Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Free live-booting distro DVD with LU&D #162

  A brand new issue of Linux User & Developer hits the high street and the app stores today – we’ve done something a little different for you this time.

• Desktop

  • Russian government to switch to desktop Linux?

    The Russian government is reported to be contemplating dropping Microsoft Windows and adopting Linux as the operating system for agency PCs according to its internet czar, German Klimenko.

  • Russian Government Planning To Replace All Of Its Windows Computers With Linux

    The Russian government is planning to replace all of its Windows-powered computers with some Linux distribution. The government has justified this decision by stating that American technology companies like Google and Microsoft need to pay more taxes.

  • Russia Going To GNU/Linux Late Rather Than Never

    Back in 2010, Putin put into (slow)motion a move to GNU/Linux. There were several projects but nothing concrete and system-wide. Finally, in 2016, thanks to the price of oil, sanctions and global politics, the time is ripe.

• Server

  • The Age of Docker is Upon Us

    With Container Summit going on in New York this week, there is a lot of news related to Docker, Kubernetes and various container technology star players. Datawise announced that it has made some key contirubtions to advance Kubernetes, a tool Google developed and used to make containerization more useful by making it possible to manage containerized applications.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator: Jorge Tudela Gonzalez de Riancho

    The Linux Foundation offers many resources for developers, users, and administrators of Linux systems, including its Linux Certification Program, which is designed to give you a way to differentiate yourself in a competitive job market.

    To illustrate how well the certification prepares you for the real world, the Linux Foundation is featuring some of those who have recently passed the certification examinations. These testimonials should help you decide if either the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator or the Linux Foundation Certified Engineer certification is right for you. In this installment, we talk with Jorge Tudela Gonzalez de Riancho.

  • SCO v. IBM: Judge Rules for IBM in Interferance Claims

    Two SCO stories in a week? As Yogi Berra would say, it’s 2003 all over again. But this time with a big difference. It’s almost over.

    I told you on Monday that Judge David Nuffer with the US District Court in Utah had shot down SCO’s attempts to bring an action for Unfair Competition against IBM because the issue is already covered by another breach of contract claim by SCO. On Tuesday, Judge Nuffer issued a ruling on a pair of interference claims which effectively takes whatever winds were left out of SCO’s sails.

    Bankrupt SCO, of course, lost their big $1 billion case against IBM long ago when Novell, in a separate case, proved that it, and not SCO, owned the copyrights that SCO was suing over. But SCO’s been struggling to stay alive, hoping to at least win a few bucks from IBM as compensation for all it went through.

  • Linux, IBM Share Bold Vision for Hyperledger Project, a Blockchain Fabric for Business

    No longer a group of thinkers and entrepreneurs on the fringe, the proponents of blockchain technology are growing in number, boosted by new attention from the media, financial institutions, professional services firms and, most recently, major tech giants.

    The development comes amid reports that the blockchain market could expand to account for more business in the coming years, with Aite Group projecting it could be worth as much as $400m in annual business by 2019.

    However, how this market takes shape, and which technology providers start to generate actual revenue, is less clear given the variety of new projects arising – from consortiums composed of financial institutions to open-source collaborations. What’s more, each of these groups boasts a who’s-who list of well-known backers.

  • Open Source Effort Targets Faster Nets, Storage

    Networking is becoming a bottleneck as enterprises store, move and sift through vast quantities of structured and unstructured data from a growing list of sources. In an effort to accelerate adoption of network virtualization, a new open source effort seeks to provide a high-performance input/output services framework for developing the next generation of virtualized network and storage software.

  • The Linux Foundation’s big plan to speed up storage, networking

    The Linux Foundation continues to think big. It became a hub for containers by spearheading the Open Container Project and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, and it has pushed to make APIs self-standardizing. Now, it’s kicked off yet another industry-wide open source initiative: the Fast Data Project (Fd.io).

    The idea of “an I/O services framework for the next wave of network and storage software” (per the Foundation) may not sound as vital as protecting core Internet infrastructure or making it simpler for Web server admins to support HTTPS. But on closer inspection, FD.io is in line with the Foundation’s ambitions to nurture the future Web.

  • Banks and the blockchain: How open will they be?

    Not everyone agrees banks should be responsible to build the new financial order made possible by blockchain technology. As a consortium of global banks known as R3CEV has grown from a no-name establishemnt last year to 42 of the most powerful banks in the world — among them, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Credit Suisse —doubters have emerged.

  • The Linux Foundation Appoint New Members to Executive Leadership Team

  • The Linux Foundation Appoints New Chief Technology Officer, Open Source Community Veterans to Executive Team

  • Linux Foundation lines up big guns for open I/O standard push

  • Linux Foundation Launches Open Source Enterprise IO Project

  • The Linux Foundation builds FD.io, its open source project to establish an IO services framework

  • The Linux Foundation Forms Open Source Effort to Advance IO Services

  • Hyperledger gains 11 major finance players in blockchain initiative

  • Intel Begins Landing Apollolake Support Within Coreboot

    Intel engineers have begun landing support for the next-gen “Apollolake” SoC within Coreboot and support for the initial development board.

    Apollolake (Apollo Lake) is Intel’s 14nm SoC for low-cost PC/notebooks, and surely Chromebooks. Apollolake uses the Goldmont CPU core and Skylake Gen9 derived graphics. Apollolake is the successor to Braswell. Apollo Lake systems will be available later in 2016.

  • Benchmarks

    • Some Fresh Radeon EXA/GLAMOR 2D Acceleration Benchmarks

      It’s been a while since last publishing any 2D-focused benchmarks since overall the state of Linux 2D acceleration architectures like GLAMOR and Intel’s SNA have become good enough that it’s no longer a frequent concern by desktop users. However, as some recently have been inquiring about updated numbers, I ran some fresh Linux 2D benchmarks on different Radeon GPUs using the open-source driver stack.

• Applications

  • ownCloud Desktop Client Updated with HiDPI Improvements, Better Syncing

    Today, February 10, 2016, ownCloud Inc. was proud to announce the release and general availability of new versions for its ownCloud Desktop and ownCloud Android clients.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Filling your data lake with log messages: the syslog-ng Hadoop (HDFS) destination

    • [Howto] Access Red Hat Satellite REST API via Ansible

    • Tip: FUSE-mount a disk image with Windows drive letters

    • QEMU command-line: behavior of ‘-serial stdio’ vs. ‘-serial mon:stdio’

  • Wine or Emulation

    • Handheld Emulation: Achievement Unlocked!

      I love video game emulation. My favorite games were produced in the 1980s and 1990s, so if I want to play them, I almost always have to emulate the old systems. There is usually a legal concern about ROM files for games, even if you own the original cartridges, so I’m not going to tell you where to find ROMs to download or anything like that. What I am going to share is my recent discovery of the perfect handheld gaming system. Oddly enough, it was never intended to be an emulator.

  • Games

    • Steam Client Beta Brings NVIDIA NVENC Encoding, Steam Controller Improvements

    • Steam Beta adds hardware accelerated encoding for Nvidia on Linux, Steam Controller major update

      A pretty major Steam Client Beta just landed, and with it comes hardware accelerated encoding for In-Home Streaming on Nvidia with Linux, and you can also now configure the Steam Controller for desktop mode (including using the big picture overlay when launching from the desktop client).

    • Amazon launches Lumberyard, a free game engine that will support Linux and have source access

    • Amazon Opens Lumberyard to Game Devs

      Amazon on Tuesday announced that it has widened its footprint in the game industry, complementing its development studio with the Lumberyard 3D game engine.

      Based on core components of Crytek’s CryEngine, Lumberyard will support development for PCs and consoles (Xbox One and PlayStation 4). Amazon plans to add support for mobile devices and virtual reality gear soon.

      The game engine, which is available in a beta build, is free of charge, and there is neither a subscription fee nor revenue-sharing model to bar entry to small development teams.

    • ARK: Survival Evolved devs throwing money at BattlEye for Linux support, good news for Arma 3 too

      Sad news for players of ARK: Survival Evolved as it now uses BattlEye for online play, but the great news is the developers of ARK have confirmed BattlEye is coming to Linux and they are throwing money to help it happen. This will also be good news for Arma 3 players.

    • BattlEye anti-cheat now supports Linux, already live in ARK: Survival Evolved

    • We Are Legion, indie strategy game with hundreds or even millions of units now on Linux

      We Are Legion is a small indie strategy game with no unit caps, so you could end up with millions of units going at it. Sounds fun, but the graphics are pretty low-res.

