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01.06.16

Microsoft Confirms Real-Time Spying on Vista 10 Users (Operating System as a Bug), Increases Pressure to ‘Upgrade’

Posted in Microsoft, Security, Vista 10, Windows at 7:46 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Don’t install, just antagonise the bugging

A microphone

Summary: Microsoft inadvertently reminds people who had Vista 10 installed on their PC (sometimes downloaded passively against their will) that it is spying on them all the time and a new kind of pressure is being used to create a panic for acceptance of any forced (remotely-imposed) ‘upgrade’ to Vista 10

TECHRIGHTS does not wish to be dragged back into Microsoft bashing (unlike direct attacks on GNU/Linux, usually with the aid of software patents and patent trolls), but readers probably know by now that Microsoft has been turning people who used to be called users or customers into subjects or products, to be spied on and be treated like a commodity whose amount need to be maximised for exploitation in bulk.

With the introduction of Vista 10, the latest and nastiest (more malicious based on rather objective criteria) version of Windows, Microsoft now spies on every person all the time. There is some good analysis [1] and criticism [2] of this self-incriminating propaganda-driven move from Microsoft, which is desperate to convince people whom it forces to move to Vista 10 that this forcing will be for their own good, not just the good of the NSA.

“Vista 10 is not an operating system but spyware pretending to be one.”Using ‘security’ as a reason, Microsoft is now bashing older versions of Windows. Low on resources, Microsoft leaves in tact even known (to the public) back doors in its Web browsers, as covered by Microsoft-friendly sites (as here) and FOSS-centric sites (well, FOSS-centric most of the time). Here is how to put a positive spin on Microsoft’s latest kind of pressure/demand for people to move to the latest trap: “This news has come as a breath of fresh air as it was considered a bane for many web developers, thanks to the endless security holes in the software.”

Well, Web developers whom I know and work with often complain about the latest Internet Explorer and “Edge” (new branding for the same rubbish). They’re more incompatible with even more Web sites, for various different reasons. So this excuse or optimism is misplaced. As soon as next week, based on Microsoft fan sites, Microsoft will have yet another propaganda by which to pressure people to install spyware on their computers. Now is a good time to move to GNU/Linux. Some high-profile journalists are doing so right now because they better understand the underlying reasons (they’re reasonably technical).

Vista 10 is not an operating system but spyware pretending to be one. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Massive Windows 10 Success Has Six Nasty Surprises

    Understandably perturbed by this BetaNews took Microsoft to task on these revelations and asked if it would like to “explain how it came about the information, and why it is being collected in the first place”. Microsoft’s official response: “Thank you for your patience as I looked into this for you. Unfortunately my colleagues cannot provide a comment regarding your request. All we have to share is this Windows blog post.”

    To which BetaNews makes a very fair conclusion: “Microsoft’s spying is intrusive enough to reveal how long you have been using Windows 10, but the company is not willing to be open about the collection of this data.”

    Consequently the next obvious point to ponder is: If Microsoft is happy to disclose this data without saying how it was attained, what else does it access and track without user knowledge? Given Microsoft already admits much of its automatic spying cannot to turned off, just how many more metrics and how much user data is it gathering from every Windows 10 device?

  2. Why is Microsoft monitoring how long you use Windows 10?

    The various privacy concerns surrounding Windows 10 have received a lot of coverage in the media, but it seems that there are ever more secrets coming to light. The Threshold 2 Update did nothing to curtail privacy invasion, and the latest Windows 10 installation figures show that Microsoft is also monitoring how long people are using the operating system.

    This might seem like a slightly strange statistic for Microsoft to keep track of, but the company knows how long, collectively, Windows 10 has been running on computers around the world. To have reached this figure (11 billion hours in December, apparently) Microsoft must have been logging individuals’ usage times. Intrigued, we contacted Microsoft to find out what on earth is going on.

    If the company has indeed been checking up on when you are clocking in and out of Windows 10, it’s not going to admit it. I asked how Microsoft has been able to determine the 11 billion hours figure. Is this another invasion of privacy, another instance of spying that users should be worried about? “I just wanted to check where this figure came from. Is it a case of asking people and calculating an average, working with data from a representative sample of people, or it is a case of monitoring every Windows 10 installation?”

Links 6/1/2016: CES Focus, Firefox OS in Panasonic UHD TVs

Posted in News Roundup at 6:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • Ford, Mazda, Mitsubishi, and Subaru get on board with Linux Foundation

      The Linux Foundation began a new initiative in 2012 called Automotive Grade Linux as an open-source project to develop common Linux-based software cores for connected cars. Now major automakers like Ford, Mazda, Mitsubishi, and Subaru have joined AGL alongside existing members Toyota, Nissan, and Jaguar Land Rover.

    • High schooler awarded Linux Foundation scholarship

      RJ Murdok spends his days studying Linux and contributing to bug reports, and he’s only 15 years old.

      Recently, he received a Teens-in-Training scholarship from the Linux Foundation. In the past five years, the Foundation’s Training Scholarship Program has awarded 34 scholarships totaling more than US$100,000 in free training to students and professionals.

      Murdok, who is legally blind, started studying Linux in 2012. He became interested in it when his older brother introduced him to the system. And a year year ago he started using openSUSE Tumbleweed.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Kubuntu 15.10 Gets Plasma 5.4.3 and Applications 15.08.3

        Even if Ubuntu and its flavors don’t usually receive big updates after an official release, Kubuntu doesn’t subscribe to this policy and get big updates for the Plasma desktop and other KDE components.

      • KDE Plasma 5.6 to Land on March 22, 2016, Will Have Five Point Releases

        We reported earlier today, January 6, 2016, the availability of the third maintenance release for the KDE Plasma 5.5 desktop environment, and we’ve promised to share some details about the release schedule of the next major version, KDE Plasma 5.6.

      • KDE Plasma 5.5.3 Desktop Environment Brings the First Plasma 5 Bugfixes for 2016

        The third maintenance release of the KDE Plasma 5 open source desktop environment for GNU/Linux operating systems was supposed to be released on Tuesday, January 5, 2016, according to the official release schedule.

      • Plasma 5.4.3 and Applications 15.08.3 for Kubuntu 15.10

        In the last months after the 15.10 release, developers have been very busy updating and improving our workflows and documentation which left little time for packaging. But we’re getting back on track, so here’s the missing announcement for Plasma 5.4.3 and KDE Applications 15.08.3.

        Many of you have been asking for Plasma 5.5. We are working on it and are close to finishing the packages for the development release, 15.10 packages will follow soon after.

      • conf.kde.in 2016

        Building on the success of conf.kde.in 2014 at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Community Technology (DA-IICT) in the land of Gujarat and 2015 at Amritapuri in Kerala, India, the horizon of the KDE Community is broadening and shifting to north India. conf.kde.in 2016 takes place on the 5th and 6th of March at Jaipur in Rajasthan, India. As in previous years of the conference, conf.kde.in 2016 will promote the spirit of free and open source software (FOSS) and offer ideas to build awareness about FOSS culture at the college level, when most technology students have their first experience with Open Source. The emphasis will be on KDE technology and Qt, the popular cross-platform application framework.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME Maps Will Allow Users to Add POIs on OpenStreetMap

        The GNOME Maps developers continued to provide really interesting updates for the application, and now they are working on a new feature that will allow users to add POIs on OpenStreetMap.

      • Add your local joint to the map
      • More NX & Chrome Books

        The most recent end point offering is using a ChromeBook. This is not yet in production, and being tested mostly by me at this point. We purchased a HP 14 inch ChromeBook with 4GB memory for around $250. It boots immediately. After opening the Chrome browser, you just put in the right URL and credentials and after a few seconds the GNOME desktop appears. The experience is then the same as the other platforms and this platform will resume sessions started on other types of devices. This ChromeBook is full 1920×1080 and provides an excellent canvas space for running software.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • The January 2016 Issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine

        The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the January 2016 issue. With the exception of a brief period in 2009, The PCLinuxOS Magazine has been published on a monthly basis since September, 2006. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editor Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.

