• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Unix and Linux writer disappears off New Zealand Coast

Evi Nemeth, whose work on Unix and Linux, helped develop the languages behind the modern data bases is missing at sea and presumed dead.

How Linux can turbocharge your career

Today in open source: Learn how Linux can give your career a jumpstart, look out for smokin’ hot Unix chips, and download Linux kernel 3.9 — you know you want to.

Desktop

• GNU/Linux Breaking Out in Germany

Audiocasts/Shows

• Burning Circle Episode 121

  As this week’s episode discusses a specific deadline an unofficial transcript is provided below for the avoidance of doubt.

Kernel Space

• Intel Works On Enabling Haswell’s Resource Streamer

  Intel Open-Source Technology Center developers are currently working on another feature of Intel’s latest-generation Haswell architecture not currently exposed by their open-source Linux graphics driver.

• Linux Working On 5MHz, 10MHz Wireless Support

  Linux wireless developers remain at work on support for 5 and 10MHz channels in order to prepare for future 802.11 standards.

  On Monday the sixth revision to the Linux wireless 5/10MHz channel patch-set was published by Simon Wunderlich. This patch-set consists of 18 patches and nearly a thousand lines of new code for supporting 5 and 10MHz channels in the Linux wireless networking area of the kernel.

• The State Of Killing CONFIG_VT, Moving To User-Space

  David Herrmann is a student developer and one of the kernel developers that has been on a mission to kill off CONFIG_VT, a.k.a. the VT console within the Linux kernel, and move it off to user-space. He’s contributed to various projects to further his ideas and now he’s written a new post to provide an update on this matter and his thoughts on the current situation of Linux system compositors.

• Graphics Stack

  • The Extraordinary DRM Pull Request For Linux 3.11

  • AMD Radeon DRM Gets More Early DPM Fixes

    AMD’s Alex Deucher has sent in another Git pull request for the Radeon DRM code for the in-development Linux 3.11 kernel. As with the other secondary pulls, this code update is about bettering up the state of Radeon dynamic power management.

  • Intel/NVIDIA/AMD Compete On Open/Closed Source Linux GPU Driver Performance

    After recently delivering a 15-way open-source Intel/AMD/NVIDIA GPU comparison, here are the benchmarks when tossing in the proprietary AMD Catalyst and NVIDIA graphics drivers too. Besides comparing a diverse selection of graphics processors from the three main desktop GPU vendors, this comparison also shows how the current open-source Linux graphics drivers compare to the official proprietary drivers.

Applications

• Proprietary

  • CA Technologies simplifies data protection for Linux

• Instructionals/Technical

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

  • Linux: SSH Tunneling, Port Redirection and Security

  • Honeypot Tutorials : Modes & Working of Honeypot

  • Virtual Users And Domains With Postfix, Courier, MySQL And SquirrelMail (Debian Wheezy)

  • HotShots: A Lightweight and Useful Screen Capture Tool For Linux

• Games

  • Full Bore – A Puzzle Adventure coming soon to Linux!

  • Crytek Goes Public On Linux Coder For CryENGINE

    Crytek is hiring a new Linux programmer for maintaining their Linux (client-side) portion of their popular and very advanced CryENGINE game platform.

    The CryENGINE powers Crysis as well as other games like Homefront 2, Monster Hunter Online, Ryse, and Warface.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • GNOME 3 Classic is more of a hybrid desktop

    GNOME 3 Classic is supposed to provide a traditional interface for desktop computing for those not completely pleased with the default GNOME Shell. So when you hear people talk about it, you’d think that it is actually offers a true GNOME 2-ish interface for desktop computing.

    But I found out while testing the main edition of Fedora 19 that it is far from a traditional desktop interface. That it is more like a hybrid desktop interface – a fusion of what could be considered a traditional desktop interface and the GNOME Shell.

Distributions

• Open Ballot: Distro hopping

  Distros are funny things. We love some, we love to hate others and we’re pretty ambivalent about a few. However, underneath they’re based on basically the same code base. Most distros have a similar choice of desktop environments and the same applications, so they should all be pretty similar right? What we want to know this fortnight is: what causes you to leave a distro and install a new flavour of Linux?

• First impressions of Whonix and Linux Deepin

  This week I want to dedicate some time to looking at projects which readers have requested I review. These two projects aren’t related, their primary connection being both of their names showed up in my inbox.

• Why CrunchBang is good for beginners

  As many of you already know, I also blog as Larry the Free Software Guy and sometimes, when these blogs deal with CrunchBang, I usually merge the two. Yesterday, I wrote a blog item about something I found on the CrunchBang forums — TuxRadar’s Distro Picker — and a comment on the blog caused me to think about distros and which distros are better for new Linux users than others.

• Using An Old Computer? Give It New Life With LXDE

  As Linux is arguably the most customizeable operating system between it, Windows, and Mac OS X; there’s plenty of room to change just about whatever you please. Proper customizing can potentially lead to massive performance improvements, giving even the oldest hardware a new leash on life. I previously reviewed Xfce quite a while back as a great choice for resource-conscious users, but apparently there’s a new kid on the block that is even more lightweight and great for the crappiest hardware imaginable.

• New Releases

  • OpenELEC Testing – Raspberry Pi ARM Version:3.1.2

• Red Hat Family

  • Fedora

    • Fedora 19 Review – The cat that survived the poison

      Fedora 19 (Schrödinger’s Cat) arrived earlier this week. This release missed the planned deadline by one week, as has traditionally happened with past releases. Nevertheless a seven days’ delay is still manageable as compared to 2-3 weeks by which Fedora generally misses the mark. We’ve still not forgotten the two-and-a-half month delay in case of Fedora 18. The reason behind such delays is generally given to be focus on stability, which is a good thing for the end users because Fedora comes with “bleeding-edge” software—packages in their latest upstream versions at the time of release—and it’s kind of imperative to ensure everything works and all regressions are ironed out.

    • Fedora 19 ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’ Released – Installation Guide with Screenshots

    • 5 things to do after installing Fedora 19 GNOME

    • 4 third-party repositories to enable on Fedora 19

• Debian Family

  • New Debian leader seeks more innovation within project

    The new leader of the Debian GNU/Linux project, Lucas Nussbaum, plans to boost the amount of innovation that happens in the project itself, rather than just in its derivatives.

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • China Unicom Signs Up to Ubuntu Touch Advisory Group

        CAG members are able to get involved in shaping the direction of the Ubuntu Touch mobile experience, as well receive exclusive information on hardware and launch details.

      • China Unicom affirms Ubuntu support

        The fledgling mobile phone-oriented version of the Ubuntu platform picked up a boost today, with China Unicom signing up for the Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group.

      • Linux Desktops: Ubuntu vs. Linux Mint

        Ubuntu targets new and casual Linux enthusiasts with its Unity desktop environment, and Linux Mint says the same about its Cinnamon desktop. Each distribution claims to have the end user in mind, and these two distributions offer very similar experiences (unlike Ubuntu vs. Fedora).

      • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 323

      • Debian Project News – July 8th, 2013

      • Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group Updates

        A few weeks ago we announced the Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group (CAG). The CAG is designed to provide a place where carriers can help influence the development and requirements of Ubuntu for smartphones.

      • OpenSUSE from an Ubuntu users point of view..

      • Canonical Puts Out Mir 0.0.6 Release For Ubuntu

        For those living on the bleeding edge Ubuntu 13.10 developments, Mir 0.0.6 has been tagged.

        Mir 0.0.5 was tagged less than two weeks ago but out now is Mir 0.0.6 for those wishing to test this experimental display server that’s up for use in future versions of Ubuntu Linux by the desktop and mobile devices.

      • China Unicom hedges OS bets with Ubuntu support

        At least the wave of new mobile operating systems, set to appear on commercial devices over the next few months, is making the market more interesting, and potentially even disrupting the Android/iOS axis. Mozilla’s Firefox Mobile is leading the field in terms of profile and carrier support, but this week Ubuntu and Tizen, also Linux/browser-based OSs, are picking up momentum too.

Devices/Embedded

• MontaVista certified for Carrier Grade Linux using ARM chips

  MontaVista Software announced that its MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) 6.0 is the first Linux distribution to have been registered for Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) 5.0 under the ARM profile. The move reflects an expected surge of ARM processors in networking and telecom gear.

• Wind River Linux receives Ada language support

  AdaCore has rolled out the GNAT Pro Ada development environment on the Wind River Linux platform. This new implementation brings the Ada language’s reliability benefits to the increasingly popular Wind River Linux platform. The company offers the Ada solution for Wind River’s products, including a GNAT Pro implementation for Wind River’s VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS).

• Linux-based smartpen heads for Kickstarter

  A Linux-based digital pen from German startup Lernstift will go live on Kickstarter on July 10 for about 115 Euros, or $148. The Lernstift pen incorporates an ARM Cortex processor, a WiFi module, and a motion sensor, and is designed to correct penmanship, spelling, and grammar errors as you write.

• Phones

  • Ballnux

    • Boxee sells itself to Samsung at a loss

      Boxee, the Israeli startup that achieved fame first as the developer of an innovative, free, media-streaming software platform, and later through its partnership with D-Link around the iconic Linux-powered Boxee Box device, has been acquired by Samsung. According to reports by Haaretz and the New York Times, the company’s selling price was less than the $28.5 million it raked in from optimistic investors over the past six years.

  • Android

    • M.O.J.O vs Ouya: Can the open source solution take on the Kickstarter sensation?

      Damien McFerran talks to peripheral manufacturer Mad Catz to see if its M.O.J.O Android gaming device can take on Ouya

    • Qt 5.1 arrives with Qt for Android and iOS previews

      Digia and Qt-Project.org have released version 5.1 of their Linux-ready cross-platform development framework. Qt 5.1 offers new Qt Quick declarative UI language controls and layouts, improved OpenGL support, sensor and serial port support, an updated Qt Creator 2.7.2, and preliminary versions of Qt for Android and iOS.

SearchDaimon Enterprise Search goes Open-Source

Norway’s SearchDaimon today release their enterprise search system under the GPL v2 license with a clear intent in mind – to challenge Apache’s Solr and dominate the market. SearchDaimon will of course benefit through charging fees for engineering and consulting services to licences.

Top open source network management tools

As networking continues to expand and diversify, encompassing a growing number of wired and wireless devices, the demand for network monitoring tools remains high. While feature-packed commercial products abound, the growing market for monitoring tools has also fueled robust offerings from the open source community.

Web Browsers

• Chrome

  • Chrome OS Gets More MS Office Compatible, But Has a Ways to Go

    Last week, Google took a bold step forward in providing native editing capabilities for Microsoft Word and Excel files directly from Chrome OS. Microsoft’s Office applications are dominant in the business world, and compatibility with them is essential if Google’s platforms and applications are to make more inroads in businesses. The latest moves from Google follow the news back in May when the company built features into the Chrome browser allowing users to open Microsoft Office files.

• Mozilla

  • Reflecting on the launch of the first Firefox OS device

    In this guest column, Robert Nyman, a Mozilla technical evangelist and editor of the Mozilla Hacks website, provides a perspective on the history and evolution of Firefox OS. Nyman writes on the occasion of the first Firefox OS device, the $90 ZTE Open smartphone, becoming available for sale in Madrid, Spain.

SaaS/Big Data

• BriefMine: An “Open Source” Big Data Project for the Legal Industry

  When people think of lawyers and the law, they most likely think of paper and stacks of books. Most law is still practiced in the physical world, meaning that if a lawyer is not orally arguing in court, she is arguing and building a case of and in the written word.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• 6 Best Microsoft Office Alternatives

  The best Microsoft Office alternatives allow you to formulate spreadsheets, documents and attractive slideshows without empting out your coffers. Now while the latest version of the productivity suite shining in the spotlight here is attached with a $280 price tag, the options we’ve selected for you won’t break the bank and still proffer you similar features that are found roped into the treat in question. You’ll find that many of these utility applications are priced quite reasonably while a few of them are even free to procure. So go ahead and check out the options we’ve lined up right here.

• LibreOffice 4.0 Manuals Published

  The Document Foundation maintains a library of user manuals for the elements of the LibreOffice suite. The 4.0 branch of manuals have been getting published since its release and several have appeared just recently. If you find a lot of work involves using LibreOffice, these manuals will surely come in handy.

CMS

• ImpressPages Raises €200k To Pull More Users Into Its Open Source, Drag-&-Drop CMS

  ImpressPages, a Lithuanian startup behind an open source, drag and drop, widget-based web content management system aimed at broadening access to web development by simplifying the tools required to create and maintain a website, has raised a €200,000 seed round from VC firm Practica Capital. The startup confirmed the round is its first external investment.

Business

• Semi-Open Source

  • Ricardo plc : Ricardo joins open source consortium in sign of commitment to Modelica-based CAE

    Ricardo Software announced today that it has joined the Open Source Modelica Consortium (OSMC), demonstrating the company’s commitment to Modelica-based CAE and paving the way for launch of the forthcoming IGNITE software product.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GNU Radio 3.7 Released

  GNU Radio 3.7 is out, after a year and half of parallel development, introducing new features to the GNU Radio 3.6 API, making it a big release for the open source software development toolkit. This new version of GNU Radio contains all the bug fixes that were applied to 3.6.0 to 3.6.5.1 series of releases.

Openness/Sharing

• Open Hardware

  • OpenReflex: The 3-D Printed Open-Source SLR

    It’s fast turning into “Camera Monday” here at Cult of Mac Spain, and so I shall continue unapologetically into the next photo-themed subject: the OpenReflex, an open-source, 3-D-printed SLR from model making supremo Léo Marius.

  • Novena Laptop shaping up to be open-source MacBook Pro Lite

  • Novena open source laptop trades Raspberry Pi headers for power

  • Drone Enthusiasts Uses Open Source Hardware To Drive Innovation

    One drone-maker in Silicon Valley has a vision: iPhones with wings populating the sky, collecting data about everything. And to get there, he’s enlisting tens of thousands of his fellow drone enthusiasts. His civilian drone company is open source — a business model that’s completely contrary to the military’s model of proprietary secrets.

Programming

• Collaborative Projects: Transforming the Way Software is Built

  I got involved with Linux and open source in the mid-90s. I had a routine: I would check out LKML, go to bed and wake up in the morning and find thousands of messages from developers around the world innovating and iterating at an unprecedented rate of change. Nothing had or has since compared with that rate of innovation: I was hooked on open source collaboration, and I’ve never looked back.

• Collaborative Projects: Transforming the Way Software is Built

  I got involved with Linux and open source in the mid-90s. I had a routine: I would check out LKML, go to bed and wake up in the morning and find thousands of messages from developers around the world innovating and iterating at an unprecedented rate of change. Nothing had or has since compared with that rate of innovation: I was hooked on open source collaboration, and I’ve never looked back.

Standards/Consortia/Web

• The most open inductees to the 2013 Internet Hall of Fame

  Groundbreaking contributions to the global Internet are recognized every year in The Internet Hall of Fame by The Internet Society—a leading advocate for a free and open Internet, promoting the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world.

• Kaltura’s Zohar Babin: Video Power to the People

  “There is a trend in which people consider open source first rather than going with a purely commercial option. Sometimes video developers will come back and say how much they love Kaltura but are prevented from using it because it is not a commercial product. We see this as an opportunity for us. Our response is, ‘We will give you a commercial license.’”

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Bin Laden files moved to CIA for secrecy

  US military files about the controversial raid that killed terrorist leader Osama bin Laden have been cleared from Defense Department computers and moved to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for further protection, according to the Associated Press.

• Suspicions Growing Over Death of Journalist Probing NSA and CIA Abuses

  Hastings, who wrote for Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, Gawker, and other publications, was probably best known for his award-winning 2010 article “The Runaway General.” The piece helped bring down U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Despite his establishment credentials and what analysts called his “Democrat-friendly” reporting, Hastings had become extremely alarmed about the “surveillance state” and other troubling developments in recent months. His last published story: “Why Democrats Love To Spy On Americans.”

• 50 Shades of CIA

  President Obama, already known to his staff as a “sophisticated” and “voracious” consumer of intelligence reports, has just found a way to enhance his intelligence briefing experience even further, by choosing 44-year-old Avril Danica Haines, whose resume includes reading erotic fiction out loud to paying customers, as a new deputy CIA director.

• Readings: Anthony Dworkin on “Drones and Targeted Killing: Defining a European Position”

  The transatlantic dialog on security matters often has a frustrating ships-passing-in-the-night quality to it. So I was interested to see this unusually constructive and valuable policy paper on drones and targeted killing emerge this week from Anthony Dworkin of the European Council on Foreign Relations. Entitled “Drones and Targeted Killing: Defining a European Position,” the paper responds to the near silence among European governments about drones and argues that recent American policy shifts on the subject bring the United States close to what ought to be the unified European position.

• Iran and a nuclear bomb: Jack Straw and Melanie Phillips

  There was no evidence that Iran has been building a nuclear bomb, said a former British foreign secretary.

• How Police Are Turning Military

  The sheriff’s office in Pima County, Ariz., raided the home of former Marine and Iraq combat veteran Jose Guerena, shooting 71 rounds at Guerena and hitting him with 22. The department is now facing a serious controversy over Guerena’s death.

Transparency Reporting

• Defense presents video in Manning WikiLeaks trial

  Lawyers for an Army private who gave mountains of classified information to WikiLeaks opened their defense at his court-martial Monday with leaked video of a U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad — footage in which airmen laugh and call targets “dead bastards.”

• WikiLeaks Trial: Manning Defense Team Plays ‘Collateral Murder’ Video

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Must-See Gasland Part II on HBO Monday: Natural Gas, Once A Bridge, Now A Gangplank

  I think it’s a better movie, more entertaining and even more compelling in making a case that we are headed on a bridge to nowhere — a metaphorical gangplank — with our hydraulic fracturing feeding frenzy.

Finance

• First Barclays, now Lloyds: which company will go data mining next?

  Yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph reported that Lloyds Banking Group has followed in Barclays’ footsteps by announcing that it could use trillions of data entries from millions of customers’ accounts in order to detect if staff had wrongly sold insurance. Lloyds has justified the move, stating that it would be of “benefit to the customer”, but could this move be purely in the best interests of the bank?

  Over the last few months we have seen an increase in reports of companies and banks mining customers’ data for commercial purposes: first it was Barclays and now it seems that Lloyds Banking Group are at it too. Barclays customers were rightly concerned when it was reported last month that the bank had announced that it was planning to sell customers’’ spending data to other businesses. Now it seems that Lloyds Banking Group is also considering using customers’ information for a different purpose: to check whether bank staff wrongly sold insurance.

• Recovery woes: America’s second-largest employer is a temp agency

  Behind Wal-Mart, the second-largest employer in America is Kelly Services, a temporary work provider.

  Friday’s disappointing jobs report showed that part-time jobs are at an all-time high, with 28 million Americans now working part-time. The report also showed another disturbing fact: There are now a record number of Americans with temporary jobs.

  Approximately 2.7 million, in fact. And the trend has been growing.

• To Millionaire TV Host, ‘Anybody Who Gets a Paycheck’ Makes More Than $200,000

  It’s revealing that someone with Gregory’s job admits that he doesn’t know much about the new healthcare law. (Was he not paying attention when his guests were talking about every week for months on end? Or were his interviews just not very informative?) But the part that he thinks he does know–that “anybody who gets a paycheck” is paying a new Obamacare tax–isn’t true.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• America’s Most Dynamic (Yet Under-Covered) Movement: Overturning Citizens United

  The most under-covered political movement in the United States—and there are a lot of under-covered political movements in the United States—is the broad-based national campaign to enact a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court rulings that ushered in a new era of big-money politics.

Privacy

• TECH: How to increase your online privacy

• Judge: Lawsuit alleging illegal NSA spying may continue

  Electronic Frontier Foundation wins a key round in its lawsuit alleging the National Security Agency illegally wiretapped Americans’ private phone calls and Internet conversations.

• Supreme Court asked to halt NSA phone surveillance

  Privacy group can’t petition secret court, so it goes straight to Supreme Court.

• Snowden claims US NSA works closely with Germany

• Germany defends ‘strictly legal’ cooperation with NSA

  Angela Merkel’s government said on Monday that its cooperation with American intelligence was fully regulated by strict legal guidelines after a magazine reported that the U.S. National Security Agency was in close cahoots with German spies.

• Brazil demands explanation from US over NSA spying

  Foreign minister expresses ‘deep concern’ over extensive spying revealed in documents uncovered by Edward Snowden

• Brazilian government wants answers from US following reports of NSA spying in Brazil

  The NSA intercepts telephone and email records from multiple countries, including Brazil, by leveraging the partnerships that a major, but unnamed U.S. phone company has with the local telecommunications firms and ISPs in those countries, Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported Sunday based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

• US privacy group challenging NSA and FBI collection of phone records

• ‘US will say I aided our enemies,’ says NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in newly released video interview

  Edward Snowden, the 30-year-old wanted by American authorities for leaking information about classified US surveillance programs, predicted he would be seen in violation of the Espionage Act and that the “US government will say I aided our enemies”.

• WikiLeaks suggests Cuba asylum

  WikiLeaks is predicting that Cuba will offer asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who has been holed up in Moscow’s airport for weeks.

• WIKILEAKS: Edward Snowden Has Requested Asylum In 6 More Countries, But We’re Not Saying Which Ones

  National Security Agency leak source Edward Snowden has submitted applications for asylum in six additional countries, the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks said Friday.

• Snowden leaks which Aussie spy bases contribute to NSA

  Fugitive US National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden has revealed the extent of some of Australia’s participation in the giant surveillance programme that allegedly monitors internet as well as voice and SMS data worldwide.

  PRISM slides provided to Brazilian news organisation O Globo by Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who broke the story of global surveillance, point to four Australian signals intelligence bases and the Waihopai facility taking part in the XKEYSCORE categorising and processing system.

• Privacy International files legal challenge against UK government over mass surveillance programmes

  In the wake of revelations that the UK Government is accessing wide-ranging intelligence information from the US and is conducting mass surveillance on citizens across the UK, Privacy International today commenced legal action against the Government, charging that the expansive spying regime is seemingly operated outside of the rule of law, lacks any accountability, and is neither necessary nor proportionate.

  The claim, filed in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), challenges the UK Government on two fronts. Firstly, for the failure to have a publicly accessible legal framework in which communications data of those located in the UK is accessed after obtained and passed on by the US National Security Agency through the Prism programme. Secondly, for the indiscriminate interception and storing of huge amounts of data via tapping undersea fibre optic cables through the Tempora programme.

• PRISM: Privacy International Issues Legal Challenge Against GCHQ Snooping

  Organisation hopes to make a dent in the UK government’s alleged widespread snooping, but its legal challenge will be heard in secret

• Fallout from NSA surveillance program disclosures spreads

  The fallout from the recent disclosures of the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programs continues to spread.

  On Monday, the European Parliament Civil Liberties Commission voted overwhelmingly to investigate the privacy and civil rights implications of the NSA’s PRISM and other spy programs on European citizens, and demanded more information on the programs from U.S. authorities.

• US court rejects state-secrets defense in NSA surveillance case

  The U.S. government can no longer refuse to litigate wiretapping cases on the grounds that they would expose state secrets and undermine national security, a U.S. court has ruled.

• America’s NSA ‘in bed with’ Germany and most others: Edward Snowden

• Oversight board hears testimony on NSA spying

  Civil liberties activists, a retired federal judge and a former Bush administration lawyer are among 16 experts testifying before the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board about the National Security Agency’s surveillance. The board’s five members include an Internet freedom advocate and two former Bush lawyers who helped expand the government’s national security authority.

• Part Two Of Snowden’s Guardian Interview Could Rekindle The PRISM ‘Direct Access’ Debate

  The Guardian and Washington Post, to whom Snowden gave 41 NSA PRISM slides, both published articles and several slides that quote the presentation’s statement regarding “collection directly from the servers” of nine Internet companies including Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft.

• NSA’s catch-22: we can’t tell you anything, because everything we do is a secret

• NSA Rejecting Every FOIA Request Made by U.S. Citizens

• Snowden insists NSA overstepping bounds

  NSA leaker Edward Snowden claims the spy agency gathers all communications into and out of the U.S. for analysis, despite NSA claims that it only targets foreign traffic.

• Snowden: Your Emails or Facebook Profile Can Make You an NSA Target

  “Normally you’d be specifically selected for targeting based on, for example, your Facebook or webmail content,” Edward Snowden told the German magazine Der Spiegel in an email interview. The discussion was held weeks before Snowden decided to step forward as the source of top secret documents that revealed wide-ranging surveillance programs.

• NSA Controversy Reveals Need for Greater Public Discourse to Prevent Future Abuses

  Recent revelations concerning the National Security Agency’s controversial mass surveillance programs — and the government contractor who leaked classified documents about those programs — have sparked a renewed dialogue: How much individual freedom are U.S. citizens willing to sacrifice for the sake of national security?

• Supreme Court asked to stop NSA phone snooping

  A privacy-rights group Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the National Security Agency from mining domestic phone data.

  The Electronic Privacy Information Center bypassed lower courts in filing its emergency appeal directly with the nation’s highest court.

• America’s Secret Spy Court Has Been Radically Expanding The Powers Of The NSA

  The court overseeing National Security Agency surveillance has given the government power to amass vast collections of data on Americans by creating a secret body of law with almost no public scrutiny, current and former U.S. officials told Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times.

• NSA controls global Internet traffic via private fiber-optic cables

  Deals brokered between federal agents and foreign corporations have allowed the United States government to easily intercept and interpret a vast swath of communication data sent around the world, new documents reveal.

  In a National Security Agency slideshow obtained by The Washington Post and attributed to NSA leaker Edward Snowden, the US government encouraged analysts to tap into an array of underwater, fiber-optic cables that serve as conduits for around 99 percent of the world’s Internet and phone traffic.

• Snowden: NSA is ‘in bed with the Germans’

  The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) worked closely with the German intelligence service, whistleblower Edward Snowden told German magazine Der Spiegel in a recent interview.

• Snowden warns Tempora surveillance ‘snarfs’ everything, even worse than NSA’s PRISM

  Snowden confirms NSA and Israel wrote Stuxnet

• NSA Scandal to Be Exploited by Europe?

  The public perception across Europe is that American intelligence agencies are stealing European industrial secrets. Such an atmosphere of transatlantic mistrust could lead to bigger problems.

  [...]

  While it is yet to be seen exactly how the details play out, the Trumpet has long predicted (based on Isaiah 23) that a German-led European Empire will make a brief trade alliance with the nations of East Asia and Latin America. The purpose of this alliance will be to economically besiege the United States, isolating it from world trade. For a more detailed explanation of this coming siege, read Chapter Seven of editor in chief Gerald Flurry’s booklet Isaiah’s End-Time Vision. ▪

• German intelligence is “in bed together” with NSA

  US fugitive Edward Snowden said that the German intelligence knew more about the activities of NSA.

• NSA spying, FISA court and… the Supreme Court?

  The court was created under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to handle spy agency requests to do what they do. It consists of 11 judges the Washington Post says is appointed by John Roberts, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. And Roberts can apparently appoint the judges to their seven-year terms without having to go through an annoying approval process. It’s an interesting read, especially as the picture of the scope of the NSA spying program becomes clearer.

• Privacy Group Asks Supreme Court to Halt NSA Phone Spying

• Edward Snowden: US surveillance ‘not something I’m willing to live under’

  In second part of Glenn Greenwald interview, NSA whistleblower insists he is a patriot who regards the US as fundamentally good

• Why MSNBC Defends NSA Surveillance

  The World War I vintage Espionage Act, originally used to imprison socialists for making antiwar speeches, has been used by the administration against whistleblowers with a vengeance unprecedented in history: eight leakers have been charged with Espionage under Obama, compared to three under all previous presidents.

• Supreme Court asked to stop NSA telephone surveillance

  The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to stop the National Security Agency’s surveillance of domestic telephone communications data.

• NSA revelations continue to rattle

  The rulings have been ended down by the 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — aka the FISA court — which saw its powers grow thanks to legislation approved with bipartisan majorities in the Bush/Cheney era.

  What’s more, as Ezra Klein explained this morning, “When judges make the laws, Congress can always go back and remake the laws. The changes the court makes are public, and so is their reasoning. Both the voters and Congress know what the court has done, and can choose to revisit it…. [But the FISA court is] remaking the law in secret. The public has no opportunity to weigh in, and Congress can’t really make changes, because few know what the court is deciding, and almost no one can discuss the decisions without endangering themselves.”

• Snowden reveals NSA partnership with German intelligence service: report

• Has Tor been bugged by the NSA?

• Federal Judge Allows EFF’s NSA Mass Spying Case to Proceed

• New Snowden video interview plus der Spiegel interview

• PRISM phish carries Java RAT for patched Windows, Macs and Linux PCs

  A malicious multi-platform Java applet called jRAT posing as an emailed attachment about the US National Security Agency’s surveillance campaign is being used in a spy campaign against government agencies.

• Digital Arms Trade

• Snowden made the right call when he fled the U.S.

  Many people compare Edward Snowden to me unfavorably for leaving the country and seeking asylum, rather than facing trial as I did. I don’t agree. The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago.

  After the New York Times had been enjoined from publishing the Pentagon Papers — on June 15, 1971, the first prior restraint on a newspaper in U.S. history — and I had given another copy to The Post (which would also be enjoined), I went underground with my wife, Patricia, for 13 days. My purpose (quite like Snowden’s in flying to Hong Kong) was to elude surveillance while I was arranging — with the crucial help of a number of others, still unknown to the FBI — to distribute the Pentagon Papers sequentially to 17 other newspapers, in the face of two more injunctions. The last three days of that period was in defiance of an arrest order: I was, like Snowden now, a “fugitive from justice.”

  [...]

  I hope Snowden’s revelations will spark a movement to rescue our democracy, but he could not be part of that movement had he stayed here. There is zero chance that he would be allowed out on bail if he returned now and close to no chance that, had he not left the country, he would have been granted bail. Instead, he would be in a prison cell like Bradley Manning, incommunicado.

  He would almost certainly be confined in total isolation, even longer than the more than eight months Manning suffered during his three years of imprisonment before his trial began recently. The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture described Manning’s conditions as “cruel, inhuman and degrading.” (That realistic prospect, by itself, is grounds for most countries granting Snowden asylum, if they could withstand bullying and bribery from the United States.)

  Snowden believes that he has done nothing wrong. I agree wholeheartedly. More than 40 years after my unauthorized disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, such leaks remain the lifeblood of a free press and our republic. One lesson of the Pentagon Papers and Snowden’s leaks is simple: secrecy corrupts, just as power corrupts.

• U.S. NSA ‘spied’ on most Latin American nations – Brazil paper

  The U.S. National Security Agency has targeted most Latin American countries in its spying programs, with Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil and Mexico ranking among those of highest priority for the U.S. intelligence agency, a leading Brazilian newspaper reported on Tuesday.

• Confusion mounts: Has NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden accepted Venezuela’s offer of asylum?

  Head of Russian foreign affairs committee announces that he has accepted the offer in a tweet but quickly deletes it

• Edward Snowden: ‘US will say I aided our enemies,’ says NSA whistleblower in newly released video interview

  Edward Snowden, the 30-year-old wanted by American authorities for leaking information about classified US surveillance programs, predicted he would be seen in violation of the Espionage Act and that the “US government will say I aided our enemies”.

• Germany defends ‘strictly legal’ cooperation with NSA

  Angela Merkel’s government said on Monday that its cooperation with American intelligence was fully regulated by strict legal guidelines after a magazine reported that the U.S. National Security Agency was in close cahoots with German spies.

• Privacy advocates call on government to rein in NSA

  A U.S. government board focused on privacy and civil rights should push Congress to rein in the National Security Agency’s mass collection of telephone records and Internet communications, privacy advocates said Tuesday.

  The U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, established by Congress in 2004 to be a watchdog of government antiterrorism efforts, should also demand that the NSA and other government agencies be more transparent about the data they collect, said privacy advocates speaking at a board meeting in Washington, D.C.

• Their View: NSA spying prompts legitimate concerns from allies in Europe

• How The Snowden Leaks And NSA Surveillance Are Bad For Business

  Reddit general manager Erik Martin noticed something strange when he was at a conference in Latvia last month. There was a contest held, with a prize of one year’s free web-hosting for a small business — a decent value, a fairly normal prize. But when it came time to award it, nobody in the audience wanted it. It was from a U.S.-based company, and this was just days after Edward Snowden’s landmark leaks about the NSA’s PRISM program hit the press. With that hanging over them, people at the conference would have preferred to go with a different country.

• Egregious Cases Of US Government Employees Abusing Databases To Spy On Americans

• NSA Senate oversight bill may handcuff U.S. companies

  Proposal that supposedly increases oversight of the National Security Agency instead could hinder companies trying to challenge warrantless demands for their confidential customer data.

• So, You Want to Hide from the NSA? Your Guide to the Nearly Impossible

• Chevron shows the NSA how to spy

  A judge’s decision that the First Amendment doesn’t protect anonymous speech gives the oil company a big win

• NSA, European Intelligence Agencies Work Closely Together

  The claim by European governments that they were unaware of the extensive wiretapping undertaken by the US intelligence agency NSA is simply a lie. In fact, various European intelligence agencies, and in particular Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND), work closely with the National Security Agency (NSA) in the surveillance of electronic communications.

• Progressives and NSA Spying

  Ever since the Edward Snowden story about the NSA spying program erupted, there has been a disturbingly eerie silence from progressives. Yes, perfunctory articles have been written, the usual pundits have spoken, and the ACLU has filed a much needed lawsuit, but progressive action groups have scarcely eked out a handful of petitions. As we are facing what is arguably one of the greatest historic struggles of our time, there is barely a ripple in the progressive universe.

• Quoted: Whistleblower (who now works at an Apple store) speaks about NSA spying

  “Encrypt the crap out of your life. Why make it easy for the government? Make it as hard as possible.”

  — Thomas Drake, former NSA official and whistleblower — who says he’s now a full-time worker at an Apple store — at a recent panel on mass surveillance.

• What the N.S.A. Knows About You

  National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden says tech companies in the United States have given the government full access to all the nation’s online communications.

  “Companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, they all get together with the NSA and provide the NSA direct access to the back ends of all of the systems that you use to communicate, to store data, to put things in the cloud and even, just to send birthday wishes and keep a record of your life,” Snowden said.

• ‘I felt a shiver go down my spine’ after learning of NSA espionage, CFK

  President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said she felt “a shiver go down her spine” when she learned that the National Security Agency in Washington was carrying cyber-espionage in Argentina, and said she hoped these actions would be condemned during the next Mercosur summit.

• PRISM & ‘purity’: NSA follows Nazi tradition

  The NSA in America is following in the Nazi tradition in its attempt to discriminate based on data collection, modeled around their belief system – which justifies trashing the Constitution in pursuit of ‘pure’ data.

• Five things Snowden leaks revealed about NSA’s original warrantless wiretaps

  As stories based on Edward Snowden’s trove of leaked National Security Agency (NSA) documents continue to trickle out, most reporters have focused on what they can tell us about the spy agency’s current or recent surveillance activities. Yet one of the most interesting documents from Snowden’s cache, published in full by The Guardian back in June, sheds new light on the granddaddy of them all: President Bush’s original warrantless wiretap program.

• Snowden: NSA Uses Facebook Profile, Emails To Choose Target

  Your Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) or webmail content can now land you in trouble, by making you a suspect of the National Security Agency, reveals Edward Snowden.

• NSA program’s legality faces tests

  A privacy group is asking the Supreme Court to stop the National Security Agency from collecting the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers in the United States.

• Edward Snowden Interview Part 2 Contains More NSA Revelations [Video]

• US will say I aided our enemies: NSA leaker Edward Snowden

  A new video footage of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden when he was in Hong Kong has been reportedly released in which Snowden said that US government will say that he aided the enemies by leaking the classified data.

• Brazil to investigate evidence of sweeping NSA surveillance

  Brazil has launched an investigation as to whether telecoms operating within the country cooperated with the US as part of the NSA’s herculean surveillance operations.

  Revelations that the NSA considered Brazil its top Latin American priority in the monitoring of telephone and email conversations broke over the weekend after the O Globo newspaper published information provided by Edward Snowden.

• Play With An MIT Tool That Visualizes How The NSA Can Map Your Relationships

• Lawsuit Against NSA Can Move Forward As Judge Smacks Down State Secret Defense

• Judge throws out ‘state secrets’ claim, allowing lawsuit against NSA to continue

• Privacy group challenges NSA phone surveillance in Supreme Court petition

• LIVE: Motorola + NSA | Sit In Trees, K-I-S-S-I-N-G

  Welcome to NewsDesk on SiliconANGLE TV for Monday July 8, 2013. Is Motorola in cahoots with the NSA? A recent discovery by a security engineer may hold the answer to this question. Joining us now to reveal details surrounding a privacy breach that may be affecting you is SiliconANGLE Contributing Editor John Casaretto.

• NSA recruiting session at UW goes viral

  Given the National Security Agency’s vast unpopularity after revelations that it’s spying on Americans, Germans, and, now, Brazilians, being an NSA recruiter might not be the most enviable job in the world. But the job is decidedly more challenging when well-informed, articulate students show up asking uncomfortable questions like:

  So is this job for liars? Is this what you’re saying? Because, clearly, you’re not able to give us forthright answers. Given the way the NSA has behaved, given the fact that we’ve been lied to as Americans, given the fact that fact sheets have been pulled down because they clearly had untruths in them, given the fact that Clapper and Alexander lied to Congress — is that a qualification for being in the NSA? Do you have to be a good liar?

  That question was posed at a July 2 recruiting session on the UW campus by Madiha R. Tahir, an independent journalist and Columbia University Ph.D. candidate who came to UW for a summer language program. The session was hosted by the South Asia Summer Language Institute, where the recruiters were shopping for prospective language analysts.

• Supreme Court Unlikely To Rule On NSA Surveillance Soon – But One Day Privacy Advocates Could Win

• Indians See a Gift in NSA Leaks

  A month after the first revelations by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, the affair continues to resonate around the world. To the list of 38 countries whose diplomatic missions in the U.S. were, according to documents leaked by Snowden, targeted for surveillance by the NSA, one can now add a second list, almost as long. These are the countries in Asia, Europe and Latin America that in the last week have received requests from Snowden for asylum and that risk running afoul of the U.S. government. India is on both lists, and the response of its government to both developments has been as insipid as a random sample of Internet debris.

• Mask IP Address Article: Does NSA Access the 200 Million US Profiles From Elections?

  idcloak republishes its Mask IP address article following the recent NSA controversy. The article shows how 200 million commercially-obtained profiles of US citizens were used for political campaigning, leaving the question: does the NSA also have access to this information?

• Interview with NSA expert James Bamford

  With regard to the information he released on domestic surveillance, I consider him a whistleblower. He revealed details of massive violations by the NSA of the privacy rights of all Americans. The NSA has no constitutional right to secretly obtain the telephone records of every American citizen on a daily basis, subject them to sophisticated data mining and store them forever. It’s time government officials are charged with criminal conduct, including lying to Congress, instead of going after those exposing the wrongdoing.

• Snowden predicted his demonization, indictment

  U.S. surveillance leaker Edward Snowden a month ago predicted Washington would demonize him and charge him with espionage, a newly released interview indicated.

  Separately, Snowden was honored by a group of former U.S. national security officers with the Sam Adams Award for revealing the extent of U.S. government domestic and international electronic surveillance.

• Given the NSA Spying on Americans and Suppression of Dissent in US, Terrorists No Longer Can Hate Us for Our Freedoms

  In an e-mail to BuzzFlash at Truthout, reader and sometimes commentary writer Marc Perkel phrased it this way: “One thing good about the NSA spying scandal is that the terrorists no longer hate us for our freedom.”

  Perkel certainly has a point.

  Former President George W. Bush famously declared in a post-9/11 comment that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms. That phrasing has a great appeal to it: What American would be against the liberties guaranteed in the Constitution?

• The Members of Congress Who Want to Reform NSA Surveillance

• ‘Israel and the NSA co-wrote the Stuxnet computer virus’

  In newly published interview by Der Spiegel, American whistle-blower Edward Snowden says NSA has “a massive body responsible” for working with Israel, named “the Foreign Affairs Directorate”

  [...]

  The information Snowden provided was passed on to Der Spiegel by Jacob Appelbaum, 30, a developer of encryption and security software who provides training to international human rights groups and journalists on how to use the Internet anonymously.

  The paper employed Appelbaum’s services even before Snowden became a household name to help determine the veracity of his identity as an NSA operative.

  [...]

  1 As of Tuesday morning (Israel time), Snowden was still located in Moscow’s international airport.

• Digital age expanded the NSA’s mission

Civil Rights

• Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def) force-fed under standard Guantánamo Bay procedure – video

  As Ramadan begins, more than 100 hunger-strikers in Guantánamo Bay continue their protest. More than 40 of them are being force-fed. A leaked document sets out the military instructions, or standard operating procedure, for force-feeding detainees.

• More and more children being arrested for trivial things…

  #1 At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume.

  #2 A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class.

• NDAA and martial law in America, Part 3

• Judge Orders U.S. to Release Aaron Swartz’s Secret Service File

  A federal judge in Washington, D.C. on Friday ordered the government to promptly start releasing thousands of pages of Secret Service documents about the late activist and coder Aaron Swartz, following months of roadblocks and delays.

  “Defendant shall promptly release to Plaintiff all responsive documents that it has gathered thus far and shall continue to produce additional responsive documents that it locates on a rolling basis,” wrote U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

• I am Justin Carter: We’re not children anymore, just criminals who have yet to be caught

  America loves to lock people up. It’s what we do. A young man named Justin Carter is in jail right now because he “joked” about a school shooting on Facebook while arguing about League of Legends.

  The NPR story claims that the young man may have said “JK” after his comments, but that bit is disputed by the police. This is the sort of thing that’s news: A young man’s freedom may hinge on some online slang. Kids aren’t allowed to be kids anymore, they go straight from normal child to criminal. Judges are being arrested for selling kids to private prisons.

• Jerry Brown’s War on the First Amendment: Caltrans confiscates anti-tunnels signs

• Obama: Side-Stepper-In-Chief

  He side stepped an NDAA detainee provision requiring they be brought before military courts.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Trans-Atlantic Trade Talks Bound to Harm Freedoms Online

  Today begins in Washington DC the first round of negotiations of the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, TAFTA (also known as TTIP1), amid concerns about the legitimacy of negotiating such a text under espionage by the US government. La Quadrature du Net publishes a leaked document [pdf] [text] showing that the EU is already preparing to attack citizens’ freedoms online, turning TAFTA into a “super-ACTA”. La Quadrature calls on citizens to mobilize and calls negotiators to communicate TAFTA texts to the public as soon as they enter in their possession.

• Opinion: Who Owns Knowledge

  Ownership seems like such a crass idea when it comes to something so necessary, though I’m hoping not to drag this discussion into either hyperbole about the evils of capitalism, or something taken straight out of Pochahontas. Yes, capitalism is evil; it’s been the bad guy amongst thinkers for a while now, but I think we can mostly leave him out of this discussion. And yes, I could ask you who really can claim ownership over something abstract – like the very long number generated when I write a document on my computer and save it, which is essentially what all digitised information can be reduced to, a series of long numbers, which it would be absurd to assert ownership over – or talk about who owns rocks or trees or the wind. But however absurd it is, we do divide things, abstract and concrete, into categories. We set boundaries and borders, and we assert rights of ownership that are then heavily defended.

• Copyrights

  • French copyright and telecommunications watchdogs lose their teeth

    Two French Internet watchdogs have lost their teeth following a change in the law on Tuesday and a ruling by the Constitutional Court last week.

    Those accused by the High Authority for the Distribution of Works and the Protection of Rights on the Internet (Hadopi) of illegally downloading copyright works in France no longer risk losing their Internet access, following a change in the law promulgated Tuesday, although it will now be easier to fine them.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

The Linux Setup – Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation

Performance on Linux. Just how far *can* we go?

As the title suggests, Linux and performance in the same sentence makes for an interesting topic of discussion. Everyone knows there is a multitude of options available to us. In this article, I’m going to attempt to cover a few of them.

Desktop

• My Excellent $199 Chromebook Adventure ~pj

  I impulsively bought one of the $199 Acer C7 Chromebooks, specifically to find out if I could successfully put pure Linux on the Android laptop. I know Android runs on Linux, the kernel, but I wanted KDE, which is what I normally run. I wanted both, and I thought it’d be fun. I also thought it might be an easier way to get around Microsoft’s Secure Boot, which makes it hard to install a GNU/Linux environment on new laptops. Microsoft never runs out of ways to make it inconvenient to use Linux, of course.

Server

• IBM Continues Advancing PowerPC For Linux

  Beyond the exciting x86 architecture changes that are always under the microscope for the Linux kernel, and lately the great ARM work, IBM has an interesting set of POWER architecture changes for Linux 3.11.

• CA Technologies simplifies data protection for Linux

  CA Technologies has announced CA ARCserve D2D for Linux, providing fast, simple data protection and disaster recovery for businesses running virtual and physical servers on the popular open source platform.
  An image-based solution, CA ARCserve D2D for Linux helps organizations protect the integrity and availability of critical systems, applications and data within their shrinking backup windows. It complements CA ARCserve D2D for Microsoft Windows, providing a complete solution for today’s heterogeneous environments.

• New Unix Chips Coming

  At the upcoming Hot Chips Conference in late August, Oracle, IBM and Fujitsu are all set to announce the release of new high-performance Unix chips.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Illuminating Linux Podcasts

  Before starting with the survey, let’s deal with a couple of terms that are fundamental to this article. First, the word podcast. In simple terms, a podcast is rich media, such as audio or video, distributed via RSS. Podcast derives from the words broadcast and iPod. Podcasting lets you automatically receive the latest show of your chosen programme as soon as it is available.

Kernel Space

• 5 Intriguing New Features in Linux 3.10

  Roughly two-thirds of the patches included focus on drivers, Torvalds noted, “while the rest is evenly split between arch updates and ‘misc.’ No major new subsystems this time around, although there are individual new features.”

• Sphirewall: Another Open-Source Linux Firewall

  Sphirewall 0.9.9.5 has been released this weekend. Sphirewall is an open-source Linux firewall/router with advanced management capabilities, analytics, and other advanced features.

• Lustre File-System Client Heads To Linux 3.11

  The staging pull has been submitted for the Linux 3.11 kernel merge window and with it comes client support for Lustre, the high-performance parallel distributed file-system.

• Intel 2.21.11 Driver Works On Fastboot, Bug Fixes

  Chris Wilson has released yet another xf86-video-intel 2.21.x driver point release.

• Kernel Patches Start Coming For 2013 MacBook Air

  The Linux support for Apple’s new Haswell-based MacBook Air is less than desirable, but at least it’s on the path to getting better.

  The 2013 MacBook Air is an incredible piece of hardware with its lightweight, well built design, very long battery life, and excellent performance via an Intel Core i5 “Haswell” processor. However, as I have already written about at length, running Ubuntu Linux is messy on the 2013 MacBook Air.

• EXT4 File-System Updated For Linux 3.11 Kernel

  Ted Ts’o has already sent in his pull request for EXT4 file-system changes targeting the Linux 3.11 kernel.

• More AVX2 Crypto Optimizations For Linux 3.11

  Recent Linux kernel releases have seen a number of crypto performance optimizations for this kernel subsystem by taking advantage of newer CPU instruction set extensions for accelerating various cryptographic workloads. This theme has continued for Linux 3.11.

• RAD Game Tools To Take On Linux Debuggers

  RAD Game Tools, the video game development tooling company responsible for Telemetry and Pixomatic and other high-end development products, is looking to work on improving Linux debuggers for game developers.

• More ARM Changes For The Linux 3.11 Kernel

  Beyond Xen and KVM virtualization coming to 64-bit ARM in the Linux 3.11, there’s also other ARM architecture and SoC advancements within this next major kernel release.

• Linux 3.11: Bay Trail Audio, 32+ Sound Cards

  The sound/audio kernel driver pull request has been submitted for the Linux 3.11 merge window. The changes this time around aren’t too exciting, but there’s the continued bettering of the Linux audio stack.

• F2FS File-System In Linux 3.11 Gets Updated

  Samsung’s Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) has been updated for the Linux 3.11 merge window.

• DRM Changes In Linux 3.11 Might Be The Biggest Ever

  The in-kernel DRM graphics driver changes lined up for the Linux 3.11 kernel are possibly the biggest set of Direct Rendering Manager changes ever, but it looks unlikely that the VIA KMS driver will be merged for this release.

• Graphics Stack

  • Unvanquished Improves OpenGL 3 Renderer, Installer

    The seventeenth alpha release of the very promising Unvanquished open-source first person shooter was released today. This monthly development update to the Tremulous-derived game continues to improve its GL3 renderer and other game functionality.

  • Testing Radeon DPM Using Sysfs/Debugfs

    For those looking to test out the long-awaited Radeon dynamic power management support within the Linux 3.11 kernel, here’s some information on the new debugfs and sysfs interfaces for dealing with this “DPM” feature.

  • Radeon KMS HDMI Audio Might Be Re-Enabled Soon

    While HDMI audio support may seem like a mundane feature for graphics drivers in 2013, the Radeon KMS driver still hasn’t re-enabled support for Radeon HDMI audio on modern kernel releases. Fortunately, it looks like the important feature for HTPCs might be re-enabled soon for a better “out of the box” experience.

