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12.08.15

Links 8/12/2015: Chromebooks Rising, KDE Plasma 5.5

Posted in News Roundup at 3:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Fujitsu Releases Its First Open Source Project: Open Service Catalog Manager

    Recently, the company announced its first open source project, called Open Service Catalog Manager, which is cloud management software created by Fujitsu. The software was internally developed by Fujitsu and has been on the market for a while. Wolfgang Ries, Chief Marketing Officer Fujitsu Enabling Software Technology, told me that it can be used in both enterprise and service provider scenarios.

  • Why We Are Open Source and Will Remain That Way

    I felt the need to write this opening paragraph due to a highly visible source code closing done by another company. We have no intentions, plans, thoughts or wavers in that direction. Furthermore, we consider contributions to be the least important benefits of Open Source Software.

  • The insecurity of platforms and how open source overcomes

    This is not to say that Linux and open source will always get off this easily. This time around, the creators of the ransomware made a crucial error. Who’s to say next go ’round they won’t make that error and find a vulnerability in an even more prevalent software to use. Say, for example, they find a vulnerability in Apache or BIND…that could spiral into a catastrophe. And considering some vendors (such as IBM) are so lazy that they cannot adequately get their software to function with SELinux (so much so, they advise users to disable the critical security layer), more and more vulnerabilities will be found. Linux is, in no way, immune to attacks. They will happen. But thanks to the very nature of the platform, overcoming such issues is far easier and expeditious than its proprietary counterpart.

  • Node.js Developer Fedor Indutny Weighs Performance and API Elegance

    The Node.js Foundation is a community-led, industry-backed consortium created to advance the development of the Node.js platform. Node.js itself is an open-source, cross-platform runtime environment for developing server-side web applications. It is used by thousands of organizations, including PayPal, GoDaddy, Joyent, and IBM, and is the runtime of choice for high-performance, low-latency applications. Node.js can be found in everything from cloud stacks and enterprise applications to mobile websites and the IoT.

  • OpenFin Shares HTML5 Container Info and Creates Advisory Board
  • OpenFin open-sources HTML5 container technology
  • OpenFin to open-source its financial desktop HTML5 container technology
  • Hashcat Password Cracker Goes Open Source

    Jens Steube, the creator of the password cracking toolkit Hashcat, has announced that his tool and its derivates will from now on be made available under an open source license.

  • Kylin, Born at eBay, Graduates to Top-Level at Apache

    The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), has just announced that Apache Kylin, an open source big data project born at eBay, has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP), “signifying that the project’s community and products have been well-governed under the ASF’s meritocratic process and principles.”

  • 8 books to make you a more open leader

    Before The Open Organization by Jim Whitehurst was The Open Organization by Philip A. Foster. While Jim admits that his book isn’t management theory (“I’ll leave that to the academics,” he says), Foster’s is unabashedly so. Published in 2014, The Open Organization is quite frankly the textbook on what both authors call a “new management paradigm.”

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla retires Firefox’s sponsored tiles, hunts for new revenue streams

        Firefox’s targeted sponsored tiles always seemed a little out of place for a browser that is essentially predicated on free, libertarian ideals. You can’t exactly blame Mozilla for trying, though. Since its inception, Mozilla has been entirely reliant on revenues from search engines. For years, Google paid Mozilla hundreds of millions of dollars to be Firefox’s default search engine. In recent years, Mozilla has diversified its search engine defaults

      • Mozilla’s Firefox Quits Sponsored Tiles

        Mozilla has announced that it’s dropping a program everyone but Mozilla seemed to realize was a bad idea from the start. In a blog posting on Friday, the organization’s vice president of content services, Darren Herman, wrote that Mozilla has “made the decision to stop advertising in Firefox through the Tiles experiment in order to focus on content discovery.” The much disliked sponsored tiles won’t immediately disappear from users’ browsers, however. “Naturally, we will fulfill our current commitments as we wind down this experiment over the next few months.”

        This was the second time last week that Mozilla announced it was dropping (or wants to drop) one project in order to “focus” on something else. Last Monday, executive chairperson Mitchell Baker wrote in a memo that the organization is seeking to drop support of the popular Thunderbird desktop email client in order “to be laser-focused on activities like Firefox that can have an industry-wide impact.”

      • Mozilla has a revenue share agreement with Pocket

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

    • Is Open Source Swift a good thing ? [Ed: Apple and Microsoft 'contribute' to Open Source like animal farms (for meat) contribute to bovine and fowl]

      On December 3 Apple has open sourced the Swift programming language on Swift.org. The language was first released (not Open Source yet) about the same time as iOS 8 and was created by Apple to make Mac and iOS app development an easier task. Swift is welcome as one more Open Source language and project but is too early to make a lot of noise about it.

      [...]

      For now Swift has no client-side (as Angular for JavaScript) or server-side (as Rail for Ruby, Django for Python) application frameworks. Exceptions are the proprietary Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks for Apple platforms only.

      For now Swift can only offer a very young set of core libraries.

      We have enough modern Open Source languages: Python, Ruby, Perl, JavaScript, PHP, Java just to mention the most recent ones. A lot of energy is required to create an ecosystem around a language.

      It is difficult to unbound Swift from Apple platforms since a lot of Open Source extensions for Swift still use proprietary Apple class libraries as NSString etc.

    • Apple retracts comment that it was first major open source company after criticism

      Last week Apple’s open sourcing of Swift naturally saw the spotlight thrown over Apple’s open source pages. This included a paragraph that claimed Apple was “the first major computer company to make Open Source a key part of its strategy”. Unsurprisingly, this riled some members of the developer community as being disingenuous and untrue.

    • Apple is proud of its open source software Swift. A bit too proud

      But it may be a bit too proud. On its page celebrating open-source software, Apple originally claimed it was “the first major computer company to make Open Source development a key part of its ongoing software strategy”.

      That claim will have come as some surprise to most major computer companies. While Apple has a long history of adopting open-source code for its own releases, most notably with the Unix basis of Mac OS X in 1999, it isn’t exactly the first mover in the field. And as for releasing its own proprietary code as open source, that’s something that it has been even slower on – certainly compared to arch rival Google, whose Android operating system is and always has been freely licensed.

    • Was ​Apple the first major open-source company? Not even close

      Ah, I don’t think so.

      Many older open-source programmers think, with reason, that’s nonsense.

      True, Apple has used open-source software for years, but that’s not the same thing as making open-source development “a key part of its strategy.” It would be more correct to say that Apple was the first major company to take advantage of open source.

    • Dropbox urged by users to open-source soon-to-be shut Mailbox app

      Dropbox users are petitioning the cloud storage giant to consider open-sourcing its iOS email app Mailbox, after announcing plans to shut it down in 2016.

    • Apple mocked for playing Open Source card

      The famously proprietary and secretive cargo-cult Apple has been trying to copy Microsoft’s moves into the weirdy beardie world of Open Sauce. Needless to say, it has not quite got the hang of it.

      The Tame Apple Press trumpeted Apple’s move to make its Swift programming language available to the great unwashed claiming that it bought the company’s open source efforts to the forefront.

    • Microsoft to open source the Edge browser JavaScript engine [Ed: openwashing of “cancer on the Web” (rebranded, buggy, insecure IE) by Microsoft booster Andy Patrizio]
    • Microsoft Goes Open Source on Key Part of Edge Browser Engine
    • EMC extends open-source ambitions to the server side with new RackHD project
    • EMC Unveils RackHD, Open-Source Version of OnRack
    • Data Storage King EMC Finally Gets With the Times
    • Open Source Is The Future Of EMC Software

  • BSD

    • BSD for the desktop user: A review of PC-BSD

      To be clear, the BSDs are not Linux distributions. They are Unix-like, so they are similar to Linux, but they are their own family of open source operating systems with their own rich history. Unlike Linux with its multitude of distributions, the BSD family is much smaller; the big three distributions are FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. The small handful of other BSD distributions branch off from one of those projects, most frequency, from FreeBSD.

    • DragonFly BSD 4.4

      DragonFly version 4.4 bring further updates to accelerated video for both i915 and radeon users, a new locale system, and a new default linker. Significant behind-the-scenes work has also been done, with symbol versioning, Hammer1 improvements, and other changes. Version 4.4.1 was the first release due to the late inclusion of OpenSSL update 1.0.1q.

    • BSDs in Linuxland and Best Rolling Distros

      OpenBSD and PC-BSD got the review treatment today at Distrowatch.com and OpenSource.com, proving Linux isn’t the only game in town. Several rolling distribution topics arose as well with Dedoimedo fighting Netrunner 2015.11 from destroying a laptop and Jesse Afolabi looking at the best user-friendly distributions based on Arch. Elsewhere, the Mint 17.3 screenshots sprang up faster than a boot-up screen and Curtis Franklin Jr. put together a slideshow on 10 distros perfect for gifts.

    • Guarding the gates with OpenBSD 5.8

      The OpenBSD project has long held a reputation for producing a secure operating system. The project boasts just two remote security holes reported over a span of about twenty years. It’s an impressive accomplishment for the developers and a good indication of why OpenBSD is so often trusted for security oriented tasks like running firewalls. However, the OpenBSD team has been steadily working on other projects too. The team behind OpenBSD also creates the widely used OpenSSH software which is used around the world by system administrators to remotely work on servers and securely transfer files. The OpenBSD project also spawned the LibreSSL software (a replacement for OpenSSL) following the Heartbleed vulnerability. In the latest release of OpenBSD we also saw improvements to the project’s lightweight and secure web server (called httpd), the introduction of the doas command (a replace for sudo), a new implementation of the file command and W^X support for i386 processors. The latest version of the operating system, OpenBSD 5.8, also switched to denying root logins in the default installation.

    • Microsoft Wired Up Clang’s Parser To Their Own Code Generator
    • DragonFly BSD 4.4 Officially Announced, Already Gets Its First Point Release

      Today, December 7, 2015, Justin Sherrill from the DragonFly BSD project, a BSD-based computer operating system, has had the great pleasure of announcing the release and immediate availability for download of DragonFly BSD 4.4.

    • n2k15: sashan@ on PF mpsafe progess

      mpi@ came with patch (sent to priv. list only currently), which adds a new lock for PF. It’s called PF big lock. The big PF lock essentially establishes a safe playground for PF hackers. The lock currently covers all pf_test() function. The pf_test() function parts will be gradually unlocked as the work will progress.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNUstep Developers Consider Forking The Project, Moving Away From FSF

      The lead developer of GNUstep, a GPL-licensed implementation of Apple’s Cocoa frameworks and toolkit, is considering a fork of the project.

    • GCC Compiler Patches Implementing AMD HSA Revised For Merging

      Martin Jambor at SUSE has sent out the latest set of patches for implementing support for the AMD-backed Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) inside the GNU Compiler Collection.

    • By 12/15: Send us comments to rally the Dept. of Ed. toward free licensing

      These proposed regulations are meant to facilitate public reuse of works funded by Department of Education grants. Currently, as explained in the NPRM, grantees are allowed to make their federally-funded works proprietary. The Department of Education receives a special license to share the works with the public, but in practice it rarely does so. Worse, teachers and students absolutely cannot use them in freedom (except for those few that happen to be made free).

      Since the course materials are works of practical use, they should carry the four freedoms of free software, just as programs and manuals should.

      The proposal would require grantees to publish the works under an “open” license. In the case of software, they may be thinking of “open source”, which is not quite as strong as free; in the case of courseware, many “open” courses are not free. The flaw in the proposed specific rules is that they don’t require that the license permit redistribution of modified versions. Without that freedom, the works will be nonfree.

  • Project Releases

    • NetHack 3.6.0 released

      After a 10+ year hiatus, the NetHack DevTeam is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6, a combination of the old and the new.

      Unlike previous releases, which focused on the general game fixes, this release consists of a series of foundational changes in the team, underlying infrastructure and changes to the approach to game development.

      Those of you expecting a huge raft of new features will probably be disappointed. Although we have included a number of new features, the focus of this release was to get the foundation established so that we can build on it going forward.

  • Licensing

    • FOSS projects and their legal structures

      Free Software has been growing pretty much everywhere around the world, and so much so that we now face challenges nobody would have thought possible even ten years ago. One of these unexpected issues is the need for proper legal structures. Traditionally, only a handful of entities used to exist. They could be dedicated to one, large project or act as a hub for a “forge” or a set of more or less related projects: that’s the case with the Eclipse or the Apache Software Foundation. Others were one of kind: Software In the Public interest, SPI, is handling funds for large and small projects and has been doing so for well over 15 years. The Free Software Foundation both directly and through the Free Software Conservancy has also hosted many FOSS projects developments, infrastructure and financial resources.

    • German court addresses GPLv3 section 8 termination provisions

      GPLv2, first published in 1991, provides for automatic termination of the license in the event of violation, with no stated opportunity for cure. By the time of the drafting of GPLv3, the Free Software Foundation, steward of the GPL license family, had come to consider automatic termination to be an unduly harsh policy. GPLv3, introduced in 2007, formally retained automatic termination in its section 8 but moderated it in certain ways, including by providing for automatic reinstatement of the license for first-time GPLv3 violators who cure the violation prior to 30 days after receiving notice from the copyright holder. The precise wording of section 8 was drafted with German preliminary injunction procedure in mind.

    • The Licensing and Compliance Lab interviews Michael Lissner and Brian Carver of RECAP The Law

      This is the latest instalment of our Licensing and Compliance Lab’s series on free software developers who choose GNU licenses for their works. In this edition, we conducted an email-based interview with Michael Lissner and Brian Carver of RECAP The Law.

    • Leveraging Open Source? If So, Keep it Legal

      Famously, a few years ago, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst made the prediction that open source software would soon become nearly pervasive in organizations of all sizes. That has essentially become true, and many businesses now use open source components without even knowing that they are doing so. As businesses adopt open source platforms such as OpenStack and Hadoop, they are complementing them with their own open source projects.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Ionic Launches New Version of its HTML5 App Creator

      It’s been a little over a year since Ionic launched the alpha of its open source Ionic Creator platform which provides an HTML5 SDK to build cross platform, native-feeling mobile apps using web technologies like HTML, CSS, and Javascript. The company has recently released a number of updates to the platform adding new features, polishing existing ones, and fixing issues.

    • New 3D Software Tracks the Brain Development in an Embryo

      An Indian-origin scientist has developed new, open-source 3D software that can track the embryonic development and movement of neuronal cells throughout the body of the worm. Although scientists have identified a number of important proteins that determine how neurons navigate during brain formation, it is largely unknown how all of these proteins interact in a living organism.

    • Researchers develop open-source 3D software to track brain development of the embryo

      Now it will be possible for the medical fraternity to track the growth and development of the brain in an embryo. An Indian-origin scientist from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) has developed an open-source 3D software that can track embryo’s brain activity.

    • Wio Link is an open-source IoT WiFi solution

      Wio Link is a new open source product that aims to make it easy to develop Internet of Things products and services. The Wio Link is an ESP8266 based WiFi development board that is made specifically for creating IoT applications using virtualized plug-n-play modules to RESTful APIs with mobile apps.

      Using the Wio Link developers are able to build IoT applications with no hardware programming, no breadboard, no jumper wires, and no soldering. The people behind Wio Link claim that users can build IoT applications in three steps in about five minutes.

  • Programming

    • A New Tool For Tracking ABI Changes Of Libraries

      Andrey Ponomarenko has announced his work on ABI-Tracker, a new open-source tool for tracking ABI changes of C/C++ software projects.

      Ponomarenko shared on the Fedora developer list this weekend about his aptly-named ABI-Tracker.

    • Day 7 — Unicode, Perl 6, and You

      Quick (rhetorical) question: how many of you either try your best to ignore Unicode, or groan at the thought of having to deal with it again?

Leftovers

  • Open Office Spaces and Cabal Rooms Suck

    In case it wasn’t clear: I really dislike large open office spaces. (Not 2-3 person offices, but large industrial scale 20-100 person open office spaces of doom.) Valve’s was absolutely the worst expression of the concept I’ve ever experienced. I can understand doing the open office thing for a while at a startup, where every dollar counts, but at an established company I just won’t tolerate this craziness anymore. (See the scientific research below if you think I feel too strongly about this trend.)

  • EU accuses Qualcomm of using market power to hinder rivals

    European Union antitrust regulators charged Qualcomm on Tuesday with abusing its market power to thwart rivals, putting the world’s number one mobile chipset maker at risk of a hefty fine.

    The accusations by the European Commission are the latest antitrust problems for the company as regulators in the United States, China, Japan and South Korea look into its licensing model and its dominant patents in mobile networks and devices.

  • Hardware

    • I said it was wired like a Christmas tree

      My main issue is that modern systems are just plain noisy, often with multiple small fans whining away. I have worked to reduce this noise by using quieter components as replacements but in the end it is simply better to be able to put these systems in a box out of the way.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • US Workers Sue Monsanto, Claiming Herbicide Caused Their Cancers

      One of the cases was filed in Los Angeles on September 22, 2015 by 58-year-old Enrique Rubio, who used to work on farms in California, Texas, and Oregon. His job used to consist of spraying fields with the herbicide Roundup, which he is alleging caused his bone cancer in 1995. 64-year-old Judi Fizgerald in New York filed the other lawsuit. She used to work at a horticultural products company and was exposed to Roundup in the 1990s. She is attributing her diagnosis of leukemia in 2012 to the herbicide.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Corporate News Sources Fail to Fully Report US Drone Strike Causalities

      Both the New York Times and the Washington Post have consistently underreported the number of fatalities resulting from US drone strikes. Research conducted by Jeff Bachman, co-director of the Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs Program at American University, compares fatality reports from both papers to more completely researched reports from City University London’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism. While the NYT reported only two civilian deaths out of 81 drone strikes covered, TBIJ found that there were actually 26 civilians killed. Likewise the Post had reported one civilian death out of 26 drone strikes covered. TBIJ documented seven.

      When both the NYT and the Post covered 33 drone strikes that they reported caused civilian causalities, both claimed only nine deaths over the course of three different stories. TBIJ had found between 180-302 civilian deaths.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Putting out Indonesia’s fires

      Every year, forest fires ravage Indonesia, causing massive environmental, social and economic devastation. This year’s fires are the largest in nearly 20 years, destroying three million hectares of land and causing an estimated $14 billion in losses related to agriculture, forest degradation, health, transportation, and tourism.

    • ‘How Do We Move Past a Fossil Fuel-Powered World?’ – CounterSpin interview with Janet Redman on climate conference activism

      Janine Jackson: Coverage of the upcoming UN conference on climate change has shifted to concerns about security in Paris and resulting clampdowns on activism. But before that, the conference itself was billed as pivotal on global action on the issue. Barack Obama recently declared the US global leaders in the fight against climate change–but is that really true, and what should we actually expect from the conference itself? Janet Redman is director of the Climate Policy Program at the Institute for Policy Studies. She joins us now by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Janet Redman.

    • Jury Finds DuPont Responsible for Negligence in Chemical Spill

      The chemical known as perfluorooctanoic acid (also called C8, because of the eight-carbon chain that makes up its chemical backbone) has spread from the company DuPont’s plant into the drinking water of 80,000 people in West Virginia and Ohio. A 59-year old woman named Carla Bartlett has developed kidney cancer after drinking C8-contaminated water for over 10 years. Bartlett is the first of many personal injury and wrongful death claims stemming from the 2005 settlement of a class-action suit filed on behalf of the people who lived near this plant. DuPont’s attorneys presented their arguments stating that the company is not responsible for the tumor that Bartlett was treated for in 1997. Their defense is that the company’s employees did not realize that C8 was dangerous when Bartlett was exposed, even though there were internal documents indicating DuPont’s knowledge that the chemical posed risks to both animals and humans.

  • Finance

    • 6 dispiriting truths about America’s billionaires

      When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced this week that he will give away 99 percent of his personal fortune—now estimated at $44 billion—during his lifetime, he was lauded in newspapers and TV broadcasts from coast to coast. But few people noted that giving away his billions will still leave Zuckerberg, his wife Priscilla Chan and newborn daughter Max, with at least $440 million to live on.

      Such vast sums of money are unimaginable to most of us. But according to a just-released report, “Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us,” by the Institute for Policy Studies, the Facebook founder is merely one of the 400 wealthiest Americans, whose net worth is growing while they evade taxation and drive economic inequality.

      “The Forbes 400 provides a useful snapshot of the nation’s wealthiest individuals, an insight into a world most people will never witness firsthand,” the report said, as it lists some incredible comparisons that contrast the vast wealth held by a select few compared to average Americans. “The Forbes 400 also provides an insight into just how lopsided our economy has become: Just 400 people hold as much wealth as over 190 million.”

      Consider the following six bullet points from the report. The authors state they “believe that these statistics actually underestimate our current national levels of wealth concentration,” because, “the growing use of offshore tax havens and legal trusts has made the concealing of assets much more widespread than ever before.”

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Trump, The Press, And How To Treat A Liar

      Appearing on Face the Nation, Republican frontrunner Trump told host John Dickerson that prior to the attacks, the wives of the 9/11 hijackers “knew exactly what was going to happen” and were flown “back to Saudi Arabia” days before the hijacked plane strikes.

      This is complete nonsense. As The Washington Post explained, “There is no support for Trump’s claims … virtually all of the hijackers were unmarried.” And anyone who followed news of the attacks, and the subsequent years-long investigation, ought to know that. But on Face the Nation, Dickerson didn’t flinch when Trump floated his latest 9/11 lie; Dickerson didn’t question Trump’s absurd claim.

    • Seth Meyers Calls Out The Media For Stoking Fear In The Wake Of The San Bernardino Shooting
    • Fox News Tells Young Children To Run At Active Shooters

      A Fox & Friends demonstration where children neutralized a gunman during an active shooter situation offered dubious advice to parents, as experts emphasize that confronting the gunman should be “a last resort.”

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Why the AP’s Call Record Article Is So Stupid

      Notice how there’s no mention, in the headline or the lead, of the FBI? They’re the agency that will lead the investigation of the San Bernardino attack. That’s important because FBI has their own databases and the ability to obtain records from phone and Internet companies directly going forward (and already had, given reports from Facebook, before this article was written). The PCLOB report on the 215 phone dragnet showed that the FBI almost always accessed the information they otherwise might have gotten from the 215 dragnet via their own means. “[O]ur review suggests that the Section 215 program offers little unique value here, instead largely duplicating the FBI’s own information-gathering efforts.”

      But the real problem with this utterly erroneous article is that it suggests the “US government” can’t get any records from NSA, which in turn suggests the only records of interest the NSA might have came from the Section 215 dragnet, which is of course nonsense. Not only does the NSA get far more records than what they got under Section 215 — that dragnet was, according to Richard Clarke, just a fraction of what NSA got, and according to NSA’s training, it was significantly redundant with EO 12333 collection on international calls to the US, which the NSA can collect with fewer limits as to format and share more freely with the FBI — but there are plenty of other places where the FBI can get records.

    • [tor-relays] ANN: TCP injection attack detection tool – honeybadger

      I was inspired by the Snowden documents to write a TCP injection attack detection tool. Powerful entities world wide are stock piling zero-days. TCP injection attacks can be used to deliver many of these attacks.

    • Legislation requiring tech industry to report terrorist activity may be revived

      Legislation requiring tech companies to report on terrorist activity on their platforms is likely to be revived, following concerns about the widespread use of Internet communications by terrorists.

      Legislation requiring tech companies to report on terrorist activity on their platforms is likely to be revived in the U.S., following concerns about the widespread use of Internet communications by terrorists.

      A proposed rule that would require companies to report vaguely defined “terrorist activity” on their platforms had been included as section 603 in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016.

    • President Obama urges tech companies to join in the fight against terror

      US PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA went on television at the weekend to talk up his administration’s efforts to combat terrorism, and to urge tech firms to help the government to protect citizens.

      In what’s been seen as an unusual move, Obama decided to reach out to America’s TV-loving masses and beam his anti-terror/smash encryption message straight to their living rooms.

    • Software Can Now Identify Individuals by How They Type

      Computer programmers have developed software that can uniquely identify an individual by the way they type with a reported accuracy rate of 99.7%. This particular method of identification is the latest avenue of biometrics research and technology.

      This software works by analyzing minor variations in keyboard use. This is possible because every individual uses a keyboard slightly differently. These differences can be due to a number of reasons, ranging from the size of a person’s hands to the impaired use of a finger. All of these factors result in unique characteristics when typing, such as the length of time a key is pressed or the pause between hitting the “j” and the “o” keys. Each press of a key can be measured down to the millisecond. Taken together, an individual’s traits contribute to a unique typing signature that is virtually impossible to mimic without detection. Researchers have found that this signature also translates very similarly onto the use of touch-screen keyboards.

  • Civil Rights

    • French police want to ban Tor, public Wi-Fi

      French police have made their Christmas wish-list, and it includes banning Tor and public Wi-Fi.

      As legislators debate new antiterrorism laws, police and security services have been studying how technology hinders their enquiries, according to French newspaper Le Monde.

      In the hours following the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris the French government declared a state of emergency, granting police sweeping powers to impose curfews and conduct warrantless searches.

    • Are French civil liberties another victim of Paris attacks?

      In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, France has enacted a three-month state of emergency, widening the powers of police and security agencies. It has done so with relatively little public debate about the deterioration of civil liberties.

    • Army recommends no further punishment for Petraeus

      The Army has recommended that David H. Petraeus, the retired general and former CIA director who quit in a scandal three years ago, not face further punishment for having an affair with his biographer and providing her with top-secret materials, according to Pentagon officials.

      The final decision on whether to discipline Petraeus under military law rests with Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter. Although he could overrule the Army’s recommendation, such a move would be unusual.

    • My “Theory” of Codes of Conduct

      Oh, good lord, we’ve got a “thinker” on our hands. Seriously, that’s how he describes himself in the bio for his self-published book about psychopaths (based on his personal experiences rather than psychological research, natch). Only now he’s thinking about codes of conduct.

      Is there a problem with thinking? Nope. Is there a problem with this guy thinking? Not in particular. It sounds like he’s even pretty good at it when it comes to software. So what’s the problem?

      It’s the same problem that continually happens with people who define themselves as smart or as good thinkers: They forget about GIGO. They come to think of themselves as experts without having done any of the work.

    • Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt

      Peter and Mickey spend the hour in conversation with political author Chris Hedges; his latest book is “Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt.” The discussion covers issues from freedom of information to U.S. Middle East interventions, and the ideas of intellectuals from W.E.B. Dubois to Cornel West to Sheldon Wolin.