    • Arch Family

      • Manjaro Update 2016-01-05 (stable)

        We are happy to announce our second update for Manjaro 15.12 (Capella)!

        Packages of the new major version of PHP have been released into all our repositories. Besides the new PHP 7 features there are the following packaging changes. In general the package configuration is now closer to what was intended by the PHP project. Also refer to the PHP 7 migration guide for upstream improvements.

        Read more

      • PHP 7 and Linux Kernel 4.4 RC8 are Now Available in Manjaro Linux 15.12 (Capella)

        On January 5, the Manjaro development team, through Philip Müller, announced the general availability of the second stable update for the Manjaro Linux 15.12 (Capella) computer operating system.

        The “Manjaro Update 2016-01-05″ update is here to upgrade all the PHP packages to the latest stable and most advanced version of the world’s most popular server-side programming language, PHP 7. With this occasion, the Manjaro devs made a few adjustments for better integration of PHP 7 in Manjaro Linux, such as to remove the php-pear, php-mssql, php-ldap, php-mongo, php-xcache, and graphviz packages.

    • Ballnux/SUSE

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Updates CloudForms Hybrid Cloud Management Platform; Adds Support for Microsoft Azure, Containerization

        Red Hat’s latest upgrade to its CloudForms hybrid cloud management platform expands its collection of managed platforms to include Microsoft Azure, following the recent Red Hat / Microsoft partnership. CloudForms 4 also adds management support for container architectures and even self-service features.

      • JPMorgan Chase & Co. Reiterates Overweight Rating for Red Hat Inc (RHT)

        Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT)‘s stock had its “overweight” rating restated by equities research analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in a research report issued to clients and investors on Monday, MarketBeat reports. They currently have a $89.00 price objective on the open-source software company’s stock, up from their previous price objective of $85.00. JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s target price indicates a potential upside of 8.66% from the company’s previous close.

      • Top Stocks of the day: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

      • Fedora

        • Sylvia Sanchez: How do you Fedora

          Sylvia Sanchez is a Fedora user and contributor living in Uruguay. She started using Linux ten years ago when she bought her first computer. Sanchez recalls, “My first computer came with Guadalinex, an Ubuntu-based distribution, promoted by the government of Andalusia, Spain.” In an odd twist, Sylvia was converted to Fedora at an Ubuntu release party. She has been a Fedora user since Fedora 16. Her childhood heroes are Wonder Woman and Spiderman. Milanesas with salad and fried potatoes is her favorite food. She is an aviation enthusiast who loves airplanes and studying history. She recently started a personal blog called Crossing the Air.

        • Does Fedora Linux need to be more stable?

          Fedora Linux is one of the best known Linux distributions, and it’s proven to be quite popular with some users. But is Fedora stable enough or does it need some additional improvement in that area?

          A developer at Red Hat recently shared his thoughts about Fedora Workstation and the ongoing work of improving its stability.

        • Fedora 23 on Tegra K1 Chromebook

          Last year during Flock I got myself an Acer CB5 311 Chromebook with Nvidia Tegra K1 ARM board, and 2 GB ram. It is a very nice machine to run ChromeOS, but my goal behind getting the hardware was all about running Fedora on it. With the great help from Jon Disnard (IRC: masta) on #fedora-arm channel, I finally managed to do that this morning.

    • Debian Family

      • The birth of Debian, in the words of Ian Murdock himself

        Fast forward to 2016 and we now know just how prescient Murdock’s words were: a recent family tree of GNU/Linux distributions (pictured above) makes clear the absolutely key role played by the Debian project in the world of free software, and the enduring contribution of the man who created it.

      • Derivatives

        • TeX Live security improvements

          Today I committed a set of changes to the TeX Live subversion repository that should pave the way for better security handling in the future. Work is underway to use strong cryptographic signatures to verify that packages downloaded and installed into a TeX Live installation have not been tinkered with.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Dueling Raspberry Pi drone autopilots ship in Q1

      Erle Robotics unveiled a Dronecode-ready “PXFmini” drone autopilot for the Raspberry Pi, and Emlid updated its Pi autopilot to a HAT-ready “Navio2.”

      In 2014, Emlid launched a Navio drone autopilot shield for the Raspberry Pi. Last month, the company unveiled a Navio2 update with HAT compatibility, and now Spanish drone firm Erle Robotics has launched a competitor called the PXFmini. The shield works with any Raspberry Pi, but is optimized for the Raspberry Pi Zero.

    • The Rokos Core OS Turns Your Raspberry Pi Into A Bitcoin Node

      The Rokos Core, now in its fourth version, is a disk image for Raspberry Pis that can turn your single-board computer into a full bitcoin node. The system will allow you to hold a bitcoin wallet and mine, send, and receive bitcoin over the network.

      Understand that without specialized hardware this thing is essentially the way to actively waste electricity and/or hold bitcoin. However, because it is a full BTC node, you’ll be doing the bitcoin world a favor while learning a bit about mining.

    • Raspberry Pi Raspbian Cross Compiler Toolchains on 64-bit Linux

      It might be obvious if you’re more familiar with gcc and cross compiler toolchains, but in the Raspberry Pi tools project there’s 32 bit and 64 bit versions of the tools. Trying to use the 32 bit versions on 64 bit Linux does not work. Rather than some useful error though, trying to execute any of the 32 bit versions from a shell gives a rather un-useful “No such file or directory” error.

    • Raspberry Pi Closes December on Up Note

      With the holidays and all, the month of December wasn’t as action packed as some of the past months have been concerning the Raspberry Pi, but there were still some interesting stories that occurred. Let’s take a minute to reflect back on the Raspberry Pi and December.

    • Intel, Qualcomm stake claims in Linux drones

      In Linux-related drone news at CES: Intel acquires AscTec, ZeroTech tips a Snapdragon Flight based “Ying” UAV, and DJI and Ford launch a $100K app contest.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Android N switches to OpenJDK, Google tells Oracle it is protected by the GPL

          The Oracle v. Google legal battle over the use of Java in Android keeps on going, but this week Google made a change to Android that it hopes will let the company better navigate its current legal trouble.

          Google told VentureBeat that it in “Android N,” the next major version of Android, it is swapping Android’s Java libraries from its own Apache Harmony-based implementation to one based on Oracle’s OpenJDK—yes that Oracle, the same company suing Google. OpenJDK is the “official” open source version of the Java Platform, and Oracle makes it available under the GPL with a linking exception.

        • 2016 Technology of the Year Finalist: Android Auto

          Ever wonder why the tiny little Android-powered computer constantly riding around with you in your car is subjected to a life as a dust collector while you struggle to comprehend the terribly designed infotainment system that resides in the center of your car’s dashboard? We feel your pain. Which is why we’re so excited by the promise offered up by Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.

        • Android has a serious bug that looks a lot like Stagefright
        • Casio’s first smartwatch brings Android Wear outdoors

          For all the talk of smartwatches over the past year-plus, it’s been difficult to convince most people that it’s worth wearing one every day. Casio thinks it has a solution, though — while you definitely won’t want to wear its first smartwatch seven days a week, you might find it genuinely useful for one or two.

        • Huawei made a 10-inch Android tablet with a stylus

          Huawei didn’t spend too much time talking about this one at its CES press conference today, but the Chinese smartphone maker revealed a new 10-inch Android tablet called the MediaPad M2, a larger version of the 8-inch M2 it shipped last year.

        • New Balance is making an Android Wear smartwatch, and Intel is putting chips in its shoes

          New Balance is now a gadget company. The athletics giant has created a Digital Sport division that will focus on devices, embedded technology (e.g. sensors in New Balance shoes and apparel), and performance sport (e.g. sensors in sports equipment).

