.

      In an interview with Prabhakar Deshpande, Professor DB Phatak shares his perspective on the role of open source and how technology can transform healthcare and education.

    • 18F publishes guidelines for open source contribution

      As the General Services Administration’s 18F continues to promote open source federal IT development, the organization last week published a contributor’s guide to help those reusing and sharing its code.

      Tracing the basics along with other key topics like how users can enhance code, 18F’s Dr. Robert Read explains in his post on 18F’s tumblr the best ways anyone — federal worker or not — can take part in the team’s development process and why they should. Read uses the FBOpen.com project as a real-time example of how contributors can leverage 18F code and even offer improvements, which he argues “improves the rapidity of our coding and the quality and security of the code.”

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Improve your online relationships with a dose of empathy

      Humans have always formed communities. They are necessary for support both physically and, according to psychologists, emotionally as well. Until recently, though, the development of communities was constrained by geography. If you wanted to raise a barn or have a quilting circle, for example, only the folks nearby could participate. The Internet, though, has allowed communities to grow in ways that are not bounded by geography.

    • Shifting a mindset, why OpenStack is written in Python, and more

    • Open Hardware

      • 3D-printed AirEnergy3D takes open source approach to wind turbines

        The AirEnergy3D is an open source, 3D-printed, portable wind turbine prototype whose creators claim will be able to generate up to 300 W of power. Designed to be easily assembled and disassembled without tools, the device is intended to be compact enough to be transported in a backpack, allowing it to be taken camping or anywhere else that there is a breeze and no access to the electricity grid.

  • Programming

    • PHP 5.3 Hits End-of-Life

      I first wrote about PHP 5.3 back in 2009 when it first debuted. Five years later PHP 5.3 is now at its End of Life, dead and abandoned as newer versions have replaced it.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Row as horsemeat file shelved

      The official report into the causes of the horsemeat scandal has been shelved until at least the autumn, prompting criticism that the government is not doing enough on food safety.

      The inquiry by Chris Elliott, professor of food safety at Queen’s University Belfast, was announced by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs 16 months ago and was to have been completed by the spring. It is expected to highlight the impact of spending cuts on frontline enforcement and inspection in the food industry.

  • Security

    • Monday’s security updates
    • We still believe in Linus’ law after Heartbleed bug, says Elie Auvray of Jahia

      Jahia was incepted in 2002 in Switzerland – the name comes from the contraction of Java (our core language) and Bahia (which means “bay” in Brazil). To support the international growth of the project, Jahia Solutions Group was later formed (in 2005) with offices throughout Europe and Jahia Inc. (the US subsidiary) was created in 2008. Jahia has now offices in Geneva, Paris, Toronto, Chicago, Washington, DC, Dusseldorf and Klagenfurt – and outsourced support centers in Australia and Nicaragua.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Assange to ‘soon’ leave Ecuadorian Embassy

      Julian Assange recently held a press conference at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He says he has plans to leave the Embassy soon where he has been trapped for the past two years, but gave no details on why he’d be released.

      According to Assange the UN human rights states that prisoners must have a minimum of one hours outside a day however Assange’s only access to the outside is the balcony from which he spoke from to supporters a few years ago.

      He said that he understood Wikileaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson had said “that he can confirm i am leaving the embassy soon” however Hrafnsson later responded saying Assange could leave the embassy when the UK government “calls of the siege”.

  • Finance

    • A third of people have nothing saved for retirement

      A third of people (36%) in the U.S. have nothing saved for retirement, a new survey shows.

      In fact, 14% of people ages 65 and older have no retirement savings; 26% of those 50 to 64; 33%, 30 to 49; and 69%,18 to 29, according to the survey of 1,003 adults, conducted for Bankrate.com, a personal finance website.

    • More Than One-Third of Americans Have No Savings

      More than one-third of Americans haven’t started putting away money for retirement, but those who do are making the move a bit earlier than past generations.

  • Privacy

    • Boston Police Used Facial Recognition Software To Grab Photos Of Every Person Attending Local Music Festivals

      Once again, the government is experimenting on the public with new surveillance technology and not bothering to inform them until forced to do so. Boston’s police department apparently performed a dry run of its facial recognition software on attendees of a local music festival.

    • BOSTON TROLLING (PART I): YOU PARTIED HARD AT BOSTON CALLING AND THERE’S FACIAL RECOGNITION DATA TO PROVE IT

      Nobody at either day of last year’s debut Boston Calling partied with much expectation of privacy. With an army of media photographers, selfie takers, and videographers recording every angle of the massive concert on Government Center, it was inherently clear that music fans were in the middle of a massive photo opp.

    • How Various Law Enforcement Agencies Could Hack Your Computer Via YouTube Videos

      When we recently wrote about Google starting to make use of SSL for search rankings, one of our commenters noted that not every site really “needs” HTTPS. While I used to agree, I’ve been increasingly leaning in the other direction, and I may have been pushed over the edge entirely by a new research report from the Citizen Lab by Morgan Marquis-Boire (perhaps better known as Morgan Mayhem), entitled Schrodinger’s Cat Video and the Death of Clear-Text. He’s also written about it at the Intercept (where he now works), explaining how watching a cat video on YouTube could get you hacked (though not any more).

    • Ron Wyden: It’s Time To Kill The Third Party Doctrine And Go Back To Respecting Privacy

      For years, we’ve written about the third party doctrine and its troubling implications for the 4th Amendment and your privacy — especially in the digital era. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the third party doctrine is the concept used by law enforcement (and, tragically, the courts) to say that you have no expectation of privacy or 4th Amendment rights in information you’ve given to a third party. The origins of this argument are not completely crazy, because there is a legitimate claim to the idea that if I entrust you with some private information, and you decide to disclose it, that my 4th Amendment rights haven’t been violated. But that assumes a very different world. In today’s digital world — especially with cloud computing — we “entrust” all sorts of information to third parties even though we still think of and treat that information like it’s our own personal effects. These aren’t cases in which I’m handing over a collection of journals to my neighbor to hold onto. Online services are treated as our own content — which we can access, update and modify at any time from any device.

    • From The Unsealed ‘Jewel v. NSA’ Transcript: The DOJ Has Nothing But Contempt For American Citizens

      Not that it ultimately mattered. The NSA just kept destroying relevant evidence, claiming the system was too complex to do anything with but allow to run its course. Evidence would be destroyed at the 5-year limit, no matter what preservation orders were issued. The NSA, of course, has a vested interest in destroying evidence that its 215 and 702 programs collect the data and communications of Americans. Thanks to Snowden’s leaks, it can no longer pretend it doesn’t. But despite this, the DOJ still claims Section 702 targets only foreigners and American suspects located outside of the US.

      The mock concern about compliance with court orders was a hustle. The DOJ wants as much evidence that might be useful to plaintiffs gone as swiftly as possible. Thanks to the unsealing of Jewel court documents, the EFF can now relate that the DOJ’s efforts went much further than simply letting aged-off collections expire. It also actively tried to change the historical record of the Jewel case, as Mike covered here recently.

    • NativeWrap for Android turns websites into apps to improve your privacy

      If you want to access a website or service like Facebook, Twitter or Google on your mobile device you have two options. You can either open a mobile browser and point it to the service, or install an app that provides you with access.

      Both options have privacy and security implications. With apps, it is all about permissions that you grant the app to have. While the permissions are often justified, they are not all the time so that additional information can be retrieved even though that’s not needed for the apps’ functionality.

  • Civil Rights

    • Fox’s Pinkerton Baselessly Speculates Michael Brown Could Have Been “High On Some Drug, Angel Dust Or PCP”
    • Lawmaker drafting bill to demilitarize local police

      A Democratic congressman from Georgia is drafting legislation to limit a Pentagon program that provides surplus military equipment to local law enforcement.

      Rep. Hank Johnson is pushing the legislation amid the situation in Ferguson, Mo., where an armed police presence has taken to the streets after mass protests over a police shooting.

      “Our main streets should be a place for business, families, and relaxation, not tanks and M16s,” Johnson wrote in a Dear Colleague letter sent Thursday to other members of Congress.

    • Seven pieces of military equipment the Pentagon is giving to local police
    • Seattle police chief during WTO unrest appalled by Ferguson violence

      The first thing Norm Stamper thought when he saw images of the protests in Ferguson, Mo., following the police shooting of an unarmed black man was straight out of a folk song — “When will we ever learn?”

      “My reaction was, ‘Please learn from my mistakes, from what I did and did not do during the week of WTO,’ ” said the former Seattle police chief, who presided over a law enforcement response to widespread demonstrations in 1999 that was vilified around the globe for its heavy handedness.

    • Police In Ferguson Sign Court Agreement Promising Not To Interfere With Media… Then Go Threaten And Arrest Media

      Note that the agreement was signed by Hussein and parties representing St. Louis County, the City of Ferguson and the Missouri Highway Patrol… on Friday the 15th. The threat to Hussein came on Sunday… the 17th.

    • Ferguson Cops Once Beat an Innocent Man and Then Charged Him With BLEEDING ON THEIR UNIFORMS

      As Michael Daly reports at The Daily Beast, the address where the defendant was said to have so wantonly damaged these officers’ uniforms is in fact the address of the Ferguson Police Department, which recently took over from the colon-searchers in Deming, New Mexico, as America’s favorite. Did the above-named defendant go down there voluntarily and throw blood upon their uniforms? No he did not.

      The above-named defendant was 52-year-old Henry Davis, who was a Henry Davis but not the Henry Davis they were looking for. This Henry Davis had the bad luck to be caught in a driving rainstorm on the highway, reportedly missing the exit for St. Charles and ending up in Ferguson. Having pulled over to wait out the rain, he became the prey of an officer who ran his plate and found an outstanding warrant for “Henry Davis.”

    • NYT Would Call It Torture–If It Covered Torture

      But what if the paper decides that well-documented evidence of US torture is not fit to print?

      On August 11, Amnesty International released a lengthy report about abuses in Afghanistan committed by US forces and others, including Afghan security. The report includes serious allegations about US Special Forces torturing Afghan civilians.

    • Action Alert: NYT Skips First Big Test of New Torture Policy

      FAIR’s new Action Alert (8/18/14) calls out the New York Times for not covering a major Amnesty International report on US torture–shortly after the paper announced a new policy of calling torture by its right name.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Study: Many tribal libraries lack broadband

      At least two-fifths of Native American libraries don’t have broadband Internet access, according to a study released this month, though the actual number could be as high as 89 percent.

      Additionally, just 42 percent of libraries surveyed for the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums’ annual study provided technology training, compared to 90 percent of all public libraries. Just 34 percent of the tribal libraries had a website.

  • DRM

    • Kill switches might let the government brick your smartphone

      Smartphone kill switch laws have been touted in the media a lot lately as a way to protect your phone from theft. But are they actually a good idea? If Google or Apple can brick your smartphone then what is to stop the government from ordering them to do so when it wants to stop you from using your phone? Foss Force takes a look at some of the chilling and disturbing consequences of smartphone kill switches.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • U.S. Court Grants Order to Wipe Pirate Sites from the Internet

        A U.S. federal court in Oregon has granted a broad injunction against several streaming sites that offer pirated content. Among other things, the copyright holder may order hosting companies to shut down the sites’ servers, ask registrars to take away domain names, and have all search results removed from Google and other search engines.

      • Hollywood Desperate To Blame Bad Opening Box Office Of Expendables 3 On Piracy Rather Than The Fact That It Sucked

        It’s been kind of crazy to watch movie studio Lionsgate go absolutely crazy over the fact that The Expendables 3 leaked online a few weeks ago. Within a few days, Lionsgate had filed a massive lawsuit, been granted a restraining order and followed it up with thousands of takedown notices, combined with targeting everyone from hosting providers to domain registrars, in a quixotic attempt to make the leaked files disappear.

08.18.14

Links 18/8/2014: Linux 3.17 RC1, Escalation in Ferguson

Posted in News Roundup at 6:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Coreboot Now Has Native Graphics Initialization For Intel’s GM45

    Vladimir Serbinenko has managed to get working native VGA initialization for the GM45 graphics that’s hard-coded into Coreboot as an alternative to using the hardware’s video BIOS for starting up the GMA graphics.

  • Linux training courses to be offered at Camp Shelby

    Camp Shelby will soon offer some high-tech computer training that will set itself apart from other military facilities in the country.

  • The Time to Recommend Linux & FOSS Is Now

    When I first started using Linux twelve years ago, no one I knew, other than folks on the local LUG, were interested in giving Linux or FOSS a try whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong; my friends were nice. They supported my enthusiasm for this Linux thing I’d discovered, but were politely uninterested when I suggested they might want to give Linux a try too. That didn’t surprise me at all. Hell, I’d been trying to get people to give Star Office a try since the turn of the millennium and they wouldn’t go for that either, even though they were paying through the nose for MS Office.

  • Real People Now Ready To Accept A Real OS

    When I first taught in the North, no one I met had heard much about GNU/Linux and no one had tried GNU/Linux on a desktop, even myself. After a few years of using GNU/Linux in schools, everything changed. I met students, parents and members of the community who had used GNU/Linux before I arrived and I travelled to a new community almost every year. Students and community members also travel and several in each community had previously installed GNU/Linux or attended a school that used GNU/Linux much as I did. That was before Android/Linux and ChromeOS took off…

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 3.17-rc1

      I’m going to be on a plane much of tomorrow, and am not really supportive of last-minute pull requests during the merge window anyway, so I’m closing the merge window one day early, and 3.17-rc1 is out there now. Well, it’s been out for a while now, but the network was bad enough where I’m traveling that I couldn’t get this *announcement* out.