    • Tempest, a good looking pirate ship combat game looks like it’s coming to Linux

      Tempest is a pretty good looking naval warfare game involving pirate ships, and it looks like it’s coming over to Linux.

    • Tomb Raider really does look like it’s coming to Linux & SteamOS

      Thanks to SteamDB and a twitter follower it really does look more likely that Tomb Raider (the 2013 version) is coming to Linux.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • KDE Applications 16.04 Suite for KDE Plasma 5.6 to Arrive on April 20, 2016

      Thanks to Michael Larabel from Phoronix, who spotted this earlier, it would appear that KDE published a preliminary release schedule for its upcoming KDE Applications 16.04 software suite for the KDE Plasma 5.6 desktop environment.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GNOME Software Gets Comment and Rating Support with Help from Ubuntu Dev

      GNOME Software is finally accepting reviews and votes for applications, and the work has been done with the help of an Ubuntu developer, Robert Ancell.

    • Endless joined GNOME Advisory Board

      Right after I wrote about my unexpected dream hacking routine at Endless, an intriguingly positive news arose: Endless joined GNOME Advisory Board, and I particularly think I should talk about that. That’s old news, but important nevertheless.

    • Moderate reviews in GNOME Software

      I can’t imagine the tool would be used by many people, but it does make reviewing comments easy.

    • Testing unstable gnome using xdg-app

      Lot of interesting work on xdg-app lately!

      I’ve created a new runtime based on the latest unstable gnome, and during the Gnome developer experience hackfest we made bundles for a bunch of core Gnome applications.

    • GNOME 3.19.90 beta tarballs due (and more)

      Hello all,

      We would like to inform you about the following:
      * GNOME 3.19.90 beta tarballs due
      * API/ABI, UI and Feature Addition Freeze; String Change Announcement Period
      * New APIs must be fully documented
      * Writing of release notes begins

      Tarballs are due on 2016-02-15 before 23:59 UTC for the GNOME 3.19.90
      beta release, which will be delivered on Wednesday. Modules which were
      proposed for inclusion should try to follow the unstable schedule so
      everyone can test them. Please make sure that your tarballs will be
      uploaded before Monday 23:59 UTC: tarballs uploaded later than that
      will probably be too late to get in 3.19.90. If you are not able to
      make a tarball before this deadline or if you think you’ll be late,
      please send a mail to the release team and we’ll find someone to roll
      the tarball for you!

    • GNOME 3.20′s Feature Freeze Is Next Week

      Next week marks GNOME 3.20′s feature freeze followed by the GNOME 3.20 (v3.19.90) beta release.

      The GNOME Release Team sent out a reminder that next week marks the API/ABI, UI, and feature freezes along with the start of release note writing and the GNOME 3.20 beta release.

• Distributions

  • Solus Operating System to Get a Much Smaller ISO

    The developers of the Solus operating system are working on their ypkg tool and they are migrating it from Python to C. This will allow them to considerably shrink the size of the ISO.

  • New Releases

    • US Air Force’s Secure LPS (Lightweight Portable Security) Linux OS Gets Updated

      Lightweight Portable Security (LPS), a thin Linux kernel-based operating system that creates a secure end node from trusted media on almost any PC, has been updated recently to version 1.6.4.

  • Ballnux/SUSE

    • SUSE and business open source specialist it-novum collaborate to expand Ceph platform’s Storage Management

      Powered by Ceph, SUSE Enterprise Storage is a self-managing, self-healing, distributed software-based storage solution for enterprise customers. The collaboration between it-novum and SUSE will bring centralized management of file, block and object storage via openATTIC’s single graphical user interface to future releases of SUSE Enterprise Storage.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Rackspace Debuts Red Hat OpenStack For Private Clouds

      Rackspace may have put OpenStack on the map, but Thursday it introduced to its private cloud portfolio another vendor’s version of the open-source technology.

      The managed cloud company out of San Antonio is making Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform available to customers and partners deploying private clouds either in Rackspace data centers or on their own premises, according to Bryan Thompson, senior director of product management for Rackspace’s OpenStack practice.

    • Rackspace to Manage Red Hat OpenStack Clouds On-Premise

      In the latest stage of its transformation into a managed services provider that just happens to own some cloud infrastructure, Rackspace announced today that it has been certified by Red Hat to manage Red Hat OpenStack deployments in data centers.

    • Rackspace launches Red Hat driven Private Cloud

      Hosting company Rackspace has launched Private Cloud which (as the name suggests) is a private cloud ‘as a service’ built on the foundation of OpenStack technology.

      The new offering is an addition to its portfolio of Rackspace OpenStack-as-a-Service offerings, as part of the hosting company’s strategy to simplify and popularise OpenStack private and hybrid clouds.

    • Rackspace Continues its Quest to Support Everyone Else’s Cloud

      Rackspace’s contention is that there are many customers that start down the OpenStack path before realizing that it’s a lot harder to set up and run than anticipated. Then Rackspace can swoop in to configure and run that cloud for them either in their own server rooms, in a third-party data center, or on Rackspace equipment.

    • Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) Sentiment Increased in Q3 2015

    • Bullish Options Activity on Red Hat Inc Surges After Better Fundamentals

      In today’s session Red Hat Inc (RHT) registered an unusually high (178) contracts volume of call trades. Someone, most probably a professional was a very active buyer of the March, 2016 call, expecting serious RHT increase. With 178 contracts traded and 5074 open interest for the Mar, 16 contract, it seems this is a quite bullish bet. The option with symbol: RHT160318C00067500 closed last at: $1.75 or 40% up. The stock increased 3.10% or $1.91 on February 10, hitting $63.51. Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) has declined 16.38% since July 8, 2015 and is downtrending. It has underperformed by 6.86% the S&P500.

    • Systemd 229 Released With Many Changes, DNS Resolver Now Fully Supported

      The last major systemd update was all the way back in November, which is rather strange considering their normal frequent releases, but that changed today with the release of systemd 229.

      Systemd 229 has been released and given the span since systemd 228, this is a very hearty release. First up, the systemd-resolved DNS resolver is no longer experimental but is now fully-supported and offers a ton of new features, including DNSSEC support.

    • Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Falls 2.5% for February 11

      One of the S&P 500’s big losers for Thursday February 11 was Red Hat Inc. (RHT). The company’s stock fell 2.5% to $61.95 on volume of 1.71 million shares.

    • Red Hat Inc (RHT) Shares Sold by Harding Loevner LP

      Harding Loevner LP decreased its stake in Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) by 12.2% during the fourth quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 1,494,835 shares of the open-source software company’s stock after selling 207,134 shares during the period. Harding Loevner LP owned approximately 0.82% of Red Hat worth $123,777,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

    • Rackspace pivots to sell competitor Red Hat’s private cloud, bolstered by customer support centers

    • Lennart Poettering Announces the Release of systemd 229 for all Linux OSes

      It has been three long months since systemd 228 was released to the open-source community, and today we’re glad to inform you that the controversial software received a new major update.

    • Rackspace Announces Private Cloud Powered by Red Hat

    • What’s Behind Rackspace’s Private OpenStack Cloud Partnership with Red Hat

      OpenStack is hard. It’s hard to take the conglomeration of about 20 open source projects, each at its own stage of maturity, collectively referred to as OpenStack, and turn it into a functioning cloud. This has created a whole services market for companies that can help users stand up their own OpenStack clouds, and Rackspace is going after this market hard.

    • Fedora

      • Radeon Gallium3D OpenGL Performance From Fedora 18 To Fedora 23

        For those curious how the open-source Radeon Gallium3D driver has evolved over the past three years, I benchmarked every release from Fedora 18 through Fedora 23 on the same system while looking at the OpenGL Linux performance with an AMD Cypress GPU. Here is a look at the open-source Radeon driver performance evolution on Fedora Linux.

  • Debian Family

    • Tails installer is now in Debian

      One of the components of Tails, the Tails Installer is now in Debian thanks to the Debian Privacy Tools Maintainers Team.

      Tails Installer is a graphical tool to install or upgrade Tails on a USB stick from an ISO image. It aims at making it easier and faster to get Tails up and running.

      The previous process for getting started with Tails was very complex and was problematic for less tech-savvy users. It required starting Tails three times, and copying the full ISO image onto a USB stick twice before having a fully functional Tails USB stick with persistence enabled.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu Core Now Supports Intel NUC Mini PC

          Canonical has this week announced that the Ubuntu Core now supports the Intel NUC DE3815TY mini PC after working together with Intel the company has now created a standard platform for developers to test and create x86-based IOT solutions using snappy Ubuntu Core.