  • New Unified VMA Offset Manager, Render Node Patches

    David Herrmann has a GSoC project for working on DRM render and mode-set nodes and so far he has been making great progress. On Sunday he posted his second revision of his unified VMA offset manager patch-set and DRM render node work.

  • QXL DRM Driver Gets Dynamic Resizing, Multi CRTCs

    The QXL KMS/DRM driver that was merged for Linux 3.10 and supports Red Hat’s SPICE with guest virtual machines on QEMU, is picking up more features for Linux 3.11.

  • Open-Source RadeonSI Gallium3D vs. AMD Catalyst On Linux

  • Radeon DRM: Dynamic Power Management Updates

    The DRM pull request has yet to be submitted for the Linux 3.11 kernel and already there is another revision to the Radeon DRM kernel driver to be submitted. This latest Radeon DRM work provides additional dynamic power management fixes and some new sysfs features.

  • DRM/KMS Driver Published For Snapdragon Graphics

    Rob Clark has expanded his Freedreno efforts from just being a reverse-engineered user-space (Gallium3D) graphics driver for Qualcomm’s Adreno/Snapdragon hardware. Rob has now written his own DRM/KMS kernel driver for dealing with the Snapdragon graphics hardware.

  • Gallium3D Compute Comes For Nouveau NVC0

    While the reverse-engineered Nouveau graphics driver has limited support for OpenCL/GPGPU support, it’s been mainly capped to older “NV50″ graphics cards. Published today though for review are patches for the Fermi “NVC0″ hardware to expose compute support as well as the hardware performance counters.

  • Nouveau Advances NVIDIA NVF0/GK110 Support

    The open-source reverse-engineered Nouveau driver now has 2D EXA acceleration and X-Video support for NVIDIA’s “NVF0″ or better known as the GK110 GPU found in the NVIDIA GeForce TITAN and GeForce GTX 780. Updates to the Nouveau DRM and Mesa Gallium3D driver have also arrived.

  • The Mesa 3D Release Process Is Changing

    Ian Romanick of Intel who generally has been serving as the release manager of new Mesa releases, has announced some planned changes for releasing Mesa 3D drivers.

    Ian shared the planned changes on the Mesa developers’ list. The key information for Phoronix readers include:

  • NVIDIA Releases 325.08 Beta Linux GPU Driver

  • Marek Has New Set Of Radeon MSAA Patches

    Marek Olšák published a set of twelve patches earlier this week for improving the AMD R600 Radeon Gallium3D driver support code for MSAA.

  • Armada, VIA DRM Not For The Linux 3.11 Kernel

    While we have known the VIA DRM/KMS driver would likely not be merged for Linux 3.11, the Armada DRM ARM driver also isn’t going to be merged for this next kernel release.

  • Mesa 9.1.4 Pulls In Bug Fixes, Mostly For Intel

  • Testing Radeon DPM Using Sysfs/Debugfs

    For those looking to test out the long-awaited Radeon dynamic power management support within the Linux 3.11 kernel, here’s some information on the new debugfs and sysfs interfaces for dealing with this “DPM” feature.

• Benchmarks

  • AMD Radeon HD 8670D Preview On Linux

    This past weekend I delivered benchmarks of the AMD A10-6800K Richland APU under Ubuntu Linux. This mild upgrade over AMD’s Trinity APU ran faster on the CPU side and overclocked well, but how do the graphics performance under Linux? In this article are benchmarks of the Radeon HD 8670D running the Catalyst Linux driver on Ubuntu and compared to the previous-generation Radeon HD 7660D APU graphics.

  • AMD Radeon HD 8670D: Gallium3D vs. Catalyst

    This morning there were the RadeonSI Gallium3D vs. AMD Catalyst Linux benchmarks for the high-end Radeon HD 7850/7950 “Southern Islands” graphics cards. While the new Southern Islands GPUs understandingly have a long way to catch up on their new open-source Linux Gallium3D driver compared to Catalyst, how is the AMD Radeon HD 8670D “Richland” APU performance between the open and closed-source drivers? Here are some benchmarks.

  • 15-Way Open-Source Intel/AMD/NVIDIA GPU Comparison

    When running Fedora 19 with its updated open-source Linux graphics drivers, 15 different Intel, AMD Radeon, and NVIDIA GeForce GPUs were compared when looking at the open-source Linux OpenGL performance. The tested graphics processors span from the Intel HD Graphics 4600 “Haswell” integrated graphics to the AMD Radeon HD 7950 “Southern Islands” graphics card to the vintage Radeon X1800XL.

  • AMD Catalyst vs. NVIDIA OpenCL Performance

    While the open-source Radeon and Nouveau Gallium3D drivers have a limited level of OpenCL support via Gallium3D’s “Clover” state tracker, it’s not too useful. Radeon Gallium3D on OpenCL can run some simple demos and even a bit of open-source BitCoin mining, but it’s not enough to be useful yet or really performant. There isn’t any tier-one Linux distribution shipping this open-source OpenCL support yet by default and it will likely be some months before it’s really useful for end-users.

  • GCC vs. LLVM/Clang On The AMD Richland APU

    Along with benchmarking the AMD A10-6800K “Richland” APU on Linux and its Radeon HD 8670D graphics, I provided some GCC compiler tuning benchmarks for this AMD APU with Piledriver cores. The latest Linux testing from the A10-6800K is a comparison of GCC 4.8.1 to LLVM/Clang 3.3 on this latest-generation AMD low-power system.

  • NVIDIA Mobile: Nouveau vs. The Linux Binary Driver

    With the Linux 3.10 kernel having been pulled recently into the Ubuntu 13.10 archive, new benchmarks have been conducted comparing the open-source Nouveau driver against the binary NVIDIA 319.32 Linux graphics driver on a NVIDIA-powered laptop.

  • Intel Haswell Linux Virtualization: KVM vs. Xen vs. VirtualBox

    The latest chapter to our lengthy Intel Haswell on Linux saga is virtualization benchmarks. From Fedora 19 with the very latest software components for Linux virtualization, the performance of KVM, Xen, and VirtualBox were benchmarked from the Intel Core i7 4770K “Haswell” CPU.

Applications

• Tired of VLC? Try MPlayer – A Unique, Modular Alternative for Linux

  Ask just about any Linux user, and they’ll more than likely recommend VLC Player as the best choice for playing any media format you can think of. They have plenty of reasons to do so as VLC is indeed a fantastic piece of software with plenty of awesome features. But it only offers one implementation — a complete media playing package that uses its own technologies (such as its own hardware acceleration) as well as its own GUI.

• Clementine Player : A very good audio player

  Clementine is one of the best audio players, hyper-complete, highly configurable, powerful but easy to use, Clementine Player is simply the ideal for me. Multiplatform, open source and free, it’s a real pearl to try without hesitation.

• Proprietary

  • Opera 15 Is Here, But Not Yet For Linux Users

    The Norwegians announced today Opera 15, the first release of their closed-source cross-platform web-browser that’s now powered by Google’s Chromium/Blink engine.

    Beyond changing from their own in-house browser engine to now using what’s used by Google’s Chrome/Chromium, Opera 15 also has a much simpler user-interface, Speed Dial and other features have been incorporated into this revamped browser, a new Stash feature, and much more.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Webinar: Reduce Product Lifecycles with Linux and Yocto Project

  • How to Call the Camera in Android Apps Part 2: Capture and Store Photos

  • Disable & Enable USB from terminal

  • Creating a Custom Linux OpenSuSE 11 EC2 S3 Backed AMI Using Kiwi

  • How to change or disable login sound in Linux Mint 15

  • Stopping Screen Flickering on Ivy Bridge Laptops using Linux

  • Fixing OpenSuse’s Dog Awful default fonts…

  • No Small Text For Firefox Makes Websites Easier To Read

  • Okular: “fit best” zoom. Yes? No? How?

  • Adding Microsoft Core Fonts to Fedora 19

  • Update and Install With the Command Line Using Apt

  • How To Add Special Effects On Audacity – Tips And Tricks

  • 5 Linux commands to shutdown/reboot/restart the system

  • 3 Ways to Hide Confidential Data Inside Images in Linux

  • Raspberry Pi with HDMI – VGA converter

  • Raspberry Pi learns the lost art of Teletext

  • Different methods to change the delimiter in file content

  • Whats wrong with every open source firewall/router on the market now

  • Playing with desktop files aka application launchers in Linux

• Wine or Emulation

  • Linux 3.11 Will Allow For Windows RT Wine Support

    A patch that was committed for the Linux 3.11 kernel will allow more Microsoft Windows RT / ARM applications to now run with Wine.

• Games

  • Oculus SDK Update Officially Supports Linux

    Version 0.2.3 of the Oculus SDK for the popular virtual reality (VR) headset was released yesterday. While we know they have been planning to officially support Linux, with this new v0.2.3 SDK the support is finally here.

  • Limit Theory Developer Update on Linux Port

    In case you don’t know, Limit Theory developer Josh Parnell said in his last update video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqT1Lr6dnLs&feature=em-subs_digest) that the first port of LT to Linux has been realized.

  • Natural Selection 2 FPS Looks Amazing on Linux

  • Oculus Rift First Impressions and Official Linux Support

    A couple of days ago, version 0.2.3 of the official SDK (requires login) for the crowdfunded Oculus Rift was released with Linux support, and I thought now would be a good time to put together a belated unboxing/first impressions video! Watch or read on for more textual thoughts with a lot less “umm”.

  • First Chapter of The Raven – Legacy of Master of Thief Arriving July 23rd

    Nordic Games has announced the release of the first in-game trailer for The Raven – Legacy of Master of Thief Chapter 1. Players will be able to download the game on July 23rd for PC, Mac and Linux. The new trailer will give more insight into the journey ahead in the first chapter entitled The Eye of the Sphinx.

  • Full Bore – A Puzzle Adventure coming soon to Linux!

  • Zelda-like indie adventure Ittle Dew out now on PC, coming soon to Steam and Ouya

    Ittle Dew, a cartoony, classic adventure game that uses a Zelda-like dungeon formula, is available now for $13.99 through developer Ludosity’s official site. The game includes online leaderboards and a number of shortcuts, so it is designed to encourage speedrunning.

  • Source SDK for Linux!

    The Source Development Kit offers the possibility to create your own modifications and new content to the existing games based on the Source Engine. Some of the games based on Source are Team Fortress, Left for Dead and Dota 2.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• LXDE Desktop Being Ported To Qt

  The lightweight LXDE desktop will be slowly transitioning from being GTK2-based to using the Qt tool-kit.

• No, LXDE-Qt is not bloated

  After posting a preview screenshot for LXDE-Qt, I got quite a lot of feedback from various sources. Generally the responses from the users are positive, but there are also some people saying that LXDE is no longer lightweight.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Qt 5.1 Finally Released With Lots Of Good Features

    One day after the Qt 4.8.5 release, after facing many delays Qt 5.1 is finally available.

  • Amarok MTP (Android) GSoC: week 3; Amarok 2.8 Released

  • Improvements to Continuous Integration

    Over the past few weeks, the build scripts supporting our Continuous Integration system at build.kde.org have been refactored in some areas, and have had some extra features implemented as well. This refactoring has laid the foundations for building multiple projects at the same time – something we will need later when implementing support for automatic uploading of results to Coverity.

  • KTouch Typing Trainer Introduced for KDE

    The popular KDE desktop now includes a new and exciting typing tutor application called KTouch. The KTouch typing trainer will help users take their typing skills to the next level in a fast and fun way. This tool provides a very comfortable interface, and you can create profiles for each system user.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • GNOME Shell Apps Picker – Revisited

    Paging is just to help spatial memory (my app is around page 2-3), but Shell’s search has hugely improved , you can just type (text) and get all the text editors, so paging might not be really necessary –at least for keyboards

  • The Linux Desktop Beauty Pageant, Round Eleventy

    Freedom and choice are hallmarks of the Linux world, and that’s certainly evident in the number of desktop environments users have to choose from. “This is yet another example of arguing over where the deck chairs are while the boat sinks,” said Slashdot blogger hairyfeet. “I mean, has nobody read that study where too much choice is just as bad as not enough?” – See more at: http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/78422.html#sthash.JYXvzeVi.dpuf

Distributions

• SalixOS – The Miracle of Upgrading When It Actually Works

  Following on from my previous post on Slackware I have to root for SalixOS here which has almost slipped out of sight over the last two years or so after a spectacular start. It handled everything I’ve thrown at it which is more than I can say for any other distribution. The story goes like this:

• The ease of choosing a distro

• New Releases

  • DoudouLinux 2.0 “Hyperborea” released

    The whole team is very glad to inform you that DoudouLinux 2.0 Hyperborea is now officially out :).

  • MidnightBSD 0.4

  • Pear OS 8 Will Be Released in October 2013

    David Tavares, the developer of the Pear OS Linux operating system, has recently announced the features and roadmap for the upcoming Pear OS 8 distribution.

  • Legacy 2.1 (Gamer)

  • Salix OS Xfce 14.0.1 RC1 Gets a New Linux Kernel and LibreOffice

    Salix, a GNU/Linux distribution based on Slackware that is simple, fast, easy to use, and based on Xfce desktop environment, is now at version 14.0.1 RC1.

• Screenshots

  • gNewSense 3.0 Beta 2 Screenshot Tour

• Arch Family

  • Arch-Based Manjaro Prepares For Next Release

    Manjaro Linux is a distribution that makes it very easy to play with Arch. Manjaro is to Arch as Sabayon or Calculate Linux is to Gentoo. Manjaro makes it very easy to deploy an Arch-based desktop using Xfce and other lightweight components, a theme that’s continuing with their upcoming 0.8.7 release.

• Slackware Family

  • KDE 4.10.5 and Linux Kernel 3.9.9

    Slackware-Current has moved on to bring KDE 4.10.5 and also the latest stable kernel from 3.9.x branch: 3.9.9. It seems that Pat believed that Linux Kernel 3.9.x is the best choice for the next Slackware release and he also put some configuration for the Linux Kernel 3.10 in testing/.

• Red Hat Family

  • Fedora

    • Fedora 19 Review: Not flashy but very dependable, KDE being the best of the lot!

      2013 has been an exceptional year in a sense that Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian, the three major Linux distros, had their releases this year. Debian 7 finally got released, Ubuntu came up with a better Unity along with more social integration and it is now turn of Fedora to showcase it’s latest offering. I was really interested to know Fedora 19 – whether the latest Fedora is able to live up to the other two illustrious counterparts plus what’s brewing in RHEL stable.

    • Fedora 19 Review

      Fedora 19 ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’ got released few days ago, and since I have not reviewed Fedora on this blog (mainly because I did not have a lot of positive things to say about it), I decided to review it.

    • Fedora 19 Overview / thoughts / opinions…. (video)

• Debian Family

  • This weekend I will be mostly upgrading to wheezy

    Having migrated my websites away from my ssh/mail box I’m going to upgrade that this weekend.

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Canonical Announces “Flipped” Ubuntu Touch Images

        The Ubuntu Touch image model has been flipped around so that Android is no longer on the bottom side and that Ubuntu is going for a different position.

      • XMir Performance For Nouveau G

        On Friday I delivered the first benchmarks of Ubuntu’s Unity desktop running on XMir — the X.Org Server compatibility layer for talking to the Mir Display Server. Those benchmarks showered there was noticeable performance overhead to running XMir with Intel’s graphics driver. Later benchmarks showed XMir 2D performance was also negatively affected. In this article are benchmarks looking at the XMir performance with the Nouveau driver.

      • The Ubuntu PC Case Mod Pt.5 Powdercoating

        Hey guys. I’m back with a very picture heavy update.

        Since my last update i’ve got the whole case powdercoated in “ripple X15 orange”. I’ve also got a heap of stickers from jared.

Devices/Embedded

• Chinese firm tips Android-based automotive computer

  Chinese Android development firm Borqs announced an in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) system based on Android 4.1. The Borqs Smart Vehicle Mounted Terminal incorporates navigation technology from Beidou and a wireless data cloud from TD-LTE, and supports applications including navigation, multimedia, and video calling.

• BeagleBone Black Part 2: Linux Performance Tests

• How embedded Linux devices will be specialized with Celeum

  Before the PC, computers were devices: custom hardware combined with software specifically written for the machine, and the machines themselves were usually designed for a select few (if not single) purposes. The problem that PCs seemed to address was diversity. Where customers had previously relied on one company to support both hardware and software, the PC clones opened the doors to a brave new world where anyone could build, support, or maintain a computer.

• Phones

  • Samsung delays first Tizen phone to fourth quarter

    The debut phone using the upstart Tizen operating system was originally slated to launch in July or August, but has been pushed back to the last quarter of the year.

  • HP aims to get back into the smartphone game

    The company will try to compete with the likes of Apple and Android with a smartphone that will offer a “differentiated experience.”

  • Android

    • Prices Slashed For Amazon Kindle Fire HD and HP Slate 7

      Amazon and HP have made their tablets even more attractive with recent price cuts. The 7-inch Android tablets namely HP Slate 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire HD have slashed their prices in response to price cuts introduced by Barnes and Noble for their Nook HD and Nook HD+ tablets.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Install Linux on your x86 tablet: five distros to choose from

    We live in a world where the tablet or smart device dominates – both on the high Street and online. Instead of people going out at Christmas to buy a shiny new laptop, they opted for one of the many 10-inch tablets that appear to be everywhere at the moment.

DevOps Skills are Hot – and Highly Valued

Job listings mentioning “DevOps” have burgeoned over the past year or so, and people who include the term in their LinkedIn profiles and resumes are hotly pursued by tech recruiters.

For those of us who believe DevOps thinking and practices are the way to better IT and happier, more productive technology teams, this trend is both discouraging and encouraging. It’s discouraging because we don’t want to see “DevOps” become a mere buzzword, used to put a new shiny gloss on old, ineffective practices and assumptions. And it’s encouraging because it indicates a growing awareness that operations people and developers produce better software when they collaborate closely, using the tools and disciplines from both worlds.

Open Source Dictation: Acoustic Model

Whats wrong with every open source firewall/router on the market now

I once read that a network firewall was as much a central point for getting visibility into your network as it was a point for restricting and securing your network. It is my personal belief that these things go hand in hand. How can you secure your network if you don’t understand what is actually going on inside it? how can you differentiate between what is good and bad traffic, if you can’t actually see the traffic? A few years ago, I invested a serious amount of time searching for an open-source firewall that I could insert into a network on some standard hardware and see what was happening, then respond to this. I was disappointed to say the least.

Searchdaimon Enterprise Search Now Open Source Under Gpl V2

Searchdaimon today announced its flagship enterprise search product is now available as open source software. The Searchdaimon solution, highlighted at http://www.searchdaimon.com, is the only enterprise-grade alternative to Solr available.

Events

• 2013 Kernel Summit call for topics/proposals

Web Browsers

• Google, Among Others, May Have Paid off Adblock Plus to Not Block its Ads

  Adblock Plus accepts payment to “whitelist” certain ads.

• Mozilla

  • Mozilla Advances Rust Programming With v0.7 Release

    Per the release announcement, “This release had a markedly different focus from previous releases, with fewer language changes and many improvements to the standard library. The highlights this time include a rewrite of the borrow checker that makes working with borrowed pointers significantly easier and a comprehensive new iterator module (std::iterator) that will eventually replace the previous closure-based iterators.”

SaaS/Big Data

• Apache CloudStack Weekly News – 1 July 2013

• Kogan sold on OpenStack cloud

  “If our office burnt down today,” says Goran Stefkovski, “we would be running the business from the cafe next door tomorrow.”

  It seems an appropriate sentiment from Stefkovski, given that he is the director of technology at Kogan, the online electronics retailer whose founder, Ruslan Kogan, has waged a very public war of words with bricks-and-mortar retailers (most notably Harvey Norman’s chairman, Gerry Harvey).

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• AMD To Exploit OpenCL Potential In LibreOffice

  AMD has joined The Document Foundation’s Advisory Board to take on a supporting role of accelerating LibreOffice in new ways.

• LibreOffice 4.0 Math Guide and Base Handbook have been published

  The LibreOffice Documentation Team has published two books: the LibreOffice 4.0 Math Guide and the LibreOffice 4.0 Base Handbook.

BSD

• FreeBSD Radeon Support Might Be Good In Mesa 9.2

  The porting of the open-source Radeon Linux graphics driver to FreeBSD is coming along well. The developer behind this work is hoping that the user-space Radeon Mesa/Gallium3D driver changes will be merged upstream for Mesa 9.2.

• MidnightBSD 0.4 Betters The FreeBSD Desktop

  MidnightBSD 0.4 has been released as an operating system derived from FreeBSD 9.1, but with many extra features, including a new package management tool.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GnuCash 2.5.3 (Unstable) released

  The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.5.3, the fourth release in the 2.5.x series of the GnuCash Free Accounting Software which will eventually lead to the stable version 2.6.0. It runs on GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris and Mac OSX.

• GNU gettext 0.18.3 released

  GNU gettext 0.18.3 has been released. It has support for 4 new programming languages: Glade 3, JavaScript, Lua, and Vala, support for Python 3 format strings, support for newer Automake, portability fixes, and normal bug fixes.

• Invitation to the GNU Hackers Meeting 2013

• GNU Smalltalk with C callouts #2

• Workshop on GCC Internals

Project Releases

• Announcing eDeploy

  eNovance’s software engineering team is releasing the eDeploy project publicly today. A series of articles will describe the project.

Openness/Sharing

• Lawmakers: Aaron Swartz Was Right About Open Internet

  The law used to prosecute the late open source internet advocate Aaron Swartz would be curtailed, under bipartisan legislation introduced in Congress.

  Swartz was a leading computer programmer, internet activist and writer who wanted as much information as possible to be free online. He died at age 26, having been involved in the development of the web feed format RSS, the organization Creative Commons, the website framework web.py and the social news site Reddit, among other achievements.

• Open Hardware

  • Open Source Back To The Future II-Like Hoverboard in the Making for…2015

    We’re pretty sure that nobody could argue against the cool factor of ‘hoverboards,’ the magically powered skateboards from the future, which have been blessed with a self-explanatory name, requiring no additional clarification. The idea stems from the 1989 movie “Back to the Future II,” which has main character Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, go back and forth in time, from 2015 to the year 1955.

Programming

• New Quipper Language is Like Java for Quantum Computers

  Now Peter Selinger of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, and colleagues have brought the field up to speed by creating Quipper, the first high-level quantum programming language. Quipper is designed to express instructions in terms of bigger concepts, and to make it easy to bring together multiple algorithms in a modular way. High-level languages for classical computers such as Java do most of the heavy lifting in modern computation. Quipper is based on a classical programming language called Haskell, which is particularly suited to programming for physics applications. What Selinger’s team has done is to customise it to deal with qubits.

• Harlan: A Scheme-Based GPU Programming Language

  Harlan is a new research programming language focused around taking advantage of modern GPUs. The Harlan language syntax is derived from Scheme while the language itself currently compiles to OpenCL.

• GCC Compiler Tuning On The AMD A10-6800K APU

  For those curious about how the system performance is impacted by applying compiler optimizations to the AMD A10-6800K “Richland” APU, here’s some benchmarks of GCC 4.8.1 on Ubuntu Linux.

Godmother of Unix admins Evi Nemeth presumed lost at sea

Obit The New Zealand authorities have formally called off the search for the sailing cruiser Nina, and say its seven-person crew, which includes Evi Nemeth who for the last 30 years has written the system administration handbooks for Unix and Linux, is now presumed lost at sea.

San Francisco: Crash ‘Was Only a Matter of Time’

The cause of the crash landing of a Boeing 777 in San Francisco is still unclear. But pilots say they had been worried about conditions at the West Coast airport for a while. An important flight control system had been out of service for weeks.

Security

• Bad kitty! “Rookie mistake” in Cryptocat chat app makes cracking a snap

  The precise amount of time the vulnerability was active is in dispute, with Cryptocat developers putting it at seven months and a security researcher saying it was closer to 19 months. Both sides agree that the effect of the bug was that the keys used to encrypt and decrypt conversations among groups of users were easy for outsiders to calculate. As a result, activists, journalists, or others who relied on Cryptocat to protect their group chats from government or industry snoops got little more protection than is typically available in standard chat programs. Critics said it was hard to excuse such a rudimentary error in an open-source piece of software held out as a way to protect sensitive communications.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Why do so many American ‘journalists’ appear to hate actual journalism?

  The question was directed at Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist who broke the story of NSA surveillance using material provided by on-the-lam leaker Edward Snowden. The person grilling Greenwald wasn’t a government prosecutor or a frustrated member of the intelligence community. It was David Gregory, host of NBC’s Sunday morning political talk show Meet the Press.

• “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”: The new warrior cop is out of control

  SWAT teams raiding poker games and trying to stop underage drinking? Overwhelming paramilitary force is on the rise

• Top special operations officer directed shift of bin Laden records to CIA to keep files secret

  The nation’s top special operations commander ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.

• Report: bin Laden raid files purged from Pentagon computers, sent to CIA

  The nation’s top special operations commander ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.

• Siegelman Frame-Up Led To New Book Exposing Obama, CIA, Romney Secrets

  Four years ago, my research documenting the Bush administration frame-up of Alabama’s former governor Don Siegelman led me to find nationwide patterns of similar horrors.

• Bin Laden records purged to CIA

  Records about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout were ordered purged from Pentagon computers and sent to the CIA – a place where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.

• Undercover CIA Spy Doubled as CBS Reporter

  Austin Goodrich, an undercover CIA officer during the Cold War who also worked for several years as a CBS television correspondent before his identity was unmasked, died June 9 at his home in Port Washington, Wis. He was 87.

• NSA CIA Public Keys

  A fair number of the NSA keys appear to be spoofs — it is easy to register a PK with a fake email address. Perhaps others are stings. The three Alex Belleque keys are hoots. Few NSA or CIA staff would use PGP with an nsa/ucia.gov address, knowing its compromisability, in contrast to the hundreds of national secuity staff who do (DHS, USSS, FBI, DoJ, NATO, et al.)

• Snowden: NSA, German foreign intelligence ‘in bed together’

  National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden says the United States partnered with Germany and other nations to invade people’s privacy.

  In an interview to be published this week, Snowden said the NSA has close working ties with Germany’s foreign intelligence agency and similar agencies of other countries, and that NSA staff are “in bed together with the Germans,” the German magazine Der Spiegel reported Sunday.

• CIA Manipulation: The Painful Truths Told by Phil Agee

  Philip Agee spent 12 years (1957-69) as a CIA case officer, most of it in Latin America. His first book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, published in 1974 – a pioneering work on the Agency’s methods and their devastating consequences – appeared in about 30 languages around the world and was a best seller in many countries; it included a 23-page appendix with the names of hundreds of undercover Agency operatives and organizations.

  [...]

  Agee’s goal in naming all these individuals, quite simply, was to make it as difficult as he could for the CIA to continue doing its dirty work.

  A common Agency tactic was writing editorials and phony news stories to be knowingly published by Latin American media with no indication of the CIA authorship or CIA payment to the media. The propaganda value of such a “news” item might be multiplied by being picked up by other CIA stations in Latin America who would disseminate it through a CIA-owned news agency or a CIA-owned radio station. Some of these stories made their way back to the United States to be read or heard by unknowing North Americans.

• Home Office ‘knew police stole children’s identities’

  Bob Lambert admits to adopting the identity of a seven-year-old boy and has conceded to having four affairs while undercover

• Turkish Police Shoot Down Surveillance Drone During Istanbul Protests

  As the growing number of Techdirt stories on the subject testify, drones are becoming a more familiar part of modern life. But their presence can add a new element to situations. An obvious example is during demonstrations, where drones can be used to monitor those taking part — but also the authorities’ reaction. As with cases where members of the public have used smartphones to capture police abuse, so drones offer the possibility of revealing questionable police activity that might in the past have gone unrecorded.

• Texas Trooper Shoves 74-Year-Old Then Arrests Her For Felony Assault When She Hits Him With Her Purse

• 74-Year-Old Woman Violently Assaults Two Texas DPS Troopers – Really?

  An activist was watching State Senator Wendy Davis filibuster an abortion bill in the Texas Legislature when two Texas DPS Troopers approached her and told her to come with them. (Note: Although they are troopers, they are also known as Capitol Police, and function more as security guards than as peace officers).

  According to the Probable Cause Affidavit, the Lt. Governor order that the gallery be cleared and the Troopers were enforcing that order. When they got to Martha Northington and told her to leave, there was a problem.

Cablegate

• Sarah Harrison, the woman from WikiLeaks

  He didn’t have the space for it, but Gavin MacFadyen needed more bodies. The American running a British think tank for investigative journalism had eight staffers crammed into an 15-by-12-foot office in east central London, trying to crack a story on wrongdoing at a multinational company.

• What Correa really said about Assange and the safe-conduct to Snowden. Analysis

  I have carefully listened to the interview – conducted in Spanish – of President Rafael Correa with the Guardian on the “Snowden saga”, also focused on the role of the WikiLeaks founder Mr Julian Assange. Frankly, I became astonished realizing the extent to which the answers of Rafael Correa were misrepresented by the Guardian, and subsequently by other MSM. Instead of what it has been reported, Ecuador has never retracted of their positive statements on whisteblower Edward Snowden, or on their openness to study his asylum. Correa affirms clearly that Ecuador has not “negated” the safe-conduct issued to Mr Snowden. He also says emphatically that “Mr Assange continues to enjoy our respect”

• Visa And Mastercard Ban Anonymizing VPNs… Just As They Allow Wikileaks

  This is random. Just as Mastercard and Visa are allowing payments to Wikileaks again after a two year hiatus, those same two companies have started banning VPN providers. If you don’t recall, the credit card companies refused to process payments for Wikileaks, following significant pressure from US officials, even as they have no problem processing payments to hate groups like the KKK. After a long legal dispute, an Icelandic court ordered the credit card companies to start processing payments to Wikileaks again.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Climate extremes are ‘unprecedented’

  The Earth experienced unprecedented recorded climate extremes during the decade 2001-2010, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.

Finance

• Defining Prosperity Down

  Friday’s employment report wasn’t bad. But given how depressed our economy remains, we really should be adding more than 300,000 jobs a month, not fewer than 200,000. As the Economic Policy Institute points out, we would need more than five years of job growth at this rate to get back to the level of unemployment that prevailed before the Great Recession. Full recovery still looks a very long way off. And I’m beginning to worry that it may never happen.

• Bitcoin and Unbreakable Law

  Imagine that you were entertaining a business deal with a man with an supernatural ability to make two kinds of promises: 1) promises that are impossible for him to break and 2) ordinary, breakable promises. Why would you accept anything other than the unbreakable promises from him? If he offered to make breakable promises you might grow suspicious about his intent.

  It’s easy to see how unbreakable promises would be a revolution for contracts and law. Enforcement costs for contracts would be drastically reduced. It would enable a new era of globalization, allowing people to participate in contracts with each other without regard to jurisdiction. The rights promised to a citizen of a country could be guaranteed instead of relying on the benevolence and caprice of their sovereign.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• OMG! State Department Dropped $630,000 on Facebook “Likes”

  Ostensibly web-savvy State Department employees spent $630,000 to earn more Facebook “likes,” in an effort that struggled to reach its target audience, according to a searing Inspector General’s report from May.

• State Dept. Spent $630,000 Buying Likes, But That Was Actually The Least Of Its Engagement Problem

  The release of a report from the Inspector General on the Bureau of Internal Information Programs (BIIP) brings with it the surprising news that the various agencies under its purview spent $630,000 pursuing Facebook “likes” in an attempt to increase their popularity. Normally, I would be setting the keyboard to “Mock Relentlessly,” but this isn’t so much a case of the government blowing tax dollars on stupid stuff as it is a case of using the wrong tool (bureaucracy) for the job (increasing engagement). That being said, it still means the money was ultimately wasted, but not in the “espresso machine in every cubicle” sort of way. (And there will probably be a little mocking.)

Censorship

• Iran’s President-Elect: Net Filtering Doesn’t Work… Oh, And By The Way, Human Rights Are Universal

  That’s a pretty remarkable statement, since it comes from a nation that has tried to impose Net censorship more rigorously than most. It’s also important, because it underlines why Western countries that keep flirting with the idea of introducing Net filtering are simply wasting their time. Rouhani has some other points that Western leaders would do well to remember…

• Iran’s president signals softer line on web censorship and Islamic dress code

Privacy

• RIP Google Reader

  Today, Google’s RSS reader is kaput. Maybe most don’t notice, maybe some are relieved not to have another box with 396,955,428 unread items. But the loss casts a shadow over a stalwart contingent.

• The NSA’s mass and indiscriminate spying on Brazilians

  As it does in many non-adversarial countries, the surveillance agency is bulk collecting the communications of millions of citizens of Brazil

• Bolivian President’s Jet Rerouted On Suspicions Snowden Could Be On Board; Multi-Country Outrage Ensues

• US attempts to block Edward Snowden are ‘bolstering’ case for asylum

  Attempts by the US to close down intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden’s asylum options are strengthening his case to seek a safe harbour outside of Russia, legal experts claim.

  Snowden, who is believed to be in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, has received provisional offers of asylum from Nicaragua and Venezuela, and last night Bolivia also offered him sanctuary. He has applied to at least six other countries, says the Wikileaks organisation providing legal support.

• UK Authorities Threat Google Over Its Privacy Policies

  The Information Commissioner Officer of the UK, in a recent statement, said that he believes that Google’s Privacy Policy does not comply with the current UK Data Protection Act. He also further says that Google does not make it clear on how it uses the private data gathered by its various data mining tools and systems, thus further adding to the blame and aggravating the situation.

• Privacy Group to Ask Supreme Court to Stop N.S.A.’s Phone Spying Program

  A privacy rights group plans to file an emergency petition with the Supreme Court on Monday asking it to stop the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program that collects the telephone records of millions of Americans.

• NSA Rejecting Every FOIA Request Made by U.S. Citizens

  Clayton Seymour, a 36-year-old IT specialist from Hilliard, Ohio, recently sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the NSA, curious as to whether any data about him was being collected.

  What he received in response made his blood boil.

  “I am a generally law abiding citizen with nothing I can think of that would require monitoring,” Seymour told me, “but I wanted to know if I was having data collected about me and if so, what.”

  So Seymour sent in an FOIA request. Weeks later, a letter from the NSA arrived explaining that he was not entitled to any information. “When I got the declined letter, I was furious,” he told me. “I feel betrayed.”

• NSA ‘in bed’ with German intelligence says US whistleblower Edward Snowden – and GCHQ operates a ‘full take’ data monitoring system

  The fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden alleged on Sunday that the National Security Agency was “in bed together” with German intelligence despite claims by politicians in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition that they were shocked by the extent of American spying in Germany.

  In an interview with Der Spiegel , Snowden claimed that the NSA provided German intelligence, with analysis tools to help the organisation monitor data flowing through Germany. “The NSA people are in bed together with the Germans,”” he told the magazine.

• The Power of Britain’s Data Vacuum

  Britain’s intelligence service stores millions of bits of online data in Internet buffers. In SPIEGEL, Edward Snowden explains GCHQ’s “full take” approach. All data that travels through the UK is captured.

• France ‘has vast data surveillance’ – Le Monde report

  France’s foreign intelligence service intercepts computer and telephone data on a vast scale, like the controversial US Prism programme, according to the French daily Le Monde.

  The data is stored on a supercomputer at the headquarters of the DGSE intelligence service, the paper says.

• Brazil Voices ‘Deep Concern’ Over Gathering of Data by U.S.

  The international tensions stirred up by recent revelations about American spying spread to yet another nation on Sunday, when Brazil’s foreign minister expressed “deep concern” over the issue and said his government would press the United Nations to take action that “preserves the sovereignty of all countries.”

• [Old] White House gives Homeland Security control of all communication systems

  The White House has finally responded to criticism over US President Barack Obama’s hushed signing last week of an Executive Order that allows the government to command privately-owned communication systems and acknowledges its implications.

  When President Obama inked his name to the Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions Executive Order on July 6, he authorized the US Department of Homeland Security to take control of the country’s wired and wireless communications — including the Internet — in instances of emergency. The signing was accompanied with little to no acknowledgment outside of the White House, but initial reports on the order quickly caused the public to speak out over what some equated to creating an Oval Office kill switch for the Web. Now the Obama administration is addressing those complaints by calling the Executive Order a necessary implement for America’s national security.

• Obama needs to take charge on NSA spying scandal

  The president should fire James Clapper and Keith Alexander over domestic spying revealed by Edward Snowden

  Read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-nsa-20130708,0,7170946.story#ixzz2YSlQQoST

• Op-Ed: Who’s ultimately to blame for spying — the NSA or the CEO?

  The new colonization paradigm aims to conquer the kingdom of individual privacy. Privacy is a recent phenomenon in human society, and it is the last frontier that even kings and armies have failed to conquer.
  But the NSA and telecom giants are staking claims in the vast domain of human relations. This trend towards reigning in individuality for the sake of exploitation and control has had its heralds. Orwell gave us the ‘who’, the government, “our” government. Aldous Huxley warned us “that we musn’t be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology.” Together, the powers of both the corporate world and government have played pivotal roles in destroying individual privacy.

• NSA whistleblower reveals Australian involvement in US ‘snoop-op’

  NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has reportedly revealed Australian intelligence’s involvement with the alleged US ‘snoop-op’.

  According to the Age, Snowden has identified four Australian facilities which work in co-ordination with the US’ surveillance programme and have been furnishing citizen data and contributing to the programme.

• The AM Roundup: How One Word Empowered the NSA

  The National Security Agency’s ability to gather phone data on millions of Americans hinges on a secret court ruling that redefined a single word: “relevant.”

• Privacy group to ask SCOTUS to review NSA surveillance

• US and EU Shrug Off Edward Snowden’s NSA Revelations to Resume $200bn Trade Deal Talks

• The Three Amigos offer sanctuary to cornered NSA leaker Snowden

  NSA contractor-turned-surveillance-whistleblower Edward Snowden has been offered asylum in three Latin American countries.

• Edward Snowden tells Der Spiegel NSA is ‘in bed with the Germans’

  Interview carried out before NSA whistleblower fled to Hong Kong appears to contradict Merkel’s public surprise at snooping

• NSA and GCHQ spy programmes face legal challenge

  The British and US spy programmes that allow intelligence agencies to gather, store and share data on millions of people have been challenged in a legal claim brought by privacy campaigners.

  Papers filed on Monday call for an immediate suspension of Britain’s use of material from the Prism programme, which is run by America’s National Security Agency.

• The NSA/GCHQ metadata reassurances are breathtakingly cynical

  The public is being told that the NSA and GCHQ have ‘only’ been collecting metadata, not content. That’s nothing to be thankful for

• Hitting the reset: NSA spying targeted BRICS

• Brazil allegedly targeted by NSA spying, demands explanation from United States

• If Only Ed Snowden Worked On Wall St. He’d Be Free From Prosecution Risk

• U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

  Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.

• Old School Snail Mail ‘Metadata’ Still Being Harvested By The USPS And Turned Over To Law Enforcement/Security Agencies By Request

• Privacy Protests

  Read this while thinking about the lack of any legal notion of civil disobedience in cyberspace.

• Privacy Protests: Surveillance Evasion and Fourth Amendment Suspicion

  The police tend to think that those who evade surveillance are criminals. Yet the evasion may only be a protest against the surveillance itself. Faced with the growing surveillance capacities of the government, some people object. They buy “burners” (prepaid phones) or “freedom phones” from Asia that have had all tracking devices removed, or they hide their smartphones in ad hoc Faraday cages that block their signals. They use to surf the internet. They identify tracking devices with GPS detectors. They avoid credit cards and choose cash, prepaid debit cards, or bitcoins. They burn their garbage. At the extreme end, some “live off the grid” and cut off all contact with the modern world.

• Snowden’s Constitution vs Obama’s Constitution

  Edward Snowden is not a constitutional lawyer. But his public statement explaining his decision to blow the whistle on what he and Congress both know to be only the “tip of the iceberg” of state snooping secrets expresses a belief in the meaning of the Constitution: in a democracy, the people – not his defense contractor employers or the government that hires them – should ultimately determine whether mass surveillance interfering with everyone’s privacy is reasonable.

  Some have tried to minimize the import of the snooping exposed by Snowden on the grounds that the government is just storing the information it gathers, and has not yet searched it. The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Seizure – the taking of private information – is what the government has now been forced to admit in its decision to prosecute Snowden for telling the truth about their secret seizures. Whether or not the state ever chooses to “search” the seized information, the universal, non-consensual seizure itself of what used to be called “pen register” data grossly invades individual privacy and vastly empowers government, all in violation of the Constitution if “unreasonable.”

• MIT Project Reveals What PRISM Knows About You

  An MIT project shows Wayne Rash just how much information PRISM can get without opening a single email

• Report: France data gathering program compared to PRISM

  A leading French newspaper says France’s intelligence services have put in place a giant electronic surveillance gathering network.

  Citing no sources, the Le Monde daily says France’s Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, the country’s foreign intelligence agency, systematically collects information about all electronic data sent by computers and telephones in France, as well as communications between France and abroad.

• AT&T to sell users’ anonymous usage and location data to advertisers

  AT&T is planning to cash in on the large amount of data it collects from its subscribers every month. The company said this week that it is looking to follow in the footsteps of Google, Facebook and Verizon, and begin selling information about its customers to other businesses. AT&T says it’s considering selling its customers’ wireless and Wi-Fi locations, U-verse usage, website browsing habits, mobile app usage and “other information.” The carrier notes that the data will be anonymous and in some cases will group together with other subscribers, which it says will protect a customer’s privacy. Those who aren’t fond of AT&T selling their information, however, will have the opportunity to opt out of the program. AT&T didn’t reveal when the data selling program will go into effect.

• The web you know is dying

  I’m drinking an espresso shot. It’s half-cold. There’s still gunk in my eyes from sleeping.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about how I use the Internet. A year ago, I nearly vanished from the public web because I had an intuitive feeling the centralized web was a backdoor to the government. Now, as the dust settles from our collective experiences over the past week, I know this to be true.

• Rethinking Surveillance

  As a federal prosecutor in the 1980s, I used to think nothing of scooping up the phone numbers that a suspect called. I viewed that surveillance as no big deal because the Supreme Court had ruled in Smith v. Maryland (1979) that we have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the phone numbers we dial, as opposed to the content of the calls. And in any event, I had limited time or practical ability to follow up on those numbers.

• EU votes to support suspending U.S. data sharing agreements, including passenger flight data

• From Aspen: Justice Kagan calls surveillance cases ‘growth industry’

  Speaking late Saturday afternoon at the Aspen Ideas Festival, U.S Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was every bit as diplomatic as you would expect a woman who has survived the Senate confirmation process to be. Chief Justice John Roberts? “A great chief justice,” who faces the “tall order (of) trying to forge agreement” on a court whose members traditionally treasure the right to go their own way. Justice Clarence Thomas? “I enjoy him enormously. He’s a justice with incredible integrity and a very principled one,” Kagan said. “We disagree on a lot of stuff and we’re going to disagree on a lot of stuff but I enjoy every moment I spend with him.”

• The Snowden Controversy and Our Legacy of Choices

  In one of the most innovative uses of the bizarre rules of international travel, whistle-blower Edward Snowden sits in an airport transit lounge outside the customs barrier that is Russian enough to not invade but not Russian enough to claim the Russians are hiding him. He has now reportedly applied for asylum in Russia.

• Controversial EU Data Protection Regulation May Be Negotiated In Secret In Breach Of Parliamentary Process

  Today, the European Parliament held a three-hour long debate on PRISM, Tempora and what the EU response should be. Many wanted TAFTA/TTIP put on hold; others didn’t. But one theme cropped up again and again: the need for strong data protection laws that would offer at least some legal protection against massive and unregulated transfer of Europeans’ personal data to the US.

• Cloak of secrecy hangs over EU privacy reform

  It may seem to be a paradox that a law concerning protection of people’s secrets should be legislated in the open, but in fact, the paradox is the other way around.

Civil Rights

• EU Approves Tougher Sentences for Cyber Crime

• Europe gets tougher on cybercriminals

  ougher penalties for a wide range of cybercrimes have been agreed by European politicians.

  A draft directive outlining minimum jail terms for some crimes was adopted by the European Parliament on 4 July.

  The directive says those found guilty of running a botnet of hijacked home computers should serve at least three years in jail.

• NDAA and martial law in America, part 2: FEMA camps

  There is a lot of very disturbing language throughout this recently leaked military file. When this file is coupled with the NDAA, one cannot help but put together a scenario in which the US government is readying to detain US citizens. Many of the people who have attempted to debunk the idea of FEMA camps have asked what the purpose of these camps would be. For the answer to this I must quote Alan Moore, “People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.”

• Wall Street Journal says Egypt needs a Pinochet – can it get away with that?

  The Chilean dictator presided over the torture and murder of thousands, yet still the free-market right reveres his name

• Protests Erupt in South Korea Over Spy Agency’s Electioneering

  Protests have continued for several weeks in South Korea against revelations that the country’s intelligence agency allegedly meddled in December’s presidential election by undertaking an anonymous online attack campaign against opposition parties.

• Cynical subversion of justice in the name of security: Returns to torture in Central Asia

  The security services of Russia, Ukraine and the Central Asian republics are colluding in the abduction, disappearance, unlawful transfer and torture of wanted individuals with a regularity that amounts to a region wide renditions programme, Amnesty International said in a report published today.

• Egypt: Crackdown on Morsi’s supporters heralds new rights abuses

  Amnesty International is warning against a crackdown on supporters of Mohamed Morsi, after documenting a new wave of arrests of Muslim Brotherhood leaders, raids on media and an incident in which a protester was killed by army live fire.

• Egyptian Soldiers Said to Kill Dozens

• Israel: Stop judicial ‘bullying’ of Palestinian activists

  Amnesty International has accused the Israeli authorities of bullying and judicial harassment of Nariman Tamimi, a Palestinian rights activist who was placed under partial house arrest today to prevent her taking part in peaceful protests while she awaits trial next week.

• Mayor Bloomberg Opens Own Wallet To Erect Protective Wall Of Money Around His Beloved Stop And Frisk Program

  We wrote recently about New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s apoplectic response to the passage of two bills aimed at his beloved stop and frisk program. In addition to claiming the city would fall immediately and be beset on all sides by the tyranny of evil men swept up in an unprecedented crime wave (which would seem to imply stop and frisk isn’t catching that many criminals), he also promised to veto both bills despite both having landed on his desk with veto-proof votes.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Patents on 3D Printing Challenged by Prior Art

  Mike Masnick lets go with a strong blast on patents because they may yet again cripple innovation in 3D printing link here. As he writes, “One of the reasons 3D printing is suddenly on the cusp of going mainstream is the expiration of some key patents that have held the technology back for decades.”

• Copyrights

  • Team Prenda Plays Dumb In Central California, As Brett Gibbs Says They Lied In Northern California

    It was a busy day for Team Prenda yesterday, as summarized by Joe Mullin. Down in Central California, in the case overseen by Judge Otis Wright — who famously called out Team Prenda on their scam — four of the members of Team Prenda all sent coordinated filings, attacking the opposing lawyers, Morgan Pietz and Nick Ranallo, claiming that they should be sanctioned for failing to serve the various members of Team Prenda concerning the additional filings in the case. John Steele, Paul Hansmeier, Peter Hansmeier and Mark Lutz all claim that they’ve been blissfully unaware that anything was happening in the case.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Linux is here to stay

Linux provided not just a cheap POSIX Unix clone, but a whole new platform… the opportunity to take the ideas of Unix and take it beyond the limitations of both System V and BSD. Linux gave a kernel to the GNU tools, which really helped launch the success of Linux and made the whole idea of Linux distributions easily achievable.

Curious About Linux? 5 Easy & No Risk Ways To Try Linux On Your Windows PC

Want to check out Linux, but fear you might wreck your existing Windows installation? Don’t. There are plenty of risk-free ways to try Linux, from live CDs to USB keys to virtual machines – and I’m going to outline all of them. Whether you’re thinking of ditching Windows or simply want to tinker with some tech, Linux is worth looking into. There are hundreds of great Linux distros out there to try, all giving you easy access to tens of thousands of open source programs. Better yet: it all runs on a secure system that’s free in every conceivable way. Even beyond the practical points, Linux is just plain cool. If you consider yourself a geek, you should at least try it out. I recommend starting with Ubuntu if you want to see how user friendly Linux can be, though others will tell you Linux Mint is a better first experience. The good thing about what I’m outlining below is you can try both, easily, so let’s get started.

Start your Linux career by becoming a free software or open source developer

If you are fresh out of uni with a degree in IT or even currently studying, it is the best time to become a free software or open source developer (F/OS) and gain Linux experience. In this article we will talk about what is a free software and open source software and what are the benefits of becoming a F/OS developer. Note however, that we are not taking sides and not saying what is better free software or open source software. We would like to simply underline the benefits coming from participation in such projects. We will also advice how to engage yourself in a F/OS project, what kind of projects are out there for you and what steps you need to take in order to become a F/OS developer. Besides the experience with Linux, you can gain experience in variety of programming languages. Check out our Linux skills on demand as a guide to what kind of IT skills are currently required by employers and, therefore, what you should study to have a best chance to succeed in your career.

Desktop

• Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition

  Dell has long been one of the most Linux-friendly PC manufacturers. But with its project Sputnik, Dell has really embraced open source software in a way unique to all PC makers. Sputnik is the nickname for Dell’s newest Linux laptop — the XPS 13 Developer Edition, a sleek ultrabook that runs Ubuntu out of the box.