    • Fox Business Invites Gun Store Owner Who Banned All Muslims From Her Gun Range To Praise Trump For Adopting Her Idea

      Fox Business invited gun store owner Jan Morgan to respond to GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s call to ban Muslims, including American citizens, from entering the United States. Morgan bragged that Donald Trump is “basically going to do what [she is] already doing at [her] gun range” by banning all Muslims from buying or renting guns.

    • New Polling Shows Americans Strongly Oppose Citizens United

      In 2010 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Citizens United. The landmark decision allowed for nearly unlimited funding of political campaigns by corporations. Arguably, the decision is one of the largest detriments to American democracy, as it essentially allows the “highest bidder” to buy members of office. American media have touched on the case in general. However, it has received minimal attention given the seriousness of its consequences.

      A recent Bloomberg poll revealed that 78% of Americans do not agree with the Citizens United decision and are in favor of the law being overturned. While a majority of Americans share this belief, corporate media failed to cover this story. The Huffington Post covered the story, however they were the only major news corporation to do so. This means that this poll was largely unshared with the general public.

    • New York Counties Push to Upgrade Public Defender System

      In New York state, citizens’ freedom is being put in jeopardy by part time, lack-luster public defenders. The right to an attorney is a basic right that should help people through the court system, however these lawyers are not giving their clients enough time or energy. Most people are showing up to their court dates without having seen their appointed public defender once. The five New York state counties that are fighting for better public defenders for the poor have finally won their argument with the state and are receiving “new funding and oversight to help the five counties upgrade the quality of legal representation” that people deserve.

    • Girls Who Code Makes Its Way Into A Mobile Game

      A major factor that deters girls from pursuing computer science is the perception that coders are mostly white and male, according to a recent Google-commissioned Gallup survey. That’s why non-profit organization Girls Who Code has partnered with mobile game-maker Pixelberry Studios to tell the story of a young girl coder in its flagship game, “High School Story.”

      The coder, named Gabriela, will be the first tech-related character featured in “High School Story,” a game that over 30% of high school girls in the U.S. have played, according to Pixelberry. The storyline is inspired by a group of Girls Who Code alumnae. In the game, Gabriela leads players on a mission that culminates at a hackathon, where the objective is to build a mobile app. Previous storylines on High School Story have addressed cyber-bullying and body image.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • The Internet isn’t ready for really big news

      One thing you can say for traditional broadcast media: They scale really well. If you put an analog signal on the air or on a wire with enough repeaters and amplifiers, it will serve every client that connects. That’s not the case with most of the network world, unfortunately. Sure we have multicast, but that’s not on an Internet scale — and the Internet is where the problems lie.

      First, let’s define multicast as used in IP networks. This is a method by which a single source stream can be accessed by multiple clients simultaneously, without increasing the load on the source itself. Thus, this functions much like an analog broadcast: You have a single source that a client can connect to at any time. The downside is that the client is a silent subscriber of the content and cannot control the stream; there’s no rewinding or restarting on a per-client basis. This is content broadcast over IP, and it’s what television networks use to distribute video streams through their networks, financial institutions to receive stock quotes, and so forth.

    • Donald Trump thinks he can call Bill Gates to ‘close up’ the internet

      Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump just said the US should consider “closing up” the internet to curb radical extremism. Trump, a man that routinely claims everyone in charge of the US is stupid, believes that as president he could just call up Bill Gates to help him shut off the internet. Trump floated the idea at a campaign rally at the USS Yorktown in South Carolina tonight as a way to stop ISIS “jihadists” from recruiting Americans to commit acts of domestic terrorism. The idea is so dumb it almost has us, too, at a loss for words.

12.07.15

Links 7/12/2015: Linux 4.4 RC4, Steam GNU/Linux Gaming at Almost 1,700 Titles

Posted in News Roundup at 7:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Intel open-sources its Snap cloud visibility tool on GitHub

    Back in July, Intel launched its “Cloud for All” initiative aimed at foster inggreater enterprise adoption of public, private and hybrid clouds. Building on that effort, Intel last week said its open-sourcing a new tool called “Snap” that’s designed to help organizations gain better visibility into their cloud infrastructure.

  • Trusted Analytics Platform: Simplify Big Data Analytics with Open Source Software

    The Trusted Analytics Platform (TAP) is an open source project that Intel developed to make it easier for developers and data scientists to deploy custom big data analytics solutions in the cloud as well as reduce development costs and time to market. The company disclosed pilots with Penn Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU).

  • Implementing an Open Source Private Docker-based PaaS: A Q&A with Rancher Labs CEO Sheng Liang

    Rancher Labs have created RancherOS, a minimalist operating system (OS) built to explicitly run Docker, and also Rancher, an open source platform for building a private container service, much like Engine Yard’s Deis PaaS and VMware’s Photon platform. InfoQ sat down with Rancher Labs CEO, Sheng Liang, and asked about the Rancher platform, common container platform issues such as networking and storage, and how a container platform will fit into a standard development workflow.

  • It’s actually open source software that’s eating the world

    At Lightspeed we’ve been investing aggressively in open source software (OSS) businesses for the past 10 years. Recently, we’ve seen a significant increase in entrepreneurs pitching open source startups, and we’ve also seen greater competition for these deals. We pulled together some numbers in an attempt to measure the acceleration in interest in and funding for OSS businesses in the last few years. The results were staggering even to us.

  • Weather Company CIO says informed IT leaders are open to open source

    Just a few short years ago, there was a possibility you might lose credibility by bringing up open source as a possible solution for an IT problem. As 2015 draws to a close, it’s more likely that you will lose credibility for not bringing up open. This doesn’t mean the decisions or the outcomes are closer to being right, but at least there’s a respectable debate going on.

    I look at open source and take stock that we’ve come a long way as an industry, and I think that’s good. Apple has recently made some noise related to the platform they’re building out that is heavily open source-based. Google has just released a big part of its AI technology, and IBM is hard at work in the Spark community. As the consumerization of IT continues its march and as consumers begin to consume content from nontraditional sources as their new traditional means – the Netflixes of the world, the Hulus, the Amazon Instants, the HBO GOs – they’re starting to be more comfortable and familiar with less traditional and niche players as a part of their lives.

  • November: FOSS Activites

    This is the first time I have posted my monthly activities on my blog, but doing so serves two purposes. The first is that I hope to become a more active blogger. The second is that it will force me to review my activities monthly. The month of November marked the end of my term on the Ubuntu Community Council and a return to a focus on advocacy and local activity. I have included some activities that took place at the end of October since this is my first report.

  • CryptID open source identification system uses the blockchain to revolutionize ID

    Access control systems are an integral part of the security industry, which is vital across every campus, airport, corporate office, government building, and anywhere else the movement of people or their access to certain items or programs, is limited. Even the driver’s license in your wallet is a product of this industry, and it is likely laden with 45-year old magnetic stripe technology, and can be counterfeited by hundreds of different people around the world for an affordable fee on the dark web.

  • Robots not likely to take your job (at least not yet), says Open Source chief

    Stripped of its diplomacy and erudition, the message from Brian Gerkey, CEO of Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF), is simple:

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • Zapcc Is Showing Compile Times Even Faster Than LLVM Clang

      The Zapcc compiler stack is proving to be faster than LLVM/Clang at compiling C++ codes, which in turn is much faster already than GCC. The performance of the generated binaries from this LLVM-based compiler stack is on-par with what’s offered by Clang.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GIMP Versus Old Thin Clients

      Take GIMP, for instance, the ubiquitous image-editing software that’s “not as good as…”. It works fine from a thin client except when you select something for “cut and paste” operations. Then, it calls out the selection with “marching ants”, actual animation on your screen. Not good. There is a workaround, however. In the “View” menu item, you can turn off “Show selection” and the ants go away. You can still see the selection as a thin line, so you’re good, no longer having to redraw a screen over that slow connection. The ants return on subsequent images though. So, to keep them away, go to “Edit/Preferences/Appearance” and uncheck “Show selection” in two places, normal window and full-screen.

    • GNUnet News: YBTI @ 32c3

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Bye, bye, bananas

      Now, half a century later, a new strain of the disease is threatening the existence of the Cavendish, the banana that replaced the Gros Michel as the world’s top banana export, representing 99 percent of the market, along with a number of banana varieties produced and eaten locally around the world.

      And there is no known way to stop it—or even contain it.

      That’s the troubling conclusion of a new study published in PLOS Pathogens, which confirmed something many agricultural scientists have feared to be true: that dying banana plants in various parts of the world are suffering from the same exact thing: Tropical Race 4, a more potent mutation of the much feared Panama Disease.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • CIA-funded Afghan militia accused of killing civilians

      An Afghan militia paid and equipped by the CIA has been accused of killing civilians and torturing detainees in a secret war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

    • CIA-backed militias waging shadow war in Afghanistan

      Months after the Obama administration declared combat operations over in Afghanistan, the CIA continues to run a shadow war in the eastern part of the country, overseeing an Afghan proxy called the Khost Protection Force, according to local officials, former commanders of that militia and Western advisers.

    • ISIS 2.0: Meet the New Extremist Group the CIA is Paying to Kill Innocent Civilians in Afghanistan

      While American bureaucrats claim that heavy interventions in the Middle East are somehow beneficial for the increasingly volatile region, the US military continues its decades-old tradition of creating more terrorists than it kills.

    • Column: War on Terror is creating more terror

      The interventionists will do anything to prevent Americans from seeing that their foreign policies are perpetuating terrorism and inspiring others to seek to harm us. The neocons know that when it is understood that blowback is real – that people seek to attack us not because we are good and free but because we bomb and occupy their countries – their stranglehold over foreign policy will begin to slip.

      That is why each time there is an event like the killings in Paris earlier this month, they rush to the television stations to terrify Americans into agreeing to even more bombing, more occupation, more surveillance at home, and more curtailment of our civil liberties. They tell us we have to do it in order to fight terrorism, but their policies actually increase terrorism.

      If that sounds harsh, consider the recently-released 2015 Global Terrorism Index report. The report shows that deaths from terrorism have increased dramatically over the last 15 years – a period coinciding with the “war on terrorism” that was supposed to end terrorism.

    • Sadly, Terrorism Is Easy

      Because, sadly terrorism is easy. As I stated recently, if I were crazed enough to want to kill somebody tomorrow, and did not care how I did it, who I killed or if I died myself, I could kill a few people without too much effort or planning. That is why the continual propaganda about “seven foiled ISIS terrorist plots” or “4,000 active Islamic terrorists in the UK” is quite simply untrue. If all those terrorists existed, they would not be so entirely unproductive. What the authorities do catch continually are fantasists, often children, boasting and “plotting” online about being terrorists. That is quite a different thing. It is worth noting that nobody has been charged over any of these seven foiled ISIS plots. Strange that, isn’t it?

    • ‘Targets Have Very Different Values in the US Media System’ – CounterSpin interview with Jim Naureckas on ISIS Attacks

      Janine Jackson: The Paris attacks were barely over before people began using them for their own purposes. They were a reason to reject Syrian refugees, though no refugees appear to be implicated. They were a reason to increase government surveillance, although the suspects were already on the French government’s radar and there’s no indication more surveillance would have made any difference. Some even used the attacks as a cause to demean antiracism activists on college campuses.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Global Protests Demand Climate Action Ahead of Paris Summit

      More than half a million people took part in rallies around the world ahead of today’s opening of the 21st United Nations Climate Change Summit here in Paris, France. World leaders have arrived for two weeks of negotiations aimed at reaching an accord on global warming. In London, the musician and artist Peter Gabriel said citizens around the world are calling out for a binding and just agreement.

    • Indonesia’s fires need to be smothered for good

      Every year, forest fires ravage Indonesia, causing massive environmental, social and economic devastation. This year’s fires are the largest in nearly 20 years, destroying three million hectares of land and causing an estimated US$14 billion (about 500 billion baht) in losses related to agriculture, forest degradation, health, transportation, and tourism.

      Perhaps even more alarming is the climate impact. Indonesia is already among the world’s biggest carbon emitters. Thanks to the fires, its daily average emissions this September and October were 10 times higher than normal.

    • Climate and consumption come to a head in Indonesia forest fires

      As Western Washington settles into its rainy season, Indonesia is welcoming the rains as well, clearing the air after two months of forest fires that are the worst the country has seen in decades.

      In the most affected areas, the smoke was so bad that schools and offices were closed in Indonesia. The fires had a human toll: more than half a million people suffered respiratory problems and 21 died.

      “Even when it got rain, it was not enough to eradicate the fire smoke,” Wahyu Riawanti, a political science lecturer who lives in Jakarta, said in an email. “It needed a whole two days rain to completely clean the air.”

      When the fire was finally quenched, over 8,000 square miles of forests and other land had burned, according to reports from the Associated Press. Economic losses are estimated to be $9 billion. The fires have also taken the lives of endangered animals, like the orangutan, and devastated some of the earth’s most biodiverse forests.

    • Indonesia Burning

      As much as 79% of Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions result from the destruction of its carbon-rich tropical forests and peat bogs.

    • Everyone can be a target

      We are at the dawn of an environmental crisis that will end humanity. Every human on this planet is concerned. People get beaten up when they march to pressure governments to do something about it. We need to unite and resist. And yes, we are going to get hurt but freedom is not free.

  • Finance

    • Zuckerberg’s crafty donation

      This gives Zuckerberg more flexibility to invest in for-profit enterprises and to support political causes, something charities cannot easily do. He will not have to disclose details of the company’s financial affairs and can disburse a profit if he chooses.

    • Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us

      This report exposes the extreme wealth concentrated within the fortunes of the 400 wealthiest Americans and compares this wealth to the much more meager assets of several different segments of American society.

      The report proposes several solutions to close the growing gap between the ultra wealthy and the rest of the country. These policies include closing offshore tax havens and billionaire loopholes in the tax code that the wealthy exploit to hide their wealth.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

    • Calvin Cheng and Amos Yee: Where should we draw the line on freedom of speech?

      Cheng’s case is troubling as it further enables Islamophobia that we’ve seen come from the West. Amos’ case continues to entrench misogyny and the practice of objectifying women. And since both are seen as public figures in Singapore (even Amos seems to agree with this on his social media accounts), they are more likely to face scrutiny for such remarks. So there’s a consequence that they can’t run away from – public outcry.

    • Channel 4 axes Prince Charles interview over ‘censorship’

      Britain’s Channel Four News has reportedly axed a planned interview with Prince Charles after the heir to the throne demanded absolute control over the questions asked and subsequent editing of the program.

      The conditions are contained in a detailed 15-page contract, which reportedly even gave Charles – potentially the future King of Australia – the right to pull the program if he was unhappy with it.

    • Sign a 15-page contract if you want to interview me, says Charles: Prince in censorship row over demands to broadcasters
    • No One Is ‘Censoring’ Michael Moore

      Of my many pet peeves, the one that might annoy me the most is when a filmmaker claims that the MPAA is “censoring” him because it gives his work a rating he doesn’t like. Usually, this complaint is leveled by a director who receives the NC-17 rating because such a rating not only requires theaters to keep children out of theaters but also precludes the picture from being shown in certain chains or advertised on certain networks/in certain newspapers.

    • ‘Fefka to head protest against censorship’

      On Day 2 of IFFK, the larger cliques of 2013 festival seem to have been replaced by a smaller group of delegates. The crowd is slowly trickling in as the festivities are yet to begin.

      Be that as it may, the dignitaries are making their presence felt. Onmanorama caught up with director B. Unnikrishnan for a quick chat.

    • Watch Filmmaker Anand Patwardhan Talk About His 40-Year-Long Battle With Censorship

      Filmmaker Anand Patwardhan is widely known for raising issues through his films that can be seen as ‘testing the limits’ of freedom of expression. He is not afraid to focus on matters that might make anyone flinch, which can be seen in many of his films, starting from the very first ‘Waves Of Revolution‘ (1974), which followed the JP movement started in Bihar, to the last ‘Jai Bhim Comrade‘ (2012), that explores the lives and politics of Dalits in Mumbai.

      With his film ‘Father, Son And Holy War‘, released in 1994, Patwardhan engaged in a long drawn legal battle with Doordarshan. Despite winning several awards, the state-sponsored telecaster refused to broadcast the film that delved into the history and psychology of communalism in India in light of the Babri Masjid demolition.

      He recently returned his National Award to protest growing intolerance in India and penned a powerful open letter expressing his dismay and emphasising the need of eternal vigilance. 65-year-old Patwardhan has been at war with various forms of censorship, including the CBFC (central board for film certification) and right-wing groups. His website is blocked often and can then only be accessed via proxy servers. He believes that all governments are equally responsible for attacking freedom of expression, but censorship is worse in the BJP-led government.

    • Melizarani T.Selva on how spoken words is free of censorship, unlike journalism

      I have always seen spoken words as an instrumental freedom. As a journalist, I report about every issue in the society. Journalism has censorship which always prevents me from expressing myself freely, but the world of spoken words does not. It is a free platform and I feel very open and safe. There are no hurdles as such, but sometimes I feel tied down when I have to write about something very personal, as you need to keep in mind that you have to share your story without revealing too much about your life. There is a constant challenge in maintaining that balance.

    • ‘Safe space’ or censorship?
    • “Safe Space” The new word for blasphemy and censorship
    • Film Censorship at Its Darkest Under Leadership of Pehlaj Nihalani

      If there is one thing the politically divided industry is generally at a consensus about, it is the vagaries of the censors, a recurring sore for decades, that has seemingly reached the nadir in 2015 under the stewardship of producer Pehlaj Nihalani as chairman of the Central Board of Film Certification.

    • Saraki Defends Social Media Censorship Bill, Says People Must Be Held Responsible For Their Action

      In spite of criticism trailing the ongoing bill by the Senate to censor social media in the country, Senate President Bukola Saraki on Thursday vowed that the Red Chamber would not back down from passing the proposed law.

    • Social media censorship bill: ‘Senate can’t be intimidated’ to surrender’

      AS criticisms continue to trail the ongoing bill by the Senate to censor social media in the country, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, has said no amount of attacks arising from it would make the Red Chamber abandon the proposed law.

    • Social Media Censorship Bill Dangerous To Nigeria’s Democracy – Gani Adams
    • Nigeria’s lawmakers are about to pass a bill which could gag citizens on social media

      Nigeria’s senators and house representatives are not exactly a popular bunch. Widely criticized for their high salaries and luxurious lifestyles, Nigerians have a frosty relationship with their senators. That relationship could get even worse with the introduction of a bill which is seen as aiming to gag free speech on social media.

    • Self-Censorship Rampant in Albanian Media, Study Says

      Links between politics, business and media have undermined journalistic excellence in the Albanian media and generated censorship or self-censorship among journalists, said the BIRN Albania study published on Tuesday.

      The study, based on interviews with 121 journalists, media owners and media experts, concluded that owners’ economic interests, their political links and media outlets’ financial inadequacy are the key factors pushing journalists toward self-censorship.

    • Censorship costs should be grounds for refusing FoI requests says watchdog

      Public bodies should be able to refuse Freedom of Information requests on the basis it would take them too long to censor material, the MPs’ expenses watchdog has said.

      The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) has suggested the move to the Government’s controversial commission reviewing the Freedom of Information Act.

      Under existing rules, Whitehall departments can turn down FoI requests if they would cost more than £600 to answer. The limit for other public bodies is £450.

    • When Is Censorship Okay? Answer: never

      I predict that this strange new power dynamic emerging on college campuses, where students leverage mostly reasonable grievances for patently unreasonable ends, will weaken the university as the last remaining bastion of free speech—at risk of culturally appropriating a word from the activist community, the last remaining “safe space.” Unlike the office, the church, and even the Thanksgiving table, as last week’s episode of SNL pointed out, the campus has not been a place where we fear getting silenced. I pray it stays that way.

    • Racism a subject suppressed due to censorship

      Censors have disguised themselves as sincere reformers, and their success could produce disastrous consequences.

    • San Gabriel High School’s shameful censorship continues

      How quickly they are learning what professional journalists all around the world learn over time, in a hard school: The powers that be, even in our nation that theoretically treasures free speech, only truly value press freedom when it serves to bolster their authority.

    • Social media censorship in Bangladesh hints at long-term problems for publishers

      Two weeks have passed since the government in Bangladesh blocked access to Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber, and other social media sites. In Dhaka, some people have crowded into hotel lobbies to access private networks, while others are gaining access through proxy servers. The reason for the ban, according to the government, has to do with security, in light of the recent terrorist attacks and local political violence, but there is concern that it’s part of a creeping pattern of censorship that’s having a negative impact on publishers, especially after the temporary block in January and reports of journalists being harassed.

    • Saudi Arabia’s Art Scene Is Horrified by the Death Sentence Given to Poet Ashraf Fayadh

      Ashraf Fayadh, a poet recently sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia by beheading, relayed a simple but grim message to the world from his prison cell.

      “I’m an artist and I want my freedom,” Fayadh, 35, said over the telephone last week as he spoke with colleagues from the art collective Edge of Arabia, who have been advocating for his release along with a number of other artistic and human rights groups.

      Fayadh is charged with blasphemy for penning a book of love poems allegedly containing atheistic writings and uttering religiously blasphemous comments in an Abha café in 2013.

    • Time to Speak Out Against Censorship

      Saudi Arabia has condemned Palestinian poet and artist Ashraf Fayadh to death, charging that, as an apostate, he has insulted Islam, the Custodian of the Two Holy Shrines (the Saudi monarchy) and the Wahhabi sect. Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi tenets have been stirring fanatical religious fervor from as far away as Bangladesh, across North and central Africa, and into central Asia and the Caucasus.

    • Venezuelan Elections: journalists face challenges such as censorship and lack of access to information

      Covering parliamentary elections occuring on Dec. 6 in Venezuela has become a major challenge for national and international journalists.

      Allegations of censorship, lack of access to public information, excessive rumors, fear of an Internet blackout, violence against reporters and confiscation of equipment are part of the environment in which journalists are working while covering the 6D, as this day has become known in social networks.

    • Measuring millennials’ support for censorship

      My Tuesday column, about the use of trigger warnings, mentions some other survey data suggesting that millennials may be more amenable to limits on speech than earlier generations were. Here are the sources I was referring to.

    • “I hate censorship”: Larry King on his journey from prime time TV to Russia Today

      The first celebrity interview Larry King did was by chance, in a Miami Beach restaurant. He was a 26-year-old local radio presenter, and had set up his mid-morning show to broadcast from the popular Pumpernik’s deli. In walked the singer Bobby Darin, famous for his hit version of “Mack the Knife” released that year, 1959, and gave the young journalist his first showbiz interview. King has been asking questions ever since.

    • Florida Cops Issue Secret Police Censorship Training Manual, Call Photography a Crime

      A free speech chilling memo by the general counsel for a Florida police department advises cops that they can choose when to arrest citizens who record them in public, if those officers happen to be working undercover.

      Lakeland Police Department‘s ironically named “Crime Analysis & Intelligence Center” disgorged the secret police censorship manual memo labeled “14-0193” during a recent public records request by a member of the PINAC Newsroom, as shown below.

      Lakeland PD‘s memo acknowledges the public’s right to record police in public, while performing their official duties in passing on page one, and then crafts a tortured, Rube Goldberg’s police manual with unclear powers to undercover police.

    • New York Times Runs with Blank Pages Due to Censorship

      The New York Times’ international edition ran with widespread blank holes on its front page on Tuesday following pressure from the Thai government, which objected to the paper’s critical coverage.

    • Thai printer replaces International New York Times article with blank space
    • RSF deplores Thailand’s censorship of New York Times
    • Thailand printer censors International New York Times article on sagging economy
    • Printer refuses to run International New York Times story (again)
    • International New York Times’ Thai Printer Refuses To Run Front-Page Story
    • NYT has front page story blanked out in Thailand
    • Thai Printer Refuses to Publish US Paper’s Article on Thailand
    • Thailand: “New York Times” appears with a white spot on the title
    • Anonymous Hacks Thailand Police Server Against Internet Censorship

      The server breach allowed Anonymous to leak private information regarding Thai officers and some evidence records.

    • New York Times censored again as Thailand marks birthday of fragile king
    • Living in a void of white wilderness
    • Thai printer removes NYT content, again
    • NYT decries curbs on press freedom in Thailand
    • NYT Decries Censorship in Thailand as Article Again Redacted
    • Thailand: “New York Times” appears again whitened
    • Israel requests Google to block Palestinian videos from YouTube
    • Google Denies Online Censorship Deal with Israel
    • Google Denies Israel’s Claims That It Will Allow Censorship Of Palestinian Videos
    • Five Years After Revolution, Internet Censorship Is Creeping Back into Tunisia

      Tunisia has made great improvements in promoting a culture of internet freedom in the five years since the Tunisian Revolution.

      Unfortunately, internet activists are saying that the climate of fear and self-censorship is starting to creep back—and unless the Tunisian Parliament passes new laws protecting free speech on the internet, the country’s internet freedom could regress in the coming years.

      Before the revolution in January 2011, the North African country of approximately 11 million was governed by a tightly controlled dictatorship led by President Zine El Abeddine Ben Ali.

    • Full text of SA’s censorship bill published: ISPA wants to know more

      When the South Africa’s Film & Publication Board (FPB) released a draft set of regulations designed to regulate online content in South Africa earlier this year, it was met with a hail of criticism, which included it being called unconstitutional and “the worst censorship law in Africa”.

    • South Africa: Call for More Transparency On Online Censorship Policy

      The policy, which was published on March 4, attracted controversy because it sought to regulate all online content in SA, including any “film, game or certain publication” that would include classification of material on international platforms such as Facebook and Google.

    • Censorship negates freedom of the press

      The Bill of Rights: the first 10 Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Amendments that protect the rights of everyone, including journalists. Freedom of speech is a part of the First Amendment, yet freedom of the press which is also a part of the First Amendment is rarely recognized as valid when one is in a debate.

    • Chicago Sheriff Tried To Censor Backpages By Threatening Visa, Court Rules

      Backpages.com won its fight with the Chicago sheriff over intimidating letters that led Visa V +2.50% and MasterCard MA +3.06% to cut ties with the adult-services website, a victory against censorship in a climate where government officials seem more inclined than ever to use the threat of financial ruin to change corporate behavior.

      The decision by a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals was written by the always-entertaining Judge Richard Posner, a nominal conservative who last month angered Republicans by striking down Wisconsin’s anti-abortion law for masquerading as a women’s health measure.