        • Three nginx Vulnerabilities Closed in Ubuntu OSes

          Canonical published details in a security notice regarding a few nginx vulnerabilities that have been identified in Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS operating systems.

        • Canonical Releases Snapcraft 2.2 Snappy Creator Tool for Ubuntu Snappy Core

          Canonical’s Sergio Schvezov was happy to announce earlier today, February 11, 2016, the general availability of the second point release of the Snapcraft 2 Snappy creator tool for the Snappy Ubuntu Core operating system.

        • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS to Let Users Change the Visibility of App Menus in Unity Panel

          We’ve already told you that we’re running the latest Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, right? Well, guess what? Earlier today, Canonical pushed a bunch of important updates to the upcoming distribution.

        • Ubuntu Phones Will Soon Get a Fix for the Infamous Incoming-Call Hang Issue

          Just a few minutes ago, Łukasz Zemczak of Canonical sent in his daily report to inform us all about the latest work done by the Ubuntu Touch developers in preparation for the upcoming OTA releases.

        • KEYMILE and Canonical Demo Industry’s First Cloud-based App-enabled Open Source MSAN During MWC16

          KEYMILE and Canonical have joined forces to demonstrate their revolutionary cloud-based open-access vision. This bold move will eliminate the last network demarcation obstacle to a fully open, virtualized, software-defined, cloud-based network infrastructure. OrcaX is a world first and set to transform multi-service access network (MSAN) elements by fusing them into the cloud network revolution in the most significant recent ICT paradigm shift. KEYMILE is the leading global provider of mission-critical communications and broadband access. Canonical is the leader in cloud-enabled and IoT software technologies and the company behind the cloud and IoT operating system Ubuntu.

• Devices/Embedded

  • ST Releases Free Linux IDE for 32-Bit MCUs

    The 32-bit microcontroller world is starting to open up to world Linux. This week, leading ARM Cortex-M vendor STMicroelectronics (ST) released a free Linux desktop version of its development software for its line of STM32 microcontroller units (MCUs). The tools include ST’s STM32CubeMX configurator and initialization tool, as well as its System Workbench for STM32 (SW4STM32), an Eclipse-based IDE created by Ac6 Tools. SW4STM32 is supported with toolchain, forums, blogs, and technical support by the openSTM32.org development community.

  • Phones

    • Tizen

      • Tizen 3.0 Is Being Ported for Raspberry Pi 2

        The Linux-based Tizen 3.0 operating system is being adopted for Raspberry Pi 2, in an effort to make the operating system much more popular.

      • Raspberry Pi is the new target to trigger Tizen adoption rate

        It’s needless to say that with a huge number of Raspberry Pi users worldwide, the community keeps growing by the minute and the list of ROMS available for this dirt cheap PC on a card is endless. With the hardware readily available everywhere, Samsung sees the Raspberry Pi (Pi 2 to be precise) as the right platform to grab hold of developers and build their interest towards Tizen.

      • App: Download Manager for Samsung Z1 / Z3 is Available in Tizen Store

        Download Manager for Tizen Smartphones, namely the Samsung Z1 and Z3, is a powerful download speed booster and an advanced download manager combined into one. A must-have app for the power user that wants to download files off the Internet in a fast and efficient manner.

    • Android

      • Qualcomm rolls out new Snapdragon trio and wearable platform

        Snapdragon Wear is a platform that aims to power the latest Android Wear watches and expand from there. Snapdragon Wear includes processor, software, support and reference designs to target everything from health trackers to fashion to mobile devices.

      • Android’s new People API helps developers more easily tap into contact data

        Google has introduced a new API for developers to take advantage of: the People API. The purpose of the People API is to simplify gathering information about a user’s contacts once they have given permission. As Google points out in its announcement post, the People API essentially condenses the current process of tapping into two different APIs (Google + and Contacts) for the same information.

      • Chrome for Android will soon alert you to nearby objects you can interact with

        Google is moving forward with its plans to allow Bluetooth beacons to broadcast location-based information and URLs to your phone. The Bluetooth-based technology is designed so that a subway can tell you when the next train is coming, or a nearby parking meter can alert you how to pay when you park. This seamless interaction with, what Google calls, the “physical web” has long been promised, but an upcoming update to Chrome for Android will make it more of a reality.

      • Advisory: Android Users Should Beware of Third-Party App Stores

      • Jevgeni Kabanov and Sten Suitsev, from ZeroTurnaround, Talk about JRebel for Android

      • OKDOTHIS for Android helps shutterbugs break their selfie habit

      • February Nexus 5 Android 6.0.1 Update: First Impressions

      • Android 6.0 Marshmallow Update Features Leak Out For Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Rollout Imminent

      • This Malware In 1,163 Android Apps Can Root Your Smartphone Without Your Permission [Ed: More mythical "malware" that users actually need to foolishly put on their devices.]

      • Microsoft bringing more bloatware to Android [Ed: greater problems associated with this]

      • Acer will preload Microsoft’s apps on its Android phones [Ed: to avoid being sued by Microsoft]

      • Android Wear 1.4: Hands-on with the new Messenger & Reminders apps + much more in Marshmallow [Gallery]

      • Twitter open-sources Screengrab, a tool to automatically take screenshots on Android

      • 10 tips for getting the most life out of your Android battery

        As Android evolves, so too does the battery life. With every iteration of the platform we enjoy longer time between charges. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things you can do to get even more out of that battery. With just a bit of work, you can extend it well beyond what you’ve been experiencing. Best of all, these tips don’t require a degree in Android-ology to put them to work.

      • “Many” Android OEMs look set to release Ubuntu devices this year

        A few years ago the open source community got pretty excited after Jolla, Mozilla, Samsung, and Canonical all announced their intentions to get involved in mobile. In the time since, Jolla – the owner of Sailfish OS – has hit rough waters regarding funding, Mozilla has canceled Firefox OS for smartphones, Samsung’s Tizen OS is still restricted to select countries such as India, and Ubuntu is struggling to break into the market in places like Europe, where devices have launched. Finally, one of these might be about to make a significant breakthrough later this year.

      • Maru is becoming an open source project (use your Android phone as a Linux desktop)

        Maru is a platform that lets you run Android on a smartphone, but connect the phone to a keyboard, mouse and display to run a desktop Linux-based operating system (Debian 8 Jessie, to be precise).

        Developer Preetam D’Souza announced the project a week ago and opened up a beta program for Nexus 5 smartphone users. The goal was to get few beta testers… apparently thousands of people signed up… and a number of people have offered to help develop the software.

Free Software/Open Source

• Facebook-squishing Indian regulator’s next move: Open source code

  Fresh from squashing Facebook’s effort to grab the enormous India market, the sub-continent’s regulator has another goal in mind: open source software.

  Speaking at the India Digital Summit this week, chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Ram Sewak Sharma, told attendees: “No service can be hostage to a particular technology.”

  He then went on to explicitly support the broader adoption of open source software, arguing that it would help the booming digital economy in India from being locked into buying from a specific company and enable a broader and more equitable internet for all.

  “Any technology that is deployed for connectivity must be interoperable and the open standards framework and the principles it entails are extremely important,” he argued.

• India Asks Tech Companies To Use Open Source Technologies For Connectivity

  A day after taking a tough stand on Facebook’s Free Basics and banning it from India, TRAI (Telecom Regulator Authority of India) has also given a cue to the tech giants like Facebook and Google over the use of open source software. TRAI has hinted to these companies that their connectivity framework would only be accepted in India if they followed an open source approach.

  [...]

  Ram Sewak Sharma, who is the current chairman of TRAI, has clearly put a stress on using open source technology over a company specific product in making the internet reach to the remote areas. In a recent summit hosted by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, he said,
  “I don’t like to comment on a specific product. But India has adopted an open source policy and open API [application program interface] policy. The whole objective is that there should not be a situation of a vendor lock-in.”

• Events

  • Vote for Presentations – OpenStack Summit Austin 2016

    The first OpenStack Summit this year will take place in Austin (TX, US) from April 25-29, 2016. The “Call for Speakers” period ended some days ago and now the community voting for presentation started and will end 17th February, 11:59 PST (18th February 7:59 UTC / 08:59 CEST).