          Its first product? An Android Wear-powered smartwatch that will “track runners’ routes via GPS and also enable them to run with music” without the need to bring along a smartphone. Unfortunately that’s about all we know at the moment. New Balance’s smartwatch launches this holiday season.

        • Haier Launches New 9.7-inch Android Tablet

          Haier might not be a brand many are familiar with, but if you have been keeping up with the tech scene for a while, you might have heard their name pop up once or twice. The company has launched a variety of products in the past, like smartwatches for kids, and just last year during CES, they even unveiled a 105-inch TV.

        • Google Announces New Chromecast Audio And Android TV Hardware Partners

          You could be forgiven if you had already forgotten about Android TV, but Google’s one-year-old Android-based successor to its ill-fated Google TV project is still around and kicking. Today, Google announced a number of new hardware partners for Android TV, as well as a number of new partners who plan to build Chromecast Audio — it’s recently launched audio version of Chromecast — directly into their speakers.

          Soon, you will find Android TV on screens from brands like Arcelik, Vestel, RCA, Hisense, TCL and Bang & Olufsen. Google is also working with Indonesian cable and broadband provider Linknet to offer an Android TV-based set-top box. Previously, the only Android TV sets were available from Sony, Sharp and Philips.

        • Casio launches Android Wear smartwatch that lasts a month per charge

          Casio has launched the G-shock of smartwatches with its first Android Wear device that can last a month between charges.

          The Smart Outdoor Watch, which was launched at CES 2016 in Las Vegas, is the first true smartwatch aimed at the outdoors that can run apps but is waterproof and shockproof to US military MIL-STD-810 standards. That means the watch will be fine in water up to 50m deep – most smartwatches can manage up to 1.5m – and will probably survive a tumble down a rocky outcrop.

        • The excellent Remix OS is bringing Android to every old x86 PC (and Mac) for free

          When I first tested the Remix Mini at the end of last year, I was blown away. Sure, the hardware is interesting and portable, but it’s the fork of Android adapted to make the Remix Mini into something resembling a desktop system that really took me by surprise.

          It’s what Chrome OS should be, in some ways: productivity-focused and instantly familiar, with full support for Android apps from the Google Play store.

        • Nvidia’s Shield Android TV gets a little more customizable with Marshmallow upgrade

          Android 6.0 Marshmallow is coming to the Nvidia Shield Android TV, bringing with it a handful of small and useful updates. Nvidia hasn’t said exactly when the upgrade will be available, but released a video yesterday outlining the new features. These include more customization for the home screen, greater control over external storage, and a hands-free, first time setup process that lets you add your Google account to the Shield just by telling your smartphone: “OK Google, set up my device.”

        • Android’s latest version is still hard to come by
        • More than 4x as many people are running Gingerbread than Marshmallow

          Do you remember when Gingerbread came out? This would have been December 2010: more than five years ago. Do you remember your excitement and anticipation as you waited for Android 2.3 to finally arrive on your device? You might be feeling the same way about Marshmallow now, eagerly awaiting its eventual appearance.

        • Android needs a bit of growing up for productivity

          Tablets were initially designed for consuming content, like web pages, videos, and ebooks. They were, to some extent, larger but somewhat dumber cousins of smartphones. Advancements in mobile technology as well as the pervasiveness of the Internet, however, eventually introduced tablets to new use cases. People now compose documents, make great arc, and even compose music or edit videos on their tablets. In other words, tablets have become devices for productivity aside from entertainment.

        • Android is ousting Windows from its last mobile bastion

          They’re everywhere, but you rarely notice them: the millions of handheld devices — often equipped with scanners — that delivery people, store clerks, and hospital staff responders often carry to manage inventory, process orders, and verify delivery.

          Nearly all of these supply chain-oriented devices run a version of the Windows Embedded operating system, which has had many names over the last decade. But within five years, the companies using these devices will have ditched Windows and moved to Android in one of the biggest industry platform shifts ever.

        • Android Set Top Box Lets You Stream and Record via HDMI Input

          While on the hunt for some hardware that would let him stream video throughout his LAN [danman] got a tip to try the €69 Tronsmart Pavo M9 (which he points out is a re-branded Zidoo X9). With some handy Linux terminal work and a few key pieces of software [danman] was able to get this going.

        • Sun, Oracle, Android, Google and JDK Copyleft FUD

          I have probably spent more time dealing with the implications and real-world scenarios of copyleft in the embedded device space than anyone. I’m one of a very few people charged with the task of enforcing the GPL for Linux, and it’s been well-known for a decade that GPL violations on Linux occur most often in embedded devices such as mobile hand-held computers (aka “phones”) and other such devices.

        • ZTE launches two inexpensive Android phones at CES 2016

          If you’re tuned into our CES coverage, these new ZTE smartphones might not be your first choice for a handset. But they’re aimed at a critical market for phone makers; consumers who don’t want to spend flagship prices or get pulled into a monthly financing plan with US carriers. First is the $129.99 Grand X3, an Android 5.1.1 Lollipop handset with a 5.5-inch HD (720p) display, 1.3GHz Qualcomm quad-core processor, and 16GB of storage, which can be expanded up to 64GB with microSD cards. It’s got an 8-megapixel camera, with a 2MP sensor on the front. It’s not going to win any performance awards, and at this size, 720p is noticeably less crisp than 1080p. It’s not a terrible looking display though, and the amount of bloatware is minimal. That’s nice to see. This one’s headed for Cricket.

        • New Balance announces Android Wear smartwatch for running smartphone-free

          Smartwatches can be hugely convenient tools when it comes to tracking runs and workouts. But the vast majority require that you also bring your smartphone along for the run or ride which, for some, limits the appeal of a wrist-mounted tracker.

Free Software/Open Source

  • OpenSSL’s teachable moment: Secure Shell key management in light of open source vulnerabilities

    Imagine an Internet without encryption. Credit card numbers would flow in the clear from point to point. Social Security numbers and other personally identifiable information would be sitting ducks for any cyber criminal to make off with. And government secrets wouldn’t stay secret for long.

  • Events

    • FOSDEM and Devconf.cz trip

      As two years and year ago I plan to make conference combo: FOSDEM in Brussels and then Devconf.cz in Brno. Weekend after weekend. But this time I want to make it different.

      First I thought that will skip devconf.cz one. But this is quite important Fedora conference so checked how to make it cheaper that in previous years. And found out few deals and setup a trip which should be interesting.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox OS will Power New Panasonic UHD TVs Unveiled at CES

        Panasonic announced that Firefox OS will power the new Panasonic DX900 UHD TVs, the first LED LCD TVs in the world with Ultra HD Premium specification, unveiled today at CES 2016.

        Panasonic TVs powered by Firefox OS are already available globally, enabling consumers to find their favorite channels, apps, videos, websites and content quickly and pin content and apps to their TV’s home screen.

      • CES 2016: Firefox OS Still Alive, Powering New Panasonic UHD TV

        The open source Firefox OS will be used to power new Panasonic DX900 UHD TVs, Mozilla and Panasonic have announced.

  • Databases

    • UK spies publish NoSQL database system as open source

      Last month, the British intelligence agency GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) published its first public project under the Apache 2 open source license.

    • Oracle fends off open source to stay top rated database

      Oracle is maintaining its place at the top of the database software rankings, according to new data that has been released by website DB-engines.