    • MDA not officially classifying Eric Khoo’s sex drama does not help nanny state image

      “The film was classified R21 uncut for the SGIFF. More leeway is given to film festivals as they play to a niche audience and have limited screenings.”

    • Telstra Bans Swear Words From Text Messages Sent Through Its Network

      Carrier Telstra bars off sailor talk on voice-to-text messages from its network, replacing the F and C bombs of the English language with long dashes.

      Such censorship is not unprecedented, as Apple has been changing the F word to “duck” on preemptive text messages since the iPhones emerged. But the Australia-based carrier had bigger plans, completely blocking out expletives.

      Back in June 2012, Telstra banned certain words, and then in July 2013, the carrier added more to its growing list of naughty words, where more words are thrown in on a yearly basis.

      “A small number of offensive words are omitted from our voice to text translations. This practice has been in place for a number of years and is based on feedback from our customers,” a Telstra spokesperson says.

    • Christian College President Slams Speech Censorship: ‘College Is Not Day Care’

      The president of a Christian college in Oklahoma has condemned the rise of political correctness on college campuses and told students who seek to silence speech that offends them that they are “self-absorbed” and “need to grow up.”

    • University President Delivers Tough Message to PC Students: School ‘Is Not a Safe Space’
    • Comment: Legal victory will stop the censorship of non-religious views in schools

      This week the High Court ruled in favour of three parents and their children who challenged the government over the exclusion of non-religious worldviews from the school curriculum as a result of the new Religious Studies GCSE.

      The Religious Education Council (REC) has naturally followed the legal proceedings extremely closely, and we have been clear that we fully support the court’s ruling. Our efforts have always focused on the need to ensure the subject is as comprehensive, intellectually challenging, and as socially beneficial as possible, and we look forward to working with the Department for Education, as well as schools and teachers, to bring in the changes the ruling entails.

      For now though, I want to be very clear about why we support the judgement. With good religious education (RE) children can become skilled inter-cultural navigators, better able to understand and relate to their future neighbours, friends, work colleagues and fellow citizens. This means that a wide range of faiths and beliefs ought to be options for study within RE. Part of this means that young people should have the opportunity to learn about the large number of people who describe themselves as being of no religious belief.

    • Poland: Worrying implications of defamation through the criminal code

      The company, which is based in Warsaw, provides information and communication services to well-known clients, such as the major Polish bank Pekao. Jakimczyk’s questions pertained to discs of private client data that, according to his information, there was proof of a transaction of sale between the two parties. When Jakimczyk received a response from Qumak’s press office in late September, the denial of any wrongdoing on their part was followed swiftly by something rather unexpected: Qumak was now pressing charges against Jakimczyk for defamation under article 212 of the Polish penal code.

    • University ‘safe space’ policies stifle freedom of expression, warns human rights activist
    • The liberal racism faced by ex-Muslims
    • This article is guilty of spreading panic and disorder

      IN THE middle of August Zhao Shaolin, a retired Communist Party boss of Jiangsu province in eastern China, was carted away by the country’s anti-corruption commission. Nothing unusual there. Dozens of local party bosses have fallen foul of a national anti-bribery campaign. What was surprising were the charges levelled against him. These usually stress the vast wealth the accused is said to have squirrelled away by his or her nefarious activities. Mr Zhao’s crime, according to Beijing News, a party newspaper, was to flout party discipline by criticising government policies. Some people, Xie Chuntao of the Central Party School sniffed, think “they are cleverer than the Party, which cannot be allowed.”

      Mr Zhao was not the only one. In mid-October the anti-corruption commission arrested two serving provincial party chiefs, in Hebei near Beijing and Guangxi in the south. Their list of crimes also included criticising the party. On October 12th the Politburo approved a new edition of the party’s rules. It was, Xinhua, the state news agency, said, “the most complete and stringent code of conduct” in the history of the Communist Party. It bans party members from making “negative comments” or “irresponsible remarks” about policy. Members may debate issues—but only if they say nice things.

    • Top court to decide on CHP petition over Internet censorship

      Parliament on Feb. 5 of last year approved the government-backed Internet bill that has caused outrage in Turkey and has received heavy condemnation abroad, granting even more rights to the chief of the telecommunications body and raising the specter of censorship on the Internet as the government was trying to contain the fallout from a graft scandal that became public in 2013.

    • Battle Brewing in Quebec Over Online Gambling Censorship
    • Quebec Lottery’s Censorship Plan Receives More Legislative Support

      An Internet censorship plan championed by Québec’s government-run lottery agency, Loto-Québec, continues to be part of financial legislation providing the framework for the province’s 2016-17 fiscal budget. Language within Québec’s ongoing budget proposal includes a modification to the province’s existing Consumer Protection Act that would force most Canadian ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to block access to what would likely be a lengthy list of online-gambling websites.

    • Austrian Pirate Bay Blockade Censors Slovak Internet

      Many Slovak Internet subscribers have been unable to access The Pirate Bay in recent days due to an unintended consequence of an injunction handed down in an entirely different country. An Austrian blockade of The Pirate Bay spread to Slovakia because a local ISP uses a datacenter in Vienna for its DNS server.

    • Japanese government cancels visit from UN free speech representative

      The UN’s principal global monitor of freedom of expression, David Kaye, was due to visit Japan between 1 and 8 December. In mid-November, the Japanese government cancelled the trip.

      Kaye said of the cancellation: “The Japanese government indicated that relevant interlocutors would be preoccupied with the budget process. That was disappointing to hear, particularly since we had been organising a broad set of meetings with officials, civil society, academic experts, journalists and others.”

      During the visit, Kaye planned to address basic aspects of freedom of expression, including the public’s right to access information, the freedom and protection of independent media, online rights and restrictions on marginalised communities.

  • Privacy

    • New software watches for license plates, turning you into Little Brother

      We now live in a world where if you have an IP-enabled security camera, you can download some free, open-source software from GitHub and boom—you have a fully functional automated license plate reader (ALPR, or LPR).

      Welcome to the sousveillance state: the technology that was once was just the purview of government contractors a few years ago could now be on your own street soon.

    • NSA’s shuttered program was ‘a sacrificial lamb’ in U.S. mass surveillance

      The change is “not going to be a big blow” to the NSA, says David Murakami Wood, the Canadian Research Chair in surveillance studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.

      “The fact that they’ve allowed it to be cancelled probably suggests it’s a bit of a sacrificial lamb.”

    • Senate NSA bill would expand requirements of phone companies

      A new Senate bill would require phone companies to notify the government if a change is made in how customer records are stored. This comes as the NSA’s bulk data collection expires but calls to increase surveillance intensify following recent attacks.

    • Senate bill adds new fuel to NSA debate
    • Republican unveils new bill to stall NSA reforms
    • New legislation aims at stalling NSA reform
    • No, NSA Phone Spying Has Not Ended

      Instead, telecom companies will retain and access the data on their customers. The NSA may then seek warrants from the secretive courts created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in order to compel these companies to hand over pertinent information on terrorism suspects and affiliates. The requests are not done in bulk, but rather require “specific selectors” such as the phone number of an individual. The NSA then has up to 180-days to query the telecom companies for more data—on socially connected persons of interest, so-called one-to-two degree “hops” on their networks—before seeking a renewed authority from a FISA court.

    • No, NSA HASN’T Stopped Mass Spying On American Citizens

      WILLIAM BINNEY: The only thing that ended was the general warrants issued by the FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] for companies to give all their call records to NSA for processing.

    • WATCH: Despite What You’ve Read, NSA Hasn’t Stopped Spying on You
    • Surprise! The NSA Is Still Spying On You

      The bulk phone records collection program was banned in the USA Freedom Act, a law that curbed some domestic spying. This program allowed the NSA to collect metadata from American citizens’ calls en masse. Now, instead of collecting phone metadata in an expansive dragnet, the USA Freedom Act requires the NSA to first make a “specific query,” like a name, or a device number.

    • The end of NSA’s phone-record dragnet? That’s marginal change.

      By all accounts, these are pretty good times for advocates of privacy rights in the face of creeping government surveillance. Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing sent shockwaves across the international community about who knew what. Just last week, the NSA finally shut down its bulk telephone records collection, and it is no longer allowed to directly hold information about the phone calls of millions of U.S. citizens. Here in Canada, the Liberals took power, with promises to reform the previous government’s controversial Bill C-51.

    • NSA can still collect your phone records through legal loopholes

      Verizon and AT&T were both forced to hand over their records to the authorities on a rolling basis.

    • FBI won’t discuss how shuttered NSA program would have affected San Bernardino investigation

      “I won’t answer, because we don’t talk about the investigative techniques we use,” Comey said Friday, according to the Associated Press. “I’m not going to characterize it.”

    • NSA documents leaker Edward Snowden speaks in Park City

      The world’s most famous — or infamous — leaker made his way to Utah Saturday evening.

      Edward Snowden spoke in Park City from an undisclosed location, over the Internet. He is presumed to be in Russia as he was granted asylum there in 2013 after leaking sensitive documents shedding light on secret government surveillance programs.

      Hundreds turned out to the Park City Institute to hear Snowden speak.

    • The next version of the web has a message for the NSA

      The language of the web is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and like a lot of really important technology it’s actually more than a little, um, unexciting.

      HTTP is maintained by the IETF (The Internet Engineering Task Force) and it’s so sensible and unexciting that it’s remained almost unchanged for about 25 years. In technology terms it’s a time capsule from the same era as Windows 3.1 (ask your Dad.)

    • Will the NSA Spy on COP21 Paris Climate Talks?

      The U.S. agency spied on foreign climate negotiators at the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks and funneled the information to U.S. delegates.

      As the Paris COP21 climate change talks begin Monday a question remains on the minds of many: Will the U.S. spy on its rivals and sabotage negotiations?

      This may seem farfetched, but it is exactly what National Security Agency documents, leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, revealed to have happened in 2009. The NSA spied on member states before and during the inconclusive Copenhagen talks, viewed as a failure by many for the member states’ inability to reach a meaningful and binding climate agreement.

    • Here’s how Larry Klayman celebrates victory — but then, maybe the NSA already knew?

      The photo is just another sign that Klayman is back in the game after a career of ups and downs since he first made a reputation suing the Clinton administration in the 1990s. Rather than declare victory in the NSA matter and move on, he’s doubling down. He says he’s going to ask Leon to award damages to the plaintiffs to compensate them for the constitutional violation. And — even as some politicians are calling for a return to the discarded NSA program in the wake of recent terrorist attacks — Klayman also plans to ask Leon to monitor the NSA to make sure the government follows the new, more restrictive law.

    • Google’s ‘Inbox’: Should Privacy Advocates Be Concerned?

      Google is getting ready to migrate all Gmail users to Inbox, which should be something of a concern for those worried about privacy, but no one seems to be noticing. The current efforts seem to be directed at users of the Gmail mobile app, but it’s my guess that desktop users of Gmail will be getting be getting the same treatment soon.

    • Let’s Encrypt free digital certificate project opens doors for public beta

      Let’s Encrypt, the project offering free digital certificates for websites, is now issuing them more broadly with the launch of a public beta on Thursday.

      The beta label will eventually be dropped as the software they’ve developed is refined, wrote Josh Aas, executive director of the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), which runs Let’s Encrypt.

      “Automation is a cornerstone of our strategy, and we need to make sure that the client works smoothly and reliably on a wide range of platforms,” he wrote.

      Digital certificates use the SSL/TLS (Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security) protocols to encrypt traffic exchanged between a user and a service, adding a higher level of privacy and security.

    • Will the Paris terror attacks push the French government to compromise data protection for security?

      On 13 November 2015, terrorists conducted simultaneous attacks at several locations in Paris, leaving more than 130 people dead. The French government responded by enacting a state of emergency, which allows the agencies of the government to search homes without warrants and block websites.

    • Millions of Internet Explorer users must update, or lose patches

      Millions of Internet Explorer users have just five weeks to upgrade to a newer browser before security patches dry up.

    • Talk: Mass surveillance and a crisis of social responsibility

      He will discuss ethical issues of mass surveillance activity carried out by the United States government as revealed by former CIA employee and NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Professor Rogaway asks why computer scientists, who developed the technology for mass data-gathering, have not more strongly condemned it.

    • BlackBerry pulls out of Pakistan after refusing the governments demands for unrestricted data access

      Even though Pakistan remains an important mobile market, BlackBerry has announced that they will be formally withdrawing from the country. This development has come about as a result of Pakistan’s government insisting that BlackBerry grant them backdoor access to encrypted services earlier this year.

      BlackBerry is a company that touts the value of security pretty vocally. The CEO even said that the BlackBerry Priv was given its name in-part because it was short for “Privacy.” In an era in which companies seem more than willing to fold on their values for financial gain, it’s encouraging to see BlackBerry’s unconditional refusal. The company has taken a firm stance on the side of their users’ personal privacy, and the Pakistani government wasn’t thrilled.

    • HTTP/2 opens every new connection it makes with the word ‘PRISM’

      British programmer and writer John Graham-Cumming has spotted something interesting in the opening protocol of any HTTP/2 connection: an array of explicitly formatted code which spells the word PRISM, in an apparent reference to the NSA’s primary program for mass-surveillance of the internet, as disclosed by Edward Snowden in 2013.

    • Editorial: Sen. Wyden wins his long struggle with the NSA

      Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden played a leading role over 10 years to bring the NSA’s secret operation into the open. In the wake of the NSA announcement last week, Sen. Wyden brought the recent terrorist attacks on Paris and Mali into the discussion. “After every such attack, politicians who would play to Americans’ fears call for liberty to be sacrificed in the name of security. I reject those calls. And as long as Americans continue to demand that their government protect both their security and their liberty, I am confident that our country can deal with these threats without sacrificing our most cherished rights and values.”

    • Edward Snowden, Deep Throat and the NSA

      The more you study Edward Snowden—what he actually did and did not do, and his concerns for our country—you have to admire his bravery. If you saw the Oscar award-winning documentary, CitizenFour, you understand the enormous sacrifice and risk. When you understand his military family background and his own military service, you shift again. And when you see his Twitter feeds, you understand he also has a quick sense of humor. I think we will come to view Edward Snowden as we once did Deep Throat or Daniel Ellsberg. We will discover we initially misjudged him and come to understand him as a remarkable patriot. He deserves amnesty and a return to the United States and there are increasing calls for this to happen from New York Times editorials to former Attorney General Eric Holder suggesting we re-consider bringing him home and suggesting to make a deal to do so.

    • NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden to Headline Free State Project’s Liberty Forum

      Edward Snowden, the former CIA intelligence officer and NSA contractor who leaked information about illegal government surveillance in 2013, is coming to New Hampshire–live from Russia–during the Free State Project’s 9th annual Liberty Forum.

  • Civil Rights

    • [EFF] Join the 2015 Power Up Your Donation Campaign for 2× the Impact
    • WaPo Attacks Unions for Seeking Higher Wages for Their Members

      The piece starts out by acknowledging that the AFL-CIO opposes tax provisions and trade agreements (wrongly called free trade agreements — apparently Lane has not heard about the increases in patent and copyright protection in these pacts) that encourage outsourcing. He could have also noted that it has argued for measures against currency management and promoted labor rights elsewhere, also measures that work against outsourcing. And it would be appropriate to note in this context its support for measures that help the workforce as a whole, like Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and the Affordable Care Act.

    • US must investigate Bush, aides in CIA torture, rights group says

      US President Barack Obama must investigate his predecessor George W. Bush and allies over the CIA’s torture of terror suspects, or stand complicit in a government “cover-up,” Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

      In a scathing report, the international rights group decried the lack of prosecutions of those involved in the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret program to torture detainees in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

      “While the program officially ended in 2009, the cover-up of these crimes appears to be ongoing,” said the report, which argues there is enough evidence for the attorney general to order criminal probes.

    • Obama should probe Bush, others over CIA torture: rights group
    • In Pursuit of Investigation and Prosecution of CIA Torture Program Perpetrators

      President Barack Obama has walked away from pursuing those involved in the CIA’s torture program, but human rights advocates are demanding the administration take legal action against them.

      Obama and his top officials say there is not enough evidence to pursue prosecution of CIA agents and contractors or former members of the George W. Bush administration who authorized the secret renditions and torture of suspected terrorists.

      But Human Right Watch (HRW) argues “sufficient evidence exists” for Attorney General Loretta Lynch to carry out criminal investigations of “senior United States officials and others involved in the post-September 11 CIA program for torture, conspiracy to torture, and other crimes under U.S. law.” HRW says its new report provides evidence to support criminal charges against those responsible for state-sanctioned torture, and it discusses legal obligations to provide redress to victims of torture.

    • Interview: Torture and the CIA

      In the years after 9/11, the US basically abducted or were handed scores of men throughout the world, held them in secret locations, and tortured or otherwise mistreated them. Yet there’s been zero accountability for these crimes.

    • Cruz: ‘America Does Not Need Torture to Protect Ourselves’
    • Why the CIA torture techniques aren’t a reliable way of extracting information

      If Ant and Dec had read the “torture memos” released by Barack Obama in 2009, they might not find I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! quite so funny. Food and sleep deprivation are standard fare for the CIA but one of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” under consideration was to place a suspected al-Qaeda terrorist “in a cramped confinement box with an insect”. Abu Zubaydah was believed to have a fear of insects. Being at close quarters with one was supposed to be a route to “breaking” him.

      That CIA torture techniques are also employed as entertainment on prime-time television is ironic: many of the CIA’s best ideas come from watching TV. Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver has said that staff at Guantanamo Bay watched 24 on cable while at the base, for instance – and that its maverick hero, Jack Bauer, “gave people lots of ideas”.

    • George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should face prosecution over CIA’s secret torture program, group says
    • Outspoken Miss World Canada denied entry to China
    • Chinese newspaper says banned Miss World contestant is aligned with ‘hostile’ forces
    • Miss World Canada Says China’s Censorship is ‘An Assault on Humanity’
    • Turkey: Index condemns killing of lawyer during press conference

      Elci, was briefly detained and questioned last month for saying during a live news program that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, is not a terrorist organisation. According to The Guardian newspaper, he was charged soon after with making terrorist propaganda and was facing more than seven years in prison.

    • CIA torture, NSA spying will return

      The New York Times recently drew attention (Nov. 10) to the fact that Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has succeeded in locking up – unread – in government vaults across Washington, from the Justice Department to the Pentagon, the full, classified, U.S. Senate report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention, interrogation, and torture program.

    • After Paris Attacks, Proposed French Law Would Block Tor and Forbid Free Wi-Fi

      After the recent Paris terror attacks, the French government is proposing to forbid and block the use of the Tor anonymity network, according to an internal document from the Ministry of Interior seen by French newspaper Le Monde.

      That document lays out two proposed pieces of legislation, one around the state of emergency, and the other concerning counter-terrorism.

      In the former, the French government is considering to “Forbid free and shared wi-fi connections” during a state of emergency. This comes from a police opinion included in the document: the reason being that it is apparently difficult to track individuals who use public wi-fi networks.

      The latter piece of legislation, meanwhile, says the government is considering “to block or forbid communications of the Tor network.” The legislation, according to Le Monde, could be presented as early as January 2016.

    • How Many Inmates Have Died in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Jails? Who Knows, But it’s a Big Number.

      Last week, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio concluded a contempt of court hearing that revealed what we’ve always known about the old coot: his office engages in racial profiling, he thinks he’s above the law enough to ignore court orders, and he’ll use the power of his office, and the taxpayer’s coin, to investigate and harass his enemies—in this case a judge and his wife!

    • Unarmed man who lost quarter of his skull after being shot in the head by cop while he was out for a walk sues LAPD

      An unarmed man who lost a quarter of his skull after being shot by a Los Angeles police officer notified the city and police department on Wednesday that he plans to sue, claiming the shooting was part of a broad, disturbing pattern in the police force of the nation’s second-largest city.

      Attorneys for Walter DeLeon, 49, filed the notice of claim in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

    • Lord Janner unfit to stand trial, judge rules

      Lord Janner is unfit to stand trial over allegations of child sexual abuse spanning three decades, a High Court judge has ruled.

      Mr Justice Openshaw told the Old Bailey the 87-year-old peer had “advanced and disabling dementia”.

      Both prosecution and defence barristers had agreed at a previous hearing that Greville Janner was not well enough to take part in a criminal trial.

      Lord Janner is accused of 22 counts of sex offences against boys.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Net neutrality has its day in court – with lawyers, Christians and the Cheshire Cat

      Net neutrality is on trial, and everyone from white-shoe-firm lawyers to Christian internet activists showed up to watch oral arguments in the US Telecom Association v the FCC on Friday in a packed Washington DC courtroom, where an exasperated bailiff threatened to toss out reporters who wouldn’t stop using their phones to access the technology in question.

      From the moment in February when the FCC voted to reclassify internet providers as “common carriers”, paving the way for net neutrality protections, a bitter fight in the courtroom was inevitable.

12.05.15

Links 6/12/2015: New Linux Mint Releases, No Ads in Firefox

Posted in News Roundup at 6:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • From Closed Source to Open Source: A Journey

    Since joining GigaSpaces a few months ago, I thought it would be interesting to write down some thoughts about my experience on the journey from the closed-source, enterprise world to the open source, startup mentality of getting work done, both internally at the office as well as from a client-facing perspective.

  • Intel Open Sources Snap Cloud Telemetry Tool to Promote Cloud for All

    Intel’s latest move in its “Cloud for All” initiative — which it says will accelerate enterprise adoption of public, private and hybrid clouds — is an open source tool called snap, which helps organizations understand the telemetry of their clouds.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Thunderbird 38.4.0 Brings A Bunch Of FIxes Only
      • Advancing Content

        One of the many benefits of the Web is the ability to create unique, personalized experiences for individual users. We believe that this personalization needs to be done with respect for the user – with transparency, choice and control. When the user is at the center of product experiences everyone benefits.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • What’s the Intersection of Docker and OpenStack? [VIDEO]

      OpenStack and Docker are both open source technologies with a lot of excitement and momentum behind them. But where is the intersection between Docker and OpenStack? And why isn’t Docker Inc part of the OpenStack Foundation?

      In a video interview, Ben Golub, CEO of Docker Inc. the lead commercial sponsor behind the open source Docker engine, explains where it all fits together.

      At a high-level, OpenStack is a popular widely deployed Infrastructure-as-a-Service open source platform, while Docker provide an open-source container technology to build, deploy and manage containers. Golub noted that organizations are using Docker together with various flavors of OpenStack from different vendors including HP, Red Hat and Mirantis.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Introducing the LibreOffice Online App for ownCloud

      While digging through the Internet, we’ve discovered that there’s now a LibreOffice application for the ownCloud open-source self-hosting cloud server, which lets users edit all sorts of LibreOffice documents online.

  • CMS

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Reproducible builds and standalone GNU systems with Guix 0.9

      Version 0.9 of the Guix package-management system was released on November 5. Since the previous major release in 2014, the Guix project has evolved to include not only the package manager itself, but the Guix Software Distribution (GuixSD) as well. With the large set of packages it supports, Guix already provides, in essence, a full operating-system layer that can be deployed and maintained on top of a minimal core Linux distribution. GuixSD goes one step further, and provides a Linux kernel and core OS components as well. Regardless of whether one uses GuixSD or simply installs individual packages with the Guix tools, the new release adds quite a bit of interesting new functionality, including automatic container provisioning, new tools for graphing package dependencies, and a mechanism for users to verify reproducible software packages.

    • GIMP 2.9.2 Released

      We are excited to announce the first development release of GIMP in the 2.9.x series. It is another major milestone towards making GIMP a state-of-the art image editing application for graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, and scientists.

    • A CEO’s Guide to Emacs

      Years—no, decades—ago, I lived in Emacs. I wrote code and documents, managed email and calendar, and shelled all in the editor/OS. I was quite happy. Years went by and I moved to newer, shinier things. As a result, I forgot how to do tasks as basic as efficiently navigating files without a mouse. About three months ago, noticing just how much of my time was spent switching between applications and computers, I decided to give Emacs another try. It was a good decision for several reasons that will be covered in this post. Covered too are .emacs and Dropbox tips so that you can set up a good, movable environment.

    • Gimp 2.9.2 Released
    • Got a light? Help the FSF’s guiding light shine brighter

      For thirty years, the Free Software Foundation has been seen as a guiding light for the free software movement, fighting for computer user freedom worldwide — but we can’t continue this work without your support.

    • New GIMP, Ubuntu’s New Year’s Gift & More…

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • OpenHardware and code signing (update)

        I posted a few weeks ago about the difficulty of providing device-side verification of firmware updates, at the same time remaining OpenHardware and thus easily hackable. The general consensus was that allowing anyone to write any kind of firmware to the device without additional authentication was probably a bad idea, even for OpenHardware devices. I think I’ve come up with an acceptable compromise I can write up as a recommendation, as per usual using the ColorHug+ as an example. For some background, I’ve sold nearly 3,000 original ColorHug devices, and in the last 4 years just three people wanted help writing custom firmware, so I hope you can see the need to protect the majority is so much larger than making the power users happy.

  • Programming

    • How old were you when you started learning how to program?
    • So you think that you know what “hacker”means?

      Given the negative connotation of the term today, I recall my surprise when I first read (alas, the source has long been forgotten) that in the world of mainframe computer in the 1960′s, where the principal revenue stream were licensing fees for the hardware, “hacker” referred to a person who was encouraged to tinker with the software to improve its performance. After all, there was no or little money to be made in the software per se, so that any improvements in performance would only serve to enhance the value of the mainframe itself. Hacking appeared to be a beneficial activity in support of the hardware.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • This Scientist Uncovered Problems With Pesticides. Then the Government Started to Make His Life Miserable.

      Until fairly recently, Jonathan Lundgren enjoyed a stellar career as a government scientist. An entomologist who studies how agrichemicals affect the ecology of farm fields, he has published nearly 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals since starting at the US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service laboratory in Brookings, South Dakota, in 2005. By 2012, he had won the ARS’s “Outstanding Early Career Research Scientist” award, and directorship of his own lab.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • A Missed Chance to Connect Paris Massacres, Past and Present

      It does no dishonor to those killed in Paris last month to acknowledge that at least 200 people were killed in that city on October 17, 1961. It was nearly seven years into the war for Algeria’s independence from French colonial rule, and some 30,000 Muslims demonstrated in central Paris against a curfew imposed solely on Muslims. They were met by a police force led by prefect Maurice Papon, who would later be charged with crimes against humanity for his collaborationist role in the World War II Vichy government.