• SaaS/Big Data

  • Dive into Apache Hadoop open source technology

    On this week’s NFV/SDN Reality Check, we look at some top news items from across the space as well as speak with Cloudera on CSPs adopting Apache Hadoop open source technology

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • LibreOffice 5.1 Released with Boatload of Changes

• CMS

  • 6 reasons to blog in Markdown with Jekyll

    GitHub pages is a free offering that can host your Jekyll blog for free. It also takes care of generating static HTML files from your Markdown text files, so there’s no need to install anything on your computer. You can also use Jekyll with your own domain name (if you have one).

  • Bluehost Develops Open Source Script To Update Two Million WordPress Sites

    The cloud-based solutions provider’s custom script reduced WordPress-related technical issues by 18 percent.

  • What’s New in February ’16 in Open Source CMS

    By any measure, WordPress is the most popular content management system on the planet. But that distinction also makes it especially popular with hackers and attackers.

    Early this month Menifee, Calif.-based security company Sucuri reported a spike in WordPress infections, with a large number of sites getting injected with the same malicious scripts. Sucuri called it “a massive admedia/adverting iframe infection” characterized by the injection of encrypted code at the end of all legitimate .js files.

• Education

  • UNICEF Seeks World-Changing Open Source Technologies

    United Nations to fund startups to develop open source tech to improve the lives of vulnerable children and civilians

  • UCLA just open-sourced a powerful new image-detection algorithm

    Image recognition has become increasingly critical in applications ranging from smartphones to driverless cars, and on Wednesday UCLA opened up to the public a new algorithm that promises big gains.

    The Phase Stretch Transform algorithm is a physics-inspired computational approach to processing images and information that can help computers “see” features of objects that aren’t visible using standard imaging techniques. It could be used to detect an LED lamp’s internal structure, for example — something that would be obscured to conventional techniques by the brightness of its light. It can also distinguish distant stars that would normally be invisible in astronomical images, UCLA said.

• BSD

  • Lumina Desktop Getting Ready for FreeBSD 11.0

    Ken Moore, the lead developer for the BSD-based Lumina Desktop Environment, announced that another step towards the release of a full-fledged desktop environment for BSD variants (and Linux distros, for that matter) has been achieved with the release of version 0.8.8 yesterday.

    For those of you keeping score at home, the Lumina Desktop Environment — let’s just call it Lumina for short — is a lightweight, XDG-compliant, BSD-licensed desktop environment focusing on getting work done while minimizing system overhead. Specifically designed for PC-BSD and FreeBSD, it has also been ported to many other BSD variants and Linux distros. Lumina is based on the Qt graphical toolkit and the Fluxbox window manager, and uses a small number of X utilities for various tasks.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Liberty Eiffel wrapper for IUP toolkit

    Since a couple of months ago I’m working in a Liberty Eiffel wrapper to the IUP toolkit. IUP is a multi-platform toolkit for building graphical user interfaces. This is still under development, but I think the current state is enough to start playing with it. Here some screen shots:

• Openness/Sharing

  • Open Access/Content

    • Open-source textbooks gain in push for college affordability [Ed: same as below]

    • Open-Source Textbooks Gain in Push for College Affordability

      The standard textbook for Fundamentals of General Chemistry I at the University of Connecticut has a list price of $303. For students who use the version professor Edward Neth is preparing for the fall semester, the cost will be zero.

      An early adopter of open source textbooks, Neth said he turned to the new technology out of frustration with spiraling prices of commercial textbooks.

      “It’s seeing the costs go up every semester and almost feeling powerless,” Neth said.

    • Zika articles made open-source to accelerate research

      Nature, the Lancet and many other medical publishers and researchers have announced that all Zika-related scientific articles will be published freely in the wake of the recent outbreak.

• Programming

  • New SourceForge Owners Start Trust Repair

    SourceForge Media announced the termination notice with a promise of other policy changes coming soon.

    DevShare was an opt-in revenue-sharing program for developers that was started in 2013. The program attempted to give open source software developers a monetizing stream by bundling selected software titles with the free downloads. It garnered negative reactions because projects hosted on SourceForge could bundle adware with project installers.

  • SourceForge Attempts to Rebuild its Integrity

    There was a time when SourceForge was the defacto default standard open-source code repository. That time is not now – as Github and mis-steps at SourceForge have eroded both the mind and market share that SourceForge once had.

  • IBM Bequeaths the Express Framework to the Node.js Foundation

    The Node.js Foundation has taken the Express Node.js framework under its wing.

    Express will be a new incubation project for the Foundation. IBM, which purchased Express maintainer StrongLoop last September, is contributing the code.

  • IBM Bequeaths the Express Framework to the Node.js Foundation

  • Data analysis of GitHub contributions reveals unexpected gender bias

    With more than 12 million users, GitHub is one of the largest online communities for collaborating on development projects. Now a team of researchers has done an exhaustive analysis of millions of GitHub pull requests for open source projects, trying to discover whether the contributions of women were accepted less often than the contributions of men. What they discovered was that women’s contributions were actually accepted more often than men’s—but only if the women had gender-neutral profiles. Women whose GitHub profiles revealed their genders had a much harder time.

  • Women are better at coding than men—if they hide their gender

  • Github patches from women who don’t reveal their gender more likely to be accepted than patches from identifiable women

  • Women devs – want your pull requests accepted? Just don’t tell anyone you’re a girl

Leftovers

• Science

  • It’s Official: Einstein’s Most Incredible Prediction Proved Right, Gravitational Waves Discovered

    Gravitational waves are ripples created in the curvature of spacetime. These waves propagate in the space travelling outward from the source. The theory of gravitational waves was predicted first by Albert Einstein in 1916 which was a part of of his theory of general relativity. Theoretically, gravitational waves transport energy as gravitational radiations.

  • Space debris: How dangerous is it to people on Earth?

    Over the past few months, people have captured footage of space debris burning up in our atmosphere. While certainly startling, the truth is, there’s been a lot of junk up there for a long time and so far no one has been hurt here on Earth.

    Since the first satellite went into orbit — the Soviet Union’s Sputnik, launched on Oct. 4, 1957 — we have steadily increased the amount of objects encircling our small planet.

• Health/Nutrition

  • Timeline: Flint’s Water Crisis

    This is a work in progress. Not all dates and events between the end of 2015 and current date have been added as of publication. This timeline will be updated periodically, as events unfold and as key information is revealed about Flint’s ongoing water crisis. Some information is incomplete or in need of validation. Links to sources will be added over time. If you have content you believe is relevant and should be added, please share in comments.

  • ‘Cases Are Sometimes Stuck in Limbo for a Very Long Time’

  • How National Media Failed Flint

    The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, in which thousands of residents have been exposed to everything from cancer-causing chemicals to lead in their drinking water, dates back nearly two years. But the unfolding story had received scant coverage from the national media until a month ago, when Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) declared a state of emergency for Flint.

    Why did it take so long for major national outlets to focus closely on the story, even as local outlets had been doggedly covering it for well over a year?

    In interviews with Media Matters, media observers and the journalists who have been covering the story in Michigan cite a wide range of factors, including continued newsroom cutbacks, the complexities of a story that combines government mismanagement with detailed science, and competition from the presidential primary campaign, breaking news events, and click-bait like celebrity gossip.

  • Lead: America’s Real Criminal Element

    When Rudy Giuliani ran for mayor of New York City in 1993, he campaigned on a platform of bringing down crime and making the city safe again. It was a comfortable position for a former federal prosecutor with a tough-guy image, but it was more than mere posturing. Since 1960, rape rates had nearly quadrupled, murder had quintupled, and robbery had grown fourteenfold. New Yorkers felt like they lived in a city under siege.

    Throughout the campaign, Giuliani embraced a theory of crime fighting called “broken windows,” popularized a decade earlier by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in an influential article in The Atlantic. “If a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired,” they observed, “all the rest of the windows will soon be broken.” So too, tolerance of small crimes would create a vicious cycle ending with entire neighborhoods turning into war zones. But if you cracked down on small crimes, bigger crimes would drop as well.

  • ‘This “Independent” Academic Is Promoting Public Policy Issues for a Private Corporation’

    Janine Jackson interviewed Carey Gillam on the conflicts of interest of food science experts for the February 5, 2016, CounterSpin.

• Security

  • Security advisories for Thursday

  • These Vigilante Hackers Aim To Hack 200,000 Routers To Make Them More Secure

    Remember the white hat hackers — The White Team — responsible for creating the Linux.Wifatch malware last October? The same hackers are now planning to take over Lizard Squad’s botnet of infected IoT devices in an attempt to shut down their operations.