      The numbers show that the company is still successfully managing to hold off open source challengers, and ranks higher than MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server, despite its rating being slightly down from last month.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Christopher Allan Webber: Goodbye 2015, Hello 2016

      The reduced time spent coding on MediaGoblin proper has been deceptive, since most of the projects I’ve worked on have spun out of work I believe is essential for MediaGoblin’s long-term success. I took a sabbatical from MediaGoblin proper mid-year to focus on two goals: advancing federation standards (and my own understanding of them), and advancing the state of free software deployment. (I’m aware of a whiff of yak fumes here, though for each I can’t see how MediaGoblin can succeed in their present state.) I believe I have made a lot of progress in both areas. As for federation, I’ve worked hard in participating in the W3C Social Working Group, I have done some test implementations, and recently I became co-editor on ActivityPump. On deployment, much work has been done on the UserOps side, both in speaking and in actual work. After initially starting to try to use Salt/Ansible as a base and hitting limitations, then trying to build my own Salt/Ansible’esque system in Hy and then Guile and hitting limitations there too, I eventually came to look into (after much prodding) Guix. At the moment, I think it’s the only foundation solid enough on which to build the tooling to get us out of this mess. I’ve made some contributions, albeit mostly minor, have begun promoting the project more heavily, and am trying to work towards getting more deployment tooling done for it (so little time though!). I’m also now dual booting between GuixSD and Debian, and that’s nice.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Mayor Bowser Just Made DC’s Economic Data Open-Source
    • How the Open Source Car Could Change the Auto Industry

      Show-stopping rims, subwoofers that make your license plate rattle, razor-sharp decals — custom car modifications that regular people can still do themselves are getting fewer and farther between, and even updates like these take considerable effort and skill and might be beyond the reach of most car owners. In the not-so-distant past, car owners who were so inclined could make all sorts of changes to their cars. Open an engine on a current model, though, and you have to practically be a technology expert to do anything. But what if all the technology, all the blueprints and patents, were readily available to everyone? What if, instead of purchasing a pre-made car manufactured by an industry veteran, you could set up a microfactory and actually build your own car? And, what if car manufacturers, rather than spending years and years and untold sums racing to be the first to discover and perfect the latest technologies, instead shared their findings, encouraging rapid development, the likes of which we can now only imagine?

    • Open Hardware

      • How to build an open hardware amplifier in 5 steps

        ElectroSmash just released an open hardware guitar amplifier called the 1Wamp. Designed as a small and portable 1 watt amplifier loaded with all the features of big amps, the project was fully developed using only open source tools—like KiCAD, a design suite to create schematics and layouts in any platform.

  • Programming

    • Build a web browser with 20 lines of Python

      The Qt graphical toolkit has been at the heart of the KDE desktop since its inception, and it’s used by many other cross-platform applications. It’s a great because it does so much of the hard work for you, even at a low level. There’s a Qt class for dealing with string manipulation, for example, or sorting lists. There’s exceptional networking support and transparency, file handling, native XML and image handling. Using Qt to perform all these tasks means you don’t have to re-invent the wheel or import yet another library into your project. But Qt is still best known for it’s high level user-interface design, where you can quickly construct an application from buttons, sliders, forms and images and tie them all together from your code.

    • PHP 5 Support Timeline

      With the new year starting the PHP project is being asked to decide about the PHP 5 support timeline.

      While Aligning PHP 5.6 support timeline with the release date of PHP 7.0 seems like common sense to keep the support schedule continuous, there’s a big question whether to extend it further to an additional one year of security support till the end of 2018. This would make PHP 5.6, the last of the PHP 5 branch, to have 2 years of security support and de facto getting the same life span as PHP 7.0 would (ending support of both in Dec 2018).

    • Java loses no luster in popularity index

      Java is coming off a banner year in language popularity indexes, and it looks to continue its momentum in 2016.

      Named the Programming Language of the Year on the Tiobe index and scoring the largest increase in popularity, Java remains in the top spot for the first month of this year as well. Tiobe’s index is calculated based on a formula assessing searches on languages in a variety of different search engines.

Leftovers

  • Bulgaria reports eGovernment progress

    The Bulgarian government is making good progress in offering electronic government services. The country’s Ministry for ICT in December reported on progress in providing online validation of documents, and making these documents available online.

  • Science

  • Health/Nutrition

    • These 19 Big-Name Toothpastes and Face Scrubs Will Be Forced to Ditch Tiny Bits of Plastic

      Just before Christmas, Congress passed a law banning microbeads—those tiny pieces of plastic that act as exfoliants in face washes, toothpastes, and other personal-care products.

    • As If Slavery Weren’t Enough, 6 Other Reasons to Avoid Shrimp

      Ah, shrimp. Americans can’t get enough of it: Per capita consumption has doubled since the early ’80s, and we now eat on average about four pounds per year of the briny crustacean. Not even tuna and salmon (about 2.3 pounds each) outshine the shrimp on the US dinner table.

      But the all-you-can-eat specials and fish counter fire sales ride on a massive shrimp-farming boom in the developing world, mainly in South Asia. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, global farmed shrimp production leapt from 154,00 metric tons in 2000 to 3.3 million metric tons in 2013. Imports now account for 90 percent of the shrimp we eat.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Wednesday
    • Third try is no charm for failed Linux ransomware creators

      Getting cryptographic implementations right is difficult. A group of malware creators is currently experiencing that hard truth, to the amusement of security researchers.

      For the past several months, a group of cybercriminals have been infecting Linux systems — primarily Web servers — with a file-encrypting ransomware program that the security industry has dubbed Linux.Encoder.

    • Indian Hackers Attack Pakistani Websites In Response To Pathankot Terror Attack

      An Indian hacking collective named Indian Black Hats has defaced multiple Pakistani websites. This Kerala-based group has dedicated the attack to the little daughter of a Pathankot terror attack martyr. The group told fossBytes, “Harming is not our aim..but if anyone pick their eyes on our mother India..we stand for it”.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Saudi Coalition Just Bombed a Center for the Blind in Yemen

      THE NEW YEAR seems to have brought little change for civilians living under bombs in Yemen. Early Tuesday morning, missiles reportedly fired by aircraft supporting the Saudi-led and U.S.-backed coalition damaged a center for the blind in the capital city of Sanaa, as well as the city’s chamber of commerce, a wedding hall, and at least one residential area.

      Multiple outlets reported that the attacks caused no casualties, though one local report, citing an unidentified security official, claimed “at least three people” were wounded at the al Noor Center for Care and Rehabilitation of the Blind in Sanaa. Footage from the capital, published by the International Business Times, showed images of crumbled buildings, collapsed rooftops, and a young man weeping in the street. A spokesperson for UNICEF in Sanaa told Vice News that the al Noor Center offers classes for visually impaired students.

      In an email to The Intercept Tuesday, Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, confirmed that his office had received reports of airstrikes in Yemen indeed hitting the al Noor Center, as well as the other reported sites. The Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the region, did not respond to requests for comment.

    • The 18-Minute Gap

      Frankly, I’m more interested in why the FBI doesn’t have cell phone tracking data from this period, especially given that they clearly have it from after the 18 minute gap. I asked on Twitter today but none of the journalists who covered this presser seem to have asked that obvious question (though there seems to be a map indicating some kind of cell tracking).

      If they shut off their phones or otherwise hid their tracks, it would suggest some importance to whatever they were doing in that 18 minute gap.

      One thing the FBI didn’t say, nor any of the crack reports I saw covering the press conference, is that the 18 minute gap — from 12:59 p.m. to 1:17 — happens to coincide with a period when Farook’s now arrested buddy, Enrique Marquez, was not captured on his employers’ closed circuit video.

    • New Hillary Emails Reveal Propaganda, Executions, Coveting Libyan Oil and Gold

      The New Year’s Eve release of over 3000 new Hillary Clinton emails from the State Department has CNN abuzz over gossipy text messages, the “who gets to ride with Hillary” selection process set up by her staff, and how a “cute” Hillary photo fared on Facebook.

    • For a Return to Normalcy

      The economic “emergency” required that we surrender the very concept of economic freedom, the foreign “crisis” meant we had to mobilize the nation, impose conscription, institute rationing, and turn industry over to the cartels. The social and economic life of the country was militarized, and dissent was crushed, along with the Constitution: hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans were interned, antiwar activists were prosecuted for “sedition,” and the Supreme Court itself was besieged by the enemies of liberty.