    • Fox’s Megyn Kelly Attacks Attorney General For Promising To Address Violent Anti-Muslim Rhetoric
    • Yemen: Nine Wounded in Saudi-Led Coalition Airstrike on MSF Clinic in Taiz

      Airstrikes carried out yesterday by the Saudi-led coalition hit a clinic in southern Yemen run by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and wounded nine people, including two MSF staff members.

      According to local sources, at 11:20 a.m. local time on December 2, three airstrikes targeted a park in Taiz city’s Al Houban district, about two kilometers from MSF’s tented clinic. The MSF team immediately evacuated the Al Houban clinic and informed the Saudi-led coalition that their jet planes were mounting an attack nearby. The clinic itself then came under attack.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Republicans’ Climate Change Denial Denial

      Future historians — if there are any future historians — will almost surely say that the most important thing happening in the world during December 2015 was the climate talks in Paris. True, nothing agreed to in Paris will be enough, by itself, to solve the problem of global warming. But the talks could mark a turning point, the beginning of the kind of international action needed to avert catastrophe.

      Then again, they might not; we may be doomed. And if we are, you know who will be responsible: the Republican Party.

      O.K., I know the reaction of many readers: How partisan! How over the top! But what I said is, in fact, the obvious truth. And the inability of our news media, our pundits and our political establishment in general to face up to that truth is an important contributing factor to the danger we face.

    • Is Indonesia underreporting its emissions at COP21?

      Official documentation submitted by Indonesia to the UN climate talks in Paris this week dramatically underestimates deforestation and emissions in the archipelago, according to an analysis by Greenpeace. However, not everyone agrees with Greenpeace’s assessment.

      The documentation’s omissions include 10 million hectares of deforestation, millions of hectares of peatland degradation and emissions from the annual farm and plantation fires, threatening to undermine Indonesia’s prospects for receiving international assistance for peatland protection and REDD+ schemes, according to the NGO.

      “The people of Indonesia deserve to know the truth about how much forest and peatland has been destroyed,” Greenpeace Indonesia forest campaigner Annisa Rahmawati said. “Only from a truthful foundation can we build a solid climate plan for Indonesia.”

    • Climate deniers agree their key messages for journalists (with a journalist in the room)

      This afternoon, I went along to a fringe event in central Paris put on by the UK climate denier brigade. There were about 15 people – all older white men but for one woman, me, and Brendan Montague, editor of DesmogUK, with whom I’d arrived.

      Among the small number at PCC15, as they called their event, were a number of prominent figures from the movement against the scientific consensus on climate change. Patrick Moore, the controversial former director of Greenpeace who has questioned both whether global warming is man-made, and whether it is dangerous, was leaving as we arrived. UKIP MEP Stuart Agnew was there, as were Christopher Monckton, a prominent climate change denier, and Canadian Tom Harris, executive director of the “International Climate Science Coalition” – and former operations director of the “High Park Group”, a Canadian lobbying company. I was told we’d missed the journalist James Delingpole and Piers Corbyn (MD of WeatherAction and brother of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn)..

  • Censorship

    • Feds Drop Case Against Torrent Site, ‘Return’ Domain After 5 Years

      After more than five years the Department of Justice has released the Torrent-Finder.com domain, which is now back in the hands of the original owner. The authorities had a very weak case and decided to accept the torrent site’s “offer in compromise.”

    • Sharing of television news clips hangs in the fair-use balance

      All of this begs the question of what is fair use. It’s complicated, and there is no bright-line rule. “In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and ‘transformative’ purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work, according to Stanford University. “Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner. In other words, fair use is a defense against a claim of copyright infringement. If your use qualifies as a fair use, then it would not be considered an illegal infringement.”

  • Privacy

    • My fridge is listening to me

      There is no presumption of privacy riding in a tour bus, so it probably isn’t illegal to listen-in. Bus security cameras and their footage have been around for years now and appear regularly on TV news after bus crimes. But there’s something about this idea of not only our actions being recorded but also our words that I find disturbing. It’s especially so when we consider the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT). What other devices will soon be snitching on us?

    • Responding to “Nothing to hide, Nothing to fear”

      Every time we talk about mass surveillance, privacy or the security services’ powers we and our supporters find ourselves at the other end of that familiar phrase, “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear”. It’s time to challenge that.

    • German Parliament Spy Oversight Board Sues German Government Over Data Sharing With NSA

      After Edward Snowden’s revelations about the extent of spying being carried out around the world by the NSA and its Five Eyes friends, there have been a number of attempts in other countries to find out what has been going on. One of the most thoroughgoing of these is in Germany, where there is a major parliamentary inquiry into NSA activities in that country. As Techdirt reported back in May, a surprising piece of information to emerge from this is that Germany’s secret service has been carrying out spying on behalf of the NSA, which sent across various “selectors” — search terms — that it wanted investigated in the German spies’ surveillance databases.

    • A Journey Into the Heart of Facebook

      We are running late to the Facebook Data Center. I keep checking my watch, as if the seconds might start moving backwards if I stare hard enough. This is not a particularly safe way to drive. I am, apparently, more concerned with being late than I am with possibly totaling a car. Being late is far more heinous act.

    • Former Bush Press Secretary Says The Answer To Mass Shootings Is… More Domestic Surveillance

      The tragic shootings in San Bernadino earlier this week have created a political field day for the usual idiotic partisan arguments — which tend to have little to nothing to do with whatever actually happened. You have people on one side using it to call for gun control and folks on the other side using it to spark fears of “domestic terrorism.” And, of course, it didn’t take long for someone to pop up with using it as an excuse to call for greater surveillance. That was the argument that former Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer took on MSNBC yesterday when asked what should be done in response. MSNBC Kate Snow asked if this could lead to bipartisan support for gun control (ha ha!) and Fleischer turned it around to say the answer is more surveillance.

    • NSA ‘reform’: Fewer phone records, but data flow continues

      No sooner had the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records for millions of U.S. citizens come to an end, then members of Congress swung into action to dilute even that small step toward reform. Meanwhile, other programs that have much greater implications for privacy survive and thrive in the NSA’s sprawling surveillance system.

      The USA Freedom Act passed overwhelmingly in June, but its reform banning the NSA from scooping up more phone data only went into effect last weekend. Metadata already collected can be kept by the NSA until Feb. 29, and your phone data will continue to be collected by telecom companies, but the NSA must now go to the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance) court for permission to gain access. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden showed it was the secret FISA court that gave the NSA permission to indiscriminately collect Americans’ phone records in the first place.

  • Civil Rights

    • American Nightmare: the Depravity of Neoliberalism

      Deciphering the meaning of Neo-liberalism as a historical force and societal form requires the energies and know-how of a sagacious sleuth like Hercule Poirot. Wendy Brown, a philosophy professor at UCLA (Berkeley) and author of Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, has a Poirot intellectual sensibility and acuity that sees what most of us cannot.

      Those of us who have written on neo-conservative politics and neo-liberalism as an economic form have illuminated many dimensions of “something new” that has emerged out of the collapse of welfare state liberal democracy in the West over the last five decades.

    • The Completely Nonsensical Differences In Punishment For Revenge Porn Kings

      Earlier this week, Hunter Moore — the guy who basically invented the concept of revenge porn with his “Is Anyone Up” site — was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail along with a $2,000 fine… and he has to pay $145.70 in “restitution” to a single victim. Moore was arrested for violating the CFAA, and as we noted at the time, it may be one of the few legitimate uses of the CFAA. He didn’t just run a revenge porn site, he hired a guy, Charlie Evens, who got a similar sentence a week ago, to hack into the computers of unsuspecting women, and swipe naked photos of them to put on his site. The sickening bit: that “$145.70″ in “restitution”? That’s how much Moore paid Evens (also, Evens is jointly liable for that money, meaning that Moore might not even pay it). It’s difficult to understand why the $145.70 makes any sense at all as the “harm” caused to the anonymous woman “L.B.” whose computer got hacked into.

    • Sharia courts in Britain lock women into ‘marital captivity’, study says

      Sharia courts in Britain are locking women into “marital captivity” and doing nothing to officially report domestic violence, according to an academic who gained unprecedented access to Islamic divorce hearings.

    • Court: Breaking Your Employer’s Computer Policy Isn’t a Crime

      The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued an opinion rejecting the government’s attempt to hold an employee criminally liable under the federal hacking statute—the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”)—for violating his employer-imposed computer use restrictions. The decision is important because it ensures that employers and website owners don’t have the power to criminalize a broad range of innocuous everyday behaviors, like checking personal email or the score of a baseball game, through simply adopting use restrictions in their corporate policies or terms of use.

      The court also ruled that the government cannot hold people criminally liable on the basis of purely fantastical statements they make online—i.e., thoughtcrime.

    • SJW attitude in science

      The arguments are quite easy to summarize: The meritocracy party proposes that “One’s contribution should only be evaluated based on the content and the quality”, while the SJW party asserts that in case the submitter as from a minority group, in particular everyone outside the white straight group, the contribution has to be accepted with higher probability (or without discussion) to ensure equality.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • If the FCC Loses in Court Today, It Could Be the End of Net Neutrality

      The US government’s landmark net neutrality policy faces a crucial test Friday when advocates and opponents of the new rules face off in federal court. The Federal Communications Commission, along with a coalition of public interest groups, is battling some of the biggest cable and telecom interests in the country over whether the agency has the authority to enforce a policy it says is necessary to protect internet openness.

    • Eight Questions About Friday’s Net Neutrality Hearing

      The Federal Communications Commission will head to court on Friday to defend its net neutrality rules against opponents who want to overturn the broadband regulations, a hearing that may help determine how consumers get access to content on the web.

      If this sounds familiar, it’s because the F.C.C. has twice appeared in front of the same federal court to argue over net neutrality policies, in particular a set of regulations aimed at preventing favoritism on the Internet. In both cases, the F.C.C. argued that it had the authority to regulate high-speed Internet providers, while opponents argued the agency was overstepping the mandates of Congress. Both times, the agency lost.

      Hoping that the third time will be the charm, the F.C.C.’s lawyers will tell a panel of judges at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that its most recent version of net neutrality rules is on firmer legal ground. With all the twists and turns of the F.C.C.’s yearslong net neutrality push, we offer this guide on the latest developments and what they may mean for you.

    • Appeals court weighs government’s rules requiring equal access to Internet content

      In this March 17, 2015 file photo, Federal Communications Commisison (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on net neutrality, on Capitol Hill in Washington. A long-running legal battle over government rules that require Internet providers to treat all Web traffic equally is back for another round before a federal appeals court. Cable and telecom industry groups will urge a three-judge panel on Dec. 4 to throw out regulations that forbid online content from being blocked or channeled into fast and slow lanes

    • Net neutrality supporters optimistic after court arguments

      Internet providers suing the Federal Communications Commission to overturn net neutrality rules got their day in court today as oral arguments were heard by a three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC.

      A decision might not come for months, but net neutrality supporters said the judges’ questions indicate that a ruling may defer to the FCC’s determination on the crucial question of whether Internet providers can be reclassified as common carriers. Opponents of the net neutrality rules believe the judges are skeptical about some of the FCC’s arguments, however.

      The FCC’s decision to impose common carriage restrictions on Internet providers hinges on whether they can be considered “telecommunications services,” as opposed to more lightly regulated “information services.” ISPs argue that Internet access is properly defined as an information service, but ultimately the FCC may have the discretion to make that decision.

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

Links 6/12/2015: CoreOS News, MediaTek Development Platform

Posted in News Roundup at 5:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Science

    • The dawn of the Digital Dark Age threatens us with ‘bit rot’

      Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet and the vice president of Google, is now warning of a new type of degradation threat: “bit rot.”

      Bit rot is basically created by a sort of planned obsolescence in software, and the formats associated with that software. As an example, Microsoft phased out Windows XP officially in 2014, which now won’t install on most newer computers.

  • Hardware

    • Plummeting SSD prices are quickly closing in on traditional hard drives

      The decision between solid state and hard disk drives should become a lot less agonizing over the next couple years as consumer SSD prices plummet.

      Research firm DRAMeXchange projects average SSD prices to hit $0.24 per gigabyte in 2016, down from $0.39 per gigabyte this year, Computerworld reports. Those prices will see another dramatic drop to $0.17 per gigabyte in 2017. Meanwhile, HDD prices are projected to stagnate at $0.06 per gigabyte over the next few years.

    • SSDs aren’t as cheap as hard drives yet, but they’re getting there

      CPUs, GPUs, chipsets, motherboards, RAM, Wi-Fi, and all the other components you think of when you think about a PC have all been getting continuously faster over the last five years, but so far this decade nothing has offered the performance boost of a solid-state drive. Putting an SSD in a five-year-old computer is enough to make it feel like a new machine even if every other component stays the same, and at this point you’re really doing yourself a disservice if you’re buying a new machine without one.

    • Seagate and Newisys Demonstrate 1 TB/s Flash Architecture

      Today Seagate and Newisys announced a new flash storage architecture capable or 1 Terabyte/sec performance. Designed for HPC applications, the “industry’s fastest flash storage design” comprises 21 Newisys NSS-2601 with dual NSS-HWxEA Storage Server Modules deployed with Seagate’s newest SAS 1200.2 SSD drives. These devices can be combined in a single 42U rack to achieve block I/O performance of 1TB/s with 5PB of storage. Each Newisys 2U server with 60 Seagate SSDs is capable of achieving bandwidth of 49GB/s.

  • Security

    • OpenSSL Affected By Four More Security Vulnerabilities
    • Let’s encrypt all the things

      Now that letsencrypt is more widely released, I took the opportunity to generate the certificates and install them manual on my hosting. In the future I will flip the switch to force HTTPS here. For now I made sure to avoid mixed-content as much as I could.

    • I jumped on the SSL-bandwagon
    • Friday’s security updates
    • Security updates for Thursday
    • Let’s Encrypt Enters Public Beta
    • SSH SHA-2 support in Twisted

      Launchpad operates a few SSH endpoints: bazaar.launchpad.net and git.launchpad.net for code hosting, and upload.ubuntu.com and ppa.launchpad.net for uploading packages. None of these are straightforward OpenSSH servers, because they don’t give ordinary shell access and they authenticate against users’ SSH keys recorded in Launchpad; both of these are much easier to do with SSH server code that we can use in library form as part of another service. We use Twisted for several other tasks where we need event-based networking code, and its conch package is a good fit for this.

    • Can you keep Linux-based ransomware from attacking your servers? [Ed: this isn’t a Linux issue but an unpatched CMS issue. Lazy sysadmins.]
    • Elasticsearch Servers Targeted by Linux-Based Botnet Operators

      A honeypot experiment ran by AlientVault has shown that the recent security vulnerabilities discovered in Elasticsearch servers over the summer are now actively being used by botnet operators.

    • Researchers Found Another Malware Targeting Linux Users

      Many analysts believe Rebooke is a harmless Trojan which is true, but its simple design allows the attacker to maneuver the type of attacks which can allow them to deliver powerful payloads on the systems.

    • Let’s Encrypt May Improve Security for Regular People More Than Any Other Initiative This Decade

      Secure websites have always been standard for ecommerce companies like Amazon or Shopify, and in recent years companies that handle private communications like Google and Facebook have invested millions of dollars in enabling encryption for all users. But what about everyone else?

    • Public Beta: December 3, 2015

      Let’s Encrypt will enter Public Beta on December 3, 2015. Once we’ve entered Public Beta our systems will be open to anyone who would like to request a certificate. There will no longer be a requirement to sign up and wait for an invitation.

      Our Limited Beta started on September 12, 2015. We’ve issued over 11,000 certificates since then, and this operational experience has given us confidence that our systems are ready for an open Public Beta.

      It’s time for the Web to take a big step forward in terms of security and privacy. We want to see HTTPS become the default. Let’s Encrypt was built to enable that by making it as easy as possible to get and manage certificates.

    • Let’s encrypt automation on Debian
    • DHS to Silicon Valley: Tell us how to secure this “Internet of Things”

      The US Department of Homeland Security has announced that its Silicon Valley Office (SVO)—the agency’s liaison point with the technology industry—will hold an event on December 10 to kick off a recruiting drive for startups and “non-traditional small businesses” interested in latching onto government funding. The Industry Day, being held at the Menlo Park, California, offices of SRI International, will be focused on the current leading source of worry for DHS officials: the “Internet of Things” (IoT).

    • Millions of smart TVs, phones and routers at risk from old vulnerability

      There’s growing concern over how manufacturers of devices such as routers and smart TVs deal with security vulnerabilities that emerge in their products. Their patching regimes are not nearly as rigorous as those from major software manufacturers, which could expose consumers to attacks as the products age.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Is Turkey Really Benefiting From Oil Trade With ISIS?

      Relations between Russia and Turkey hit a new low this week after Moscow doubled down on its claims that Turkey shot a Russian warplane in order to protect its supply of oil with the militant group ISIS.

    • War Porn

      Scotland is being dragged into a war it voted near unanimously against. 96.5% of Scotland’s MPs voted against the airstrikes in Syra. On platforms all up and down this country, I argued that I do not care a damn about how strong powers are given to Scotland’s parliament in domestic affairs, it we are not a sovereign nation and can still be taken to war against our will. I was proud of Alex Salmond last night for expressing contempt at the notion that civilians are not killed in British airstrikes, a big lie nobody else directly challenged.

    • Deselection is Essential to Democracy

      This goes to the heart of the Blairite cause. It is apparently not “undemocratic” for them to take legal advice on whether they can keep Jeremy Corbyn’s name off the ballot in a future membership ballot. It is not “undemocratic” to discuss deselecting the Leader, but it is a heinous offence against democracy to consider deselecting an MP. The odious Blairites are the most self-centred, selfish and indeed sociopathic group ever to have a serious presence in the UK parliament.

    • Zionist Benn’s Grab For Power

      It is worth reading the next article BICOM published. Brigadier General Michael Herzog, head of strategy for the Israeli defence Force, sets out a strategy for Israeli interests in Syria which dovetails precisely with what Benn and Cameron were pushing in the Commons. Note that Herzog says an overall diplomatic solution is not realistic and rather de facto partitioning of Syria suits Israel’s interests. Therefore there should be no waiting for diplomatic progress before western military action.

    • Emily Benn and Alex Salmond
    • O’Reilly And NYPD’s Ray Kelly Hype NYPD’s Failed Muslim Surveillance Program To Combat Terrorism

      Bill O’Reilly and former NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly defended the NYPD’s now defunct surveillance program called, “The Demographics Unit” in response to the deadly attacks in San Bernadino, California. Kelly argued that the program foiled sixteen terror plots in New York City, but a report found that the program never produced one viable lead since being adopted.

    • CNN’s New Day Explains How “Ease Of Access” To Guns Is Linked To High Levels Of Gun Violence

      CNN Analyst: “It’s Easier To Buy A Gun In The United States … Than Most Comparable Countries”

    • Murdoch Trails Behind Murray

      Eight days ago I published a leak from an MOD source that the MOD’s Defence Intelligence Service fundamentally disagreed with Cameron’s “70,000 moderate rebels claim” and were incensed about. Today the Murdoch Press – the Times and the Sun – publish as massive front page exclusives exactly what I published eight days ago.

      Interesting isn’t it that they didn’t publish it before the parliamentary debate on Syria?

    • Guns killed more Americans in 12 years than AIDS, war, and illegal drug overdoses combined

      At least 14 people were shot and killed at Wednesday afternoon’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. It’s a shocking number, one that will contribute to a rolling national tragedy: roughly 33,000 Americans every year are killed with firearms (homicides, suicides, and accidents).

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Seeing Through the Smoky Pall: Observations from a Grim Indonesian Fire Season

      In September and October 2015, tens of thousands of fires sent clouds of toxic gas and particulate matter into the air over Indonesia. Despite the moist climate of tropical Asia, fire is not unusual at this time of year. For the past few decades, people have used fire to clear land for farming and to burn away leftover crop debris. What was unusual in 2015 was how many fires burned and how many escaped their handlers and went uncontrolled for weeks and even months.

    • Manslaughter charges dropped in BP spill case—nobody from BP will go to prison

      In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and began spewing oil into the US Gulf Coast. In all, this released some 134 million gallons of crude over a span of almost three months. Eleven workers were killed in the nation’s worst offshore oil spill.

      Today, federal prosecutors moved—and a judge agreed—to drop manslaughter charges against two supervisors aboard the Deepwater Horizon when it exploded. This development, in which prosecutors said they believed they no longer could meet the legal threshold for a conviction, means that nobody will go to prison for the disaster that soiled coastlines from Texas to Florida, killed nearly a dozen people, and was an environmental disaster that perhaps brings with it never-before-seen longterm consequences.

    • Facebook Has Activated Safety Check in India for the Chennai Floods [iophk: "making money off of disasters"]

      The website activated its Safety Check feature early Thursday, allowing people to mark themselves as “safe” from the floods. The feature, which debuted in October 2014, has now been deployed on several occasions, the most recent — somewhat controversially — being last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris.

    • The High Cost of Indonesia’s Fires

      Enormous fires have been burning for several months on the Indonesian side of Borneo, and on Sumatra. The resulting haze has been a catastrophe for the region, with severe impacts for human health and wildlife. The fires are also a climate disaster, resulting in 1.62 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions so far this year — triple Indonesia’s normal annual output.

      [...]

      Indonesia, is the global leader in terms of palm oil, pulpwood, and timber production, and fires are used to clear the land and make way for agricultural produftion. The driving force behind this destructive system is foreign demand. In the United States, palm oil is being used by companies including PepsiCo, Nissin, and Frito Lay as an alternative to hydrogenated oils. In Europe, it is used as a biofuel. Today, the biggest markets for palm are China and India.

      Of course, there are other ways to clear forest, but fire is often cheaper — set a fire and then nature takes over. Fires also provide an opportunity for land grabs in Indonesia, adding an additional incentive for those who want land. Due to restrictions on deforestation, pristine forests are more difficult to legally convert into palm oil or pulp plantations. But recently burned forest and peat? It becomes “degraded land” that is ripe for agricultural production. Greenpeace has already observed this pattern of land grabbing on recently-burned land in Borneo.

  • Finance

    • JPMorgan Wrote Complaints After Firing a Whistle-Blower

      Mr. Burris complained in 2013 that JPMorgan was pressuring brokers like him to sell the bank’s own mutual funds even when the offerings from competitors were more suitable. A few weeks after an article in The New York Times about Mr. Burris’s concerns appeared, complaints from some of his former clients in Arizona began showing up on his disciplinary records that are maintained by a regulatory agency and publicly available.

    • Six Key Flaws In The EU’s Proposed ‘New’ Corporate Sovereignty Court

      A few months back, Techdirt wrote about the European Commission’s proposal to replace the traditional corporate sovereignty system — generally known as “investor-state dispute settlement ” (ISDS) — with what it called the “Investment Court System” (ICS). That seemed to us little more than a re-branding exercise; now an international investment law scholar has weighed in on the issue with his own, rather more expert opinion. Gus Van Harten is Associate Professor at York University in Canada.

    • Facebook shares: what’s behind Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘hacker philanthropy’?

      Whatever motivates them, these new philanthropists aren’t happy with the model for altruism that they’ve inherited. In his WSJ article, Parker, dismissing traditional philanthropy as “largely antiquated” and motivated by “safe” gifts that result in the chance to “name buildings”, described a new approach that would be at ease with failure, agile, and sceptical of received wisdom – just as its proponents had been in tech. “They’re much more comfortable with risk,” says Breeze. “This is not an easy area: trying to do something about intense social problems outside of the state and outside of the market. If they take a risk and they learn from it, that’s held up as a success. The willingness to talk about failure is another part of their gift.”

    • Imagining a World Without Growth

      Could the world order survive without growing?

      [...]

      Economic growth took off consistently around the world only some 200 years ago. Two things powered it: innovation and lots and lots of carbon-based energy, most of it derived from fossil fuels like coal and petroleum. Staring at climactic upheaval approaching down the decades, environmental advocates, scientists and even some political leaders have put the proposal on the table: World consumption must stop growing.

    • Zuckerberg Responds To Critics, Explains How He’s Spending $45B

      The revelation generated a lot of attention, much of it due to the sheer volume of Zuckerberg’s net worth — $45 billion!

    • Mark Zuckerberg explains why he didn’t give his Facebook billions to charity

      Earlier this week, Mark Zuckerberg made the surprise announcement that he, along with his wife Priscilla Chan, would be donating 99 percent of their Facebook shares — worth around $45 billion — to the causes of “advancing human potential” and “promoting equality.” The gesture appeared altruistic, but some have criticized the way Zuckerberg is using the money, giving it to a limited liability company rather than a charitable foundation. Now Zuckerberg has responded to those complaints, posting another message that attempts to explain why he set up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and what he and his wife want to do with the money.

    • Justice Department Collects More Than $23 Billion in Civil and Criminal Cases in Fiscal Year 2015

      Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced today that the Justice Department collected $23.1 billion in civil and criminal actions in the fiscal year (FY) ending Sept. 30, 2015. Collections in FY 2015 represent more than seven and a half times the approximately $2.93 billion of the Justice Department’s combined appropriations for the 94 U.S. Attorneys’ offices and the main litigating divisions in that same period.

      “The Department of Justice is committed to upholding the rule of law, safeguarding taxpayer resources and protecting the American people from exploitation and abuse,” said Attorney General Lynch. “The collections we are announcing today demonstrate not only the strength of that commitment, but also the significant return on public investment that our actions deliver. I want to thank the prosecutors and trial attorneys who made this achievement possible, and to reiterate our dedication to this ongoing work.”

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Trump wins because he lies: Truthiness, Fox News, and why the right likes a fact-free zone

      Conservatives decided years ago, as a matter of strategy, to attack the mainstream media as hopelessly liberal. There’s a kernel of truth to this, in that there are likely more liberals than conservatives working in media. But the coverage, if it’s biased at all, isn’t biased in favor of liberals. If anything, the media favors the sensational and the attention-grabbing – this is what drives ratings and clicks.

      The media, after all, is a commercial enterprise, and so its biases are financial, not political.

    • Donald Trump Praises Leading Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones And His “Amazing” Reputation

      Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump appeared on Alex Jones’ program, where Trump praised Jones as having an “amazing” reputation and promised, “I will not let you down.” Jones is America’s leading conspiracy theorist — he believes the government was behind 9-11 and several other catastrophes.

    • Neo-Con YouGov At It Again With Leading Questions

      There is no need to mention the RAF in this question – it is not their decision and the impression is subtly conveyed that the RAF want to do it. The question is carefully designed to tap in to the public’s well-documented inclination to support the armed forces in any conflict situation.