  • Skimmers Hijack ATM Network Cables

    If you have ever walked up to an ATM to withdraw cash only to decide against it after noticing a telephone or ethernet cord snaking from behind the machine to a jack in the wall, your paranoia may not have been misplaced: ATM maker NCR is warning about skimming attacks that involve keypad overlays, hidden cameras and skimming devices plugged into the ATM network cables to intercept customer card data.

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Airport workers seen with laptop used in Somalia in-flight jet blast

    Somali intelligence officials say two airport workers handled a laptop containing a bomb that later exploded in a passenger plane.

    In a video made public on Sunday by officials, one airport worker takes the laptop and hands it to another employee.

    The employees then hand it over to a man who was killed when the laptop explosion blew a hole in the plane’s fuselage, said Abdisalam Aato, a spokesman for the Somali Prime Minister.

    [...]

    Investigators believe the attack was orchestrated by Al-Shabaab, although they are not certain Borleh was a direct member of the group, according to the source. No group immediately claimed responsibility.

  • Techdirt Crowdsourcing: How Will The TSA Idiotically Respond To The Laptop Terror Bomb?

    The terrorism arms race marches on, apparently. You may have heard of the recent attack on a passenger plane taking off from Somalia. By all accounts, the attacker managed to get onto the plane with a laptop that contained a bomb, which he detonated during takeoff. The result? The bomber was sucked out of the hole he created in the plane and died, while a couple of other passengers were mildly wounded. The universe, it seems, is not without either a sense of justice or humor.

    Still, you absolutely know that this will create a typical shitstorm at the TSA. Security theater stops for nobody, after all, and this latest attempt is sure to put a focus on any computer devices passengers are bringing with them on flights. Laptops and tablets are already screened by the TSA, of course, but somehow this guy got on the plane with his bomb-filled notebook. Even though it happened outside the US (so not directly a TSA failing), it’s not difficult to expect that things are predictably and stupidly going to get more strict on the rest of us.

  • These Quakers Are Asking Tougher Questions Than Many in the Press

    For all the talk about this election revolving around national security and government spending, the AFSC group is the only one dedicated to asking candidates about President Barack Obama’s planned $1 trillion nuclear arms program, bloated military programs such as the Pentagon’s F-35, and how to diminish the influence of lobbying by military contractors. Activists trained with the group have also asked about fracking, ethanol subsidies, and other issues they say are clouded by the pervasive role of money in politics.

  • U.S. Allies Have No Interest in Anti-ISIS Coalition

    Over the course of a decade and a half of coalition warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. officials have frequently found themselves pleading and cajoling with the Europeans to contribute more, and they generally have responded with pledges to do just a little bit more. The pattern may be repeated in Brussels.

  • Israeli extremist detained for death threats against Palestinian MK

    Israeli police on Thursday detained a far-right Israeli extremist who reportedly threatened the life of Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset Ayman Odeh.

    The MK, member of the Joint List party, told Ma’an that the extremist was detained by Israeli police who carried out investigations into comments left by the Israeli on social media.

  • The researched-based responses to troublemaking MKs

    News from the Knesset in the last week raises myriad questions about democracy, and Israel Democracy Institute president Yohanan Plesner tries to provide answers.

  • Condemnation, not censorship

    Israel is not a merchant of corpses. Perhaps in the past Israel has traded the bodies of terrorists (or, worse, live enemy combatants) in exchange for the bodies of Israelis, but this policy was dangerous and wrong. The point of armed conflict is to take as take those who would hurt us out of the game. The dead, ours and theirs, are out of the game. Humanity obligates giving them to their families for a proper burial. This is true of the enemy’s dead and of our dead.

  • Syria civil war: Prospect of Saudi incursion raises fears of a conflict without end

    The first fateful steps have been taken for Saudi-led troops to enter Syria’s civil war, a move that has raised fears of powers across the region being drawn into a bloody conflict without end.

    Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi Defence Minister and heir apparent to the throne, presented his country’s military plans to a summit organised by a US-led coalition on Syria at Nato headquarters in Brussels. Ashton Carter, the US Defence Secretary, reported afterwards that a “wide variety of things” had been discussed with the Saudis on the use of ground forces.

  • Anguish as North Korea Marches Into 1955

    We need Trident, they say, to deter rogue nuclear states like North Korea.

    Extraordinary, isn’t it.

    [...]

    Now they throw in Russia. In all the reams of analysis of Putin’s Russia, nobody has ever been crazy enough to argue that nuclear attack on the UK (or even conventional invasion of the UK) is something Putin would wish to do. Because to claim that would look absolutely stupid. Plainly the desire of Russia to attack with nuclear weapons is at absolute zero. Anybody writing otherwise would rightly be written off as crazed.

  • Hillary Clinton IS The Guardian

    Hillary Clinton is American, owned by financial interests to whom she is completely in thrall, a rabid neo-conservative warmonger, completely uncritical of Israel and focused for any claim to be progressive entirely on identity politics. Which is also a precise description of today’s Guardian newspaper. The once august and intellectual title is now a shrill cheerleader for far right Blairites and wealthy American feminists.

• Transparency Reporting

  • Branded a rapist for daring to be an NHS whistleblower: How brave surgeon sacked for exposing needless deaths was smeared as sex attacker by bosses

    A surgeon has revealed he was smeared by NHS bosses and left with his career in ruins after he spoke publicly about dangerous overcrowding at a hospital.

    Doctor Raj Mattu, who has been left with a £1.4million legal bill following the dispute, has warned against whistleblowing as he revealed the shocking practices he reported at Walsgrave hospital in Coventry still haven’t been investigated.

    In this interview, the 56-year-old describes the ‘terrible’ and ‘humiliating’ experience of being labelled a sexual pervert by bosses desperate to quash his claims as he reveals his life will never be the same.

  • California Department of Justice Agrees to Stop Skirting Open Meeting Rules

    The California Department of Justice (CADOJ) is ending its practice of holding meetings in ways that impede the public’s ability to meaningfully participate in oversight of the state’s sprawling network of police databases. The new reforms, announced in response to EFF advocacy, will allow greater opportunity for Californians to review and comment on policy changes that impact their privacy and civil liberties.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Satellites and Tide Stations, Working Together

    This is an illustration of the Jason-3, launched into orbit in January 2016. Measuring sea surface heights is a primary mission of the new satellite. The accuracy of these space-based sea surface measurements are validated by comparing them with real-time observations of water levels made by tide stations in the ocean.

• Finance

  • Elizabeth Warren Catches Investment Advisors Fibbing

    Glass’s company and other are pouring millions of lobbying dollars into opposing the rule. President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers estimates that “conflicted” advice costs individual investors $17 billion a year in retirement savings.

  • TTIP: A locked room, no internet access, two hours, 300 pages and lots of typos

    A German MP has given an insight into the surreal restrictions imposed around the upcoming US-EU trade deal, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

    Katja Kipping has written a personal account of her visit to a special reading room at the German Ministry of Economics that was set up after Parliamentarians fought and won the right to see the text being negotiated on their behalf by bureaucrats.

    In it, she describes the extraordinary lengths that the German government has gone to in order to prevent any useful information on the trade deal being made public.

  • It Takes a Greek to Save Europa

    This past Tuesday, at the Volksbühne Theater in Berlin, Varoufakis launched a new project: the DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement 2025), whose aim is to ultimately transfer power from Europa’s unaccountable, fiercely authoritarian elite and distribute it – fairly – among European citizens.

  • Are Americans Too Insouciant To Survive? — Paul Craig Roberts

    Whether you agree with Thomas Frank’s answer or not, Americans do, on a regular basis, harm themselves by voting for people who are agents of vested interests diametrically opposed to the interests of American citizens.

    How is it possible, if Democrats are informed people, that half of them prefer Hillary Clinton? Between February 2001 and May 2015 Bill and Hillary collected $153 million in speaking fees. The fees averaged $210,795 per speech.

  • Uber-Unionist Deutsche Bank Tanks

    Deutsche Bank was the central pivot of the LIBOR fixing scandal. In the great banking crash it wrote off 92 billion dollars of junk assets that Folkerts-Landau had failed to notice was a liability. Today its share price has fallen even below the 2008 levels it reached after that write-off, and the German Finance Minister has just announced his full confidence in the bank and that there is nothing to worry about. Deutsche Bank shares have fallen 40% in a month.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Missing the Days When Candidates Pretended We Had No Big Problems

    If that’s your idea of the kind of problems you face, then resigning yourself to the “limits of the situation” makes sense. If, on the other hand, you’re in the large majority that’s gotten the short end of the stick on income inequality, if you have one of the working-class jobs that’s been subject to being shipped overseas, if your health insurance is unaffordable or nonexistent, if you’re part of a community that’s subject to being shot by police or driven to an early grave by despair—then maybe a little “epic social disruption” doesn’t sound so unappealing.