    • Saudi-Iran Crisis Spells a Long Syrian War

      The Saudi decision to start the new year with mass executions bore the hallmarks of a calculated move. Riyadh doubtless anticipated that the Basij would do to Saudi diplomats what had been done to previous representatives of governments who had incurred the Ayatollah’s wrath. The Saudis were prepared to cut diplomatic relations, and ensure that other Arab states followed suit.

      Not for the first time in recent months, an Iran which prided itself on anticipating the next step of its enemies and on outsmarting them, found itself wrong-footed by the Saudi move. Just as it was when Riyadh announced its military offensive against the Houthi takeover of Yemen, Iran still worked on old assumptions that Saudi Arabia moved cautiously and behind a bead curtain.

    • North Korea Claims It Just Detonated a Hydrogen Bomb For the First Time

      This doesn’t mean that North Korea has actually detonated a real hydrogen bomb, however, and experts are already suggesting that it’s unlikely the country has done what it claims. At least one U.S. official has already told ABC News that the U.S. does not believe North Korea has developed hydrogen bomb tech yet.

    • There’s No Evidence North Korea Has an H-Bomb–but NYT Knows Fear Sells Papers

      Fusion-based hydrogen bombs have more explosive power than nuclear fission bombs that rely on uranium or plutonium. “If the North Korean claim about a hydrogen bomb is true, this test was of a different, and significantly more threatening, nature,” the Times reports. It’s not made clear, though, what if anything North Korea could achieve by having a bomb that could destroy a city and its suburbs rather than just a city, or how the response by the US and its allies to such a threat would be in any way different.

    • Wednesday Morning: Otherwise Known as Mike-Mike-Mike Day

      NK’s Kim Jong Un later confirmed a “miniaturized hydrogen nuclear device” had been successfully tested. Governments and NGOs are now studying the event to validate this announcement. The explosion’s size calls the type of bomb into question — was this a hydrogen or an atomic weapon?

    • When Will China Finally Abandon the Loons in North Korea?

      There’s something a little hard to understand about China’s continued sponsorship of North Korea. Historically it’s easy enough to understand, but for the past couple of decades it’s surely been nothing but a huge millstone around their necks. Are they really that worried about problems on the border with North Korea? Would they really lose that much face if they abandoned North Korea for good? And surely that would be more than made up for by the goodwill it would generate with the West.

    • The Deceptive Debate Over What Causes Terrorism Against the West

      Ever since members of the U.K. Labour Party in September elected Jeremy Corbyn as party leader by a landslide, British political and media elites have acted as though their stately manors have been invaded by hordes of gauche, marauding serfs. They have waged a relentless and undisguised war to undermine Corbyn in every way possible, and that includes — first and foremost — the Blairite wing of his party, who have viciously maligned him in ways they would never dare do for David Cameron and his Tory followers.

      [...]

      Beyond such studies, those who have sought to bring violence to Western cities have made explicitly clear that they were doing so out of fury and a sense of helplessness over Western violence that continuously kills innocent Muslims. “The drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don’t see children, they don’t see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody,” Faisal Shahzad, the attempted Times Square bomber, told his sentencing judge when she expressed bafflement over how he could try to kill innocent people. And then there’s just common sense about human nature: if you spend years bombing, invading, occupying, and imposing tyranny on other people, some of them will want to bring violence back to you.

    • New ‘Jihadi John?’ ISIS Video Features English-Speaker

      For those who still don’t get why the War of Terror continues to fail after 14+ years, here is another lesson.

      We all remember “Jihadi John,” who of course was never called that except in the western media. John (real name: Mohammed Emwazi) was a British citizen who became radicalized, joined ISIS and went on to do horrible things, including beheadings. The media, in hand with the White House and Downing Street, fluffed this one loser guy up into an international super villain. So, when eventually the world’s most powerful nation finally killed him in November 2015 with million-dollars air sorties and drones, we were all supposed to go full-out-bin-Laden-celebration, on the road to victory over Islamic State, with a little old fashioned Wild West vengeance thrown in for the feel good.

      And so now guess what?

      There’s a new guy to replace Jihadi John. He doesn’t have a stupid nickname yet, so let’s be the first and call him Haji Hank. He executed five persons claimed to be British spies, creating the video you see above in the process.

    • Does the media say too much when reporting on terrorism?

      efore committing their heinous acts, terrorist-minded individuals will be sure to wipe out all the information on their cell phones after learning in the media how the damaged handsets found near the San Bernardino shootings in early December helped the FBI track a confidante. They may also decide not to use phone communication altogether after reading precise media reports on how, in January last year, Belgian police were able to kill two jihadists after intercepting suspicious calls originating in Athens. The same ill-intentioned individuals will tear to pieces their receipts after finding out in the mass media how French police linked one of the terrorists of the Paris bloodbath to Brussels, thanks to parking tickets issued in Molenbeek, a district in the Belgian capital.

    • ISIL/ Daesh Threatens to attack Saudi Arabia after Executions

  • Transparency Reporting

    • UK Government Spends Three Years And Large Sums Of Money To Avoid Revealing The Number ’13′

      Nothing very threatening there, you might think, but the UK government refused on the basis that disclosing this magic number would “impinge on cabinet collective decision-making”. So Buchanan appealed — first, to the Cabinet Office, the department he had made the request to, where he was turned down, and then to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which oversees this whole area of government transparency.

    • Red tape and a three year FOI battle with Cabinet Office

      Journalism is, at least in part, the art of delivering new information in a timely manner.

      In which case, I have to admit a failure.

      It’s important to point out that I wasn’t wholly to blame, what with the government taking me to court and all that.

      Nonetheless what I’ve finally learned isn’t a story now – and probably wouldn’t have been when I thought it might have been.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Tensions flare over environmental threat of Canadian gold mine in Kyrgyzstan

      The remote Issyk Kul province in eastern Kyrgyzstan, on the border with China, is home to some of the most stunning vistas of the rugged Tian Shan mountain range that cuts through much of Central Asia. Mountain goats and endangered snow leopards roam the rocky slopes, while rare species of dandelion and wild tulip bloom in alpine meadows.

    • VW Lawyer
    • Here’s what David Cameron’s Flood Resilience Review must do

      This is starting to feel a bit like Groundhog Day. Two years ago, the UK experienced horrendous floods during its wettest winter ever. Back then, David Cameron charged Oliver Letwin with reviewing our flood defences. But his report was never published.

      Two years on, and the Met Office have just confirmed that December 2015 was the wettest month on record, ever. Storms Desmond, Eva and Frank broke new rainfall records and have devastated the North of England and Scotland with floods. And David Cameron has… ordered another flooding review, led by Oliver Letwin.

      This time, if the Government’s Flood Resilience Review is to be at all meaningful, it needs to tackle four crucial issues: climate change, land management, budgets and governance.

    • America’s Food System Could Be More Vulnerable to Climate Change Than We Thought

      For billions of people around the world, the most immediate threat posed by climate change is at the dinner table, as staple crops face a steadily worsening onslaught of drought, heat waves, and other extreme weather events. The United States certainly isn’t immune to these challenges; for proof, just look at California, where an unprecedented drought has cost the state’s agriculture industry billions.

      Still, the conventional thinking among many scientists is that developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia—where people are typically hit harder by food price spikes and generally more reliant on agriculture as a primary source of income—are the most vulnerable to food-related climate impacts.

      A paper published today in Nature may add a wrinkle to that assumption. Scientists often track the impact that an individual weather disaster has on crops (again, see California), but the new research takes it a step further.

    • Energy boost for Russia and neighbours

      Renewable energy could supply Russia and Central Asian countries with all the electricity they need by 2030 − and cut costs significantly at the same time.