  If the idea of running Linux full-time is foreign or novel to you, this is not the laptop for you. Likewise, if you’re of the opinion that Linux on the desktop just isn’t ready for everyday use, then this is not the laptop for you. It’s also not the laptop for the Linux geek who scoffs at everything but Arch and loves to search out obscure hardware drivers.

Server

• The Award of Best Linux Web Hosting Named By Top-Cheap-Web-Hosting.com

• Enterprise Linux consolidation and optimisation on IBM System z

  That Linux has come a long way in the past 15 years is undeniable. It began as a system for small web servers but now spans multiple hardware platforms to run enterprise and technical workloads, and to support a wide range of new workloads in social media, web serving, and cloud computing.

• Birmingham Amps Up Research With New Linux Supercomputer

  Upgraded high-performance-computing system, BlueBEAR II, to help University of Birmingham researchers solve tough problems such as cheaper fuel cells.

• CERN and Rackspace to Collaborate on Hybrid Cloud Platform

Audiocasts/Shows

• TLLTS Episode 512 Released July 03

• LB – Episode 82 – Sync the Games

Kernel Space

• Linux Kernel 3.9.9 Is Now Available for Download

  A few minutes ago, July 3, Greg Kroah-Hartman happily announced that the ninth maintenance release for the stable Linux 3.9 kernel series is now available for download.

• Intel Rapid Start technology coming to Linux (unofficially)

  Intel’s Rapid Start technology is a system that allows recent Windows computers to resume from deep sleep in 6 seconds or less. Soon you may also be able to achieve the same thing on a PC running a Linux-based operating system.

• Systemd 205 starts conversion process to cgroups usage

  Lennart Poettering has announced the release of systemd 205, the latest version of the system management tool. This release takes the first steps towards, in the medium term, taking control of interactions with the kernel’s cgroups. In recent kernel versions, cgroups can be used to govern the allocation of system resources like CPU time, memory usage or storage quotas.

• Input Device Support Gets Better For Linux 3.11

• Xen & KVM Come To 64-bit ARM On Linux

  The Linux 3.11 kernel that’s officially just been under development since last night’s 3.10 release will feature support for KVM and Xen virtualization on 64-bit ARM (AArch64) hardware.

Applications

• Whisker Menu: Fast Application Launcher Featuring Search Function For Xfce

  The tool allows you to quickly search for the application you want to launch or, if you don’t know the application name, you can browse all the applications installed on the system by browsing through categories.

• File Roller 3.8.3 Repairs Saving of New Archives

  The developers behind the File Roller (file-roller) application, the default archive manager for the GNOME desktop environment, announced yesterday, July 2, the immediate availability for download and update of File Roller 3.8.3.

• 15 years of Wireshark: Towards the Internet of Things

  The success of Wireshark still takes Gerald Combs by surprise even today: when he released the first version under the name Ethereal on 14 July 1998, the open source project triggered a wave of development contributions. Originally developed exclusively for Ethernet and TCP/IP, the project started to support protocols such as Token Ring, Novell IPX, DNS, IGMP, OSPF, RIP, DHCP, ISO/OSI, Banyan Vines, FDDI, Apple Talk and NetBIOS within the first year of its existence. This vigorous expansion demonstrated that, at a time when the market was still being dominated by Network General’s expensive sniffer software, there was a strong need for a freely available network analysis tool. With the continuous integration of new dissectors (decoders) that were being contributed by hundreds of developers worldwide, Ethereal grew rapidly, wiping out commercial products. The tool now comprises two million lines of program code and registers half a million downloads per month.

• Proprietary

  • Carla, omnivore audio/MIDI plugins host, released

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Things to do after installing Linux Mint 15 MATE

  • Installing Nginx With PHP5 (And PHP-FPM) And MySQL Support (LEMP) On Ubuntu 13.04

  • Install Cinnamon on Fedora 19

  • Linux DIG Command – DNS Lookup utility with examples

  • How to install ajenti (Similar to Webmin) on ubuntu 13.04 server

  • Make a personal wiki with DokuWiki

  • Patch Management of Linux Servers Using Spacewalk

  • Online Defragmentation

  • Compression

  • Intro to Snapshot / Cloning

  • Effective System Administration

  • How To Create A Fiber Channel SAN Using SCST With QLogic HBA On Linux Debian 6

  • Some examples of how to use the paste command

  • Building Blocks Of Linux Boot Process

  • How to Fix Grub Boot Loader Errors with Boot-Repair Utility

  • Mythbuntu Screen Saver is Screwed Up!

  • Introduction to Vim Sessions

  • Screen with multiple sessions

  • Files search system polishing and modernization

  • Deploying forward secrecy on RedHat, Centos or Fedora based systems

  • iftop: A Network Bandwidth Monitoring Tool for Linux

  • phpvirtualbox – Running Virtual Machines With VirtualBox 4.2 and phpvirtualbox On A Headless Ubuntu 12.04 Server

• Games

  • Natural Selection 2 developers tease more Linux info!

    Another day another Natural Selection 2 Linux progress update! Yes it’s real, it’s coming and here’s more info for you!

  • Left 4 Dead 2 EMS mods and Linux officially launch

    Valve’s beta version of Left 4 Dead 2 has graduated to become it plain old regular version. Yesterday’s update brought the official launch of the co-op shooter’s Linux version and the Extended Mutation System that lets modders create complex new modes.

  • Left 4 Dead 2 Is Now Free to Play, Happy Zombie Hunting Until Monday

  • Left 4 Dead 2 Linux version primed for full Steam release, Extended Mutation System is go

  • Left 4 Dead 2 for Linux out of beta

  • Left 4 Dead 2 Linux leaves the beta safe house

  • ‘Left 4 Dead 2′ For Linux Out Of Beta, Now “Ready For Primetime”

  • Name your price for Shank and Shank 2

    While “Humble Bundle 6 with Android” comes to an end tomorrow, Humble Weekly Sale including the games Shank and Shank 2 has three more days to go.

  • Mammoth Gravity Battles a turn based strategy/artillery game

  • Half-Life 2, EP1, EP2 and Lost Coast exit beta on Linux!

  • An Interview and Preview with IndieCity on Linux!

    Todays GamingOnLinux.com question time is all about IndieCity and their soon to arrive Linux client, this means alongside Steam and Desura we will have another client on Linux.

  • Humble Weekly Sale Features All the Two Tribes Games in One Package

    The entire catalog of games from the Two Tribes developer has been made available through the Humble Weekly Sale.

  • An Interview and Preview with IndieCity on Linux!

Desktop Environments/WMs

• LXDE previews Qt port of its desktop

  The LXDE developers are working on a Qt-based version of their desktop and have already ported significant parts of the components of LXDE to the user interface framework. While still in an experimental state, the developers could already show a functional desktop with the panel, PCManFM file manager and an image viewer in a working state. Most of the desktop’s applets work with the ported panel as well.

• LXDE-Qt Preview

  The GTK+ version of LXDE is still under development, but we did some experiments with Qt, too. Now I have some things to show you.

• LXDE Demonstrates It’s Desktop’s Qt-port

  Folks over at LXDE are developing a Qt-based version of their desktop environment. They have already made lots of progress and have ported sizeable parts of the LXDE to the new user interface design. A working prototype is already on display, which shows a functional desktop having the panel, PCManFM file manager and image viewer. Even most applets from the desktop work on the ported panel without a glitch.

• LXLE gets DuckDuckGo, Distrowatch and an update.

  Late last week Distrowatch decided to create some room for LXLE on their infamous distro discovery site. I was really happy to see an official page for LXLE with an official url http://www.distrowatch.com/LXLE.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • A Year of the Linux Desktop

    Around a year ago, a school in the southeast of England, Westcliff High School for Girls Academy (WHSG), began switching its student-facing computers to Linux, with KDE providing the desktop software. The school’s Network Manager, Malcolm Moore, contacted us at the time. Now, a year on, he got in touch again to let us know how he and the students find life in a world without Windows.

  • Yet Another School Goes To GNU/Linux

  • Swedish studio makes Krita part of its visual effects workflow

  • Mad Crew Animation Studio Makes ‘Krita’ Part Of Its Workflow

    A Swedish Animation and Visual Effects Studio named, Mad Crew has decided to use Calligra’s digital painting application ‘Krita’, as part of its visual effects workflow. Member of Mad Crew developers, Fredik Brannbacka is said to have told the developers “We are damn happy with Krita!”, as claimed by a post on Krita Blog.

  • AudioCd. Week 1.

    Here a small report about what was done during first week of GSoC:

  • AudioCD. Week 2.

    Plan for second week was: “New implementation of AudioCdCollection. After this step is completed, Amarok should support AudioCd in a same way as before.” New implementation of AudioCdCollection was done during first week, so second week began with a testing of new AudioCD collection implementation. At the beginning of a week I did not found any problem and decided to continue my work with what was planned on a third week: “Decision about track enumeration routine should be done.”

  • News in kdepim 4.11: Archive Mail Agent

    This agent allow to define when we want to archive it (specific date), with recurrence or not (each x days, each x months etc.), and we can define maximum number of archive (We don’t want to full hard disk).

  • Touch the future of Mail

    I did not expect to get so much positive feedback when I released my Kontact Touch Mail mockup last week. No one argued against the plans to “remove” features so it looks like we are on the right track. It is important to get feedback early so we decided to open our “dirty” development repositories for public testing. They contain a (currently deactivated) package with the latest kdepim master and a prototype. The prototype is for experimenting with UI features before they get implemented. We are currently working on the overall application navigation. Feedback about other areas does not make much sense at this point.

  • Qt 5.1 – more than just a minor update

  • Window list QML :Development Phase

  • Keyboard layout indicator: widget or tray icon?

    When keyboard layout module was redesigned for KDE 4 it felt like indicators of sorts were to be done in widgets/applets instead of tray icons, so keyboard layout indicator applet was created. It does allow greater flexibility that systray icon on where to put it and how to size it. I learned though that the keyboard daemon can’t control that applet much (e.g. hide/show automatically) so when multiple keyboard layouts are configured there was no way that indicator applet can automatically appear (like system tray icon does).

  • Participate in KScreen Survey: How do you setup your screen(s)?

  • New in kdepim 4.11: Send Later Agent

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • The best of GNOME 3.8

    Now if someone has an explanation for this visual glitch that occurs specifically only with gnome-control-center and the (rather new and immature) radeonsi driver… I’m not even sure what (and where) to file this bug on….

  • Gedit 3.9.3 Brings Various Bugfixes and Improvements

    Yet another development release towards Gedit 3.10 has been released yesterday, July 1, bringing several improvements to various functions and fixing various bugs found in previous testing releases.

  • Gnome Video Arcade

    The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator first released in 1997 is a cross-platform emulator designed to recreate the old hardware that arcade game systems used, in the modern computers of today. MAME can currently successfully run thousands of ROM images originally found in many different arcade machines from 1970 till now.

  • GTK+ 2.24.20 Brings Backport Changes from GTK+ 3

    Looks like the GNOME developers are actively maintaining the old stable branch of the GTK+ toolkit, as version 2.24.20 just appeared yesterday, July 4, on the official GNOME FTP servers.

  • PyGObject 3.8.3 Is Now Available for Download

    The third maintenance release of the stable PyGObject 3.8 library for the GNOME desktop environment was announced earlier today, July 5, fixing various bugs found in the previous release.

Distributions

• StartOS 6 GNOME 3 and KDE preview

  The very first edition of what is now called StartOS were based on Ubuntu, but the distribution has since dumped Ubuntu to become one that is not based on any other distribution. In other words, it is now an original or independent distribution, with its own package management system.

• BASIS “Slate” Alpha v2_ 0.03 _ 29/06/2013

• Which Linux Distro Is Most Popular? Don’t Even Ask

  Which Linux operating systems are the most popular among home and small business users? Which Linux desktop is the best choice for enterprise users? Questions like these are meaningless and unanswerable, even for Linux developers. “Measuring Linux adoption … has always been — and will likely always be — a difficult task, due to the lack of empirical data,” said Jeremy Garcia, founder of LinuxQuestions.org.

• New Releases

  • DoudouLinux Review: Expose your children to Linux

    doudoulinux It is important for children living in the age of computers and the Internet to have some exposure to the technology of today’s world. At the same time we may want to keep them away from the corporate side of our society, all kinds of advertising that targets children or we do not wish to purchase any expensive software. In such case the Linux operating system is the solution for you. In particular, DoudouLinux seems to be a right choice for a child that exhibits an interests in computers. It provides a great learning experience for children of all ages. Whether they would like to play a game or, for instance, start learning a programming language DoudouLinux has them covered. Moreover, what is also important, it is for FREE, can be downloaded and copied as many times as you require and passed to other users, which makes it accessible to children in all parts of the world.

  • Slax 7.0.9 Beta Distro Features KDE 4.10.4

    Slax, a modern, portable, small and fast Linux operating system with a modular approach and outstanding design, is now at version 7.0.9 Beta.

  • Pear OS 8 Will Be Released in October 2013

    David Tavares, the developer of the Pear OS Linux operating system, has recently announced the features and roadmap for the upcoming Pear OS 8 distribution.

  • Netrunner 13.06 Enigma is here

• Screenshots

  • OS4 OpenLinux 13.5 Screenshot Tour

  • DEFT 8 Beta Screenshot Tour

  • ALT 7.0.0 Screenshot Tour

  • Fedora 19 Screenshot Tour

  • Calculate 13.6 Screenshot Tour

  • Parsix 5.0 Test 2 Screenshot Tour

  • I’m running Mint

  • Sonar Gnome-Shell 13.04 Screenshot Tour

  • Korora 19 Screenshot Tour

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Win back your digital independence with Mandriva

    Recent news regarding United States governmental agencies collecting and monitoring data across the Internet were pretty well known for years among the tech community. The details and the specific activities, such as the PRISM project might not have been matters of common knowledge though. It remains nonetheless true that any organisation or individual who is connected to the Internet -which means a lot of of them on the Earth- needs to be able to keep both its privacy and the ownership of its data. It is not just a matter of national interest and sovereignty for countries. It is not just a political matter that might be solved between the United States and Europe for instance. The right to privacy and data ownership is a fundamental right, on the Internet and elsewhere.

  • My new installs: Pisi, Mageia 3, and OpenMandriva

    Taking full advantage of some bouts of insomnia, I made some progress on my handling of GRUB2 (thank you Megatotoro!). I also installed Pisi 1.0 Beta v3 to my laptop, upgraded my netbook from Mageia 2 to Mageia 3 (i586), and finally achived to install OpenMandriva LX (alpha?beta?) to my desktop. Here’s a summary of what I have seen so far:

  • The July 2013 issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine.

  • PCLinuxOS 2013.06 LXDE Screenshot Tour

• Gentoo Family

  • Sandboxed Gentoo

    This article is a guide on installing Gentoo in another Linux distribution (Arch, in this case). Look at it like a BSD Jail. It’s not a true install, merely a chroot–a virtual machine.

• Arch Family

  • Arch Linux 2013.07.01 Is Now Available for Download

    Today, July 1, 2013, we are happy to announce that Arch Linux 2013.07.01 is available for download on mirrors worldwide (see download link at the end of the article).

• Red Hat Family

  • Hungama Deploys Red Hat Enterprise Linux And Red Hat JBoss Middleware

    Red Hat, Inc., the provider of open source solutions, has announced that Hungama Digital Media Entertainment, the aggregator, developer, publisher and distributor of Hindi language (Bollywood) films and South-Asian entertainment content, has selected Red Hat for its new platform solution to deliver value-added services with a much lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

  • How far will Red Hat, Google go?

  • Hungama selects Red Hat for its new platform solution to achieve savings on TCO

  • Fedora

    • Hands on with Korora 19 ‘Bruce’

      Hot on the heels of Fedora 19 comes this everything-including-the-kitchen-sink derivative.

    • ah-ha! That’s why Korora

      When Kororaa changed their name to Korora I wondered why? But today I think I’ve spotted the real reason.

    • Fedora 19 Linux Brings 3D Printing, Virtualization, Storage Updates

      Fedora 19 (codenamed “Schrödinger’s Cat”) is officially out this week, and it’s looking to be more than just another latest-and-greatest iteration of a popular open source, Linux-based operating system. From 3D printing tools to better support for virtualization and storage, this latest version of Fedora, the Linux distribution sponsored by Red Hat (RHT), offers a lot that other leading Linux distributions currently don’t. Here’s a look at some of the highlights.

    • Fedora 19 Schrödinger’s Cat is out of the bag

      The Red Hat sponsored Fedora Project has announced the Fedora 19 fully functional free of charge Linux operating system code-named “Schrödinger’s Cat”.

      “In this release, the Fedora Project community has absolutely demonstrated that agility matters,” said Robyn Bergeron, Fedora Project Leader.

    • Fedora 19 – “Schrödinger’s Cat” – is most certainly alive – Update

      Fedora 19 Despite having a code name that evokes quantum uncertainty, Fedora 19 “Schrödinger’s Cat”, has arrived on time. The new release of Fedora arrives with the features as previewed in May’s beta. For developers, the OpenShift Origin platform-as-a-service, the Node.js asynchronous JavaScript platform and Ruby 2.0 as standard are highlights of the release. Database users will find Fedora 19 has switched to MariaDB as its new standard database, while makers will find a range of 3D design and print tools are now available. There’s also a switch to GCC 4.8 for building packages and updated desktop software in the form of GNOME 3.8, KDE Plasma Workspace 4.10 and Mate 1.6.

• Debian Family

  • all Debian source are belong to us

    Debsources is a new toy I’ve been working on at IRILL together with Matthieu Caneill. In essence, debsources is a simple web application that allows to publish an unpacked Debian source mirror on the Web.

  • New Debian leader seeks more innovation within project

    The new leader of the Debian GNU/Linux project, Lucas Nussbaum, plans to boost the amount of innovation that happens in the project itself, rather than just in its derivatives.

  • Light Debian Linux for Family and Friends

    A friend of yours tells you one day he’s heard so much about Linux and he’s decided to install it on his Windows machine. His computer is already a few years old, a Windows 7 or maybe a Windows XP, and he’s come to you for advice. Could you please help him to install it? No problem, happy to oblige!

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu Touch Redesigned Without The Android Shell

        Canonical the company behind the new Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system has this week revealed that they are redesigning the operating system without using the Android Shell that was used in previous versions of Ubuntu Touch.

      • Dogfoodable Core Apps

      • Ubuntu Touch revamped from the ground up – no longer running as an Android shell

        The Canonical team is revamping the Ubuntu Touch OS from the ground up. Instead of booting into Android and firing up the Ubuntu system after Android has booted, the new images now boot into Ubuntu and initialize Android inside an LXC (LinuX Container) container during boot.

      • Ubuntu Touch no longer launched by Android

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Linux Mint 15 Interview – HTML5, Arch and the MintBox

          Read the rest of our interview with Clement Lefebvre and the Mint Dev Team from the latest issue of Linux User & Developer, 128

        • Things to do after installing Linux Mint 15 MATE

        • Linux Mint 15 ‘Olivia’ vs. Ubuntu 13.04 ‘Raring Ringtail’

          With every release, Mint and Ubuntu are becoming two different distributions altogether. While on one hand Canonical is focused on making Ubuntu the universal OS across all devices, Linux Mint is busy ensuring that users get to use a solid and intuitive desktop experience. Both these distributions are similar at the core and offer the same basic features. However, if you look at the desktop, the graphics, the icons, and the behavior, you’ll find that they are completely worlds apart. This chasm in approaches towards desktop computing is now giving users a variety of choices.

        • MintBox 2 Will Be Powered by Linux Mint 15

        • New Breath of Fresh Air with Mint

          For the last couple of days I’ve been getting input/output errors while running my everyday install and eventually things would just halt. I decided I better get what I wanted off that drive because it was probably failing. This seemed like a good time to do more than boot Linux Mint 15 KDE (rc). It was time for a full install.

        • Zorin OS 7 Lite and Educational Lite are released

          The Zorin OS Team are proud to release Zorin OS 7 Lite and Educational Lite, the latest evolution of the Zorin OS Lite series of operating systems, designed specifically for Windows users utilizing old or low-powered hardware.

Devices/Embedded

• Tiny board aims TI SoC at embedded imaging apps

  FossilShale Embedded Technologies announced an SODIMM-style CPU module based on a Texas Instruments DM385 digital media processor with a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 core. The DM385-SOM primarily targets embedded imaging tasks, such as surveillance and medical imaging devices, and is supported with a carrier board, several I/O adapters, and customized Linux and Android software stacks.

• Startup unleashes low-cost, secure, IoT cloud service

  Ayla Networks announced a partnership with USI to develop wireless modules enabled with Ayla’s “Internet of Things” connectivity platform. The Ayla Platform, unveiled last month, offers a cost-effective way to implement secure device-to-device communications via an embedded software or hardware component, and provides end-user access to Ayla-enabled devices via Android and iOS mobile apps.

• Linux-friendly i.MX6 dev board gains 1080p camera

  E-con Systems has launched a 5-megapixel 1080p autofocus camera board, designed to integrate with a Linux- and Android-friendly $199 Boundary Devices development board for Freescale’s quad-core i.MX6 system-on-chip. E-con’s camera board connects to Boundary’s i.MX6 single-board computer via a CSI-2 MIPI interface, and is supplied with a V4L2-compliant Linux driver and source.

• Raspberry Pi creator won Silver Medal by the Royal Academy of Engineering

• Intel looking for Linux experts at ST-Ericsson

• This Raspberry Pi robot will make you coffee

• The Raspberry Pi beat skeptics to become a hacker’s staple

  The Raspberry Pi has grown well beyond the founder’s original plans for an inexpensive student computer, and is now a staple in almost every hardware hacker’s toolkit. Wired tells the story of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the British computer company that has become the face of a new wave of highly affordable computing. But the success of the Raspberry Pi Foundation wasn’t always a sure bet, and the initial loan request was denied due to an apparent lack of perceived market. Demand for the product turned out to be even bigger than original estimates, growing beyond the classroom and becoming a product adored by adult hardware hobbyists. Despite its broad success, the company is still focused on getting the Raspberry Pi into the hands of students, teaching that technology can be tangible rather than just a passively downloaded app.

• BeagleBone Black Part 2: Linux Performance Tests

  Last time around we took a look at the new $45 Beagle Bone Black (BBB) board which has a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU with 512Mb of RAM and 2Gb of eMMC flash memory. This time we’ll see how fast that little machine is.

• Time on Your Side

  The gap between embedded systems and desktop systems is lessening.

• Update on Our Laptop (aka Novena)

  Back in December, I posted that we’re building an open laptop. The post generated hundreds of comments, and I was surprised there was so much interest.

  To be honest, that was overwhelming. Also, there were many who didn’t get what we’re trying to do — as indicated by suggestions along the vein of “use a Core i7 and a fast nVidia graphics chip and sell it for under a hundred bucks and then I’d buy it”.

• Phones

  • Smartphone war all about BRICs, emerging markets

  • In Smartphones and Tablets, Multicore is Not Necessarily the Way to Go

    Several years ago, desktop PCs hit a performance wall. Intel thought that it could keep raising the clock speeds and keep up with the cooling issues, but something happened on the way to 4GHz. That “something” was a heat wall that required a heat sink and fan almost as big as a power supply to keep the CPU cool. Other crazy experiments included liquid cooling, including antifreeze coolant, and even liquid nitrogen.

  • Ballnux

    • Samsung ships 20 million Galaxy S4s since launch, almost keeps pace with iPhone

      Samsung has now shipped over 20 million units of its flagship Android smartphone, the Galaxy S4, in just 68 days, outpacing its previous flagship to the milestone by over a month.

    • Samsung’s record $8.3 billion profit isn’t enough for worried investors

    • HTC’s Financial Woes Continue

      HTC, a major player in the smartphone market, is struggling to churn out good profits. This despite their well-received latest flagship phone—the HTC One. Like last year’s One X, HTC One was launched a few days before Samsung’s parallel Galaxy S4 offering, and garnered rave reviews from critics and users alike. According to a report, “HTC’s unaudited net profit for the three months up to 30 June was NT$1.25bn, which equates to roughly $41.6m.” This figure is still way better than the measly $2.8 million earned in profits in the Q1 of this year. It seems like HTC’s noble plan to offer a Google edition phone experience in HTC One didn’t work out well. They are still hoping to alleviate the situation a bit through their HTC One Mini handsets.

    • LG Optimus G2 Specs and Pics leaked

      LG Optimus G2, the successor to the LG Optimus G phone is set to release sometime in the near future. It is supposed to be the flagship product from LG that is to compete directly against Samsung S4. Also, this is the only phone from LG that Is supposed to have Full HD display integrated in to a device. The only other device to sport the Full HD is the LG Optimus G Pro, but with its 5.5 inch screen it is more of a rival to Samsung’s Galaxy Note in the Phablet segment.

    • Samsung Buys Out Boxee For $30 million

      According to a recent report from the Israeli business site The Marker, Samsung has apparently sealed a deal worth $30 million with Boxee, thus buying the company.

    • Boxee bought by Samsung

  • Android

    • Sleep as Android

      I sleep poorly. In fact, insomnia has plagued me for years. As it turns out, even when I think I’m sleeping well, I’m usually not. There’s nothing worse than a shoddy night’s sleep followed by an abrupt alarm going off when you’ve finally settled into a deep slumber.

    • How CyanogenMod’s founder is giving Android users their privacy back

    • Summer fun: Android 4.3 leaks, Google gadget rumors

      Android 4.3 firmware for the Samsung Galaxy S4 was leaked, revealing new features like battery-friendly WiFi hotspot searching and a more power-stingy version of Bluetooth. Meanwhile, a Wall Street Journal report suggests Google is working on its own Android-based game console, as well as a smartwatch and a new version of the Nexus Q media player, and is prepping new low-end smartphones for emerging markets.

    • ‘Mega’ Secure Cloud Storage Service Launches Official Android App

      MEGA is a security and encryption focused product, created by millionaire internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom. Mega, formerly Megaupload has always been at the centre of controversy, but now they are moving towards legitimacy as they launch an official Android Application.

    • Moto X Customisations And Launch Details

      Customization and tech have always gone hand in hand, and customized ordering of computer was pioneered by Dell and Alienware, whose systems could be customized very deeply, even down to the type of RAM one would like on his/her rig. Given that our phones are slowly but gradually becoming our personal & portable computing device, it was a matter of time before a customization option was introduced in the mobile segment.Spearheading that very notion, Motorola, along with Google on the bandwagon, is offering the same notion to mobile phone customers through the upcoming Moto X phones.

    • Sony Rolling Out ‘My Xperia’ Remote Phone Tracking And Locking Service Globally

    • Sony Rolling Out ‘my Xperia’ Remote Lock, Wipe, And Phone Tracking Service Globally In The Coming Weeks

      After a few months of testing, Sony has announced its my Xperia service will be hitting all regions in the next few weeks. This system will provide remote management of 2012 and 2013 Xperia devices. Smartphones are expensive – it’s nice of Sony to help you keep track of it.

    • Android’s code signing can be bypassed

      Android applications carry a signature that is designed to ensure APK package integrity. During installation, the operating system will use the signature to validate the package contents, and an alert will be issued if a manipulation is detected. US firm Bluebox, which was only founded in mid-2012, claims to have discovered a bug in this approach that allows arbitrary code to be injected into APK files without invalidating the signature.

    • Google’s Motorola-based Moto X Strategy Clearer in New Ads

      Following its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, it’s been clear that Google has ambitious smartphone plans that extend well beyond the success that it has already had with the Android mobile OS. But it hasn’t been clear exactly what new Moto X smartphones will be like, or how Motorola’s phones produced under Google’s wing might impact Google’s focus on open source and open standards in the mobile space.

    • Karbonn Launches Dual-Sim Quad-Core Phone At Rs. 19,900 In India

    • Best Android smartphones (July 2013 edition)

      Time to take a tour of a handful of the best Android smartphones currently available on the market (July 2013). This time around, I’ve added a dual-SIM handset into the mix for those of you looking to switch networks quickly.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • The Engadget Show featuring OLPC

    The Engadget Show 44 has featured OLPC among its other targets on education. Others include Google, LeapFrog, Adafruit, Sparkfun and more. First, I applaud Engadget for including OLPC in the mix. More importantly, the show includes OLPC’s work in the US, especially in North Carolina through a series of projects run by the Knight Foundation. Bringing technologies into schools in the US are a specific challenge. The North Carolina schools are a particularly interesting deployment.

Setting TV Free

My 2006-vintage Sony Bravia flat-screen “Full HD” TV has Linux inside. I can tell because it comes with a two-page printout of the GPL, included almost as a warning. “Watch out”, it seems to say. “This TV comes infected with freedom.” Not that it’s worth hacking: you can make breakfast in the time that passes between a click on the remote and a change on the screen. (I’m barely exaggerating here. Switching between the TV’s eight HDMI inputs is amazingly slow.) But being a Linux device says volumes about what has happened to TV already, because the freedom it contains at the device level also ranges outward from the operating system to the network on which that operating system was born and grew up. That network was, and remains, the Internet.

Review: Open-source freebie jPDF Tweak gives you power over your PDFs

Open-source developer Michael Schierl describes jPDF Tweak as the “Swiss Army Knife for PDF Files,” and it certainly lives up to that promise. Like a real Swiss Army Knife, jPDF provides a variety of functions for your PDF files. This includes making printable booklets, combining PDF files, adding watermarks, rotating pages, encrypting files, changing the metadata, and more. I love this program so much that it has a permanent place on my PC.

A New Open-Source Web Crawler

Norconex has always been a big consumer of open-source libraries and products. The time has come for us to give back. That’s why we are open-sourcing a handful of libraries and products we hope will benefit others as well.

The HTML5 mobile CMS comes of age

Magnolia International has announced the release of the 5.0 version of its Content Management System (CMS).

Odds

He’s right, of course. The flexibility, low cost, and performance of Free/Libre Open Source Software is too great an asset to leave to your competitors whether you are an individual or a huge business. Even if you don’t like to compete, you can get the best value from your investment in IT using FLOSS. Big businesses and techies figured that out long ago. It has taken nearly a decade for the rest of us to catch on but it’s happening. All the OEMs are shipping tons of GNU/Linux servers and desktops/notebooks and many are shipping many more tablets, smartphones and all kinds of intelligent gadgets.

Design‐led Open Source With Codename Prometheus

In Greek mythology, Prometheus was the name of the Titan who defied Zeus and brought the gift of fire to humanity, which he created out of clay. Generally a heroic figure, Prometheus seems like an apt name for a project that aims to bring the “fire” of user-centered design to the open source community. Codename Prometheus is the new project being launched by designer Aral Balkan to create a new product that is design-led, as opposed to feature-led.

Open Source Dictation: Language Model

A language model defines probable word succession probabilities: For example “now a daze” and “nowadays” are pronounced exactly the same, but because of context we know that “Now a daze I have a smartphone” is far less likely than “Nowadays I have a smartphone”. To model such contextual information, speech recognition systems usually use an n-gram that contains information of how likely a specific word is, given the context of the sentence.

Events

• Linux Foundation Webinar: Reduce Product Lifecycles with Linux and Yocto Project

• What to expect at OSCON 2013

  This year I get to go to OSCON for the first time ever! I’ve been on the library conference circuit for years, but this will be my first non-library con and I’m ready to learn as much as I possibly can in three days.

  The conference is actually five days long, it starts with two days of tutorials (which I won’t be able to attend), but I plan on attending at least one session during every time slot during the next three days of sessions and keynotes. I went through the program and want to attend so many things (including things in the same time slot).

• Libre Software Meeting : Brussels 8 – 11 July 2013

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Rust 0.7 never sleeps

    As Mozilla’s language Rust develops, so it becomes more nuanced and less volatile. The latest release of Rust, version 0.7, doesn’t have many breaking language changes but does continue refining that language, with over 2000 changes made. Rust, which began life as a side project for developers Graydon Hoare, is being developed at Mozilla to provide the safe, concurrent systems language the Mozilla developers want for building their next generation browser, Servo.

  • Why Firefox OS will be a Big Win for Apple

    The Firefox Marketplace – the app store of the open web world – is the gateway for Firefox OS – and its maturity or lack thereof at launch will be the item that makes or breaks Firefox OS.

    There is little doubt in my mind that Firefox OS will gain traction. It’s a royalty free open source system that is open, what’s not to like?

  • Android too chunky for cheap phones, says Firefox OS creator

  • Mozilla Webmaker: We Want You to Break Things

    When you think about it, the idea behind “view source” is incredible. Not only can you, with the click of a button, instantly reveal a site’s code; you can copy, paste, tweak and make that code into something all your own. In many ways, it’s this concept that helped make the Internet such a revolutionary tool in the first place. And it’s this idea that lives at the heart of an open source web culture.

  • Mozilla’s Firefox OS smartphones do matter — to developers and buyers

    Given Android and iOS together control 90% of the worldwide smartphone market, what chance does Mozilla have to find success with its new Firefox OS for smartphones?

  • Mozilla launches its own open-source, web-based mobile operating system

    The Mozilla Foundation — the creator of the Firefox web browser — has just entered the mobile operating system fray, launching its Firefox OS on a line of smartphones in Spain. The ZTE Open will launch Tuesday and will be sold by Telefónica’s Movistar for 69 euros (US$90) — including 30 euros of prepaid credit. Should users purchase a phone with a two-year plan, the cost drops to 2.38 euros (US$3) per month.

  • Firefox OS phones arrive in Spain

    Telefónica has announced the commercial launch of the first Firefox OS phone, the ZTE Open, in Spain. The device will be available from tomorrow, 2 July, for 69 euros through the company’s Movistar stores. The ZTE Open device has a 3.5″ HVGA display, 256MB of RAM, 512MB of ROM and a 3.2 megapixel camera. For the price, Movistar are also including a 4GB microSD card. The device includes an FM radio, camera app with filters, Nokia HERE maps and Firefox web browser.

  • New home for Firefox OS Building Blocks

    Mozilla has rolled out a new web site for its Firefox OS Building Blocks, designed to help developers with the UI design of Firefox OS applications. The web site provides reusable HTML and CSS components and documentation for the user interface elements of the mobile operating system. Developers can also download design stencils and Firefox OS’s icons and fonts to help with sketching concepts of their applications.

SaaS/Big Data

• OpenStack Open Source Cloud Security Sprints Forward

  One of the most exciting aspects of agile code development is the reliance on code sprints to complete certain tasks. It’s an approach that works also for documentation.

  At the OpenStack Summit in Portland this past May, the OpenStack Security Group (OSSG) pledged to sit downto do a documentation sprint to build an OpenStack Hardening Guide.

• Building a hosted private cloud with the open source cloud computing infrastructure solution openQRM

• Private cloud via open source virtualization yields significant business benefits for Flipkart

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice Accelerates Open Source Spreadsheets, Thanks to AMD

• AMD Joins The Document Foundation to Accelerate LibreOffice

  Today, July 3, The Document Foundation (TDF) announced in a press release that the famous AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) company joined its Advisory Board, in order to accelerate the development of the LibreOffice open source office suite.

• AMD helps LibreOffice speed up Spreadsheets

  AMD, the giant CPU and GPU manufacturer, is now a member of the Open Office Foundation’s advisory board, the organization behind LibreOffice. This was announced by the Open Office Foundation in a press release on Wednesday. AMD is planning to make an impact immediately by using its expertise to help optimize the LibreOffice spreadsheet app for GPUs.

• LibreOffice and AMD to GPU boost spreadsheet performance

  LibreOffice and AMD are working together to create a faster version of the office suite’s spreadsheet that will make use of AMD’s GPUs within its Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) based Accelerated Processing Units (APUs). The work is only just beginning though and there is no timescale for a production release of the software. AMD is joining the LibreOffice Advisory Board as part of the collaboration, sitting alongside Google, Intel, Red Hat, SUSE and the FSF, among others.

Healthcare

• Johns Hopkins University Helps Develop Open Source Software to Track Diseases

  Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center have engineered an open source software suite that intends to help monitor disease outbreaks.

  Open-Source Electronic Disease Surveillance Software Released

  The Suite for Automated Global Electronic bioSurveillance works to help users download software products to fulfill the World Health Organization’s surveillance and reporting requirements, APL said Monday.

• NHS heads towards the Open Source market

• U.K. Considers VA’s VistA System To Expand Open-Source Software

• NHS IT to embrace open source

  Open source licensing agreements will be a key feature of the new approach to NHS IT, according to a report published today.

  The “safer hospitals, safer wards: achieving an integrated digital care record” publication from NHS England said it aimed to “develop a vibrant market of products and solutions” for organisations across the country to use, all made available under an open source licence model.

Business

• Semi-Open Source

  • Concurrent’s Chris Wensel: The Open Source Path Is a Rocky Road

    So argues Chris Wensel, founder and CTO of Concurrent. Wensel started the company in 2008 to focus on the open-source Cascading Project, a framework that he created to better work with Big Data applications.

Funding

• Open-source hoverboard project seeks $1 million just to get started

  Ever since moviegoers watched in awe as Marty McFly sped along on a hoverboard in Back To The Future Part II, many of us have dreamed of having a real-life hoverboard of our own. Sadly no such product exists, but that hasn’t stopped someone from dreaming of making it happen. To do so, they’re asking for US$1 million on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo.

BSD

• PCBSD is the future of computing – Interview with Kris Moore the Founder of PCBSD

  Kris Moore: BSD is not Linux first of all, that means no Linux Kernel, its a FreeBSD Kernel from a FreeBSD World. Some of biggest advantages are something like ZFS on your file-system, even for a workstation it makes complete sense because your able to do backups, [and] snapshots. We even have a feature called Boot environments were you can create a snapshot of the entire OS. [So you can] install a new Kernel, or new packages, and if it all goes horribly wrong you can roll right back and not end up losing everything. So… its got some unique features. Another one would be, like in PCBSD something we use called AppCafe which is something like an Apple app store, that uses [a] different type of package called PBIs which don’t have dependencies, so their fat packages which are extracted into their own directory and don’t touch the rest of the OS. So its possible to run conflicting versions of Firefox, for example, in PBI form. So you can give it to Mom and Dad, and they click install and you don’t have to worry about them saying “Why is it telling me to upgrade my GTK?” or brake something.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Bytes Media Interviews Stallman

• Talk open source over free beer

Project Releases

• Release of GSRC 2013.07.06

  I’m happy to announce the 2013.07.06 release of GSRC, the GNU Source Release Collection. GSRC is a convenient means to fetch, build and install the latest GNU software from source via a BSD Ports-like system. Installing a package is as simple as

• Ruby 1.8.7 retires as planned

  If Ruby developers aren’t using Ruby 1.9.x or 2.0.0, they should be looking to upgrade as Ruby 1.8.7 has now reached its official end of life. The end of life is far from unexpected; the announcement of the planned retirement came in October 2011 and in June 2012, Ruby 1.8.7 moved into security fix only mode.

• Data gathering platform ScraperWiki exits beta

  The ScraperWiki team has announced that the open source data gathering platform has exited beta. The AGPLed software is available as a commercial self-service platform, as a managed service, and as an application that users can download and run themselves. ScraperWiki allows developers to extract data from a large variety of sources and then manage and process it. The results are then presented in a wiki-like interface, giving the software its name.

• Cloud automation and management – Puppet Labs Enterprise 3.0

  Managing complex workloads in a dynamic environment made up of physical, virtual and remote/cloud-based resources can be difficult. Puppet Labs believes its Enterprise 3.0 software will make life better for operations, administration and development staff members.

Public Services/Government

• ‘Free software’ questions for federal and local candidates (reposted in another site)

Licensing

• Oracle switches Berkeley DB license

  Oracle had the right to change the BerkeleyDB license to AGPL, but many will view Oracle’s switch as a betrayal of trust

• A Change in License for Berkeley DB

  Perhaps you didn’t spot it, but last month in their new Berkeley DB release Oracle changed the license associated with the software. Many will see this as a betrayal of trust, despite the fact that the new license (the AGPL) is also strongly copyleft, published by the FSF and approved by the Open Source Initiative. Of course, Oracle are completely within their rights to change the license as they see fit, but for Web developers using Berkeley DB for local storage, the seemingly small change from one strong copyleft license to another may well be seen as cynical and manipulative.

• UK National Archives updates Open Government Licence

  The British National Archives has published a revised version (v.2.0) of its Open Government Licence. This licence covers the use and re-use of the majority of government and other public sector information.

Openness/Sharing

• Aspen Ideas Festival: The influence of open source tech on design, art

• MagicPlay creator crafts Raspberry Pi demo

• Your music, everywhere: DoubleTwist launches MagicPlay to dethrone Apple’s AirPlay

• Bloodhound 1,000mph ‘open source’ rocket car to tackle STEM skills shortfall

  A 1,000mph rocket car project used to teach children about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has received government approval and a £1m grant.

  The Bloodhound SSC project, touted as an ‘open source’ high technology programme, involves 5,340 UK primary and secondary schools and colleges. David Willetts, minister for universities and science opened the project’s new base in Avonmouth, saying the project represented British science and technology at its best.

• In the news: open source celebrities, owning your digital comic, and more

• Open Data

  • In Hawaii, open data is the law

    We’re forecasting sunnier skies in Hawaii today, as Gov. Neil Abercrombie is scheduled to sign the state’s first open data bill into law. The bill requires data already deemed public to be made available online and requires the state CIO to set policy and procedures that include “whenever practicable, the use of machine readable, non-proprietary technical standards for web publishing.”

  • 50 years in, ZIP codes an open-source treasure trove

• Open Access/Content

  • Market pressure builds to provide alternatives to costly textbooks

    A report issued by the United States Government Accountability Office on June 6 confirms a trend of the educational publishing industry: textbook costs to students at higher education institutions are rising 6% per year on average, and have risen 82% over the last decade. The study, ordered by Congress, looks at the efforts of publishers and colleges to increase the availability of textbook price information and “unbundled” buying options as required under provisions in the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA). The GAO also interviewed faculty regarding benefits of this transparency and offering of new options for students purchasing course materials.

• Open Hardware

  • Bitcraze – Interviewing the Crazyflie team

    Meet the open source quadrocopter that will teach the world how to fly, or play aerial laser tag. The choice is yours

Programming

• Boost 1.54.0 adds logging and introspection libraries

  The latest version of Boost, the open source collection of C++ libraries, adds libraries for logging application events and errors, type traits introspection (TTI) and type erasure. in Boost 1.54.0, TTI allows developers to check elements within C++ types with macros and metafunctions at compile time. The type erasure library adds runtime polymorphism to C++ which is designed to be more flexible than the corresponding feature of the core language. This allows developers to combine the abstraction capabilities of templates with the flexibility of virtual functions.

• New algorithm for graph editor yEd

  The developers of graph editor yEd have released a new version of the Java-based tool, yEd 3.11, which includes a new algorithm for radial layouts that places nodes in concentric circles. Support has also been improved for importing group nodes from Excel spreadsheets.

• Harlan: A new GPU programming language

  The young, declarative and domain-specific Harlan programming language promises to simplify the development of applications that run on the GPU. Behind its development is Erik Holk, a researcher at Indiana University. The language syntax itself is based on Scheme, a dialect of the Lisp functional programming language; various language creators regard Lisp as the ancestor of most good programming languages.

• GitHub adds Releases to make delivering projects easier

  GitHub has presented Releases, a new feature in the code hosting and project collaboration service, which should make delivering projects to end users easier and more consistent. In the past, GitHub had offered a downloads option for projects which allowed versioned archives of the project to be uploaded to a tab on the repository home page for easy downloading. But at the end of last year, GitHub removed that option.

How Google is Killing Organic Search

Google won search by providing the best organic results users had ever seen. Ever since then, organic has been fading from the SERPS, losing ground to revenue generating Google products.

Nelson Mandela’s three children reburied in home town Qunu

The remains of Nelson Mandela’s three deceased children have been reburied at their original resting site, a day after a court ordered their return two years after Mr Mandela’s grandson exhumed the bodies.

Mandela family infighting gets nastier by the day (VIDEO)

The bizarre dispute has focused on family graves, but at its core is the question of who will succeed the iconic Mandela as head of the family.

Mandela family feud deepens as doctors suggest relatives ‘turn off life support machine’

Doctors advised Nelson Mandela’s family to turn off his life support machine as he is in a ‘permanent vegetative state’, court documents revealed today claim.

According to court documents dated 26th June the former South African president was in a “permanent vegetative state” and “is assisted in breathing by a life support machine.”

Unix luminary among seven missing at sea

One of the shining lights of the world of Unix, retired CU professor Evi Nemeth, is among a group of sailors missing at sea near New Zealand.

Judge Issues Temporary Restraining Order Blocking Enforcement of Dangerous New Jersey Law

Good news out of New Jersey—a judge has issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking a dangerous a provision of a recently-passed New Jersey statute (A3352) that would have left online service providers legally on the hook for user-generated content. The TRO issued Monday blocks enforcement of the new law until the court hears additional arguments in support of a permanent injunction in early August.

Science

• We’re Collaborating With CERN openlab For Hybrid Cloud-Powered Research

  The researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) are on an amazing mission. They operate the world’s largest particle physics laboratory and their research uncovers the mysteries of universe. Coincidentally, CERN is also the birthplace of the world wide web as we know it.

Hardware

• “We Need a Fixer Movement”

  A few years ago a friend handed me his dead laptop. It wouldn’t boot, so it was no use to him, he said. I got lucky: I opened the bottom to see what RAM was installed, and saw that it wasn’t properly seated. Two minutes later, to my friend’s delight, I handed back a working laptop.

Security

• Serious vulnerabilities in OpenX ad platform expose millions to risk

• Yes, It’s Possible to Be Confident About Mobile Security

  When it comes to mobile computing, many organizations either cringe at the fear of security risks or rejoice in the business potential. On one hand, mobile is revolutionizing business operations — improving operational efficiency, enhancing productivity, empowering employees and delivering an engaging user experience. On the other hand, sensitive data that used to be housed in a controlled environment of a company desktop or even laptop is now sitting in an employee’s back pocket or purse.

• Attacks on SCADA systems are increasing

• EU Parliament adopts stricter penalties for cyber-attacks

  On Thursday, with 541 to 91 votes and 9 abstentions, the EU Parliament adopted the EU Commission’s draft directive on attacks against information systems. For activities like the illegal accessing of network devices such as servers, the unlawful interfering with systems, and the unauthorised interception of non-public data communications, the directive stipulates prison sentences of at least two years, and in serious cases at least five years. It is also considered a criminal offence to intentionally produce and sell tools that can be used to commit such crimes. The draft directive has yet to be ratified by the Council of Europe. After that, member states will have two years to incorporate it into their national legislation.

• Microsoft Patch Tuesday to close kernel hole

  Seven security updates, six of them classified as critical by Microsoft, will be closed on the upcoming patch Tuesday. The advance notice for the updates notes critical remote code execution holes in Microsoft’s .NET framework, Silverlight, Office, Visual Studio, Lync and Internet Explorer. All versions of Windows are affected by at least three of the critical holes and all versions of Internet Explorer are affected by the critical flaw addressed by one of the fixes.

• Security experts highlights remote server management issues

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• For Islamists, Dire Lessons on Politics and Power

  Sheik Mohamed Abu Sidra had watched in exasperation for months as President Mohamed Morsi and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood bounced from one debilitating political battle to another.

• Nevada Cops Commandeer Private Homes, Arrest Residents for Objecting

  Henderson police arrested a family for refusing to let officers use their homes as lookouts for a domestic violence investigation of their neighbors, the family claims in court.

  Anthony Mitchell and his parents Michael and Linda Mitchell sued the City of Henderson, its Police Chief Jutta Chambers, Officers Garret Poiner, Ronald Feola, Ramona Walls, Angela Walker, and Christopher Worley, and City of North Las Vegas and its Police Chief Joseph Chronister, in Federal Court.

• Clashes erupt in Egypt’s Zagazig between pro-, anti-Morsi protesters

• Trooper Grabs 74-Year-Old Woman And Then Arrests Her After She Hits Him With Her Purse For Being Rough

  Texas has been the scene of intense protests and debates over a senator’s filibuster to block an abortion bill. As reporters were threatened with arrest and other controversies mounted, this scene unfolded in the gallery. According to reports, a 74-year-old woman was arrested for assaulting an officer after the Lt. Governor ordered the gallery to be closed. Troopers then encountered Martha Northington who did not move fast enough out of her chair.

• Egypt army permits ‘peaceful protest’ amid Morsi anger

  Egypt’s army has said it will guarantee the right to peaceful protest, ahead of the traditional day for major rallies.

• When is a military coup not a military coup? When it happens in Egypt, apparently

  For the first time in the history of the world, a coup is not a coup. The army take over, depose and imprison the democratically elected president, suspend the constitution, arrest the usual suspects, close down television stations and mass their armour in the streets of the capital. But the word ‘coup’ does not – and cannot – cross the lips of the Blessed Barack Obama. Nor does the hopeless UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon dare to utter such an offensive word. It’s not as if Obama doesn’t know what’s going on. Snipers in Cairo killed 15 Egyptians this week from a rooftop of the very university in which Obama made his ‘reach-out’ speech to the Muslim world in 2009.

• 28 injured at Calif. fireworks show

  More than two dozen people were injured Thursday when fireworks malfunctioned at an annual 4th of July show northwest of Los Angeles.

• David Brooks Applies His Mental Equipment to the Egypt Coup

  “Islamists…lack the mental equipment to govern,” New York Times columnist David Brooks writes today (7/5/13). “Incompetence is built into the intellectual DNA of radical Islam.”