      [...]

      Nevertheless, there are two very interesting facts. Even on this biased question opinion is swinging very fast against airstrikes. Secondly, yet again there is a very real divergence of opinion between England and Scotland.

    • In “Extraordinary” Move, WI Supreme Court Fires Scott Walker Prosecutor to Stave-Off SCOTUS Review

      “What a mess this court has wrought!” Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson declared in the latest chapter in the state’s John Doe legal saga.

      On Wednesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s majority contorted itself to find a new way to protect both Scott Walker and the Court’s biggest supporters–not to mention itself–following its decision in July rewriting the state’s limits on money in politics and ending the “John Doe” investigation into Walker’s campaign coordinating with dark money groups.

      Wednesday’s ruling was supposed to be a straightforward decision on a motion to reconsider, in light of additional evidence that Walker and his allies had violated the campaign finance laws that the Court upheld in July.

    • Conservative Media React To San Bernardino Mass Shooting With Evidence-Free Solution Of More Concealed Guns

      Conservative media are using the mass shooting that claimed 14 lives in San Bernardino, California, to once again push the carrying of concealed guns as a deterrent for mass shootings. There is no evidence that concealed guns are a real-life solution to mass shootings; according to an analysis of public mass shootings over a 30-year period, not a single one was stopped by an armed civilian with a concealed carry permit.

  • Censorship

    • After Illegally Censoring Websites For Five Years On Bogus Copyright Charges, US Gov’t Quietly ‘Returns’ Two Domains

      One of the craziest stories of outright censorship by the US government isn’t getting any attention at all. Five years ago, ICE — Immigrations and Customs Enforcement — a part of the Department of Homeland Security, illegally seized a group of domain names, claiming that they were violating copyright law. As we noted soon after this, the affidavit that ICE used to get a court to sign off on the seizures was particularly ridiculous, showing a near total lack of understanding of both the law and how the internet worked.

    • It’s time to smash the cosy Question Time chumocracy

      Not every white person thinks the same: Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, Nicola Sturgeon and Nick Griffin share not much more than a skin colour. There are class, gender, cultural, political, national and religious differences that are far more powerful than ethnic similarities.

      Everyone, of course, realises this – not least the media. Watch a programme such as Question Time and you will see a wide range of white panellists representing the wide range of views that white people in the UK hold.

      Why, then, is the same civility not extended to Britain’s ethnic minorities? Instead, the select few BAME (Black Asian minority ethnic) “representatives” are wheeled out again and again as if somehow they alone who speak for Britain’s 8.1 million ethnic minority citizens.

      Here’s an open secret: they don’t. Political views are just as broad and diverse among people of colour as they are among white citizens. It is worrying that this still needs pointing out.

    • If Any Kind of “Shaming” Can Be Called Legitimate and Useful, It Must Be Prayer Shaming

      I would go a step further to suggest that prayer is not just insufficient but harmful—not only in crisis situations (when it is just empirically ineffectual), but every single day. Every prayer is a tacit and/or explicit affirmation that the navigation of human life, human interaction, and human interdependence are somehow not the responsibility of humans. This can obviously take much more malign significance in the minds of the deeply faithful, but even in those little “god, give me strength”/”wow, the universe is really looking out for me today” moments, all of humankind is subtly diminished by the suggestion that there is a deity whose plan is being served by our suffering, and, more to the point, other people’s suffering.

  • Privacy

    • Facebook to stop tracking people without Facebook accounts in Belgium after privacy ruling

      Facebook will stop tracking browsers of Facebook pages in Belgium who are not signed into a Facebook account, seeking to comply with a court ruling last month ordering it to do so or face daily fines.

      The company’s action means Belgians will have to log into Facebook before they can see Facebook pages, forcing them to create and sign into an account if they want to view the pages or related content.

      Previously non-users could view public Facebook pages from sports teams, celebrities, tourist attractions and businesses without needing to log into Facebook. As a result of the changes registered Facebook users in Belgium who attempt to log in from an unrecognised web browser will be forced to comply with some added security steps, the company said.

    • Google Cloud Vision API Could Revolutionize Machine Vision

      You can currently call the API by embedding an image as part of the request. In future phases, Google will add support for integrating with Google Cloud Storage. The Vision API enables you to request one or more annotation types per image.

    • Amazon wants to fill your living room with sensors and cameras to bring you augmented reality

      We’ve had a couple virtual reality headsets in the Digital Trends office, and whether or not they’re comfortable to sport on your face, they make the wearer look kind of ridiculous. If your living room was one big augmented reality space, though, that would mean you’re not constantly hunting for your headset. That’s Amazon’s idea, away, according to a couple new patents the retailer recently filed.

    • Submission to Science and Technology Committee on Investigatory Powers Bill

      Parliamentary committees have started examining the draft Snooper’s Charter, so it is important to engage and explain what is wrong with the bill. In this submission we decided to focus on the provisions to create “internet connection records”. We ask for these to be scrapped as they are disproportionate and technically unworkable without the excessive and intrusive collection of everything we do online. There are alternatives that should be explored.

    • The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work

      Cryptography rearranges power: it configures who can do what, from what. This makes cryptography an inherently political tool, and it confers on the field an intrinsically moral dimension. The Snowden revelations motivate a reassessment of the political and moral positioning of cryptography. They lead one to ask if our inability to effectively address mass surveillance constitutes a failure of our field. I believe that it does. I call for a community-wide effort to develop more effective means to resist mass surveillance. I plea for a reinvention of our disciplinary culture to attend not only to puzzles and math, but, also, to the societal implications of our work.

    • Is Google spying on students who use Chromebooks?

      I’ll let you make up your own mind about Google’s response. To me it doesn’t carry much weight, but I’ve become somewhat cynical regarding Google’s motives and behavior over the years. So you’ll have to decide for yourself if the company’s explanation trumps the EFF’s report.

    • After Safe Harbour ruling, legal moves to force Facebook to stop sending data to US

      The Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems has sent complaints to the data protection agencies in three EU countries—Ireland, Germany, and Belgium—asking them to suspend the flow of personal data from Facebook’s operations in Ireland to the US. This follows his earlier success at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which ruled that the Safe Harbour framework under which personal data was being transferred was no longer valid because of mass surveillance of EU citizens by the NSA. Subsequently, the Irish High Court said that the Irish data protection commissioner (DPC) was obliged to investigate Schrems’ earlier complaints.

      His letter to the authorities in Ireland, where Facebook has its European headquarters, asks the Irish data protection agency “to suspend all data flows from ‘Facebook Ireland Ltd’ to ‘Facebook Inc’.” Schrems makes the same request to the data protection agencies in Germany and Belgium. In a release accompanying his complaints, Schrems explains why he has taken this unusual approach of involving several data protection agencies (DPAs): “My personal experience with the Irish DPC are rather mixed, which is why I felt involving more active DPAs make proper enforcement actions more likely. I hope the DPAs will cooperate in this case.”

    • LinkedIn’s revised Android app emulates Facebook
    • Why Electronic Health Records aren’t more usable

      Federal government incentives worth about $30 billion have persuaded the majority of physicians and hospitals to adopt electronic health record (EHR) systems over the past few years. However, most physicians do not find EHRs easy to use.

      Physicians often have difficulty entering structured data in EHRs, especially during patient encounters. The records are hard to read because they’re full of irrelevant boilerplates generated by the software and lack individualized information about the patient.

      Alerts frequently fire for inconsequential reasons, leading to alert fatigue. EHRs from different vendors are not interoperable with each other, making it impossible to exchange information without expensive interfaces or the use of secure messaging systems.

  • Civil Rights

    • The Police Were Right That Someone Could Abduct Her Son

      Video here. Check out how close the playground is to the houses. This is like my parents allowing us to play in our backyard, except apartment dwellers don’t have their own yard.

    • University Islamic Society students ‘make death threats’ as they disrupt controversial blasphemy lecture by human rights activist who they said ‘violated their safe space’

      One student switched off the projector after the speaker showed a cartoon of Muhammad, while a member of the audience claimed that an activist pointed his fingers at his head in the shape of a gun and said ‘boom’ in a bid to intimidate him.

      The Islamic Society spoke out in advance of the talk – titled ‘Apostasy, blasphemy and free expression in the age of ISIS’ – insisting Ms Namazie should not be allowed to speak because of her ‘bigoted views’.

    • Islamic students pull plug on talk by atheist who ‘violated safe space’

      A secular campaigner has told how she was heckled and shouted down by members of a student Islamic society who said that she was violating their “safe space”.

      Maryam Namazie claimed that the Islamic society at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she was addressing the institution’s atheist group, tried to stop her talk going ahead by invoking a “no platform policy”.

    • Goldsmiths’ Islamic Society students disrupt human rights activist’s speech

      A renowned human rights campaigner has told how she was “intimidated” by Muslim students at a London university during a talk on radical Islam.

      Members of the Goldsmiths University Students Union’s Islamic Society switched off a projector and heckled as Maryam Namazie delivered a lecture on Monday evening.

      The students disrupted the speech, entitled ‘Apostasy, blasphemy and free expression in the age of Isis’, because they claimed it “violated their safe space”.

    • Pakistan Aims To Take Home ‘Worst Cybercrime Legislation In The World’ Trophy With Prevention Of Electronic Crimes Bill

      Pakistan is pushing forward its version of CISPA/CISA, the PECB (Prevention of Electronic Crime Bill). Much like here in the US, legislators have put this together without the input of legal or technical experts and, to make matters worse, this one is being pushed under a regime already notorious for censorious actions and intrusive surveillance.

    • Gitmo Prisoner Held For 13 Years Was Victim Of ‘Mistaken Identity’

      He’s been held without charge at Guantánamo Bay for 13 years. Believed to be an al-Qaeda courier or trainer, he was deemed dangerous enough to be held for an “indefinite” amount of time at the prison camp.

      But on Tuesday, in documents released at a Guantánamo hearing, U.S. officials admitted that the man — a Yemeni named Mustafa al-Aziz al-Shamiri — was not who they thought he was. His arrest, they conceded, had been partly a case of “mistaken identity.”

      Al-Shamiri, the documents revealed, had been a low-level Islamic fighter — and not a significant member of al-Qaeda as had previously been suspected.

      “It was previously assessed that YM-434 (al-Shamiri) also was an al-Qaeda facilitator or courier, as well as a trainer, but we now judge these activities were carried out by other known extremists with names or aliases similar to YM-434’s,” officials said.

    • Saudi woman seeks asylum in UK after death threats from her family

      A Saudi woman who fled to the UK with her young son after leaving her husband has told a court how she received death threats from relatives – one of whom told her they would “cut off your head like we do to the sheep” for bringing shame upon their family.

      The woman, who is in her 30s but has not been named, is claiming asylum in Britain after her decision to separate from her husband angered her family. In one incident recounted to the court, her father attacked her with a piece of furniture and her brother tried to strangle her.

    • Will Ukip break up? These bookmakers think Ukip could disband and Nigel Farage could step down
    • Massive Collapse in Tory Vote Share in Oldham

      The Tory vote in Oldham West was not tiny and statistically insignificant. In 2010 it was 23%. The national media has been plugging a narrative about the political dominance of the Tories for months, which bears no relationship to people’s experience in real life. Tens of thousands of words of utter bilge have been written about the Conservatives “Northern powerhouse” strategy and how it will enable them to win in the North, and especially in precisely this Greater Manchester region. This is revealed as complete and utter nonsense. This by-election shows the Tories are deeply unpopular.

    • The mask slips: Oldham result brings out the real Nigel Farage

      Now before I get into the substance of Farage’s argument, it’s worth actually taking a look at the article he referred to in all his interviews this morning.

      The Guardian’s Northern editor is a journalist called Helen Pidd. You can read the article she wrote about the Oldham by-election last Saturday in full here.

      As you can see, there is absolutely no mention of a street where “nobody spoke English, nobody had ever heard go Jeremy Corbyn, but they were all voting Labour.”

      There is one woman quoted who had not heard of Corbyn and another man quoted who had heard of him, didn’t like him, but was still voting Labour because of the local candidate.

    • Ken Livingstone: ‘After Oldham, all those MPs who think we can’t win with Jeremy Corbyn might start to rethink’

      Ken Livingstone gazes out of his kitchen door, where the autumn leaves are floating gently down towards his cherished pond. “The garden wouldn’t be such a mess,” he says laconically, “if Jeremy hadn’t won.”

      At 70, he was meant to be retired by now, devoting himself to domesticity. When he lost his last mayoral election three years ago, he swapped roles with his wife, Emma, who had previously put her career on hold to support his; she has now retrained as a teacher while he became a househusband, running around after 12-year-old Thomas and Mia, 11. (He also has three grownup children by previous partners.)

    • Oldham may be the end for UKIP

      In 1997, Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling threatened the very existence of Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation. The WWF was being beaten in television ratings, pay-per-view buy rates, merchandise sales and all the other pecuniary methods of measuring success in professional wrestling. McMahon, however, is a canny operator and managed to turn around his company the following year, destroying the insurgent organisation and eventually buying it out for a paltry $2.5 million.

      Fast forward to December 2015 and another McMahon, Labour’s Candidate Jim in the Oldham West and Royton by-election, may also prove to be a canny operator who spells doom for an insurgency. UKIP, who had high hopes of causing another by-election headache for the increasingly desperate Labour party, have been held off in a distant second place. McMahon stormed home with a 10,722-vote majority, smaller than predecessor the late Michael Meacher’s due to turnout but with an increased share of the vote over the General Election result.

    • Death Mob Bays For Blood of MPs

      It is astonishing that Tom Watson says that anybody in that video should be expelled from the Labour Party, and that the entire mainstream media has described it as “intimidation”. There really is a genuine attempt to delegitimise even the concept of dissent from the neo-con war agenda.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Can We Save Wireless from Regulators?

      Linux was born and grew within an ecosystem of norms, not laws. Those norms were those of programming (C), operating systems (*NIX), command shells (bash, etc.), e-mail (SMTP, etc.) licenses (GPL, etc.) and Internet protocols (TCP/IP and the rest).

    • NetworkManager and privacy in the IPv6 internet

      The other problem (privacy) is a bit harder to solve. An IP address (be it IPv4 or IPv6) address consists of a network part and the host part. The host discovers the relevant network parts and is supposed generate the host part. Traditionally it just uses an Interface Identifier derived from the network hardware’s (MAC) address. The MAC address is set at manufacturing time and can uniquely identify the machine. This guarantees the address is stable and unique. That’s a good thing for address collision avoidance but a bad thing for privacy. The host part remaining constant in different network means that the machine can be uniquely identified as it enters different networks. This seemed like non-issue at the time the protocol was designed, but the privacy concerns arose as the IPv6 gained popularity. Fortunately, there’s a solution to this problem.

  • DRM

    • I Can’t Let You Do That, Dave

      DMCA 1201 prohibits breaking “digital locks” that restrict access to copyrighted works. Though it was originally conceived as a means of preventing piracy, it has proved most useful at preventing competition and the creation of legitimate, otherwise legal technologies. Copyright law has many flexibilities and exclusions that product designers, developers, and users can freely exercise, without any permission from the copyright holder. But under 1201, you can only make these uses if you do not have to break a lock.

    • Adobe Renaming Flash Software To “Animate CC”

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • University: ‘Pirating’ Students Being Deliberately Targeted

        Data published by Central Michigan University has revealed a worrying trend in copyright complaints. Out of 1,912 received so far in 2015, more than 80% were from Rightscorp, a company that demands cash to settle. The university’s chief information officer believes that campuses like his are being deliberately targeted.

      • Popcorn Time Developers Poke MPAA with A New Fork

        A new group of Popcorn Time developers has officially launched a “Community Edition” of the popular application. What started as a relatively simple fix to get the most used fork working again has turned into a fork of its own, challenging the MPAA’s efforts to bring Popcorn Time down.
        s

12.02.15

Links 2/12/2015: Microsoft and Debian, Thunderbird’s Fate

Posted in News Roundup at 8:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Prioritizing volunteer contributions in free software development

    Wikimedia is an organization which has both volunteers and paid folks working together in software development, with many software projects and different stakeholders involved.

  • Varnish Software: Zipnish for microservices

    Twitter developed the open source software Zipkin in 2012 to address this issue, however it only supports Java architectures.

    So then, Varnish now launches Zipnish in response to demand for an architecture-agnostic open source tool.

  • Dogecoin Startup Goes Open Source as Creator Says ‘Peace Out’ to Crypto

    The creator or micropayments startup dogetipbot has announced he will open-source the payments tool, just over one year after raising $445,000 from investors including Blackbird Ventures.

  • IBM Expands Spark Support with SystemML

    IBM’s machine learning technology has been accepted as an open source project, adding momentum to the steady enterprise shift to open-source development. The development effort also extends IBM’s reach into the Apache Spark ecosystem.

    IBM (NYSE: IBM) said last week its SystemML originally developed for its BigInsights data analytics platform has been accepted as an Apache Incubator open source project. SystemML is a machine learning algorithm translator designed to help developers building machine-learning models used for predictive analytics across a range of industries.

  • Altair to Open Source PBS Professional HPC Technology in 2016

    “Altair’s open source contribution is valuable and will help advance the work of the OpenHPC Collaborative Project,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “By working together to build and extend new technologies for the world’s most complex computing systems, Altair and other members of OpenHPC can accelerate exascale computing.” The open licensing system is scheduled to be released to the open source community in mid-2016.

  • Best Practices for Open-source Projects

    GitHub’s Phil Haack hosted a panel on Channel 9 that focused on best practices for open source projects.

    The panel saw the participation of four maintainers of open source projects: Carlos Rojas, audience evangelism manager at Microsoft for Latin America; Brian Lagunas, maintainer of the PRISM framework, used to build loosely coupled, maintainable, and testable XAML applications; David Paquette, contributor to several open source projects; and Carlos dos Santos, maintainer of CodeCracker, an analyzer library for C# and VB.

  • IBM Fashions Open Source Platform for Machine Learning

    It’s funny how Hadoop continues to crop up as the prime example of an open source platform that finds an early niche as an experiment in enterprise IT shops then suddenly explodes into its own vibrant ecosystem. In fact, the same thing might be happening with Spark, at least as an engine for the types of workloads that Hadoop was not so skilled at tackling.

  • IBM, Google Open Source Machine Learning Technology for Big Data Analytics

    IBM followed Google’s lead in donating machine learning technology to the open source community, providing developers with more resources for their Big Data predictive analytics projects.

  • Gallery of open source project stickers

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • End-of-Year Surveys Show Hadoop Growing, Still Complex, Though

      As the year draws to a close, several research reports and surveys are quantifying just how big an open source success story Hadoop has become. According to a new best practices survey from TDWI there is a big increase in how many enterprises plan to have Hadoop clusters in production. By Q1 of next year, 60% of survey respondents said they will be in production, up from 16% when the report was published earlier in 2015. We covered the complete results of the survey here.

  • CMS

  • BSD

    • New ELF Linker from the LLVM Project

      We have been working hard for a few months now to rewrite the ELF support in lld, the LLVM linker. We are happy to announce that it has reached a significant milestone: it is now able to bootstrap LLVM, Clang, and itself and pass all tests on x86-64 Linux and FreeBSD with the speed expected of an LLVM project.

    • LLVM Is Developing A New ELF Linker

      They wrote today, “We are happy to announce that it has reached a significant milestone: it is now able to bootstrap LLVM, Clang, and itself and pass all tests on x86-64 Linux and FreeBSD with the speed expected of an LLVM project.”

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Richard Stallman Is Not The Father Of Open Source

      Richard Stallman wants to make one thing completely clear: He is not the father. “I’m not the father of open source. If I’m the father of open source, it was conceived by artificial insemination without my knowledge or consent,” he proclaimed from the keynote stage last month at Fossetcon 2015. It wasn’t close to the strongest statement he made from that stage.

    • GNU UPC Hopes To Merge For GCC 6

      Developers on GUPC, the GNU UPC project for extending GCC to support the Unified Parallel C language dialect, are hoping they can get their code merged for GCC 6.

      It’s been a while since last talking about Unified Parallel C as the C programming language extension designed for HPC on parallel machines, but the developers have been hard at work on improving the code and keeping it in sync with GCC.

    • GIMP 2.9.2 Released, How About Features Trivia?

      In a surge of long overdue updates the GIMP team made the first public release in the 2.9.x series. It’s completely GEGL-based, has 16/32-bit per channel editing and new tools. It’s also surprisingly stable enough even for the faint of heart.

    • Supporting Software Freedom Conservancy
    • Software Freedom Conservancy supporter

      They provide a non-profit home, infrastructure, and advice for FLOSS projects. They take care that the will of the project members, choosing free software licenses, is respected by third parties. They care about “all the rest” so free software contributors can focus in improving the software itself. They have an agreement with the Debian community to protect the freedoms that Debian Developers provide to the Debian end users (and derivative distributions).

  • Public Services/Government

    • Open source Gov.UK is ‘example of UK soft power’

      In introducing Manzoni, Nefkens described the UK as a world leader in the “digital transformation of government”, a model even for similar schemes in the USA and Australia. Furthermore, New Zealand has used Gov.uk source code – it’s based on open standards and is open source – to help build out own digital services.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • First Open Source Scientific Notebook Released On Kickstarter

      Modularity is what makes sciNote flexible and useful for every laboratory. Modules are either developed by the sciNote team or by the community. There is a number of open source scientific platforms out there which can be connected to sciNote so there will be an ever-growing selection of modules to choose from. Modules can be simple, such as reagent calculator or complex, such as bioinformatics modules. They can be connected with your existing, databases, laboratory instruments and software.

    • Open Data

      • Flanders to redouble focus on open data standards

        One of the first tasks for Flanders’ newly created Agency for Information (Agentschap Informatie Vlaanderen) will be to promote the use of open data standards by public administrations in the Belgian region. The agency is to align existing and future business processes involving open data and will advance the use of European linked open data standards. The agency’s long-term vision is to support the European Commission’s actions on spatial data infrastructure standards (INSPIRE) and on semantic interoperability for eGovernment systems – one of the actions of the EC’s ISA programme. (ISA is also responsible for the Joinup platform.)

    • Open Hardware

      • It May Soon Be Possible To Build A Do-It-Yourself 64-Bit ARM Laptop

        Olimex Ltd is hoping to make it possible to sell a Do-It-Yourself laptop powered by a 64-bit ARM SoC.

        Olimex has been working on the OLinuXino OSHW Linux laptop that’s an open-source ARM hardware design and would be powered by an Allwinner A64 64-bit SoC.

        They just received samples of their plastic body design for the laptop itself. While a pure plastic laptop is worrisome, they claim that “the plastic parts [are] very good!” They have also sourced the battery, LCD display, keyboard, and other components.

Leftovers

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • US will deploy special force to boost fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

      The United States is deploying a specialized expeditionary targeting force to help Iraq put additional pressure on Islamic State and be positioned to conduct unilateral operations into Syria, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Tuesday.

    • Corbyn says only ‘small number’ of ‘diehard’ Labour MPs support airstrikes – Politics live
    • We need Chilcot’s lessons from Iraq now – before we bomb Syria

      MPs have instead been summoned to meetings to talk to “experts” – David Cameron’s reference to intelligence agencies that he is reluctant to identify after the disaster in Iraq. We are having to wait until next summer, more than 13 years after the invasion, to hear what Chilcot says about “lessons learned”, the main purpose of his inquiry.

    • The Desolation of Labour

      Labour is in a mad panic over Ken Livingstone’s fundamental departure from the neo-con narrative.

    • The Planned Parenthood Attack, And How Homegrown Terrorism Gets Downplayed By The Press

      So, in just the last three months we’ve seen a car set on fire, Molotov cocktails allegedly thrown at a house of worship, terroristic threats leveled against a family, liberal protesters gunned down by radicals, and a medical facility stormed by an anti-abortion/anti-government gunman who killed civilians and a policeman.

      What portrait do those events paint in your mind? And is that portrait of radical homegrown violence and terrorism the one you’ve seen conveyed in the press following the Colorado Springs terror attack?

      It’s not the one I’ve been seeing.

      Media Matters for years has documented how Fox News in particular has used a blinding double standard in terms of casting wide, cultural and religious aspersions when covering terror attacks involving Muslim attackers, versus how it deals with homegrown political violence from the right. (It was Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade who once confidently declared, “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.”)

    • BBC Broadcasting House ‘Bomb Scare’ Leaves Journalists Bemused Over False Evacuation Report

      Hundreds of BBC journalists were left bemused after a rival news outlets reported they were being evacuated from Broadcasting House.

      Staff at the broadcaster were less than impressed at claims – later debunked – that they had been escorted from the building over a suspicious vehicle parked nearby posing a possible bomb threat.

      ITV, the Independent, the Daily Express, City AM and others fell foul of the false claims, sparked by a tweet from one BBC journalist who claimed Broadcasting House had been evacuated.

    • The large proportion of Iraqis who believe the US is supporting Isis

      On the front lines of the battle against Isis, suspicion of the United States runs deep. Iraqi fighters say they have all seen the videos purportedly showing U.S. helicopters airdropping weapons to the militants, and many claim they have friends and relatives who have witnessed similar instances of collusion.

      Ordinary people also have seen the videos, heard the stories and reached the same conclusion — one that might seem absurd to Americans but is widely believed among Iraqis — that the United States is supporting Isis for a variety of pernicious reasons that have to do with asserting U.S. control over Iraq, the wider Middle East and, perhaps, its oil.

    • 70,000 is the new 45 minutes

      Precisely as I reported two days ago, Cameron really is in trouble over the Syria vote due to his patently ludicrous claim of the existence of 70,000 “moderate rebels”. Most MPs are pretty unpleasant people, but they do have a high opinion of their own importance. They will vote for anything they see as in their own self-interest, but not if it means kneeling and licking the floor when they are being treated with very obvious contempt, in public. Well, a great many of them will even do that if it advances their career, and the George Osborne tendency do it in private and pay for it. But not even pretending to take MPs seriously is a risky tactic, and that is what Cameron has done with his foolish ruse of just inventing 70,000 moderate fighters.

      Today the government rubbed MPs faces further in the dirt by saying they could not give a breakdown of who the 70,000 are, because it is a secret.

      Yes, honestly. The identity of our allies – even just in terms of what groups they belong to – is a secret.

    • The Old Etonian Sir Mark Lyall Grant

      Lyall Grant is now National Security Adviser and made responsible by Cameron for persuading Labour MPs to bomb Syria. A disagreement has arisen tonight over whether he admitted or not that a great many of the “70,000” are “extreme Islamists”.