  • Sanders a Bourgeois Deviationist, Washington Post Declares

    Of course, that was last month, before Sanders nearly tied Hillary Clinton in Iowa and beat her by 22 percentage points in New Hampshire—which clearly has Milbank worried that maybe Democrats are insane enough to nominate a socialist, after all. So now Sanders’ problem isn’t that he’s too radical; it’s that he’s not radical enough.

  • An open letter to older women voting for Hillary, from a younger woman voting for Bernie

    Everything you’re telling us now goes against everything you’ve taught us before, everything you seemed to stand for when you were young. Asking women to vote for Hillary based on her gender rather than policy is sexist. Telling women they’ll to go to hell if they don’t vote for Hillary is evil. Telling women that they are only voting for Bernie to impress guys tells us you no longer respect women.

    We know the fight is uphill, but understand that this rhetoric makes you part of that uphill battle we are now fighting, part of the uphill battle that you fought, too. We understand the allure of a woman president after everything you’ve been through in your lifetime. But understand that based on the principles you’ve taught us, we know having a female presidency is less important than gaining true gender equality. Understand that we’re not willing to give up the values you’ve instilled in us for a trophy, even at your request.

  • Pro-Trump Alex Jones Threatens Violence Against Supporters Of “Inhuman, Parasitical Maggot,” “Hitler” Bernie Sanders

    Conspiracy theorist radio host Alex Jones, who is being courted by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, is smearing Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as “a dangerous, evil,” man comparable to Hitler and Lenin, and falsely claiming he wants to put people in “forced relocation” camps. Jones has also launched unhinged attacks against “stupid” and “self-propelled trash” Sanders supporters, suggesting they need to have their “jaws broken” and their “moron heads” slapped.

  • IRS Gives Up, Grants Karl Rove’s Dark Money Group “Social Welfare” Certification

    In the face of the Republican-led Congress’ hostility to the IRS clarifying the rules for nonprofit political activity, the tax agency has apparently given up.

    The IRS has granted nonprofit status to Karl Rove’s dark money political operation, Crossroads GPS, which for the past five years has pushed the legal envelope in order to influence elections but keep its donors secret.

    Formed in the wake of Citizens United, Crossroads GPS has been one of the biggest secretly-funded political players, raising and spending $330 million on election-related ads attacking Democratic candidates or praising Republicans, but without doing anything that might be described as advancing “social welfare.” Although the majority opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision endorsed disclosure of donors, in the five years following the decision, spending by secretly-funded 501(c)(4) nonprofits has exploded.

  • Biased Pluralism and the Defense of “Reality” in the Democratic Primary

    Last week, I pointed to a problem with Jonathan Chait’s defense of Hillary Clinton’s “pluralistic” approach to governance, noting that in an era of weak labor organization, such an approach leaves out the views of the great majority of working people, precisely the kinds of people Bernie Sanders is attracting.

    I didn’t think of it at the time, but since got reminded of an important paper by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, released in 2014. It used a dataset matching polling data to policy outcomes to test four theories for how our political system works: Majoritarian Democracy (meaning policies adopted reflect what most people want), Dominance by Economic Elites (meaning the rich get what they want), Majoritarian Pluralism (meaning interest groups, including those that represent the non-wealthy, get what they want), and Biased Pluralism (meaning interest groups that represent the views of the economic elite get what they want).

• Censorship

  • Censorship rules at Croydon Council

    On Monday 25th January 2016, a decision was taken by Croydon Council to limit democratic scrutiny, to restrict the views of the people and to limit the voices of elected representatives. Did you notice?

  • Judge Changes Mind, Says James Woods Can Likely Unmask Guy Who Made Fun Of Him On Twitter

    As the lawsuit noted, Abe List had also mocked Woods in the past, such as calling him a “clown-boy.” Of course “clown-boy” is not something than a statement of fact and thus can’t be defamation. The real issue is whether or not saying “cocaine addict James Woods” is a statement of fact that is defamatory. Of course, considering that Woods is a public figure, this seemed like a really high bar to cross. With a public figure, the statements need to be made “with actual malice” or a “reckless disregard for the truth.” In other words, it needs to be a case where Abe List knew those things weren’t true, but said them anyway. That seems unlikely here. Oh yeah, and also, hyperbolic statements that are obviously hyperbole are not considered defamation, and this one seemed to qualify.

  • Don’t Trash Your Old Flash Drives, Send Them to North Korea

  • Your Outdated Flash Drive Could Help Fight North Korea’s Censorship

  • The mute button called self-censorship

    In his book The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom (2014), Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), writes, “Deluged with data, we are blind to the larger reality. Around the world new systems of control are taking hold. They are stifling the global conversation and impeding the development of policies and solutions based on an informed understanding of the local realities. Repression and violence against journalists is at record levels, and press freedom is in decline.”

  • Apple Rejects Game Based On Bible Story Due To Content Including Violence Against Children

    Apple has a long and annoying history of trying to keep the content within its app store as pure as the driven snow. To do this, Apple employs an arbitrary and downright stupid sense of morality. That’s how you end up with Apple banning a VR representation of the Ferguson shooting, for instance, despite the fact that it was non-graphic. Or that time the company killed off a Civil War simulation because the game contained historically accurate representations of the Confederate flag. Or when it removed an image-searching app from the store because, hey, somebody somewhere might use it to see naughty-bits.

  • Battling State Censorship In The Westport Independent

    Of course, as with any game, there are rules in place. Although the censorship bill has yet to be passed, the state will look disapprovingly upon stories which cite their apparent corruption and impropriety. In response, they’ll send strongly-worded letters to your paper, encouraging you to desist unless you’re prepared to face to the consequences.

  • Google Expands Right-to-Be-Forgotten Removals Under Europe Rules

    Google will take more steps to comply with Europe’s right-to-be-forgotten rule by removing links from all of its search websites across the globe, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

    Google, part of Alphabet Inc., is taking the steps to better embrace a landmark ruling in 2014 by the European Union’s top court, which granted the region’s citizens the right to ask Web-search engines to remove personal information about themselves. Implementation can be tricky, because of the different versions of search sites operating in different countries, leading to questions about how far Google must go to make sure that it doesn’t fun afoul of the right-to-be forgotten rule.

• Privacy

  • The French data protection authority publicly issues formal notice to FACEBOOK to comply with the French Data Protection Act within three months

    The Chair of the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) issued formal notice to FACEBOOK to fairly collect data concerning the browsing activity of Internet users who do not have a FACEBOOK account. FACEBOOK must also provide account holders with the means to object to the compiling of their data for advertising purposes.

  • Open Letter to Věra Jourová: From Safe Harbor to Privacy Shield, Words in the Wind

    We will remain wary of the negotiation’s outcome. This landmark ruling of the ECJ repealing the Safe Harbor must not result in discarding our civil liberties. A watered-down agreement would most likely be repealed again by the Court and would have serious consequences for the confidence of both Europeans and European and American companies involved with the “Privacy Shield”. Europe’s credibility in the world is at stake, in an era of globalization driven by digital transformation.

  • Data Retention: Will the French Council of State Defy the ECJ?

    As the French Council of State is set to render a first decision on this burning issue this Friday1, Privacy International (PI) and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) have submitted a third party intervention aiming to support the legal challenges brought by FDN, the FDN Federation and La Quadrature du Net. The goal: repeal the provisions enforcing the generalised retention of metadata in France and allow the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to play its role of guardian of fundamental rights.

  • NYPD Used Cell Phone Spying Tools Over 1,000 Times Since 2008: NYCLU

    The New York Police Department (NYPD) has used the covert cell phone spying devices known as Stingrays more than 1,000 times since 2008, including for the investigation of low-level crimes and typically without a warrant, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) revealed on Thursday.

  • NSA’s spy-on-Americans plan goes before judge, again

    U.S. District Judge Richard Leon has scheduled a status hearing for several of the ongoing cases naming the NSA – or the CIA – for allegedly violating the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures.