    • Linux 3.17 Will Detect If Your Toshiba Laptop Is Falling Down

      The new “Toshiba HDD Active Protection Sensor” driver is for the accelerometer found in recent Toshiba laptops (HID TOS620A). The driver receives an ACPI notify event when the sensor detects a sudden movement or harsh vibration and then another ACPI event when the movement/vibration has passed.

    • Linus Torvalds Releases Linux Kernel 3.17 RC1
    • Linux 3.17-rc1 Kernel Released
    • The New Features Of The Linux 3.17 Kernel

      Now that the merge window has passed and Linux 3.17-rc1 released, here’s a rundown of the new features for the Linux 3.17 kernel.

    • BFS Scheduler Update Brings SMT Nice Support

      Con Kolivas released a new version of his BFS scheduler and besides porting it for Linux 3.16 compatibility it also contains a big new feature.

      BFS CPU scheduler v0.450 made a Saturday morning premiere and it offers support for Linux 3.16, offers various bug-fixes, and brings configurable SMT nice support.

    • Keeping Open Source Safe

      In a recent thread on lkml.org Theodore Ts’o pointed out that Krause has tried to insert non-working code into the ext4, btrfs, scsi, and usb subsystems and tried to come up with an explanation for his behavior. Among the suggestions is one from Airlie that Krause is trying to write a University Thesis on trolling the kernel development process. Other theories are that he’s a badly written AI chatbot, or just a clueless high school student with more tenacity than one usually expects at that age. Or maybe he’s trying to win a bet, or is trying to get extra credit or to complete some course assignment by getting a patch into the kernel.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Intel’s Idle Driver Supports Broadwell With Linux 3.17

        The native hardware cpuidle driver for Intel CPUs now supports the upcoming Broadwell processors with Linux 3.17.

        Len Brown of Intel sent in a few basic tweaks for the idle drivers at the end of the Linux 3.17 merge window. One commit disables Bay Trail’s Core and Module C6 auto-demotion while the other main patch adds Broadwell support to the intel_idle driver.

      • Intel Starts Sending In Graphics Patches For Linux 3.18

        While Linux 3.17-rc1 isn’t even out yet, the merge window is coming to an end and Intel OTC is already starting to send in pull requests to the drm-next branch for merging into the next cycle, Linux 3.18.

        Daniel Vetter as the Intel i915 DRM maintainer sent in his first pull request to David Airlie for getting the DRM driver changes queued up early for the next cycle. More pull requests are expected for the Intel driver in Linux 3.18 with this just being the changes that are queued and ready for further testing by the community.

      • Nouveau Works On Maxwell Fan Management

        Nouveau developer Martin Peres has published a set of ten Nouveau DRM patches working towards proper fan/power management support for NVIDIA’s latest “Maxwell” GPUs.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Plasma 5—For those Linux users undecided on the kernel’s future

        KDE’s Plasma 5 release lacks the attention-grabbing, paradigm-shifting changes that keep Unity and GNOME in the spotlight. Instead, the KDE project has been focused on improving its core desktop experience. Plasma 5 is not perfect by any means, but, unlike Unity and GNOME, it’s easy to change the things you don’t like.

      • what is “the desktop”: convergence will not happen

        Plasma was the first big free software project to work, and deliver, on the idea of GUIs that adapt at runtime to the form factor they are run on. People were skeptical about the possibility of this, but since then this idea has been picked up by others. In the process, the concept was “tweaked” and given the buzzworthy tag of “convergence”.

        Convergence literally means the act of coming together from different directions as so to eventually meet. As it has been popular used recently, it means that different kinds of devices (e.g. a phone and a desktop; a tablet and a laptop) will “converge” into a single piece of hardware that can be used in different modes so that sometimes it has a “phone” style UI and sometimes a “desktop” one (for example).

      • Akademy 2014 needs *you*

        Akademy 2014 is just 3 weeks away.

      • KDE’s Konqueror Is In Need Of A New Maintainer
      • Konqueror is looking for a maintainer

        For quite some time now (OK, many years…) I haven’t had time for Konqueror.
        KDE Frameworks 5 and Qt 5 have kept me quite busy.

        It’s time to face the facts: Konqueror needs a new maintainer.

        This is a good time to publish the thoughts we had many years ago about a possible new GUI for Konqueror.

        Kévin Ottens, Nuno Pinheiro and myself had a meeting (at some Akademy, many years ago) where we thought about how Konqueror’s GUI could be improved to be cleaner and more intuitive, while keeping the idea of Konqueror being the universal navigator, i.e. the swiss-army knife that includes file management, web browsing, document viewing, and more. This is what makes it different from rekonq and dolphin, for instance.

      • The KDE Randa Meeting 2014 in retrospective

        Leaving Randa after spending a week there at the KDE Randa Meeting 2014 raises mixed feelings. I am really looking forward to coming home and seeing my family, but at the same time the week was so full of action, great collaboration and awesome people that it passed by in an instant and was over so soon. Carving a work week out of the schedule for a hackfest is not an easy feat, especially during summer school break, so the expectations were high. And they have been exceeded in all aspects. A lot of the credit for that goes to the organizer, Mario Fux, and his team of local supporters. The rest goes to the awesome family of KDE contributors that make spending a week on contributing to Free Software so much fun. And of course to the sponsors of the event.

      • Krita booth at Siggraph 2014
      • One place to collect all Qt-based libraries

        We were thinking of something like CPAN for Qt back then. Since then there was a little bit of progress here and there, but my goal for the Hack Week was to complete the data to cover all relevant Qt-based libraries out there.

      • Beautiful KDE Plasma 5 Desktop Received Its First Update

        The KDE Community has announced that the first bugfix release for Plasma 5 has been released and that it’s now available for download

        The first bugfix release for KDE Frameworks 5 has been dubbed 5.0.1, and, as the name suggests, it’s chock full of fixes for a variety of problems.

        “Today KDE releases the first bugfix update to Plasma 5. Plasma 5 was released a month ago with many feature refinements and streamlining the existing codebase of KDE’s popular desktop for developers to work on for the years to come. This release, versioned 5.0.1, adds a month’s worth of new translations and fixes from KDE’s contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important such as fixing text which couldn’t be translated, using the correct icons and fixing overlapping files with KDELibs 4 software,” reads the announcement.

      • Randa Report: Hacking on KDE and meeting friends

        I’m already back home and now like to you let you know what I’ve been doing the last week during the Randa Sprint in the Swiss Alps.

      • … and they pop up on your desktop

        If you like to keep your project-related files on your desktop for easy access, you might have kept links to them in different folders which you placed in a folder view.

      • Prominent KDE Developer Says Convergence Will Not Happen

        The idea of convergence has been floating around for quite some time and companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Canonical are already working towards this goal. On the other hand, there are some voices that say it will never happen. KDE developer Aaron Seigo is one of those voices.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • m23 rock 14.2 is released!
      • Release: SymphonyOS 14.1 Now Available

        We are happy to announce the release of SymphonyOS 14.1, the second release in the Phoenix series. This release includes several bugfixes over the 14.0 developer preview from earlier this year including. Update to an Ubuntu 14.04 base system Improved handling of menu generation and proper updating of the menu system when system changes occur Improvements to the logout functionality Replacement of Slim DM with LightDM Security updates to the local httpd Fixes to installation from DVD While this new release still receives a beta title and should not be considered stable it is a large step forward and we hope…

      • Robolinux Xfce 7.6.1 Will “Blow Windows Users’ Minds” – Gallery

        The Robolinux developer doesn’t hide the fact that he’s interested in the Windows audience and he is targeting those particular users with this Linux distribution. Sure enough, regular Linux users can also take advantage of the distro, but the OS features a few options that should only prove interesting if you are already running a Microsoft product.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Musings on identity management

        I’m over three months into my new gig on the identity management team at Red Hat now, so I would like to share a few thoughts about what I’ve learned about identity management.

        I was excited to come into this role because of my innate interest in security and cryptography. I had little practical experience with PKI and security protocols beyond basic X.509/TLS and OpenPGP, so I have been relishing the opportunity to broaden my knowledge and experience and solve problems in this domain.

      • Fedora

    • Debian Family

      • AppStream/DEP-11 Debian progress

        DEP-11 is Debian’s implementation of AppStream, as well as an effort to enhance the metadata available about software in Debian. While initially, AppStream was only about applications, DEP-11 was designed with a larger scope, to collect data about libraries, binaries and things like Python modules. Now, since AppStream 0.6, DEP-11 and AppStream have essentially the same scope, with the difference of DEP-11 metadata being described in YAML, while official AppStream data is XML. That was due to a request by our ftpmasters team, which doesn’t like XML (which is also not used anywhere in Debian, as opposed to YAML). But this doesn’t mean that people will have to deal with the YAML file format: The libappstream library will just take DEP-11 data as another data source for it’s Xapian database, allowing anything using libappstream to access that data just like the XML stuff. Richards libappstream-glib will also receive support for the DEP-11 format soon, filling it’s in-memory data cache and enabling the use of GNOME-Software on Debian.

      • Debian turns 21!

        Today is Debian’s 21st anniversary. Plenty of cities are celebrating Debian Day. If you are not close to any of those cities, there’s still time for you to organize a little celebration!

      • Happy 21st Birthday, Debian!

        The Debian project has just celebrated it’s 21st birthday, making it one of the oldest open source projects in existence.

        Debian is one of the most used Linux distributions in the world, even if it might not seem like it. It’s not the friendliest operating system out there, but it’s good and stable enough and many other projects use it as their base.

      • Happy 21st Birthday Debian!

        On this day August 16th, 1993 The Debian Project was officially born from its creator Ian Murdock. The Debian Project went on to become one of the highest standards in open source software, and it managed to maintain this status until even today.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Touch RTM Version to get Released Soon by Canonical

            Mark Shuttleworth has said on a number of occasions that the first Ubuntu-powered smartphones should be arriving this Autumn, but unfortunately, the developers yet aren’t available to ship a stable version so soon. Now, a separate branch of Ubuntu Touch that will get RTM status, and will mainly be focused on bug fixes and stability issues.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Ballnux

        • Retailer accidently leaks Samsung Note 4 specs

          Erafone, a reputable Indonesian retailer uploaded the specs of the Note 4 to a corresponding product page which seems to have gone live without the retailer realizing. There are no confirmation as of yet that the specs are correct. However as the device is expected to be launched for sale on September 3rd it is not uncommon for retailers to have the information earlier. This allows them to prepare the device pages ready for immediate sale once released. As such it is possible these really are the specs for the newest addition to the Note family.

        • Samsung To Buy IoT Startup SmartThings

          The 2-year-old SmartThings is creating an open platform for the IoT that already supports more than 1,000 devices and 8,000 apps.

          Samsung is making a stronger push into the burgeoning Internet of things space with the planned acquisition of SmartThings, a 2-year-old startup that has created an open platform for the smart home.

        • Retailer accidently leaks Samsung Note 4 specs

          Erafone, a reputable Indonesian retailer uploaded the specs of the Note 4 to a corresponding product page which seems to have gone live without the retailer realizing. There are no confirmation as of yet that the specs are correct. However as the device is expected to be launched for sale on September 3rd it is not uncommon for retailers to have the information earlier. This allows them to prepare the device pages ready for immediate sale once released. As such it is possible these really are the specs for the newest addition to the Note family.

        • Recent reports of three-sided Note 4 unlikely to be true

          Here at themukt we want to make sure are sources are credible and information passed on to you is real. With this in mind, as far as we are concerned these rumors are extremely unlikely to be true and should generally be ignored…at least for now.

      • Android

        • Moto 360 VERY likely to be shipping September 8th

          With each day that passes we are receiving more and more information about the upcoming fall releases and today is no different.

          It has only been two days since we announced Motorola had sent animated invites to their Moto Launch Experience. The event is scheduled for September 4th and we reported it was highly likely this will be when the Moto 360 is officially released.

        • Google I/O Attendees, Check Your Inboxes – Moto 360 Distribution Emails Are Out

          At this year’s Google I/O, the company behind the search engine with the most o’s promised attendees not one, but two Android Wear devices. The first was either an LG G Watch or a Samsung Gear Live. The second, a Moto 360. We haven’t heard much about the latter since then, but emails are now going out. The time has come for I/O goers to check their inboxes.

        • Adobe Flash Player Android: The Typical Software with Best Features

          Adobe was been widely known by millions ad the leading manufacturer of prestigious products, which brought the existence of the Flash Player. Adobe’s finest has truly made a mark in the global market. It can also be utilized as a browser plug in or even on mobile devices that can support the system. It is made for professional web developers and the average Joe. It is also being supported on quite a number of mobile tablets and devices that range from Samsung to Blackberry, to Sony, HTC and Dell among others.

        • Android development with Java

          Developers seeking to create apps for Google’s popular smartphone operating system needn’t bother themselves with learning complex and often obscure custom versions of C++ like the one used by the once-famous Symbian OS. Instead, Android applications tend to be written in Java, with native modules added in for convenience and speed.