    • Syria airstrikes: Has the West learned nothing after its 9/11 response?

      …a new intervention will play directly into the narrative used by ISIS to lure the Western recruits most likely to carry out attacks in Britain.

    • MSNBC’s Kornacki Found Muslims In NYC Were Assaulted After 9/11, But No News Reports Of Muslim Celebrations

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • The Worst Right-Wing Media Reactions To The UN Climate Summit

      President Obama is in Paris at a United Nations summit, where nations hope to reach an international agreement on climate change. In response, conservative media figures have resorted to denial, dismissal, and mockery, while criticizing Obama as “simply stupid” and NASA scientists as “talentless low-lives.”

    • Indonesia forest fires: how the year’s worst environmental disaster unfolded – interactive

      As world leaders gather in Paris to discuss the global response to climate change, we assess the impact of the widespread forest fires in Indonesia. Set to clear land for paper and palm oil production, the fires have not only destroyed forest and peatland, but also severely affected public health and released massive amounts of carbon

  • Finance

    • How EU nations are being sued for billions by foreign companies in secret tribunals

      The most controversial aspect of the the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement, which is currently being negotiated behind closed doors between the US and EU, is the plan to allow foreign companies to sue entire nations in special tribunals for the alleged expropriation of future profits through changes in laws or regulations. This is not an entirely new approach—these secret tribunals have been included in hundreds of other smaller-scale trade agreements over the years—but its inclusion here would have profound impacts on both the EU and US.

      Opponents of the idea see these secret tribunals as undermining a government’s sovereign ability to implement democratic decisions through new legislation. Those in favour of this investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism insist that it’s just a normal part of trade agreements, and nothing to worry about.

      The UK government’s public stance on ISDS is typical: “Since 1975 the UK has negotiated 94 Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) almost all of which include ISDS provisions,” one of its information leaflets says. And yet the government also claims: “No ISDS challenge has ever succeeded against the UK. Despite the large number of treaties in force with ISDS clauses, there have been only two ISDS challenges brought against us.”

  • Censorship

    • Our Response To The Latest Ridiculous Legal Threat Against Us: Milorad Trkulja Can Go Pound Sand

      As we’ve noted, we regularly get legal threats, some of which are more serious than others. Sometimes we ignore them entirely, and sometimes we feel the need to respond. Depending on the situation, sometimes we respond privately. Sometimes we respond publicly. The more ridiculous the threat, the more likely we are to respond publicly — and I think the latest holds up as one of the most ridiculous legal threats we’ve seen. It comes from Milorad Trkulja, who is also known as Michael Trkulja, and who lives in Australia. Trkulja made some news a few years back when he (somewhat surprisingly) successfully sued both Yahoo and Google for hundreds of thousands of dollars, because when people did image searches on a variety of phrases related to things like “Australian criminal underworld mafia” sometimes a picture of Trkulja would show up. Apparently, Trkulja was actually shot in the back a decade ago by an unknown gunman. And somehow, for whatever reasons, certain websites included pictures of him along with enough keywords that the search algorithms at both Google and Yahoo would return his photo in such searches. We wrote about his victory over Google back in November of 2012, pointing out how ridiculous it was that an Australian court said you could sue search engines because image search happens to pop up your image along with actual gangsters.

      [...]

      That’s enough of a response. There are tons of other possible responses, but in short: we’re not doing a damn thing in response to this ridiculous threat. You have no case whatsoever and complaining about this is ridiculous. It may be time to find a hobby or something, Mr. Trkulja, because poorly written and ridiculous legal threats to foreign entities aren’t doing you any good.

    • Prince Charles: 15-page contract reveals how the Prince of Wales tries to control the media

      Prince Charles is demanding “North Korean-style” pre-conditions in television interviews, including advance knowledge of precise questions, the right to oversee editing and even to block a broadcast if he does not approve of the final product.

  • Privacy

    • GCHQ accused of ‘persistent’ illegal hacking at security tribunal

      GCHQ carries out “persistent” illegal hacking of phones, computers and networks worldwide under broad “thematic” warrants that ignore privacy safeguards, a security tribunal has heard.

      Microphones and cameras on electronic devices can be remotely activated without owners’ knowledge, photographs and personal documents copied and locations discovered, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) has been told.

      GCHQ, the government monitoring station in Cheltenham, has for the first time in a court case admitted that it carries out computer network exploitation (CNE) – commonly known as hacking – both in the UK and overseas.

    • The attack that broke the Dark Web—and how Tor plans to fix it

      Law enforcement has been complaining for years about the Web “going dark,” saying that encryption and privacy tools are frustrating their ability to track criminals online. But massive FBI operations over the last year that have busted ‘hidden sites’ used for the sale of drugs, hacking tools, and child pornography suggest the digital criminal world has gotten lighter, with law enforcement bragging that criminals can’t “hide in the shadows of the Dark Web anymore.” While mysterious about its tactics, law enforcement indicated that it had found a way to circumvent the tool on which these sites relied, a software called Tor. But criminals are not the only ones who rely on it.

    • IRS says it will get a warrant before using cell-site simulators

      The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is drafting a policy to restrict the use without a warrant of cell-site simulator technology to snoop on the location and other information from mobile phones.

      The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is drafting a policy to restrict the use without a warrant of cell-site simulator technology to snoop on the location and other information from mobile phones.

      The head of the IRS, John Koskinen, wrote in a letter that the agency was drafting a policy that would mirror an earlier Department of Justice rule, which requires a search warrant supported by probable cause before using the technology, except in exigent or exceptional circumstances.

    • Google accused of tracking school kids after it promised not to

      Google has been collecting information about schoolchildren’s browsing habits despite signing a pledge saying it was committed to their privacy, the EFF said Tuesday.

      Google has been collecting information about schoolchildren’s browsing habits despite signing a pledge saying it was committed to their privacy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a complaint filed Tuesday.

    • Boston PD Finally Confirms It Has A Stingray Device In Its Possession

      The Boston Police Department has been fighting two FOIA requests — one from Mike Katz-Lacabe and one from Shawn Musgrave — for months. We covered Katz-Lacabe’s battle back in June. In that one, the BPD denied the release of documents related to Stingray devices on the questionable grounds that they were covered under the “investigative materials” exemption.

    • Bulk Collection Under Section 215 Has Ended… What’s Next?

      But the facts that have emerged thus far tell a different story. It appears that much of the planning took place IRL (that’s “in real life” for those of you who don’t have teenagers). The attackers, several of whom were on law enforcement’s radar, communicated openly over the Internet. If France ever has a 9/11 Commission-type inquiry, it could well conclude that the Paris attacks were a failure of the intelligence agencies rather than a failure of intelligence authorities.

  • Civil Rights

    • Sixty years on, U.S. heroes of Montgomery bus boycott celebrated

      While Rosa Parks became a symbol of the U.S. civil rights movement when she refused to give up her seat on a segregated Alabama bus, the 60th anniversary of her arrest is also highlighting lesser-known pioneers of the bus boycott she sparked.

      Parks made history by taking a stand alongside other desegregation pioneers like Claudette Colvin, a black teenager arrested nine months earlier in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger, said Fred Gray, a lawyer who represented both women.

      “If there had not been a Claudette Colvin, who did what she did, a lot of other events would not have occurred,” Gray said. “It was a matter of each one building upon each other, and the rest is history.”

      The Montgomery bus boycott, launched in protest of Parks’ arrest on Dec. 1, 1955, modelled the nonviolent protests that defined the era and brought to prominence a lead organizer, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

    • Rosa Parks: 60th anniversary of a historic day in Alabama – in pictures
    • Chicago police chief ousted amid tensions over black teen’s killing

      Chicago’s police chief was ousted on Tuesday following days of unrest over video footage showing the shooting of a black teenager and the filing of murder charges against a white police officer in the young man’s death.

      Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced during a news conference he had asked Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy to resign. The mayor also said he was creating a new police accountability task force.

      The white officer, Jason Van Dyke, was charged a week ago with first-degree murder in the killing of Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times. The video of the killing was released on the same day.

    • Human Rights Watch demands U.S. criminal probe of CIA torture

      Human Rights Watch called on the Obama administration on Tuesday to investigate 21 former U.S. officials, including former President George W. Bush, for potential criminal misconduct for their roles in the CIA’s torture of terrorism suspects in detention.

    • US Officials Must Be Brought to Justice for CIA Torture Program – HRW

      Human Rights Watch concluded in a report that foreign governments must prosecute senior US officials involved in the Central Intelligence Agency’s torture program.

    • Where is the Outrage on David Cameron’s Scandal in the Gulf?

      The UAE, we now know, was busy planning its own operation against Muslim Brotherhood affiliates at home while urging David Cameron to do the same in Britain.

  • DRM

    • Adobe isn’t killing Flash, just changing the name of the tool that makes it

      Score one for the late Steve Jobs. Adobe is changing the name of Flash Professional CC, its web animation tool, to Animate CC. The goal is to accurately reflect the reality that web developers are using the tool to also create HTML5 content—“over a third of all the content” created with the app—according to Adobe.

      In a blog post announcing the change, Adobe credited Flash with “[pushing] the web forward.” But the company also conceded that HTML5, which is friendlier to laptop batteries and not the security nightmare Flash has become, has matured enough to “be the web platform of the future across all devices.”

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • UK Anti-Piracy ‘Education’ Campaign Launched, Quietly

        After a long wait the UK’s broad anti-piracy effort operated by ISPs and copyright holders has finally launched. The UK Government-funded program aims to warn and educate illegal file-sharers in the hope of decreasing piracy rates over time, but thus far the response has been rather underwhelming.

      • Broke Again, Dotcom Asks Hong Kong Court For Millions

        Lawyers for Kim Dotcom have asked a Hong Kong court for the release of millions in previously seized funds claiming that their client is broke once again. However, the prosecution claim that after opening new businesses, Dotcom banked “hundreds of millions” of dollars through Hong Kong.

12.01.15

Links 1/12/2015: Porteus Kiosk 3.6.0, Linux Mint 17.3 “Rosa”

Posted in News Roundup at 9:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 8 projects with LEGO: plastic bricks meet open source

    LEGO bricks: To a parent, they’re a virtual minefield, hidden away in the carpet to inflict unimaginable pain from a seemly innocent barefoot step. But to a child, they are a tool for creatively engineering anything the mind can imagine. And for many, they are our first foray into open source. The instructions with a LEGO set start out as rigid rules, and become merely guidelines as children learn to remix, adapt, and extend the “code” which defines the object being built, and then be shared with anyone nearby.

  • IBM latest to open source AI program

    Thomas said IBM has another reason to open-source its machine learning code – it helps the company recruit new AI experts, which are currently in great demand.

  • Finding the right tool for the job

    I’ve worked on many projects in my life so far, and almost all of them involve open source somewhere along the line. Below is a brief summary of some of the projects I worked on and the tools I used to work on projects in my own time, outside of work.

  • Being Thankful for Open Source Software

    At the end of every year I always like to donate some small amount of money to the open source projects I spend the most time using. If everyone donated even 1/10th of the money free software saved them each year to the projects that they use, I have no doubt that a lot more open source software would exist today.

  • 6 creative ways to use ownCloud

    ownCloud is a self-hosted open source file sync and share server. Like “big boys” Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, and others, ownCloud lets you access your files, calendar, contacts, and other data. You can synchronize everything (or part of it) between your devices and share files with others. But ownCloud can do much more than its proprietary, hosted-on-somebody-else’s-computer competitors.

  • Freeswitch vs. Asterisk?

    We’ve been experimenting with VOIP in our school, primarily for internal communication. I’ve set up both asterisk and freeswitch servers, and have been quite frustrated with the limitations of both.

    Asterisk only allows one registration to be connected to each extension. Yes, there are ways to work around this restriction (for extension 101, set up multiple extensions – 980101, 981101, 982101, and then set up a ring group 101 that rings those extensions simultaneously), but it’s an incredibly irritating workaround.

  • Events

    • How Is Fossaegean Doing?

      Since I moved into the island, one of the first things I did was to find out if there were any people around interested in free & open source technologies. Luckily, there was this community called fossaegean, which pretty much stands for Free & Open Source Software Community of the University of the Aegean. However, it was not that active back then.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla’s Millions Grow Under Last Year of Google Deal

        While Mozilla continues to give away its open source products for free, including the Firefox web browser, it is still generating growing revenues. Mozilla’s newly published 2014 financial statements show that the open source software group made more money than ever before in 2014, though 2015 will be a year of challenges.

      • Mozilla: Open Source Firefox Browser Thrives without Cash from Google

        How important is Google to open source? Not quite as important as it was up until a year ago, when Mozilla announced that it was no longer receiving large sums of cash from the search giant. Yet it turns out Firefox and other Mozilla products are still thriving without as much Google support.

      • All hail Firefox Dev Edition 44 – animations, memory and all

        When Mozilla released the first Firefox Developer Edition there wasn’t much difference from the regular Firefox release, but all that changed recently.

        Firefox DE 44, delivered in early November, packs in a wealth of new features and improvements, particularly for anyone working with HTML5 and CSS3 animation.

        The Developer Edition’s Page Inspector tool adds an animation panel that allows developers to step through animations node by node and easily scrub, pause, and inspect each animation on the webpage.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice Now Has More than 100 Million Active Users

      LibreOffice is hailed as the best open source office suite available right now, and we keep hearing about the amazing adoption rate, but we hardly get any real numbers. That changed today after Collabora released some statistics about LibreOffice usage and it’s more than impressive.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • I support Software Freedom Conservancy

      Conservancy provides a lot of services to member projects, including financial and administrivia. Conservancy also provides license enforcement services, including support of a high-profile suit against VMWare. Although Conservancy uses litigation as a last resort, it’s sometimes necessary. However, this has lead to some corporate sponsors pulling their funding.

    • Support Software Freedom Conservancy
    • GnuTLS 3.4.x
    • FSF to begin accepting GPG signatures for copyright assignments from Italy

      The Free Software Foundation is striving to provide more and simpler ways for hackers to contribute to the GNU Project. For projects that are assigned to the FSF (such as GNU Emacs or GCC), dealing with the paperwork for assigning contributions can sometimes be a bottleneck in the process. We are always working on ways to make assignment itself simpler. We have accepted GPG-signed documents from U.S. contributors for some time now. Our legal counsel at the Software Freedom Law Center recently gave us the all clear to begin accepting GPG and electronic signatures from contributors in Italy. We would also like to thank Carlo Piana for providing local counsel on this issue as well.

    • It’s Fall, still, and the Bulletin is out!

      As many of you are aware, twice a year we mail a new edition of the FSF Bulletin to our members and supporters via the good old United States Postal Service. The Bulletin comes together in just a few weeks, and this time we had to make an extra quick turnaround after celebrating FSF30.

  • Public Services/Government

    • German aerospace centre in transit to open source

      Germany’s Aerospace Centre DLR is steadily increasing its use of free and open source software. The DLR is already using open source tools for many of its software development projects, and also makes several of its solutions available as open source. In addition, the research institute plans in the long-term to use open source for it PC operating systems, office productivity and collaboration tools.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Does the Open Document Format still matter?

      One of the core topics of this blog -at least one of the main reasons it came to existence- was open standards: their benefits, their advantages, and their value as a fundamental component for digital innovation and ultimately software freedom. This is still the case of course, but today I will try to show how one open standard in particular, ODF, has failed in its approach until now and could very well make a remarkable comeback.

      This is not to say that ODF is a bad idea or that it is not a good standard; it is all this and much more. However I have realized with the hindsight of several years since it became an official ISO standard that the expectations about its adoption and its development have been defined the wrong way. Hence the title of this post.

    • Your guide to 7 open eBook formats

      Electronic books, or eBooks, have been around for a long time, but convenient devices upon which to read them are a relatively recent development. Between mobile phones, tablets, and dedicated eBook readers, chances are you have some device in your life that you can use to read an electronic book upon. That’s great for leveling up on how much you read, but it begs the question of what open file formats are out there for eBooks, and which ones are best.

    • “Open standards should be a priority” – MITA

      Open standards should be a priority in public administration’s IT projects, says Noel Cuschieri, enterprise architect at Malta’s Information Technology Agency (MITA). Open standards are a strategic part of Malta’s IT policy, Cuschieri says.

Leftovers

  • Where does a person have online discussions anymore?

    Back in the day, way back in the day perhaps, there were interesting places to hang out online. FidoNet provided some discussion groups — some local, some more national or international. Then there was Usenet, with the same but on a more grand scale.

    There were things I liked about both of them.

    They fostered long-form, and long-term, discussion. Replies could be thoughtful, and a person could think about it for a day before replying.

    Socially, you would actually get to know the people in the communities you participated in. There would be regulars, and on FidoNet at least, you might bump into them in different groups or even in real life. There was a sense of community. Moreover, there was a slight barrier to entry and that was, perhaps, a good thing; there were quite a lot of really interesting people and not so many people that just wanted answers to homework questions.

  • Science

    • HPC Helps Drive Weather Forecasting

      The computational requirements for weather forecasting are driven by the need for higher resolution models for more accurate and extended forecasts. In addition, more physics and chemistry processes are included in the models so we can observe the very fine features of weather behavior. These models operate on 3D grids that encompass the globe. The closer the points on the grid are to each other, the more accurate the results. Today most global grid models use a range of 10 to 25 kilometer separation between points; the Holy Grail of weather forecasting is to reduce that separation to one kilometer or less.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Will EU renew $1.25bn deal with tobacco firm PMI?

      There are 222 days left until an unprecedented treaty between tobacco company Philip Morris International (PMI) and the European Union expires. The 2004 deal saw Europe halt all its legal claims against PMI in exchange for the multinational’s cooperation in the fight against cigarette smuggling. The EU had previously sued PMI and other tobacco companies in the US over suspected involvement in smuggling operations.

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Monday
    • Warning: Internet security turbulence ahead

      A little more than a year ago, I urged manufacturing companies testing the IoT waters to leave the work of bringing Internet connectivity to their traditionally unconnected products to those who understand what’s at stake. I’m not alone in my concerns that the IoT brigade will bring with it an avalanche of staggeringly insecure products that will find their way into our daily lives.

      What we’re seeing right now is a hopefully imperfect storm of security challenges that, with any luck, will not result in global security and privacy breaches. In one corner, we have companies like Dell and Lenovo distributing computers with wide-open root CAs, allowing anyone with a small amount of skill to crib a certificate and spoof SSL websites, run man-in-the-middle attacks, and install malicious software on those Windows systems with nary a whimper from the “protections” in place to prevent such issues.

    • Flaws in Huawei WiMax routers won’t be fixed, researcher says

      Huawei isn’t planning on patching several flaws in seven models of WiMax routers that are not being supported anymore by the company, according to a security researcher.

      Huawei isn’t planning on patching several flaws in seven models of WiMax routers that are not being supported anymore by the company, according to a security researcher.

      Pierre Kimpublished a list of the affected models, which are still used in countries including Ivory Coast, Iran, Iraq, Libya, the Philippines, Bahrain and Ukraine.

    • The threats of November 2015, Linux ransomware leads the way according to new report [Ed: Blaming already-resolved CMS bugs on “Linux”]
    • Can’t get a break: Pwned Linux ransomware pwned again, infects 3000

      WordPress and Magento sites are the main targets. The software had infected 2000 sites by 12 November and surpassed 3000 two weeks later.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Here We Are Again on the Way to War – and All Anyone Can Talk About is the Labour Whip

      Often in the past few days, BBC listeners and viewers, and readers of the unpopular newspapers, might have had the impression that Britain is discussing the pros and cons of an intervention in the Labour Party, rather than of an intervention in Syria.

      As I read the papers and listened to BBC Radio 4 on Friday morning last week, I was baffled to find that the main item was not the plan for war, but the divisions on this subject within the Labour Party.

    • Wow

      I think you can measure the death of democracy by the sheer audacity of the propaganda that government can get away with. Michael Fallon today on the Marr programme churned out the “70,000 moderate rebels” lie with a smooth bland face, and mentioned only the Free Syrian Army when pressed on who they were exactly. This is dishonesty on an epic scale.

      [...]

      As does the fact that a substantial number of MPs of the official “opposition” have spent the weekend actively colluding with government ministers to forward the government’s militarist agenda.

    • [Old] Turkey sends in jets as Syria’s agony spills over every border

      When US special forces raided the compound of an Islamic State leader in eastern Syria in May, they made sure not to tell the neighbours.

      The target of that raid, the first of its kind since US jets returned to the skies over Iraq last August, was an Isis official responsible for oil smuggling, named Abu Sayyaf. He was almost unheard of outside the upper echelons of the terror group, but he was well known to Turkey. From mid-2013, the Tunisian fighter had been responsible for smuggling oil from Syria’s eastern fields, which the group had by then commandeered. Black market oil quickly became the main driver of Isis revenues – and Turkish buyers were its main clients.

      As a result, the oil trade between the jihadis and the Turks was held up as evidence of an alliance between the two. It led to protests from Washington and Europe – both already wary of Turkey’s 900-mile border with Syria being used as a gateway by would-be jihadis from around the world. [...] direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking Isis members was
      now “undeniable”.

    • The Guardian view on Syria: MPs should say no to airstrikes without a strategy

      There is a right way to approach a question as serious as whether the UK should extend airstrikes against Islamic State to Syria – and a wrong way. The wrong way is to view it through the lens of the bitter debate about the future of the Labour party and in particular its leader. For all the drama of Monday’s decision to allow a free vote, the threat of Isis is too grave to be used merely to undermine or shore up the position of Jeremy Corbyn.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • In New York Times, Blue Eyes ‘Wince and Cloud’ at the Terror of a ‘Gentle Loner’

      It’s hard to say what was more incongruous: the description of someone who had reportedly admitted carrying out a deadly act of terror as a “gentle loner” or the presumption that phrase could be attached to someone who “occasionally unleashed violent acts” toward women and others.

      Faced with a barrage of criticism on Twitter and elsewhere, the Times rewrote the lead of that story to make Dear less “gentle.” Now the same reporters reported that “neighbors said they barely knew him”—the same neighbors, presumably, to whom the earlier description was attributed.

    • What You Never Hear On Fox News

  • Censorship

    • A Decade-Old Gag Order, Lifted

      A few days earlier, an FBI agent had come by Calyx’s offices and handed Nick a “national security letter” demanding that Calyx turn over sensitive information about one of its subscribers. The letter included a gag order prohibiting Calyx from disclosing to anyone that it had received the demand. It also included an attachment listing the kinds of information that the FBI wanted Calyx to turn over.

    • Right-wing group Britain First calls Facebook ‘fascist’ after fan page banned by mistake

      Britain First, a far-right group that opposes immigration and brands itself a “patriotic resistance and ‘frontline’ for our long suffering people”, accused Facebook of fascism after its page on the social network was briefly taken down.

      The group saw its page briefly taken down for violating rules on Monday, with a message saying its page had been “unpublished” and that Facebook does not tolerate hate speech.

      However, the page was subsequently re-published. “The page was removed in error but has now been restored,” a Facebook spokesman said.

      The Facebook page is known for publishing anti-immigrant, and pro-army and Christian messages on Facebook, with its fan page receiving more than 1.1 million “likes”. However, it has also generated a backlash, with an opposition page, “Exposing Britain First”, becoming popular.

    • Sweden refuses to order ISP to block Pirate Bay

      Sweden’s internet service providers cannot be forced to block file sharing site the Pirate Bay nor be held responsible for copyright infringements by users, a court has ruled.

      Stockholm District Court rejected a lawsuit filed by the Swedish Film Industry, Nordisk Film, Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music last year which argued that Sweden’s second-largest internet service provider (ISP) Bredbandsbolaget should be held liable for the copyright infringements of its users should it refuse to block access to the Pirate Bay.

      The court said in a statement: “The District Court considers that Bredbandsbolaget’s operation and conduct in the present case does not constitute participation under Swedish law.”

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Remember Why We Have the Fourth Amendment

      The Paris attacks have fueled a debate over surveillance on both sides of the Atlantic that, while not new, has reached a level of hysteria that I have not witnessed since the weeks and months following 9/11. There is great cause for grief and great cause for concern over whether those horrific events could have been prevented. But in our desire to prevent such a tragedy at home, it is vital for Americans to remember the values that drove the birth of our nation, and to guard them jealously. It is not “handwringing” to fret over the future of privacy rights, religious freedom, and free speech. At a time when the British government has spent months discussing its desire to implement a “Snooper’s Charter” and ban strong encryption, we would do well to remember that the Brits are the reason we have the Fourth Amendment (and the First), rather than echoing their arguments for broader surveillance powers.

  • Copyrights

    • MPAA ‘Softens’ Movie Theater Anti-Piracy Policy, Drops Bounty

      The MPAA has issued an updated version of its best practices for the prevention of movie piracy in theaters. While much remains the same, theater managers are no longer required to call the police for every incident. In addition, the long-standing pirate hunting bounty program has disappeared.

    • Microsoft Lobbying Group Forces ‘Pirate’ To Get 200,000 Views On Anti-Piracy Video… Whole Thing Backfires

      The history of anti-piracy activities by the legacy entertainment and software industries always seems to focus on the mistaken idea that if only the public were “more educated” piracy would magically go away. That’s never been true. In fact, nearly every attempt at an education campaign hasn’t just failed to work, it’s often actively backfired and been mocked and parodied. And yet, if you talk to politicians and industry folks, they still seem to think that “more education” will magically work next time. One can only wonder what the hell the geniuses at the Software Alliance (the BSA — which used to be the “Business Software Alliance” but has dropped the “Business” part, but not the “B” in its name) were thinking when they decided to “settle” with a guy who apparently uploaded some Microsoft software in the Czech Republic. The terms of the settlement required him to take part in a “professionally produced” anti-piracy video and that the video needed to get 200,000 views on YouTube or he might face having to pay damages in court.

      The BSA is a well-known front for Microsoft, and has a long history of rather ridiculous claims about “piracy,” so I guess it’s little surprise that it’s now engaged in out and out propaganda, but done so badly that it’s turned the whole thing into a laughingstock. The whole “compelled speech” aspect of the settlement, including the requirement to get so many views, strikes basically everyone as ridiculous and stupid.