    “As Judge Leon observed, these cases are at the ‘pinnacle of national importance,’” said Larry Klayman of Freedomwatch, who is a plaintiff in one case as well as a lawyer.

    “Mass surveillance of the citizenry cannot be permitted when it is likely based on reasons that go far beyond catching terrorists. Indeed, as Judge Leon found on two occasions in issuing his prior preliminary injunctions, Obama and his agents at the spy agencies have not been able to cite one instance when the unconstitutional mass surveillance caught even one terrorist.”

  • DC Federal Court To Hold Hearing On Status Of Three NSA Mass Surveillance Cases

    The Honorable Richard J. Leon will hold a hearing to discuss the status of three on-going cases against the NSA and the CIA from violating the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution through its various “programs” which have been spying on virtually all American citizens.

  • A How-to for Tech Firms: Doing the Right Thing on Privacy & Free Speech

    Good practices aren’t just the right thing to do, they’re good for the bottom line.

    Last year, the privacy and free speech mistakes of tech companies led to tons of embarrassing and costly stories. Often, these missteps would have been avoidable with good planning and processes in place, but many companies lack the resources to navigate this increasingly thorny terrain.

  • White House Executive Order on Privacy Falls Short

    This morning, the White House announced an Executive Order establishing a federal interagency privacy council composed of senior privacy officials from two dozen federal agencies. While seeming to offer some promise, however, the council has a limited mandate, and ultimately represents an overdue nod to privacy principles the administration has repeatedly abused in practice.

    If the Obama administration wants to support privacy, it can start by finally offering straight answers to Congress on surveillance and intelligence practices that offend privacy. Instead, Congress has legislated surveillance policy in the dark while enduring a long series of executive misrepresentations.

    Last week, mere days after an independent panel (notably including current U.S. intelligence officials) refuted recent FBI claims about encryption tools, Congress began examining surveillance powers set to expire next year in a closed hearing, enabling a familiar pattern of executive obfuscation and congressional confusion.

    As we wrote over two years ago, “It’s time for Congress to reassert its oversight role and begin a full-scale investigation into the [government's] surveillance and analytic activities….Congress cannot rely solely on mandating more reports from [intelligence agencies] as a solution.”

  • The NSA’s Credibility Takes Another Hit

    To be honest, I’m surprised the crypto community—especially overseas—is willing to cooperate with the NSA at all, given what we now know. They are plainly pretty obsessed with sneaking backdoors into both crypto standards and network devices. If the Snowden leaks didn’t destroy their credibility on this subject forever, I’m not sure what would.

  • Marsh recruits ex-GCHQ director for cyber role [Ed: Time for profit in the private sector]

  • Marsh brings in ex-GCHQ chief as cyber consultant

  • Marsh Appoints Lobban as Senior Adviser on Cyber Risk

  • Former spymaster to help fight City cyber crime

  • ‘Think harder’ about new GCHQ powers MPs and Peers tell Home Office [Ed: How the GCHQ's mouthpiece ('press') responded to outrage over GCHQ wishlist approved,]

    MPs and Peers are concerned that proposals to force communications companies to keep records on individuals internet activity for up to a year to allow GCHQ to catch terrorists and criminals are not properly thought through.

• Civil Rights

  • A Fashion (and Civil Liberties) Faux Pas: Don’t Profile Passengers Based Solely on Their Religious Headwear

    Waris Ahluwalia, a Sikh-American fashion designer and actor, was refused boarding in Mexico because of his turban.

    As we all know from the famous “Project Runway” tagline, “In fashion, one day you’re in, and the next day you’re out.” But no one told Mexico City airport officials that acclaimed fashion designer and actor Waris Ahluwalia, a Sikh-American who wears a turban and beard, is still very much in and that news of the airport’s profiling of him would spark outrage worldwide.

    On his way home to New York City for Fashion Week, Ahluwalia’s boarding pass was marked for additional screening before he even went through the initial security protocol. During the secondary screening, airline officials demanded that Ahluwalia remove his turban. A Sikh’s turban is a sacred head covering that shows devotion to God, and, like many Sikhs, Ahluwalia never removes it in public, so he refused the demand. That’s when Aeromexico officials told him that he would be banned from boarding the flight.

  • Why I Have Hope For American Muslim Equality

    Blaming the bad acts of a few on any religious or racial community is the essence of bigotry. Sadly, it’s not new in our country. At various times in U.S. history, Catholics, Jews, African-Americans, and Japanese-Americans — to name just a few — have all been scapegoated as national security threats, and suffered as a result. I’m glad that the president reminded Americans of that past and talked about the history and diversity of American Muslims, starting from those brought here as slaves in colonial times, to the generations who helped build this nation, to all who are part of our rich, pluralistic society today.

  • To Annoy or Not To Annoy: That Was The Question

    But amidst the intense focus on Reno v. ACLU, a less noticed provision of the CDA criminalized any “indecent” computer communication intended to “annoy” another person. It wasn’t surprising that it attracted little attention. The clause was hidden among a string of words—“lewd, lascivious, filthy, indecent and obscene” communications intended to “threaten, abuse, annoy or harass” another person.

  • The Stories Behind the Government’s Newly Released Army Abuse Photos

    The photos we did get mostly show close-ups of body parts — arms, legs, and heads, many with injuries. There are also wider shots of prisoners, most of them bound or blindfolded. The government didn’t provide any information about the human beings depicted or the contexts in which they were photographed.

    But with a little digging, we were able to learn about the stories behind them. Sixty of the 198 photos have legible Army criminal investigation file numbers printed on them. We used those numbers to search our Torture Database, which contains some 6,000 reports, investigations, emails, and other documents the government has been forced to release to us in the course of our 11-year-old FOIA suit.

    We found 14 separate cases of alleged or proven detainee abuse relating to 42 of the photos. Here’s what we learned.

  • The Danish refugee bill and what happens when you treat everyone the same

    The seizure of asylum seekers’ assets in Denmark confirms that the state sees refugees as economic burdens by default, but this new bill makes them dependent by design.

  • WI Supreme Court Again Tries Thwarting SCOTUS Review of Its Conflicts of Interest

    Last week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s majority took another step to insulate itself from review by the U.S. Supreme Court, the latest twist in the long-running “John Doe” legal saga that has brought national attention to dysfunction on the state’s highest court.

    “It is hard to imagine how a state Supreme Court could throw more roadblocks in front of an attempt to file [an appeal] with the U.S. Supreme Court than this court has,” said former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske, who is now a professor at Marquette Law School.

  • How Police Use a Dangerous Anti-Terrorism Tactic to End Pursuits

    If Calhoun had been alone in the car, he might have received little or no prison time, as he had with all his previous arrests for minor crimes. He was driving with a suspended license — and some counterfeit currency was later found in the wreckage — but his most serious offense was running from the police. That Tuesday, however, he had two friends as passengers, 20-year-old Relpheal Morton and 19-year-old Marion Shore. In court, Trooper Saddler described seeing Morton at the scene. “He was still in the back seat,” Saddler said. “He was kind of just looking around … I will never forget it. He just kept looking around.”

    Morton, whom I was not able to interview for this article, must have been stunned to be alive and relatively unharmed. The crash was so violent that the car’s roof was ripped completely off. The car looked flattened, like a tank had ridden over it. In one of the police dashcam videos that shows the crash, pieces of the car fly dozens of feet in the air toward the camera. According to a report by the Georgia State Patrol’s Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team, “The damage to the Toyota Corolla was too extensive to describe all the damage.” It seems almost impossible that two people survived.

    Marion Shore was not so lucky. She was sitting in the passenger seat, wearing her seatbelt, but the force of the crash was so strong that she was partially ejected from the car while it was flipping and rolling. Shore, the mother of a 3-year-old boy, was trapped halfway inside the car, in an in-between place where death was certain. The car rolled over her several times. The chief medical examiner for the state of Georgia examined Shore’s body and said in court that, as the car was rolling, the forces propelling it “literally bent her body almost in half.”

  • 10 Secret CIA Prisons You Do Not Want To Visit

    The US Central Intelligence Agency has, according to multiple investigative reports from both mainstream media outlets and human rights organizations, operated numerous “black sites” across the world. These locations, according to the reports, are secret prisons used to house “ghost prisoners.” Those sent to these places are held captive without being charged with any crime and are not allowed any form of legal defense.

    Ghost prisoners are subject to what the CIA calls “enhanced interrogation tactics”; most others call it torture. The CIA and their operatives’ methods allegedly include waterboarding, sleep deprivation, humiliation, physical beatings, electric shocks, and worse.