        • Android Circuit: The Samsung Galaxy Alpha Challenges The iPhone 6, Asus Challenges Android Wear, and Xiaomi Challenges Everybody Else

          Taking a look back at the week in news across the Android world, this week’s Android Circuit highlights a number of stories, including Samsung presenting their challenger to the iPhone 6, Motorola’s potential champion waiting in the wings, IDC’s market share numbers are good news for Android, HTC announcing their Creative Lab for creating software that will run on any Android device, Asus preparing to launch an Android Wear smartwatch, Facebook’s Android permissions, and the success of Xiaomi’s Mi3 handset in India.

        • OnePlus One unboxed – What you get and what you don’t get

          Finally received a OnePlus One a few days ago and as this is still an invite only product thought it may be worth providing readers with a bit of info on what you actually get…and don’t get.

        • Moto 360 to cost $250, Best Buy accidently released details

          What a week it has been in terms of leaks and rumors. With September rolling round and the expecting release of the Moto 360, Note 4, Moto X and Moto G we have seen a number of leaks involving product specs, leaked images and release dates.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Apple’s MacBook (2,1) Now Can Boot With Coreboot

    After the Lenovo X200 support the latest laptop supporting Coreboot is Apple’s second-generation MacBook.

  • Why Your Company Needs To Write More Open Source Software
  • Alternative Open Source Hosting Control Panels

    Free and open source control panels can be just as powerful and feature-rich as proprietary ones. What they generally lack, however, is commercial support or any kind of warranty. Some developers offer additional paid commercial support, while others offers support through community forums and discussion groups.

  • Look inside building an open source map app

    Imagine yourself walking down the middle of a crowded street in a complex city like Cairo. Suddenly a protest builds ahead. A mass of people, cutting off the road. You try to evade, but then violence breaks out in mere seconds. You need help. Someone else, a car to get you out. A phone call might suffice, but wouldn’t it be easier to notify all your friends that this place is dangerous and that you need their assistance? This is where a map-based social network could come into play.

  • Events

    • LibreOffice Conference 2014 to be held in Bern this September

      LibreOffice is arguably the most popular open source office suite available today. The success has come doe to the hard work and contributions from several dedicated developers as well as contributors from community memebrs. The key to develop and grow this ecosystem is constant collaboration and having a solid strategy regarding the future of the software. The LibreOffice conference is a stage that provides this opportunity to the contributors and enthusiasts to take part in planning the future roadmap.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Adventures in Mozillaland #4

        One and Done is a brilliant idea to help people contribute to the QA Mozilla teams.
        It’s a website proposing the user a series of tasks of different difficulty and on different topics to contribute to Mozilla. Each task is self-contained and can last few minutes or be a bit more challenging. The team has worked hard on developing it and they have definitely done an awesome job! :)

      • I was at Guadec

        I was at Guadec in Strasbourg – thanks to all the volunteers who helped making this event possible.. For those who don’t know Guadec is the annual Gnome User And Developer European Conference. I hadn’t attended since 2008 — such is life — but I reconnected with people I hadn’t seen in a while, as well as met awesome people that joined the project since. Attending this year made me regain a lot of motivation on why a Free Software desktop and why Gnome are really necessary. This is even more important as to why at Mozilla I use Fedora Linux rather than MacOS X like most of my team mates —*hint* at least on Fedora I don’t have code signing break existing apps, and I have a real full screen browser to use to do presentation based on web technologies or even the risk that one day third party browser be barred like they are on iOS — and it is important to keep the alternatives alive.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • One interface, many truths

      Today I’d like to discuss a topic that is constantly recurring about LibreOffice: the overhaul of its interface. I am aware the matter has some real trolling potential, but at least if one wants to troll it is important to get some things straight first.

      Is LibreOffice’s interface outdated? It depends who you ask the question. The problem is that some part of the answer is really a matter of taste; another part of it is really about the kind of interface we could have; and yet another side of the matter is the perception of what its interface should be like. Let’s address the three issues separately.

  • CMS

    • WordPress 4.0 Beta 4 is out, time to test

      A major update for WordPress is due this month and fourth beta, which I assume would be the last beta has been released for testing and bug hunting. I installed it on a test machine and the changes are impressive. Since we used Drupal earlier for Muktware and then migrated to WordPress in September last year, I can say from personal experience WordPress is a more suitable choice for writing focused sites like TheMukt.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • AMD Compiler Optimization Benchmarks With GCC 4.10 (GCC 5.0)

      As a continuation to yesterday’s brief GCC 4.9 vs. GCC 4.10 (GCC 5.0) comparison with the AMD A10 A-Series “Kaveri” APU, here’s some benchmarks when using the GCC 4.10 development snapshot and trying a variety of CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS to see the current impact on their performance for a variety of Linux benchmarks.

    • GNU lightning 2.0.5 released!

      GNU lightning is a library to aid in making portable programs that compile assembly code at run time.

  • Public Services/Government

    • DemocracyOS promotes civic engagement on both sides

      Using DemocracyOS represents a challenge for any institution used to make decisions in the traditional way. It is designed for governments to open themselves up to citizen engagement, but power is usually conservative. But the biggest challenge is probably to fight against the presumption that citizens are naturally apathetic and shun commitment. Our challenge is cultural, not technological.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Git 2.1 Released

      Version 2.1 of the Git revision control system is available this weekend.

    • [ANNOUNCE] Git v2.1.0

      The following public repositories all have a copy of the ‘v2.1.0′ tag and the ‘master’ branch that the tag points at…

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • Software that prevents cyber attacks

      “TCP Stealth is a free software that requires particular system and computer expertise, for example, use of the GNU/Linux operating system. In order to make broader usage possible in the future, the software will need further development,” said scientists from the Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM) in Germany.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • ISI, CIA aiding NE militants: Tripura CM

      Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar has alleged that Pakistani intelligence agency (ISI) and America’s (CIA) are in constant touch with anti-India militants, a section of whom are still using Bangladesh to operate.

    • US blocks Chinese-Russian backed back on weapons in space

      War is not nice and it’s understandable that countries would seek to ban weapons in space to attempt to keep conflict confined to the Earth, for this reason Russia and China have been attempting to draft a joint treaty for the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space since 2008. Since then, the United States have been repeatedly blocking consensus in the UN’s Conference on Disarmament to prevent countries moving forward on negotiating a treaty to ban weapons in space claiming that the proposal was ‘a diplomatic ploy by the two nations to gain a military advantage’.

    • Suspected al-Qaida militants killed in Yemen drone and air strikes
    • Drone Strikes In Yemen Kill 7 Suspected Al Qaeda Militants: Official

      Two separate airstrikes in Yemen’s south killed seven suspected militants Saturday, a Yemeni security official said.

    • U.S. drone strikes kill ten militants in Yemen
    • Mindless drones

      Drones have killed thousands of people in places such as Pakistan and Yemen, countries against which we have not declared war.

    • Lady Gaza comes to Melbourne

      The Melbourne Palestine Action Group, a group consisting of Whistle Blowers Australian Citizens Alliance (WACA) and Renegade Activists, locked down Elbit Systems in the suburb of Port Melbourne and occupied the building’s roof for a few hours.

    • More Scots firms linked to the manufacture of parts for Israel’s Gaza bombs
    • U.S. unilateral military action is not solution to the Iraqi crisis

      I wish to condemn, in the strongest terms, the attacks by the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) against Christian and other religious minorities in Iraq. Christian friends who migrated a long time ago from Iraq to the United States called my family, and were informed that our hearts were bleeding to see how the situation was worsening in Iraq.

    • Three Afghan policemen killed by US airstrike

      At least three Afghan policemen have been killed when US-led foreign forces launched an airstrike in Afghanistan’s northern province of Parwan.

      Afghan authorities said the airborne attack took place in the Ghorband district of the province, situated about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the capital, Kabul, on Friday and targeted local police forces. A fourth police officer was wounded in the raid.

    • In the West Respect for Truth No Longer Exists

      The conclusive evidence is the media story of the armored Russian column that crossed into Ukraine and was destroyed by Ukraine’s rag-tag forces that ISIS would eliminate in a few minutes. British reporters fabricated this story or were handed it by a CIA operative working to build a war narrative. The no longer reputable BBC hyped the story without investigating. The German media, including Die Welt, blared the story throughout Germany without concern at the absence of any evidence. Reuters news agency, also with no investigation, spread the story. Readers tell me that CNN has been broadcasting the fake story 24/7. Although I cannot stand to watch it, I suspect Fox “news” has also been riding this lame horse hard. Readers tell me that my former newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, which has fallen so low as to be unreadable, also spread the false story. I hope they are wrong. One hates to see the complete despoliation of one’s former habitat.

    • Cha-Ching! Tony Blair’s Wife Lands Lucrative Gig in Kazakhstan—British Paper

      At first blush, it seems Kazakhstan’s strongman President Nursultan Nazarbayev likes to keep business in the family. A daughter heads his party in the rubber-stamp parliament; his sons-in-law held various official positions and became fabulously wealthy. So why is it not surprising that Kazakhstan is paying the wife of Nazarbayev’s most distinguished advisor, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, hundreds of thousands of pounds for her legal services?

    • How Cherie Blair earns £1,000 an hour from the Kazakh taxpayer
    • Handmaiden to Africa’s Generals

      Security is a core concern of the American government’s Africa policy. This was made clear in May when President Obama proposed a $5 billion Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund to supplement programs the Pentagon already has in 35 countries. And it was made clear again at the recent U.S.-Africa summit in Washington, when Mr. Obama announced $110 million a year for an African Peacekeeping Rapid Response Partnership, a program to train and equip six African armies for peacekeeping operations.

      Because Mr. Obama is committed to scaling back the deployment of United States troops to combat terrorism, America’s security strategy in Africa translates largely into training and equipping African armies. Although this approach rightly gives African governments the lead in tackling their own security problems, it is misguided nonetheless. It is, in effect, providing foreign tutelage to the militarization of Africa’s politics, which undermines peace and democracy throughout the continent. America’s diplomacy is becoming a handmaiden to Africa’s generals.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Julian Assange has had his human rights violated, says Ecuador foreign minister

      Ricardo Patino says British government has no will to find a solution to stalemate that has confined WikiLeaks founder to London’s Ecuadorian embassy for more than two years

    • Julian Assange ‘to leave’ Ecuador embassy

      Wikileaks founder Julian Assange says he will leave London’s Ecuadorean embassy “soon” after two years.

    • Two years on, Julian Assange is still a prisoner of process

      Ecuador is committed to protecting persons subject to political persecution. Two years ago, after a profound investigation and review of our legal obligations, we decided to give political asylum to Julian Assange.

      This decision followed a dramatic change in our global understanding of privacy, telecommunications and diplomacy over the past few years. Edward Snowden’s revelations about mass surveillance have uncovered grave security threats for states, violations of human rights, and have shown that the future of the internet is in danger. The millions of documents published by Wikileaks about the political, economic and military manoeuvres of powerful interests also magnified delicate matters of sovereignty and abuse of power.

      All states have secrets. And all states have the right to defend themselves. But this must not whitewash the grave violations of human rights, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, of which we have learned.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Drillers illegally using diesel fuel to frack, report says

      A new report charges that several oil and gas companies have been illegally using diesel fuel in their hydraulic fracturing operations, and then doctoring records to hide violations of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

      The report, published this week by the Environmental Integrity Project, found that between 2010 and July 2014 at least 351 wells were fracked by 33 different companies using diesel fuels without a permit. The Integrity Project, an environmental organization based in Washington, D.C., said it used the industry-backed database, FracFocus, to identify violations and to determine the records had been retroactively amended by the companies to erase the evidence.

  • Finance

    • Paul Ryan Shuns Conservative Media’s “Makers And Takers” Rhetoric, But His Policies Still Rely On Those Myths

      In the same Wall Street Journal opinion piece that distanced himself from the “makers and takers” phrase, Ryan went on to explain his anti-poverty plan, which in part proposes that individuals would have to sign “contracts” in order to remain eligible for social safety net benefits, such as food stamps.

    • BitXBay: The First Open Source, P2P Online Trading Platform

      Charly Clinton, the creator of BitXBay, a decentralized and anonymous Bitcoin marketplace, claims to have created the first open source, peer-to-peer online platform for trade.

    • Joe Hockey may be sorry, but that doesn’t mean he gets it

      He was a 64-year-old from somewhere near Bathurst who had been forced to give up his lifelong job as a truck driver in 2013 after a serious heart attack. He could no longer work, even casually, and was living on a disability support pension. After he had paid rent and power he had $135 a week – which also had to cover around $40 a week in medical prescription costs.

      The man had sought financial counselling and had tried to save money in many ways but he still couldn’t make ends meet and was forced to ask for help from Vinnies several times before deciding to move to a shack on a small bush block he owned, without power or running water.

    • Germany’s World Cup triumph fails to net economic rewards

      Brewers feel flat and Adidas shares fall as optimism and confidence dips in Germany amid tensions with Russia

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Hypocrisy In Action: Stingray Maker, Who Relies On Secret No Bid Contracts, Whines About Motorola Getting A No Bid Contract

      Harris Corporation, the stealthy, mostly-silent company behind the cell tower spoofer known as the Stingray, is making a few louder noises now that its financial toes are being stepped on. The company muffles law enforcement agencies with restrictive terms and conditions that include broad non-disclosure clauses and a general admonishment that as much information as possible should be withheld from the public at all times. These tactics have worked out for its core business — tower spoofers — allowing Harris to make a whole lot of money without having to deal with FOIA fallout and citizen backlash.