    • Midwest Flooding Damage Assessment Imagery

      NOS’s National Geodetic Survey (NGS) continues to collect damage assessment imagery of flooding along the Mississippi and Arkansas River. A team of NOAA aviators began collecting the photographs on January 2, flying above the area at around 7,500 feet aboard NOAA’s King Air aircraft equipped with specialized remote-sensing cameras. Imagery is available online to view and download.

    • If Obama is a Climate Leader, Why Is US Oil Industry Booming?

      Despite President Barack Obama’s claims of climate leadership, the U.S. oil industry is booming under his watch.

      Bloomberg Business journalist Jennifer Dlouhy reported on Tuesday that “U.S. oil production has surged 82 percent to near-record levels in the past seven years and natural gas is up by nearly one-quarter.”

      The domestic fracking surge—a pillar of Obama’s “all of the above” energy policy—is key to this trend.

    • VP Kalla Slams Neighboring Countries Over Haze Complaints

      Vice President Jusuf Kalla has denounced neighboring Singapore and Malaysia for complaining about the severe haze caused every year by Indonesian forest fires. He said he took note of the way the neighboring countries had kept complaining when toxic haze from adjacent areas in Indonesia, Riau in particular, fouled their air.

      “For 11 months, they enjoyed nice air from Indonesia and they never thanked us. They have suffered because of the haze for one month and they get upset,” Kalla said on Tuesday.

      Environmental group Greenpeace Indonesia reported forest fires in Riau have worsened from 6,644 hotspots in 2011 to 15,112 hotspots in 2013.

    • Oklahoma Is Now the Earthquake Capital of America

      Earthquakes in Oklahoma increased by 50 percent in 2015, surpassing the previous year’s record and sounding new alarms over the risks of oil and gas operations like hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

    • EPA Releases the First of Four Preliminary Risk Assessments for Insecticides Potentially Harmful to Bees

      The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a preliminary pollinator risk assessment for the neonicotinoid insecticide, imidacloprid, which shows a threat to some pollinators. EPA’s assessment, prepared in collaboration with California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation, indicates that imidacloprid potentially poses risk to hives when the pesticide comes in contact with certain crops that attract pollinators.

  • Finance

    • VIDEO: Bernie Sanders Inveighs Against Wall Street in Major Address on Economic Policy Proposals

      We need a banking system that is part of the productive economy – making loans at affordable rates to small- and medium-sized businesses so that we create decent-paying jobs. Wall Street cannot continue to be an island unto itself, gambling trillions in risky financial instruments, making huge profits and assured that, if their schemes fail, the taxpayers will be there to bail them out.

    • Work less, play more

      Time is perhaps the most precious commodity of all. While we can buy more possessions and work new jobs, we can never make more time or recapture what has already been spent. But considering how much work dominates our lives, we question concepts around working and time relatively little.

      While paid employment can provide security, for many, jobs are a means of putting “food on the table” within a work culture that feels more enslaving than natural or joyful. But now there is growing recognition that traditional working patterns no longer serve us. More and more people are searching for freedom from bosses, wages, commuting and consuming, seeking instead the lives we truly want to lead.

    • Thomas Piketty Ran The Numbers On Income Inequality. Here’s What He Found.

      Some of the top experts on income inequality released a study of new, more accurate data this week, revealing that Americans in the top 1 percent have done far better than everyone else for the last half century — and why they’ve gotten so far ahead.

      At the American Economic Association conference this week, economists Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman, and Thomas Piketty released their preliminary research that uses a new analysis of tax, survey, and national accounts data. That’s more accurate, they say, than just looking at tax data, which misses huge chunks of the actual income people bring home.

    • The cracks begin to show: a review of the UK economy in 2015 (part one)
    • The cracks begin to show: a review of the UK economy in 2015 (part two)

      Thus, the ultra-flexible UK labour market (“with employers in the driving seat”, in the government’s own charming words) – to be enhanced by the repressive new Trade Union Act – has had the effect of causing productivity to fall.

    • Convincing the Young to Blame the Old, Not the Rich

      First, Rampell’s comparison is misleading, since there are few married couples with single breadwinners turning age 65. Most women have been in the workforce for the last four decades. If we look to the same study referenced by Rampell, and take the more typical case of a couple with an average earner and low earner, we find that the value of the Medicare benefit is roughly four times (rather than six) times the taxes paid.

      Most of the reason the value of Medicare benefits exceeds the value of the taxes paid is not the generosity of the benefits received by our seniors. The main cause is the fact that we pay our doctors twice as much as doctors in Canada, Germany and other wealthy countries. We also pay twice as much for our drugs and medical equipment. This is a case of upward redistribution from the rest of us to members of the 1 Percent. (Almost all doctors are in the richest 1 or 2 percent of the income distribution.) But rather than talking about how the rich raise the cost of our healthcare, Rampell wants us to be upset at seniors.

    • Surprise! Corporate America Is Throwing Down for the TPP

      American big business has now officially endorsed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), giving many all the proof they need that the 12-nation deal—poised to be the largest ever—is bad news for people and the planet.

      An association of Chief Executive Officers known as the Business Roundtable (BRT) announced its formal backing on Tuesday, indicating that it plans to use its muscle to press Congress to approve the deal this year. In fact, BRT president John Engler told The Hill that the association wants the TPP to pass as quickly as possible—before the summer.

    • Ben Carson Has a Tax Plan!

      This is great! At a guess, your average zillionaire would have an effective tax rate of about 8 percent compared to about 20 percent today. Ka-ching!

    • Lots of Rich People Seem to Be in Tough Financial Straits

      I’m not sure what to make of this. Either there are a whole lot of rich people who manage their money really badly, or else this is some kind of statistical artifact. Or maybe rich people consider separate summer and winter getaway homes to be among the things they “need.” It’s a headscratcher.

    • How Bernie Sanders And Hillary Clinton Differ On Wall Street

      Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) unveiled a comprehensive financial reform plan in a speech Tuesday just a few miles from Wall Street itself, vowing to break up large financial institutions that pose a threat to the economy and complete the “unfinished business” of reform which began under President Obama.

    • Greece’s Varoufakis to Launch Pan-European Progressive Movement

      Hoping to show Europeans they have an alternative to the prevailing system of “authoritarianism” and austerity, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has announced a new cross-continent movement with a “simple, common agenda:” To democratize Europe.

      The movement, known as the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (or DiEM 25), will be launched on February 9 at Berlin’s Volksbühne theater.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Ted Cruz Knows What His Followers Want

      The president is the one on the right, of course. He’s the menacing one who looks more like a stormtrooper than the actual Nazi, but still retains plausible deniability in case someone like me happens to point out the entirely coincidental resemblance. It comes to us courtesy of the Ted Cruz campaign, which is apparently fully adopting Trumpism as its guiding vision.

    • Ted Cruz: Obama Is Putting On Commando Gear And Coming For Your Guns
    • 2016 Will Be a Test for Super PACs

      What do Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have in common? Pause for requisite awful hair joke. No really. From a campaign finance perspective, they have one distinctive thing in common: they have no Super PACs propping up their candidacies.

    • Would a privatised Channel 4 still be a serial risk-taker?

      Why do we care so much about Channel Four? After all, as a supplier (I’ve worked for Channel Four on and off since 1984, that’s, scarily, more than three decades) it can be truly infuriating. And, every few years, there’ll be an article in the broadsheets, or a session at Edinburgh, about how Channel Four ‘isn’t what it used to be’. But, isn’t that the point? It keeps changing and it’s always the same. It’s as much part of Britain and its media landscape as the BBC – and that’s saying something. It is the place where most of the new stuff happens – formats, styles of documentary, new shapes of different types of content. It’s one of the reasons networks all around the world see Britain as a player.

    • The Most Chilling Political Appointment That You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg

      But why should any of us take relationship advice from you? Because you founded Facebook? That isn’t a qualification. Because you run a massively popular website and can broadcast such advice to millions (even through third-party news outlets)? That doesn’t automatically make it good advice. Our relationships, on any level, are not for you to judge. In this case, your so-called “advice” is worthy only of contempt. And so, in reponse I say:

      Piss off, you sexist hypocrite.