    • German Museum Sues Wikimedia Foundation Over Photos Of Public Domain Works Of Art

      The mission of museums and art galleries is generally to spread knowledge and appreciation of beautiful and interesting objects. So it’s rather sad when they start taking legal action against others that want to help them by disseminating images of public domain works of art to a wider audience. This obsession with claiming “ownership” of something as immaterial as the copyright in a photograph of a work of art made centuries ago led the UK National Portrait Gallery (NPG) to threaten Derrick Coetzee, a software developer, when he downloaded images from the NPG and added them to Wikimedia Commons, the media repository for Wikipedia, of which he was an administrator.

11.30.15

Links 30/11/2015: Linux 4.4 RC3, Zaragoza Moving to FOSS

Posted in News Roundup at 6:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Historians and detectives keep track of data with open source tool

    Segrada is a piece of open source software that allows historians (and detectives) to keep track of their data. Unlike wikis or archival databases, its focus lies on information and interrelations within it. Pieces of information might represent persons, places, things, or concepts. These “nodes” can be bidirectionally connected with each other to semantically represent friendship, blood relation, whereabouts, authorship, and so on. Hence the term “semantic graph database,” since information can be displayed as a graph of semantically connected nodes.

  • 5 open-source alternatives to Slack

    Here are five full-featured Slack alternatives — tools that go beyond IRC, in other words — that are open-source software, which means you can download it and run it on whatever server you want. That implies that you’re in charge of security, for better or worse, instead of, say, Slack.

  • KTU exams to run on open source software

    All examinations of the A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technological University (KTU) — which run on an online platform — would switch to open source software from the second semester onwards. For the first semester examinations, the KTU would use a proprietary, Microsoft, software.

    In response to demands from student organisations, the KTU has pushed back its first semester examinations by two days. The first of the examinations would now begin on December 4 instead of December 2. The first of the results would be published on December 19.

  • KTU goes ahead with exam outsourcing
  • What is hacker culture?

    Eric Raymond, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar (an important work describing the effectiveness of open collaboration and development), recently wrote a piece calling for “Social Justice Warriors” to be ejected from the hacker community. The primary thrust of his argument is that by calling for a removal of the “cult of meritocracy”, these SJWs are attacking the central aspect of hacker culture – that the quality of code is all that matters.

  • #HROS project: putting the open source into HR

    The #HROS project was launched in back in May of 2015 to bring the worlds of human resources (HR) and open source (OS) together, hence the name: HROS.

  • 3 reasons open source needs Open Badges

    The Fedora Badges system, which is interoperable with Mozilla’s Open Badges Infrastructure (OBI), lists more than 17,000 contributors who have been issued digital badges. And, at the top of the leaderboard is Kevin, who has been issued 142 badges—less than half of the overall number of badges available! Those badges Kevin has achieved are a mix of Content, Development, Community, Quality, and Event badges, with some easier, and some harder, to obtain.

  • Will Open Source HR Make Life Easier For Companies?

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • IceCat 38.4.0 release

        GNUzilla is the GNU version of the Mozilla suite, and GNU IceCat is the GNU version of the Firefox browser. Its main advantage is an ethical one: it is entirely free software. While the Firefox source code from the Mozilla project is free software, they distribute and recommend non-free software as plug-ins and addons. Also their trademark license restricts distribution in several ways incompatible with freedom 0. https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Telefonica, Huawei Team on OpenStack-based Cloud Initiative

      Huawei has a new deal with giant Spanish telecom company Telefonica through which the two firms will work on helping enterprises move infrastructure onto Telefonica’s OpenStack-based cloud. It’s yet another indicaton of the global phenomenon that OpenStack has become.

  • CMS

  • Healthcare

    • How I ended up working in open source healthcare

      I am prepared and excited to take on that challenge, and to make sure my chosen FOSS project, with the wind of open source as a dominate model in the world to drive us, tries to change the world of healthcare IT for the better.

      Viva la FOSS!

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • A few thoughts on OpenBSD 5.8

      I’ve been using OpenBSD since way back at release 2.3 in 1998, so I’ve gone through upgrades that took a fair amount of work due to incompatible changes, like the switch from ipf to pf for host firewalling or the change to ELF binaries. The upgrade from 5.7 to 5.8 was a pretty smooth and easy one, for the most part. The two most painful changes for me were the replacement of sudo with doas and the dropping of support in the rc.conf for the pf_rules variable. While sudo is still available as a package, I like the idea of reducing attack surface with a simpler program, so I made the switch. The two things I miss most about sudo are the ability to authenticate for a period of time and the ability to have a single config file across a whole set of servers. The former I’m just living with, the latter I’ve adjusted to by having a single config file that has lines commented out depending on which server it’s on. I did have one moment of concern about the quality of doas when it incorrectly reported the line number on which I had a syntax error in the config file–fortunately, this was just a failure to increment the line count on continuation lines (ending with a “\”) which is fixed in the -current release.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GIMP 2.10 Development Started, Will Bring GEGL-Based Tools, OpenEXR Support

      After turning 20 years of activity, the GIMP developers have been happy to announce that the development cycle of the upcoming GIMP 2.10 open-source and cross-platform image editor software has started with the immediate availability of GIMP 2.9.2.

    • GCC 5.2 vs. GCC 6.0 On An Intel Haswell-E Linux System

      With GCC 6 feature development now over I decided to run some benchmarks comparing GCC 5.2.0 against GCC 6.0.0 (the 20151124 snapshot) on an Intel Haswell-E Xeon system running Ubuntu.

    • GIMP 2.9.2 Released With GEGL Technical Preview

      Days after celebrating the project’s 20th birthday, GIMP 2.9.2 has been released as the latest development snapshot towards the GIMP 2.10 image editor.

    • Do You Like What I Do For a Living?

      But software freedom is not merely an ideology for me. I believe the ideology matters because I see the lives of developers and users are better when they have software freedom. I first got a taste of this IRL when I attended the earliest Perl conferences in the late 1990s. My friend James and I stayed in dive motels and even slept in a rental car one night to be able to attend. There was excitement in the Perl community (my first Free Software community). I was exhilarated to meet in person the people I’d seen only as god-like hackers posting on perl5-porters. James was so excited he asked me to take a picture of him jumping as high as he could with his fist in the air in front of the main conference banner. At the time, I complained; I was mortified and felt like a tourist taking that picture. But looking back, I remember that James and I felt that same excitement and just were expressing it differently.

    • FixedMisc [MirOS] for GNU GRUB2
    • The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust
    • Software Freedom Conservancy

      Some projects receive support from or are managed by companies or trade associations that benefit from the software the community produces. That is great as long as the community objectives and the company profit motives are aligned. Free Software is a great way for companies to work together. The services that the Conservancy provides allows projects to define their own terms and conditions for the community to work together. And companies can then join on equal terms. Making sure the project and community will work together for the public benefit.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Zaragoza continues its transition to open source

      The Spanish city of Zaragoza continues to expand its use of free and open source software. The city administration now has 1200 of its 3000 PCs running the AZLinux desktop, which is based on Ubuntu Linux. On all workstations, LibreOffice is the default office suite, and the city by default uses the Open Document Format ODF.

    • What’s behind Europe’s love affair with open-source?

      Government IT departments in Europe, over the past several years, have been eager to trumpet their interest in open-source software – and have been backing their interest up with action. Open-source has become a matter of national policy in the U.K., a critical part of the infrastructure at the European Commission, and the standard for the city of Munich.

    • Portugal offers IT training to government workers

      Portugal’s Agency for Administrative Modernisation (AMA) is offering IT training that is open to all public administration staff members. The courses are intended to help modernise public administrations and to speed up the introduction of eGovernment services.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • 3 Open Source Alternatives to Using the Google Maps API

        The rise of data mining, mobile applications and social media, among many others, has dramatically changed the face of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and what they can accomplish. This has led to the creation of tools suited to various use cases. The most obvious place to begin when thinking about GIS is the web maps available through the Google Maps API.

  • Programming

    • GCC Working On ARMv8.1, Clang Working On ARMv8.2 Support

      ARM’s Matthew Wahab posted the new patch series yesterday, “ARMv8.1 includes an extension to ARM which adds two Adv.SIMD instructions, vqrdmlah and vqrdmlsh. This patch set adds support for ARMv8.1 and for the new instructions, enabling the architecture with –march=armv8.1-a. The new instructions are enabled when both ARMv8.1 and a suitable fpu options are set, for instance with -march=armv8.1-a -mfpu=neon-fp-armv8 -mfloat-abi=hard.”

    • Forum PHP in Paris 2015

      First, a huge thanks to AFUP for the organization of this great event, as always, reception was beyond reproach.

    • PHP version 5.6.16

      RPM of PHP version 5.6.16 are available in remi repository for Fedora ≥ 21 and remi-php56 repository for Fedora ≤ 20 and Enterprise Linux (RHEL, CentOS).

Leftovers

  • Hardware

  • Security

    • Friday’s security updates
    • Researchers poke hole in custom crypto built for Amazon Web Services

      Underscoring just how hard it is to design secure cryptographic software, academic researchers recently uncovered a potentially serious weakness in an early version of the code library protecting Amazon Web Services.

      Ironically, s2n, as Amazon’s transport layer security implementation is called, was intended to be a simpler, more secure way to encrypt and authenticate Web sessions. Where the OpenSSL library requires more than 70,000 lines of code to execute the highly complex TLS standard, s2n—short for signal to noise—has just 6,000 lines. Amazon hailed the brevity as a key security feature when unveiling s2n in June. What’s more, Amazon said the new code had already passed three external security evaluations and penetration tests.

    • Social engineering: hacker tricks that make recipients click

      Social engineering is one of the most powerful tools in the hacker’s arsenal and it generally plays a part in most of the major security breaches we hear about today. However, there is a common misconception around the role social engineering plays in attacks.

    • Judge Gives Preliminary Approval to $8 Million Settlement Over Sony Hack

      Sony agreed to reimburse employees up to $10,000 apiece for identity-theft losses

    • Cyber Monday: it’s the most wonderful time of year for cyber-attackers

      Malicious attacks on shoppers increased 40% on Cyber Monday in 2013 and 2014, according to EnigmaSoftware.com, an anti-malware and spyware company, compared to the average number of attacks on days during the month prior. Other cybersecurity software providers have identified the December holiday shopping season as the most dangerous time of year to make online purchases.

      “The attackers know that there are more people online, so there will be more attacks,” said Christopher Budd, Trend Micro’s global threat communications manager. “Cyber Monday is not a one-day thing, it’s the beginning of a sustained focus on attacks that go after people in the holiday shopping season.”

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • UK could be prosecuted for war crimes over missiles sold to Saudi Arabia that were used to kill civilians in Yemen

      Britain is at risk of being prosecuted for war crimes because of growing evidence that missiles sold to Saudi Arabia have been used against civilian targets in Yemen’s brutal civil war, Foreign Office lawyers and diplomats have warned.

      Advisers to Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, have stepped up legal warnings that the sale of specialist missiles to the Saudis, deployed throughout nine months of almost daily bombing raids in west Yemen against Houthi rebels, may breach international humanitarian law.

    • Stop The War: Thousands Protest Against Plans To Join Air Strikes Against Islamic State In Syria
    • The Charge of the Blairite Brigade

      Supporting neo-con military attacks in the Middle East is one of two prime articles of faith of a Blairite.

    • Terror Junkies: The West’s Addiction to Funding Radical Groups

      Despite all the grandstanding and rhetoric from the French President and Western leaders, a critical point that needs to be emphasised is that Western governments are complicit in the Paris attacks and any future terror attacks (there will be more). If we put aside for a second the thesis that the Paris attack was a false flag operation or that French intelligence simply allowed it to happen, what can’t be disputed is that Western foreign policy has directly resulted in the rise of terrorism globally, most notably the rise of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra.

    • ISIS’ Grip on Libyan City Gives It a Fallback Option

      One manifestation of the shift is a turn toward large-scale terrorist attacks against distant targets, including the massacre in Paris and the bombing of a Russian charter jet over Egypt, Western intelligence officials say. But the group’s leaders are also devoting new resources and attention to far-flung affiliate groups that pledged their loyalty from places like Egypt, Afghanistan, Nigeria and elsewhere. There are at least eight in all, according to Western officials.

    • David Cameron, there aren’t 70,000 moderate fighters in Syria – and whoever heard of a moderate with a Kalashnikov, anyway?

      Not since Hitler ordered General Walther Wenck to send his non-existent 12th Army to rescue him from the Red Army in Berlin has a European leader believed in military fantasies as PR Dave Cameron did last week. Telling the House of Commons about the 70,000 “moderate” fighters deployed in Syria was not just lying in the sense that Tony Blair lied – because Blair persuaded himself to believe in his own dishonesty – but something approaching burlesque. It was whimsy – ridiculous, comic, grotesque, ludicrous. It came close to a unique form of tragic pantomime.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Obama’s War on Truth

      The four USAF military drone operators who recently blew the whistle and exposed the callousness and complete lack of concern for civilian casualties of the US drone assassination programme, (and received very little mainstream media exposure), yesterday found their bank accounts and credit cards all blocked by the US government. The effects of that on daily life are devastating. My source is their lawyer, Jesselyn Radack, through the Sam Adams Associates (of which we are both members).

      No criminal charges have been brought against any of the men, despite numerous written threats of prosecution. Their finances appear to have been frozen by executive action under anti-terrorist legislation. This is yet a further glaring example of the use of “anti-terror” powers against people who are not remotely terrorist.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Beijing residents told to stay inside as smog levels soar

      Beijing’s residents have been advised to stay indoors after air pollution in the Chinese capital reached hazardous levels.

      The warning comes as the governments of more than 190 nations gather in Paris to discuss a possible new global agreement on climate change.

    • EU-US trade deal will unleash oil sands and fatally undermine climate efforts

      The prospects for a meaningful agreement at the UN climate change talks beginning on Monday are bleak. As a result, so too are the prospects for the 100 million more people predicted to be living in poverty by 2030 as a result of global warming.

      Though framed by record high temperatures and an increasing number of extreme weather events, the Paris talks are already beset by the same problems that repeatedly dog climate change negotiations: the richest countries steadfastly refuse to meet legal commitments and shoulder their share of responsibility, preferring to uphold the desires of all-powerful corporate lobbies. Meanwhile, the poorest countries meet or exceed their responsibilities.

    • Ban On Tuna Labeled Dolphin-Safe Shows How TPP Will Crush Consumer Rights

      In the last 25 years, dolphin-safe labeling of tuna managed to reduce unnecessary annual deaths of the mammals from over 100,000 to only 3,000—an astounding 97% reduction—but the World Trade Organization just effectively nullified this critical program.

      In order to placate Mexico as a member nation of the upcoming (and seemingly inevitable) Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the WTO deemed dolphin-safe labeling a “technical barrier to trade”—even though that environmentally-conscious label is voluntary and applies equally to domestic and foreign companies. At issue are fishing methods that exploit the as-yet-unexplained symbiotic relationship between tunas and dolphins.

    • Paris climate activists put under house arrest using emergency laws

      At least 24 climate activists have been put under house arrest by French police, accused of flouting a ban on organising protests during next week’s Paris climate summit, the Guardian has learned.

      One legal adviser to the activists said many officers raided his Paris apartment and occupied three floors and a staircase in his block.

      French authorities did not respond to requests for comment but lawyers said that the warrants were issued under state of emergency laws, imposed after the terror attacks that killed 130 people earlier this month.

    • Prominent climate scientist offers scathing critique of Obama’s Paris plans

      Three days before the beginning of a critical international climate conference in Paris, one of the world’s most famous climate scientists, James Hansen, has written a withering criticism of President Obama’s approach.

      The Paris meeting will be attended by the heads of state of more than 130 countries, including Obama. Heading in, the United States has adopted a policy of calling for each country to set limits on carbon dioxide emissions, and will push for the adoption of technology to capture and store carbon dioxide. That approach, Hansen wrote in a new letter posted on his web site, “is so gross, it is best described as unadulterated 100 percent pure bullshit.”

      In his “communication” published on Friday, Hansen argued that world leaders are eager to avoid the embarrassment of the last major climate meeting in Copenhagen in 2009, which was largely ineffectual. This time, world leaders will reach a deal, Hansen says, and pat themselves on the back. This deal will likely include pledges to cut emissions by 2025. For example, the United States is expected to aim for cuts of 25 percent based on 2005 carbon levels.

    • Suharto’s fires

      During the 1990s, the scale of the burning grew each year as the forestland converted into tree plantations in Sumatra and Kalimantan expanded. Plantation firms and the land-clearance contractors they hired almost exclusively use fire to clear land. Scientists assessing the forest fire damage say that approximately five million hectares of land were burned in 1997. Of this, 20 per cent was estimated to be forest, 50 per cent agricultural land, and 30 per cent non-forest vegetation and grasslands. Putting this in financial terms, scientists working for Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Indonesia have calculated that the direct and indirect short-term impacts of 1997/1998 have exceeded US$ 4 billion, equivalent to total annual health spending by both the public and private sectors.

    • Indonesia is burning – but how responsible is the palm oil industry?

      Indonesia’s forests are being ravaged by forest and peatland fires that are sparking a public health and environmental crisis – but how responsible is the palm oil industry?

    • VW knew fuel usage in some cars was too high a year ago: report

      Volkswagen’s (VOWG_p.DE) top executives knew a year ago that some of the company’s cars were markedly less fuel efficient than had been officially stated, Sunday paper Bild am Sonntag reported, without specifying its sources.

      VW in early November revealed that it had understated the level of carbon dioxide emissions and fuel usage in around 800,000 cars sold mainly in Europe.

      The scandal, which will likely cost VW billions, initially centered on software on up to 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide that VW admitted was designed to artificially suppress nitrogen oxide emissions in a test setting.

      The Bild am Sonntag report contradicts VW’s assertion, however, that it only uncovered the false CO2 emissions labeling as part of efforts to clear up the diesel emissions scandal, which became public in September.

  • Finance

    • Saru Jayaraman on Outlawing the Tipped Minimum Wage

      This week on CounterSpin: While many folks go to family or friends for Thanksgiving dinner, somewhere around 15 million Americans have that holiday meal at a restaurant, with more millions ordering food to eat at home. What that means is that millions of restaurant workers don’t have a choice about where to have their Thanksgiving. And of course that’s only a small part of the things that make work in that industry difficult and, for many, precarious.

    • HSBC whistleblower given five years’ jail over biggest leak in banking history

      Hervé Falciani sentenced in his absence for financial espionage by federal court for exposing wrongdoing at HSBC’s private Swiss bank

    • TTIP talks: EU alleged to have given ExxonMobil access to confidential strategies

      The EU appears to have given the US oil company ExxonMobil access to confidential negotiating strategies considered too sensitive to be released to the European public during its negotiations with the US on the trade agreement TTIP, documents reveal.

      Officials also asked one oil refinery association for “concrete input” on the text of an energy chapter for the negotiations, as part of the EU’s bid to write unfettered imports of US crude oil and gas into the trade deal.

      The employers’ confederation BusinessEurope was even offered “contact points” with US negotiators in the State Department and Department of Energy, according to the cache of material which was released under access to documents laws.

    • SMEs want a TTIP rethink

      What would drive the boss of a Bavarian mechanical engineering company to launch a business initiative against TTIP? Martina Römmelt-Fella detailed her concerns about it to EurActiv Germany.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Pentagon Must Be Thankful for the Turkey Washington Post Gave Its Readers

      So here we have US claims that Russian airstrikes are killing civilians backed up by statistics from a presumably independent human rights group. Meanwhile, when the US government claims to killed almost no civilians in its air attacks, the Post just takes the Pentagon’s word for it.

    • Sex and Death

      Having been sat the last three hours in a lounge at Stansted, with a Sky News screen in front of me, it has been fascinating to watch them six times cover the Grant Shapps resignation and never mention the word sex. It was all apparently just about “office bullying.” There has also been some pontification about why, over Shapps and Coulson, Cameron is such a bad judge of people.

    • Dylann Roof Is Not a “Terrorist” — But Animal Rights Activists Who Free Minks From Slaughter Are

      The FBI on Friday announced the arrests in Oakland of two animal rights activists, Joseph Buddenberg and Nicole Kissane, and accused the pair of engaging in “domestic terrorism.” This comes less than a month after the FBI director said he does not consider Charleston Church murderer Dylann Roof a “terrorist.” The activists’ alleged crimes: “They released thousands of minks from farms around the country and vandalized various properties.” That’s it. Now they’re being prosecuted and explicitly vilified as “terrorists,” facing 10-year prison terms.

  • Censorship

    • Swedish court: ‘We cannot ban Pirate Bay’

      After considering the case for almost a month, the District Court of Stockholm ruled that copyright holders could not make Swedish ISP Bredbandsbolaget block Pirate Bay.

      The court found that Bredbandsbolaget’s operations do not amount to participation in the copyright infringement offences carried out by some of its ‘pirate’ subscribers.

      Pirate Bay is blocked by many European ISPs but anti-piracy outfits have always hoped that one day the notorious site would be restricted in Sweden.

    • Divya Dutta on Censorship: Director Has Every Right to Express
    • Censorship and Control

      Recent events in Punjab are consistent with the Indian government’s strategy of public silence and local repression.

    • Censorship in the age of social media irrelevant: Divya Dutta

      Actress Divya Dutta feels at a time when everything is easily available online, the relevance of censorship on films in the country is questionable.

      The 38-year-old “Bhaag Milkh Bhaag” actress says she agrees with filmmaker Shyam Benegal, who recently said that censorship should be abolished.

      Divya says the audience today is quite sorted and should have the right to choose what they want to watch.

    • Censor Board Chairman seeks Dr. D’s advice on censorship
    • Snipping the kissing scene in ‘Spectre’ was illogical: Emraan Hashmi

      Bollywood actor Emraan Hashmi has termed the censor board’s move to trim the length of kissing scene in the new James Bond film “Spectre” illogical and “going back to dark ages”.

    • Abolish censorship: Shyam Benegal

      Censor board chief Pahlaj Nihalani has been criticised on social media as well as by his colleagues and Bollywood actors after it was revealed that board had shortened the length of kissing scenes in James Bond movie “Spectre”.

    • Can Myanmar leave censorship behind as it enters a new era?

      Following the landslide election result for Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) earlier this month, Myanmar appears to be transforming from one of the world’s most repressive regimes to a relatively free country.

      But signs of regression towards old habits by the military over the past year, and their continued presence and power of veto in parliament even after the election result, the future for democratic freedoms – including freedom of expression – is far from guaranteed.

    • Censorship by satellite

      Kissing is also expunged, presumably on the assumption that lip-to-lip congress is a gateway behaviour that, if glimpsed even briefly, will inspire the innocent to fornicate in the streets like frenzied simians. Unobstructed cleavage is likewise a harbinger of civilisation’s demise.

    • Identity and Censorship: A Life of Doing Standup in China

      Speaking of which, we are living in one of the most censored countries. Have you personally, or the club you are part of, ever run into any censorship issues?

      Oh yes, of course. There was a whole series of shows that was banned because one joke was heard by, I don’t know, some censor from the government. But the joke was totally harmless. The thing is they never have a standard, like which line you can not cross. If they think you are not right, and then they can just ban you. Another time we were supposed to have an open mic and a couple of officials from the Cultural Bureau [Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture] said “OK you can have shows here, but we are going to censor you for the whole thing. If you guys are OK, then that will be OK. But if something happens we have to report it.” So we decided not to do the show.

    • China’s latest censorship battlefield is global beauty pageants

      The organizers of a Miss Earth beauty pageant have refused to allow its Taiwanese contestant on stage or to be photographed by the press, after she refused to wear a sash bearing “Chinese Taipei,” according to an online post written by the contestant.

    • Tech Firms and Users Partner Up for Censorship Dance

      At China File, Professor Hu Yong from Peking University’s School of Journalism and Communication looks at China’s censorship of personal media, emphasizing the rise of pre-publication censorship by new media platforms, which in turn encourages self-censorship by users.

    • Chinese Activist Sentenced to 6 Years for Protesting Censorship

      China has sentenced three human rights activists to harsh prison terms for participating in an anti-censorship protest in 2013.

      The attorney for the three, Zhang Lei, told VOA that he is “shocked and angered” by the verdict, which gave a sentence of six years to activist Guo Feixiong.

      Zhang said the court added an extra criminal charge to his client’s case just moments before Friday’s trial started.

    • China Jails Civil Rights Activist Guo Feixiong For 6 Years Over Censorship Protest

      China has jailed a leading civil rights activist for six years on charges of disturbing public order — in part for his role in protests against censorship at a popular liberal newspaper in Guangzhou. A court in southern Guangdong province on Friday passed the sentence on 48-year-old Guo Feixiong in a hearing off-limits to foreign media, his lawyer said. Two other activists were also jailed, in what human rights groups said was a sign of a deepening crackdown on civil liberties in China.

      Guo, a former university lecturer who has campaigned for greater freedoms in China for the past two decades, was detained after taking part in protests in January 2013 outside the offices of the Southern Weekly newspaper in Guangzhou. The protests were a response to the spiking of the paper’s New Year’s editorial, which had called for more thorough implementation of China’s constitution, including its promise of freedom of speech for all.

    • Chinese rights activist jailed for six years

      A prominent Chinese rights activist, Guo Feixiong, was sentenced to six years imprisonment on Friday by a court in southern China, amid a continuing crackdown on human rights advocates across the country, his lawyer said on Friday.

      Two other activists, Liu Yuandong and Sun Desheng, were sentenced to three years and two-and-a-half years respectively, according to Guo’s lawyer, Zhang Lei.

    • Protests in Turkey after reporters arrested for ‘spying’ over arms report

      Hundreds of people demonstrated in Turkey Friday in support of two journalists from a leading newspaper being held on spying charges over a report suggesting Ankara shipped arms to rebels in Syria.

      Over 1,000 demonstrators, including a number of journalists and opposition MPs, gathered outside the Istanbul offices of Cumhuriyet daily shouting slogans such as “Shoulder to shoulder against fascism,” and “Tayyip thief, Tayyip liar, Tayyip killer”, referring to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    • Third Turkish journalist arrested amid fears of Ankara censorship: reports

      Local media has reported that a third Turkish reporter has been arrested, amid concern Ankara is cracking down on free speech. Yesterday, protesters took to the streets following the arrest of two other journalists.

    • District of North Vancouver harassment policy stokes fears of censorship

      The District of North Vancouver is looking to rein in “inappropriate, offensive, misleading, harassing or threatening” letters and emails sent to district staff and council members.

      The move however has some council watchers crying censorship.