    • Australian Officials Pushing For Data Retention Had No Idea What A VPN Is

      If you haven’t yet, you really should watch the video we pointed to recently of Australian Attorney General George Brandis trying to explain his internet data retention plan when it’s clear he has no idea how the internet works. It’s the one where he’s asked if it will track the web pages you visit, and Brandis vehemently insists that it will not, but that it will track the web addresses you visit. Some people have said that perhaps he meant it won’t record the actual content on the pages, but just the URL (which might matter if it’s dynamic pages), but later in the conversation, he also implies (almost clearly incorrectly) that he means it will just track the top level domains, not the full URLs.

    • Centre to shield India from cyber attacks proposed

      The Narendra Modi government is preparing to set up a Rs. 950-crore cyber security centre following a rise in virtual world attacks and recent revelations that the US National Security Agency had spied on the BJP and sensitive establishments.The Narendra Modi government is preparing to set up a Rs. 950-crore cyber security centre following a rise in virtual world attacks and recent revelations that the US National Security Agency had spied on the BJP and sensitive establishments.

    • Did a U.S. defense contractor help create the next generation of spyware weapons?

      The Washington Post relates a fascinating little cloak-and-dagger story that ends with a heck of a punchline: a U.S. defense contractor was apparently working with foreign companies that create spyware and virus programs to develop new tools for spying on people, potentially both foreign and domestic.

    • U.S. firm helped the spyware industry build a potent digital weapon for sale overseas

      CloudShield Technologies, a California defense contractor, dispatched a senior engineer to Munich in the early fall of 2009. His instructions were unusually opaque.

    • Germany tapped John Kerry’s phone, spied on Turkey for years – report

      Germany’s foreign intelligence agency eavesdropped at least one telephone conversation of US Secretary of State John Kerry and spied on NATO ally Turkey since 2009, Der Spiegel newspaper revealed on Saturday.

      Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) picked up the phone call “by accident” in 2013, the weekly newspaper reported in a pre-publication citing unnamed sources. Kerry was discussing the Middle East tensions between Israelis, Palestinians and Arab states in a satellite link, according to Der Spiegel.

    • Germany Spied On Kerry and Clinton Says Der Spiegel, But It’s Not As Awkward As It Sounds

      In what many are calling a pot-and-kettle situation, German magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday that German intelligence spied on U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, allegedly listening into and recording their private phone calls. Though the revelations are potentially unsurprising (doesn’t it feel like everyone is spying on everyone at this point?), they still might have been embarrassing for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has publicly criticized the U.S. for its spying practices. Instead, though, the report only highlights how badly the U.S. behaved.

    • Germany intelligence spied on Kofi Annan
    • Spiegel: BND focus on Turkey nets Kerry, Clinton
    • Knocking down the HACIENDA

      “Knocking down the HACIENDA” by Julian Kirsch, produced by GNU, the GNUnet team and edited on short notice by Carlo von Lynx from #youbroketheinternet is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported License. We thank the CCC for hosting this on their CDN.

    • UK spies have scanned the internet connections of entire countries

      You may know that the UK’s GCHQ intelligence agency pokes its nose into people’s internet service accounts, but it’s now clear that the spy outfit is mapping the internet connections of whole nations, too. Heise has obtained documents showing that a GCHQ system, Hacienda, can scan every internet address in a given country to see both the connection types in use (such as web servers) as well as any associated apps. The scanning platform is looking for relevant targets and any exploitable security holes; if a target is running software with known vulnerabilities, it’s relatively easy for agents to break in and either swipe data or set up malicious websites that trick suspects into compromising their PCs. Poring over this much data would normally be time-consuming, but there’s a companion system (Olympia) that makes it easy to find useful information within minutes.

    • It’s time to delete mandatory data retention once and for all

      After five years of debate, it is time for all sides of politics to acknowledge that the Australian public will not stand for a mandatory data retention policy keeping track of every aspect of their lives. It is time to kill the mandatory data retention policy once and for all.

    • Sen. Wyden: Your data’s yours no matter on whose server it lives

      At the TechFestNW event in Portland on Friday, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden called for legal reforms that embrace an understanding that the mere act of handing over digital data doesn’t mean giving way a user’s right to privacy.

    • The Internet’s Original Sin

      The fiasco I want to talk about is the World Wide Web, specifically, the advertising-supported, “free as in beer” constellation of social networks, services, and content that represents so much of the present day web industry. I’ve been thinking of this world, one I’ve worked in for over 20 years, as a fiasco since reading a lecture by Maciej Cegłowski, delivered at the Beyond Tellerrand web design conference. Cegłowski is an important and influential programmer and an enviably talented writer. His talk is a patient explanation of how we’ve ended up with surveillance as the default, if not sole, internet business model.

    • Gyroscopes in your phone could be spying on you

      Researchers have developed software that uses a devices gyroscopes, not microphone, to listen in to your conversations. They found that the gyroscopes were so sensitive that they could be used as makeshift microphones.

    • Github tracks you by email.

      That’s right. Github tracks you by email. Each Github notification email contains in the HTML part a beacon. Beacons are usually one pixel images with a unique URL to know who did view the email or not – triggered by the HTML rendered downloading the image to display.

    • Attacking NPR As A Shill For Government Intelligence

      After doing my own research, I strongly agree with the critics that the story committed a fundamental failure in not noting that both the company, Recorded Future, and a second company that aided it, ReversingLabs, have ties to the United States intelligence community. Temple-Raston and her editor, Bruce Auster, agree, too, and say that what happened was an oversight on deadline.

    • CIA spy program actually called ‘Hydra’? Not cool.

      You know, the US government does a lot of shady and, frankly, stupid stuff in the name of “keeping us safe” from “terrorists.” They also do some smart things and completely morally unambiguous stuff. This is not one of those.

      In documents leaked to The Intercept (a site devoted to analyzing documents leaked, first and foremost, by Edward Snowden) it appears the CIA has created a monster. One of their data-collection programs is literally named “Hydra.”

  • Civil Rights

    • Patriots don’t torture: Why excusing it is an American catastrophe

      About a week ago, for the first time ever, the U.S. government, through the comments of its chief executive no less, confirmed that “folks were tortured.” Simultaneously, he observed that there ”was little need for sanctimony” given the heightened fears of the American public in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the enormous pressure that law enforcement officials were under to prevent future attacks.

    • Watchdog groups putting pressure on CIA director
    • Shane Todd’s family says noose and towel used in U.S. engineer’s hanging death DESTROYED by police

      Police in Singapore destroyed two pieces of evidence tied to the death of Shane Todd, whose body was found in his apartment there in June 2012, according to the American engineer’s family.

      The 31-year-old’s parents, Rick and Mary Todd, have for months been demanding the Singapore government return the hand-made noose and towel around their son’s neck when his body was discovered by his girlfriend hanging from his bathroom door.

    • Shane Todd’s death: AGC denies towel and noose destroyed to block DNA test
    • Singapore gov’t destroyed evidence in US engineer’s death
    • Israeli court allows protesters to picket Palestinian-Jewish wedding

      A Palestinian man and his Jewish bride-to-be are facing hostile protests in the Israeli town of Rishon Letzion after Israel’s high court refused their application to ban demonstrations outside their wedding reception.

      Mahmoud Mansour, 26, a Palestinian from Jaffa, has had to hire dozens of security guards after an anti-Arab group, Lehava, published details of his wedding reception online and called for Israelis to come and picket the wedding hall.

      The group, which campaigns against assimilation between Jews and Arabs in Israel, is angry that Mansour’s bride-to-be, Moral Malka, 23, is Jewish, although local media reported that she has already converted to Islam and the couple have had an Islamic wedding.

    • Cell Phone Guide For US Protesters, Updated 2014 Edition

      With major protests in the news again, we decided it’s time to update our cell phone guide for protestors. A lot has changed since we last published this report in 2011, for better and for worse. On the one hand, we’ve learned more about the massive volume of law enforcement requests for cell phone—ranging from location information to actual content—and widespread use of dedicated cell phone surveillance technologies. On the other hand, strong Supreme Court opinions have eliminated any ambiguity about the unconstitutionality of warrantless searches of phones incident to arrest, and a growing national consensus says location data, too, is private.

    • Petition Asks DOJ to Halt Action Against New York Times Reporter

      “The main thing that gets to me is that I realize I don’t deserve all this,” Risen said.

    • Where’s the Justice at Justice?
    • Channeling Orwell from Oval Office

      The Justice Department is trying to scuttle the reporters’ privilege — ignoring the chilling effect that is having on truth emerging in a jittery post-9/11 world prone to egregious government excesses.

    • Nixon believed CIA involved in Kennedy Assassination

      A new book, which will be released September 2, discloses a previously unknown connection between Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, John F. Kennedy and the CIA.

      In fact, author Roger Stone, a former Nixon aide, asserts that Nixon “knew the CIA was involved in JFK’s assassination” and was so pesky in his attempts to get them to disclose all their records that the CIA contemplated the assassination of Nixon as well.

      The book, “Nixon’s Secrets: The Rise, Fall, and Untold Truth about the President, Watergate, and the Pardon”, demonstrates a definitely unfriendly relationship between himself and then CIA Director Richard Helms.

    • UK ambassador ‘lobbied senators to hide Diego Garcia role in rendition’

      Logs released under the Freedom of Information Act have reinforced claims that the UK lobbied to keep its role in the CIA’s torture and interrogation programme out of what is expected to be a damning Senate report.

      They show that the UK ambassador to the US met members of the Senate select committee on intelligence 11 times between 2012 and 2014 – as they were investigating the CIA’s rendition programme. This included two meetings with the committee’s chair, Diane Feinstein, which took place as crucial decisions were being made regarding how much of its report into the programme should be made public.

    • Do police need grenade launchers, other military weapons? Officers say yes

      …under a federal program that allows police to obtain surplus gear free from the U.S. military…Local agencies must return items they don’t use.

    • Ferguson protests: National Guard sent to Missouri unrest

      The US state of Missouri is sending the National Guard to the town of Ferguson as protests escalate over the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager.

    • Ferguson’s Police Got Free Military Gear Straight From The Pentagon

      The images coming out of Ferguson could be critical in instigating the debate. Dansky and others have noted that police militarization dates back to the 1980s. But the prevalence of social media and its ability to share the kind of images that caused TPM’s Josh Marshall to ask “Ferguson or Fallujah” have made the issue more difficult to ignore.

    • Ferguson Attacks And Web Censorship Are Parts Of Same Story

      A lot of this week in civil liberties has been about the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, USA. Police troops fired tear gas on a television crew. This mirrors the ongoing web censorship efforts.

      The governments around the world are reacting the exact same way today as they did when the printing press arrived 500 years ago. There isn’t really anything new under the sun.

    • In Ferguson, Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery gives account of his arrest

      Multiple officers grabbed me. I tried to turn my back to them to assist them in arresting me. I dropped the things from my hands.

      “My hands are behind my back,” I said. “I’m not resisting. I’m not resisting.” At which point one officer said: “You’re resisting. Stop resisting.”

      That was when I was most afraid — more afraid than of the tear gas and rubber bullets.

      As they took me into custody, the officers slammed me into a soda machine, at one point setting off the Coke dispenser. They put plastic cuffs on me, then they led me out the door.

      I could see Ryan still talking to an officer. I said: “Ryan, tweet that they’re arresting me, tweet that they’re arresting me.”

      He didn’t have an opportunity, because he was arrested as well.

      The officers led us outside to a police van. Inside, there was a large man sitting on the floor between the two benches. He began screaming: “I can’t breathe! Call a paramedic! Call a paramedic!”

    • Militarized Terror Policing

      Now our police have become an occupying army in our cities.

    • Cops or Soldiers? Pentagon, DHS Helped Arm Police in Ferguson with Equipment Used in War
    • 7 Pages to Drone Kill an American Citizen
    • NUSOJ Calls for the Release of Journalists detained for the Second day without Charge

      The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) calls for the Federal Government of Somalia to release the media workers and the journalists detained in Mogadishu for second day without charges following raid of Radio Shabelle and SKY FM stations.

    • TV crews hit by bean bags, tear gas
    • Michael Brown’s death was no anomaly. We cannot stay silent
    • Turns Out When Police Act Cordial, Rather Than As An Oppressive Military Force, Things Work Out Better

      After covering the militarized police fiasco in Ferguson, Missouri the past few days, including highlighting Anil Dash’s rather simple point that the way to deal with angry protestors isn’t to make them angrier, it appears that someone finally got the message. Missouri’s governor kicked out the St. Louis County police, who were responsible for much of the previous escalation, and sent in the Missouri State Highway Patrol, who almost immediately set a very different tone — one that involved a much smaller police presence, and one that was a lot friendlier. It even involved talking with (not just to) protestors in a cordial manner. The most striking image — a complete reversal of the day before — has to be Captain Ron Johnson, who was put in charge, walking with the protestors (in ordinary police garb) rather than having militarized police aiming high powered weaponry at them.

    • Creating Controversy: No, An Upcoming EA Game About Militarized Police Doesn’t Need To React To Ferguson, MO

      As the Ferguson, MO saga continues to unfold, there are certainly lessons to be learned. An overly-militarized police force coupled with the oppression of free speech and the press aren’t good ways for managing an angry population, for instance. Conversely, a police force that actually connects and serves with the community they’re tasked with policing produces far better results. And, of course, we’re all forced to have yet another discussion about race-relations in this ostensibly free and equal country of ours. These are good conversations to have.