  Now, Brooks has been known to cite eugenicist Steve Sailer on “white fertility rates” (12/7/04; Extra!, 4/05). But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that rather than making a racist argument, he’s simply appearing to be racist as a metaphor (as when he wrote recently that interracial marriage was producing a “nation of mutts”–6/27/13).

• Can the NYT Call a Coup a Coup?

  Coup? Or Something Else?” is the question a New York Times headline is posing today (7/5/13) about the U.S. government’s response to the military’s removal of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. It’s not just a question of semantics; U.S. law seems to require suspending aid to Egypt in case of a coup. That’s why the government might not want to call it one.

• CIA Operatives and the Targeted Assassination of Foreign Leaders

  No one’s safe from America’s long arm. From inception, CIA operatives developed skills to kill.

  Fidel Castro survived hundreds of assassination attempts. He knows best how Washington operates.

  Other leaders weren’t as lucky.

  In April 1994, CIA surface-to-air missiles killed Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira.

• CIA ‘wanted to kill Lockerbie bomber before trial’

  THE CIA wanted to assassinate Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi and his co-accused, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, before their trial, a former Washington lobbyist has claimed.

  William C Chasey, 73, made the sensational allegation in his autobiography, Truth Never Dies, which is to be turned into a film.

  He claims agents tried to convince him to plant homing devices on Megrahi and Fhimah as part of the plot.

• The C.I.A. and the N.Y.P.D.

  The inspector general worries that the “perception” that the agency exceeded its authority might diminish trust in the C.I.A. itself. The greater risk is that poor oversight could lead the agency to overstep its bounds in more serious ways.

• Venezuela Leader Claims CIA Behind Morales Plane Incident

  “A very important minister told us that it was the CIA that contacted the authorities of Portugal, Italy and France to have their airspace closed to President Morales,” President Nicolas Maduro was quoted as saying by Venezuelan national news agency AVN.

• Bolivia offers asylum to former CIA agent Edward Snowden

  Bolivia joined the group of Latin American countries offering asylum to the former CIA agent stranded in a Moscow airport

• Latin American Governments blast Hijacking in Snowden Manhunt

  Five South American heads of state joined with Evo Morales in Cochabamba Thursday to denounce the US-instigated grounding of the Bolivian president’s plane. The action was ostensibly taken in response to faulty intelligence that the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who has exposed massive illegal spying by the NSA, was on board the aircraft.

• Former CIA officer John Kiriakou writes open letter to Snowden

  According to the Huffington Post, Kiriakou worked with the CIA from 1990 to 2004. In 2007, he revealed to the world how the CIA used torture to extract information from prisoners as a matter of official policy under the administration of President George W. Bush. He revealed that the CIA used waterboarding as an interrogation technique.

• CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou’s Open Letter to Edward Snowden

  Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who is serving a thirty-month sentence in prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania, has written another letter. It expresses support for former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who has exposed secret US government surveillance programs and policies, and provided a glimpse of the ever-expanding massive surveillance apparatus the government has built.

  Kiriakou was the first member of the CIA to publicly acknowledge that torture was official US policy under the administration of President George W. Bush. He was convicted in October of last year of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) when he provided the name of an officer involved in the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program to a reporter and sentenced in January of this year. He reported to prison on February 28 (which was also the day that Pfc. Bradley Manning pled guilty to some offenses and read a statement in military court at Fort Meade).

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Pacific Ocean Floor Is a Huge Underwater Garbage Dump

  It’s old news that plastic bags, aluminum cans and fishing debris not only clutter our beaches, but accumulate in open-ocean areas such as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” (basically a giant vortex of plastic soup, roughly twice the size of Texas.)

• Turkish court annuls Erdogan’s plan to raze Gezi Park

  A Turkish court has blocked a government decision to redevelop Istanbul’s Gezi Park, which had sparked protests that drew 2.5 million people to the streets nationwide. The ruling marks a victory for the opposition.

Finance

• Flourishing in a not-for-profit world

  Imagine waking up in a world where you feel good about going to work, no matter the nature of your job. You feel positive and motivated, knowing that your work provides you with a livelihood that also contributes to the wellbeing of others in a way that respects the ecological limits of the planet.

  Welcome to Not-for-Profit World, where businesses can still make profits, but any profits are always reinvested for social or organizational benefit, rather than being accumulated privately by individuals. This world emerged because, around 2013, a large number of people came to the realization that any economic system that centralizes wealth and power is, ultimately, socially and ecologically unsustainable. People were fed up with excessive executive salaries, a financial sector divorced from the real world, corporations with more say than people, endless spin from politicians and entrepreneurs about the latest technological ‘solution,’ and the trappings of mindless consumption.

• You’re not unemployed – you lack self-reliance

  Back in the 1930s, millions of people were out of work because they all forgot to be self-reliant

• Bit Apple: Savvy pros push Bitcoin currency

• French competition watchdog probes Apple resale practices

• Time to Celebrate! Pete Peterson’s “Fix the Debt” Flunkies Blow Their July 4 Deadline for Austerity

  Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson’s “astroturf supergroup,” the Campaign to Fix the Debt, won’t have much to celebrate this Independence Day weekend after missing its goal of achieving a “Grand Bargain” on austerity by July 4, 2013.

• Mammoth 2-Year College to Lose Accreditation

  City College of San Francisco will lose its accreditation in one year and be shut down, its regional accreditor announced on Wednesday, unless the college can prevail in a review or appeal process with the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges.

  The two-year college, which enrolls 85,000 students, would be the largest institution ever to lose its accreditation. Without regional accreditation it would no longer receive state funding and would certainly close its doors.

• Another nail in the IRS scandal’s coffin

  …non-political groups like open source technology advocates…

Censorship

• Insult someone on Twitter or Facebook? A crime in Grenada

  Lawmakers on the island of Grenada are tired of online “mischief.” So they’ve banned it. How might this affect the nation’s discourse?

Privacy

• Stasi vs. The NSA Back To Back: Who’s Worse – A Visual Guide

• Haven for Snowden: Icelandic Pirate Party pushes for granting NSA leaker citizenship

  Icelandic Pirate Party, which is represented in the parliament, has proposed a bill on granting NSA leaker Edward Snowden citizenship of the island nation.

  Iceland’s political Pirate Party managed to win three seats in the Parliament, the Althing, becoming the first piratic party in the world to make it to a national legislative body.

• This Fourth of July, we stand by the Fourth Amendment and against mass NSA surveillance

  The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. – Fourth Amendment, US Constitution

• Enter AntiPrism

  The uncovering of programmes like PRISM and Tempora, as well as similar projects hinted at in France and elsewhere, shows clearly that far from respecting our independence and privacy many of our governments are complicit in domestic surveillance to an unprecedented scale.

• America’s founders would be horrified at this United States of Surveillance

  How did we become so fearful and timid that we’ve given away essential liberties? Some are even afraid to speak up

• ‘The agency is out of control’

  The US spies with the “eavesdropping equivalent of a nuclear bomb,” says US- bestselling author James Bamford – and urges an independent investigation into the intelligence community.

• NSA Recruiters Taken Apart By Ravenous University Of Wisconsin Badgers (AUDIO)

  Attention all NSA recruiters: If you’re planning to pitch your agency at a college career fair anytime soon, be sure to bring your “A” game.

• President Obama to hold crisis talks with Germany to settle claims that US spied of EU allies

  President Barack Obama is to hold high level meetings with the German government in an attempt to assuage concerns about reported US surveillance of their European allies.

  The European Union has previously demanded an explanation as to the claims by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden that the United States’ intelligence service spied on the offices of foreign allies in New York.

• Daily Report: Snowden Trained as Hacker While With N.S.A., Résumé Says

  He took a course that trains security professionals to think like hackers and understand their techniques, all with the intent of turning out “certified ethical hackers” who can better defend their employers’ networks. But the certification, listed on a résumé that Mr. Snowden later prepared, would also have given him some of the skills he needed to rummage undetected through N.S.A. computer systems and gather the highly classified surveillance documents that he leaked last month, security experts say.

• What the TSA has in common with the NSA: unreasonable searches

  Tennessee Congressman Marsha Blackburn doubtlessly meant well when her office released a report titled “Not on My Watch: 50 Failures of TSA’s Transportation Security Officers (pdf)”, but she missed the point more completely than a professional knife-thrower’s target assistant.

• France ‘runs vast electronic spying operation using NSA-style methods’

  Intelligence agency has spied on French public’s phone calls, emails and internet activity, says Le Monde newspaper

• US and Germany to hold talks over European NSA surveillance concerns

  Obama tells Merkel US ‘takes seriously the concerns’ but French interior minister admonishes US ambassador at 4 July party

• European firms ‘could quit US internet providers over NSA scandal’

  European businesses are likely to abandon the services of American internet providers because of the National Security Agency surveillance scandal, the European commission has warned.

  Neelie Kroes, the commission vice-president who speaks on digital affairs, predicted that providers of cloud services, which allow users to store and access data on remote servers, could suffer significant loss of business if clients fear the security of their material is under threat.

  The warning came as it appeared that the Americans and the Europeans were to start investigating alleged breaches of data privacy in the EU as well as US intelligence and espionage practices.

• NSA recruitment drive goes horribly wrong

• NSA surveillance: protesters stage Restore the Fourth rallies across US

  San Francisco protest targets Senator Dianne Feinstein as part of demands for reform of Patriot Act across the US

• The New York Times and the NSA’s Illegal Spying

  Government illegality is the sinew of Hersh’s first sentence. He says that that what the CIA did was illegal and that it violated the CIA’s charter. What the NSA has been doing is also illegal. Its warrantless domestic eavesdropping is in direct violation of the 1978 law which came about as a direct result of Hersh’s expose and the congressional hearings that followed. The eavesdropping it also violates the NSA’s charter, which gives the Agency no mandate to conduct domestic surveillance.

• NSA’s Reach Leads To Calls For Updated Eavesdropping Laws

• Protesters Target NSA Data Center

  A data center may seems like an unlikely location for a protest. But the NSA’s Utah Data Center in Bluffdale has become a focal point of the agency’s data collection, which has become a topic of global controversy in the wake of disclosures of previously secret documents by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

• Securing the cloud

  A new algorithm solves a major problem with homomorphic encryption, which would let Web servers process data without decrypting it.

• Students cite EU data protection laws, challenge firms over NSA data transfers

  In the wake of the disclosure of the National Security Agency’s mass digital surveillance program, a group of Austrian students have filed a series of formal complaints with a number of European data protection agencies. The case could become the first legal proceeding challenging disclosure of non-American data to the American government on the basis of alleged violations of European Union data protection law.

• Secret-court judges upset at portrayal of ‘collaboration’ with government

• Sextortion Warning: Masking Tape Time For Webcams

  New worries for the always-connected crowd: Attackers may remotely activate your webcam — without tripping the warning light — and remotely record your every activity, public and private. Is it time to invest in some masking tape?

• We need encryption for private communications

  Technology companies should offer encryption for email, VOIP and other communications. Trust in the internet is at stake

• Beware of Internet trolls in sheep’s clothing

  You say NSA.gov got hacked? Think again — apparently, it’s just a group of Internet trolls indulging in ‘performance art’

• Did Euro data privacy regs help kill Google Reader?

  Google spokeswoman Nadja Blagojevic declined to comment about whether regulatory costs played a role in Reader’s demise.

• Technology, Not Law, Limits Mass Surveillance

  Improved technology enabled the NSA’s mass surveillance programs. Future improvements will make collecting data on citizens easier and easier.

• Bolivian leader threatens to close US embassy after plane scandal

  Bolivian leader Evo Morales has threatened to close the American embassy in Bolivia after his plane was grounded in Europe.

  The incident saw Morales’ plane grounded in Vienna after being refused entry into French, Spanish and Portuguese airspace, apparently as it was believed that Nantional Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden was aboard his plane.

  The Bolivian president was returning from an energy conference in Russia.

• Edward Snowden offered asylum by Venezuelan president

  Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro said on Friday he had decided to offer asylum to former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who has petitioned several countries to avoid capture by Washington.

  “In the name of America’s dignity … I have decided to offer humanitarian asylum to Edward Snowden,” Maduro told a televised military parade marking Venezuela’s independence day.

• Mobile Privacy: ‘You can’t see the contract until after we’ve done a credit check’

  How do you choose which mobile operator to go with? A good deal? Strong coverage in your area? Access to the best new handset? Would you like to know which companies let you keep your data private?

• Wiretapping grows and goes mobile

  That is so last century. Today’s law enforcement wiretap is far more likely to be on a “portable device,” most likely a cellphone, according to a new report by federal court administrators.

  And for the first time, the report noted, U.S. law enforcement has encountered encryption schemes that prevented investigators from understanding the messages they’d intercepted.

• PRISM scandal: internet exchange points as targets for surveillance

  At least some of the data traffic coming through the German internet exchange point DE-CIX is diverted to German intelligence and other agencies. This was confirmed by an expert connected to the company that runs the internet exchange point, talking to The H’s associates at heise online. The peak load at DE-CIX, which claims to be the world’s largest internet exchange point, is currently measured at more than 2.5 Tbit/s. Over 500 peering partners, including most of the major internet providers, use the more than 700 10Gbit/s and 200 Gbit/s ports, and the peering platform is due to be expanded to 100 Gbit/s connections in the next few months.

• Cryptocat’s false sense of security with crackable chats

  According to security expert Steve Thomas, messages sent via Cryptocat between 17 October 2011 and 15 June 2013 are compromised. The security hole affects all versions of the chat software since 2.0, as the hole was only discovered and closed in version 2.0.42. On his web site, Steve Thomas has a massive go at the software developers.

• Edward Snowden is a whistleblower, not a spy – but do our leaders care?

  Legislators and journalists alike have been cavalier in their condemnations of the man responsible for the NSA leaks

• Edward Snowden NSA revelations: ‘North American imperialism’ means Bolivian President Evo Morales could close US embassy

  Anger as four European countries allegedly refuse permission for his jet to enter their airspace because of suspicions it was harbouring the fugitive spy Edward Snowden

• Give me liberty: ‘Restore the Fourth’ rallies take online protests over NSA spying to the streets

  As the constant drip of new revelations about NSA surveillance programs continues to stoke outrage online, the nationwide Restore the Fourth rally seems to be the first major, physical example of the ongoing backlash. The event, which took place on July 4th in over 100 cities, is being called the internet’s biggest rally since SOPA, the bill that threatened to cripple and control the open web in early 2012. But does Restore the Fourth have what it takes to become a full-fledged social movement? The Verge went to rallies in New York and San Francisco to see.

• Audio: 4th July “Independence FROM America” protest at NSA Menwith Hill

• Privacy group demands Supreme Court halts NSA surveillance programs

  At a Restore the Fourth rally in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, the Domestic Surveillance Project division of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) announced plans to once again urge the high court to revoke authorization of the NSA spy programs. The rally was one of many public events held in the US to protest the NSA surveillance programs first leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden last month.

• NSA Recruiting Fiasco at U. Wisconsin

• Audio Of NSA Recruiters Being Called Out By University Of Wisconsin Students May Give You Hope For The Future

  Two recruiters for the National Security Agency (NSA), which has been facing scrutiny after documents leaked by Edward Snowden exposed that it spies on the entire world, recently visited a language program at the University of Wisconsin.

• NSA leaks: UK blocks crucial espionage talks between US and Europe

  Britain has blocked the first crucial talks on intelligence and espionage between European officials and their American counterparts since the NSA surveillance scandal erupted.

  The talks, due to begin in Washington on Monday, will now be restricted to issues of data privacy and the NSA’s Prism programme following a tense 24 hours of negotiations in Brussels between national EU ambassadors. Britain, supported only by Sweden, vetoed plans to launch two “working groups” on the espionage debacle with the Americans.

• Oliver Stone defends Edward Snowden over NSA revelations

  The outspoken film-maker hails the whistlebower as a ‘hero’ at Czech film festival and claims that ‘the United States has repeatedly violated the fourth amendment’

• NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden offered asylum by Venezuela, Nicaragua and now Bolivia

  WikiLeaks says Snowden has applied to six new countries in his quest for asylum, bringing the total approached worldwide up to 27

• Of mice, the NSA, GCHQ and data protection

  The banks in the UK, for instance – which are also data controllers – were kept totally in the dark about the scale of this backdoor access.

Civil Rights

• San Diego jury finds protester not guilty in chalk-vandalism case

  A jury Monday acquitted a 40-year-old man of all charges connected with writing protest messages in chalk on the sidewalk outside branches of the Bank of America.

  The case has exacerbated the already tense relationship between Mayor Bob Filner, who called the case “stupid” and a “waste of money,” and City Atty. Jan Goldsmith, who defended it as a legitimate prosecution for graffiti vandalism.

• Appellant’s Brief Filed in United States v. Auernheimer

  Back in March, I blogged about my agreeing to work pro bono on a Third Circuit appeal, United States v. Auernheimer, that raises several critical questions about the scope of the computer crime laws. I spent part of May and most of the last month working on the brief, and I’m happy to say it was filed just a few moments ago.

• The Dude Who Went to Pizza Court

  This in particular. It’s a video (three short videos, actually) of Tim Carr telling the story of his nine-and-a-half-month legal fight against criminal charges brought against him for allegedly stealing a $1 piece of pizza (actually, eating it without paying for it). Carr, who is a member of the band Universe Contest, insisted that he not only didn’t steal the pizza, he paid for it twice before the bouncer put him in a headlock and threw him out. But a cop wrote him a ticket for “theft of less than $300,” somehow the case did not get dismissed immediately, and Carr refused to plead guilty. So nine-and-a-half months later, the case actually went to trial.

• Nevada Family Sues After Police Reportedly Demand To Use Home As Stake Out, Bash In Door, Shoot Homeowner with Pepperballs, and Arrest Him And His Father

  Remember that whole business in the Third Amendment about not having quarter soldiers in private homes without the owner’s consent or that stuff in the Fifth Amendment about takings of property or that other stuff in the Fourth Amendment on unreasonable searches and seizures. It does not appear to apply to police in Henderson Nevada. The City of Henderson is being sued with its police chief Police Chief Jutta Chambers (left) as well as the City of North Las Vegas and its Police Chief Joseph Chronister (right) for a bizarre takeover of a home for a stakeout. Anthony Mitchell says that he was told that police needed to occupy his home to get a “tactical advantage” on the occupant of a neighboring house. When Mitchell refused, the police ultimately, according to his complaint, busted through his door, hit him with pepper balls, and put him into custody. The lawsuit also names Officers Garret Poiner, Ronald Feola, Ramona Walls, Angela Walker, and Christopher Worley.

• Tom Watson Resignation and the Failure of Labour on Civil Liberties

  Tom Watson has been something of a political touchstone for the digital rights movement in the UK ever since he warned about the dangers of the Digital Economy Act in the dying days of the Gordon Brown government. Since then he has found his way on to the Labour front bench and been their general election coordinator. For many of us his rise was rather frustrating as his ability to comment on digital issues seemed to have been hampered. Well no more, Tom is to return to the back benches.

• The NDAA and martial law in America, part 1

• California Senate Committee Unanimously Passes Anti-NDAA Bill; Flaws Remain

  The bill’s primary sponsor is current gubernatorial candidate Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-33rd District). Donnelly’s bill specifically guarantees the right of citizens of California to be free from any federal law, including the NDAA, that would authorize their indefinite detention in violation of habeas corpus.

DRM

• For the First Time, You Can Actually Own the Digital Comics You Buy

  It’s a digital sales model that has been adopted by every major U.S. comics publisher — and most e-book publishers as well — and was inspired by fears that piracy of digital copies could hurt not just digital but also print sales. It has also essentially prevented the comic book readership (or at least, the legal comic book readership) from truly owning any of the books they buy. At least until this morning, when comic book publisher Image Comics announced at its Image Expo convention that it will now sell all of its digital comics as downloadable via its website for both desktop and mobile users, making it the first major U.S. publisher to offer DRM-free digital versions of comics. Readers can even choose the file format they prefer: PDFs, EPUBs, CBRs or CBZs.

• Why DRM-free comic books are a big deal, even if you don’t read comics

  Yesterday, publisher Image Comics threw a media event in San Francisco. It brought in some authors (notably Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead, even though they spelled his name “Roberk” on the official site), dropped a couple of announcements, and mixed it up with the press and fans. Standard stuff.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Maybe generic drug makers will be sueable

  In a highly speculative piece the New York Times suggests that a possible change in labeling requirements risks generic drug makers being sued link here. This comes just two years after the Supremes decided the reverse i.e., that they couldn’t be sued as the law required they use the same warning label as the brand-name makers (see our piece posted on 06/26/2013 at 08:40 AM.

• Trademarks

  • Judge nixes Microsoft SkyDrive name in BSkyB court ruling

    British judge Sarah Asplin, sitting in the chancery division of Blighty’s High Court, ruled that the evidence in the case “revealed confusion amongst real people” about the SkyDrive service, including members of the public calling Sky’s helpline about difficulties they were having with Microsoft’s product.

• Copyrights

  • American Bankers Association Claims Copyright in 9-Digit numbers

    However, given that the numbers are available from the Federal Reserve, it was therefore to Thatcher’s great surprise when he received this DMCA notice. (presumably as someone who runs his own website, Thatcher is his own DMCA agent. See 17 USC 512 (c)(2).

    Sent by a law firm representing the American Bankers Association, (“ABA”) the letter requested that Thatcher remove the numbers from his website because they were violating the copyright in those numbers held by the ABA.
    Thatcher received a similar notice in 2008, and at that time contacted a lawyer to see what he should do.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Interviews: Jon “maddog” Hall Answers Your Questions

Last week you had a chance to ask Jon “maddog” Hall about his work on Project Caua and FOSS in general. Below you’ll find his answers to those questions.

User Perceptions of systemd Better Than Anticipated

In some circles systemd took a real beating, while others like it. Just about anytime the subject of systemd arises, a bit of shouting match develops. But as developers defend the shift to systemd, I wondered what regular users thought. So, of course, I ran a poll.

In an attempt to get a general idea of how users felt, I simply asked “systemd” with the following answer choices:

Desktop

• Is Windows use an addiction?

Server

• BeyondTrust Rolls Out PowerBroker UNIX & Linux 7.5

  BeyondTrust, a provider of Context-Aware Security Intelligence, announced the release of PowerBroker UNIX & Linux 7.5, which now includes tight integration with the company’s vulnerability management platform, Retina CS.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Linux Outlaws 316 – Sentient Sideburns

Kernel Space

• A look at 22 Linux Foundation newbies

  The wide array of new organizations that have joined the foundation this year.

• What’s new in Linux 3.10

  A second SSD caching framework and support for the new Radeons’ video decoder are two of the most important enhancements in Linux 3.10, which is now out. This version also includes several new and improved drivers and a change to the network stack to speed up HTTP connections.

• New version of Linux kernel appears

  Linux messiah Linus Torvalds released the new Linux 3.10 kernel over the weekend.

  Version 3.10-rc7 is the last release candidate of the latest kernel and is packed with the most changes in years.

  It appears that there were some 11,900+ changes, but Torvalds said that despite the large number of commits, it’s all boringly straigthforward.

• Linux 3.10 out with better SSD caching and Radeon support

• Linux kernel 3.10 arrives with ARM big.LITTLE support

• Linux 3.10 Improves Multi-tasking and SSD Caching

  The third major milestone release for the Linux kernel in 2013 is now available. Linux 3.10 The new release follows the previous Linux 3.9 kernel release by just over two months.

• Intel brings Linux support to System Studio Extended

  CHIPMAKER Intel has incorporated support for Linux in its System Studio Extended development environment.

• 5 Intriguing New Features in Linux 3.10

  After a relatively short development cycle of only nine weeks, Linux 3.10 made its official debut on Sunday.

• Explaining Intel Rapid Start Technology

  Recent Intel-based systems often implement something called Intel Rapid Start Technology. Like many things with the word “Technology” in the name, there’s a large part of this that’s marketing. The relatively small amount of technical documentation available implies that it’s tied to your motherboard chipset and CPU, but as far as I can tell it’s entirely implemented in firmware and could work just as well on, say, a Cyrix on a circa 1996 SIS-based motherboard if someone wrote the BIOS code[1]. But since nobody has, we’re stuck with the vendors who’ve met Intel’s requirements and licensed the code.

• Datalight Updates Linux Support in Reliance Nitro Power Fail-safe File System

  Gives OEMs ability to update field units without compromising end user data

• Graphics Stack

  • Nouveau Changes Pulled For Linux 3.11 Kernel

    After talking about the big DRM changes heading for the Linux 3.11 kernel, the Nouveau DRM driver changes are finally known as they were pulled into the drm-next tree last night.

    While the AMD Radeon DRM driver changes are exciting with dynamic power management and Sea Islands support, and the Intel driver has an assortment of good stuff, the Nouveau driver sadly isn’t too exciting. The pull for the Linux 3.11 kernel still doesn’t have Fermi/Kepler re-clocking or any other major changes to the Nouveau driver.

Applications

• Guayadeque Music Player’s an Impressive Featherweight

  Sometimes, less really is more. Case in point: Guayadeque. Compared with most music players for Linux, this lightweight player manages to offer much more in the way of useful features. For example: Guayadeque offers an impressive array of fine-tuning possibilities. In fact, this is one area that truly separates Guayadeque from the rest of the music-playing pack.

• Inky to Update Users on Progress of Linux App

• Proprietary

  • Beatbuddy launching worldwide on Aug. 6 for Windows PC, Mac and Linux

  • CA simplifies data protection for Linux

  • CA Technologies ARCserve D2D for Linux Announced

  • CA adds Linux backup to ARCserve D2D

  • CA Technologies Simplifies Data Protection for Linux

    CA ARCserve D2D for Linux Delivers Fast, Efficient Data Protection and Recovery for Virtual and Physical Linux Server Environments

  • CA launches ARCserve D2D for Linux

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Kolab – How to integrate Dokuwiki

  • Dealing with corrupted files in Linux

  • DOS on Linux

  • Reorder network devices set by udev

  • How to Clear Memory Cache on Linux

  • Linux: SSH Tunneling, Port Redirection and Security

  • Using hash tags to organize bash history

  • New To Programming? Say Hello To Memory Corruption

  • 20 Advanced Commands for Linux Experts

  • Linux Tail Command Options With Examples

  • How to Install Linux Deepin Desktop on Ubuntu

  • How Linux Process Life Cycle Works – Parent, Child, and Init Process

  • How To Photograph Fireworks

  • Conky Manager: A GUI For Managing Conky Configurations

  • Fedora 19 – Upgrading and Skype

  • Create Multiple IP Addresses to One Single Network Interface

  • How to Boot A Linux Live USB Stick On Your Mac

  • Static Blogging With Pelican

    The easiest way to write online might not be the best choice. If you are serious about building your online identity, putting your faith in a single companies platform puts you at risk of that company changing priorities, moving in a direction you no longer agree with, or just going away completely. The best way to go about building a site to last is to build it in a way that you can move it from place to place, server to server, with as little interruption as possible. This is what Pelican gives you, an open source tool that generates a static site you can upload to any server or cloud hosting provider.

• Games

  • Wargaming Mobilizes with Linux and Open Source

    The growing company joined the Linux Foundation in May as it seeks to advance the gaming industry. And it’s off to a great start, having shipped more than 15 titles since 1998, including the armored World of Tanks and World of Warplanes, a free-to-play flight combat game. Wargaming is now expanding to a new mobile platform and continues to hire developers as it opens offices across the globe.

    Here, Melnikau discusses how Wargming uses Linux; the company’s hardware setup; gaming on Linux; his advice to game developers; and openings at the company.

  • Steam for Linux Gets a Shiny New Beta Update

    Valve has launched a new beta version for its Steam for Linux client, bringing a lot of interesting new features.

  • Left 4 Dead 2 Update

  • Left 4 Dead 2 Linux Leaves Beta Development With New Mod Tools

    Valve has announced that their Left 4 Dead Linux game has now left its beta development stage and is ready for full release on to the Linux platform.

  • Left 4 Dead 2 mutates past Linux beta, adds more mod tools

  • Left 4 Dead 2 update brings Linux support, adds “Extended Mutations” to Workshop

  • Open Source Never Dies

  • Linux Gamers Brace Yourselves, the Steam Summer Sale Starts Today

    The Steam Summer Sale is about to start, and Linux users must prepare for a couple of weeks of continuous price drops.

  • Name your price for Shank and Shank 2

    While “Humble Bundle 6 with Android” comes to an end tomorrow, Humble Weekly Sale including the games Shank and Shank 2 has three more days to go.

  • Game Preview: Mad Max

    Between the original 1979 movie and the iconic Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior in the US) two years later there is a large leap of story line, but there are constants between the surreal setting of Max’s revenge tale and the post-apocalyptic world of the spectacular sequel. Mainly it was that black ’73 Falcon XB GT in the role of Pursuit Special V8 Interceptor.

  • Interstellar Marines released in Early Access on Steam

    Today Zero Point Software released Interstellar Marines on Steam Early Access. It’s still in Pre-Alpha state but many features are available right now. For now it will only support Windows and Mac, but support for Linux is on roadmap and should be available soon.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Qt 4.8.5 Released, Ships With Over 400 Improvements

    Qt 4.8.5, the latest stable version of Qt in 4.8.x branch has been released and it fixes over 400 bugs and security holes. As this is a patch release, no new features have been added and its designed to maintain full compatability with earlier releases of Qt 4.x. Upgradation to this release is highly recommended as it closes some major security issues and makes the environment more stable and reliable.

  • Qt 4.8.5 Released

  • KDE 4.10: Thoughts after nearly a week..

    Ooooh, you’re a KDE user was what I got this morning from one young tech guy in the office, most of the Linux users I work with are XFCE lovers. I’m partial to a bit of Unity or Gnome 3 because I’ve had my fingers burnt too many times with previous KDE releases being buggy and unstable.

  • KDE ships July updates to 4.10 series

  • Mad Crew Chooses Krita

    Swedish Animation and VFX studio Mad Crew has chosen for Krita, taking advantage of KO GmbH’s new professional support offering. While for many artists, Krita is a great choice out of the box, in a production setting having dedicated support can be really important.

  • Ground Overlay Rendering

    Unlike to what we had initially planned, we decided to start working on the rendering of the ground overlays, since it would eventually interact with the OpenGL project developed by René Küttner and Bernhard Beschow.

  • KDE 4.10.5 – final increment in the 4.10 series

    While there already is a second beta release of KDE 4.11, the next development cycle of the KDE Software Compilation, the team released their final increment (stability and bugfix release) of the 4.10 cycle today.

  • KDE ships July updates to 4.10 series

    Today KDE released updates for its Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform. These are the latest in the series of monthly stabilization updates to the 4.10 releases. The 4.10.5 updates contain many bugfixes and translation updates on top of the 4.10 release and are recommended updates for everyone running the 4.10 release series.

  • KDE 4.10.5 Officially Released, Fixes over 30 Bugs

Distributions

• 50 best Linux distros: find the best one for you

  Our favourites for productivity, ease, security, hacking and speed

• Working on Pisi: Display and GRUB 2

  Since I installed Pisi Linux Beta 2, I’ve been using it steadily. So far, I haven’t experienced any crashes. That’s great! I also installed the updates (quite a few, indeed) that my system showed.

• WattOS R7 x64 Linux Distro Review

• New Releases

  • DoudouLinux 2.0 is out !

    DoudouLinux is specially designed for children to make computer use as easy and pleasant as possible for them, while taking care of children self-fulfillment. DoudouLinux provides tens of applications that suit children from 2 to 12 years old and gives them an environment as easy to use as a gaming console. Kids can learn, discover and have fun without Dad and Mum always watching!

  • Blender 2.68 Release Notes

    Rendering performance has been improved on CPU and GPU and support for new GPUs was added. A new Mist render pass is available, Ray visibility is now supported for all light sources, and new Nodes have been added. Hair rendering on the GPU has been enabled as well.

  • Alpine 2.6.2 released

  • Clonezilla 2.1.2-20

  • OS4 OpenLinux 13.5 released

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat May Be a Buy After Turning the Corner

    Another quarter is in the books for software giant Red Hat (RHT) and the valuation debate lingers.

    The fact that Red Hat’s price-to-earnings ratio of 60 is twice the P/E of Oracle (ORCL) and Microsoft (MSFT) put together is tough to reconcile.

  • Red Hat puts Linux into the OpenStack cloud

    Red Hat, one of the most popular flavors of Linux, is taking steps to allow users to move into the cloud.

  • World’s Largest Provider of Bollywood Content Choooses Red Hat for New, Scalable Solution

    Hungama deploys Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat JBoss Middleare to achieve savings on total cost of ownership (TCO)

  • Fedora

    • Fedora 19, Schrödinger’s Cat, lives

      Red Hat’s latest community Linux, Fedora 19, is out and ready for cutting-edge Linux users and developers.

    • Fedora release days aren’t as frantic as they used to be, and why it’s mostly a good thing.

    • Fedora 19 Released

    • Fedora 19 aka Schrödinger’s Cat released

      The Fedora project has announced the release of Fedora 19 aka Schrödinger’s Cat. Fedora teams lead the development of some of the core upstream projects which are then used by other distros such as Ububuntu.

    • Announcing the release of Fedora 19!

    • Fedora 19 Release Notes

    • Releases 19 Feature List

    • Fedora 19 Desktop Edition

    • Fedora and Korora 19s Released Today

      It’s been another exciting Tuesday in the Open Source world. Fedora dominated headlines today with the release of version 19. Hot on their heals is the Korora Project with their version 19. With such bounty, how can one choose?

    • Korora 19 (Bruce) released

    • Installing Fedora 19: What’s new?

      On time and on target, this is a good release — and I’ve installed it on traditional BIOS and UEFI BIOS systems. Here’s what I found.

    • Upgrade Fedora 18 to 19 using fedora-upgrade or FedUp

    • What’s new in Fedora 19

      In a nod to fans of classic desktop interfaces, the new Fedora includes a MATE variant and classic mode for GNOME. Systemd now takes care of containers and assigning network names. New drivers support 3D acceleration in newer Radeon graphics cards.

    • Fedora Linux Set to Flock Forward [VIDEO]

      The Red Hat-sponsored Fedora Linux project is out today with its second major release of the year.

• Debian Family

  • Newbies Guide to Debian 7 – Part One

  • Newbies Guide to Debian 7 – Part Two

    In Part One we learned that installing Debian 7 definitely isn’t rocket science–anybody can do it! Now that we have our Debian system installed and our computer is booting into the world of Debian Linux, let’s take a look and discover our new computing environment.

  • all Debian source are belong to us

  • Derivatives

    • Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy

      The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up today.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Canonical Hiring to Advance Ubuntu Linux Smartphone, Tablet Plans

        Canonical, the company behind the open source Ubuntu Linux OS, set out earlier this year to create a radically new video display platform called Mir to help it steal a slice of the smartphone and tablet markets. Now, in a sign of just how serious the company is, it has announced a hiring push for developers to work on Mir and related projects.

      • Ubuntu Weekly Update and Hour-long Mir Interview

      • 10 things we love about Ubuntu 13/5 things we hate

      • Canonical’s Charm contest commences

        Canonical are looking for Juju developers to create new tools that use its service orchestration framework and is prepared to offer $10,000 to the best Charm in each of three categories. The company is looking for entries that can construct a full high-availability service stack in the “High Availability” category, can implement “big data” mining and analysis in the “Data Mining” category or can assemble monitoring infrastructure for existing services in the “Monitoring” category.

      • Ubuntu 13.04 – The Dash

        In the first article in the series I gave a whistlestop tour of Ubuntu 13.04 which gave a brief overview of the functionality within Ubuntu. In the second article i demonstrated the functionality of the Unity Launcher. This article is all about the Dash within Unity and includes details about lenses, filters and previews.

      • Create Some Good Juju, Win $10K in Ubuntu Developers Contest

        The best way to get some attention for your DevOps platform and open source system is to put some money behind it. Ubuntu’s Juju was designed to be a free and open source sandbox for develops can build and deploy Juju Charms (distilled apps recipes, as Ubuntu noted), and now there’s a contest for Juju developers to strut their stuff and possibly win $10,000. That is, if they can develop the best Juju Charm.

      • Hyperscale trends and an insight into Moonshot and Ubuntu

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Peppermint in Asheville’s Mountain Xpress

          Peppermint is super proud this week to appear in the Local Economy section of Asheville, North Carolina’s most trustworthy news source, Mountain Xpress. After three years of appearing on Lifehacker, Geek.com, ZDnet and our software riding front cover on the likes of Linux Format and Linux User, it’s an amazing feeling to get some hometown recognition and love.

Devices/Embedded

• ARM9 Industrial Box Computer comes pre-installed with Linux.

• JW-11: A $68 PC that runs Linux with an ARM processor

  Back in the good old days, PC desktops were huge, and yes, quite literally took up an entire desktop, or at least good amount of foot space if you configured it as a tower.

• JW-11: A $68 PC that runs Linux with an ARM processor http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-features/72312-jw-11-a-68-pc-that-runs-linux-with-an-arm-processor

• AdaCore Brings Ada to Wind River Linux

• Trademark Filing Hints Samsung GEAR Might Be The future Smartwatch.

  It’s been confirmed by Samsung’s Executive Vice President Lee Young Hee that Samsung’s smartwatch is indeed a real thing and it has been in development for quite a while, as rumors speculated. We don’t have any further news or details regarding the smart watch, even the picture you see is an artist’s rendering of the device. However, the recent trademark filing ‘Samsung GEAR’ raises suspicions that it might just be the name of the device, a couple of trademark filings and a look at their documents have hinted the possibility.

• Kit aims Snapdragon 800 at embedded Android designs

  Intrinsyc announced the availability of a hardware/software development kit for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 system-on-chip. The DragonBoard 8074 Development Kit for the 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 includes a Qseven-compliant computer-on-module (COM) and a Mini-ITX baseboard, and is supported with Android 4.2.

• Inside Calxeda ARM [VIDEO]

  In the modern server space, Intel’s x86 has dominated for at least the last decade. It’s an area where ARM-based servers could soon take a slice of that pie.

• AdaCore Brings Ada to Wind River Linux

• AdaCore brings GNAT Pro Ada to Wind River Linux

  AdaCore has announced that it is making its commercial GNAT Pro Ada development environment available for the embedded Wind River Linux platform. The development kit can be used to write application modules in Ada and combine them freely with C and C++ modules. Due to tight integration between GNAT Pro and Wind River Linux, Ada applications can then be analysed and manipulated through Wind River’s tools and working environment. GNAT Pro on Wind River Linux supports all versions of Ada – from Ada 83 up to the most recent Ada 2012.

• Phones

  • Samsung delays first Tizen phone launch to Q4

    Following several days of rumors that the release of Samsung’s first Tizen-based smartphone had been delayed, the Korean language website i24news.com reported today that Samsung officials have stated that the launch of the company’s first Tizen device is being pushed out by two months.

  • Ballnux

    • Android, Led By Samsung, Continues To Storm The Smartphone Market, Pushing A Global 70% Market Share

      Google is grappling with an ongoing antitrust case in Europe over its online search business, and if its rivals have anything to do with it, that might extend into Google’s power in the mobile sphere, too. Figures out today from Kantar Worldpanel may not help Google’s case very much. The analysts say that in the last three months, Google-powered smartphones, running Android, accounted for more than 70% of sales in the region’s five biggest markets of Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Spain — part of a wider, global trend of Android continuing to consolidate its leadership position in smartphones. And the secondary story here is that much of this success is being led by Samsung, which now accounts for nearly half of all smartphones sold in the region.

    • HTC One Mini Leaked Images

      We are getting lots of leaked evidences of existence of HTC One Mini, the smaller sibling of the flagship HTC One. We have got new leaked photos of the alleged HTC One Mini that are floating online.

  • Android

    • Rumour: Huawei To Produce Nexus 5

    • Nexus 7 Launch Date And Specs Revealed

      We were left disappointed when Google did not announce any new Nexus device at the Google IO, especially announcement about next Nexus 7 device was much anticipated. Suddenly we have some information about the specs and release date of the 2nd generation Nexus 7, spilled by an Asus representative.

    • Motorola DROID ULTRA Appears On The Company Site

      Motorola has been quiet since a long time, while Samsung, Sony and HTC have been busy launching their flagship devices with lot of fanfare. However, suddenly a page has surfaced on the Motorola official website that has confirmed the existence of the ULTRA line of phones.

    • Ubuntu Touch mobile OS no longer boots into Android first (but it still loads Android anyway)

      The developers who have been working to bring the Ubuntu Linux operating system to smartphones and tablets have released the first builds that don’t have to load Android before they can boot into Ubuntu.

    • Finnish startup Adaia set to launch $1,300 Android phone in 2014

      Nokia’s turmoils and subsequent mass layoffs have freed up plenty of smart people in the Finnish workforce to do their own thing. Rovio with Angry Birds, Jolla with Sailfish and now Adaia. The 16-person startup, led by former Nokia employee Heikki Sarajärvi, has revealed that it plans to launch a range of premium Android handsets at some point in 2014 in the US, UK and of course, Finland. By premium, we’re looking at anywhere between $1,300 to $6,500, in return for the promise of extra ruggedness and durability as well as potential satellite connectivity. Why Android? Heikki says “there is no alternative,” something we assume Stephen Elop would strongly disagree with.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Aakash 4 specs released; will run on Android and Linux

    After much deliberation, the government has decided to continue the much-troubled Aakash project and has released the specifications of the fourth-gen low-cost education tablet. These are the proposed specifications for the device, which will officially be called Aakash 4.

Fighting the misconceptions of open source

After almost 10 years in open source, Robin Muilwijk is still fighting the misconceptions that come with working in the industry. He says the toughest part is finding the right balance between openness while continuing to promote the open source way of doing business.

Open source defies odds

These are the words of Rob Lith, business development director at Connection Telecom, who adds that adopting an open approach to software engineering has become more popular.

“In today’s operating system market, for example, Android leads with 42% share, and Apple is second with 24%,” he says, pointing out that Android is OSS, and Apple’s OS X has an integrated version of FreeBSD, an OSS operating system.

Concurrent’s Chris Wensel: The Open Source Path Is a Rocky Road

“I want the same clout as Oracle. I just don’t want that same infrastructure as Oracle. Open sourcing is a great way to teach people how to write code, see how things work, and get contributions and get people to trust it. It is marketing as well, however. It is a lot of things. Just one thing is missing: It is not a very clean way to make money.”

Four tips to transition your open source project into a viable business

Most open source projects start by scratching the developer’s own itch. They then spread to other developers based on functionality and stability, and the responsiveness of the community.

DoubleTwist Introduces MagicPlay as Open Source Alternative to AirPlay

Events

• LinuxCon and CloudOpen Add New Keynote Speakers: Linus Torvalds, TED Fellow Candy Chang and Google’s Chris DiBona

• BozemanLUG: July 2013 Meeting

Web Browsers

• Firefox Takes the Performance Crown From Chrome

  Recent browser benchmarks are showing surprising results: in ‘a geometric mean of all four performance-based categories: Wait Times, JavaScript/DOM, HTML5/CSS3, and Hardware Acceleration,’ Firefox 22 ‘pulls off an upset, replacing the long-time performance champion Google Chrome 27 as the new speed king.’

• RollApp scores $1M to bring Windows & Linux apps to any browser

  One year after its launch, RollApp has raised $1 million of funding to build out its platform for running Windows and Linux apps on any device with a web browser (yes, even the iPad).

• Chrome

  • Chrome OS Build Allows Native Editing of Word and Excel Files

    Microsoft has been enjoying some success recently, as Windows 8 finally starts to grab more market share, but it may surprise some people to learn that a huge portion of the company’s revenues come from the Microsoft Office suite of applications, which many offices standardize on for compatibility reasons. As good as the free, open productivity suites have become, they still tend not to be totally compatible with applications like Word and Excel.

• Mozilla

  • Firefox OS starting small but thinking big says Mozilla CTO

  • Firefox OS phones arrive for €69

    Mozilla has entered the smartphone race with the launch of the first consumer-ready phones running its Firefox OS – and promised a tablet “ASAP”.

  • Mozilla’s Firefox OS may kill feature phones, but can it survive against Android?

    Almost two years after open source software development initiative Mozilla first announced plans to build its own Web-based mobile operating system, Firefox OS finally reached consumers this week with the launch of the ZTE Open. Rolling out in Spain in partnership with carrier giant Telefónica, the ZTE Open boasts core services like voice calling, text messaging, email, Web browsing and a camera, as well as built-in social features like Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter integration, Nokia (NYSE:NOK) Here maps and access to Firefox Marketplace, which offers HTML5-based apps across a range of categories. It’s also dirt cheap: About $90. “Now there’s no price reason not to own a smartphone,” HIS Screen Digest analyst Ian Fogg tweeted.

  • Download Mozilla’s open source office furniture, some assembly required

  • Everything in Mozilla’s new office is open source

    Mozilla’s latest open source release isn’t a browser, a mobile OS, or an email client. It’s not even software. It’s the Foundation’s new office in Japan. Everything within its walls is open source and available to be downloaded, copied, and remixed like so much free code.

  • Mozilla Open Source Furniture Now Available To Download

  • Mozilla Open Source Furnitures Project democratizes DIY design

  • Firefox OS mobilises HTML5, without the added Steve Jobs

    Succeed or fail, you’ll still have a working web app

  • As Browsers Remain in Transition, Firefox 22 Serves Up Blazing Speed

    For years now, open source browsers–led by Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome–have been setting the pace of innovation. Ask many people which browser is the fastest, and they’ll instantly say Google Chrome, but Firefox version 22–released only days ago–actually takes the performance crown in Tom’s Hardware’s latest round of browser tests, which are always rigorous. In addition, the underlying engines of popular browsers are heading in some surprising directions.

    According to the Tom’s Hardware tests, Firefox’s new version 22 wins against Chrome version 27 in a lot of key performance tests, including average startup times across hot and cold scenarios.

  • As Firefox OS Phones Roll Out, Don’t Forget Ubuntu Phones

    As Mozilla’s Firefox OS arrives in new phones, it’s grabbing lots of headlines and faring well in hands-on tests, which bodes well for the mobile operating system that Mozilla is aligning its entire organization around. I’ve written before that I think goodwill toward Mozilla and open source will make Firefox OS phones early successes.

SaaS/Big Data

• Join Thousands Of Linux Users Asking Google For Native Drive Client [Updates]

  Imagine 15,000 people, all desperately wanting to use your product – so much so that they take time out of their day to sign a petition. That’s the case for Google: a Change.org petition demanding a Linux version of Google Drive is rapidly approaching its goal of 15,000 signatures.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• 9 LibreOffice Features You Should Avoid Using

  LibreOffice is essential to the Linux desktop. However, it is also burdened by useless baggage—features that are hopelessly obsolete today and should never be used by anyone hoping to create an impression.

  I’m not talking about features like master documents in Writer that have become less useful as the average amount of RAM on a workstation has risen into the gigabytes. Nor am I talking about the interface, which, although serviceable, is decidedly uninspired. Still less am I talking about features such as the fields for hidden text or paragraphs that have only a handful of users but remain essential for rare yet sophisticated purposes.

  Rather, I am talking about features that make users look clueless—features that encourage typographical nightmares of illegibility or excess. Some of these features look as though they might date to LibreOffice’s first incarnation as StarWriter in 1984, because they result in the kind of excess that people used to commit when office suites were new. Certainly, in the decade that Sun Microsystems oversaw the code, very little was done to update it with the result that much of the code has a nineties-like look to it.

• AMD joins The Document Foundation Advisory Board to accelerate LibreOffice

• Open documents formats and LibreOffice at FISL 14

  The 14th edition of the International Forum on Free Software FISL 14, from July 3rd to 6th in Porto Alegre, Brazil, will carry several LibreOffice and OpenDocument Formats (ODF) activities. This year, the good news are the participation of Italo Vignoli (Italy) and Bjoern Michaelsen (Germany) who will talk on the adoption of open standards and free software, respectively. Italo will present a lecture on LibreOffice: the History and A Reference Protocol for Migrations to Free Software and Open Document Standards. Bjoern will conduct the LibreOffice Workshop and will give the lecture LibreOffice Project: Getting Involved and LibreOffice – Continuous community integration.

• LibreOffice users can use exploit GPU and APU for spreadsheet work

  The Document Foundation, the organization behind the development of LibreOffice, has announced the chip maker AMD as a member of its Advisory Board.

Healthcare

• Organisations should be aware of open source pitfalls, warns expert as NHS England announces open source plans

  Organisations may encounter problems as well as achieving benefits through their use of open source IT solutions, an expert has said.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• [GNU's Framework for Secure Peer-to-Peer Networking GNU's Framework for Secure Peer-to-Peer Networking] New option field in transport addresses

  Some transport plugins may want to include additional flags or options in the transport addresses. For example the HTTPS plugin may want to set a flag that a peer has a valid SSL certificate and that a peer can enable client-side certificate validation. To do so we extended all existing transport plugins to add a 32-bit field in their addresses to support this functionality.

• New generic format for human readable transport addresses

• GNU Paint – News: switching to git

  GNU Paint is switching to git, starting from the Debian pkg-gpaint git repo as a base. Immediate work will be to port the existing code to gtk+ 3. Later plans are moving the code base to vala and to make use of GEGL

Project Releases

• Ardour 3.2 released – Video comes to Ardour

  Über-developer Robin Gareus has worked for a couple of years to add video support to Ardour, and with this release, we are pleased to finally enable it. In addition there are a couple of new features (including the ability to chain MIDI processing plugins) and the usual assorted list of bug fixes.