    • NSA hacked two key encryption chips

      None of the documents in the Snowden archive identify all or even most of the encryption standards that had been targeted, and there was a concern that if an attempt were made to identify one or two of them, it could mislead the public into believing that the others were safe. There also seemed to be a concern among some editors that any attempt to identify specific encryption standards would enable terrorists to know which ones to avoid.

    • UK mass surveillance ‘totalitarian’ and will ‘cost lives’, warns ex-NSA tech boss

      Planned surveillance laws in the UK are “totalitarian” and the bulk collection of people’s data makes people “more vulnerable” to terrorist attacks, a National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower has said.

    • GCHQ mass spying will ‘cost lives in Britain,’ warns ex-NSA tech chief

      Plans by the UK’s Conservative government to legitimize the mass surveillance of Brits won’t work, and will cause lives to be lost to terrorism.

      That’s the view of a former senior US National Security Agency (NSA) staffer, who will sound off on blanket snooping at a parliamentary hearing this afternoon (Wednesday).

      William Binney, the former technical director of the NSA’s Analytic Services Office, will give evidence before the Investigatory Powers Bill committee, which is scrutinizing proposals to grant fresh spying powers to British agencies.

    • Neocons Protest US Spying on Israel

      U.S. neocons are livid over a report that U.S. intelligence spied on Israeli efforts to sabotage the Iran nuclear talks, though they are curiously silent on evidence that Israel spies on the U.S. Ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar says it would be a mistake to let this pressure blind U.S. leaders on what Israel is up to.

    • The FBI’s ‘Unprecedented’ Hacking Campaign Targeted Over a Thousand Computers

      In the summer of 2015, two men from New York were charged with online child pornography crimes. The site the men allegedly visited was a Tor hidden service, which supposedly would protect the identity of its users and server location. What made the case stand out was that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had used a hacking tool to identify the IP addresses of the individuals.

      The case received some media attention, and snippets of information about other, related arrests started to spring up as the year went on. But only now is the true extent of the FBI’s bulk hacking campaign coming to light.

    • Selective outrage at NSA snooping

      The U.S. has been caught spying on foreign heads of state – again. And just as with the tapping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone, revealed in 2013 by the Edward Snowden documents, the target was the leader of a supposed ally: in this case, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

      Despite President Barack Obama’s promise two years ago to limit spying on heads of state of friendly nations, a Wall Street Journal report last week described National Security Agency spying on Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli officials while the U.S. was negotiating a nuclear arms agreement with Iran and trying to sell the resultant agreement to a fairly skeptical Congress.

    • Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

      The governments of Australia, Germany, the UK and the US are destroying your privacy. Some people don’t see the problem…
      “I have nothing to hide, so why should I care?”

      It doesn’t matter if you have “nothing to hide”. Privacy is a right granted to individuals that underpins the freedoms of expression, association and assembly; all of which are essential for a free, democratic society.

    • UK Legislators Want To Toss Tech Company Officials In Jail If They Inform Users About Government Surveillance Efforts

      Default mode at tech companies these days is to inform users of government surveillance. Unless explicitly forbidden to do so, multiple companies have stated they will inform users of requests for data or suspected state-sponsored hacking attempts.

      The mechanisms inherent in US law usually prevent notification. Requests made by foreign governments, however, operate in a much grayer area. UK legislators are trying to close perceived loopholes with new legislation that would make it illegal to notify users of UK agencies’ requests for data.

    • UK government wants to send tech execs to jail for disclosing surveillance

      Ministers are lobbying to make it a criminal offense for a tech company to inform a user that the UK government is spying on them.

  • Civil Rights

    • New Zealand’s Raid On Investigatory Journalist Was Illegal

      This reminds me of the raids on Kim Dotcom’s house as well, which involved a bogus warrant. Though, in that case, the High Court, after admitting that the warrants were not drafted properly, decided they were “good enough.” Either way, those are the only two law enforcement raids in New Zealand, and both came under sketchy circumstances, where the police couldn’t be bothered to actually follow the rules. What’s going on down there?

    • Fox Host On Obama’s Emotional Response To Child Victims Of Gun Violence: “Check That Podium For A Raw Onion”
    • As Obama Issues Executive Orders, Gun Stocks Explode

      Stocks for two major gunmakers skyrocketed as President Obama unveiled a long-awaited series of executive orders intended to reduce gun violence.

      Gunmaker Smith & Wesson’s stock price closed at $25.86, higher than at any point in 2015. A year ago, on January 7th, 2015, it closed at just $9.93.

    • The Many Hypocrisies of the Oregon Standoff

      The militia members purportedly are “defending” father and son ranchers sentenced for two separate arsons of public lands. The corporate media has been portraying these arsons as some unfortunate accident, when the reality is quite different.

      [...]

      The grandson, a ThinkProgress article reports, had good reason to “keep his mouth shut” out of fear of his family. He later told a sheriff’s deputy that he had been abused multiple times, being punished by blows, forced to eat cans full of chewing tobacco, being driven 10 miles away and forced to walk home, and after carving two letters into himself with a paper clip having the letters removed with sandpaper.

    • Hundreds rally against sexual violence after NYE attacks in Cologne

      Protesters held aloft a sign reading, “Arm Cologne” as up to 500 people rallied against attacks by members of the migrant community during the city’s New Year celebrations, and the authorities’ failure to stop dozens of sexual assaults which took place.

    • Why It’s Scary That the Mall of America Can Crush Dissent

      ON DECEMBER 23, the day before Christmas Eve, the United States’ largest mall moved to shut down a potentially landmark Black Lives Matter demonstration before it even really began.

      Management at the shopping center, Mall of America, located just outside Minneapolis, had stores lower their metal security gates about half an hour before the protest started, part of a “lockdown” that cleared shoppers from that wing of the mall. Only moments after Black Lives Matter organizers entered the mall’s east rotunda, the cousin of Jamar Clark, whose death at the hands of police was the center of the protest, was led away by a throng of police. Organizers directed demonstrators to exit the mall toward the light-rail station. As protesters walked out, the mall broadcast a looping announcement in a friendly Midwestern voice: “Mall of America is now going into lockdown. Seek shelter in the nearest store, and follow employee instructions.”

    • From Waco to Burns: Chicken Wings and Militiamen

      Nearly 25 years ago, on Feb. 28, 1993, preacher David Koresh and his 125 live-in congregants, the “Branch Davidians,” exchanged fire outside Waco with agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Six of their number and four ATFers were felled. After encircling it for 51 days, the FBI assaulted the Davidian compound, Mt. Carmel, with volatile CS gas and Army tanks, leading to a fire that took more than 80 lives, including those of two dozen children. In retribution for their deaths, thinking that his action would spark a revolution, “patriot” Timothy McVeigh on April 19, 1995 planted a fertilizer bomb at the curbside of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168; again, some of the victims were toddlers. In anybody’s book, all of that was tragedy.

      But today’s standoff by armed “patriots,” “Constitutionalists” and “sovereign citizens” outside Burns, Ore., will most likely be in accord with Marx’s dictum that history first presents itself as tragedy—and then as farce.

      The practices and preconditions for another bloodbath are simply not present at the Malhueur National Wildlife Refuge, where a dozen buildings have been seized by a group that calls itself a militia.

      The apparent organizers of the occupation are Ammon and Ryan Bundy, sons of Cliven Bundy, who with a little help from his friends held federal forces at bay in Nevada in April, 2014. Ammon Bundy has proclaimed that “I know the Lord is involved” in the Oregon occupation, but neither he nor his brother, like Koresh, is a guru of a passionate church. Their accomplices are not in agreement about God, without whose blessing, it seems, few members of our species are today prepared to face martyrdom.