    • Ferguson looks like Iraq. Statements from politicians like me won’t fix that
    • California Cops Seize Recordings Of Questionable Arrest, Claim They Have The ‘Right’ To Do So
    • Police In Ferguson Back To Threatening And Arresting Reporters: Tells Them To ‘Get The Fuck Out Of Here’

      A live stream from the local radio station KARG (Argus Radio — which is a local volunteer run radio station that has been doing amazing work) caught police screaming, “Get the fuck out of here or you’re going to get shelled with this” while pointing a gun at the reporter. Many reports claimed that he was saying, “You’re going to get shot,” but it’s pretty clearly “shelled.” Not sure it really makes a huge difference.

    • Northern California Cops Beat Mentally Ill Man, Seize Phones, Claim it’s their Right

      Police in Northern California beat and tased a mentally ill man before siccing a dog on him, then turning on citizens who recorded the incident, confiscating cell phones and in one case, ordering a witness to delete his footage.

      But one video survived anyway, slightly longer than two minutes, where a cop from the Antioch Police Department can be heard saying he wants cameras confiscated right before the video stops.

    • Live From the Streets of Ferguson, Missouri
    • Israel bans national service with rights group B’Tselem in Gaza row

      Young barred from serving in organisation as alternative to military service after it is accused of ‘incitement against IDF’

    • New light on black sites

      Foreign courts crack down on US-led human rights abuses

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • How Verizon lets its copper network decay to force phone customers onto fiber

      The shift from copper landlines to fiber-based voice networks is continuing apace, and no one wants it to happen faster than Verizon.

    • NY Times Says FCC Should Reclassify Broadband Under Title II
    • FCC, Writers Guild push for public feedback on net neutrality issue

      The Writers Guild of America is calling on the Federal Communications Commission to hold public hearings regarding net neutrality before it rules on changes to the Open Internet Order.

      Michael Winship, the president of the Writers Guild, highlighted the multitude of public comments that were made during an open comments period regarding net neutrality when he wrote to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.

    • FCC Extends Net Neutrality Comment Period

      The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced Friday it would extend the net neutrality reply comment period from September 10 to September 15.

    • Redditors Propose Setting Up A ‘Consumers’ Union’ To Fight Back Against Broadband Giants

      A random factoid about my past that some people don’t know is that I have a degree in “industrial and labor relations,” which involved an awful lot of learning about the history of unions, collective bargaining and the like. While I firmly believe that most unions today are counterproductive (frequently holding back innovation and flexibility), the idea certainly made quite a lot of sense in the early days, in which you had parties (giant employers) with near total market power over employees who had absolutely no market power. Basically, many companies were market abusers, and they abused freely. Organizing workers for collective bargaining was a way to even the playing field slightly. That it later resulted in vast amounts of corruption and cronyism, let alone hindering the way in which companies could innovate and adapt, are certainly big issues to be concerned about — but there were reasons why that happened as well (driven by leadership on both sides).

    • Data Analysis Of FCC Comments Reveals Almost No Anti-Net Neutrality Comments
    • A Fascinating Look Inside Those 1.1 Million Open-Internet Comments

      So what’s in those nearly 1.1 million public comments? A lot of mentions of , according to a TechCrunch analysis. But now, we have a fuller picture. The San Francisco data analysis firm Quid looked beyond keywords to find the sentiment and arguments in those public comments.

  • DRM

    • When the Police Can Brick Your Phone

      In this age of militarized police forces, anyone who thinks the police will hesitate to use such capabilities to quell dissent and to hide their illegal behavior is in denial about political reality. The kill switch will not protect a phone from thieves much, if at all, but it will help governments work in darkness.

    • Microsoft Silent On Xbox One Sales as PlayStation 4 Wins July

      Sony says the PlayStation 4 is the fastest selling PlayStation in history, as July retail game sales turn up another net-positive month.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • TTIP Update XXXV

      According to the publication “Inside US Trade”, which tends to be pretty good when it comes to sourcing its information, the next round of TTIP talks won’t take place until the end of September – obviously the negotiators felt they needed a holiday after all the excitement of the last year. But even if TTIP news is thin on the ground, there have been a couple of big developments recently that have important implications for the negotiations.

      [...]

      The resistance to TTIP is growing, and it may be that the whole thing – not just ISDS – collapses as people become aware of the reality of what is being planned. But what this valuable new site from Kelsey makes clear is that even if we manage to keep out the worst demands of the US side from the “final” text, it may not actually be final. Assuming certification is required for TTIP as for TPP, it would give one last chance for the US to try to bully the EU into accepting its demands – and one last chance for the European Commission to capitulate.

    • Copyrights

      • WWE Asked Google to Hit Live Piracy…From the Future

        An anti-piracy company working on behalf of World Wrestling Entertainment has sent a rather unusual DMCA notice to Google. The takedown requested the removal of dozens of URLs related to a live event scheduled for two days after the notice. Which means, of course, it hadn’t even aired yet.

      • ANTI-PIRACY OUTFIT WANTS TO HIJACK BROWSERS UNTIL FINE PAID

        Piracy monetization service Rightscorp has provided investors with details of its end game with cooperative ISPs. Initially service providers are asked to forward notices to subscribers with requests for $20.00 settlements, but the eventual plan is to hijack the browsers of alleged pirates until they’ve actually paid up.

      • English Premier League Apparently Wants Fans To Hate It Even More: Threatens To Pull Down Vines And Animated GIFs

        Actually, no, you don’t “have to protect” your intellectual property. In fact, if it’s stupid to do so — pissing off fans and angering the very people who pay the bills, it seems like a bad idea. But the Premier League doesn’t seem to care about that at all. It’s just taking the “we must protect our IP” view of it all. Because.

      • I Visited Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde in Prison, Here’s What he Had to Say

        He tells me that this is par for the course in prison. “If you don’t constantly insist upon your rights, you will be denied them”. Repeatedly, he had to remind the guards that they’re not allowed to open confidential mail he receives from journalists. His alleged right to an education or occupation during his jail time in practice amounted to being given a beginners’ Spanish book.

        [...]

        Facebook alone has turned into its own little walled-garden version of the Internet that a lot of users would be content using without access to the wider Net. At the same time, services from Google to Wikipedia are working on distribution deals that make their services available to people without real Internet access.

      • Premier League to Clamp Down on GIFs and Vines

        On the eve of the new season, the UK’s Premier League has been putting fans on notice that it will no longer tolerate the unauthorized distribution of its copyright works. In addition to going after those who live stream full matches, the football giant says it now intends to tackle individuals who post short clips online.

08.16.14

Links 16/8/2014: Microsoft Linux, US Government Turns to Free Software

Posted in News Roundup, Site News at 11:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • How to crack an open source community

    This can be hard for developers new to a project, because “many would-be devs are intimidated by the perception of an existing ‘in-crowd’ dev group, even though it may not really be true,” ActiveState vice president Bernard Golden told me. Developer Tony Li echoes this, suggesting, “There is often a intimidation factor when thinking about submitting code to the maintainers (even though it is not on purpose).”

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • The why and how of becoming a cloud architect

      It’s certainly not news. We’ve talked before about how learning OpenStack is a great way to kickstart an IT career. But just how valuable is it? And if you want to make the transition from doing traditional IT infrastructure administration to becoming a cloud architect, how do you get there?

    • Running Hadoop as a Cloud Service is on the Rise

      For a while there, working with Big Data–sorting and sifting large data sets with new tools in pursuit of surfacing meaningful angles on stored information–meant leveraging the open source Hadoop platform in on-premise fashion. Typically, enterprises deployed Hadoop in-house as a platform tool.

    • Deciding on the Right Cloud for Your Organization
    • Scott Sanchez on OpenStack: Shifting a Mindset

      “I often stand in front of audiences filled with people who use storage servers. I ask them if they still name their servers. Inevitably, two-thirds of the people raise their hands. Their servers have names. … It is definitely a mindset. … You are not yet building quality applications. All of the innovation in the world is not going to solve that from an infrastructure perspective.”

    • Could fundamental open cloud freedom die?

      Balkan claims he is working to create independent technologies that protect our fundamental freedoms & democracy.

      Trust in the cloud forms the cornerstone of the Summit agenda with topics covered including:

      • the surveillance state,
      • the encryption economy,
      • honest business models and,
      • keeping trust amongst customers.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Organs of democracy

      Oh, yes, creation of human organs no longer requires divine oration, just a walk to the laboratory.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Gaza Strip Crisis: Melbourne Palestine Action Group Shuts Down Israeli Arms Factory

      Sam Castro, spokesperson for the Melbourne Palestine Activist Group, claims drones produced in the factory are being used in the current conflict in Gaza.

      She said: “By importing and exporting arms to Israel and facilitating the development of Israeli military technology, governments are effectively sending a clear message of approval for Israel’s military aggression, including its war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.”

    • U.S. arms for Iraq’s Kurds could backfire, as similar aid has in the past

      The U.S. decision to arm Iraqi Kurds shows a dangerous and deplorable disregard for the lessons of history. The move is understandably tempting, given the threat Islamist extremists pose to civilians and the integrity of the Iraqi state, especially when the redeployment of U.S. troops is all but off the table.

    • Iraq crisis: US launches fresh drone strikes

      Fresh airstrikes have been launched by US drones against Isis forces close to a village where there were reports that dozens of civilians had been massacred.

    • Anger Over Missouri Police Shooting Resonates Across Bay Area and Nation
    • To Draw A Line

      There have been other disquieting trends too in recent times. Osama bin Laden was, of course, a Saudi and 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. We have it on testimony by ex-CIA director James Woolsey that Saudi Wahabism is “the soil in which Al Qaeda and its sister terrorist organisations are flourishing”.

    • With Friends Like These: NATO and the Afghan Leadership

      On 12th June 2011 Ahmed Wali Karzai (AWK), a key ally of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s mission in Afghanistan was assassinated. His fate was sealed by his own security chief of many years Mohmad Sardar, who shot him at point-blank range in his own home. Recent years in the conflict have seen a rise in such attacks by inside men, usually members of the Afghan National Army and police forces. It is rarer that that such a high level figure is killed at the behest of the Taliban in this way, since these attacks are usually carried out to create fear in the ranks of these forces. It is rarer still that the victim is none other than the President’s half brother. As if to add insult to injury, the Taliban detonated a suicide bomb at AWK’s funeral.

    • Americans can expect escalation of Iraq airstrikes

      The president’s authorization was confined to protecting American personnel and preventing the genocide of the Yazidis religious group. But it also suggested increased military involvement if the Iraqi government replaced Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, a Shiite widely seen as responsible for implementing sectarian policies that have severely alienated Sunni Iraqis. Al-Maliki resigned this week in favor of another Shiite, and Americans can expect to see an escalation of the airstrikes.

    • Elite commandos train for mission

      The men included Green Berets from the 10th Special Forces Group headquartered at Fort Carson, Colo., and an unidentified Navy crew who are training together for a classified mission somewhere in Africa.

    • US, NATO And The Destruction Of Libya: The Western Front Of A Widening War – OpEd

      NATO claimed that its intervention in Libya was a historic success. But three years later, Libya is in complete chaos. Some 1700 militias have a combined total of 250,000 men under arms. Another external intervention seems necessary to stabilize the country. But the US and NATO must never be involved

    • Libya’s new parliament asks for UN intervention
    • The Clintons, Duvalier, Martelly and Haiti

      If you vote and you live in the USA, you should try to become educated about the multiple recent and ongoing misdeeds of the Clintons in Haiti.

      So far, they’ve managed to hide their hands cleverly using the puppets (Martelly, Duvalier, Lamothe…) they have imposed upon the people of Haiti.

    • Nepal must be Stand against the CIA & EU’s Conspiracies

      Since 2006, due to the traitors’ regime, Nepalese society is suffering due to inflation, shortage, insecurity and indefinite pain. The leaders of Nepal only listen to foreign powers and do what they are told. That is why Nepal is facing such dire consequences. Anarchy prevailed in the country after Hindu status and royal institution were removed forcibly. The leaders of NC and UML are hostage to indecision. Most of the intellectuals of the country can be bought for money. Maoist leader Mohan Vaidya led group have not abandoned Leninism that is 88 years old date expired formula. A man unable to swim will drown. We must show commitment for progress of Nepal. To save our nation we must get rid of prejudice and support constitutional monarchy and Hindu and Buddhist status of the country.

    • Top 10 Fidel Castro assassination attempts
    • CIA Records: They Wanted to Kill, Using Chemical, Biological Substances

      By analyzing CIA documents from earlier days, we can understand the programs of the Agency and its government cousins.

      Given the fact that the CIA’s umbrella research program, MKULTRA, went completely dark in 1962, and given the technological advances that have been made in the intervening years, we can draw inferences about present-day covert ops.

    • Washington Staged Egypt’s “Arab Spring” Revolution, U.S. Knew About 9/11 Warning, Former Egypt Interior Minister Reveals

      One of these claims was that the United States was behind the 2011 Egyptian revolution which overthrew Hosni Mubarak. The other, however, was that the Egyptian intelligence agencies and Interior Ministry received information regarding a developing terrorist operation against the United States in September, 2001 and that the Egyptians warned the United States twice ahead of time. According to El-Adly, these warnings were completely ignored.