• GIMP 2.8.6 Released

Public Services/Government

• German Parliament elections: The parties’ positions on Free Software

  Today, the Free Software Foundation Europe publishes its Free Software related election questions for this fall’s elections to the German parliament, which will take place on September 22. All political parties have responded to the questions, which cover issues like users’ control over their electronic devices, the release of publicly funded computer programs as Free Software, and software patents.

Openness/Sharing

• Open Hardware

  • $99 Supercomputer Parallella Now Fully Open Source Hardware

    While there is a open source alternative for almost every useful closed program out there, open source hardware are however rare. Parallella which started earlier as a Kickstarter campaign to create a really cheap, reliable supercomputer for masses, had promised earlier that they will make their hardware open source. The campaign is now over and now it seems that they have fulfilled their promise.

  • $99 Parallella Supercomputer is Now Open Source Hardware

    Parallella is a low cost supercomputer designed by Adapteva using Xilinx Zynq-7010/7020 FPGA+2x Cortex A9 SoC combined with Adapteva Ephipany 16 or 64 cores epiphany coprocessor. The project had a successful kickstarter campaign which allowed then to provide the 16-core version for $99, and the 64-core version for $750. The board will soon be shipped to people who pledged on kickstarter, and one of the promise of the campaign was to fully open source the platform, and today, they just fulfilled that.

Standards/Consortia

• Visualizing OASIS Technical Committees

Turkey court annuls park development

A court in Turkey has scrapped a controversial plan to redevelop Istanbul’s Gezi Park that sparked protests which snowballed into deadly nationwide unrest, media reported on Wednesday.

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake, and neither is your Instagram

A new research project is using visualization techniques to tell us more about the world using our Instagram uploads. Phototrails explores the “visual patterns, dynamics, and structures” of over 2 million images shared on the popular photo-sharing service, helping researchers map the behavior of people in 13 cities across the globe.

Three good Google Reader replacements (Review)

Google Reader, the most popular RSS news reader of all time, is now dead as a doornail. Here are three good alternatives.

Go Read – An Open Source Google Reader project

An open source web reader created to copy Google Reader’s look and feel, go read is an interesting project

Science

• USC Study Validates Large-Scale Quantum Chip

  Scientists demonstrated that the D-Wave processor housed at the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center behaves in a manner that indicates that quantum mechanics has a functional role in the way it works. The demonstration involved a small subset of the chip’s 128 qubits.

• Harper’s attack on science: No science, no evidence, no truth, no democracy

  Science—and the culture of evidence and inquiry it supports—has a long relationship with democracy. Widely available facts have long served as a check on political power. Attacks on science, and on the ability of scientists to communicate freely, are ultimately attacks on democratic governance.

  It’s no secret the Harper government has a problem with science. In fact, Canada’s scientists are so frustrated with this government’s recent overhaul of scientific communications policies and cuts to research programs they took to the streets, marching on Parliament Hill last summer to decry the “Death of Evidence.” Their concerns— expressed on their protest banners—followed a precise logic: “no science, no evidence, no truth, no democracy.”

Hardware

• Douglas Engelbart, inventor of computer mouse and so much more, dies at 88

  If you’ve used a mouse to click this article, you can thank Douglas Engelbart. The longtime inventor passed away in the late hours of July 2 at his home in Atherton, California. He was 88 years old.

  In addition to inventing the computer mouse, Engelbart helped develop other technologies that have become commonplace in the computing world, including pioneering hypertext, networking, and the early stages of graphical user interfaces. He will always be one of the giants of Silicon Valley.

• In Memoriam: Douglas Engelbart, Maestro of the Mouse and So Much More

• Computer mouse inventor Doug Engelbart dies at 88

Health/Nutrition

• Unapproved GMO rice trials in U.S. may have contaminated the world’s rice supply

  New evidence has emerged suggesting that the entire global supply of rice may have already been contaminated by unapproved, genetically-modified (GM) rice varieties manufactured by the American multinational corporation Bayer CropScience. A recent entry in the GM Contamination Register explains that between the years of 2006 and 2007, three different varieties of illegal GM rice, none of which have ever been approved for cultivation or consumption anywhere in the world, were identified in more than 30 countries worldwide.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Cops Shoot Dog After Arresting Owner for Filming Police

  A video aired on KTLA shows police in Hawthorne, California shooting and killing a dog after arresting a man who was filming them. According to police, the dog’s owner, Leon Rosby, was allegedly interfering with the crime scene and blasting music after police asked him to stop. The video does not show the altercation police say led to Rosby’s arrest. In video footage that is available, Rosby does not appear to be disrupting the crime scene, only filming it. Rosby put his dog in a car before he was arrested. After Rosby was handcuffed, however, his dog jumped out of the car window and approached the police officers, who shot and killed the dog.

• How did America’s police become a military force on the streets?

  In a 2001 article for the Seton Hall Constitutional Law Journal, the legal scholar and civil liberties activist Roger Roots posed just that question. Roots, a fairly radical libertarian, believes that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t allow for police as they exist today. At the very least, he argues, police departments, powers and practices today violate the document’s spirit and intent. “Under the criminal justice model known to the framers, professional police officers were unknown,” Roots writes.

• Obama’s Purge: Military Officers Replaced Under the Commander-in-Chief

  High-ranking officers in the United States military are being replaced by the Obama administration and for a number of dubious reasons. The latest is General John Allen, who was embroiled in the Petraeus affair.

• Obama in South Africa: “Hero’s Welcome”

  If the first Black President of the USA thought he was going to get a hero’s welcome in South Africa,

  It’s not going too well.

  A mass protest movement has unfolded.

  This is on the way to the US Embassy.

• Fukushima Shows Nuclear-Terrorism Risks at UN Meeting

  Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, whose 2011 meltdowns dislocated 160,000 people, may provide a new blueprint for terrorists seeking to inflict mass disruption, security analysts said at a United Nations meeting.

• Hawthorne California Police Kill Dog, and Arrest Dog’s Owner For Filming Police

  Cold, emotionless, and unforgiving police in Hawthorne, CA, shot the dog of a peaceful man who was filming the police, one out of many people filming who happened to be nearest to the police. Not only that, but for trying to hold the police accountable, he was arrested after his dog was slaughtered.

• Egypt: 10 key moments

• Egypt: Time for extreme caution and restraint

• Live Updates: Egyptian Military Ousts President Mohamed Morsi Amid Mass Protests

• Counter-Revolution

  What we are seeing in Egypt is counter-revolution pure and simple, military hardliners who are going to be friendly with Israel and the US, and are committing gross human rights abuse.

• Egypt’s military arrest Muslim Brotherhood supreme leader

• Morsi deposed: Coup or no coup? Obama faces tough call in Egypt

  The Egyptian military’s overthrow of elected President Mohammed Morsi left President Barack Obama grappling with a difficult question of diplomacy and language in dealing with the Arab world’s most populous nation: was it a coup?

  At stake as Obama and his aides wrestle with that question in the coming days is the $1.5 billion in aid the United States sends to Cairo each year — almost all of it for the military — as well as the president’s views on how best to promote Arab democracy.

• Egypt’s army to suspend constitution, parliament if no deal reached – sources

  Egypt’s army would suspend the constitution and dissolve the parliament under a draft political road-map to be pursued if President Mohamed Morsi and the liberal opposition fail to agree by Wednesday, military sources told Reuters.

• CIA drone strike kills 16 in Pakistan

  Unmanned US aircraft fired four missiles at a house in north-west Pakistan today, killing 16 suspected militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

• Lethal CIA-led drone strike jolts Pakistan; at least 17 killed

  “The last two governments dealt with this dilemma by protesting in public while approving the attacks in private. Thanks to WikiLeaks, the public knows,” wrote Muhammad Idrees Ahmad in al-Jazeera.

• Officials: U.S. drone attack kills 4 militants in Pakistan

• CIA drone strike in Pakistan kills suspected militants

  Government condemns missile attack on building near Afghan border said to have been used as unofficial sharia court

• Drone attack kills 17 in Pakistan’s Waziristan region

  A U.S. drone strike killed at least 17 people in Pakistan’s restive border region early on Wednesday, Pakistani security officials said, in the biggest such attack this year, and the second since Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took office.

• Pakistan strongly protests US drone attacks in Miranshah

  The Government of Pakistan strongly condemned the US drone strikes that killed at least 18 people in Miranshah on Wednesday.

• US drone attack kills 18 in Pakistan

  The identity of those killed was immediately not known but the militants linked with al-Qaeda are active in the area.

• US drone strike kills 17 in Pakistan

  Security officials told AFP that Afghan and Pakistani militants were among the dead at the compound in the town of Miranshah, but that there was no immediate confirmation of any high-value target.

• Pakistan registers strong protest against drone strikes

  Pakistan on Wednesday lodged a strong protest against the recent drone strikes in North Waziristan that killed 18 persons, and demanded to end them on immediate basis, Geo News reported Wednesday.

• U.S. Drone Strike In Pakistan Kills 16 Militants In North Waziristan

  The drone strike elicited a swift condemnation by the Pakistani government, which released a statement saying the strikes are a violation of its sovereignty.

• Pakistan protests against drone strike in Miranshah

  Pakistan on Wednesday strongly condemned the US drone strike that took place in Miranshah, North Waziristan today.

• New report says CIA drone strikes in Pakistan at all-time low

• Qatar and CIA supplying arms to Syrian rebels – Ashdown

  Lord Ashdown, the former High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina has said huge amounts of arms have flooded into Syria from stocks left over from the Bosnian war, funded by the Qatari regime with help from the CIA. VoR’s Vivienne Nunis reports.

• Letter: New deputy director of CIA not most qualified

  Though news coverage of President Barack Obama’s selection of Avril Haines as the new deputy director of the CIA has been slim, there are many retired and active intelligence officers living in Brevard County who should take note of this appointment.

• Drone strikes are counter-productive: Pakistan condemned the CIA operated attack

• Former CIA, NSA director sounds off on PRISM, spying tools

  Former NSA, CIA director Gen Hayden said Snowden’s leaks highlight ‘balance between privacy and security’ debate, but law professors call NSA mass surveillance ‘criminal.’

• Study: US drone strikes more likely to kill civilians than US jet fire

  Drone strikes — billed by President Barack Obama as tactically surgical and less deadly to civilians than conventional air power — are 10 times more likely to cause innocent casualties than bombs or missiles unleashed from U.S. jets, according to a new study based on classified military documents.

• Security services held to account

• Army Ousts Egypt’s President; Morsi Is Taken Into Military Custody

• Egyptian Army Overthrows President Morsi

  The Egyptian military on Wednesday deposed President Mohamed Morsi and suspended the country’s constitution, the country’s defense minister said.

• Mohamed Morsi ousted in Egypt’s second revolution in two years

  A polarised Egypt is facing the most critical phase of its post-revolutionary life after Egypt’s army ousted the country’s elected president, Mohamed Morsi, and scheduled fresh elections in a what was labelled by the presidency as a “full coup”.

  The chief of the armed forces, General Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi, announced that he had suspended the constitution and would nominate the head of the constitutional court, Adli Mansour, as interim president on Thursday. Both presidential and parliamentary elections would follow shortly afterwards and a transitional cabinet would be named.

• Egypt crisis: Army ousts President Mohammed Morsi

  Egypt’s army has removed President Mohammed Morsi from power, suspended the constitution and pledged new elections following mass protests.

• Zimmerman’s injuries ‘insignificant,’ medical examiner testifies

• Questioning the Struggle

  One of the most riveting moments in the George Zimmerman trial this week was the playing of a police tape that showed Zimmerman re-enacting what he said happened the night he fatally shot Trayvon Martin.

• African migrants ‘left to die’ in dinghy sue Spanish and French military

  Two survivors of a dinghy tragedy that killed 63 migrants in the Mediterranean lodged fresh legal complaints today in Paris and Madrid, accusing the French and Spanish military of failing to come to the aid of people in danger.

• Despite President’s Pledge, 10-Year-Old Victim of Drone Strike Identified

  After the drones finally left the area and it was safe to recover the corpses, family members discovered the small, charred remains of another fatality of the strike: It was Saleh’s brother, Abdulaziz, a 10-year-old boy.

• Study: Drones Killed More Civilians Than Jets

• New Study Finds That Drones Kill 10 Times More Civilians Than Manned Aircraft

  A new study has found that the use of drones in Afghanistan resulted in 10 times more civilian deaths than manned aircraft. The study was conducted by Larry Lewis, a research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses, and Sarah Holewinsk of the Center for Civilians in Conflict. The report used classified military data to calculate the number of civilian deaths caused by drones as opposed to manned fighter aircraft.

• Drones cause 10 times more civilian deaths than manned planes

  An expert on drone casualties has told reporters that the use of unmanned aerial vehicles by American forces has caused 10 times the number of deaths brought on by more conventional aircraft.

• Drone strikes more likely to kill civilians than traditional weapons, study finds

• US drone strikes kill 18 in North Waziristan

  Islamabad says the drone attacks are violation of its sovereignty.

• Kabul, Islamabad spar as drone attacks kill 18

  Afghan army chief of staff General Sher Mohammad Karimi told the BBC in an interview that Pakistan could end the Afghan war “in weeks” if it were serious about peace and is complicit in drone strikes despite its denunciations of the anti-militant campaign.

• Pakistan sovereignty & security attacked again

  Locals of the area observed the worst kind of terror and fear as four missiles exploded with big bangs in the thickly populated residential area of Serai Darapa Khel.

Cablegate

• MasterCard breaks ranks in WikiLeaks blockade

  For almost three years, US financial giants VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, the Bank of America and Western Union have been engaged in an unlawful banking blockade against WikiLeaks. The blockade started in December 2010 in response to the start of WikiLeaks’ publication of US diplomatic cables.

• Officer Seizes iPad and Threatens Arrest After Being Filmed in Public

  This is yet another video of a citizen confronting a police officer about his taking her iPad because she was using it to film him in the course of a stop or arrest. The officer tells her that she can pick it up tomorrow and that she is risking an arrest by continuing to confront him.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Obama’s ‘Power Africa’ a Sweet Deal for GE, Not Sub-Saharan Africa

  Following his recent trip to Africa, President Obama has been lauding his new ‘Power Africa’ program, which he claims will funnel money and resources to “double access to power in sub-Saharan Africa.”

  Yet, the money the U.S. government is throwing at the program will in fact be pumped into U.S.-based multinational corporations.

• Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein to join Canada’s tar sands ‘healing walk’

  Native elders to lead a spiritual gathering to heal land, air, water and all living forms harmed by world’s largest industrial project

• Artificial photosynthesis could extend rights to nature

  Should ecosystems have legally enforceable rights? It might sound like a ridiculous idea, but a global debate on this is in full swing. The Constitution of Ecuador now recognises rights of nature. Environmental activists have called for a “United Natures” to replace the “United Nations”. And New Zealand has given “personhood” to the Whanganui River to help protect it.

• Ecuador embassy bug unlikely to be work of security services, say experts

  Expert in covert techniques says off-the-shelf plug socket device is unlikely to have been planted by state agency

• o Laughing Matter: Comedians Gave More Time Than News Shows to Climate Speech

  Who would have thought the future of the environment was some kind of joke? It turns out comedians actually seem to care more about climate change than the people who produce real news programs do.

• Obama’s ‘War on Coal’ Isn’t Real–But It’s Really in the Newspaper

  It’d be nice if newspapers covered policy fights as if reality mattered. But corporate media generally prefers to cover politics as a form of public relations–which involves the creation of a reality that you think will help your side win.

• Blue Whales Hate Military Sonar; Many Get Stranded After Fleeing From The Noise

  The whales often change their diving behavior and avoid feeding areas after they hear the underwater sonar often used during military exercises, a Duke University press release stated.

Finance

• Edward Snowden and NSA: Worrying Times for Bilderberg Trade Lobbyists

  The first round of talks in the giant Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership deal are due to begin next week but the latest NSA spying claims have thrown negotiations into doubt.

  European Union officials have expressed outrage at the NSA for bugging embassies of a US allies including France, Japan and Turkey.

  “We can’t negotiate a large transatlantic market if there is any doubt that our partners are bugging the offices of European negotiators,” warned EU commissioner Viviane Reding.

• France, Top Industrial Espionage Offender, Demands Answers Over NSA “Spying”

  But back in 2011, according to leaked U.S. diplomatic cables, France and not China or Russia, was found to be the country that conducted the most industrial espionage on other European countries. WikiLeaks also revealed that the spying network was so widespread that “damages it caused the German economy were larger as a whole than those caused by China or Russia.”

• Coinsetter: Will a Better Virtual Currency Make Bitcoin Obsolete?

• Mastercard and Visa Start Banning VPN Providers

  Following the introduction of restrictions against file-sharing services, Mastercard and Visa have now started to take action against VPN providers. This week, Swedish payment provider Payson cut access to anonymizing services after being ordered to do so by the credit card companies. VPN provider iPredator is one of the affected customers and founder Peter Sunde says that they are considering legal action to get the service unblocked.

• Group Launches “Taxpayer Empowerment Agenda” to Reclaim Public Control over Public Assets and Destructive Outsourcing

  As cities and states struggle to raise revenue in a sagging economy, they have increasingly turned control of public services and assets over to for-profit corporations. But these short-term efforts to close budget gaps can have a disastrous long-term impact.

• The Euro Zone’s Crisis is Over. You Got that Lisbon?

  You don’t have to wait very long nowadays before this or that euro zone luminary declares the currency bloc’s long crisis at an end, of concern only to historians.

  Oh, for sure, there are residual niggles, like the fact that nearly one in three Spanish workers has no job or that growth seems to have permanently abandoned the euro zone’s periphery. But never mind, the euro’s existential turmoil is finished. The euro is forever, whatever other ideas those dastardly speculators in the bond and currency markets might once have had.

• Bitcoin Group to California: You Have No Jurisdiction Over Us

  A group that promotes the digital currency Bitcoin has thrown down the gauntlet with regulators, telling California officials that selling the digital currency does not require a state money transmitter license.

  In a July 1 letter to the California Department of Financial Institutions, lawyers for the Bitcoin Foundation also clarified that the nonprofit does not itself sell bitcoins to consumers or run an exchange. But even if it did, such activity would not be regulated in California, the foundation says, arguing that selling bitcoins does not meet the state law’s definition of “money transmission.”

• ‘Pay It Forward’ Plan In Oregon Would Make Tuition Free At State’s Public Universities

  On college campuses across the United States, the eternal optimism of youth has been throttled out by a fear of crushing student debt. That’s certainly the case in Oregon, where the cost of tuition has soared as public funding for higher education has declined.

• Child Poverty Has Risen Even As Unemployment Falls

  Even as unemployment has gradually declined, the child poverty rate has been on the rise, according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Between 2010 and 2011, the number of children living in poverty rose from 15.7 million to 16.4 million. The child poverty rate also rose from 19 to 23 percent from 2005 to 2011, representing an increase of 3 million children.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• New York Times Blogger Demanded Travel and Expenses from Companies

  A blogger for The New York Times has been requesting thousands of dollars in “expenses” and travel airfare from a public relations firm trying to get its clients covered in the Times, according to emails obtained by Gawker.

• CMD Calls for Nebraska Ethics Investigation over ALEC Keystone “Academy” Junket

  The Center for Media and Democracy filed a complaint yesterday with the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission alleging that Nebraska Senator Jim Smith, a major proponent of the Keystone XL pipeline, failed to disclose significant travel expenses paid for by the Government of Alberta, Canada during Smith’s participation in an “Oil Sands Academy” organized by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The trip was sponsored by the operator of the Keystone XL pipeline, TransCanada, which may raise additional concerns under the ethics and lobbying code.

Censorship

• Clueless State AGs Attack Google Over YouTube Videos Instead Of Pursuing The Criminals Who Made Them

  Okay, well, here’s the obvious response: Digital Citizens Alliance Executive Director Tom Galvin has allowed bogus, censorious, anti-innovation screeds to be sent by states’ attorneys general. Worse, they have promoted this FUD-filled exercise with PR spam blasts to reporters trying to generate bogus faux-moral panics to promote their own anti-innovation agenda. Hopefully, the public and reporters will be able to get answers that others have failed to get. Namely, why such an obvious bullshit astroturfing group is putting anti-innovation, anti-free speech policies into the mouths of states attorneys general, and doing so in a manner that only leads to it being more difficult for law enforcement to track down actual criminals. When the Digital Citizens Alliance finally takes steps to ensure that it stops these bogus moral panics in targeting third parties and driving the actual crimes further underground, the internet will be a safer place.

• Dick Durbin Wants to Stop You From Being a Journalist

  But Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and even Instagram are all, guess what, media outlets–that is, institutions whose primary purpose is to distribute information to the public. (Their names appear in bold in FAIR materials because we bold the names of media outlets.)

  They disseminate information gathered by their users; the medium they use to do so is known collectively as “social media.” The fact that “social media” doesn’t appear in Durbin’s “broadly defined” list of media is irrelevant–Durbin doesn’t present his list as exclusive. (That’s why he says “including.”) It’s hard to think of a definition of “medium” that would exclude Facebook and include, say, nonfiction book publishing–which in the 21st Century can be as hands-off as publishing a social media post (e.g., via Amazon’s Kindle store).

  The final part of Durbin’s definition is that the information is disseminated for public use–which is a simple matter of privacy settings on most social media sites.

Privacy

• Edward Snowden affair diverts Bolivian president’s plane in Europe

• Bolivian president’s treatment stirs up fury in Latin America

• Bolivian Vice-President Álvaro García Linera: ‘today certain countries of Europe are subjected to the most terrible, ignominious obscurantism’

  Foreign powers -once again, as they did 500 years ago- mistreat and attack a people, the Bolivian people…

• Snowden and Assange Targeted by Mysterious Hacker “The Jester”

  A shadowy, self-described “patriot” hacktivist has launched a series of cyberattacks against Ecuador and says he plans to direct a similar onslaught against any country considering granting asylum to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The hacker, who calls himself the “th3J35t3r” (the Jester) and in the past has identified himself as a former soldier, has also taken aim at Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder has been assisting Snowden in his efforts to seek safe haven.

• What the N.S.A. Knows About You

• Restore the Fourth Campaign Organizes Protests Against Unconstitutional Surveillance

  This Fourth of July, groups of concerned individuals will be taking to the streets in dozens of cities across the United States in support of the Fourth Amendment. According to the official website, Restore the Fourth aims to end all forms of unconstitutional surveillance of digital communications by the United States government. The campaign calls particular attention to PRISM, a recently-revealed project of the National Security Agency that allows the government broad access to the Internet traffic and other electronic communications of many users – including many Americans. The Restore the Fourth movement has an active reddit community that is working cooperatively to organize protests across the country.

• Barring of Bolivian Plane Infuriates Latin America as Snowden Case Widens

  The geopolitical storm churned up by Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive American intelligence contractor, continued to spread on Wednesday as Latin American leaders roundly condemned the refusal to let Bolivia’s president fly over several European nations, rallying to his side after Bolivian officials said the president’s plane had been thwarted because of suspicions that Mr. Snowden was on board.

• ‘Imperial Skyjacking’: Bolivian presidential plane grounded in Austria over Snowden stowaway suspicions

  Spain has authorized Bolivia’s presidential jet to pass through its airspace and continue its journey to Bolivia, the Austrian President has said. The plane was grounded in Austria Wednesday morning over suspicions that Edward Snowden was on board.

  [...]

  Spanish authorities requested permission to search President Morales’ plane as a condition of transiting through the country, but Bolivian officials refused.

  “The Spanish ambassador has told us that his country hasn’t yet allowed the flight over its territory,” Defense Ministry head Ruben Saavedra pointed out.

  As for the demand to search the plane, he stressed, “This is blackmail, we are refusing these conditions.”

  The Bolivian vice president, Alvaro Garcia, said Morales had been “kidnapped by imperialism.”

• Edward Snowden’s father writes open letter to NSA whistleblower in Moscow

  Lon Snowden pens open letter with his attorney in response to a statement issued by his son Edward Snowden from Moscow

• Bolivian president’s jet rerouted amid suspicions Edward Snowden on board

  France and Portugal accused of refusing entry to their airspace, while plane lands in Vienna with no sign of Snowden

• Bolivian plane suspected of carrying Snowden rerouted

  Bolivian officials deny he was on board the aircraft returning President Evo Morales home from Russia

• South American nations furious over diversion of Bolivian president’s plane – live

• Bolivian leader’s plane rerouted on Snowden fear

• His Son Is ‘A Modern Day Paul Revere,’ Snowden’s Father Says

  Declaring that “you are a modern day Paul Revere; summoning the American people to confront the growing danger of tyranny and one-branch government,” the father of “NSA leaker” on Tuesday .

• Edward Snowden’s Dad Calls Him ‘Modern Day Paul Revere’

• Edward Snowden given possible lifeline as Bolivia hints it would grant asylum

  Evo Morales says his country is keen to ‘shield the denounced’ as Snowden’s father Lon compares son to Paul Revere

• Bolivian President’s Jet Rerouted On Suspicions Snowden Could Be On Board; Multi-Country Outrage Ensues

• Finland’s education ambassador spreads the word

  Imagine a country where children do nothing but play until they start compulsory schooling at age seven. Then, without exception, they attend comprehensives until the age of 16. Charging school fees is illegal, and so is sorting pupils into ability groups by streaming or setting. There are no inspectors, no exams until the age of 18, no school league tables, no private tuition industry, no school uniforms. Children address teachers by their first names. Even 15-year-olds do no more than 30 minutes’ homework a night.

• Bolivia says it may offer asylum to NSA leaker Snowden

  Bolivian President Evo Morales Tuesday indicated his country is prepared to offer political asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

• Calif. attorney general: Time to crack down on companies that don’t encrypt

  State’s first data breach report finds that more 1.4 million residents’ data would have been safe had companies used encryption

• US intelligence chief James Clapper apologises for ‘erroneous’ answer to Congress on NSA data collection

  Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has apologised for telling Congress earlier this year that the National Security Agency (NSA) does not collect data on millions of Americans, a response he now says was “clearly erroneous.”

• Perjury By Permission: Clapper Apologizes For False Testimony And The Congress Remains Silent

• INTELLIGENCE CHIEF: Yes I Lied To Congress, But Here’s Why

• NSA revelations: why so many are keen to play down the debate

  Covering the Edward Snowden story has not been straightforward for many in the mainstream media, which is reflected in the disjointed coverage it has received in the UK so far. For the newspapers that campaigned so hard to get the communications data bill thrown out because of the implications for privacy, he should be a hero. But then the brash young American “stole” the material, came to the Guardian with it, and has ended up stranded in Russia, where he may or may not receive asylum with the help of Julian Assange. All of which makes him rather unpalatable to many in Fleet Street – and indeed the House of Commons. For many of them, the easier story to tell was the one about Snowden’s girlfriend, who was left bereft in Hawaii.

• NSA officials ‘not always accurate’ in public statements over surveillance

  Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, members of NSA oversight panel, question claims on scope and utility of programs

• Bolivian president Evo Morales’ plane diverted to Vienna: NSA whistleblower Snowden NOT on board say authorities

  French officials deny refusing to let Bolivian president’s plane cross its airspace

• France denies blocking Bolivian plane amid rumours NSA leaker Snowden was aboard

• Germany fears NSA stole industrial secrets

  The NSA espionage scandal has unsettled German companies. They are concerned that industrial secrets may have been stolen by US intelligence agencies.

• John Cusack, Free Press Rallying to Demand NSA Accountability

  Actor John Cusack, a board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, has joined representatives from the Free Press, Mozilla, ColorofChange.org, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Restore the Fourth movement in demanding accountability from the National Security Agency (NSA), in light of revealed information about its PRISM surveillance program.

• House members call for the release of court decisions behind NSA surveillance

  The Hill reports that that a bipartisan group of 16 members of the House of Representatives continued to pressure the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court today, urging it to turn over rulings that helped lead to the recent NSA surveillance controversy. “The American public cannot engage in a meaningful debate about liberty and surveillance until it knows what its government is doing,” Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) said.

• Thousands to Join ‘Restore the Fourth’ Anti-NSA Rallies

  Thousands of Americans will fogo the traditional Fourth of July backyard barbecue or beach trip this week, instead choosing to join nationwide rallies against recently revealed National Security Agency surveillance programs.

• Reddit, Mozilla, EFF and more join July 4th anti-NSA protests

• Is the NSA monitoring Reddit?

  Apparently, the NSA doesn’t think terrorists use Reddit.

  As revealed by agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the NSA is hungry for information on the Internet. Under programs like PRISM, it taps Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo to look at the communications of a literally unknowable number of their users. (It’s classified.)

  It’s inherently hard to talk about how the NSA gets this information because it obtains classified orders for surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is administered by a secret court. Anyone who gets a FISA order is legally obliged to keep mum about it.

  But Reddit, despite being one of the most popular U.S.-based social sites in the world, has never gotten a letter from a FISA court. “We have not received any,” Erik Martin, the company’s General Manager, told the Daily Dot.

• NSA Surveillance and the Failure of Intelligence Oversight

• Why European nations must protect Edward Snowden

  The general secretary of Reporters Without Borders Christophe Deloire, and WikiLeaks foundator Julian Assange co-sign today an Op-Ed in Le Monde to call out the states of the European Union to protect Edward Snowden.

• The Triumph of Culture Over Politics: Edward Snowden and American Independence

  Since tyranny must shape to itself both the law and the political institutions of its day, it stands to reason that when a governing elite has gone too far in abusing its power, the fight back for liberty by the people at large does not start directly in the political realm or in legislation, itself.

  [...]

  Why else have both the Left and the Right in our time sat relatively silent as our rights to due process, privacy, and free speech have been removed by such legislation as the Patriot Act and the NDAA, and yet become very vociferous over our right to smoke weed (on the Left) or own guns without restriction (on the Right)? The answer, at least in part, is that smoking and/or guns are part of the culture for many Americans, so government overreach into those areas actually feels like a personal infringement. In contrast, removing your right to due process doesn’t feel like anything until you need due process, and invading your privacy doesn’t feel like anything if you don’t know that it is even happening.

• Op-Ed: Are oaths to defend the constitution a waste of breath?

  It’s reasonable for a government that illegally spies on Americans to also block its military personnel from viewing leaked NSA files on news agency websites like The Guardian. But who in the military would now dare to “defend” the US Constitution?

  [...]

  Unfortunately, there is an inherent contradiction built into this oath. How does one defend the Constitution from domestic enemies when these same entities are the ones giving orders? Likewise, following orders as a plea in legal proceedings hasn’t always worked out for officers and subordinates, either.

• Mass protests planned over web NSA spying revelations

• Angela Merkel: NSA snooping claims ‘extremely serious’

  German chancellor says fight against terrorism is essential but methods used must be proportionate

• Oliver Stone on NSA Leaker Edward Snowden: ‘I Would Give Him Asylum’

• Oliver Stone Calls Edward Snowden A ‘Hero,’ President Obama’s Tactics A ‘Disgrace’

  Politically outspoken director Oliver Stone called Edward Snowden a “hero” during a Fourth of July appearance at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The Oscar winner also blasted President Barack Obama for his “George Bush-style eavesdropping techniques,” calling the controversies a “disgrace.”

• France wants to ‘temporarily suspend’ trade talks with US over NSA spying

• The Post-PRISM Society: Totalitarian Clouds

  “Still,” most people think ‘I am living in a safe country and have no plans to overthrow my government.’

• Europe’s Shame: Snowden and Morales

  Those of us who have been saying that the US has become a weak, or at least more ordinary power among many in the world because of its military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and because of its economic decline, will have to recalibrate our analysis after watching the pathetic behavior of the leaders of Russia, Germany and France under pressure from the Obama administration not to allow Edward Snowden to gain asylum in those countries or even to escape his purgatory in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.

• Understanding the latest leaks is understanding the rise of a new fascism

  In his book, ‘Propaganda’, published in 1928, Edward Bernays wrote: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

  The American nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays invented the term “public relations” as a euphemism for state propaganda. He warned that an enduring threat to the invisible government was the truth-teller and an enlightened public.

  In 1971, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg leaked US government files known as The Pentagon Papers, revealing that the invasion of Vietnam was based on systematic lying. Four years later, Frank Church conducted sensational hearings in the US Senate: one of the last flickers of American democracy. These laid bare the full extent of the invisible government: the domestic spying and subversion and warmongering by intelligence and “security” agencies and the backing they received from big business and the media, both conservative and liberal.

  Speaking about the National Security Agency (NSA), Senator Church said: “I know that the capacity that there is to make tyranny in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law… so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

  On 11 June 2013, following the revelations in the Guardian by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg wrote that the US had now fallen into “that abyss”.

• NSA Spying in Germany: How Much Did the Chancellor Know?

  While the Chancellery appears to be outraged by the NSA’s spying tactics in Germany, the opposition doubts the revelations came as a surprise to Angela Merkel. Just how much could she have known?

• Inside the Electronic Frontier Foundation

  Mike Saunders investigates how the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is protecting us from dodgy megacorps and surveillance-happy governments.

  [...]

  Taking on the United States Secret Service is a pretty risky venture… But that’s exactly what the EFF did, shortly after it was founded in July 1990. The Secret Service had raided a small videogames book publisher, looking for a stolen technical document that might fall into the wrong hands. Ultimately, it found no evidence to press charges, but the publisher ended up facing bankruptcy, after having its computers seized, missing deadlines, and being forced to lay off staff. Worst of all, the Secret Service erased much of the publisher’s valuable data.

• Schieffer Hopes the Government Will Explain Its Secret Spying Program to Him

  This weekend CBS Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer (6/30/13) did a segment on the latest revelations about NSA surveillance. And who better to interview than… well, the former head of the NSA and CIA, Michael Hayden.

  Now, in an oppositional media culture, this could make some sense. Hayden oversaw domestic surveillance during some of the Bush years, which of course included the remarkably controversial warrantless wiretapping program. So a serious TV journalist might want to grill him on that history.

• How we’re boosting trust in the cloud, post PRISM

  First, our cloud computing strategy is clear about the need for a transparent legal framework: like agreeing exactly the limited conditions under which third countries might access online information for law enforcement or national security. Reports about PRISM only increase the urgency. That would be a big step forward to rebuilding essential trust.

• All Law is Gone: Naked Power Remains

  The forcing down of the Bolivian President’s jet was a clear breach of the Vienna Convention by Spain and Portugal, which closed their airspace to this Head of State while on a diplomatic mission. It has never been thought necessary to write down in a Treaty that Heads of State enjoy diplomatic immunity while engaged in diplomacy, as their representatives only enjoy diplomatic immunity as cyphers for their Head of State. But it is a hitherto unchallenged precept of customary international law, indeed arguably the oldest provision of international law.

• ORG’s next challenge

  We’ve got a huge challenge on our hands. You’ve probably read about Edward Snowden’s leaks revealing the NSA’s PRISM and GCHQ’s Tempora mass surveillance programmes.

• U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

  Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.

• Trapped in the zone: Edward Snowden shouldn’t take everything Putin says at face value

  Like everything about this amazing case, Edward Snowden’s attempt to claim asylum has become an enormous story in itself.

  Reportedly still holed up in the “transit zone” of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, Snowden’s WikiLeaks-assisted efforts to seek a place of political refuge are proving to be as fraught as you might expect in this increasingly strange affair. Snowden appears to have a good de facto case for receiving asylum – as the barrister Colin Yeo argues here – but, as Yeo also says, Snowden’s future place of residence is likely to be determined more by international politics than by the specific terms of the UN Refugee Convention.

• European anger growing over extent of alleged U.S. electronic surveillance

  In the pages the German tabloid Bild, President Barack Obama on Tuesday had been renamed OHRbama (Ohr is the German word for ear). He was pictured leaning over to listen to German Chancellor Angela Merkel with a grossly oversized ear.

  In a televised interview, French President Francois Hollande used angry words to describe the United States and an eavesdropping program whose size and scope were revealed in weekend news stories that cited documents leaked by one-time NSA computer specialist Edward Snowden. Hollande said the spying must “cease immediately.”

• Hints surface that NSA building massive, pervasive surveillance capability

  FBI Director Robert Mueller told a Senate committee on March 30, 2011, that “technological improvements” now enable the bureau “to pull together past emails and future ones as they come in so that it does not require an individualized search.”

• Bug found at Ecuador’s embassy in London

  A hidden microphone is found in the ambassador’s office, during routine security search, Ecuador foreign minister says.

• Hidden microphone found at Ecuador’s embassy in UK, says foreign minister

  Microphone was found last month inside office of Ecuadorean ambassador, in building where Julian Assange resides

• State Department Facebook: DOS Spent $630,000 On ‘Likes’ For Social Media Pages, Report Indicates

  A striking finding in a recent Inspector General report revealed that the U.S. Department of State spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook “likes” in the past two years, effectively buying fans.

• Snowden

  We all knew this was happening.

  Anybody who worked in computer security looked at the NSA’s budget and the falling cost of hardware and simply said “they’re storing everything.”

• German official: Stop using American websites to avoid NSA snooping

  Internet users worried about their personal information being intercepted by U.S. intelligence agencies should stop using websites that send data to the United States, Germany’s top security official said Wednesday.

• Reveal Illegal Surveillance? Run For Your Life; Conduct Illegal Surveillance & Lie About It? No Biggie

  It really says a lot when you compare how Ed Snowden and James Clapper are being treated these days. Snowden, who revealed the NSA’s illegal and unconstitutional surveillance efforts is finding that US pressure and various “technicalities” mean that his asylum requests are getting quickly rejected, leaving him with dwindling options. Meanwhile, James Clapper, who ran the actual program and then flat out lied to Congress about is, can apparently get away with a ridiculous, staged “apology” to Congress for “clearly erroneous” statements.

• John Kiriakou Writes Open Letter To Edward Snowden, Warns Leaker Against Cooperating With FBI

  John Kiriakou, the former Central Intelligence Agency officer currently serving jailtime for leaking the identity of a covert agent, has written an open letter to Edward Snowden, offering advice to the former government contractor who leaked classified information on the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

  The handwritten letter was published by FireDogLake on Tuesday.

  Writing from prison in Loretto, Pa., Kiriakou praises Snowden for his “heroic” actions.

  “I know that it feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders right now, but as Americans begin to realize that we are devolving into a police state, with the loss of civil liberties that entails, they will see your actions for what they are: heroic,” he writes.

• Why European nations must protect Edward Snowden

  The general secretary of Reporters Without Borders Christophe Deloire, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange co-sign today an Op-Ed in Le Monde to call out the states of the European Union to protect Edward Snowden.

  On October 12, 2012, the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize for contributing to the “advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.” The EU should show itself worthy of this honor and show its will to defend freedom of information, regardless of fears of political pressure from its so-called closest ally, the United States.

• Reddit, Mozilla to stage Fourth of July protest against NSA spying

  Reddit, Mozilla and a host of other websites are planning to launch an online protest this Fourth of July against the National Security Agency’s (NSA) sweeping surveillance of telephone records and Internet traffic.

  The participating sites, including 4chan and WordPress, will display anti-NSA spying messages on their home pages. They will also direct people to the site CallForFreedom.org, where supporters can donate money to help fund TV ads against the intelligence programs and press for action from lawmakers.

• Reddit, Mozilla and WordPress back US NSA surveillance protests

  A host of some of the biggest names in tech; including Reddit, Mozilla and WordPress, have lent their backing to a series of mass protests planned to take place across the US on Thursday against US surveillance policy.

• Fourth of July Anti-NSA-Snooping Rallies Coming to a City Near You

• Mozilla backs hundreds of US-wide protests against NSA spying

  The organisation has set up around 100 protests across the US, taking place on 4 July in major cities such as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. An interactive map specifying the locations of the protests is available on the Restore the Fourth website.

• US and Germany to hold high-level talks over NSA surveillance

  President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have agreed to hold a high-level meeting between security officials from their countries in the coming days to discuss in greater detail reports of surveillance activities by the U.S. National Security Agency, the White House said.

• Going lo-tech to avoid NSA snooping? Unlucky – they read snailmail too

  US Postal Service scoops metadata from your letters: report

• U.S. spy agency NSA hit with furloughs starting next week

  The National Security Agency, the spy agency thrown into the public eye following former contractor Edward Snowden’s disclosures, is getting hit with furloughs starting next week.

• New PRISM Slides Revive Fears NSA Has Internet Back Doors

  Four new slides released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden through the Washington Post have revived fears that Google and other Internet giants give the US security services a “back door” to access their customers’ data by allowing government monitoring equipment on their premises.

• Online giants unite for July 4 to curb US National Security Agency spying

• Malware Uses Fake Jay-Z App to Highlight NSA Spying on Independence Day

  A fake version of a Jay-Z app is set to highlight the NSA spying scandal when it goes live on 4 July.

• Trojanized Android app collects info, comments on NSA surveillance

• How to talk to the NSA when they come recruiting

• Civil rights groups plan July 4 protest against NSA surveillance

  A large coalition of civil rights and privacy groups and potentially thousands of websites will stage protests on the Fourth of July to protest surveillance programs at the U.S. National Security Agency.

• NSA Scandal: As Tech Giants Fight Back, Phone Firms Stay Mum

  As the U.S. National Security Agency scandal has unfolded over the last few weeks, Internet giants Google, Facebook, and Yahoo have been falling over each other to publicly distance themselves from the NSA’s data collection programs, in some cases even going to a secret U.S. court to increase their transparency with the public. By contrast, the nation’s largest phone companies, including Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint, have remained stone-cold silent in the face of reports that they’ve participated in a vast, ongoing NSA data collection program targeting the phone records of tens of millions of Americans.

• UK Warns EU: Don’t Blow $200bn US Trade Talks Over Edward Snowden NSA Scandal

  Britain’s government has warned the European Union not to squander “once-in-a-lifetime” trade talks with the US after Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency spying revelations.

• NSA Leaker Edward Snowden In His Own Words: “You’re Being Watched”

  We begin today’s special on whistleblowers with Edward Snowden, who came forward in June as the man who leaked details about the National Security Agency secret programs to spy on Americans, foreign governments and individuals around the world. He was praised by the country’s best-known whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of the Vietnam War. “I think there has not been a more significant or helpful leak or unauthorized disclosure in American history ever than what Edward Snowden shared with The Guardian about the NSA — and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers,” Ellsberg said. This is an excerpt of the interview Snowden did in June with Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian.

• Hey Google and Facebook: where’s the outrage? #NSA

  The Fourth of July is about celebrating the freedom of the United States. This year, it’s marred by PRISM scandal that showed how the US government is collecting personal communications data on the citizens.

  High powered sites like WordPress, Reddit, and Mozilla are amongst the usual suspects of privacy-conscientious tech companies supporting the Independence Day protest being organized by non-profit organization Fight for the Future. Who’s not on the list of supporters? Facebook and Google.

• Security-Enhanced Android: NSA Edition

  Tech giants listed as part of the National Security Agency’s Prism spying program have gone to some lengths to convince the world they aren’t in bed with the U.S. government. Google (GOOG) has filed a request with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court asking permission to disclose more information about the government’s data requests. So there’s a certain irony that NSA programmers are now refining code that Google has approved for the company’s mobile operating system, Android. Google spokeswoman Gina Scigliano confirms that the company has already inserted some of the NSA’s programming in Android OS. “All Android code and contributors are publicly available for review at source.android.com,” Scigliano says, declining to comment further.

• 4th Of July Protest: Reddit, Mozilla, WordPress Plan Anti-NSA Protest ‘Restore The Fourth’

  Thousands of websites, including Reddit, Mozilla and WordPress, will join a July 4 protest against the surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency, which have come under growing scrutiny since details were leaked by former technical contractor Edward Snowden. The protest, expected to take place in cities around the country including New York, Los Angeles and Washington, has been spearheaded by an organization called Restore the Fourth.

• USA: nationwide anti-NSA spying protests on July 4

• Restore The Fourth: Massive 4th Of July Protest Planned Against NSA Spying Program

• CIA whistleblower to Snowden: ‘Do not cooperate with the FBI’

  NSA leaker Edward Snowden is the subject of an open letter of support just published from behind bars by John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent currently serving time for sharing state secrets.

  In a letter dated June 13 and published Tuesday by Firedoglake, the imprisoned CIA vet salutes Snowden for his recent disclosures of classified documents detailing some of the vast surveillance programs operated by the United States’ National Security Agency.

• Want to Fight Government Domestic Spying? Join a ‘Restore the Fourth’ Protest This Independence Day

• Students DESTROY NSA Recruiters Over Illegal Spying and Lies (Listen)

  When NSA recruiters went to the University of Wisconsin earlier this week to pitch language students on working for the agency, they got more than they bargained for.

  The informed students turned the question-and-answer session into a hearing. On trial were the NSA’s lies, their legality, and how they define “adversary”.

• Wisconsin Students Drill NSA Recruiters – OUCH!

• Top US spy chief claims “mistake” in lies about NSA programs

  On Tuesday, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein apologizing for statements that he had made in March before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Clapper sought to justify lies he made at the time regarding National Security Agency spying programs by claiming he had made a “mistake.”

• Web firms join anti-NSA protests

  Major web firms including WordPress, Reddit and Mozilla have backed a planned 4 July protest against NSA web snooping.

• The NSA And Edward Snowden: The Boomerang Flies On

  Edward Snowden may become the most famous civil rights case this century, and throw up issues of data protection, intelligence, and the relationship between partners and allies that concern citizens of all free states.

• Companies Turn to Switzerland for Cloud Storage Following NSA Spying Revelations

  Following revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden about US government spying, businesses are turning away from US-based cloud services such as Dropbox.

• Iceland Puts Forward Bill To Grant Snowden Citizenship

  One day before members of the Icelandic Parliament are due to break for summer vacation, leaders of three political parties have submitted a special piece of legislation which would make NSA whistleblower and fugitive, Edward Snowden, a citizen of Iceland.

• French parties call for Snowden political asylum

  NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden should be given political asylum in France, party leaders from across the political spectrum have said in the wake of the latest US spying allegations.

• Iceland Congress puts forward bill to grant Snowden citizenship

  One day before members of the Icelandic Parliament are due to break for summer vacation, leaders of three political parties have submitted a special piece of legislation which would make NSA whistleblower and fugitive, Edward Snowden, a citizen of Iceland.

• Snowden Is No Trifling Matter

  The suspicion that Bolivian President Evo Morales’ jet was carrying Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who has become Washington´s public enemy number one, triggered an unprecedented international incident.

  Four European countries – France, Italy, Spain and Portugal – denied Morales’ presidential jet permission to fly through their airspace on his way back from Moscow to La Paz.

• Time For Our Independence Day. Independence From the US.

  The 4th of July is always a little bit odd for us here in the UK. It’s usually accompanied with wry jokes about how we should never have let the former colony go. Jokes that mask Britain’s enduring inability to see how the world, and our place in it, has changed. What has changed above all is that the balance of power is utterly reversed. Whether it is on foreign policy or on the domestic surveillance of our citizens, successive UK governments follow America’s lead unswervingly. We’re not quite Airstrip One yet, but the 4th is no cause for fireworks and parades this side of the pond as far as I’m concerned.

Civil Rights

• Sudan Hits Hard at Female Activists

• Fatwa for make-up: Islamists target women in rebel-controlled Syrian territories

  Syrian rebels have issued a ban on women using make up or wearing “immodest dress” in a neighborhood in the city of Aleppo. Critics have blasted the move as another attempt by Islamists to impose Sharia in rebel-controlled territory.

  The fatwa (an order based on Sharia law) was issued by the Islamic law council in Aleppo’s Fardous neighborhood.

• The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of a White Male ‘Mainstream’

  To introduce interviews with the editors of the magazines New York, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired and GQ, Port editor Dan Crowe wrote:

• Scaling back stop and search

  We have long warned against the risk of police powers being used far beyond how Parliament intended, and in situations where there is no real cause for suspicion. Stop and search powers have been one of the starkest example of how things can get out of control.

  The use of the powers have always been controversial, especially amongst ethnic minority communities, however there was public outrage after it came to light that between 2007-2009 450,000 people were stopped and searched under section 44 of the Terrorism Act; none were convicted or terrorism-related charges.

• Movement on Guantanamo?

  Despite false starts in the past, there appears to be real momentum behind new efforts to reform Guantanamo policies.

• Michigan makes a ‘roar of futility’

  Further, The World is asserting that the NDAA bill is undeniably a “nasty piece of legislative mischief” — “gives current and future presidents unprecedented power,” and is a “dramatic expansion of federal authority.” However, the newspaper is also asserting that this initiative, taken by the commissioners, is nothing but a “roar of futility” in which the commissioners “have no legitimate role.” We heard that same claptrap in Oakland County.

• July 4: Show Your Support for the Fourth Amendment

  This Fourth of July, EFF will be demonstrating our commitment to your Constitutional right of privacy from government surveillance by displaying the text of the Fourth Amendment on our website. This demonstration is a visual symbol of our opposition to the illegal and unconstitutional surveillance by the National Security Agency, which the government now admits has been collecting data on millions of ordinary Americans not suspected of any crime. We, along with the Internet Defense League and many other organizations, are showing online solidarity with the Restore the Fourth movement, a nonpartisan, grassroots movement that is planning protests against NSA spying on July 4th in cities across the United States.