    • Project Censored 2015

      Ten news items the media ignored

    • The Secret Censorship of Online Porn

      As long as credit cards are the dominant way to purchase items online, Visa and MasterCard will still hold this power over the smut peddlers of the world. So unless Bitcoin, or another relatively unregulated digital currency, happens to take off, banks will continue to have the power to silently shape the landscape of porn, enforcing their view of acceptable sex on the rest of us, whether we like it or not.

    • New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Orders Censorship Of ‘Man In The High Castle’ Ads

      The advertisements for the show wrap seats on New York subways. They feature an American flag with a German eagle and iron cross in place of the stars. There is also a flag with imperial Japanese imagery. The crimes against humanity by the Nazis during World War II were so gruesome that it’s a pretty shocking thing to see upon entering a subway car and Democratic mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio fielded complaints. He called the advertising campaign “irresponsible” and “offensive” and called for their removal.

    • That Was a False Alarm on Millennials and Free Speech

      Last week, I wrote about a new Pew poll that showed that 40 percent of millennials would be in favor of government bans on speech offensive to minority groups. Many people took this as a dire sign that kids these days are Nae Nae–ing themselves straight into an authoritarian future, especially given all the recent talk about young people’s coddling and fragility.

    • Poll: Censorship More Popular Among Millennials

      Forty percent of millennials believe the U.S. government should be able to censor speech that is considered offensive to minority groups, a new poll from Pew Research Center finds.

      The Pew poll identified a notable disparity in opinion between millennials—those ages 18 to 34—and those surveyed from three other age groups.

      The poll found that 27 percent of Generation X, those ages 35 to 50, favor such government censorship, as did 24 percent of baby boomers, ages 51 to 69.

      By comparison, only 12 percent of the so-called Silent Generation, ages 70 to 87, agreed.

    • Filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s doors explore censorship at the Aga Khan Museum

      Exhibition highlights celebrated Iranian director’s approach to living and working under censorship.

    • New Zealand police accused of censorship

      The move has been roundly criticized by the country’s academic community and opposition politicians who say it amounts to censorship.

      A New Zealand police spokesman says that the contract was designed to protect the police and the data from misrepresentation by researchers who could potentially “misunderstand” the data they were analyzing.

      Police also justify the agreement by pointing out that requests often involve access to confidential information and personal identifiers.

      “The research agreement which academics are expected to sign with police sets out our expectations, including that research is accurate, balanced and constructive,” said Mark Evans, the police force’s Deputy Chief Executive of Strategy, in a statement.

    • Police censorship of crime research “an outrage”

      The Green Party is calling on Police Minister Michael Woodhouse to ensure Police scrap controversial contracts that place onerous restrictions on academic researchers’ access to Police data, the Green Party says.

    • NGOs condemn imprisonment and nationality revocation of photographer

      Award-winning photographer Sayed Ahmed al-Mousawi was sentenced on Monday, 23 November 2015, to 10 years in prison and had his nationality revoked, along with 12 others, after covering a series of demonstrations in early 2014. Security forces detained Al-Mousawi for over a year without trial or official charges, accused him of being a part of a terrorist cell and subjected him to torture. The undersigned NGOs condemn the government’s continued attacks on independent journalism, policy of media censorship and severe restrictions on freedom of expression in Bahrain.

    • TPP allows Internet censorship to favour big corporations, say Pakatan MPs

      PKR’s Kelana Jaya MP Wong Chen and Parti Amanah Negara’s (Amanah) Kuala Krai MP Dr Hatta Ramli said that Internet service providers (ISP) would be given the role of “internet police” in the new trade pact when it comes to copyrighted content.

    • MP warns of widespread Internet censorship under TPPA

      The Internet could face widespread censorship under the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) as Internet service providers (ISPs) would be free to remove copyrighted online content without having to face the music, warned Amanah lawmaker Mohd Hatta Ramli.

  • Privacy

    • Huge Security Flaw Can Expose VPN Users’ Real IP-Adresses

      A newly discovered vulnerability can expose the real IP-addresses of VPN users with relative ease. The issue, which affects all VPN protocols and operating systems, was uncovered by Perfect Privacy who alerted several affected competitors to the threat before making it public.

    • [Enigmail] Recover GPG password remembered by Thunderbird (passphrase in session)

      For future people, here’s how you can recover your PGP key if stored in your GNOME session.

    • Updated: Green Light or No, Nest Cam Never Stops Running

      In-brief: Alphabet’s Nest Cam continues to run even after users have turned it “off,” the company acknowledged on Tuesday, raising questions about transparency and the potential for privacy abuses using the popular home surveillance device.

    • UK ISP boss points out massive technical flaws in Investigatory Powers Bill

      The head of the UK ISP Andrews & Arnold, Adrian Kennard, has pointed out a number of major technical issues with the proposed Investigatory Powers Bill (aka the Snooper’s Charter). Kennard and other representatives of the UK Internet Service Provider’s Association (ISPA) met with the Home Office on Tuesday, where they presented a number of ethical, technical, and privacy related issues with the incoming new law. These issues, plus some of the Home Office’s responses, can be found in written evidence (PDF) penned by Kennard.

    • NSA to shut down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday

      The U.S. National Security Agency will end its daily vacuuming of millions of Americans’ phone records by Sunday and replace the practice with more tightly targeted surveillance methods, the Obama administration said on Friday.

      As required by law, the NSA will end its wide-ranging surveillance program by 11:59 p.m. EST Saturday (4:59 a.m. GMT Sunday) and expects to have the new, scaled-back system in place by then, the White House said.

    • Dear ZDNet: Comcast Has Been Sketchily Injecting Messages Into User’s Browsers For Years

      None of that is to say that the privacy and security concerns aren’t very real, of course, and ZDNet does a nice job of discussing those concerns. But it’s not new. Perhaps the better conversation to be had is why anyone in their right minds would think that Comcast deserves anyone’s trust to the level where users’ browsers should be injected with copyright violation notices in a system rife with abuse from pretty much every player involved.

    • Stop the anti-encryption propaganda now

      I paused a TV show last week as one of those lower-third ads promoting the local newscast was displayed. It screamed, “Encryption preventing police from catching criminals, more at 11.” There’s nothing subtle about that, I pointed out to my wife, nothing at all. Clearly, this “encryption” stuff is very dangerous and should be made illegal, right?

      Then the world was scarred by the attacks in Paris a few days later. Before any real news about the attacks made it to the mainstream media, we were already hearing how encryption was the reason these attacks succeeded. The New York Times posted a story to that effect, then pulled it and redirected the link to a completely different article about France’s retaliation. The Wayback Machine still has the original, which states, “The attackers are believed to have communicated using encryption technology.” This is the functional equivalent of stating, “The attackers are believed to have communicated using words or sounds.”

    • Never mind Internet Connection Records, what about Relevant Communications Data?

      It was always a good bet that the draft Investigatory Powers Bill would broaden data retention obligations to cover more categories of communications data. That was at the core of the Communications Data Bill, blocked in 2012 during the Coalition government and vowed after the May 2015 election to be resurrected.

      The draft Bill has duly delivered, accompanied by a blizzard of commentary about the propriety of forcing communications service providers to retain users’ browsing histories.

      [...]

      Internet connection records and the proposed restrictions on accessing them (clause 47 of the draft Bill) have become a lightning rod for the ensuing discussion: not just the rights and wrongs of requiring browsing data to be retained, but whether internet connection records as defined in the draft Bill can be matched to real categories of data processed by service providers.

      The focus on internet connection records is understandable. The Home Office’s Guide to the powers in the draft Bill focuses on internet connection records. The estimated cost increase in the Data Retention Impact Assessment mentions only internet connection records as a new category of retained data.

    • The NSA’s bulk metadata collection authority just expired. What now?

      The language in the US Justice Department statement is far from inspiring, written in bland legalese, but it still represents an important victory for the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

    • At 11:59pm tonight, the NSA will stop in-house phone metadata collection

      The Obama administration said on Friday that it would go ahead with the scheduled closure of the National Security Agency’s bulk phone records collection program. The USA Freedom Act, which passed in early June, outlined this weekend’s deadline.

    • NSA will stop collecting bulk phone data by the end of the day

      At 11:59PM ET tonight, the NSA will shut down its systems that collect bulk phone call data from Americans across the US. The move comes as planned, precisely six months after the USA Freedom Act was signed into law.

    • NSA ends bulk phone surveillance programme; replaces it with targeted monitoring
    • The NSA Will Finally Kill Its Metadata Snooping Program This Weekend
    • “Snowden Effect” in Action: NSA Authority to Collect Bulk Phone Metadata Expires
    • The NSA Says It Will Finally Stop Spying On Millions of Americans at Midnight on Saturday
    • At midnight, the NSA will no longer keep bulk records of telephone calls
    • NSA to shut down bulk phone surveillance program =
    • Ex-NSA chief pleads guilty to killing 3-year-old adopted S. Korean son
    • Former NSA division head pleads guilty to beating adopted special-needs son, 3, to death at his Maryland home
    • Former NSA Employee Pleads Guilty in Adopted Son’s Death
    • Former NSA analyst pleads guilty to beating adopted son to death
    • Can the EU beat Big Data and the NSA? An Overview of the Max Schrems saga
    • Federal Judge Rules Against NSA Telephone Surveillance Program
    • Spy court appoints new advisers under NSA reform law
    • US spy court appoints lawyers to panel of advisers
    • NSA bungling deserves scrutiny

      But instead of being rewarded for developing a cutting-edge electronic spy system on the cheap, Binney and his crew were bureaucratically sandbagged by then-NSA Director Michael Hayden and his signals intelligence director, Maureen Baginsky.

      THINTHREAD’S deployment was officially canceled by Baginsky three weeks before the 9/11 attacks. Baginsky instead put American taxpayer money into a far more expensive, and ultimately failed, program named TRAILBLAZER.

    • Could the Third Amendment be used to fight the surveillance state?

      The Third Amendment to the United States Constitution is just 32 words: “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

      Amongst very nerdy constitutional law circles, the Third Amendment is practically a joke. It’s never been the primary basis of a Supreme Court decision, and it only turns up rarely in legal cases. The reality is that the federal government isn’t going to be sending American soldiers to individual homes anytime soon. Even The Onion tackled the issue in 2007: “Third Amendment Rights Group Celebrates Another Successful Year.”

    • John McAfee: The NSA is running on ‘sheer luck’ — and that’s a travesty

      This past week, a report came out that suggests “sheer luck” was one of the elements an NSA program needed to find useful info in the sea of surveillance data. The info came from an NSA in-house newsletter leaked by Edward Snowden, called SIDtoday. Dated March 23, 2011, it was written by a signals development analyst within the operation. In it, the author says that “by sheer luck, (and a ton of hard work) I discovered an important new access to an existing target and am working with TAO to leverage a new mission capability.” TAO stands for Tailored Access Operations, through which the NSA hacking team had collected 900 usernames and passcodes. The target in question was reportedly PDVSA, a Venezuelan state oil company also known as Petróleos de Venezuela.

    • NSA Spies on Venezuela’s Oil Company

      The U.S. National Security Agency accessed the internal communications of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela and acquired sensitive data it planned to exploit in order to spy on the company’s top officials, according to a highly classified NSA document that reveals the operation was carried out in concert with the U.S. embassy in Caracas.

      The March 2011 document, labeled, “top secret,” and provided by former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden, is being reported on in an exclusive partnership between teleSUR and The Intercept.

    • Venezuela’s State Oil Company to Sue US Over Spying
    • Venezuela Could Pursue Legal Action against US over PDVSA Spying Scandal
    • Venezuela’s Oil Sector Condemns U.S. Espionage
    • NSA shuttered bulk email program in 2011, replaced with similar initiatives

      By the time the National Security Agency (NSA) nixed its email surveillance program in December 2011, other surveillance initiatives that could “satisfy certain foreign intelligence requirements” had taken its place, according to a report in The New York Times.

      The Times caught wind of the alternative programs after obtaining documents through a Freedom of Information Act request. Included in the documents are inspector general reports that say the NSA ended the email program because it could meet requirements through other efforts—three other reasons for the program’s demise were redacted. The Times report said while the agency no longer conducts the bulk collection data from telecom companies, under the replacement initiatives the NSA still analyzes the social links found in email patterns.

    • BND and Merkel enabled NSA to Spy on German and French Companies

      It is difficult to believe that Chancellor Angela Merkel believes her own words because sprouting the international terrorist card and national security, in relation to spying on France, EU targets, and German companies, appears absurd. Indeed, her comments about the role of German intelligence (BND) assisting a non-European Union entity, is truly untrustworthy and irresponsible. After all, why was the BND assisting the US National Security Agency (NSA) in spying on German companies and nations like France?

    • NSA Leaker Thomas Drake Praises Report Showing U.S.’ Failure Toward Whistleblowers

      Whistleblower Thomas Drake, who in 2010 became the first American charged with espionage in almost 40 years and who was a predecessor of Edward Snowden, applauds a new report by the PEN American Center accusing the government of failing to protect whistleblowers.

      The report comes after presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said at last month’s Democratic debate that NSA whistleblower Snowden “could have gotten all the protections of being a whistleblower” instead of leaking materials to the press. PEN’s report shows that Clinton is wrong and that the U.S. government gives employees and contractors little assurance that they won’t be prosecuted, even if they go through sanctioned channels.

    • Oakland Tribune editorial: Electronic snooping by NSA won’t stop ISIS

      It’s increasingly clear since the Paris terrorist attacks that the future of Americans’ privacy is largely in Silicon Valley’s hands.

      Valley leaders such as Apple’s Tim Cook, and Alphabet/Google’s Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai are going to need the technology community’s full support to ward off political pressure from the FBI and NSA, who want government access to encrypted data on mobile devices.

      The United States needs to aggressively pursue terrorists. But it must not allow emotions of the moment to result in an ill-conceived security policy undermining not only Americans’ privacy but also the success of the nation’s driving industry.

    • Paris terrorist attacks no excuse to roll back civil liberties

      And never mind that the Paris terrorists don’t appear to have relied upon encrypted messages, despite some misleading early reports.

    • Choice between security and liberty a false one

      As our opinion leaders, lawmakers and intelligence community officials reflect on the events leading up to these terrible attacks, and what the appropriate response should be to better detect and thwart terrorist plots in the United States and throughout the world, it is critical that we first step back and take a deep breath.

    • Rolling back mass surveillance

      Under Schneier’s proposed policy, companies could not take away your rights to your data without your explicit permission…

    • Moving Microsoft’s Data Overseas May Not Keep NSA Out

      Earlier this month Microsoft announced the building and expansion of data storage facilities in Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom after an EU court invalidated a key U.S.-EU data transfer agreement in October — a response to mass National Security Agency surveillance programs revealed in the last two years.

      While the move represents the first time a major U.S tech company has admitted it can’t protect user data inside U.S. borders, the question of whether it will allow Microsoft to skirt the U.S. government’s ability to obtain user data is still very much in the air.

      “In terms of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), whether giving the data over to another company would avoid whatever legal obligations they’re under here is a very fact-specific question,” American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Alex Abdo told InsideSources. “I’m sure that the federal government would argue that so long as Microsoft has effective control over the data, they could still be subpoenaed for it or they could still be ordered or compelled to turn it over.”

      Microsoft has been fighting such a battle with the Justice Department since last year, when the government ordered the Silicon Valley giant to turn over user emails stored in a Microsoft data center in Dublin, Ireland as part of an FBI drug trafficking investigation.

    • Judge Grants Injuction Against NSA Bulk Surveillance Program That Is Ending Anyway

      On June 5, 2013, the Guardian published a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) order from the National Security Agency directing Verizon Business Network Services to provide daily records for a three month period of the “telephony metadata” for all telephone calls on its network. The order was part of thousands of documents stolen by Snowden while employed by a NSA contractor. In the months that followed, the government acknowledged it had been receiving this kind of data since at least 2006.

    • When the spooks get it wrong [Ed: even when they bomb hospital, gun down survivors]

      Washington is awash in intelligence agencies, some of civilians and others of the military services, 17 by one count, and a lot of what they produce is gobbledygook. Like all bureaucracies, the intelligence agencies want to protect their turf first, and writing in words (many coined on the spot) that only a small audience can understand is a way of protecting the turf.

    • The next interface moment in computing could be chip implants

      The next big thing in computing could be a glass-encased chip embedded under the skin of your left hand.

      Think of it as an extension of the wearables that can track your movement, your sleep, your heart and pulse rate now. Chip implants can do so much more.

      In its early stages today, it can store data that can be read by Near Field Communication (NFC) readers. Technically speaking you can open your door, your car just by scanning your hand in the NFC reader. It can serve as your key or access pass to the gym, the library, the office, or wherever is it that requires identification.

    • Paris attacks a wake-up call for US intelligence?

      For example, the Islamic State was using encrypted apps and websites before the NSA’s surveillance operations were uncovered, John Chase, a cybersecurity specialist who has worked with the hacking group Anonymous, told The Washington Times Friday.

    • Israël obtains the release of the spy Jonathan Pollard

      He is said to have transmitted to the Mossad an impressive quantity of US documents, sometimes concerning the Near East, but particularly concerning the surveillance methods used by the US to spy on the Soviet Union. Tel-Aviv later sold some of these documents to Moscow, particularly NSA codes, in exchange for the immigration of a million Soviet citizens who claimed to be Jewish.

    • When Top Feds Cash In, They Lead by Example

      Alexander’s IronNet has stirred allegations that he is profiting from the privileges of his former government post. Fueling the controversy was IronNet’s prospective collaboration with NSA’s Chief Technology Officer, a deal IronNet ultimately scuttled after it came to light last fall. While eyes are on the top brass, little attention has been paid to IronNet’s recruitment of young engineers, an issue that acutely plagued the NSA during Alexander’s tenure.

    • Where’s the Evidence That Mass Surveillance Actually Works?

      Current and former government officials have been pointing to the terror attacks in Paris as justification for mass surveillance programs. Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan accused privacy advocates of “hand-wringing” that has made “our ability collectively internationally to find these terrorists much more challenging.” Former National Security Agency and CIA director Michael Hayden said, “In the wake of Paris, a big stack of metadata doesn’t seem to be the scariest thing in the room.”

      Ultimately, it’s impossible to know just how successful sweeping surveillance has been, since much of the work is secret. But what has been disclosed so far suggests the programs have been of limited value. Here’s a round-up of what we know.

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Your ISP Limit Bandwidth? Here Is What You Can Do To Improve Internet Speed

      It is very annoying when our fast Internet connection goes down. Sometimes it is due to some technical error or sometime in case of wired Internet the wires damage causes the Internet completely shutdown. But, it’s all unexpected. We can’t go and fix it. Our ISP (Internet Service Provider) fixes it as soon as possible. But what if your ISP is limit bandwidth and block you to access some sites or the whole Internet world upto a limited speed.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Russian court bans Scientology church due to trademark use

        A Russian court has ordered a Church of Scientology branch in Moscow to close after a dispute over its registered US trademarks.

        The Moscow City Court backed calls from Russia’s Ministry of Justice to close the church after accepting the department’s argument that the church cannot call itself a religious organisation if it owns a registered trademark.

      • Scientology church says Russian trademark ruling is ‘disease’ of justice system

        The Church of Scientology has said it will appeal against a decision by a Russian court to close its Moscow branch, describing the ruling as a “disease of the justice system”.

        In a statement sent to WIPR, the church said it will appeal against the decision to the country’s Supreme Court.

    • Copyrights

      • Copyright Industry Still Doesn’t Understand This Fight Isn’t About Money, But Liberty

        With a lot of people streaming music and video from services such as Spotify, Pandora and Netflix, torrenting is less of a visible conflict than ten years ago. But similar fights continue in the shape of net neutrality and privacy, with the same values: it was never about the money.

      • Cox Can’t Describe Rightscorp As “Extortionists” and “Trolls” During Trial

        Internet provider Cox Communications is not allowed to use derogatory terms to describe Rightscorp during their upcoming trial. Terms such as “copyright troll,” “blackmailer,” and “extortionist” are off-limits and the same is true for Rightscorp’s dire financial position.

      • No Copyright Trolls, Your Evidence Isn’t Flawless

        If you get a letter through the post accusing you of Internet piracy, you must be guilty. That’s the message from most copyright trolls and infuriatingly, even some ‘neutral’ lawyers commenting on these cases. But while it might seem daunting, putting up a fight is not only the right thing to do, but can also cause claimants to back off.

      • Pirate forced to make anti-piracy film to avoid being sued

        A 30-YEAR-OLD MAN accused of piracy has had to make a solemn confession mini-movie to avoid being sued.

        The video is bleak at the start, reminiscent of a hostage video or one of those confessions you might have read about in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is earnest, and perhaps a bit scary, but a storyline soon develops.

        It is not in the English language, which makes the message slightly hard to understand, but ultimately it warns that you do not want to be caught pirating anything. It appears to be a short rags-to-riches story of a man who enjoyed piracy, then met the police, and was sad. Tom Hanks might try for a US remake.

      • It’s illegal to make private copies of music in the UK—again

        The UK’s 2014 private copying exception, which allowed you to make personal copies of your own music, including format-shifted versions, has now been definitively withdrawn, according to The 1709 Blog. As a result, it is once more illegal to make personal backups of your own music, videos or e-books, rip CDs and DVDs to standalone digital files, or upload your music to the cloud.

      • Judge Worries That Piracy Lawsuits Will Flood Courts

        The chief judge of an IP court in Finland has expressed concern that ‘copyright-troll’ piracy lawsuits will cause chaos if a law firm follows through with threats to sue hundreds of Internet users. Using the courts is the ultimate weapon to make alleged pirates settle but experts believe that copyright owners could have an uphill battle.

11.27.15

Links 27/11/2015: KDE Plasma 5.5 Plans, Oracle Linux 7.2

Posted in News Roundup at 7:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • What I Learned from Blowing An Interview

    Likewise, blogging or writing books about software development is necessarily removed from software development. Patterns, architectures, idioms, and algorithms are potential value. It’s only by applying the ideas that we realize the value. The same goes for creating infrastructure like operating systems, text editors, programming languages, frameworks, and libraries.

  • How Deduplication Has Evolved to Handle the Deluge of Data

  • Hardware

    • More than a billion PCs are over three years old, and there’s little reason to replace them

      And right there is the problem facing the PC industry. You’re replacing a tool with another tool that does the same thing. Much like a light bulb or a hammer. It’s why we’re seeing a proliferation of “smart” devices – smart light bulbs, smart thermostats, smart smoke detectors, smart refrigerators – because without that new “smart” twist people just aren’t replacing their light bulbs, thermostats, smoke detectors, or refrigerators until the day they release the magic smoke and stop working.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • A Winter’s Tale: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

      A Turkish jet shoots down a Russian jet. Parliament votes to send RAF jets into the mix. What could possibly go wrong?

      Unfortunately, things do go wrong. Cameron’s 70,000 “moderate rebels” prove either non-existent or crazed pro-Saudi Wahabbists. Mostly they are the very jihadists Russia is attacking, but we are supporting. In the fog of war, another Russian plane is downed. A Russian pilot downs a British jet. With politicians on all sides afloat on the sea of militarist rhetoric, within 24 hours it has spiralled hopelessly out of control.

    • Cameron Overreaches With “70,000” Claim Nobody Believes

      Cameron is in serious trouble at Westminster after overreaching himself by the claim that there are 70,000 “moderate rebels” willing to take up the ground war with Isis. Quite literally not one single MP believes him. There are those who believe the lie is justified. But even they know it is a lie.

      There is a very interesting parallel here with the claims over Iraqi WMD. The 70,000 figure has again been approved by the Joint Intelligence Committee, with a strong push from MI6. But exactly as with Iraqi WMD, there were strong objections from the less “political” Defence Intelligence, and caveats inserted.

  • Finance

    • China may invest $1 trillion overseas in next 5 years

      Continuing the carrot and stick approach to international trade, Premier Li Keqiang told poorer European nations that China would likely invest in their countries and import their products if they promised to buy Chinese products

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • The Guardian’s Anti Corbyn Campaign Plumbs New Depths

      Yet astonishingly the Guardian ran three whole articles entirely about the McDonnell gaffe. You could read every single word of these three articles and not learn the basic information provided in each of the three Blue Tory papers above. The utterly disgraceful Jonathan Jones, John Crace and Tom Phillips all managed to produce articles which utterly omit what McDonnell actually said and why he said it, to contrive to give the impression that McDonnell was quoting Mao straight and with approval.

      [...]

      UPDATE: This is absolutely beyond parody. The Guardian have just published a FOURTH article on this subject, by Roy Greenslade, which still fails to say that McDonnell was referring to Osborne’s disposal of British assets to the Chinese state. Instead Greenslade cuts and pastes the most damning comments he can find in the Tory media. Not of course including any of the Tory media quotes given above which, unlike the Guardian, tell you what McDonnell was saying.

      When do you think the fifth Guardian article is coming?

  • Privacy

    • Teardown shows Nest Cam is “always-on” even when you think it’s off

      It turns out your home security camera may see more of your home than you thought it did. In a teardown of the Nest Cam, a team at ABI Research found that even when “off,” the camera draws nearly the same amount of power as when it’s fully powered on, meaning it’s functional and running even when the indicator light claims otherwise.

    • Tor Project appeals for help to carry on, expand anti-spying network

      The Tor anonymous browsing project has asked for donations to improve the network and invest in educational projects.

      The Tor Project is a non-profit scheme which runs Tor. Otherwise known as The Onion Router, the system allows users to enter areas of the Internet which remain unindexed by common search engines.

      The node-and-relay layout also skewers the original IP of the user, improving anonymity and thwarting surveillance efforts.

    • Glenn Greenwald: Why the CIA is smearing Edward Snowden after the Paris attacks

      Decent people see tragedy and barbarism when viewing a terrorism attack. American politicians and intelligence officials see something else: opportunity.

      Bodies were still lying in the streets of Paris when CIA operatives began exploiting the resulting fear and anger to advance long-standing political agendas. They and their congressional allies instantly attempted to heap blame for the atrocity not on Islamic State but on several preexisting adversaries: Internet encryption, Silicon Valley’s privacy policies and Edward Snowden.

      [...]

      The CIA’s blame-shifting game, aside from being self-serving, was deceitful in the extreme. To begin with, there still is no evidence that the perpetrators in Paris used the Internet to plot their attacks, let alone used encryption technology.

      CIA officials simply made that up. It is at least equally likely that the attackers formulated their plans in face-to-face meetings. The central premise of the CIA’s campaign — encryption enabled the attackers to evade our detection — is baseless.

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