    • Nixon believed CIA involved in Kennedy assassination

      A new book, to be released Sept. 2, discloses a previously unknown connection between Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, John F. Kennedy and the CIA. In fact, author Roger Stone, a former Nixon aide, asserts that Nixon “knew the CIA was involved in JFK’s assassination” and was so pesky in his attempts to get them to disclose all their records that the CIA contemplated the assassination of Nixon as well. Nixon believed CIA involved in Kennedy assassination

    • Top 10 Fidel Castro assassination attempts

      Cuba celebrated Castro’s 88th birthday yesterday and he famously survived 638 assassination attempts – the Americans tried so many ways that they had to get creative. Here are his top 10 assassination attempts

    • Washington: Plans against Cuba lay bare

      The most recent leaks about Cuba reveal the hiring of young Costa Ricans, Peruvians, and Venezuelans whose goals were to recruit possible dissidents in Cuban universities. These activists would later play the role of organizers of a “velvet” revolution. The AP has released the names of their top agents. When this project is linked to the mission of USAID contractor Alan Gross, currently serving a prison sentence in Cuba, and the so-called Zunzuneo, and Piramideo —Twitter-like social networks to unite thousands of Cuban people to carry out destabilization actions— it takes shape a very-well orchestrated plan to boost up a future rebellion in Cuba.

    • ISI, CIA aiding northeast Indian militants: Tripura CM

      Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar has alleged that Pakistani intelligence agency ISI and America’s CIA are in constant touch with anti-India militants, a section of whom are still using Bangladesh to operate.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • More Trans-Pacific Partnership details leaked

      The United States and other countries in the Americas and Asia are involved in secretly negotiating a Free Trade Agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, much of the news about the deal comes from leaks as none of the details are publicly published. In the latest leak, activists reveal Certification which allows the US to withhold the the final steps that are necessary to bring a trade and investment treaty into force until the other party has changed it’s relevant laws to meet US expectations.

  • Finance

  • Censorship

    • Anonymity and Censorship

      How far can government go in forcing people to reveal their identities, or protecting people from being forced to reveal their identities? The issues of anonymity, free speech, and privacy are once again central topics of debate, made so by the refusal of the police department in Ferguson, Missouri to reveal the identity of the police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager Saturday night, based on fears for the officer’s safety. The decision to keep his identity secret has been a factor in the violent protests in the St. Louis suburb.

    • Google: We must reverse the new tide of censorship sweeping Europe

      You may have heard of the DA-Notice. This is a formal request, from the government of the day to the editors of newspapers such as this, to kill a story on the grounds of national security. The DA-Notice system is voluntary, and it works because it is not deployed as a method of censorship. Tiny numbers of DA-Notices are issued. Tiny numbers of stories are killed. But, in our internet age, in which communication is supposed to be easier, and freer, than ever before, that is changing, and not for the better. Welcome to the world of the G-notice.

    • The problem with censorship in social media

      When it comes to social media, and the Internet in general, censorship is a sensitive topic. You probably didn’t read the small print when you signed up to Facebook or Twitter but all your favourite sites have rules, and with so many users posting so much content daily it can be difficult to police them – especially without pissing people off. Free speech is pretty popular after all.

    • Crowdfunding Lantern, a P2P anti-censorship tool
    • CIA security luminary: ‘Right to be forgotten is not enough’

      The EU’s so-called “right to be forgotten” laws have not gone far enough to protect citizens’ privacy, according to Dan Geer, one of the world’s best-known security experts.

    • Essay: Censorship, police intimidation at missile defense conference

      Upon exiting the room he was immediately surrounded by four to six armed police officers in uniform, two of whom identified themselves as members of the Huntsville Police Department.

    • Bulgaria: Disputed sections of “bank censorship” proposal axed

      Bulgarian journalists covering the financial beat can breathe freely as the most controversial parts of the so-called “bank censorship” amendment to the criminal code have been removed by the legal committee of the national assembly.

    • Draw the Line: Do wars justify censorship?

      The British government established the War Office Press Bureau 100 years ago this month to censor reports from the British Army before they were issued to the press. Colonel Ernest Swinton, the first man to be appointed the Army’s official journalist, wrote later: “The principle which guided me in my work was above all to avoid helping the enemy… I essayed to tell as much of the truth as was compatible with safety, to guard against depression and pessimism, and to check unjustified optimism which might lead to a relaxation of effort.”

    • Erdoğan brought censorship, chilling effects on journalism

      Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is preparing to assume the office of president on Aug. 28 following his election to the state’s top post on Aug. 10, has left a legacy on journalism which is filled with confrontation and rebuke of journalists, attempts at censorship, prosecution and even deportation of critical journalists.

  • Privacy

    • Blogging History: NSA audit shows 1000s of privacy violations; RECAP for US law launches; Wiretapping the Web
    • Hillary Clinton’s phone ‘hacked by German intelligence’

      Hillary Clinton’s phone was hacked during her time as US Secretary of State, German media reports. Allegations are set to question US-German relations just months after Merkel hacking scandal.

    • German secret service ‘spied on Hillary Clinton’as NSA spied on Merkel
    • Pro Hackers Could Be Spying On You Through YouTube

      Morgan Marquis-Boire, a celebrated hacker turned security researcher, just published a lengthy and rather scary paper on so-called “network injection appliances”. The NSA-calibre hacking tool is sold by companies like Hacking Team and FinFisher for as little as $US1 million and can crack into your hard drive any time unencrypted data is exchanged with a server. YouTube videos, by the way, are not encrypted.

    • You Can Get Hacked Just By Watching This Cat Video on YouTube
    • Former NSA Director Doesn’t Remember Taking A Photo With Edward Snowden

      Former National Security Agency director Michael Hayden says a picture of him with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in the September issue of Wired magazine wasn’t a memorable experience because he doesn’t remember taking the photo.

    • Your Cellphone’s Tiny Motion Sensor Could Be Eavesdropping on You

      Researchers just found yet another reason to be paranoid: Even if hackers or the NSA are locked out of your cellphone’s microphone, camera and data, they might still be able to snoop on you through the tiny chip that tracks the device’s orientation. Gyroscopes in modern phones, unlike the spinning gyroscopes of old, work by a method that also allows it to detect vibrations in the air at certain frequencies — including some that overlap with the human voice. And worse still, Android apps don’t have to alert the user that they’re accessing the gyro, meaning practically any game or website could be listening in on you (neither do iPhone apps, but the technique doesn’t work as well on iOS).

    • Gyroscope In Your Phone Acts As A Microphone
    • A chance to limit spying on Americans

      When Congress returns from its August recess, surveillance reform will be high on the agenda. In May, the House passed the USA Freedom Act, a measure aimed at ending bulk collection of Americans’ phone records under the Patriot Act. And in July, a much stronger version of the bill was introduced in the Senate.

    • How US Government Surveillance Threatens Attorney-Client Privilege

      Documents leaked to the press over the past year by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden reveal that the US government is sweeping up vast amounts of private data and communications, including confidential information related to ongoing legal matters and privileged communications between attorneys and their clients.

    • Russia Denies Asking Snowden About Intelligence Secrets
    • ICYMI: Data breach disclosure, European privacy & internet outages

      Data breach disclosure is a legal necessity in the US and will soon be in the EU too, what with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (still awaiting legislative approval) stipulating that breaches must be reported within 72 hours of the initial incident.

      This is – by and large – being actively encouraged in an era of escalating data breaches and post-NSA transparency. Simply hiding the bad news can no longer be tolerated and has too many business repercussions (legal fines, brand damage) anyway.

    • Questioning Edward Snowden’s Cure-All

      Such a mindset no doubt serves the interests of an entrepreneur like Pierre Omidyar, a billionaire who plans to generate income by peddling security products. Products that will address the very scandals that his new media venture unearths.4 Isn’t that convenient? To be able to present a problem with one hand and then proffer a solution with the other? Problem-Reaction-Solution; also known as the Hegelian dialectic. By the way this tactic has also been employed, to the hilt, by a Pentagon carpetbagger named Keith Alexander.5

    • Cybersecurity’s History Provides Lessons for the Future

      In 2003-2004, deploying wireless networks was hot. Government IT executives were eager to offer wireless Internet access in conference rooms, but I was against it. Armed with white papers from three-letter agencies in D.C. and scary headlines describing “war driving” with breaches, I declared, “No wireless!”

    • FBI Snooping on Attorneys for 9/11 Suspects Has ‘Sown Chaos,’ Team Says

      The lead counsel for the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks claimed Thursday that an FBI investigation of the defense attorneys has “sown chaos” in the proceedings, as another week of pretrial hearings drew to a close.

    • The FBI Spied on the Wrong People Because of Typos

      The FBI unintentionally spied on the communications data of some Americans who were not targets of investigations because of typographical errors, according to a government watchdog.

    • Government Invokes ‘Privacy’ Exemption To Conceal Secrets

      When the National Security Agency wanted to block the public release of former contractor Edward Snowden’s emails, it found an unlikely ally: His privacy.

      The government cited a federal law protecting privacy rights to deny journalist Matthew Keys’ request for Snowden’s messages. Experts said Snowden is far from an exception. From Osama bin Laden to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, “privacy” claims are the government’s latest excuse to keep its secrets secret.

      “For an agency whose core mission is the violation of our privacy, privacy is an especially Orwellian rationale for the NSA to invoke in justifying its non-compliance” with the Freedom of Information Act, said Ryan Shapiro, an MIT graduate student who frequently files public records requests with the NSA and other agencies. “That it’s Edward Snowden’s privacy the NSA now claims to defend only heightens the irony.”

    • Meet the Man Who’s Gauging the Damage From Snowden

      Tapped in May 2014 by James Clapper, director of the Office of National Intelligence, Evanina is now immersed in coordinating multi-agency efforts to mitigate the risk of foreign infiltration, assess damage from intelligence leaks and tighten the security clearance process.

    • The surveillance debate, continued: Another response to the ACLU

      In a nutshell, I argued that the bill contained some problematic language that could actually allow more access to data by NSA; Rottman agreed that scrutiny was warranted but suggested the situation was not so bad — and certainly better than the status quo; Wheeler suggested the ACLU was too optimistic and pointed to other parts of the bill as potentially open to abuse.

    • New “TCP Stealth” tool aims to help sysadmins block spies from exploiting their systems

      The draft, authored by Tor’s Jacob Appelbaum and others, aims to standardize a technique called TCP Stealth, for keeping servers safe from mass port-scanning tools like GCHQ’s HACIENDA.

    • FTC Urged To Crack Down On Tech Firms’ Privacy Violations
    • New From 500-Year-Old Deutsche Post: Self-Destructing Encrypted Chats

      Deutsche Post offers the messenger, also available for Android phones, in eight languages and is targeting the global market, according to Mr. Edenhofer.

    • Apple slings fanbois’ data at Chinese servers in China Telecom deal

      In an effort to woo buyers in China, Apple has inked a deal to store Chinese customer data in Chinese servers for the first time.

    • Apple using China Telecom servers to store iCloud data
    • Understanding the Implications of Tor’s latest hack

      The security world got itself worked up in late July about an attack on the Tor network. The exploit, which ran from January to July, enabled the attackers to identify users looking for hidden services on Tor. Hidden services are typically web sites operated anonymously using Tor.

    • US must remedy NSA’s 2012 Syrian internet shutdown

      In this case, however, it turns out that the Syrian government was not to blame. Rather, the NSA caused the disruption by destroying a key router connecting the country to international networks.

      According to Snowden, the NSA’s aim was to spy on all Syrians. In the course of attempting to hack into the router for surveillance purposes, the NSA broke the equipment; rather than violating privacy, the NSA directly violated international law and policy on freedom of expression. Syrians lost the ability to communicate during a time when users at risk most needed access to accurate information, open media, and social networks.

  • Civil Rights

    • LAPD Officers Fatally Beat Father During Traffic Stop a Week Before Ezell Ford Shooting, Family Says

      Omar Abrego, a 37-year-old father of three, was driving home in an Amtrak truck in his work uniform on Aug. 2 when he was pulled over by officers right in front of his house in the 6900 block of South Main Street (map), which is just four blocks from where Ford was shot and killed by Los Angeles Police Department officers nine days later.

      Two sergeants from the Newton Division, which was also involved in the Ford shooting, pulled over Abrego because he was allegedly driving erratically, speeding and had almost hit a pedestrian, according to LAPD officials. When they attempted to pull him over, he kept going.

    • Has the Right Really Shifted on Police Militarization and Abuse?

      It would be a great thing if politicians were more critical of the obvious trend towards militarization of police forces. And there’s no doubt that some voices have been more critical of overzealous police practices than one might expect. But is it actually a widespread trend?

    • DoJ Memo Justifies Killing Anwar al-Awlaki by Citing US Law Enforcement’s Right to Use Deadly Force

      As a result of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Times, President Barack Obama’s administration has released the first memo authored by federal appeals court judge and former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer David Barron to justify the killing of US citizen and terrorism suspect Anwar al-Awlaki.

      The Justice Department memo is dated February 19, 2010, a few months after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to bomb a Detroit-bound plane on December 25, 2009. This memo was later superseded by a second memo that addressed issues the administration had overlooked, according to the Times.

    • The Secret US Drone Program that Killed JFK’s Eldest Brother

      Everything it seems. Over the course of 15 mission flown between August 4, 1944 and January 1, 1945 Operation Aphrodite managed to kill four American crewmen, including Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.—eldest son of the politically powerful Kennedy family and older brother to the future-35th president—while failing to damage any of their intended targets and, in most cases failing to even reach their target. Most were shot down, ran out of fuel, or just randomly fell out of the sky in a fiery ball of wreckage.