• Moral bankruptcy

  Now, however, we are seeing an evil that has infected an entire society. In a moral society, Manning’s treatment would have been intolerable—absolutely unacceptable. In a moral society, the war crimes he has allegedly brought to light would be intolerable—absolutely unacceptable. Instead, people in the U.S. are, by and large, passive and complicit, as if the 9/11 attacks could in any way be construed to justify what is being done in their name. The consequences are nothing less than astonishing.

• ‘Hideous and revolting’: Frederick Douglass on U.S. slavery

  Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms — of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

• Guantánamo hunger strike: US to force-feed detainees during Ramadan

  The US government has refused to stop force-feeding detainees on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay during the holy month of Ramadan.

  In court papers rejecting a petition by four of more than 100 detainees said to be refusing food, the US said the feedings provided “essential nutritional and medical care” and would not interfere with religious observance of Ramadan, which begins on Monday.

• Ban qat? Theresa May might as well ban cats

  A simple analogy shows how absurd the basis for the home secretary’s drug prohibition plan really is

• USA must not persecute whistleblower Edward Snowden

  The US authorities’ relentless campaign to hunt down and block whistleblower Edward Snowden’s attempts to seek asylum is deplorable and amounts to a gross violation of his human rights Amnesty International said today.

• Ecuador – CONAIE Leader: “We will not defend wealthy media interests”

• Kevin Frayer’s haunting portraits of women who survived the Bangladesh garment factory collapse

  A haunting series of portraits of women who had limbs amputated after the Rana Plaza factory building collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh on April 24, 2013. It was the worst disaster in the history of the garment industry — 1,129 people were killed, and many others were grievously injured. Canadian photojournalist Kevin Frayer of The Associated Press photographed nine of these women in June 2013, as they recovered at Enam Medical College in Savar, Bangladesh.

• 15-Year-Old Girl Charged With Child Porn Possession for Picture of Friends Having Sex

  “Any time you take a photograph or a video of children, anyone under the age of 18, engaged in sexual conduct, it’s considered production of child pornography,” detective William Lindsey told the Orlando Sentinel. “It’s illegal to take the photograph or the video, it’s illegal to possess it and it’s illegal to transmit it.”

• Orin Kerr’s Appeal Brief for Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer – Another CFAA Case~pj Updated

  Orin Kerr has posted the appeal brief [PDF] just filed on behalf of Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer. It is a group work, with EFF’s Hanni M. Fakhoury, Marcia C. Hofmann, and Tor B. Ekeland and Mark H. Jaffe of the law firm Tor Ekeland, PC, also listed as representing the appellant. It’s another hair-pulling Computer Fraud and Abuse Act case, so I believe you’re interested in knowing about it. It’s a law in desperate need of adjustment, but in the meanwhile, because it’s so vague, it’s being stretched beyond what the law was intended to cover by overcharging and misunderstanding, the brief argues, and vagueness can reach the level of being a violation of the Constitution.

• Judges reject state’s request for more time on prisoner release

  A panel of three federal judges overseeing California’s prison overcrowding case on Wednesday rejected Gov. Jerry Brown’s request for a stay of their order that the state immediately begin reducing its inmate population.

DRM

• Customers streaming away from Netflix

  So, walk away from Netflix to get off the couch, sure, but more importantly, do it for the future of the World Wide Web. It’s time to do more than turn off the TV: It’s time to #CancelNetflix.

Intellectual Monopolies

• TAFTA: Illegitimate EU-US Agreement Will Begin Under Total US Surveillance

  Today, exactly one year after the final rejection of ACTA, the European Parliament adopted a resolution in strong reaction to the massive spying by the USA. Our representatives have failed to demand that the upcoming secret negotiations of trans-atlantic trade agreement be frozen. In a context where EU officials are being spied upon by US counterparts, this upcoming “super-ACTA” will be born with very little legitimacy.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Linux Goes To Stanford in Style

The actual cost of the laptop is being reimbursed by a group of “RockHound” professors at UT/Austin. Since the cost of this laptop had to come from my own pocket, I am grateful to these professors who helped us out. I am simply writing this at the behest of Sanjit Patel to thank you for helping him achieve his dreams. And from the directors and volunteers of Reglue, thank you for helping us do what we do.

Oh, and that old T60 Lenovo we gave Sanjit when he entered UT? The drive was wiped, a fresh install of Edubuntu installed and put back in the “ready” pile, waiting to be given to the next Reglue Kid.

Linux on Power

Determining the best hardware for a self-hosted web environment is complicated, and fraught with danger. One of the most popular schemes in use is to purchase commodity hardware. Normally, the term “commodity hardware” is meant to include basic Intel pizza box servers that may not have the most power, and may not come with the best reputation for high mean time between failure for components, but are plentiful and cheap. The core concept is to avoid the need for larger, more expensive hardware by purchasing a lot of pizza boxes, and just adding on as you go.

Ubiquitous Linux: It’s Everywhere

Sometimes I’m sitting here, trying to come up with something to write and I’m coming up dry. It’s not because there’s nothing going on with Linux. Quite the contrary. Linux is always moving, changing. It’s hard to believe just how ubiquitous Linux is. It’s literally everywhere.

July 2013 Issue of Linux Journal: Networking

When our house was built a few years ago (after our house fire), one of the things I wanted was a house wired for Ethernet connectivity. Unfortunately, the contractor must not have realized that running CAT5e isn’t the same as running power lines. Although my house did in fact have RJ-45 jacks in a few rooms, opening the wall panel exposed approximately three inches of untwisted wire crammed into the wall jack. Even worse, they stapled, yes stapled, the CAT3 cable to the wall studs.

The Linux Setup – Igor Ljubuncic, Dedoimedo.com

At home, I use Linux primarily for video editing and automation of tasks, and lots and lots of testing. Linux is a fairly flexible operating system, and you truly get to appreciate the power and simplicity once you start digging under the surface. That said, I also happily use other, proprietary operating systems.

Five Linux predictions for 2013

The Last Big Lie

That makes the quoted comment a lie in 2013. It may have been true a decade ago but no longer. Folks like Munich who dug out of the hole they made by choosing M$ (as if they had a choice) years ago are laughing and the rest of the world are looking for the exits: cloud services or FLOSS. With widespread use of thin clients, corporations large and small can use whatever software they want any way they want and choosing ODF makes the office suite and the operating system a much simpler choice.

Desktop

• On my movement to GRUB2

  As I wanted to install Pisi Linux Sueño (Beta) to my laptop, I had to take the leap from GRUB to GRUB2. You know, Megatotoro warned me about the fact that Pisi has a bug and therefore installs its own GRUB2 menu on the MBR regardless of what you choose.

• GNU/Linux Is On The Move Globally

  GNU/Linux has been languishing, according to StatCounter, at below 1% share until recently and I thought I would collect data to see how it fared on different continents.

Kernel Space

• What’s new in Linux 3.10

  A second SSD caching framework and support for the new Radeons’ video decoder are two of the most important enhancements in Linux 3.10, which is now out. This version also includes several new and improved drivers and a change to the network stack to speed up HTTP connections.

• 3.10 Linux Kernel Development Rate

• The Linux Kernel: Drivers

  Drivers are small programs that enable the kernel to communicate and handle hardware or protocols (rules and standards). Without a driver, the kernel does not know how to communicate with the hardware or handle protocols (the kernel actually hands the commands to the BIOS and the BIOS passes them on the the hardware). The Linux Kernel source code contains many drivers (in the form of source code) in the drivers folder. Each folder within the drivers folder will be explained. When configuring and compiling the kernel, it helps to understand the drivers. Otherwise, a user may add drivers to the kernel that they do not need or leave out important drivers. The driver source code usually includes a commented line that states the purpose of the driver. For example, the source code for the tc driver has a single commented line that says the driver is for TURBOchannel buses. Because of the documentation, users should be able to look at the first few commented lines of future drivers to learn their purpose.

• Linux 3.10 officially released

  Linux 3.10 kernel has been officially released on Sunday evening which makes the 3.10-rc7 the last release candidate of the latest kernel which yields the biggest changes in years.

• Linux 3.10

• Benchmarks

  • XWayland 2D Performance Appears Better Than XMir

    In the past few days I delivered X.Org vs. XMir Ubuntu Unity benchmarks on Intel hardware and Nouveau / NVIDIA. The benchmarking also found that 2D was also slower with XMir than simply running an X.Org Server. Benchmarks now carried out of X.Org vs. XWayland show that the Wayland-based equivalent is generally faster, at least for 2D operations.

Applications

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Installing Apache2 With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Ubuntu 13.04 (LAMP)

  • Getting started with GIMP

  • Installing and testing Ubuntu’s Mir server

  • Install ‘Glances’ (system monitor) on Ubuntu 13.04

  • Make a personal wiki with DokuWiki

  • So I have a new desktop..

  • Use an Android Device as Screen and Input for Raspberry Pi

  • How to build Ubuntu packages from source the easy way

  • HowTo: Use ip instead of ifconfig

  • gearhead: Saving the best for last

  • Switching shells

  • What’s New In Gimp 2.8.6 | [How To]: Install Gimp 2.8.6 on Ubuntu Using PPA

  • Some examples of how to use the paste command

  • renameutils: Underappreciated tools

  • Keep Journal with jrnl

  • Manage a security bug

• Games

  • OUYA Console Sold Out: $99 Android-Based Open-Source Gaming Device Already Out Of Stock In GameStop, Amazon

  • Steam has greenlit more games for Linux!

    The next set of indie games to be Greenlighted on Steam has happened and here is the run down for you!

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • [GSoC] Porting Marble’s render plugins to graphics scene objects

  • stegano.kde user interface rewrite

  • KDE Plasma, Applications 4.11 Beta 2

    Packages for the release of KDE SC 4.11 Beta 2 are available for Kubuntu 13.04 and our Saucy development release. You can get them from the Kubuntu Beta PPA for 13.04.

  • RSI and a peculiar development setup contd.

  • Syntax-Highlighting Experiments

  • KDE Commit-Digest for 9th June 2013

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Gnome Video Arcade

    The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator first released in 1997 is a cross-platform emulator designed to recreate the old hardware that arcade game systems used, in the modern computers of today. MAME can currently successfully run thousands of ROM images originally found in many different arcade machines from 1970 till now.

  • Gnome Weather 3.9.3

    Gnome Weather was introduced as a preview for Gnome 3.8 and is aiming to be complete and functionally coherent in the upcoming Gnome 3.10 version.

Distributions

• ROSA 2012 R1 Desktop Fresh LXDE Review: Another super cool LXDE spin with added integrated control center!

  As I wrote in my last article about LXDE though being very efficient, is a bit tough for a Linux newbie to handle. I was very happy with the latest PCLinuxOS 2013.06 LXDE spin as it made LXDE relatively simpler by adding an integrated LXDE control center along with quite a few other customizations. This week I used another LXDE distro, ROSA 2012 R1 Desktop Fresh LXDE. Incidentally, both ROSA and PCLinuxOS are/were Mandriva based.

• First look at Peppermint OS Four

  Peppermint OS is a project based on Lubuntu with sprinklings of Linux Mint tossed into the mix. The Peppermint project attempts to create a user friendly, fast and lightweight distribution. The project is focused on bringing web applications and services to the desktop without relying exclusively on Internet connectivity for basic functions. This makes Peppermint a bit of a hybrid, mixing the traditional desktop platform with cloud services. While Peppermint ships with a minimalist collection of packages and a LXDE desktop the project offers several software bundles to allow users to build a fully featured operating system using the Peppermint base. The latest release of Peppermint, version 4, is based on Lubuntu 13.04 and is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit builds.

• New Releases

  • Manjaro 0.8.7 XFCE Preview

    I’m happy to announce a preview build of Manjaro 0.8.7 which we will release in late July. This first build is fully installable and stable. You will find only a minimalistic XFCE 4.10 Desktop on it. One of the biggest changes you might see is the use of Whisker Menu which replaces the standard XFCE menu. We fixed our Manjaro Settings Manager and updated Pamac (graphical package manager). The 32bit build will fit on a 700 MB CD, for the 64bit build you have to use a 800 MB CD.

  • OpenELEC Testing – Raspberry Pi ARM Version:3.1.1

  • Arch 2013.07.01

  • Zentyal 3.1-2

  • ALT 7.0.0

  • ALT Linux 7.0 Enterprise and Workstation Arrive

    ALT Linux has been around for quite some time, yet we rarely hear of it anymore. Some of my first impressions were of a nice desktop system that needed a bit of polish. Later ALT became available in desktop and enterprise editions. After nearly two years, today brought a new ALT Linux release.

• Screenshots

  • Ubuntu GNOME 13.10 Alpha 1 (Saucy Salamander) Screenshot Tour

    Ubuntu GNOME 13.10 Alpha 1 (Saucy Salamander) is now available for download and a short screenshot tour is available on Softpedia.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • July 2013 issue of The PCLinuxOS Magazine released

    The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the July 2013 issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editor Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat, Inc. (RHT): The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

    Most people with at least basic knowledge of IT infrastructure have heard about Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT). The company provides one of the most widely-used operating systems for servers. The reason why many consumers may have not heard about this operating system is because Red Hat is mainly for organizations, especially those willing to pay a premium for improved security. Therefore, Red Hat isn’t just another IT stock. The name is synonymous with security, reliability, and fast performance – three must-have success factors that many start-ups would love to possess. Although Red Hat’s cash cow resides in its open source solutions, recently the company has been giving more importance to its cloud storage and virtualization solutions, a fierce business segment where Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (NYSE:RAX) has also been very actively.

  • Fedora

    • Fedora vs. Ubuntu

      So would I recommend Fedora over Ubuntu? Honestly, no, I wouldn’t. I’m more inclined to recommend one of the options listed above instead, as I can better explain how I personally have benefited from each of them myself. Nothing against Fedora—it’s fine—but it just simply doesn’t have a well-defined niche these days.

    • Fedora 18 to 19 yum upgrade

• Debian Family

  • So wheezy is fun..

    Running a pristine operating system is fun.

  • Derivatives

    • Knoppix 7.2 Review

      You may not know about Knoppix, but before there was Ubuntu and before there was Mint there was a time when Knoppix was among the few distros that hardly needed introduction. Linux enthusiasts knew about Knoppix in the same way they knew about Debian. While Debian was the largest distro on planet (in terms of number of packages), Knoppix was the first Live distro based on Debian. Although it wasn’t the first Live distro, Knoppix popularized this concept and became the face of Live CDs. At the time when Debian was still difficult to install, especially by inexperienced or new Linux users, Knoppix gave people a way to “test” a Debian-based system before actually installing it. Knoppix even encouraged users to always use it as a Live CD, which made it popular as a rescue system that people could use to quickly salvage important files from their hard-drives and even fix their systems in the event of boot failure of the installed operating system.

    • Revisiting Knoppix

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu 13 challenges Windows 8

        The latest version of Ubuntu, Raring Ringtail, is billed as business and user-friendly. There are still significant obstacles to its widespread adoption in the enterprise, but if your employees only access applications via the browser, and your company doesn’t use complex spreadsheet macros or document formats, then Ubuntu 13 might be worth considering.

      • Aakash IV to be more powerful and Ubuntu-friendly

        Undeterred by the controversies that have struck its $35 tablet project, the Government has taken the first step towards the fourth version of the low cost Aakash tablet by releasing its mandated technical specifications.

      • Ubuntu’s Mir plans cause divisions

        Ubuntu sponsor Canonical plan to switch the distribution to the company’s Mir display server sooner rather than later and this move is now causing disturbances within the wider Ubuntu ecosystem. This appears to be especially so with the developers of two of the official Ubuntu remixes, Lubuntu and Kubuntu.

      • Ubuntu 13.10 to feature Mir display server by default

        Case in point: What if the Apollo 11 astronauts, instead of shooting for the moon, were just taking a road trip to New Jersey? Even if they made it ahead of schedule, they wouldn’t exactly be making commemorative plates about it. (Though, now that I think about it, they should. I would absolutely buy a “Neil and Buzz go to Jersey” plate.)

      • Lubuntu, Kubuntu 13.10 May Not Use Mir As Their Display Server

      • Canonical and KDE/Kubuntu Developers Finally Confront Each Other

        It’s not a secret that KDE devs are not fond of Canonical’s Mir, but the two sides never really discussed it seriously, until now.

      • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 323

      • Canonical Hiring to Advance Ubuntu Linux Smartphone, Tablet Plans

        Canonical, the company behind the open source Ubuntu Linux OS, set out earlier this year to create a radically new video display platform called Mir to help it steal a slice of the smartphone and tablet markets. Now, in a sign of just how serious the company is, it has announced a hiring push for developers to work on Mir and related projects.

      • The Ubuntu PC Case Mod Pt.4 DVD stealthing

      • Full Circle #74 hits the streets!

        Full Circle – the independent magazine for the Ubuntu Linux community
        are proud to announce the release of our seventy fourth issue.

      • Ubuntu Alarm Clock

        I am in Florence at B and B Hotels right now. I have to leave the hotel at 12 o’clock tomorrow. I find it very hard to wake up in the morning. Who is going to guarantee me that I will wake up in time and be ready to leave the hotel?

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Coming Soon: MintBox 2 With Intel Core i5 And Linux Mint 15 Olivia

          One of the reasons for comparatively low Linux adoption rate can be blamed on the fact that very few PCs come preinstalled with Linux. However, Linux Mint tried to solve this issue and last year they teamed up with CompuLab to make MintBox.

        • Ready to run desktop Linux PC: MintBox 2

          Like Linux Mint? Want it in a plug and go PC? CompuLab may have the computer for you: the new MintBox 2.

        • Linux Mint 15 Olivia MATE – Not as refined

          Here’s the third review of the Linux Mint Olivia family. We already had two reviews of the Cinnamon version, one on a rather generic laptop with Intel graphics, plus SSD, and the other on a slightly more complex box featuring Nvidia graphics and Broadcom Wireless. So far, Olivia has shown really awesome results, near perfect in almost every sense of the way.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • HTC One Android 4.2.2 OTA Update

      HTC One customers will be rejoiced to know that their Smartphone is going get an OTA update to Android 4.2.2 soon, and if you are in Taiwan you might already have the update available. A HTC One (International Model) user in Taiwan reported that Android 4.2.2 update has arrived for his phone.

    • Android 4.3 Has New Notification Service Under The Hood

      We saw Android 4.3 build for Samsung Galaxy S4 ‘Google Edition’ getting leaked last week. It was then soon ported for the original Samsung Galaxy S4 without any hassle. Considering the leaked build to be real, we found that there were not much superficial changes, instead, many under the hood changes are being observed eventually. ‘Notification Code Service’ is the new change under the light.

    • Android’s Audacious Desktop Debut

      FOSS fans have been predicting for years that Android would ultimately come to the desktop, and last week there was concrete evidence. Following on a similar announcement from Acer earlier this month, HP has now debuted an Android-based desktop tablet of its own. “Well, it’s happening!” enthused Google+ blogger Rodolfo Saenz. “Mobile and stationary hardware and software are merging.”

    • An Oracle v. Google Trial Transcripts Page – Finally. ~pj

      I’m sorry this took so long, but I’ve finally got a dedicated page done for all the Oracle v. Google trial transcripts. So if you want to know what any of the witnesses had to say, you can find it on that page. You’ll also find the trial exhibits and the jury verdict and the judge’s order and final judgment, as well as links to Groklaw’s coverage from the courtroom. For everything else, of course you’ll find it on the Oracle v. Google Timeline page.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Oops! Walmart Website Pimps Ubuntu Touch on Nexus 10 Listing

    In the on-site listing for a refurbished Nexus 10″ tablet he noticed a familiar-looking image in the product gallery: Ubuntu Touch for tablets.

  • Thailand Orders 1.2 Million Android/Linux Tablet Computers

    Android/Linux customized with local language and a simple layout of the GUI for young children has been working well to bridge the digital divide in Thailand. Since the goal is to equip as many students as possible with small cheap computers to aid education, that other OS need not apply.

The four cornerstones of open server virtualisation according to Citrix

Handpoint Mobile PoS Apps Goes Open Source

NuoDB Expands Open Source Driver Initiative

IRS Puts Open Source Projects Under Microscope, Spawns Nonprofit Black Hole

In a sense, open source software is a victim of its own success.

Driving better governance with open source

“Ten years ago, open source—notably Linux—was often labelled a ‘fad’ or destined for the ‘hobbyist’ market,” said Mark Bohannon, Vice President for Corporate Affairs & Global Public Policy at Red Hat.

“Fast forward to today. Owing not only to the benefits of the technology, but also to the benefits of the collaborative innovation model, open source software has by any measure become mainstream and vital to enterprise and government IT architecture.”

In the Public Sector, Bohannon notes that most governments now are more likely to engage on how open source can help them achieve the innovation they need to be able to serve their citizens today and in the years to come.

Internet2 Announces Proposals for Open Source SDN Networking Apps

MITRE Unveils Open Source Software to Secure Mobile Devices; David Keppler Comments

MITRE Corp. has unveiled new open source software that works to protect data stored in mobile devices and helps organizations develop security applications.

MITRE built the secure virtual mobile platform to allow customers to store sensitive data in a cloud platform, as well as collaborate with the open source community to secure smartphones running on Android operating system, MITRE said June 20.

EU project enhances open source toolkit for the Cloud

Announcement: OPTIMIS project now on phase three which provides service providers with plug-ins for open cloud as project nears its end

DESIGN West: Open source hardware searching for business model

There’s no doubt that engineers like the idea of open-source hardware. There are an increasing number of open-source hardware board designs – Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Beagleboard and many others – that enable hobbyist projects and the reuse of board designs in commercial products. And many engineers are putting a lot of time into enabling these movements via collaborative work online and through the creation of vibrant online communities.

Pistoia Releases HELM Biomolecular Representation Tools

Adventures of migrating to a new open source ecommerce website

Well, it is time for me to update my eCommerce site. I get to play with nearly every kind of cart when writing my ecommerce user manuals, so you’d think this would be an easy decision, or that I would do it often. Not so! I’ve had an ecommerce site for over 10 years, selling downloadable user manual ebooks, and it had snowballed into a crazy mess of old files, old outdated product photos, old outdated products.

Engineers, hobbyists increase reliance on open source tools

Open Source Hoverboard Project Brings Us One Step Closer to the Real Thing

Well, Back to the Future Part II promised us hoverboards in 2015, and that means we’re running out of time. But, there’s someone who still believes all hope is not lost, and they’re looking for $1,000,000 to make the impossibl happen. Shame they don’t have a copy of Grays Sports Almanac.

Today in Longshots: Hoverboards Proposed by 2015

DoubleTwist’s new MagicPlay service aims to be the open source version of Apple’s AirPlay

When you want to seamlessly stream music from a mobile device or computer to a speaker or other device, it doesn’t get much easier than with Apple’s AirPlay service. While there are a myriad of other options to wirelessly stream music from non-Apple devices to speakers (Bluetooth being the most commonly-used one), none of them have been able to replicate the simplicity of AirPlay. DoubleTwist, the company behind a suite of well designed apps for Android, hopes to change that with its new open source MagicPlay service.

Meet the next open-source stars

The world of open-source software, by design, is something of a collective. Instead of well-defined teams of developers working on a project for pay, open-source software is the result of an amorphous community making contributions – some good, some bad. Everyone is part of the project, everyone has a stake.

Contributing to FOSS Projects, a counterpoint

Earlier this week, another “advocacy site” (which I will not link here, as I don’t believe he advocates, nor does he deserve the traffic, for his shoddy “journalism”) posited that volunteering to work on a smaller Linux distribution, such as Solyd or Cloverleaf or Crunchbang, or any other smaller distribution, was akin to pissing in the wind, and possibly career suicide. Ignoring the falsehoods he spread about my own project of choice (Cloverleaf Linux), as I don’t believe they deserve a response, since they would fall on deaf ears, I would like to offer a counterpoint to his postulate.

[...]

Working on smaller distributions and projects a waste of time? Hardly.

Events

• Open Source Developers Conference 2013 to be hosted in Auckland

  Historically held in Australia OSDC covers a wide range of Open Source technologies from low level development and frameworks up to the business value of Open Source technologies.

• Over 100 teams registered

  And while we’re 2 weeks within the opening of SFD 2013 registration a lot of things are happening. First we saw an amazing 103 teams registered from 39 countries! We are currently producing team packs for those early registered SFD teams i.e. the packs will be delivered to teams that registered on or before July 21th. If you haven’t registered your SFD event yet, simply create your team page and complete the registration form. All information and links are of course available from SFD website.

Web Browsers

• Chrome

  • Google adds its free and open-source VP9 video codec to latest Chrome build

    Google today announced it has enabled its VP9 video codec by default on the Chrome dev channel. The addition means users of the company’s browser can expect to see the next-generation compression technology available out-of-the-box before the end of the year.

• Mozilla

  • Download Mozilla’s Open Source Furniture to Kit Out Your Home

  • Firefox OS launching: Spain this week for open-source Android challenger

    The first Firefox OS smartphones, the Alcatel One Touch Fire and the ZTE Open, will hit the market “soon” Mozilla has confirmed this morning, promising imminent launches from Duetsche Telekom and Telefonica. The two new handsets run Mozilla’s own alternative to Android, Firefox OS, taking a web-centric perspective on apps and services in order to keep costs down and make the phones more appealing to developing markets. According to Telefonica, the first device will hit this week.

  • Firefox 22 Launches With Built-In Asm.js And WebRTC Support

    Mozilla today launched Firefox 22, the first stable version of the popular browser that supports the WebRTC protocol and includes support for the organization’s asm.js JavaScript subset that offers near-native performance for web apps.

  • Firefox OS phone launches Tuesday in Spain at $3 a month

  • Mozilla and Partners Prepare to Launch First Firefox OS Smartphones!

  • Firefox vs Ubuntu: Pick Me!

    With their booths just 20 meters apart in the cavernous Shanghai New International Exhibition Center at Mobile Asia Expo, it wasn’t hard to see that open source champions Mozilla and Ubuntu share similar ambitions.

    Both are working on a low-cost mobile handset operating system (OS) aimed at helping carriers and vendors break the duopoly of the big two platforms, Apple Inc.’s iOS and Google’s Android. (See 5 Challengers to Apple & Android.)

  • Firefox OS Better Than the Rest?

    Do you think people will flock to another OS for phones? I think some will want to try it, but unsure if they will keep it. A while ago, I read Ubuntu starting a phone OS based on their wonderful Dubian Linux. I was excited to see what they had to offer. Well, for those who know more of Firefox then you might just want to try out the Firefox OS.

    A month ago or so I was sent an email to Beta Test Firefox’s new phone with their new OS. Due to not being with the carrier that the phone was being tested on, I couldn’t get my hands on one. I was excited to see another OS pop up because I love to play with Linux, really just anything new.

  • Download Mozilla’s Open-Source Furniture To Kit Out Your Home

  • Mozilla Calls for Developers to Build Around Firefox’s Social API

    Just last week, Mozilla released version 22 of the Firefox browser, and you can get the details on what is under the hood here. Already, though, in keeping with Mozilla’s rapid release cycle, the first beta version of Firefox 23 is available. With version 23, Mozilla is calling out to developers to build around its Social API, integrating social services and websites with Firefox.

  • Mozilla is a community of do-ers!

    The Mozilla Summit is coming! On June 15th, 50 Mozillians got together for a planning session and I discovered just how much Mozillians focus on getting great things done!

SaaS/Big Data

• Intel: the only Hadoop is secure Hadoop

  Intel’s MD of worldwide professional services Aaron Davies-Morris has been speaking at the Hadoop Summit 2013 in San Jose about his firm’s drive to work with the open source Hadoop Java-based programming framework.

• Teradata expands Hadoop support

  Teradata’s enterprise customers have a fresh set of options for integrating Hadoop into their environments.

  The company this week rolled out a new “Teradata Portfolio for Hadoop,” featuring a set of products, consulting services, training and support options for customers seeking to harness Hadoop for big data applications.

• Open source private cloud storage with OpenStack Swift

  Everyone has data. It’s always growing, and you should have ownership of everything that touches your data. You need to have the ability to see and make changes to the code managing your storage system. Having ownership of your data gives you control of your own destiny.

Databases

• Couchbase 2.1 Improves Open Source NoSQL Database Health

  “Couchbase 2.0 was a huge release for us, and with that release we became a document database and we added cross data center replication, ” Couchbase CEO Bob Weiderhold told Database Journal. “A lot of this release is about refining capabilities that we first delivered in the 2.0 release.”

• Couchbase 2.1 Scales Open Source NoSQL

  The new Couchbase 2.1 release builds on the improvements that first landed with the Couchbase 2.0 release in December 2012.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• The social side of LibreOffice

  The LibreOffice Project has been building an impressively rich and strong infrastructure in just a few years’ time. Today, I’d like to highlight not so much the quirks and the processes that support the everyday development or the flow of contributions, but rather the presence of the LibreOffice community on social networks and micro-blogging services.

CMS

• Alert: What’s Coming Up for Open Source CMS in July 2013

Healthcare

• Two deep dives into open source EHR

  If you’re interested in implementing a powerful EHR environment but don’t want to pay commercial prices, this article contains some great resources.

• NHS England mulls open source patient record systems

  NHS England is considering offering cash to trusts to develop “open source” software which it says offers flexibility and speeds up their development of electronic patient record systems.

• Johns Hopkins APL Releases Open Source Electronic Disease Surveillance Software

  The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center (AFHSC) have released the Suite for Automated Global Electronic bioSurveillance (SAGES), a collection of flexible, open-source software products developed for electronic disease surveillance in all settings.

Semi-Open Source

• Actuate Enhances Open Source Eclipse BIRT with Connectors to MongoDB, Cassandra, POJO, and Emitters for Microsoft Office Documents

• xTuple Announces First Open Source ERP Global User Conference – xTupleCon

BSD

• GhostBSD 3.1 Ditches the Nvidia Drivers

  GhostBSD, a FreeBSD-based operating system that relies on GNOME, LXDE, and Openbox desktop environments, is now at version 3.1.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 22 new GNU releases!

• Talk on PRISM and GNUnet at the University of Amsterdam

Public Services/Government

• The joint committee for the French bill on Higher Education and Research confirms the provision giving priority to Free Software

  This Wednesday, 26 June 2013, the members of the joint committee (CMP) for the French bill on higher education and research —from both the National Assembly and the Senate— confirmed the legislation that gives priority to Free Software in the Public Service for Higher Education. April especially welcomes this vote and congratulates the Deputies and Senators. April also thanks all the persons who mobilised and contacted the Parliament Members.

• UK Government Launches “Open Government License v2.0″

• How NSA surveillance destroys privacy and undermines our sovereignty

  The French called it the cabinet noir – the “black chamber”. Set behind the General Post Office in the Rue Coq Heron, its job was to take letters of interest, open them, read their contents and then seal them again without detection by their intended readers or disruption to the postal service. “It is in the secret holes and cellars that the unsealers of letters, like the coiners of false money, carry on their dark labour,” wrote a visitor from London in 1828, describing a room full of steam, staffed by 20 or 30 agents. Created under the monarchy, the cabinet noir survived the transition to the revolutionaries, and then Napoleon. Each railed against it in turn and then, on taking power, suddenly found it indispensable.

Licensing

• Agoraphobic? Rationalising a fear of open source software

  For organisations considering procuring a solution that includes OSS, very little can be expected in the way of warranties, and a clear understanding of exactly which OSS licences apply will be needed. It may also put more pressure on contracted support services if something goes wrong, and some would argue that a supplier of OSS support services has less commercial incentive to get to the bottom of a problem than someone who has invested a lot of time and money in developing and marketing proprietary software.

• What’s Your Take on the GPL?

  To many in this group, the difference between “copyleft” licenses such as the GPL and “permissive” open source licenses are minimal. They note the differences, and take great pains to choose a license that suits their needs, but there is no great philosophical rift between the notion of free software (FOSS) licenses and other open source software (OSS) licenses. Nor do they see the irony in the fact that “permissive” licenses may end-up producing restricted, proprietary software, such as how Apple’s closed OS X is partially built on code freely obtained from FreeBSD and NetBSD.

Openness/Sharing

• Energy Professionals Offered Open-Source, Online Course on Smart Grid

  As conversations about responsible energy use increase, many energy industry experts have championed the use of smart grid technology as a means of delivering energy in an efficient, economical, and environmentally-sound manner. Recognizing the need for more accessible education on the smart grid, Bismarck State College National Energy Center of Excellence, in partnership with the Energy Providers Coalition for Education (EPCE), developed a free, open-source course as part of the National Training & Education Resource (NTER) initiative, created with assistance from the U.S. Department of Energy.

• Check out this fast, cheap, and open-source EV charger

  Charging an electric vehicle can take approximately forever. And unless you fork over some serious cash for a Level 2 charger, there’s basically nothing you can do about it. Except now is one thing you can do: you can build your own, cheaper Level 2 charger based on an open source design now on Kickstarter.

• New Open Source Exhibition Format Asks Artists to Bring Their Own Projectors

• Professional Engineers and Hobbyists Will Increase Reliance on Open Source Hardware and Software in 2013, According to element14 Study

  The use of open source hardware and software will continue to grow among both professional engineers and the hobbyist community in 2013, according to the results of a new survey from element14.

• Sabai Technology Launches New Community Website for Open Source Project JaiRo

• Open company data on the rise: featuring G8, World Bank, EITI…

• Open Data

  • Open Rights Group at Latin American open data events

    Open Rights Group participated in two international conferences in Uruguay last week. We were invited to cover the junction between privacy and open data, an area under increasing scrutiny as governments implement transparency programmes.

• Open Access/Content

  • Open Access: Where are we, what still needs to be done?

    Making Open Access (OA) a reality has proved considerably more difficult and time consuming than OA advocates expected when they started out. It is now 19 years since cognitive scientist Stevan Harnad posted his Subversive Proposal calling on researchers to make their papers freely available on the Web; and it is nearly 12 years since those who took part in the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) coined the term Open Access, and agreed on a definition.

Standards/Consortia

• EU Open Standards: We Want Actions, Not Words

  Open standards has been a recurring theme here on Open Enterprise. It’s also been the occasion of one of the most disgraceful U-turns by the European Commission. That took place in the wake of the European Interoperability Framework v1, which called for any claimed patents to be licensed irrevocably on a royalty-free basis.

  [...]

  >So that raises a crucial question: is the European Commission serious about ending lock-in in the European Union? If it is, it should lead from the front, and break that outrageous and costly 20-year monopoly that the US company has enjoyed at the heart of European power. The Commission should start immediately to deploy open source solutions throughout its many organisational units – specifically, on the desktop, and not just server-side – and draw up a plan to enable the entire IT system to break free of this egregious lock-in in the shortest time possible.

• Who could not be against lock-in for government ICT systems?

  The European Commission (EC) recently published an important report, officially a Communication: Against lock-in: building open ICT systems using standards. The Communication introduces and explains the need for the accompanying: Guide for procurement of standards-based ICT—Elements of Good Practice, which was released at the same time.

D.C. Circuit: Defamation Suit Against Breitbart Can Proceed

A federal appellate court today gave the green light to a defamation lawsuit filed against the late conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart by former U.S. Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod. A three-judge panel affirmed a court order denying Breitbart’s motion to dismiss the case under the District of Columbia’s law barring strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs.

Local lawyers hoping for a conclusive ruling on whether the anti-SLAPP law applies in federal court will have to keep waiting. In the ruling this morning, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decided the case on procedural grounds.

Nonprofit Atheist Group Built A “Monument To Nothing” In Florida

The Monument To Nothing and The Ten Commandments will now sit side-by-side in front of the courthouse.

Science

• First-ever human head transplant is now possible, says neuroscientist

  Technical barriers to grafting one person’s head onto another person’s body can now be overcome, says Dr. Sergio Canavero, a member of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group. In a recent paper, Canavero outlines a procedure modeled on successful head transplants which have been carried out in animals since 1970.

  The one problem with these transplants was that scientists were unable to connect the animals’ spinal cords to their donor bodies, leaving them paralyzed below the point of transplant. But, says Canavero, recent advances in re-connecting spinal cords that are surgically severed mean that it should be technically feasible to do it in humans. (This is not the same as restoring nervous system function to quadriplegics or other victims of traumatic spinal cord injury.)

Hardware

• IDC Records The Decline Of Wintel

Health/Nutrition

• Giant weed that burns and blinds spreads across Canada

  A huge, toxic plant that can burn skin and cause permanent blindness has been found for the first time in eastern Ontario, prompting calls for a federal response to contain the spread of the poisonous plant as fear grows no province is immune.

• The EU campaigning for better, digital healthcare

  Our health system is under constant pressure: the conditions it deals with are increasingly chronic and degenerative; ever busier doctors face ever more stretched resources. That people today are living longer is positive news, and thanks to a high-quality and dedicated medical sector. But it also creates new challenges, and calls for new changes. The answer may lie in eHealth – using digital technology for health and wellbeing.

• This terrifying chart shows we’re not growing enough food to feed the world

  It’s a question that keeps crop scientists up at night: How are we possibly going to feed the world over the next few decades?

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Ex-NSA, CIA director admits US does conduct espionage

  Former CIA and National Security Agency Director, Michael Hayden, has said the United States does conduct espionage on citizens and countries.

• Is NSA Blackmail Inc. for the U.S. Military Industrial Complex?

  Imagine that you are a powerful player who straddles two worlds – the Dept. of Defense and the private sector where corporate defense-contractors live and flourish.

• Soviets ‘pushed theory JFK was CIA hit’

  The Soviet Union was behind the claim the U.S. government masterminded the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

• The CIA Doesn’t Need a ‘Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade’ to Keep Secrets

  Furthermore, because of their chosen careers, CIA employees are made justifiably paranoid about “security violations” — for instance, if you absent-mindedly took a classified document from your office, placed it in your briefcase or purse, exited the building, and then remembered you had it while walking to your car, the Office of Security could slap you with a security violation. (Pro tip: Don’t take a suitcase or large purse to work.)

• Anglo-American “Intelligence Sharing”. Britain’s “Signal Intelligence” (SIGINT) supports CIA Drone Strikes

  His comments come as the UK government is locked in a battle to avoid revealing what GCHQs policy is on providing intelligence to support CIA drone strikes.

• Former Spymaster On Three Decades In The CIA

• Drones, their Impact and the
Pakistani Dilemma

  “Drone attacks are violating our sovereignty as well as international laws. Drone attacks must stop. We have protested many a time. This is simply unacceptable,” Sharif was quoted as saying in a statement issued by his office on June 8.

• Council resolution targets drones, airspace

  The resolution also takes the government to task for the “extrajudicial” use of weaponized drones overseas that have killed many innocent people.

• Nelson Mandela’s transformation ‘from terrorist to icon’

  So revered is Nelson Mandela today that it is easy to forget that for decades he was considered a terrorist by many foreign governments, and some of his current supporters.

• South African Lawyers Demand US President’s Arrest

  The Muslim Lawyers Association (MLA) in South Africa Sudáfrica (MLA) has filed a suit before the Supreme Court against US President Barack Obama for war crimes and acts against human rights, according to press reports.

  The MLA requested Obama’s detention for ordering the death of numerous suspects abroad, which is considered enough reason for him to be subject to investigation and judged in a South African court, according to Africa Herald Express newspaper.

• Extremely Disturbing Video Shows Police Arresting Man Over ‘Distracting’ Loud Music Then Shooting His Dog 4 Times

  The officers are seen quickly approaching Rosby, who shows no signs of resisting and puts his hands behind his back before he is handcuffed.

• Cop Versus Squirrel: Students Object To Police Officer Pepper Spraying Squirrel

  We have discussed cases of the use of tasers or pepper spray as first responses by police when alternatives seem obvious. This video shows a confrontation between an officer and a squirrel where the officer pepper sprays the squirrel over the objections of onlookers.

• Government’s Chilling Arguments To Support “Aiding the Enemy” Charge Against Bradley Manning

  If the Obama administration’s case against Bradley Manning was really about “aiding the enemy,” as opposed to controlling information, then Manning would not be the government official subject to criminal prosecution. The government is biggest leaker of all, even anonymously leaking allegations that recent “leaks” about NSA domestic surveillance (which are really whistleblowing disclosures) have hurt national security. But, only government employees who reveal information the government wants to hide from the public are prosecuted under the Espionage Act or dubious charges like “aiding the enemy” by disclosure. The government’s overzealous prosecution of Manning – even after he offered a plea that could land him 20 years in prison – is very clearly NOT intended to stop all “leaks” of information, rather its purpose is to stop whistleblowers from revealing information that the government does not want the public to know.

• Police Respond To Call Of A Dog Off Leash . . . And Proceed To Shoot The Animal In Front Of Family Home

  Village of South Holland police Officer Chad Barden and other unknown officers are being sued in federal court over another dog shooting. In this case, the police arrived at the scene of a report of a dog off its leash in a suburb of Chicago. While they had dog catching poles, one of the officers shot Randy Green’s Cane Corso dog, Grady, who was sitting on the front porch of his family home when they arrived. Green says that a videotape shows that the dog did not threaten or lunge at the officers before they and Barden shot him three times.

  Police were at the scene for 20 minutes before the shooting. Grady reported got up and walked past them a couple times. There was no report of the dog being vicious or threatening people. At no point did the officers alert the family or use the dog catching poles according to the complaint.

• A Glimpse Inside the Wire

  It’s 2013 and Guantanamo Bay is still open, insanely. Newly released Army documents obtained by Gawker shed light on life inside America’s most infamous prison, where classified documents are burned in coffee cans, American guards are converted to Islam by the suspected terrorists they watch over, and wily detainees wage their own counterintelligence campaigns.

  Through a Freedom of Information Act request, Gawker has obtained a cache of documents detailing internal U.S. military espionage investigations conducted at Guantanamo Bay from 2005-2006. These were carried out by INSCOM, the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command. One of INSCOM’s duties is to protect American forces against espionage from its enemies, known in Army parlance as Subversion and Espionage Directed Against the US Army, or SAEDA.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein to join Canada’s tar sands ‘healing walk’

  Native elders to lead a spiritual gathering to heal land, air, water and all living forms harmed by world’s largest industrial project

• The 10 Dumbest Things Ever Said About Global Warming

  In 2012, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) contended that acceptance of climate science was at odds with Christianity – never mind that many Christian leaders and institutions take climate change very seriously. “My point is, God’s still up there,” he told Voice of Christian Youth America. “The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.”

• Australian-Indonesian carbon project abandoned

  Australia has effectively killed the last of its vaunted on-the-ground projects in Indonesia to restore and protect forests and peatland for the carbon dioxide they store.

  In a small note on the AusAid website, the Commonwealth government has confirmed a $47 million project to restore 25,000 hectares of peatland on the Indonesian island of Kalimantan will end before most of its major milestones are met.

• Over 30 Million Bees Found Dead In Elmwood Canada

  Shortly after 50,000 bees were found dead in an Oregon parking lot (read more here), a staggering 37 million bees have been found dead in Elmwood, Ontario, Canada. Dave Schuit, who runs a honey operation in Elmwood has lost 600 hives. He is pointing the finger at the insecticides known as neonicotinoids, which are manufactured by Bayer CropScience Inc. This also comes after a recent report released by the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) that recorded its largest loss of honeybees ever. You can read more about that here. The European Union has stepped forward, having banned multiple pesticides that have been linked to killing millions of bees. You can view the studies and read more about that here.

• There’s A Two-Headed Baby Turtle Named Thelma And Louise And She’s Adorable

  Several North American river turtles (also known as cooters) were born at the San Antonio Zoo last week, but Thelma and Louise were the only ones born with this rare condition.

• Repsol to drill for oil in Amazon rainforest in Peru

  Company to operate in a region inhabited by indigenous people extremely vulnerable to any contact with outsiders

Finance

• War On the Unemployed

  Is life too easy for the unemployed? You may not think so, and I certainly don’t think so. But that, remarkably, is what many and perhaps most Republicans believe. And they’re acting on that belief: there’s a nationwide movement under way to punish the unemployed, based on the proposition that we can cure unemployment by making the jobless even more miserable.

  [...]

  Nonetheless, the state’s government has just sharply cut aid to the unemployed. In fact, the Republicans controlling that government were so eager to cut off aid that they didn’t just reduce the duration of benefits; they also reduced the average weekly benefit, making the state ineligible for about $700 million in federal aid to the long-term unemployed.

• CFTC charges Corzine, assistant treasurer in MF Global failure

  Former MF Global Chief Executive Jon Corzine was charged Thursday for his role in the failure of the futures brokerage.

  A top U.S. regulator blaed blaming the former Goldman Sachs co-chief executive with being a key actor in one of the country’s 10 biggest bankruptcies.

  The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Thursday it will seek in a civil case to ban Corzine and former Assistant Treasurer Edith O’Brien from the industry, and also seek penalties against the two.

  “Mr. Corzine is charged with being more than a passive actor in the downfall of MF Global,” CFTC enforcement head David Meister said on a call with journalists. “He lacked good faith and … violated his supervision obligations.”

• Big Apple, Bigger Google

  Google has passed Apple as the most valuable technology company in the world—on one measure.

• Farming subsidies: this is the most blatant transfer of cash to the rich

  It’s the silence that puzzles me. Last week the chancellor stood up in parliament to announce that benefits for the very poor would be cut yet again. On the same day, in Luxembourg, the British government battled to maintain benefits for the very rich. It won. As a result, some of the richest people in the country will each continue to receive millions of pounds in income support from taxpayers.

• Latin American Countries Band Together To Fight Growing Problem Of Investor-State Disputes

  As Techdirt has observed, investor-state dispute resolution (ISDR) is turning into a major weapon that corporations can deploy against nations in order to claim damages for some alleged loss of future profits as a result of government action — for example, stricter health or environmental regulations. Last year alone, 62 new investment arbitration cases were initiated against nations, and a record award of $1.77 billion was made against Ecuador.

• MEPs call for freezing EU-US trade talks over spying allegations

  Some EU policymakers said talks for a free trade agreement between Washington and the EU should be put on ice until further clarification from the United States over revelations that American spies wiretapped European Union buildings in Brussels and Washington.

• 81.5% of QE Money Is Not Helping the Economy

  81.5% of Money Created through Quantitative Easing Is Sitting There Gathering Dust … Instead of Helping the Economy

• Unsolicited advice for those entering the brave new world of work, or worse, journalism.

  It must be summer. In anticipation of fall course schedules, several people have asked what I think someone who wants to be a journalist should study.

• Spain’s property sale of the century

  The Spanish government has approved a plan to sell a quarter of its state-owned properties in an attempt to raise hundreds of millions and fill the government’s empty coffers.

  Some 15,000 properties, from office buildings to agricultural land, will be put up for sale over the next seven years.

• Britain turns back the clock on migrant domestic workers

  The government’s decision to end the overseas domestic worker visa has given bad employers opportunity to abuse, argues Paul Donovan.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Keystone Academy: Where Legislators Learn the Etiquette of Serving Special Interests

  In October 2012, nine U.S. state legislators went on an industry paid trip to explore the Alberta tar sands. Publicly described as an “ALEC Academy,” documents obtained by CMD show the legislators were accompanied on a chartered flight by a gaggle of oil-industry lobbyists, were served lunch by Shell Oil, dinner by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, and that the expenses of the trip were paid for by TransCanada and other corporations and groups with a direct financial interest in the Alberta tar sands and the proposed Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline.

• Gov. Walker Vetoes Bail Bonds, Attack on Investigative Journalism

  Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has vetoed a budget provision that would have radically changed the state’s pre-trial justice system and another that would have kicked an independent journalism outfit off of University of Wisconsin campuses.

• What Tea Party Did Tom Friedman Go To?

  That is an odd characterization of Occupy, which most of the time tried to stress that the problem with banking interests controlling the political process was bipartisan. It’s not that he’s wrong, but the emphasis seems a little off.

  But his characterization of the Tea Party is wrong about the target of their anger, as well as the political motivations behind that anger. How many people watched the Tea Party protests and thought, “Boy, are they mad at the Republicans!”? Clearly the bulk of the energy behind that movement was directed at Democrats and the Obama White House.

Censorship

• Turkey heads for Twitter showdown after anti-government protests

  Government asks Twitter to set up ‘representative office’ inside Turkey in move that could presage censorship of service

• Opinion: Why Is the UK the Most Censored Nation in Europe?

  When Claire Perry MP held her parliamentary inquiry into “Protecting Children Online”, I was invited to appear as a witness on behalf of the adult industry. I was happy to attend the inquiry and advocate against censorship – not simply because I was selling porn online, but because I have always been an ardent advocate of free speech.

  I was disturbed, shocked even, to find that the free speech advocates at that inquiry consisted of myself (a porn vendor) and one other person, Jim Killock, of the Open Rights Group, a small campaigning body. Here was an all-party group of MPs considering whether it would be right to introduce Internet censorship for an entire democratic country, and the entire “free speech lobby” appeared to consist of myself and Jim. Such an inquiry in the US would have threatened the First Amendment to the Constitution, and would have provoked activism and legal action. Was Britain really so weakly defended against censorship?

Privacy

• Spying ‘Out of Control’: EU Official Questions Trade Negotiations

  Senior European Union officials are outraged by revelations that the US spied on EU representations in Washington and New York. Some have called for a suspension of talks on the trans-Atlantic free trade agreement.

• Will the Trans-Atlantic Spying Scandal Kill the Trans-Atlantic “Trade” Scandal?

• Attacks from America: NSA Spied on European Union Offices

  America’s NSA intelligence service allegedly targeted the European Union with its spying activities. According to SPIEGEL information, the US placed bugs in the EU representation in Washington and infiltrated its computer network. Cyber attacks were also perpetrated against Brussels in New York and Washington.