  • U.S. Passports of Sex Offenders to Be Marked

    In addition to the new law being the first time in U.S. history that a special class of Americans would be marked on their passports, a chilling event of its own, the law ignores the reality that the sex offender registry is another government “list,” such as no fly, that is relatively easy to get on and very hard to leave.

  • Assange’s UN Victory and Redemption of the West

    Last week, the United Nations Working Group (UNWG) on Arbitrary Detention ruled that journalist Julian Assange had been subject to arbitrary detention by the Swedish and British governments and that it must end. The Center for Constitutional Rights noted the significant precedent in the law of detention and the larger implications this has, not only for Assange’s case, but also for the protection of whistle-blowers and refugees around the world.

  • Lawsuit Demands Information on Shadowy “Countering Violent Extremism” Programs in U.S.

    Last February, the White House held a three-day summit on the topic of “Countering Violent Extremism.” At the summit, government officials announced the launch of pilot programs in Boston, Los Angeles, and Minnesota to explore “the preventative aspects of counterterrorism as well as interventions to undermine the attraction of extremist movements.”

    One year later, it’s still unclear what that entails, exactly. The government has provided few details on how it actually intends to “counter extremism” in the U.S., despite calling CVE an “administration priority” in the 2017 fiscal budget and allocating tens of millions of dollars in spending. In an indication of how these efforts are ramping up, this week a Senate subcommittee on Homeland Security approved a bill to create of an “Office for Partnerships Against Violent Extremism,” which will soon head to the full Senate for approval. A 2017 budget submission for the Office of Justice Programs also mentions “$69 million for CVE programs” proposed for the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice.

  • Beyonce’s Super Bowl Touchdown for Black Lives Matter

    The video of “Formation” includes images of a flooded city, reminiscent of New Orleans after Katrina, with Beyoncé singing atop a partially submerged police car. The video ends with a camera panning to a wall graffitied with the words “Stop shooting us.” Zirin lauded Zandria Felice Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Memphis, for her explanation of the imagery in the video: “Layered in and through the landscape of a black New Orleans still rigorous and delightful, past and present, the black southern signifiers and simulacra are unrelenting here,” Zandria wrote in “New South Negress,” her blog. Beyoncé, she continues, “becomes every black southern woman possible for her to reasonably inhabit, moving through time, class, and space.”

  • First Circuit ruling affirms accountability for wrongful police killings

    The lawsuit at issue stems from the 2011 Framingham, Massachusetts SWAT police killing of 68-year-old African American grandfather Eurie Stamps. In the early morning hours of January 5, 2011, the Framingham SWAT team raided Mr. Stamps’ home with a search warrant because they suspected his stepson of selling drugs there. Mr. Stamps, whom officers knew would be in the home and posed no known threat, ended up dead.

  • Brendan Dassey, Max Soffar, and the False Confession Playbook

    How police extract false confessions from the innocent, with horrific consequences.

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Should India’s Internet Be Free Of Charge, Or Free Of Control?

    In a far-reaching ruling, India has prohibited telecom service providers from charging different prices to consumers to access content on the Internet — a blow to Facebook and its aggressive bid to offer a free but stripped-down version of the Internet aimed at India’s poor.

  • Zuckerberg Admits His Defeat, Facebook Shuts Down Free Basics In India

    The world’s biggest social network Facebook has decided to shut down its controversial Free Basics service in India. This decision is being seen as a big win for the net neutrality advocates, who were opposing the service as it promoted differential data pricing.

  • One Year Later, ISP Claims That Title II Would Demolish Broadband Investment Found To Be Total, Indisputable Bullshit

    In late 2014, the Obama Administration and the FCC shocked everybody by announcing that the government would be uncharacteristically ignoring telecom lobbyists and reclassifying broadband service under Title II — ensuring it had adequate legal foundation for tougher net neutrality rules. As you might expect, the cable and phone companies immediately set to work with a blistering public relations barrage, with think tankers, editorials, industry consultants and thousands of industry mouthpieces all making one common refrain: Title II would utterly decimate broadband sector investment and crush innovation.

  • Facebook Board Member Offends 1 Billion Indians, Suggests British Rule Was Good For India

    Facebook board member and Silicon Valley luminary Marc Andreessen offended India with his colonialism tweet. He suggested that India should embrace Free Basics as the denial will harm the country is a big manner. He suggested that India’s anti-colonialism mindset has hurt the country’s economy and the government is repeating the same mistake by opposing Free Basics.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • US Industry IP Index Rates Nations

    The United States Chamber of Commerce has released an index rating countries on their use and treatment of intellectual property and innovation, finding the United States to be top in the world. The report scores the largest emerging economies relatively low, including China, despite that country’s dominance in rates of IP filings in recent years, far outstripping the United States.

  • Discussions On Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge Resume At WIPO Against Stormy Background

    After a hiatus of one year, the WIPO Committee working on the protection of genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore against misappropriation resumes its work next week. The subject is touchy, with most developing countries asking for legal protection, while some developed countries do not want to consider binding rules. Disagreement already arose at the end of 2015 over interpretation of the committee’s mandate, freshly approved in October.

  • Trademarks

    • Not Mormon®, But Still Mormon

      Who is a Mormon? This is a fundamental question of self-identity, religion, and even Wikipedia. One would think, however, that that answer would not be found in trademark law.

      Intellectual Reserve, Inc. (IRI), which owns and manages the trademarks of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has made a series of trademark claims against small startups and organizations using the term “Mormon” in their names and URLs, including our client, the Mormon Mental Health Association (MMHA).

      We first heard of IRI making claims to own the word “Mormon” when they got into a legal dispute with a company called “Mormon Match.” IRI claimed that both the company name and the associated URL infringed on IRI’s trademarks in the terms “Mormon” and “Mormon.org” (among others).

    • Navajo Nation’s Trademark Suit Against Urban Outfitters Proceeds; But Should It?

      Alright, this one has me more than a bit puzzled. We’ve written here before about Urban Outfitters, which has previously been on the receiving end of intellectual property disputes in the form of the company’s use of famous Obama iconography and for trying to inject a bit of humor into its coffee offerings. This time around, however, the clothing retailer is facing a lawsuit from the Navajo Nation for selling clothing and merchandise with patterns inspired by Native American designs and including the word “Navajo” or “Navaho” in the offerings.

  • Copyrights

    • U.S. Copyright Law Forces Wikimedia to Remove “Public Domain” Anne Frank Diary

      This year The Diary of Anne Frank entered into the public domain in the Netherlands, allowing millions of people around the world to read it for free. However, under U.S. law the book remains copyrighted, which prompted the Wikimedia Foundation to remove a copy of the book from its servers, under protest.

    • Law Students Line Up Behind ‘Baby Blue’ — Will Harvard Law Review Sue?

      Back in 2014, we wrote about a crazy story, where the Harvard Law Review was claiming copyright over legal citation standards. It’s true that the Harvard Law Review Association has published the famous “Bluebook” of legal citation standards for many years, but the idea that such citations are copyrightable is crazy. In response to this, law professor Chris Sprigman and open records guru Carl Malamud alerted the world of their intention to publish “Baby Blue” — a competing legal citations publication. They noted that the 10th edition of the Bluebook, which as published in 1958, had clearly fallen into the public domain, and they were going to use that as the starting point for their competing product. Late in December, we pointed out that Harvard Law Review freaked out after its expensive Ropes & Gray lawyers saw a few tweets from Malamud suggesting Baby Blue was almost ready for publication. On Christmas Eve, a pricey lawyer sent off a nastygram, threatening a copyright infringement lawsuit if Baby Blue were published.

    • US Congress Passes Customs Bill With Strong IP Enforcement Provisions

      The United States Congress today passed the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act, establishing clearer rules on customs officials’ work to stop infringing goods from entering the US. The Act creates a new National IP Coordination Center for coordinating investigations, training and other activities.

    • Years Later, White House Sends Two Copyright Treaties To Senate For Ratification: One Good, One Bad

      It’s not clear why it’s taken this long, but late Wednesday, the White House sent two WIPO treaties over to the Senate for ratification: The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled — usually just called “The Marrakesh Treaty” or “The Marrakesh Treaty for the Blind” — and the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances, usually just called “The Beijing Treaty.” The Beijing Treaty was completed in 2012. The Marrakesh Treaty in 2013. It’s not clear why it took the White House until 2016 to move on them, but such is life.