    • The Militarization of Law Enforcement in America: Blowback in Ferguson

      This is a short call from informing the mainstream media that the country has been living under pseudo martial law for decades.

    • More than 100 Cities Join Moment of Silence for Michael Brown
    • Blowback in Ferguson

      The fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager and the ensuing protests in Ferguson, Missouri has rocked America. Even the mainstream media with its aversion to the truth has been forced to address the militarization of the police in America – albeit years too late.

      This is a short call from informing the mainstream media that the country has been living under pseudo martial law for decades.

      On April 13, 2013, the ACLU (Shasta Chapter) invited me to be their keynote speaker to talk about government secrecy, drones, and the militarization of America. The Ferguson shooting and its coverage it the media prompted me to highlight some of the points made during that talk as they relate to today’s events.

    • Anger Over Missouri Police Shooting Resonates Across Bay Area and Nation

      To many observers in Oakland, the scenes in Ferguson of militarized police officers and clouds of tear gas are reminiscent of local clashes, including skirmishes between police and Occupy protesters and the protests that followed the 2009 BART police killing of Oscar Grant.

    • From Boston to Ferguson: Have We Reached a Tipping Point in the Police State?

      As journalist Benjamin Carlson points out, “In today’s Mayberry, Andy Griffith and Barney Fife could be using grenade launchers and a tank to keep the peace.”

      This is largely owing to the increasing arsenal of weapons available to police units, the changing image of the police within communities, and the growing idea that the police can and should use any means necessary to maintain order.

      To our detriment, local police – clad in jackboots, helmets and shields and wielding batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, and assault rifles – have increasingly come to resemble occupying forces in our communities. “Today,” notes Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, “17,000 local police forces are equipped with such military equipment as Blackhawk helicopters, machine guns, grenade launchers, battering rams, explosives, chemical sprays, body armor, night vision, rappelling gear and armored vehicles. Some have tanks. ”

      Unfortunately, whatever the threat to so-called security – whether it’s rumored weapons of mass destruction, school shootings, or alleged acts of terrorism – it doesn’t take much for the American people to march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, even if it means submitting to martial law, having their homes searched, and being stripped of one’s constitutional rights at a moment’s notice.

    • There’s no punishment for lying to Americans?

      Last April at a Senate hearing, National Security Agency Director James Clapper was asked by Sen. Ron Wyden whether the NSA was spying on the American people. He said no, but he admitted later that it was a lie.

      This lie is a felony offense.

    • Pop Music Needs to Be More Political. Here’s Why.

      By the beginning of the 1990s, that kind of opinionated, black-power-inspired hip-hop had morphed into gangster rap. Of course, it was easier for media and government to represent the likes of Tupac as a danger to society, indoctrinating America’s youth, black and white, with violent fantasies, flaunting the thug life as something to aspire to.

    • CHAPMAN: Fast facts on John Brennan

      A diplomat was once defined as someone whose job is to lie for his country. That’s apparently what makes them different from intelligence officers, whose function is to lie to their country.

    • Disappearing People and Disappearing the Evidence: The Deeper Significance of the SSCI Report

      When the executive summary of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s (SSCI) report on the CIA’s torture program is finally released, it is likely to discredit a story that defenders of “enhanced interrogation” have been telling for years. The narrative first appeared in the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memos that authorized the CIA program. President Bush repeated it in his September 2006 speech acknowledging the existence of CIA prisons, and in 2008 when he vetoed a bill outlawing waterboarding. Slightly different versions appear in Bush’s memoirs, and defenses of the CIA program by George Tenet, Michael Hayden, Michael Mukasey, Jose Rodriguez, John Yoo, Dick Cheney, and others.

    • CIA director should be fired
    • Media advocates hand Justice Dep’t. a petition supporting subpoenaed New York Times reporter
    • NY Times reporter honoured for fight to protect source
    • Reporter for New York Times honored for source protection
    • Petitioners Call on US to Stop Legal Action against James Risen
    • James Risen: ‘Happy to carry on the fight’
    • US reporter vows to ‘keep fighting’ to protect source
    • Press Freedom Groups Ramp Up Campaign For James Risen

      Press freedom organizations submitted a petition with more than 100,000 signatures to the US Department of Justice Thursday in support of New York Times reporter James Risen.

      The petition demanded that the government stop all legal action against Risen, who has been involved in a six-year battle for press freedom, McClatchy DC reported Friday.

    • 100,000 sign up to support New York Times reporter facing jail
    • 100,000-petition urges US to drop legal action vs Pulitzer-winning journalist
    • Is President Obama About to Send a ‘New York Times’ Reporter to Jail?
    • The CIA’s shameful secrets
    • Guest: CIA spying on Senate is the constitutional equivalent of Watergate
    • It’s logical to say torture doesn’t work

      Contrary to the claims of Debra Saunders in “DiFi’s tortured logic on interrogations” (Insight, Aug. 12), it is not illogical to think that torture is ineffective. It is instead, the consensus of interrogation experts at the FBI and British Intelligence, and has been for decades. The issue is not that torture victims don’t talk, but rather that they will say anything they think will make the pain stop, regardless of its accuracy.

    • America’s Real Patriots Fought to Expose and End Torture
    • Telecom petition calls on Obama to fire Brennan

      A telecom company and tens of thousands of supporters are calling on President Obama to fire CIA Director John Brennan over a report that showed his agency hacked into Senate computers.

    • Americans Should Be Ashamed Of Torture And CIA Cover-Up

      As a person of faith and as an American, the United States committing torture in my name and the subsequent CIA actions around torture are especially disturbing. It is against the very core of who I am as a Catholic and as a human being and is the antithesis as to who we are as a nation.

    • 5 Muslim Americans File Lawsuit over Terrorist Watchlist

      Five Muslim Americans have filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the U.S. government of unjustly placing them on the terrorist watchlist. One plaintiff in the suit, Yaseen Kadura, says a federal official tried to pressure him into becoming a government informant in Libya, using removal from the no-fly list as an incentive. The Intercept news site revealed last month the Obama administration has expanded the watchlist system by approving broad guidelines over who can be targeted. Hundreds of thousands of watchlisted individuals are recognized as having no ties to terrorist groups.

    • My Turn: Torture is a crime, so why don’t we treat it like one

      President Obama has now acknowledged America’s use of torture. “We tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values.” Obama went on to try and place the use of torture in context. Recalling the desperation of law enforcement to prevent further attacks post-9/11, Obama said, “It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job those folks had.”

      Although I am glad Obama acknowledged the fact of torture and did not try to call it a phony euphemism, I am disappointed in his response. Torture is a crime. It is not a public relations embarrassment that needs to be managed.

    • FBI Urged to Purge Anti-Muslim Material

      US civil rights and religious groups have voiced their concerns over federal agencies of anti-Muslim training material, demanding an urgent audit of federal law enforcement training material.

      “The use of anti-Muslim trainers and materials is not only highly offensive, disparaging the faith of millions of Americans, but leads to biased policing that targets individuals and communities based on religion, not evidence of wrongdoing,” a letter signed by 75 groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Auburn Seminary and the NAACP, reads, Religion News Services reported on Thursday, August 14.

    • Come clean on torture by the military and CIA

      Ten years ago, the infamous photos from Abu Ghraib thrust the issue of torture onto the front page. While some tried to employ the few-bad-apples defense, it was clear then and it is even clearer now that the horror at Abu Ghraib grew out of problems at the top. Torture by U.S. military personnel and intelligence officers was, at its core, a failure of leadership.

    • New York Oath Keepers claim accusations by state intelligence agency to be false

      Is NYSIC suggesting that it is extreme and threatening to encourage our officials to honor their oath and refuse to obey unconstitutional orders?

08.15.14

Links 15/8/2014: Reiser4 in Headlines Again, GNOME and KDE Events Finish

Posted in News Roundup at 11:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Calling All Teachers! Google Classroom Arrives as a Preview

    Classroom is, of course, a free and open platform that will improve over time, and Google has the opportunity to add many of its open source tools to the Classroom ecosystem.

  • ClusterHQ floats Flocker open source container data manager for Docker

    Those working with Docker containers can now try out the Flocker open-source, data-focused Docker management framework from ClusterHQ.

  • ClusterHQ Brings Docker Virtualization to Data Storage

    ClusterHQ’s Flocker leverages the ZFS file system to tackle the container storage challenge.

  • Building trust and security through open source governance

    Adoption of open source software in the enterprise continues to grow, with research suggesting the two largest factors fueling this growth are security and quality. Surprising, perhaps, given revelations of the much-publicised Heartbleed vulnerability discovered in a widely used open source cryptography library earlier this year.

  • WhoaVerse for social communities, built on open source

    When a WhoaVerse user deletes their account, all voting history is deleted from the database. Any comments that the user has made and their author tag get overwritten with the keyword “deleted,” as well as all of their text and link submissions.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • SUSE’s Latest OpenStack Icehouse Distribution Joins a Crowded Field

      While we’re eventually going to see a lot of consolidation on the OpenStack scene, for now, the number of competitors remains large. Witness SUSE’s newest OpenStack distribution, SUSE Cloud 4, which is out now and targeted at building Infrastructure-as-a-Service private clouds.

  • Business

    • Semi-Open Source

      • Leaflet provides open source map solution

        Like anything related to Web development these days, there are a number of options available for including map features to your applications. What you decide to use often comes down to personal preferences – one of my requirements is simplicity and Leaflet does not disappoint. As its documentation states, it works across all major desktop and mobile platforms. Leaflet utilizes HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript for modern platforms while remaining accessible and usable on older platforms.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Geometry Shaders / OpenGL 3.2 Finally Comes To Intel Sandy Bridge

      Those still using Intel Sandy Bridge hardware on Linux will be ecstatic to learn this morning that geometry shaders support has been implemented in Mesa by a new patch-set for this older Intel hardware and thereby allowing OpenGL 3.2 support to be exposed for this “Gen6″ hardware.

Leftovers

  • Security

    • German researchers develop defense software: Potential protection against the “Hacienda” intelligence program

      Grothoff and his students at TUM have developed the “TCP Stealth” defense software, which can inhibit the identification of systems through both Hacienda and similar cyberattack software and, as a result, the undirected and massive takeover of computers worldwide, as Grothoff explains. “TCP Stealth” is free software that has as its prerequisites particular system requirements and computer expertise, for example, use of the GNU/Linux operating system. In order to make broader usage possible in the future, the software will need further development.

    • Security advisories for Thursday
    • Who needs hackers? ‘Password1′ opens a third of business’ doors

      Hundreds of thousands of hashed corporate passwords have been cracked within minutes by penetration testers using graphics processing units.

      The 626,718 passwords were harvested during penetration tests over the last two years conducted across corporate America by Trustwave infosec geeks.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Former DARPA Chief Broke Ethics Rules, Watchdog Finds

      Fifteen months after its completion, the Pentagon inspector general on Wednesday released a report that found the former head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency violated ethics laws by endorsing a product she developed while in the private sector.

      Regina Dugan, now an executive with Google, ran DARPA from July 2009 to March 2012. Prior to that she founded and served as president and CEO of RedXDefense, which received DARPA funding.

    • Killing Programs Record Index Will Come to Light

      The Department of Justice must release a previously classified index of withheld records related to the government’s targeted-killing programs, the 2nd Circuit ruled.

    • Pro-Palestine activists arrested over Israeli arms protest in Melbourne

      Victoria police said officers were deployed to monitor about 20 protesters in total, with the seven people on the roof arrested and then released with a court summons for trespass.

    • Australia: Anti-war activists raid Israeli drone factory

      Anti-war activists stormed a factory in Port Melbourne this morning to protest against the Australian government’s support for Israeli’s war in Gaza. They raided the manufacturing compound which, they said, supplies arms and drones for Israel.

    • From Gaza to Brazil: Stop Financing Drones That Kill Our Children

      This isn’t a war between Israel and Hamas. I am a secular university professor who remembers the time before Israel hermetically locked all the entrances and exits to Gaza. The 398 children that have been killed were not Hamas fighters, the three UN schools that Israel bombed were not Hamas facilities. This isn’t even a war against the population of Gaza, for the majority of those living in Gaza are refugees displaced by Israel in 1948. This isn’t even against the Palestinian people, this is a war against humanity itself.

    • Israel Braces for War Crimes Inquiries on Gaza

      The fighting is barely over in the latest Gaza war, with a five-day cease-fire taking hold on Thursday, but attention has already shifted to the legal battlefield as Israel gears up to defend itself against international allegations of possible war crimes in the monthlong conflict.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Oil Industry Threatens to Take Its Underwater Air Guns and Go Home

      A game of chicken is shaping up over the Obama administration’s decision to let the oil industry collect fresh data on energy supplies off the Atlantic Coast.

      The Interior Department, over the protests of environmentalists, said in July that it would allow the oil industry to use seismic air cannons to search for oil and gas underneath federal waters in the Atlantic.

    • One Company Is Really Psyched About EPA’s Big Climate-Change Rule

      Several big industry groups have come out with guns blazing against the Environmental Protection Agency’s draft plan to slash carbon emissions from the nation’s coal-fired power plants.

      But some companies see opportunity in the regulation at the center of the White House climate-change agenda. Case in point: Opower, the software and data company that works with utilities to help customers save energy.