• The Absolute Joy Of The Guardian’s Sting Over PRISM And The NSA

• US to respond to NSA spying allegations

  The United States has said it will respond to demands for answers over a report claiming the National Security Agency bugged EU institutions. US officials say they will discuss the matter directly with EU leaders.

• Why Innocent People Should Fear the NSA’s PRISM Program

  The NSA would also obviously be able to intimidate/blackmail anyone who has had an extra-marital affair, which could be a corrupting influence on a future Bill Clinton in office.

• The NSA’s surveillance activity snags 500 million German ‘communications connections’ each month

• Chalk Another One Up to Free Speech Hypocrisy

  Corporate media coverage of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has enjoyed the supposed irony of his reportedly seeking asylum in Ecuador, a country that U.S. journalists depict as failing to measure up to their standards of freedom.

• California Man Chalks Up A Victory For Free Speech In Bank Of America Case

• NSA bugs EU embassies, infiltrates their computer networks: German media

  The disclosure triggered strong reaction from EU leaders who demanded full and speedy clarification from the US.

• NSA’s Transatlantic Surveillance May Sabotage European Free-Trade Talks

• Second Circuit Suggests That the Plain View Exception Should Be Applied More Narrowly to Digital Searches

  As regular readers know, I am very interested in the scope of the plain view exception for computer searches. In physical searches, if the government comes across evidence unrelated to the search it is lawfully conducting, the government can seize that evidence as long as its incriminating nature is immediately apparent. I have argued that this rule is troublesome in the context of digital searches because everything comes into plain view in computer searches. A computer warrant for anything becomes a warrant for everything, making every computer warrant a general warrant in practice. To counter that dynamic, I have argued that the plain view exception should not apply to digital searches. See Orin Kerr, Searches and Seizures in a Digital World, 119 Harv. L. Rev. 531 (2005).

• Second Circuit Suggests That the Plain View Exception Should Be Applied More Narrowly to Digital Searches

  As regular readers know, I am very interested in the scope of the plain view exception for computer searches. In physical searches, if the government comes across evidence unrelated to the search it is lawfully conducting, the government can seize that evidence as long as its incriminating nature is immediately apparent. I have argued that this rule is troublesome in the context of digital searches because everything comes into plain view in computer searches. A computer warrant for anything becomes a warrant for everything, making every computer warrant a general warrant in practice. To counter that dynamic, I have argued that the plain view exception should not apply to digital searches. See Orin Kerr, Searches and Seizures in a Digital World, 119 Harv. L. Rev. 531 (2005).

• Wyden and Udall to General Alexander: NSA Must Correct Inaccurate Statement in Fact Sheet

  Today, Senators Wyden and Udall wrote to General Keith Alexander urging him to correct inaccurate and misleading statements in the NSA’s recently released fact sheet on Section 702 of Foreign Intelligence Survelliance Act (FISA).

• Study Shows Many iPhone Apps Defy Apple’s Privacy Advice

  Researchers say that over a third of iPhone apps still access a device’s unique identifier.

• Exclusive: Met supergrass scandal – corrupt private investigators infiltrate witness-protection programme

  Police officers knew for years about the crucial security breach – but did nothing

• U.S. Surveillance Is Not Aimed at Terrorists

  The debate over the U.S. government’s monitoring of digital communications suggests that Americans are willing to allow it as long as it is genuinely targeted at terrorists. What they fail to realize is that the surveillance systems are best suited for gathering information on law-abiding citizens.

• GCHQ surveillance: Germany blasts UK over mass monitoring

  Minister questions legality of mass tapping of calls and internet and demands to know extent to which Germans were targeted

• US must not prosecute NSA whistleblower Snowden – Amnesty Intl

• ‘Americans have no privacy left, no capacity to communicate without govt watching’

  The US government pulls out all stops to prosecute, hound, and capture those who reveal classified data. This plus constant control and surveillance makes it impossible to keep anything private or secret, Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges told RT.

• FTC commissioner calls for way to ‘reclaim your name’

  Consumers should be able to retake control of data collected by websites and data brokers, Brill says

• F.T.C. Member Starts ‘Reclaim Your Name’ Campaign for Personal Data

• Meet PRISM’s little brother: Socmint

  The PRISM scandal engulfing US and UK intelligence agencies has blown the debate wide open over what privacy means in the digital age and whether the Internet risks becoming a kind of Stasi 2.0. The extent of the UK’s involvement in this type of mass surveillance—which already appears exhaustive—shows just what a potential intelligence goldmine social media data can be.

• Obama “concerned” Edward Snowden could leak more

  President Obama said Thursday he won’t engage in “wheeling and dealing and trading” to get NSA leaker Edward Snowden extradited to the U.S., but he remains “concerned” over what other classified information Snowden may still try to disseminate.

• The judges who preside over America’s secret court

  Twelve of the 14 judges who have served this year on the most secret court in America are Republicans and half are former prosecutors

• Data, meet spies: The unfinished state of Web crypto

  Many large Web companies have failed to adopt a decades-old encryption technology to safeguard confidential user communications. Google is a rare exception, and Facebook is about to follow suit.

• Baltasar Garzón has chosen not to represent Edward Snowden

  While he will still continue to represent Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, Baltasar Garzón has chosen not to act on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s behalf.
  According to Spanish media, Garzón, who is a renowned former human rights “superjudge”, announced on Wednesday that his firm has declined to represent US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden.

• Snowden’s father seeks deal with US govt

• New leak shows NSA harvests To, From, and BCC lines of e-mail data

  Metadata for non-US conversants have been collected en masse since 2001.

• White hats reveal major holes in NSA website

  Several vulnerabilities have been found in the National Security Agency (NSA) website.

  Although now reported and fixed, a report found that there were cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities on the main NSA forward facing web server. The report claimed that two vulnerabilities were found in “shoddily outsourced third party software written in ColdFusion”, which Rustle Research researcher Horace Grant said could be used to impersonate NSA personnel and web traffic.

• Daniel Ellsberg Issues Call for a New Church Committee To Probe NSA

  Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg is calling for a new Church Committee to probe the “abuses of American intelligence agencies” and “restore the protections in the Bill of Rights.”

• Norton Mobile Insight Discovers Facebook Privacy Leak

  Today we released a new version of Norton Mobile Security for Android devices that contains our new Norton Mobile Insight technology. Mobile Insight has analyzed over 4 million Android applications and processes tens of thousands of new applications every day. Through automatic and proprietary static and dynamic analysis techniques, Mobile Insight is able to automatically discover malicious applications, privacy risks, and potentially intrusive behavior. Further, Mobile Insight will tell you exactly what risky behavior an application will perform and give you specific, relevant, and actionable information.

• Facebook stealing phone numbers: Norton

• Germany also profits from US, British spying

  Public outcry has emerged over British and American monitoring of global communications. But the German government has so far been reserved in its criticism, partly because the country receives data from such monitoring.

• Prism threatens ‘sovereignty’ of all EU data

  The US Prism revelations show that the sovereignty of all European Union data is under threat, argues Caspar Bowden

• How The Indian Government’s ‘Central Monitoring System’ Makes The NSA Look Like A Paragon Of Restraint

  If the NSA’s surveillance capabilities make the Stasi’s spying seem completely underwhelming, the Indian government’s efforts in the same arena threatens to make our men and women at the NSA look as if they’re just not applying themselves.

• Obama: US will give allies info on spying claims

• Turkey to Show ‘Required Reaction’ over NSA Spying Revelations

• NSA spying row: bugging friends is unacceptable, warn Germans

• European Commission responds to NSA spying allegations – video

• Even the online ad industry is outraged at PRISM and Tempora. But why?

  The revelations about the activities of American and British spy agencies are so egregious that even the online ad industry is up in arms. As well they should be — it threatens their livelihood.

• Cover Story: How the NSA Targets Germany and Europe

• Putin hints at offer for Snowden to remain in Russia

  Vladimir Putin has for the first time floated the idea of the US whistleblower Edward Snowden remaining in Russia, a move that would enrage the Washington as it continues to lobby for his extradition.

• Blind Fear Of Cyberwar Drives Columnist To Call For Elimination Of The Internet

  Every time I think I’ve read the least well-thought out luddite argument, someone comes along to top it, and today we have columnist Robert Samuelson in the Washington post with what might be the silliest, most lacking-in-thought argument for why we should get rid of the internet. The short version: yes, the internet has provided us with some good stuff, but because there’s a yet unproven risk that it might also lead to some cyberattacks that might lead to as yet undetermined problems, we should scrap the whole thing. Oddly, the WaPo had put different titles on the piece online and in the print newspaper. Online, it’s entitled: “Beware the Internet and the danger of cyberattacks.” In the physical paper, they apparently went with the much more ridiculous: “Is the Internet Worth It?”

• French parties call for Snowden political asylum

  NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden should be given political asylum in France, party leaders from across the political spectrum have said in the wake of the latest US spying allegations.

• Edward Snowden breaks silence to threaten new U.S. disclosures

  Former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden has broken his silence for the first time since he fled to Moscow eight days ago to say he remains free to make new disclosures about U.S. spying activity.

  In a letter to Ecuador seen by Reuters, Snowden said the United States was illegally persecuting him for revealing its electronic surveillance program, PRISM. He also thanked Ecuador for helping him get to Russia and for examining his asylum request.

• US to EU: Quit whining about our spying on you

  European officials are even more shocked and outraged today than they were yesterday at the revelations in Der Spiegel that the US government has been spying on the EU’s offices in Washington and New York. “These are disturbing news if proven true. They demand full clarification,” the EU said in a terse statement today. French president François Hollande said that the revelations might threaten a big round of trade talks scheduled for next week in Washington. “We aren’t in the Cold War anymore,” said Steffen Seibert, chief spokesman for German chancellor Angela Merkel, at a news conference in Berlin.

  But while America’s European allies may be shocked, they can’t be surprised. Anyone familiar with the spy-versus-spy games in global diplomatic hubs knows that everyone has been spying on each other for decades.

  Some offices at the UN are probably being bugged by more than a dozen foreign governments, according to a former head of FBI counter-intelligence. He says governments are spying on each other so much in Washington and at the UN that it’s surprising their spooks and technicians don’t bump into each other more. At any given time, the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division is investigating dozens of potential breaches of security.

  Two US officials familiar with American electronic espionage programs told Bloomberg that “multinational institutions are routine targets for both technological and human intelligence by virtually all nations that are members of them.” And the State Department cables leaked by Wikileaks show that US diplomats have essentially been required to spy on their counterparts for years.

  [...]

  If anything, Washington spies on its friends more than its enemies because it has more access, and needs to know whether it can trust them on key strategic deliberations, according to Peter Probst, a former senior CIA and defense department official.

• Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow

  For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

  In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

• Did Ed Snowden Actually Write His Latest ‘Statement’?

  Update: And… just as I finished this post, Manjoo tweeted that they’d changed the text to “has been.” However, that’s not what it was originally. Here’s a screenshot of it from my screen with the wrong “have been” in there.

• GOP Maj. Leader Eric Cantor On NSA And Investing In Small Government Technology

• Bush Defends NSA Program, Obama’s Stance

  Former president George W. Bush criticized Edward Snowden and expressed confidence that the Obama administration would appropriately handle the controversy about its surveillance tactics in an interview filmed Sunday with CNN in Zambia.

  Speaking to CNN’s Robyn Curnow, Mr. Bush said Mr. Snowden, the former CIA employee who leaked classified National Security Agency information, had “damaged the security of the country.” Mr. Bush said he was sure the administration would “deal” with the aftermath of the leaks, and said he approved of the NSA’s tactics. “I think there needs to be a balance, and as the president explained, there is a proper balance,” he said. The full interview is airing later Monday.

• EU Officials Angered by Fresh NSA Spying Revelations [VIDEO]

• Rafael Correa not considering Snowden asylum: helping him was a ‘mistake’

  Ecuador is not considering Edward Snowden’s asylum request and never intended to facilitate his flight from Hong Kong, president Rafael Correa said as the whistleblower made a personal plea to Quito for his case to be heard.

• Obama tries to ease NSA tensions and insists: Europe spies on US too

  Barack Obama sought to defuse growing international tension on Monday over fresh revelations of US surveillance programmes on its allies by claiming European countries are also spying on him.

  Amid an outcry among EU leaders at alleged diplomatic espionage including the bugging of embassies and parliament buildings, the president insisted the US was behaving no differently from other countries.

• Julian Assange and Ecuador relations at crisis point as Edward Snowden breaks silence with letter of thanks to Quito

  Edward Snowden, the former NSA employee who blew the whistle on a huge spying programme by US authorities, has accused the American government of “persecution” and thanked Ecuador for standing against it. And in a separate statement, released by WikiLeaks, he accused the US of putting pressure on world leaders over his case.

• The NSA reimagined as a business and jobs platform

  The National Security Agency could be rejigged as a self-funded entity fulfilling its missions while saving taxpayers billions of dollars and also providing them with a host of useful services.

• NSA Scandal: Germany Summons US Ambassador over ‘Cold War Spying’ Claims

  < Chancellor Angela Merkel accuses Washington of 'unacceptable Cold War behaviour' /blockquote>

• The NSA : America’s ever-expanding digital spy agency

  The latest leak from Snowden alleges the NSA has been eavesdropping on US allies, including the European Union offices in Washington, which would fit in with the agency’s ability to scoop up any conversation or email relevant to “foreign targets.”

  Created after World War II to avoid another Pearl Harbor-style surprise attack, the NSA “has transformed itself into the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever created,” wrote author James Bamford, whose books helped lift the lid on the agency’s work.

• Reddit to thwart the NSA’s tracking plans with a gift exchange? Yup.

  One of the ways the NSA is doing this is by tracking a large list of flagged key words that are pretty common to everyday conversation. Sites like Motherboard.tv’s “Hello, NSA” takes that list of terms and automatically generates a phrase using a few of them that you can then post all over the Internet. The purpose is to basically skew all of the NSA’s efforts by going out of your way to mention these terms — thus making them less unique to terrorism (I mean, if they really were unique to terrorism in the first place.)

• Edward Snowden’s Moscow stopover became end of the line … for now

  When the NSA whistleblower melted into Hong Kong’s streets, many thought he would stay and fight his case. Instead, he ran

• We never hand anyone over, says Vladimir Putin as Edward Snowden asks for asylum

  The whistleblower behind a series of leaks that revealed the United States was spying on its allies has applied for political asylum in Russia, it has emerged, as the French President François Hollande threatened to call off EU negotiations on a major trade deal unless the snooping stopped.

• NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden is a gift to Russia

  Edward Snowden presents Moscow with an intriguing dilemma. On the one hand, his subversion of surveillance techniques and his role as a whistleblower go against everything that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the clique of former KGB officers around him stand for. On the other hand, of course, his leaks are aimed against the US, and thus a chorus of Russian officials who would find a Russian whistleblower doing the same thing repulsive has been lining up to praise Mr Snowden.

• NSA PRISM snoops on European communications

  THE REACH of the US PRISM snooping scheme extends into Germany and as many as 500,000 citizens.

  According to Der Spiegel, reporters have seen more documentation about the US National Security Agency (NSA) PRISM communications surveillance programme, and found that it extends to European governments and citizens.

• ‘Spying on allies is not unusual’: John Kerry hits back at claim US bugged 38 foreign embassies as as Hollande wades in calling for snooping on allies to ‘stop immediately’

  Microphones were put in building and computers compromised as spooks targeted EU in Washington and UN offices in New York

• Snowden breaks silence to denounce Obama for revoking his passport, opposing his asylum requests

  The fugitive U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden, believed to be in legal limbo in the Moscow airport, is expanding his requests for asylum to another 19 countries, including China, according to WikiLeaks.

• Why Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald’s Fight Against Tyranny Follows in Gandhi’s Footsteps

  There is a linguistic gobbledegoo going on about what it is that Edward Snowden has committed that was made possible by the “advocacy journalism” of Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian. While many, in the US and around the world, seem to believe that Snowden committed a “heroic act” by blowing a loud whistle on the global spying by the US, the established order keeps insisting—noop, it’s “treason.”

• James Clapper is still lying to America

  A smoking gun shows Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is a big liar — and it’s not the first time

• Welcome to the Post-PRISM Society: A primer.

  Questions of privacy, security and control have occupied me for a long time, both personally and professionally. In fact it was a significant aspect of my decision to switch focus from the Free Software Foundation Europe to Kolab Systems: I wanted to reduce the barriers to actually putting the principles into practice. That required a professional solution which would offer all the benefits and features people have grown accustomed to, but would provide it as high quality Open Source / Free Software with a strong focus on Open Standards.

• Petition written by Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower behind the Pentagon Papers

• Snowden applies for political asylum in Russia – and 20 other countries

  Vladimir Putin has for the first time floated the idea of the US whistleblower Edward Snowden remaining in Russia, hours after the fugitive applied for political asylum in the country.

• The NSA’s metastasised intelligence-industrial complex is ripe for abuse

  Where oversight and accountability have failed, Snowden’s leaks have opened up a vital public debate on our rights and privacy

• Info Wars: Paranoia, Surveillance and an Empire in Decline

  These days, despite state-corporate control and manipulation of the mainstream media, many see through the charade of today’s ‘liberal democracy’ and the ‘pack of lies’ which underpin it. The more the US lacks control over ‘the message’, the more it has to resort to violence and restrictions on freedoms. The more paranoid it becomes, the more penetrating and widespread the surveillance and ‘information gathering’ is. It is the type of insecurity that derives from an empire in decline. It is the type of oppression that derives from an empire that is ideologically and militarily fighting for its continued existence (10).

• My Creeping Concern that the NSA Leaker Edward Snowden is not who he Purports to be…

  Again I hate to cast any skepticism on what seems to be a great story of a brave spy coming in from the cold in the service of American freedom. And I would never raise such questions in public if I had not been told by a very senior official in the intelligence world that indeed, there are some news stories that they create and drive – even in America (where propagandizing Americans is now legal). But do consider that in Eastern Germany, for instance, it was the fear of a machine of surveillance that people believed watched them at all times – rather than the machine itself – that drove compliance and passivity. From the standpoint of the police state and its interests – why have a giant Big Brother apparatus spying on us at all times – unless we know about it?

• How algorithms rule the world

  The NSA revelations highlight the role sophisticated algorithms play in sifting through masses of data. But more surprising is their widespread use in our everyday lives. So should we be more wary of their power?

• Statement by the European Commission on alleged surveillance of EU premises

  As soon as the media reports about alleged spying and eavesdropping on EU premises and delegations were made known, the Commission asked the European External Action Service to immediately raise the matter with the US authorities in Washington DC and in Brussels to verify the veracity of these reports.

• Roundup: NSA, UK Fallout Persists

  Even the weekend news cycle is not immune to new developments in U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and UK spying allegations, with headlines upon headlines of new news and reactions to Edward Snowden’s revelations.

  The New York Times’ Kevin O’Brien writes, “Europe was in an uproar Sunday over a magazine’s charge that Washington bugged European Union offices in the United States,” but adds that, “the backlash on another type of intrusion has been surprisingly muted, namely the disclosure that U.S. technology leaders…may have shared EU citizens’ personal data with an American surveillance program called PRISM.”

• Whistleblower debunks claim that the NSA is keeping you safe

  Thomas Drake, a whistleblowing predecessor of Snowden, published a written testimony in the Guardian news explaining how the information that Snowden is releasing is exactly what he saw during his time working at the NSA.

• NSA joint author on OpenStack Security Guidebook

• Letter to the President and People of Ecuador

  There are few world leaders who would risk standing for the human rights of an individual against the most powerful government on earth, and the bravery of Ecuador and its people is an example to the world.

  I must express my deep respect for your principles and sincere thanks for your government’s action in considering my request for political asylum.

  The government of the United States of America has built the world’s largest system of surveillance. This global system affects every human life touched by technology; recording, analysing, and passing secret judgment over each member of the international public.

• The price of truth

  While the international press plays up the information leaked by Edward Snowden as a revelation concerning the PRISM surveillance program, feigning to have discovered what everyone should already have known for a long time, Thierry Meyssan is particularly curious about the meaning of this rebellion. From this perspective, he attaches more importance to the case of General Cartwright, who has also been indicted for espionage.

• Will US General Be Spared Obama’s (Selective) Wrath Against Leakers?

  Could the latest target of President Obama’s aggressive war against leakers of government secrets be a recent, and very high-level, member of the country’s military power structure?

• Press Latched On to Snowden’s ‘Dropout’ Status

  Edward Snowden has been characterized as many things in recent weeks, but journalists’ discounting him as a “high-school dropout” speaks volumes about media portrayals of education.

• Prism event in Parliament

  Around 70 people attended our PRISM and Tempora event in Parliament last Thursday…

• Poland to demand explanation over allegations of U.S. spying

  Poland, among the staunchest U.S. allies in Europe, said on Tuesday it will demand an explanation from Washington about allegations from ex-intelligence contractor Edward Snowden that U.S. agencies spied on European Union communications. – See more at: http://www.tidewaterreview.com/news/national-world-news/sns-rt-us-usa-security-snowden-sikorski-20130702,0,688495.story#sthash.Bi8J50Lu.dpuf

• Turkey and Japan Tighten Screws on Washington over NSA Spying

  Turkey and Japan have joined other countries in tightening the screws on Washington over the latest NSA leaks which suggested that the American agency extensively spied on its allies.

• Warrantless Surveillance? The NSA Did It Before, At Least Three Times

  The National Security Agency’s widespread surveillance of communications by Americans may have caused a scandal when it was revealed last month, but it was hardly the first time the sprawling, super-secret entity was caught snooping on American citizens. In fact, the NSA was caught spying on Americans, for decades, long before the 2001 attacks on the U.S. persuaded authorities to create mass eavesdropping programs in an attempt to catch terrorists.

• Barack Obama seeks to soothe relations with EU over NSA spying – video

• Europe must get tough with the US over NSA spying revelations

  The EU must stop cosying up to the US, protect its citizens and investigate the possibility of espionage by a foreign power

• Have the NSA revelations made you change your online habits?

• Prism leak indicates real-time surveillance, says paper

  Fresh details about Prism have emerged after the Washington Post published four more leaked slides detailing the US internet surveillance programme.

  The paper says the documents indicate the FBI has installed equipment on the property of certain US-based tech firms and passes on retrieved data to the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA).

• Reding: ‘I am still awaiting a written response’ over US, UK spying allegations

  European Commission requests for clarification from the American and British governments relating to espionage allegations remain unanswered as more revelations continue to stoke European political indignation.

  German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday (29 June) that the US National Security Agency (NSA) bugged EU offices and gained access to EU internal computer networks.

• Obama defends U.S. intelligence-gathering tactics

  President Obama defended U.S. intelligence-gathering tactics Monday in the wake of a report that the United States conducted electronic monitoring of European Union offices and computer networks.

• US government declares hacking an act of war, then hacks allies

  Revelations from European leaders on Monday that the National Security Agency bugged European Union offices in Washington and hacked into its computer network bring to light hypocrisy on the part of the U.S. government.

  In 2011, the Pentagon released its first formal cyber strategy, which called computer hacking from other nations an “act of war,” according to the Wall Street Journal. In late June of this year, WSJ reported that Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, released information alleging the U.S. government was hacking Chinese targets “that include the nation’s mobile-phone companies and one of the country’s most prestigious universities.”

• Allies turn on US over Snowden

  U.S. allies are turning on the Obama administration over the latest revelations from National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

  French politicians from the right and the left and a leader of Germany’s Green Party called for their countries to grant amnesty to Snowden on Monday amid continental outrage over reports America bugged offices of the European Union.

• All about Prism, Internet privacy and — wait! — squirrel!

  Some people are deeply upset about the latest incursions into our privacy. But as a society, we don’t seem to care all that much.

Civil Rights

• Journalism, Even When It’s Tilted

  In a refracted media world where information comes from everywhere, the line between two “isms” — journalism and activism — is becoming difficult to discern. As American news media have pulled back from international coverage, nongovernmental organizations have filled in the gaps with on-the-scene reports and Web sites. State houses have lost reporters who used to provide accountability, so citizens have turned to digital enterprises, some of which have partisan agendas.

• On the freedom to speak

  In the course of both, I referred to one example I had recently learned of created by Palantir. The specific technology essentially builds an audit trail to the core, so any use of data by, say, a gov’t official, is perfectly tractable.

• Renowned Security Expert Bruce Schneier Joins EFF Board of Directors

  San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is honored to announce the newest member of its Board of Directors: renowned security expert Bruce Schneier.

• House vs. Senate on the NDAA

  Raffaela has already posted on both the House of Representatives‘s and the Senate‘s versions of this year’s NDAA–highlighting their differences with regards to Guantanamo detentions and transfers. But I wanted to emphasize the point, which seems to me both very important and potentially offering a major breakthrough in the politics of Guantanamo.

• Center for Internet and Society Launches “Cookie Clearinghouse” to Enable User Choice for Online Tracking

• Germans Loved Obama. Now We Don’t Trust Him.

  IN May 2010, I received a brown envelope. In it was a CD with an encrypted file containing six months of my life. Six months of metadata, stored by my cellphone provider, T-Mobile. This list of metadata contained 35,830 records. That’s 35,830 times my phone company knew if, where and when I was surfing the Web, calling or texting.

  The truth is that phone companies have this data on every customer. I got mine because, in 2009, I filed a suit against T-Mobile for the release of all the data on me that had been gathered and stored. The reason this information had been preserved for six months was because of Germany’s implementation of a 2006 European Union directive.

• Edward Snowden submits asylum applications

  On 30th June 2013 WikiLeaks’ legal advisor in the Edward Snowden matter, Sarah Harrison, submitted by hand a number of requests for asylum and asylum assistance on behalf of Edward J. Snowden, the NSA whistleblower.

• Wikileaks Files for Snowden Asylum in India, Other Countries

  Snowden, a former defense contractor in the United States, has been charged with treason by America for leaking secret documents on the country’s massive surveillance program.

  The other countries to which Wikileaks has applied for asylum include: Austria, Bolivia, China, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Venezuela, Ecuador and Ireland.

• Tell EU Member States: Save Greek “undesirables” from internment camps!

• Ohio Police Threaten Unconstitutional Searches To Stop Citizens Who React “Suspiciously”

  The police in Mayfield Heights, Ohio are clearly put out that the Supreme Court has ruled out checkpoints for drugs. They have come up with what they believe is the next best thing: fake drug checkpoints. They are effectively threatening an unconstitutional stop to see which drivers flee . . . and then searching their vehicles. It turns out that Police Chief Fred W. Bittner has support from the local prosecutors in threatening police abuse as a basis to stop cars.

• Egypt’s Army Issues Ultimatum to Morsi

• Egypt’s President Morsi rebuffs army 48-hour ultimatum and says presidency will go forward on it’s ‘previously plotted path’

  Egypt set for a military coup if Muslim Brotherhood President clings to power

• Thirty-Three MILLION People. Egypt Rises WITH UPDATES. Morsi Has 48 Hours

  That’s an unofficial number, of course. But that’s the unofficial number of people who are out protesting against the government of Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood today. Thirty-three million all over Egypt. The largest protest in the history of the world.

• San Diego Jury Acquits on All Counts Occupy Chalk Protestor Targeted by Bank of America

  Bank of America pushed for the prosecution of Olson on vandalism charges for writing his First Amendment opinions on public sidewalks (and in one case on Bank of America pavement). In fact the elected conservative SD City Attorney, Jan Goldsmith, didn’t even initiate charges against Olson until months after he wrote in chalk on sidewalks in front of three Bank of America branches in SD. It was only after the local security officer for Bank of America relentlessly prodded the City Attorney’s office that Olson was charged with the 13 counts of vandalism.

• San Diego jury finds protester not guilty in chalk-vandalism case

• Understanding Evil

  When we start talking about his war crimes, we might as well be talking about a figure from a history textbook, for all the emotion we show. If we were on a television program and you were watching us with the mute button pressed, you would imagine I was asking about his grandchildren. Instead I am asking about how he murdered other people’s grandchildren.

DRM

• W3C Chief: To Prevent Parts Of The Web From Being Walled Off, We Need To Wall It Off Ourselves

  But here’s the problem: DRM itself is what allows “walled gardens” and “closed apps.” So, if they truly believe that’s not good, they should be against adding DRM to HTML 5. The argument made here is truly bizarre. It also presupposes that the web needs content companies more than the content companies need the web. That’s almost certainly incorrect. Whenever the content companies have chosen to go in the other direction and to wall off things and lock them up, that’s when you see the content flow through to the open web in an unauthorized manner. The way to stop that is for content companies to learn to embrace the web and to recognize, as many in the music world finally did, that DRM is a waste of time. It doesn’t stop or even slow down copyright infringement. It just acts as a huge pain in the ass for those who acquired the works in a legitimate and authorized manner.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Patented Drug Turns to Gold (With lots of Government Help)

  The question for Jazz now becomes whether competitors will be induced to compete, lowering prices, once the 7-year tax cut expires. Price competition seems unlikely, since it currently has only 10,500 customers and a competitor would have to gamble that it can take market share from Jazz.

  Question for taxpayers: how long will this ripoff continue?

• Copyrights

  • Group finalizes treaty to expand book access for world’s blind community

    Negotiators at the World Intellectual Property Organization have finalized terms on a copyright treaty that would provide more book access to the world’s blind and visually impaired.

  • Appeals court calls for “fair use” ruling in Google Books case

    In a major new ruling in the Google Books case, the Second Circuit decertified a class action and told Judge Denny Chin to rule on whether Google’s book scanning is fair use.

  • The proposed exceptions to copyright law offer greater flexibility to teaching and research activities

    2013 is a momentous year for UK copyright law. This month, the Intellectual Property Office has released eight draft Statutory Instruments (SI) for copyright exceptions, among them education, libraries/archives and quotation. These drafts have been produced off the back of the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property which recommended changes to copyright law in areas where the current law is confusing or has not kept pace with developments. So what exactly is being proposed and what implications will these exceptions have on the higher education community?

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Kernel Space

• Kernel Log: Coming in 3.10 (Part 4)

  Linux 3.10 will be able to use the video acceleration features offered by Radeon graphics cores. Systems with Intel graphics will wake from standby faster. Linux now has an input device driver for Apple’s infrared receiver.

• A New DRM Driver Is Coming To Linux 3.11 Kernel

  Beyond the exciting Radeon DRM driver changes that includes the long-awaited dynamic power management support and also initial support for the HD 8000 “Sea Islands” hardware, there will also be a new DRM driver to premiere with the Linux 3.11 kernel.

• AMD A10-6800K Richland APU On Linux

  Earlier this month AMD unveiled their Richland desktop APUs as an upgraded version of Trinity. While still based upon Piledriver CPU cores, the AMD A10-6800K APU under Linux is a modest upgrade until the arrival of the Jaguar-based APUs. For starting off our Linux testing of the A10-6800K are Ubuntu Linux benchmarks of this high-end Richland APU compared against the A10-5800K Trinity APU.

• LLDB 3.3 Grows In Use For Linux Developers

  While the innovative LLVM compiler infrastructure is mentioned extremely often on Phoronix along with its Clang C/C++ compiler, receiving less coverage is LLDB. However, with LLVM 3.3, the LLVM Debugger has grown in functionality and is growing in usefulness.

• Samsung Continues Advancing Its Exynos DRM

  Samsung has added S3C64XX SoC support to their Exynos DRM graphics driver, updated their DeviceTree support, and has begun utilizing the Common Clock Framework.

• Graphics Stack

  • Radeon In Linux 3.11 Is Fantastic With PM, Sea Islands

    The pull request for the Radeon DRM graphics driver changes for the Linux 3.11 kernel has been submitted. The open-source Radeon Linux graphics driver changes in this next kernel development cycle include dynamic power management (including ASPM) and support for Radeon HD 8000 “Sea Islands” graphics processors as the most prominent changes.

  • Nouveau Gets H.264/MPEG2 Decoding From VP2

    Patches published this week allow for H.264 and MPEG2 video decoding on certain NVIDIA GeForce GPUs via the VP2 PureVideo HD hardware engine.

    On the NV84 (GeForce 8600) through NV96 (GeForce 9400~9600~9700) GPUs and NVA0 (GT 200) graphics processors is a V2 engine that is now supported by the reverse-engineered open-source NVIDIA graphics driver. The NVIDIA VP2 engine is a bit-stream processor for decoding H.264 and a video processor to take care of certain video operations on MPEG/H.264/VC-1 streams.

  • AMD RadeonSI Gallium3D Performance Has A Long Way To Go

    With Fedora 19 presenting a nice “out of the box” experience for AMD Radeon HD 7000 series graphics using the open-source RadeonSI Gallium3D driver, benchmarks of the open-source driver were done and compared to previous generations of AMD hardware. Sadly, there’s still much work ahead for the Radeon HD 7000 series driver in being able to catch up with the hardware supported under the mature R600 Gallium3D driver.

  • AMD Sea Islands Support Comes To Radeon Gallium3D

    Two days after AMD’s massive Radeon DRM driver patch-set that provided initial dynamic power management support as well as initial Radeon HD 8000 “Sea Islands” graphics processor support, the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver has been updated on the user-space side.

  • AMD Southern Islands vs. NVIDIA Fermi/Kepler On Gallium3D

    Yesterday I posted benchmarks of the AMD RadeonSI Gallium3D driver looking at the open-source driver performance for the Radeon HD 7000 series graphics cards. The performance is comparatively very poor right now compared to earlier generations of AMD Radeon hardware that is better supported. But how does the open-source performance compare between the AMD Radeon HD 7000 series and the NVIDIA GeForce 400/500/6000 “Fermi” and “Kepler” on Nouveau? Here’s benchmarks.

  • AMD graphics cards, Linux basic power management

    If you buy a new laptop with Intel processors and AMD graphics cards, you by default run into this long running dual, hybrid graphics problem under Linux. This post is targeted towards new Linux users, who haven’t dealt with such kinds of problems before.

  • Intel Still Working On “Fastboot” Linux Graphics

    While there’s been many Linux-related projects using the “Fastboot” coin, the Intel Linux graphics team have been working on Fastboot support in terms of a faster start process by eliminating some useless mode-sets.

  • Intel Readies Its Last Graphics Changes For Linux 3.11

    After having already prepared a number of changes for the Intel graphics driver in the upcoming Linux 3.11 kernel, Intel OTC has now published their last batch of changes they hope to see merged into this next kernel merge window.

  • NVIDIA Releases Its ARM Linux Graphics Driver

    Earlier this month we found out NVIDIA was bringing their driver to ARM — following an announcement that NVIDIA would begin licensing Kepler graphics to SoC vendors — and now they have done their first public release of the ARMv7 binary NVIDIA Linux graphics driver.

  • VA-API Has New H.264, MPEG-2 Encoding

    Intel released version 1.2.0 of libva and libva-intel-driver over the night. The updated Video Acceleration API (VA-API) now has support for MPEG-2 encoding along with new H.264 profile encoding API support.

• Benchmarks

  • The First Benchmarks Of Unity On XMir: There’s A Performance Hit

    With Thursday’s announcement that Mir will ship by default in Ubuntu 13.10 on the desktop, many Ubuntu users were caught by surprise that this experimental display server will be ready by October. Up to now, Ubuntu 13.10 was expected to continue using an X.Org Server by default on the desktop (with only an experimental option for Mir) while the new Ubuntu Touch project would be using Mir on mobile devices, until next year. With the pressed timeline for the migration to Mir, at Phoronix we have already carried out our first Mir benchmarks. In this article are the first benchmarks of Intel graphics when running on Ubuntu 13.10 with a native X.Org Server (as done now on current Ubuntu Linux releases) and then when deploying the same Unity desktop environment atop XMir with the Mir unity-system-compositor.

  • 2D Performance Also Impacted By Unity On XMir

    Earlier today I delivered the first benchmarks of Ubuntu’s Unity 7 running over XMir to run the current X11 desktop atop the Mir Display Server via this compatibility layer. These benchmarks documented the performance impact of running OpenGL games when having to deal with XMir rather than just a clean X.Org Server running on the hardware. The extra step in the rendering process did result in a measurable performance impact, especially when the performance of the open-source Linux graphics drivers is already lower than their proprietary brethren. The benchmarks to now show illustrate that the 2D rendering performance also takes a hit when running Unity on XMir.

  • LLVM Clang 3.4 Already Has Some Performance Changes

    While LLVM 3.3 was released last week, there are already some performance changes for the latest LLVM 3.4 and Clang 3.4 SVN development code for this C/C++ compiler stack.

  • Running GCC 4.9 With Intel’s Core i7 “Core-AVX2″

    I’ve already delivered GCC vs. LLVM Clang compiler benchmarks on Intel’s Core i7 4770K “Haswell” platform and tested the “core-avx2″ optimizations offered by the latest compilers. That previous testing was done from the stable releases of LLVM Clang 3.1/3.2 and GCC 4.7/4.8 releases, but looking ahead, here’s some benchmarks of the latest GCC 4.9 development snapshot.

Applications

• Darktable 1.2.2 adds new cameras

  The latest update of darktable, version 1.2.2, builds on the improvements of darktable 1.2 to add more camera support. Specifically the raw file decoder Rawspeed r553, the Canon EOS 700D and Nikon Coolpix P330 are now supported by the photographic workflow management application.

• Transmission 2.80 Offers Up Various Changes

  Transmission, the multi-platform open-source BitTorrent client shipped by a number of Linux distributions, has been updated to version 2.80 and it brings with it a wide variety of changes.

• Proprietary

  • Avira Discontinues Support for Linux, Half-Life 2 Arrives on Steam for Linux

    In two contrasting news developments, on one hand Avira has discontinued its entire range of Linux security solutions and on another Half-Life 2 is now officially available on Steam for Linux. Avira, a known brand among anti-virus software makers, has had its entire range of products for the Linux platform since a long time. Come June 30th, Avira will drop the axe on its Linux offerings by stopping sale of new licences and renewal of existing ones.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to reverse a string

  • More Great Linux Awk, Sed, and Bash Tips and Tricks

  • Hardening is our business… new monthly report

  • Monitor Raspberry Pi with RPi-Monitor

  • Xfce4 Composite Editor: Easily Change Compositor Settings Not Available Via Window Manager Tweaks [Xfce]

  • freesweep: I shall never understand

  • Change repeat rate in awesome WM

  • How to Easily Create A Linux Live USB in Mac OS

  • A guide to the Unity Launcher in Ubuntu 13.04

  • What can you do with a headless server in 35 minutes?

  • Linux Shell: DF and DU report different values

  • More Expressions

  • Install JDK/JRE 7u25 on RHEL/CentOS 6/5 and Fedora 18-12

  • How to swap 2 columns in file content

  • Block Countries from your server easily with CSF

  • Installing The Galera-Iworx Cluster

  • Block Countries using mod_geoip in cPanel

  • How to replace Ufw with Firewalld in Linux Mint 15

  • How to reverse a string

  • Installing Apache2 With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Ubuntu 13.04 (LAMP)

  • Merging the parser

  • Security: Encrypt all our traffic with DNSCrypt in Ubuntu, Mint and elementary OS

• Wine or Emulation

  • Wine 1.6-rc3 released

  • Wine 1.6-rc4 Fixes 38 Bugs

• Games

  • Valve’s Source SDK 2013 Supports Linux For Mods

    Since Valve’s Linux gaming announcements last year, many game modders have been looking for Source SDK to be supported under Linux. Valve today released Source SDK 2013 and it now supports Linux as well as OS X.

  • My open source 3D game engine.

  • Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to Arrive Soon on Linux

  • Valve updates Source SDK with Linux Support

  • Natural Selection 2 is looking to come to Linux!

  • 2d Space Action RPG inspired by Starflight

    Void of Darkness is a Starship action RPG inspired by Starflight 1 & 2 by Binary Systems 1989 and Distant Worlds by CodeForce. Explore, trade, fight, upgrade!

  • TinyKeep dungeon crawler will now fully support Linux

    Battle against intelligent monster AI in this procedurally generated dungeon crawler. Featuring gorgeous art from Matthias Andre! This Kickstarter has already been fully funded and was using Flash with Air, they have now switched to Unity and will fully support Linux!

  • Leisure Suit Larry Debuts on Linux

    Leisure Suit Larry –the Super Mario of filthy Sierra adventure games from the 80′s & 90′s –has returned, but not as you might expect. For his latest tour of doody, Replay Games Inc. is revisiting –and remastering –Larry’s original adventure. Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded is a return to the classic PC adventure game formula, with updated graphics. It is the result of another successful Kickstarter campaign, and another promise fulfilled for Linux games.

  • Valve’s Source SDK 2013 now supports Linux

  • Valve Opens Portal for Linux Gamers

  • Natural Selection 2 is looking to come to Linux!

  • 3089 from Phroot has a new trailer and updates!

  • Hotline Miami 2 will be coming to Linux!

    Hotline Miami 2 has been confirmed by their official teaser video to be heading over to Linux, which is sure to please many of you!

  • Half-Life 2 Is Now Stable On Linux

    Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and Half-Life 2: Lost Coast have been in beta form on Linux since early May while Half-Life 2: Deathmatch has been in beta on Linux since March. After much testing by Linux gamers, Half-Life 2 is now deemed by Valve as stable on Linux.

  • Free game development suite Project Anarchy released

    Havok has released Project Anarchy, a suite for developing mobile 3D games. According to the announcement, the suite includes Havok’s Vision Engine and access to a variety of animation, AI and physics tools that have already been used in games like Halo, Skyrim and Assassin’s Creed. An extensible C++ architecture, Lua debugging and customisable samples and tutorials make the package even more interesting.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• Features Coming In The Xfce 4.12 Desktop

  Xfce 4.12 still hasn’t been released yet and it’s running months behind schedule. Xfce 4.12 will be a major update to the lightweight desktop that’s becoming an increasingly used alternative to Unity and the GNOME Shell. Here’s an update on some of the completed features.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Qt OpenCL Module May Be Revived

  • Qt For Tizen Adds In More Features, Functionality

    Launched in May was the Qt for Tizen project to bring the vibrant Qt5 tool-kit to the Tizen open-source Linux platform. After its first alpha release last month, the Qt for Tizen developers have made a heck of a lot of progress and already released Qt for Tizen Alpha 2.

  • KDE 4.11 Beta 2 Is Now Available For Testing

    For those interested in testing out KDE 4.11, the feature-rich Linux desktop environment, the second beta is out ahead of the final release in mid-August.

  • KDE, the present and present+1

  • Muon Suite 2.1 alpha released

    I am proud to announce the first alpha release for Muon Suite 2.14. The Muon Suite is a set of package management utilities for Debian-based Linux distributions built on KDE technologies. Packages for Kubuntu 13.10 “Raring Ringtail” are available in the QApt Experimental PPA. Here’s what’s new:

  • 13.10 Alpha 1 Available for Testing

  • A glimpse at the future of Kontact Touch Mail

    Kontact Touch was the one application that stood out when I tried Plasma Active for the first time. But not in a good way. It looked alien, the interaction was different from the other touch optimized applications and it just felt flawed. Custom buttons and other UI components, slide out context menus, widget based dialogs and a weird bar at the top show clearly that this application was not designed for Plasma Active.

  • Amarok MTP (Android) GSoC: week 2

    Heya, this is my second weekly report describing my work on my Google Summer of Code project to rewrite MTP (Android) support in Amarok from scratch. This week I’ve done a lot of work on MtpCollection class regarding device initialization.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • One Week With GNOME 3 Classic: Twenty-Eight Days Later

    True to my word, I have spent the last twenty-eight days running GNOME 3 Classic. For the most part, I have been very happy with it. As I said in my last entry in the original series, I originally expected that I would ultimately decide to switch back to KDE when the experiment was over. Twenty days after my final entry, I have decided to stop using GNOME Classic, but not in favor of KDE.

  • Genius Math Tool gets updated!

    The magnificent Genius mathematics tool for calculation and plotting, used for research and education has just been updated bringing a lot of plot-related improvements, libraries updating and bug fixing.

Distributions

• More PXE Magic

  In this article, I’ve decided to follow up on a topic I wrote about not in my column directly, but as a feature article called “PXE Magic” in the April 2008 issue. In that article, I talk about how to set up a PXE server from scratch, including how to install and configure DHCP and TFTP. Ultimately, I even provide a basic pxelinux configuration to get you started. Since then, PXE menus with pxelinux have become more sophisticated and graphical and could seem a bit intimidating if you are new to it. In this column, I explain how to piggyback off of the work the Debian and Ubuntu projects have done with their PXE configuration to make your own fancy PXE menu without much additional work. I know not everyone uses Debian or Ubuntu, so if you use a different distribution, hold off on the angry e-mail messages; you still can use the PXE configuration I’m showing here for your distro, provided it gives some basic examples of how to PXE boot its installer. Just use these steps as a launching off point and tweak the PXE config to work for you.

• Screenshots

  • aLinux 17.0 Beta 3 Screenshot Tour

  • Detect rootkits and malware on Linux Servers using rkhunter

  • Deepin 12.12 Screenshot Tour

  • Linux Lite 1.0.6 Screenshot Tour

  • Elive 2.1.52 Screenshot Tour

• Red Hat Family

  • This month (June) in Red Hat KDE

    So what kept us[1] busy while working on KDE in Red Hat this month?

  • Fedora

    • AMD HD 7000 “RadeonSI” Runs Well With Fedora 19

      Fedora 19 is the first tier-one Linux distribution shipping with decent “out of the box” support for the AMD Radeon HD 7000 “Southern Islands” series graphics cards with the out-of-the-box Linux graphics driver and Gallium3D-based acceleration.

    • Fedora 19 is go for release

      In an on-line meeting of Fedora developers today, the unanimous decision was reached to approve “Release Candidate RC3″ as the final Fedora 19 which has been dubbed “Schrödinger’s Cat”.

    • Fedora vs. Ubuntu Linux Benchmarks On Intel Haswell

      Our latest Intel Core i7 4770K “Haswell” Linux benchmarks come in the form of comparing the performance of Ubuntu 13.04, an Ubuntu 13.10 development snapshot, and Fedora 19.

    • Fedora 20 Will Have A Security/Performance Change

      With Fedora 19 being released soon, the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee has begun evaluating potential changes/features for Fedora 20. One of the features that was approved today is a build change for the RPMs that can yield greater code security but at the potential cost of performance.

      The change that was approved today is a GCC flag change for now using “-fstack-protector-strong” on building Fedora RPM packages rather than just the “-fstack-protector” argument. The -fstack-protector flag has the compiler generate extra code automatically to check for buffer overflows. If a guard check fails — meaning a potential buffer overflow occurred within the application — there’s an error message and the program exits. Fedora has been using -fstack-protector but now they are looking to use -fstack-protector-strong.

    • Fedora 19 Release Candidate 1 Is Ready

    • The Best Features Of Fedora 19, Schrödinger’s Cat

• Debian Family

  • 10 things to do after installing Debian Wheezy XFCE

    Debian Wheezy is a great operating system, and XFCE is a great desktop environment- especially for older computers, and for people who prefer a traditional desktop paradigm- but it does have a few quirks. I’ve just installed it on my old Presario 900 laptop, and I’m going to mention a few things I did after installing to make the computer more usable and nicer looking.

  • Derivatives

    • AV Linux 6.0.1 Review – Audio Visual Perfection

      A highly customised Debian designed for video and audio professionals, how exactly does it differ from other distros, and does it deliver?

    • Knoppix 7.2 Released, Uses LXDE By Default

      While there wasn’t a public Knoppix 7.1 release beyond their annual Linux Magazine CeBIT edition, Knoppix 7.2 was released instead to all users. Knoppix 7.2 is based on Debian “Wheezy” with newer desktop packages from Debian/testing and Debian/unstable Jessie.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Canonical To Introduce Mir In Ubuntu 13.10

        Canonical is all set to introduce its Mir display server technology in the upcoming Ubuntu 13.10. Olli Ries, engineering director for Unity and Mir at Canonical, has revealed the roadmap for Mir’s deployment.

      • Ubuntu Rushes Mir, XMir Into Ubuntu 13.10

      • Canonical to push for Mir in Ubuntu 13.10

      • Next Ubuntu release to have Mir as default

      • Kubuntu v Ubuntu: looks like the house is dividing

        Just a day before Ubuntu announced that it would be making its Mir display server the default from the next release, in October, the chief Kubuntu developer, Jonathan Riddell, announced that Kubuntu would not be using Mir or XMir.

      • Mir 0.0.5 Released; Kubuntu Will Stick To X/Wayland

        More Mir news today besides the surprise announcement that Canonical is now planning to use the Mir Display Server by default in Ubuntu 13.10, there’s some other interesting news involving Mir benchmarking, the Mir 0.0.5 release, and Kubuntu avoiding Mir/XMir and reaffirming their commitment to X.Org and Wayland.

      • LXDE-Based Lubuntu Will Not Ship Mir Display Server

      • Saucy Salamander 13.10 Alpha 1 Released

        While Ubuntu Linux no longer participates in alpha releases, other members of the Ubuntu family did their first 13.10 “Saucy Salamander” alpha releases today. Coming out today in 13.10 Alpha 1 form is Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, and Ubuntu Kylin.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Linux-Powered SFF MintBox 2 Coming Soon for $600

          Last year, CompuLabs and the developers behind the Linux Mint operating system put together a small form factor PC called the MintBox. It seems that the project was successful enough to warrant a updated offering, because specifications were recently posted online for the MintBox 2. The MintBox 2 is a router sized, passively cooled PC that will be available later this year for $600.

        • Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon review

          Summary: Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon review takes a detailed look at the Cinnamon editions of the latest release of the popular desktop Linux distribution based on Ubuntu Desktop. Cinnamon is a new desktop environment developed by the Linux Mint team, and is built atop GNOME 3 technologies.

          Linux Mint 15, the latest edition of the desktop distribution based on Ubuntu Desktop, was released at the end of last month (May 2013). It features the latest versions of the MATE and Cinnamon desktop environments. MATE is a fork of what used to be the GNOME 2 desktop environment, and it is, in a sense, based on old technology. Cinnamon is a new desktop environment built atop the latest GNOME (GNOME 3) technology, but presenting a traditional desktop interface, rather than the GNOME Shell that ships with GNOME 3.

        • DreamStudio Unity 12.04.3 Official Release

          We’re proud to announce the official release of DreamStudio Unity 12.04.3. Now with over 100,000 downloads, our latest release makes this the best open source software suite for graphics, audio, and especially video editing. Here are some of the latest features:

Devices/Embedded

• JW-11 is a cheap, Linux-friendly ARM PC with a 2.5″ drive bay

  Like the idea of using a small ARM-based device as a low-power desktop or media center computer, but don’t want to rely on the 4GB to 16GB of storage that usually comes with an Android TV box?

• What Is The True Cost Of Running a Raspberry Pi?

  The Raspberry Pi – a small, compact and versatile computer, capable of processing HDMI and MPEG-2 being the central component of any number of weekend projects from retro gaming stations and media centres to smart TVs, Internet radios and low budget space programs.

  Since its release in 2012 the Raspberry Pi has proved something of a phenomenon. We’ve featured it at length here on MakeUseOf, and even chatted with its creator, Eben Upton. Costing less than $40, the Raspberry Pi is a hugely successful computer, largely due to its low price. But is it really as low-budget as you think? Could it be that the true cost of a Raspberry Pi is in fact much more?

• Phones

  • Ballnux

    • Rumour: Samsung Galaxy Note 3 To Feature A Flexible Display

  • Android

    • Google Reportedly Developing an Android Games Console

      According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is actively developing an Android-based games console, which could arrive as soon as this fall. Citing anonymous sources, the report claims that the console is part of a bevy of secret projects, including a new smartwatch and a revamped version of its failed Nexus Q set-top streaming device. Additional details are sparse, but given the recent influx of Android gaming platforms, like the Ouya, Project Shield, GameStick, and others, a Google-produced gaming product isn’t outside the realm of reason.

    • Slate 21: HP’s Android-powered All-in-One computer

      First came the Slate 7, HP’s Android-powered tablet computer. Now HP is about to release a 21.5 inch sibling – the Slate 21. This was what I hoped that HP will do with webOS, but that hope died when HP abandoned webOS in favor of Android.

    • Top 5 weirdest Android apps

    • Android 4.3 allegedly caught on Google Play Galaxy S4

      New screenshots reportedly show an early build of Android 4.3 taken from the Google Play Edition of the Galaxy S4, says blog site Sammobile.

    • New MIPS processors coming, may target Android

      Imagination Technologies announced a MIPS “Warrior” family of 32/64-bit processors designed for everything from high-end networking equipment to Android tablets, and also announced updates to its embedded-focused MIPS Aptiv 32-bit processor line. The Warrior IP will feature multi-core hardware virtualization and multi-threading, MIPS SIMD architecture, and Imagination’s security framework.

    • Report: Google developing a smart watch to challenge Apple

      When rumors surfaced that Apple was developing a smart watch all of the big players jumped into the fray. WSJ reports that Google is developing a smart watch to follow to its smart glasses.

    • Where are all the Android laptops?

      PC OEMs seem obsessed with making complicated, high-cost, Windows 8-baed devices. Why are none of them trying to make cheap Android laptops?

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • You Know It’s A Brave New World When PC OEMs Strive To Ship */Linux

  • Taiwan market: Asustek launches MeMO Pad HD 7

    Asustek Computer on June 27 launched MeMO Pad HD 7, a 7-inch Android 4.2 tablet equipped with a MediaTek-developed quad-core processor, 1280 by 800 IPS touch screen, and 1.2-megapixel front camera and 5-megapixel rear camera, in the Taiwan market at a retail price of NT$5,990 (US$198), according to the company. Asustek aims to ship 12 million tablets in 2013.

Open source projects aren’t tax scams

IRS is eyeing open source projects and Tea Party groups as possible tax scams, raising a real question: Do open source foundations need nonprofit status?

XenServer Is Now Fully Open-Source

Web Browsers

• Chrome

  • Experiment: Chromium Integrated In Qt Quick 2

    Digia has been experimenting with porting Google’s open-source Chromium web-browser in the Qt world.

• Mozilla

  • H.264 / GStreamer Turned On For Firefox On Linux

  • Firefox aims to develop ‘self-healing’ browsers

    Should users of Mozilla’s Firefox now be worried for their privacy, now that the browser can phone home with data on startup and run times as well as the number of crashes?

  • Firefox 23 Beta arrives, enables mixed content blocking, click-to-start plugins

    Hot on the heels of the release of Firefox 22.0 FINAL, Mozilla has released Firefox 23.0 Beta 1, a preview version of the next release that will ship in around six weeks time.

  • Universal “share” button for Firefox

    Arriving hot on the heels of the release of Firefox 22, the beta of version 23 opens up the social API originally introduced in November 2012 for Facebook to all developers. It also includes a Share API that social networks can use to add their share buttons to a common panel. The browser itself displays the panel, which users can initiate using the share button in the toolbar or a context menu. Details and documentation on this new feature are still fairly incomplete.

  • Mozilla’s New Firefox Logo is a lot like the old Firefox Logo

  • Firefox 22 released with WebRTC enabled by default and 3D games support

    Mozilla has just released Firefox 22 stable, taking the powerful web-browser to a zone filled with Web-based functionalities.

    Firefox 22 introduces WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communications) by default, allowing users to exchange data between personal computers and the outside world.

  • Mozilla Firefox 23.0 Now In Beta With New Features

    Mozilla has put Firefox 23 now in their beta channel for those wanting to test this next feature update to the open-source web-browser.

SaaS/Big Data

• Open Source PaaS Cloud Computing Stacks That Pack a Punch

  Cloud systems offer low cost access to huge computational, storage, and network resources. These systems offer per-user and per-application isolation and customization via a service interface that is often implemented using high-level language technologies, well-defined Application Programming Interfaces, and web services.

• Hortonworks previews new Data Platform and Hadoop 2.0

  Hortonworks have announced a community preview of Hortonworks Data Platform 2.0 as a self-contained VM with a pre-installed Hadoop 2.0 cluster. HDP 2.0 uses Hadoop 2.0 technology, introduces Apache Hadoop’s YARN architecture and, Hortonworks hopes, will get more developers and partners to use the next generation of Hadoop architecture.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• More Good News with Contest

Education

• How to get a class involved with an open source project

  We talk about “community” a lot when it comes to open source, but it’s important to remember that just like local communities within a city, town, state, and country, each community has its own culture. One community is not just like another. Each has its own ways of communication and tracking and decision-making. Processes for code submission differ—perhaps two communities both use Bugzilla, but with different flags. Others require you to also alert a mailing list. A large software project may even have smaller sub-communities within it with their own customs and quirks.

Business

• Semi-Open Source

  • Two Open Source Strategies

    There are two strategic reasons why a company would want to sponsor its software as open source. One is good for investors, the other is not good.

BSD

• Open Source FreeBSD Co-Founder Leaving Apple

  Jordan Hubbard, the open source developer that helped to co-found the FreeBSD Project back in 1993 is leaving Apple.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GCC 4.9 Is Friendly Toward Intel’s Silvermont

  The GCC 4.9 compiler that’s still in early stages of development can generate binaries optimized for Intel’s forthcoming Atom “Silvermont” hardware via the new “slm” CPU type.

• Stallman, Swartz among 32 inductees to the Internet Hall of Fame

  FSF founder Richard Stallman, Mosaic co-author Marc Andreessen and Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow are among 32 inductees to the Internet Hall of Fame this year. The Internet Hall of Fame was founded at the Internet Society’s Global INET conference in Geneva, Switzerland in 2012 and holds annual awards to publicly honour individuals “who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the global Internet.”

• The FSF Has A New High Priority Project

  The new addition to the FSF high priority project page is coming up with an open-source solution for BitTorrent Sync. “Bittorrent Sync is a peer-to-peer, two-way file synchronization utility with fine-grained access controls. We need a free software version of this client or free software that can be used for the same purpose.”

Project Releases

• Piwigo 2.5.2 Released

  Piwigo is photo gallery software for the web, built by an active community of users and developers.

  Piwigo version 2.5.2 is available, for a fresh install and for upgrade. Thanks to reporters, this version fixes many bugs, see full details on the Piwigo 2.5.2 Release Notes.

Public Services/Government

• Europe says public authorities should use open standards to save money

Programming

• Adobe Open-Sources Flash C/C++ Compiler

  Adobe announced yesterday it’s open-sourcing FlasCC, a C/C++ compiler they developed for bringing C/C++ more easily to the web via Flash and AIR.

• Eclipse Kepler Orbits 71 Open Source Projects and 58 million lines of code

  In the open source development world, the influence of the Eclipse Foundation cannot be underestimated.

  While Eclipse started off as ‘just’ an IDE over the years it has evolved with its coordinated release train effort that sees piles of project all released on the same day.

• Eclipse Kepler enters public orbit

  The Eclipse Foundation’s annual release train, dubbed Eclipse Kepler this year, is now available. This year, the release train synchronised 71 different projects, 420 developers and 54 organisations to ensure that they release their projects together at the end of June in one large-scale release.

Standards/Consortia

• Google plans for a QUICker web with UDP connections

  Google hopes that Quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC), recently added to Chrome Canary, will help speed up HTTP traffic on the internet. The goal here is not to compete with SPDY, the protocol introduced four years ago, but to work in tandem with it by replacing TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), the current transport method, with UDP (User Datagram Protocol).

The ABCs Of The Surveillance State: Six Gun Toting Alcohol Agents Pounce On College Kid Buying Bottled Water

University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly thought she was doing a good thing buying some La Croix bottled water and cookie dough ice cream from the Harris Teeter Supermarket to share at a charity event. It was 10:15 p.m. and the twenty-year-old, along with her female roommate were trying get to a police sponsored “Take Back The Night” event where she thought she would be listening to stories from sexual assault victims and developing strategies to combat the scourge of most college towns. Instead, as she crossed the dark parking lot and got into her vehicle, she was set upon by six people, one of whom jumped on the hood of her SUV and another who pulled a gun.

Science

• Species Alteration: Is GMO Rewiring our DNA?

  New studies in cell research are bringing up some alarming new questions concerning GMOs, and one of them in particular makes liver failure or cancer seem like child’s play compared to the garish possibilities that arise when we start to look at how genetically modified foods likely affect our DNA.

Security

• Ruby update fixes SSL man-in-the-middle vulnerability

  The OpenSSL implementation bundled with Ruby has been found to be vulnerable to having its hostname check bypassed. The flaw, rooted in the lack of proper handling of alternate X509 names with null bytes in them, could allow an attacker to present a certificate for “www.ruby-lang.org\0example.com” which when read by the Ruby client library, would be interpreted as “www.ruby-lang.org”. That result would be handed over to the certificate verfication routines which would cause the certificate would be identified as coming from “www.ruby-lang.org”. If an attacker could get a certificate where the subjectAltName included such a null byte, they could use that certificate to interpose themselves between a victim and the site.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Leaked Recording Leads to Allegations of Plot to Provoke a Crisis in Venezuela

  Mérida, 27th June 2013 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan government released a recording that allegedly shows that one of the leaders head of the country’s opposition coalition discussed a possible coup with U.S. State Department officials.

  On Wednesday morning the Minister of Communication and Information, Ernesto Villegas and Caracas mayor Jorge Rodriguez released an audio recording that they alleged showed opposition legislator Maria Corina Machado speaking to a Venezuelan academic, Germán Carrera Damas.

• CIA cloud battle redux? U.S. defense agency puts cloud work out to bid

  With a new $450 million federal cloud computing contract up for bid, will we see tech giants Amazon and IBM duke it out again?

• BOOK REVIEW: Drone Warfare

• Freedom: The Big American Lie

  Why is it so unlikely that Americans will take action to stop the outrageous electronic surveillance programs of the National Security Agency? The answer, to a depressing extent, is that our basic freedoms are threatened today because our political system and our very culture make it nearly impossible for us to act.

• A General Gets Knifed

  The Obama administration’s infighting suddenly goes public.

  [...]

  Usually, the Obama administration and the Pentagon do their bureaucratic knife fighting in private. Not so in the latest investigation of a national security leak.

• Armed Forces of the Philippines plans to build 30 Hectare Air, Naval bases ASAP in Subic for American Forces

  The Philippine military has revived plans to build new air and naval bases at Subic Bay, a former U.S. naval base that American forces could use to counter China’s creeping presence in the disputed South China Sea, senior navy officials said.

• Iranian turned CIA operative honored

  Former Iranian Revolutionary Guard member-turned-CIA spy Reza Kahlili, who has pulled back the curtain on some of the innermost secrets of the Islamic regime, has been honored by the Endowment for Middle East Truth at its “Rays of Light in Darkness” dinner.

• Amazon’s $600 Million CIA Deal Really Is For A Game-Changing ‘Private’ Cloud

  Then IBM, who had put in a competitive bid, protested the CIA award. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigated and found that Amazon’s bid was a whopping $54 million higher than IBM’s. It asked the CIA to go back through the bidding process again. The CIA has 60 days to respond.

• In 1962 CIA information led to arrest of Nelson Mandela

  In an article published in January of 2005, Historian William Blum sets the background of the CIA’s involvement in the arrest of Mandela. Ultimately, Mandela was convicted and jailed for a total of 28 years. By the time Mandela was released in February 1990, his stature had changed dramatically and then-President George Bush Sr. telephoned Mandela to say Americans rejoiced in his release. Blum pointed out that this was the same Bush who once headed the CIA and who was second in power during an administration that worked closely with South African intelligence services to provide information about Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC). The ANC was seen by the US as part of the “international communist conspiracy.”

• Britain’s problems with a veto on Syria go right back to Yalta

  Where Bush threatened the UN with the irrelevance of the old League of Nations – without realising that the US had fatally weakened the League by refusing to join it – Rice has been condemning the UN Security Council’s inaction on Syria as “a moral and strategic disgrace”, without appreciating that it was Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt who insisted on the future UN’s veto powers during the great Allied World War II conference at Yalta.

• CIA rebuffs Congress on ‘torture’ findings

  The CIA is expected to deliver a report to senators on Thursday that rebuffs a congressional probe into the agency’s interrogation methods.

  CIA Director John Brennan is slated to deliver the CIA’s contradictory findings to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and ranking member Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) in a private meeting on Thursday, the senators said.

  Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/308161-cia-rebuffs-congress-on-torture-findings#ixzz2XjPjhBjq
  Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

Cablegate

• Who’s a Journalist? A Question With Many Facets and One Sure Answer

  So, who’s a journalist? I could explore the legislative and legal questions, and that may be something worth returning to in this space. (Decisions that have been made in interpreting New Jersey’s strong shield law are of particular interest, as is the language before the Senate now on the proposed federal law.)

  But for now, I’ll offer this admittedly partial definition: A real journalist is one who understands, at a cellular level, and doesn’t shy away from, the adversarial relationship between government and press – the very tension that America’s founders had in mind with the First Amendment.

  Those who fully meet that description deserve to be respected and protected — not marginalized.

• ‘Tensions don’t exist’: WikiLeaks refutes media reports about ‘Ecuadorean disarray’

  WikiLeaks says there are no tensions between Julian Assange and Ecuadorean government as it responded to media reports claiming Assange’s role in Edward Snowden’s case “has raised hackles” among Ecuadorean officials.

• FBI came to Iceland for Wikileaks – Not for Imminent Computer Attacks

  New York Times states that FBI agents that came to Iceland in August 2011 were here for Wikileaks and Julian Assange but not for alleged computer attacks on the Government Offices.

  The FBI agents said that they were going to investigate a computer attack on the Government Offices of Iceland but then they spent five days on interrogating a former volunteer of Wikileaks, who is an Icelandic citizen.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Over 30 tons of explosives to be detonated in Manu National Park buffer zone

  A consortium of gas companies headed by Pluspetrol and including Hunt Oil plans on detonating approximately 38 tons of explosives in the south-east Peruvian Amazon in one of the most biodiverse regions in the world.

  The detonations are part of 2D and 3D seismic tests planned by Pluspetrol in its search for new gas deposits in the Camisea region—plans that are currently pending approval by Peru’s Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM).

• Peru peasant squads rally against U.S. firm’s $5 billion gold mine

  Forty years ago, peasants in rural Peru banded together as “ronderos” – Spanish for “people who make the rounds” – to curb cattle rustling.

  Today, squads of these ronderos are working toward a different aim – thwarting an American mining company’s planned $5 billion gold mining project that they contend would spoil lakes vital to the local population high in the Andes.

Finance

• John Lanchester on the banks’ barely believable behaviour

  …eye-catchingly called for senior bankers to face jail

• Some Datapoints on Global Political Risk

• Former Top Regulators Tell Congress to Rein in Big Banks

• Ireland: Bankers joke about their €7 billion bailout scam

  The conversations provide an insight into the reckless, sneering cynicism of the ruling elite as they proceeded to swindle the working people to the tune of trillions of euros.

  The conversations focussed on the Anglo-Irish Bank board’s attempt to stem the massive losses it suffered following the collapse of the Irish property bubble out of which it had made billions. The board’s sting was to downplay the scale of the bank’s mounting losses and sucker the authorities into offering large sums of cash. The hope was that, once committed, the Irish government and central bank would be unable to back out of further support.

• World Bank Whistleblower Karen Hudes Arrainged to Federal Court on 13 Jun

  On 13 June, two month after her illegal arrest, World Bank whistleblower Karen Hudes has to appear the Superior Court of the District of Colombia. Hudes, who reported improper accounting at the World Bank, and threats against members of the Board of Executive Directors, was arrested for trespass in the World Bank headquarters building, handcuffed, left one hour in a police cruiser outside the building, and thrown to jail but subsequently released on 13 May.

• 13 mindblowing facts about US tax-dodging corporations

  Abusive offshore tax havens cost the US $150 billion in lost tax revenue every year (via FACT Coalition). That’s $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.

• New Breed of Banking Malware Hijacks Text Messages

  Out of band authentication — communicating with a customer outside of his mobile banking app to verify his identity or a specific transaction — is a generally respected means of deflecting mobile banking fraud.

  But RSA’s Anti-Fraud Command Center on Monday found and reported on a Trojan called Bugat that has been updated to hijack out-of-band authentication codes sent to bank customers via SMS. This doesn’t mean out-of-band authentication via text messaging is useless, but it can be compromised using a dated, unsophisticated piece of malware.

• House committee: IRS official waived rights in denying wrongdoing

  The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved a resolution Friday asserting that the woman at the center of the IRS scandal waived her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination when she came before the committee last month.

  The 22-17 vote came after a charged meeting that cut sharply along partisan lines, with Republicans saying they deserve answers out of Lois Lerner, director of tax-exempt organizations for the IRS, and Democrats arguing that the process was being rushed through.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Hollywood and Hitler: did the studio bosses bow to Nazi wishes?

  Book by a Harvard scholar argues that US producers in the 1930s ‘collaborated’ with the Nazis with cuts to films and self-censorship

• German court blocks full release of Nazi Eichmann files

  A German court has rejected a journalist’s request to see all German secret service files on a top Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann.

  The foreign intelligence agency (BND) had given the Bild newspaper journalist documents on Eichmann with some passages blacked out.

• Important new paper on how Trans-Pacific Partnership being negotiated will undermine tobacco, health & environment regulation

  Gary Fooks and Anna Gilmore just published a very important paper on how the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement could undermine tobacco control policies in countries including 40% of the world’s population.

Censorship

• US’ NSA linked to Intelsat ban on Iran media: Analyst

  The US National Security Agency (NSA) is linked to the latest decision by European satellite provider Intelsat to take Iranian channels off the air, a political analyst tells Press TV.

• DoD Blocks Millions of Computers From Viewing Alternative News

  After the initial surge of web traffic to alternative news websites following The Guardian breaking the NSA spying story, traffic has slowed considerably despite the continued interest in the NSA story as well as other alternative headlines.

  This dramatic drop in traffic may be due to broad censorship by the Department of Defense on “millions of computers”.

• Facebook Cracks Down on Adult Content, Spares Playboy?

  It is increasingly apparent that Facebook is not even bothering to explain itself, meting out severe punishments to users who honestly have no clue what is or is not acceptable anymore in Facebookland.

• Sen. Dick Durbin: It’s time to say who’s a real reporter

  A grand jury ordered Branzburg to reveal the names of his sources. He refused and was held in contempt.

Privacy

• Ask Slashdot: Explaining Cloud Privacy Risks To K-12 Teachers?

  With the advent of Google Apps for Education, there has been a massive uptake by the K12 schools I deal with on signing students up with their own Google powered email address under the school domain. This combined by the fact that the students’ work when using Google Apps is stored offshore and out of our control — with no explicit comeback if TOS are breached by Google — it seems to me that the school cannot with integrity maintain it has control over the data and its use.

• Everything you wanted to Know About NSA Surveillance *but were afraid to ask (Stray)

  All bets are off. There do not appear to be any legal restrictions on what the NSA can do with the communications of non-U.S. persons. Since a substantial fraction of the world’s Internet data passes through the United States, or its allies, the U.S. has the ability to observe and record the communications of much of the world’s population. The European Union has already complained to the U.S. Attorney General.

  The U.S. is hardly the only country doing mass surveillance, though its program is very large. GCHQ, which is the British counterpart to the NSA, has a similar surveillance program and shares data with the NSA. Many countries now have some sort of mass internet surveillance now in place. Although passive surveillance is often hard to detect, more aggressive governments use intercepted information to intimidate or control their citizens, including Syria, Iran, Egypt, Bahrain and China. Much of the required equipment is sold to these governments by American companies.

• Former NSA contractor warns of “murky” interception arrangements

  A former contractor to the US National Security Agency (NSA) has told the Privacy Surgeon that communications intelligence arrangements between the US and Europe are much more “complex, murky and far reaching” than the public has been led to believe.

• NSA reportedly has secret data collection agreement with several European countries

  A former NSA contractor says that the US has been colluding with the UK, Germany and others

• Revealed: secret European deals to hand over private data to America

  At least six European Union countries in addition to Britain have been colluding with the US over the mass harvesting of personal communications data, according to a former contractor to America’s National Security Agency, who said the public should not be “kept in the dark”.

  Wayne Madsen, a former US navy lieutenant who first worked for the NSA in 1985 and over the next 12 years held several sensitive positions within the agency, names Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and Italy as having secret deals with the US.

  Madsen said the countries had “formal second and third party status” under signal intelligence (sigint) agreements that compels them to hand over data, including mobile phone and internet information to the NSA if requested.

• Biden asks Ecuador’s president to reject NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s asylum request

• Ecuador’s Correa says Biden asked him to deny Edward Snowden asylum

  US vice-president Joe Biden has asked Ecuador to turn down an asylum request from National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, the country’s president said Saturday.

  Rafael Correa said he had a “friendly and very cordial” conversation with Biden, and told the vice-president that Ecuador hadn’t sought to be put in the situation of deciding whether to harbor an American fugitive. Correa said Ecuador can’t consider the asylum request until Snowden is on Ecuadorean soil.

  “The moment that he arrives, if he arrives, the first thing is we’ll ask the opinion of the United States, as we did in the Assange case with England,” Correa said. “But the decision is ours to make.”

  Julian Assange, founder of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks has been given asylum in Ecuador’s embassy in London.

• Speaking on NSA stories, Snowden and journalism

  Discussing the implications of the last four week’s of articles, revelations and debates1

• U.S. bugged EU offices, computer networks: German magazine

  The United States has bugged European Union offices and gained access to EU internal computer networks, according to secret documents cited in a German magazine on Saturday, the latest in a series of exposures of alleged U.S. spy programs.

  Der Spiegel quoted from a September 2010 “top secret” U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) document that it said fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden had taken with him, and the weekly’s journalists had seen in part.

  The document outlines how the NSA bugged offices and spied on EU internal computer networks in Washington and at the United Nations, not only listening to conversations and phone calls but also gaining access to documents and emails.

• Our Courtier Press

  While the NSA is, perhaps unconstitutionally, intercepting your electronic data, our media is focusing on whether Snowden should be charged with treason. One of reasons Snowden was charged with espionage is so the media would follow that meme. While James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, is getting away with lying to the Senate, our media is playing Where’s Waldo with Snowden. Instead of a debate on the constitutionality of the NSA programs out media is focusing on insignificant details regarding the private lives of Snowden and Greenwald.

• Our Courtier Press

  While the NSA is, perhaps unconstitutionally, intercepting your electronic data, our media is focusing on whether Snowden should be charged with treason. One of reasons Snowden was charged with espionage is so the media would follow that meme. While James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, is getting away with lying to the Senate, our media is playing Where’s Waldo with Snowden. Instead of a debate on the constitutionality of the NSA programs out media is focusing on insignificant details regarding the private lives of Snowden and Greenwald.

• EU Weakened Data Protection at US Request

  Earlier this week, European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding vented her fury over the US data spying program known as Prism. The far-reaching online surveillance operation, which saw the US National Security Agency spying on users across the globe, clearly demonstrates “that a clear legal framework for the protection of personal data is not a luxury, but is a fundamental right,” Reding told SPIEGEL ONLINE on Tuesday.

• Edward Snowden did not betray American people, says father of NSA whistleblower

  EDWARD Snowden did not betray American people or commit treason by leaking details of US internet and phone surveillance, his father said today.

• Greenwald on ‘coming’ leak: NSA can obtain one billion cell phone calls a day, store them and listen

  The NSA has a “brand new” technology that enables one billion cell phone calls to be redirected into its data hoards, according to the Guardian’s Glen Greenwald, who told a Chicago conference that a new leak of Snowden’s documents was ‘coming soon.’

  Calling it part of a “globalized system to destroy all privacy,” and the enduring creation of a climate of fear, Greenwald outlined the capabilities of the NSA to store every single call while having “the capability to listen to them at any time,” while speaking via Skype to the Socialism Conference in Chicago, on Friday.

• GLENN GREENWALD: The NSA Can Store ‘One Billion Cell Phone Calls Every Single Day’

  Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald hasn’t published the story yet, but he gave the Socialism Conference in Chicago a big taste of his next reveal:

  The National Security Agency can store one billion phone calls each day.

• NSA can store a billion cell phone calls each day

• NSA spied on EU diplomats in Washington, NY and Brussels – report

• NSA Spied On European Union States At Brussels And UN, Der Spiegel Says Edward Snowden Documents Show

• NSA reportedly bugged European Union offices in Washington DC, the UN, and abroad

• Ecuador in talks with Russia and US over CIA whistleblower

  Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño has said that negotiations were underway with Russia over CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden. “There were some negotiations over recent days with the Russian authorities,” he said.

• Ex CIA Officer Snowden Remains in Moscow Transit Zone

  Wanted former CIA agent Edward Snowden is still residing in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport.

  The latest flight for Cuba’s capital Havana has flown away without Snowden, informed RIA Novosti.

• Enduring Sharedom

  The recent revelations by the whistleblower Edward Snowden that the NSA (National Security Agency) is engaged in mass surveillance of private online communications between individuals by obtaining data from “internet corporations” such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft as part of a covert program called PRISM have resulted in widespread outrage and shock. The outrage is understandable, because such forms of surveillance constitute a major invasion of our privacy. The shock, on the other hand, is somewhat puzzling. In the past years, the Obama administration has repeatedly demonstrated that it is willing to continue or even expand the surveillance policies of the Bush government. The PATRIOT Act was renewed in 2011 under Obama and government intrusion into our personal lives is justified under the mantle of “national security”. We chuckle at the absurdity of obediently removing our shoes at airport security checkpoints and at the irony of having to place Hobbit-size toothpaste tubes into transparent bags for a government that seems to have little respect for transparency. Non-US-citizens who reside in or travel to the United States know that they can be detained by US authorities, but even US citizens who are critical of their government, such as the MacArthur Genius grantee Laura Poitras, are hassled by American authorities. Did anyone really believe that the Obama administration with its devastating track record of murdering hundreds of civilians – including many children – in drone attacks would have moral qualms about using the NSA to spy on individual citizens?

• U.S Government Surveillance: Bad for Silicon Valley, Bad for Democracy Around the World

  In the public debate thus far over the NSA’s mass surveillance programs, Americans have obsessed over our right to protect our emails, phone calls, and other communications from warrantless spying. But an issue that is just as important has been almost completely ignored: should the U.S. government be collecting the communications of foreigners without a warrant or any suspicion of wrongdoing? Unlike spying on U.S. citizens, where the government may well be breaking the law, spying on foreigners is almost certainly legal. But is it wise? We don’t think so. Unfettered U.S. spying on foreigners will cause serious collateral damage to America’s technology companies, to our Internet-fueled economy, and to human rights and democracy the world over. Rampant surveillance harms both privacy and our long-term national security.

• Glenn Greenwald’s Speech to the Socialism Conference [with Transcript]

  Another document that I probably shouldn’t share since it’s not published but I am going to share it with you anyway—and this one’s coming soon but you’re getting a little preview—It talks about how a brand new technology enables the National Security Agency to redirect into its repositories one billion cell phone calls every single day, one billion cell phone calls every single day.

• Thomas A. Drake

  Thomas A. Drake is a former senior executive at the National Security Agency who, in 2006, leaked information to the press about wasteful government spending and alleged snooping on the citizenry.

• Obama Recasts Edward Snowden As ‘Hacker’ In Effort To Downplay Him

• FBI’s Latest Proposal for a Wiretap-Ready Internet Should Be Trashed

  The FBI has some strange ideas about how to “update” federal surveillance laws: They’re calling for legislation to penalize online services that provide users with too much security.

• The Guardian Revealed An NSA ‘Scoop’ Then Deleted It From Their Website

• Newly released NSA slides explain mechanics of US surveillance

  In the latest revelations of the NSA leaks scandal, new slides have emerged thoroughly explaining the targeting process of the US government top-secret PRISM program deployed to spy on communication data of targets operating abroad.

• 4 New Slides Of The NSA’s PRISM Spying Program Have Been Published

  …117,675 active surveillance targets in the Prism database, as of April 5.

• New PRISM slides say the program allows NSA to eavesdrop on live conversations

  As controversy continues to swirl around whistleblower Edward Snowden and his whereabouts, the Washington Post has published several more slides from the NSA presentation that the former CIA staffer leaked to both the Post and the Guardian — slides that provide further details about the surveillance program known as PRISM and how it functions.

  Among other things, the slides highlight the large discrepancies between the way the program is described and the strenuous denials from tech giants such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook about their participation in such a program.

• New PRISM slides: more than 100,000 ‘active surveillance targets,’ explicit mention of real-time monitoring

• Over 100,000 Internet Users Under PRISM Surveillance

  The newspaper specifies that, in addition, it is unknown how many people including Americans became random targets for data collection while the subjects of the program were traced.

  Another slide describes the data collection routine. A NSA analyst makes an inquiry about a new program target. The inquiry goes to a superior authority who considers the chosen candidate and determines the range of spying in each separate case.

• Washington Post Reveals New Details, Slides on PRISM Data Collection Program

• Washington Post reveals new PRISM slides, offers greater clarity into the US’ surveillance operation

• NSA bugged Brussels US spy story hits the EU

  Bursting Brussels’ bubble, it appears the US National Security Agency has been spying on the EU institutions.

  German magazine Der Spiegel’s online edition cited a top secret document which outlines how the NSA specifically targeted EU offices in Washington, Brussels and New York, listening to phone calls and accessing internal computer networks.

• EU Seeks ‘Full Clarification’ over Fresh NSA Spying Claims

  The European Union is demanding “full clarification” from the US over the latest claims that the NSA extensively spied on EU authorities, a leak that could prove damaging to US-EU relations.

• NSA suveillance: US ‘bugged EU offices’

• Guardian/Observer pulls front-page NSA story after source turns out to be a fruitloop who thinks Obama is gay

• Experts: U.S. has little hope of moving Putin, an ex-spy, to expel Snowden

• Tales of tor

• Snowden Coverage: If U.S. Mass Media Were State-Controlled, Would They Look Any Different?

  The Edward Snowden leaks have revealed a U.S. corporate media system at war with independent journalism. Many of the same outlets — especially TV news — that missed the Wall Street meltdown and cheer-led the Iraq invasion have come to resemble state-controlled media outlets in their near-total identification with the government as it pursues the now 30-year-old whistleblower.

  While an independent journalism system would be dissecting the impacts of NSA surveillance on privacy rights, and separating fact from fiction, U.S. news networks have obsessed on questions like: How much damage has Snowden caused? How can he be brought to justice?

• Hey, MSM: All Journalism is Advocacy Journalism

  So New York Times Dealbook writer Andrew Ross Sorkin has apologized to journalist Glenn Greenwald for saying he’d “almost arrest” him, for his supposed aid and comfort of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. “I veered into hyperbole,” was Sorkin’s explanation.

  I got into trouble the other day on Twitter for asking if David Gregory may have just had a “brain fart” when he asked Greenwald his infamous question, “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you be charged with a crime?” I hadn’t seen the show and had only read the quote, and quite frankly, I don’t watch a lot of David Gregory. Apparently, in context, even the question I asked is absurd (more on that later). But Sorkin is different. For Sorkin to call his outburst an accident, that I know is hilarious.

  Did he also “veer into” a long career as a shameless, ball-gargling prostitute for Wall Street? As Jeff Cohen eloquently pointed out on HuffPo, isn’t Sorkin the guy who’s always bragging about how close he is to top bankers and parroting their views on things? This is a man who admitted, in print, that he only went down to Zucotti Park after a bank C.E.O. asked him, “Is this Occupy thing a big deal?”

  [...]

  All journalism is advocacy journalism. No matter how it’s presented, every report by every reporter advances someone’s point of view. The advocacy can be hidden, as it is in the monotone narration of a news anchor for a big network like CBS or NBC (where the biases of advertisers and corporate backers like GE are disguised in a thousand subtle ways), or it can be out in the open, as it proudly is with Greenwald, or graspingly with Sorkin, or institutionally with a company like Fox.

  [...]

  That’s what makes this new debate about Greenwald and advocacy journalism so insidious. Journalists of all kinds have long enjoyed certain legal protections, and those protections are essential to a functioning free press. The easiest way around those protections is simply to declare some people “not journalists.” Ten years ago, I would have thought the idea is crazy, but now any journalist would be nuts not to worry about it. Who are these people to decide who’s a journalist and who isn’t? Is there anything more obnoxious than a priesthood?

• Key US-EU trade pact under threat after more NSA spying allegations

  The prospects for a new trade pact between the US and the European Union worth hundreds of billions have suffered a severe setback following allegations that Washington bugged key EU offices and intercepted phonecalls and emails from top officials.

  The latest reports of NSA snooping on Europe – and on Germany in particular – went well beyond previous revelations of electronic spying said to be focused on identifying suspected terrorists, extremists and organised criminals.

• NSA Snooping Scandal: US Spied and ‘Conducted Cyber-Attack’ Against EU

  Anger is mounting in Brussels at new revelations about the extent of US spying on European Union countries – with claims that snoops installed bugs inside EU buildings.

  The damaging allegations are revealed in new top secret documents leaked by fugitive spy Edward Snowden and seen by German magazine, Spiegel.

  The most chilling claim in the secret report from 2010 is that Brussels was subjected to a cyber-attack at its offices in New York and Washington, which was later traced back to a Nato building used by US officials.

  Papers suggest US spies eavesdropped on European diplomats in EU buildings in central Washington DC. Computers were also hacked so the United States had access to computer files and emails, reports Spiegel.

• EU demands answers over claims the US bugged its offices

• EU demands clarification over US spying claims

  The president of the European parliament has called for full clarification from the US over claims it bugged EU offices in America and accessed computer networks.

• U.S. taps half-billion German phone, internet links in month-report

  The United States taps half a billion phone calls, emails and text messages in Germany in a typical month and has classed its biggest European ally as a target similar to China, according to secret U.S. documents quoted by a German newsmagazine.

• EU demands clarification over US spying claims

  The president of the European parliament has called for full clarification from the US over claims it bugged EU offices in America and accessed computer networks.

  Martin Schulz said there would be a severe impact on relations between the European trade bloc and the US if revelations by German magazine Der Spiegel proved to be true.

• Anger over Snowden claims US bugged EU offices

• EU concern over Der Spiegel claim of US spying

• Snowden leaks ‘an extremely serious matter’ says President of European Parliament amid reports America’s NSA bugged EU premises

• Snowden Spying Claims: US ‘Bugged EU Offices’

• EU bugging claims ‘like Cold War’

• Germany compares reported U.S. spying on EU offices to ‘Cold War’

• German Magazine Says US Spied on EU

• NSA Accused of Spying on EU

• European lawmakers slam US over reported bugging of EU offices, call for halt in trade talks

• ‘NSA bugs EU embassies, infiltrates their computer networks’

• EU alarmed over alleged US bugging of its offices

• US taps half-billion German phone, internet links in month, says report

• Germany demands US spying details

• Magazine NSA report provokes EU ire

• European officials ‘shocked’ over report on NSA spying

• EU demands explanation after reports of US spying

• US taps half-billion German phone and internet activities a month – report

• EU demands ‘full clarification’ over NSA spying on European diplomats, warns of severe impact on relations

• ‘US spied on key EU offices, infiltrated computers’

• US reportedly bugged EU offices, computer networks, according to Der Spiegel magazine

• EU demands ‘full clarification’ over NSA spying

• Germany ready to charge UK and US intelligence over alleged bugging operations

• Leaks shed light on how NSA may use supercomputers, gigantic hard drives.

• NSA Paranoia Invades the World’s Privacy?

  Maybe there is good reason for the U.S. to be paranoid, and using the NSA to invade the world’s secrecy.

• Schumer: Russia ‘should pay a price’ for harboring NSA leaker Snowden

  Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) both urged a strong response to Russia’s refusal to extradite National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

  “They should pay a price, either diplomatic, economic, geopolitical, for doing what they did. They’re always putting their finger in our eye,” said Schumer on “Fox News Sunday,” arguing for repercussions against Russia.

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: NSA of the Financial World

  While the National Security Agency’s (NSA) unconstitutional spying on Americans’ communications has been getting most of the press lately, another federal agency has been quietly — and illegally — vacuuming up Americans’ financial data: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

• The Guardian Revealed An NSA ‘Scoop’ Then Deleted It From The Website

• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange: NSA leaker is a hero

• European Officials Angered Over Reports NSA Spied on Them

• FISA Judge Who Approved Massive NSA Spying Identified?

  But it seems that the bigger story is that this judge is THE judge, who, all alone, decided that it was okay for the NSA and whoever else had access, to spy on ALL Americans. Her name is Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

• Snowden’s Leaks The Game, stars the NSA and Edward Snowden

• Spy games: Inventor of World Wide Web accuses West of hypocrisy

• EU anger at ‘disgusting’ reports American spies bugged its offices

  The head of the European Parliament has reacted angrily at claims the American spies bugged key European Union premises.

  Reports have claimed intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency bugged offices and spied on EU internal computer networks in Washington and at the United Nations.

  The NSA was not only listening to conversations and phone calls but also gaining access to documents and emails, German magazine Der Spiegel said.

• European officials slam US over alleged bugging of EU offices; German prosecutors start probe

• EU ‘Deeply Worried’ Over Report That NSA Bugged Its Offices, Wants Clarification

  The NSA/Prism controversy rumbles on. Today the European Parliament President Martin Schulz said there could be a severe impact on EU-US relations if the claims that the US had bugged EU offices in America and accessed computer networks turned out to be true. He’s said he’s ‘deeply worried’ about the issue and called for clarification from the US over the stories that have appeared.

• Washington Post releases four new slides from NSA’s Prism presentation

  Newly published top-secret documents detail how NSA interfaces with tech giants such as Google, Apple and Microsoft

• NSA ‘Spied On European Parliament’, Der Spiegel Claims

  The European Parliament says it is “deeply worried and shocked” by reports of the United States bugging its offices.

  A report from Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine claims the National Security Agency placed bugs inside the EU offices in Washington and infiltrated its computer network.

• NSA Spied On European Union Offices, Computer Networks [Report]

  The National Security Agency (NSA) allegedly bugged European Union (EU) offices and hacked into EU internal computer networks, according to secret documents a German magazine claims to have obtained.

• European officials lash out at new NSA spying report

• Upcoming leak: NSA can store a billion cell phone calls (video)

• New NSA Fallout: Did We Just Get Caught Spying on UN, European Union?

  Reports from German news weekly Der Spiegel have surfaced, stating that the NSA has been systematically spying on cell, email and network data transmissions of both the United Nations and the European Union.

  Although Der Spiegel won’t say where it received its information, one of the report’s authors is Laura Poitras, an award-winning documentarian who recently interviewed former CIA contractor Edward Snowden while he was in hiding in Hong Kong.

• Michael Hayden, Former CIA Director: More Information Should Be Released On NSA Programs

  The former director of the CIA and National Security Agency says the government should release more information about its secretive surveillance programs to reassure Americans that their privacy rights are being protected.

• New NSA leaks show how US is bugging its European allies

  Edward Snowden papers reveal 38 targets including EU, France and Italy

• GLENN GREENWALD: Snowden Has Stashed Secret NSA Files With People All Over The World

  Snowden “has taken extreme precautions to make sure many different people around the world have these archives “to [ensure] the stories will inevitably be published,” Greenwald told The Beast (emphasis added).

• Berlin accuses Washington of cold war tactics over snooping

  Transatlantic relations plunged at the weekend as Berlin, Brussels and Paris all demanded that Washington account promptly and fully for new disclosures on the scale of the US National Security Agency’s spying on its European allies.

  As further details emerged of the huge reach of US electronic snooping on Europe, Berlin accused Washington of treating it like the Soviet Union, “like a cold war enemy”.

  The European commission called on the US to clarify allegations that the NSA, operating from Nato headquarters a few miles away in Brussels, had infiltrated secure telephone and computer networks at the venue for EU summits in the Belgian capital. The fresh revelations in the Guardian and allegations in the German publication Der Spiegel triggered outrage in Germany and in the European parliament and threatened to overshadow negotiations on an ambitious transatlantic free-trade pact worth hundreds of billions due to open next week.

• Prism, privacy and politics with a small p

  Prism was a scandal waiting to happen. Ever since the Clinton government passed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act in 1994, and above all since the Bush government launched the “total information awareness” programme in 2003, voices have been warning of the extent of the NSA’s surveillance (most recently James Bamford in Wired). Disappointing as it may be, Obama’s bowing to the interests of the security institutions cannot come as a surprise. (Pro Publica has published a very useful and clearly laid out timeline that shows how laws and policies have been loosening ever since the Watergate scandal.)

• NSA ‘Spied On European Parliament’, Der Spiegel Claims

  The European Parliament says it is “deeply worried and shocked” by reports of the United States bugging its offices.

  A report from Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine claims the National Security Agency placed bugs inside the EU offices in Washington and infiltrated its computer network.

  It claimed the information was leaked in papers by fugitive Edward Snowden, who has requested asylum in Ecuador and is wanted by the United States on espionage charges.

• Julian Assange: Nothing can prevent the release of Snowden’s NSA documents

  Nothing can prevent the release of more of Edward Snowden’s top-secret NSA documents, WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange said on Sunday, as he dismissed claims that he is manipulating the American fugitive and the president of Ecuador appeared to pour cold water on extradition hopes.

• How a 30-year-old lawyer exposed NSA mass surveillance of Americans—in 1975

  Project SHAMROCK allowed the NSA to intercept telegrams sent by US citizens.

  US intelligence agencies have sprung so many leaks over the last few years—black sites, rendition, drone strikes, secret fiber taps, dragnet phone record surveillance, Internet metadata collection, PRISM, etc, etc—that it can be difficult to remember just how truly difficult operations like the NSA have been to penetrate historically. Critics today charge that the US surveillance state has become a self-perpetuating, insular leviathan that essentially makes its own rules under minimal oversight. Back in 1975, however, the situation was likely even worse. The NSA literally “never before had an oversight relationship with the Congress.” Creating that relationship fell to an unlikely man: 30 year old lawyer L. Britt Snider, who knew almost nothing about foreign intelligence.

• EU Furious Over Reported NSA Surveillance

  Senior European Union officials have angrily demanded answers from the United States after a German magazine alleged the U.S. National Security Agency bugged EU offices and gained access to its internal computer networks as part of its spying activities.

  The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, said Sunday that if the reports are true “it would have a severe impact on EU-U.S. relations.” He called for “full clarification” from U.S. authorities.

• EU Wants Answers to Claims NSA Bugged Its Offices

  America’s National Security Agency (NSA) bugged European Union offices in Washington and infiltrated the EU’s computer networks, German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday.

  According to Spiegel, a “top secret” document from 2010, obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden,shows the agency installed bugs in the building housing the EU representative’s office in downtown Washington, DC.

• NSA collected 1 trillion metadata records, harvested 1 billion mobile calls daily

  …One billion cell phone calls can be hoovered up every day…

• Twitter CEO Dick Costolo Can’t Tell You About NSA Abuses

  He did say that his company’s policy is to fight what they regard as overly broad requests for information.

• Assange stands by Edward Snowden as Ecuador’s Correa reprimands consul

  WikiLeaks founder says ‘there is no stopping the publishing process’ as NSA leaker remains stuck in Moscow airport

• NSA faces potential German PRISM investigation after EU bugging claims

  International tensions over the NSA’s PRISM monitoring program continue to grow, with federal prosecutors in Germany revealing they are ramping up for a potential investigation into whether the US government has broken German law.

• New NSA spying allegations rile European allies

  The Obama administration faced a breakdown in confidence Sunday from key foreign allies who threatened investigations and sanctions against the U.S. over secret surveillance programs that reportedly installed covert listening devices in European Union offices.

  U.S. intelligence officials said they will directly discuss with EU officials the new allegations, reported in Sunday’s editions of the German news weekly Der Spiegel. But the former head of the CIA and National Security Agency urged the White House to make the spy programs more transparent to calm public fears about the American government’s snooping.

  It was the latest backlash in a nearly monthlong global debate over the reach of U.S. surveillance that aims to prevent terror attacks. The two programs, both run by the NSA, pick up millions of telephone and Internet records that are routed through American networks each day. They have raised sharp concerns about whether they violate public privacy rights at home and abroad.

• Assange: ‘No stopping’ publication of NSA documents

• Julian Assange: There’s No Stopping More NSA Leaks From Being Published

  WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Sunday that Edward Snowden made sure that the information he took about U.S. surveillance programs will continue to be published regardless of what happens to the former U.S. spy agency contractor.

• Julian Assange: There’s No Stopping More NSA Leaks From Being Published

  Greenwald told The Daily Beast that the people in possession of these files “cannot access them yet because they are highly encrypted and they do not have the passwords.” But Greenwald said “if anything happens at all to Edward Snowden, he told me he has arranged for them to get access to the full archives.”

• European Officials ‘Shocked’ By NSA Spying Report

  The US National Security Agency (NSA) has shocked European officials after it was learned from an NSA report that the United States may have spied on European Union offices.

  While the report has not yet been confirmed or denied by the NSA, officials in the country warn that it would mean massive repercussions if true.

• Schumer Threatens Economic Impact Against Ecuador If NSA Leaker Is Granted Asylum

  U.S. officials including Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have issued stern warnings to the Ecuadorian government against granting asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

• Report: NSA spied on EU institutions

  According to a report in the German news magazine Der Spiegel, the US National Security Agency bugged institutions of the European Union. The magazine cited documents provided by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

• Restore The Fourth: Group Organizes Nationwide Anti-NSA Spying Protests On July 4

  A group of concerned citizens has organized under the name “Restore The Fourth” and plans to protest what it calls “unconstitutional surveillance” at rallies across the U.S. on July 4. HuffPost Live’s Alyona Minkovski recently talked to Ben Doernberg of Restore the Fourth NYC about the group’s NSA rally in Union Square on July 4 and how the group at large is demanding an end to all government programs that violate the Fourth Amendment.

• Former NSA Head On Face The Nation: ‘In An Ideal World, I’d Keep All This Secret’

  Michael Hayden, who previously served as the heads of both the CIA and NSA, sat down with CBS’ Bob Schieffer today to weigh in on the international manhunt for Edward Snowden and how much top-secret information he has released to the public about NSA surveillance. Hayden expressed confidence that if the NSA carefully releases more details about the scope and limit of the programs, people will feel more assured, but admitted to Schieffer that “in an ideal world, I’d keep all this secret.”

• European officials upset after German news magazine alleges NSA bugged European Union, UN

• Reddit co-founder: Tech companies can help fight NSA snooping

  Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian recently told Reuters that tech companies should strive to uphold constitutional principles like privacy.

  He said Edward Snowden, who leaked information about the National Security Agency, showed that the government was engaged in “unacceptable” levels of digital surveillance that violated privacy rights.

  Ohanian told Reuters Opinion Editor Jim Ledbetter at the Aspen Ideas Festival that tech companies could help protect Americans’ privacy by not collecting and storing their data online.