  • Finance

    • Culture as a cause of poverty has been wilfully misinterpreted

      When the term “culture of poverty” was first used by the anthropologist Oscar Lewis in 1959, it was seized upon as “evidence” that poverty is not caused primarily by an absence of material resources. This was never Lewis’s intention. In a 1966 essay for Scientific American, he wrote: “A culture of poverty is not just a matter of deprivation or disorganisation – a term signifying the absence of something. It is a culture in the traditional anthropological sense in that it provides human beings with a design for living, a ready-made set of solutions for human problems, and so serves a significant adaptive function.”

      This was wilfully misinterpreted by those who believed poverty could not be abated by throwing money at it (that sole remedy for all other social ills); it was absorbed into an ancient moral critique of the poor; identified in modern industrial society with chaotic, disorganised lives, absence of parental ambition for children, aversion to hard labour and a tendency to addiction.

    • Apple battered by furious shareholder lawsuit over illegal employee poaching deal

      Apple shareholders have joined forces and filed a class-action lawsuit, suing Steve Jobs’ estate over claims that Apple eroded its own value by striking an illegal recruitment agreement with its rivals.

      The case has been filed by R. Andre Klein, an Apple shareholder, on behalf of all the other shareholders in the Cupertino-based company.

  • Privacy

    • Newly Released Documents Show NSA Abused Its Discontinued Internet Metadata Program Just Like It Abused Everything Else

      James Clapper’s office (ODNI) has released a large batch of declassified documents, most of which deal with the NSA’s discontinued Section 402 program. What this program did was re-read pen register/trap and trace (PR/TT) statutes to cover internet metadata, including sender/receiver information contained in email and instant messages. (Not to be confused with the Section 702 program, which is still active and harvests internet communications.)

    • Snuffing Out The Magistrate’s Revolt: DC District Court Judge Roberts Grants Another Rejected Warrant Application

      As we’ve been covering for the past few months, there seems to be an emboldened set of magistrate judges willing to push back against broad electronic search requests by the government. While it would be nice to see a stronger pushback originate somewhere closer to the top, it is (or was, it seems…) refreshing to see those on the lower rungs defend citizens’ rights by rejecting what can only be termed “general warrants,” the very thing that prompted the Fourth Amendment in the first place.

    • Judge Blesses Justice Department Email Searches

      Magistrate Judge John Facciola had denied the warrant application, which sought the information from Apple Inc., the suspect’s email provider, on grounds that it was too broad and would allow the Justice Department access to heaps of irrelevant, private information. The details of the underlying investigation remain secret, though public court records show it involves potential kickbacks and a defense contractor.

    • New York State Keeps Government Emails Out Of The Public’s Hands With Its 90-Day Retention Limit

      New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office continues to do everything it can to prevent its emails from being accessed by FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) requests.

    • Why is the Cuomo Administration Automatically Deleting State Employees’ Emails?

      New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration — which the governor pledged would be the most transparent in state history — has quietly adopted policies that allow it to purge the emails of tens of thousands of state employees, cutting off a key avenue for understanding and investigating state government.

    • Where you’re most likely to be wiretapped

      According to Pew Research Center, which analyzed recently released data in a 2013 wiretap report from the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, Nevada had 38 wiretaps authorized for every 500,000 people — the most-wiretapped state by a large margin. Colorado and New York follow with around 12 each. The most wiretaps requested in Nevada were in the home of Las Vegas, Clark County, which only has a population of around 2 million.

    • EU legislation and US bullying put cloud users between a rock and a hard place

      Google Glass Alastair StevensonGovernment departments and regulatory bodies have been espousing the benefits of cloud computing for years now, and for good reason. The benefits of cloud computing are huge and have the potential not only to streamline most businesses’ existing work processes, but fundamentally to change the way we do commerce.

    • Eavesdrop using a smart phone without a battery possible: Researchers

      Then I came across another story in Wired that Stanford University researchers and Israel’s defense research group Rafael plan to present a technique at a conference next week for using a smartphone’s gyroscope to eavesdrop on nearby conversations in a room. In case you don’t know the gyroscope are sensors that tell the phone whether its in horizontal or vertical position.

    • Spy agency computer taps face oversight deficiency

      The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has said it will need additional resources to oversee new powers planned for Australian intelligence agencies to access computers and networks during investigations.

    • Edward Snowden: James Clapper’s lies to Congress pushed me over the edge

      Edward Snowden says dishonest comments to Congress by the US intelligence chief were the final straw that prompted him to flee the country and reveal a trove of national security documents.

    • The Switchboard: Twitter vows to improve policies after online abuse drives Robin Williams’s daughter away from service

      Twitter vows to “improve our policies” after Robin Williams’ daughter is bullied off the network. “Internet trolls bullied Robin Williams’s daughter off of Twitter and Instagram just days after her father’s death,” the Switch’s Hayley Tsukayama reports. Now Twitter has vowed to take abuse on its service more seriously — but Zelda Williams is far from the only person who has faced serious levels of vitriol on the platform.

    • Twitter vows to “improve our policies” after Robin Williams’ daughter is bullied off the network
    • They think I still have smoking gun: Snowden on US government’s fears

      Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who exposed mass cybersurveillance by American and British spy agencies, says the US government fears the most damaging leaks are yet to come.

    • Edward Snowden on Booz Allen: Here’s what we’ve learned from his Wired profile

      It was about a month ago that Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. CEO Ralph Shrader talked to me about Edward Snowden. And this week we found out what Edward Snowden had to say about Booz Allen.

    • ​‘NSA – the greatest enemy of American communications and computing security’

      NSA has done more to undermine US banking, commercial communications and computer products than any foreign power could ever have dreamed of, Robert Steele, former CIA case officer and co-founder of the US Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, told RT.

    • PORTAL router puts hassle-free TOR privacy in your pocket

      They say good things come in small packages. In this case, the good thing is a healthy layer of Internet privacy protection. The package is a TP-Link pocket router flashed with open source firmware from the PORTAL project.

      The project itself isn’t new — the code has been available on GitHub for more than a year. What’s different now is that Cloudflare’s Ryan Lackey and Lookout Security’s Marc Rogers went on stage at DefCon to announce plans to make PORTAL more accessible. They want to make it much, much easier for “ordinary” Internet users to take a page from the OPSEC handbook.

    • Proposed surveillance reforms are weaker than the ACLU suggests

      The terms of the debate over NSA reform between Dickinson College professor H.L. Pohlman and the ACLU’s Gabe Rottman are too limited. Pohlman claims the version of the USA Freedom Act sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) still permits the government to collect call-detail records prospectively (he suggests, but does not specifically say, that it permits the government to do so in bulk). Rottman claims that new language limiting the specific selection terms used in queries and mandating minimization procedures would limit that.

      Both men miss the one thing in Leahy’s bill that should limit bulk call-detail records: prohibitions on using the name of an electronic communications service provider as a specific selection term (unless that provider is the target of an investigation). Thus, whereas now the government uses “Verizon” as a selection term, it shouldn’t be able to do this going forward. The government will surely still be able to collect more limited sets of call-detail records — targeting, for example, everyone within 2 degrees of Julian Assange as part of a counterintelligence investigation — and even do so prospectively. That’s bulky collection, but not bulk.

    • Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO): Terminates 8% Of Workforce While Buying Back $1.5 Billion In Stock
    • Cisco CEO Chambers Defends Plan for Job Cuts

      Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers defended his plan to cut 6,000 jobs, calling it a necessary response to a changing market for networking gear and shifting demands in markets around the world.

      In an interview with Re/code following the company’s quarterly earnings report Wednesday, Chambers said he expects Cisco’s total head count to be about the same at this time next year as it is now — about 74,000 — despite the cuts. And though the cuts will be painful for those who lose their jobs, they’re necessary, he says, if Cisco is to exploit new, faster-growing markets like cloud computing, security and software while keepings its costs about where they are now.

    • Consumer group asks FTC to investigate tech firms and data brokers over Safe Harbor violations

      The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), a U.S. group campaigning for digital consumer rights, has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate 30 companies for non-compliance with the Safe Harbor agreement between the U.S. and the European Union. The companies include Salesforce.com, AOL and Adobe, as well as a bunch of data brokers like Acxiom and Datalogix.

    • John Schindler Out At Naval War College After Sexting Scandal

      Would you want Dr. Dick Pic and those like him having access to all your private personal information?

    • How To Turn Off Smartphone Apps That Track You In The Background

      A growing number of smartphone apps are tracking your location — even when they’re not being used. Foursquare released a revamped app last Wednesday that joins a list of those tracking location persistently, including Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), Google, and a number of shopping apps that access location data all the time, even when they’re off.

      Apps use location information to enhance their service to users. Foursquare, for example, sends helpful tips based on where you happen to be. REI’s app sends deals when you happen to be near a store. The tracking is opt-in, but that doesn’t mean the data is safe. The Target breach is one example of how a large-scale corporation could be susceptible to outside security threats. Meanwhile, tech companies like Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Facebook are sometimes forced to hand information over to government agencies like the NSA.

    • U.S. Tech’s Pain Is Non-U.S. Tech’s Gain

      American tech companies could end up losing tens of billions of dollars in foreign sales stemming from the NSA spying scandal. Then there’s the potential revenue hit from Russia, which is pushing to reduce its reliance on some of the same companies amid heightened tensions with the U.S.

    • China’s cloud grows with a little help from U.S. tech

      U.S. technology companies have dominated the global cloud computing scene, particularly cloud giants like Amazon Web Services and Google. But China’s cloud computing market is slowly building momentum, and Chinese tech giants are making headway into a market that they have the power to significantly change.

    • It’s time for PGP to die, says … no, not the NSA – a US crypto prof

      A senior cryptographer has sparked debate after calling time on PGP – the gold standard for email and document encryption.

      Matthew Green is an assistant research professor who lectures in computer science and cryptography at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, US. This week, on his personal blog, he argued that it’s “time for PGP to die”, describing it as “downright unpleasant”.

    • An unlimited appetite for data

      Which is why the release in the U.S. of newly declassified court documents are so interesting. It’s a decision by Judge John Bates of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a closed-door court that has no Canadian equivalent for approving electronic surveillance for any communications involving a U.S. resident and foreign powers.

      The decision “offers a scathing assessment of the NSA (National Security Agency) ability to manage its own top-secret electronic surveillance of Internet metadata—a program the NSA scrapped after a 2011 review found it wasn’t fulfilling its mission,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

    • Best Alternatives to Tor: 12 Programs to Use Since NSA, Hackers Compromised Tor Project

      Tor May Have Been Compromised, Linux Based OS’s Like Tails Offer The Best Supplement

    • Will Facebook, Google Delete My Personal Info?

      Deleting Facebook, Twitter accounts leaves old conversations in their place

    • Schneier: Cyber-retaliation like that exposed by Snowden report a bad idea

      The NSA program dubbed MonsterMind is dangerous in that it would enable automated retaliation against machines that launch cyber attacks with no human intervention, meaning that such counterattacks could hit innocent parties.

      MonsterMind came to light through a Wired magazine interview with former NSA sysadmin Edward Snowden, who stole and publicly released thousands of NSA documents.

    • What happens in Europe, doesn’t stay in Europe: US giants accused of breaking EU privacy pact

      More than 30 big US tech firms are breaking international agreed-upon US-EU Safe Harbor commitments to safeguard Europeans’ data, according to a complaint filed with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday.

    • VPNs Integral Part of the Net

      In these days of NSA spying, net neutrality, and internet companies messing with streaming services, a virtual private network, or a VPN, has become an integral part of many people’s internet experience. Though VPNs are becoming more mainstream, there are still people who do not know what a VPN is, or how one is used or what they do.

    • SpiderOak says you’ll know it’s secure because a little bird told you

      Edward Snowden–endorsed cloud storage provider SpiderOak has added an additional safeguard to ensure that its users’ data doesn’t fall into the hands of law enforcement without their knowledge, in the form of a “warrant canary.”

    • Snowden-endorsed file-sharing service SpiderOak to set up ‘warrant canary’

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Sharks are biting Google’s expensive cables

      Google has had to reinforce its fragile undersea cables with Kevlar – the same material used in bulletproof vests – in order to protect against shark attacks

    • Parallel Conduct: How ISPs Make The Consolidated Internet Service Market Even Worse

      What Crawford is describing is parallel conduct, which is when companies that would otherwise compete create a monopoly-like setting without having to merge or coordinate operations. Parallel conduct in the broadband industry is not hypothetical. In 2011, Comcast and Time-Warner Cable sold parts of the wireless spectrum they owned in exchange for an agreement that Verizon would stop expanding its fiber optic network. Essentially, Comcast and Time-Warner Cable paid Verizon to stop offering new high-speed broadband service. (As part of the deal, Comcast and Time-Warner Cable also further divided up the United States geographically, foreshadowing the merger between the two companies.)

  • DRM

    • Orwell chap snaps in Amazon paperback claptrap yap rap

      Amazon is under fire from George Orwell’s estate for referencing the Nineteen Eighty-Four author in its legal battle with publishers.

      The web bazaar, while mired in a war of words with Hachette over book prices, invoked Orwell’s name and cited comments made by the author at the dawn of paperback books.

      According to Amazon, Orwell had suggested in the 1940s that publishers should collude in order to suppress the sale of the less expensive paperbacks. This, Amazon said, was a sentiment now repeated by Hachette – which is accused of unfairly inflating e-book prices.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

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