    • Judge Helps Ensure That The More Ignorant Law Enforcement Officers Are, The More They’ll Be Able To Get Away With

      Why? Because probable cause is whatever a cop says it is. This is an ongoing issue in states where marijuana has been partially legalized. In California, medical marijuana is legal. The cops can’t seem to deal with this new reality. So, they find bogus reasons to raid houses, relying on multiple law enforcement-friendly exceptions to the Fourth Amendment to keep their busts intact… or at least minimize the number of times judges will find them culpable for violations. Cops say “upon information and belief” and magistrate judges nod in approval.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • HTTP/2.0 — The IETF is Phoning It In

      A very long time ago —in 1989 —Ronald Reagan was president, albeit only for the final 19½ days of his term. And before 1989 was over Taylor Swift had been born, and Andrei Sakharov and Samuel Beckett had died.

      In the long run, the most memorable event of 1989 will probably be that Tim Berners-Lee hacked up the HTTP protocol and named the result the “World Wide Web.” (One remarkable property of this name is that the abbreviation “WWW” has twice as many syllables and takes longer to pronounce.)

      Tim’s HTTP protocol ran on 10Mbit/s, Ethernet, and coax cables, and his computer was a NeXT Cube with a 25-MHz clock frequency. Twenty-six years later, my laptop CPU is a hundred times faster and has a thousand times as much RAM as Tim’s machine had, but the HTTP protocol is still the same.

    • IPv6 non-alternatives: DJB’s article, 13 years later

      With the world passing 10% IPv6 penetration over the weekend, we see the same old debates coming up again; people claiming IPv6 will never happen (despite several years now of exponential growth!), and that if they had only designed it differently, it would have been all over by now.

      In particular, people like to point to a 2002–3 article by D. J. Bernstein, complete with rants about how Google would never set up “useless IPv6 addresses” (and then they did that in 2007—I was involved). It’s difficult to understand exactly what the article proposes since it’s heavy on calling people idiots and light on actual implementation details (as opposed to when DJB’s gotten involved in other fields; e.g. thanks to him we now have elliptical curve crypto that doesn’t suck, even if the reference implementation was sort of a pain to build), but I will try to go through it nevertheless and show how I cannot find any way it would work well in practice.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

01.05.16

Links 5/1/2016: NVIDIA Shows Linux Some Love, Black Lab Enterprise Linux 8.0 DP3

Posted in News Roundup at 7:59 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Science

  • Hardware

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Residents Sue Over ‘Negligent’ Practices By Gas Company, As Pipeline Leak Goes Into Third Month

      For more than two months, methane has been escaping from a storage well in Los Angeles, causing the evacuation of thousands of homes and dumping more than six coal plants’ worth of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

      Now, residents are suing, alleging that Southern California Gas Company took out and never replaced a safety valve that could have shut off the leak, and generally failed to maintain the site.

    • Thousand of Californians Are Fleeing an Enormous Methane Leak. Here Are 8 Things You Need to Know.

      For more than two months, California has experienced a slow-moving environmental disaster: Methane leaking from a faulty natural gas well near Los Angeles neighborhood Porter Ranch has displaced thousands of families and is releasing the greenhouse gas equivalent of driving 7 million cars each day.

    • The GOP’s ‘First Priority Of 2016’ Is Pretending They Can Repeal Obamacare

      Republicans in Congress have wasted no time in establishing their lead battle of the new year: repealing Obamacare. House Speaker Paul Ryan calls it his “first priority of 2016,” and the Senate promises a bill repealing the health law will hit President Barack Obama’s desk no later than Tuesday.

      For now, the GOP’s threat is purely symbolic. Obama will undoubtedly veto any move to quash his landmark health care law. But, with an election on the horizon, this may be the point. This is the first time that a bill seeking to repeal Obamacare will actually reach the White House — and, for conservative members of Congress, the fact that a bill will make it that far is a success.

    • Organic Farmers Score New Victory in ‘David and Goliath’ GMO Fight

      Jackson County, Oregon wins new protections against cultivation of genetically engineered crops

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Bribery over Humanity: The UK, Saudi Arabia and the UN Human Rights Council

      Wither human rights – especially when it comes to strategic partnerships. The UK-Saudi Arabia relationship has been one of a seedier sort, filled with military deals, mooted criticism and hedging. When given the John Snow treatment as to what Britain’s role behind securing Saudi Arabia its position on the UN Human Rights Council was, Prime Minister David Cameron fenced furiously before embellishing Riyadh’s value in its relations with the West.

    • Ottawa going ahead with Saudi arms deal despite condemning executions

      But the biggest Saudi mass execution in decades – delivered by beheading and in a few cases firing squad – is not moving Ottawa to reconsider a massive deal to supply the Mideast country with armoured fighting vehicles. The transaction will support about 3,000 jobs in Canada for 14 years.

    • Canada Condemns Saudi Executions, But Arms Sales Speak Louder Than Words

      Despite condemning Saudi Arabia’s recent mass executions and raising concerns about human rights abuses, the Canadian government said this week it is moving forward with a controversial $15 billion weapons sale to the Gulf state.

      Reportedly Canada’s largest-ever arms export contract, the deal was confirmed amid growing condemnation of ongoing western support for Saudi Arabia, despite mounting evidence of atrocities committed by the state, from neighboring Yemen to its own soil.

    • The Refugee Conundrum

      This past summer, Germany suspended the Dublin regulation, requiring refugees to remain in their port of entry, unfairly burdening certain countries with a staggering number of refugees.

    • US Enabled Saudi Arabia’s Crackdown on Pro-Democracy Protesters

      Just days before Saudi Arabia performed a mass execution of 47 people, including four pro-democracy protesters; the US approved tens of millions in military contracts to the Saudi government. The contracts include $24 million to Raytheon Company for equipment relating to Patriot missiles, $12 million to Advanced Electronics Co. for electronics updates to F-15 fighter jets, and tens of millions of dollars to Boeing Co. for implementation of a laser guided, air-to-ground weapons system.

    • Iraqi Shiites up in Arms, claim Saudi “Spying on behalf of ISIL/Daesh”

      Saudi Arabia’s execution on Saturday of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr Baqir al-Nimr has so far not created a crisis between Riyadh and the Shiite-dominated Baghdad government. But Saudi Arabia’s name with the rank and file Shiites and parliamentary backbenchers is mud.

      On Tuesday, thousands (or perhaps only hundreds) of demonstrators from the Muqtada al-Sadr bloc came out in front of the walled-in Green Zone to demand that the Saudi embassy be closed. Alarmed, al-Jubeir called his counterpart, expressing fears that the mission might be overwhelmed by angry crowds. The Iraqi foreign minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, pledged to Riyadh that his government would protect the Saudi embassy. Contrary to some reports, it has not been attacked.

    • Saudi Arabia, Our Great and Good Ally

      One way or another, there’s not much question that this was a calculated move by Saudi Arabia. They knew how Iran would react—and they hoped that it might scuttle the Syrian peace talks, maybe the Iranian nuclear deal too, and at the very least, create some chaos that they could take advantage of.

      Ladies and gentlemen, this is our great and good ally. They flog apostates. They export Sunni extremism. They treat women as chattel. They flog and imprison gays. They import slave labor from abroad. They have no truck with freedom of religion or freedom of speech. Their royal family is famously corrupt. And they really, really want to start up a whole bunch of wars that they would very much like America to fight for them.

    • The Saudis Go Full ISIS

      Saudi Arabia has perpetrated a mass execution that puts ISIS’s beach beheadings to shame. Forty-seven heads rolled on Saturday. One of them belonged to Nimr al-Nimr, a revered Shi’ite cleric who had been sentenced to death for sermons in which he criticized the government (especially for its persecution of the country’s Shi’ite minority). His brother has been sentenced to be crucified.

    • US Should Stop Supporting Likely Saudi War Crimes

      Yemen is a small, poor, and insignificant (from the perspective of US vital interests) country just South of Saudi Arabia. It doesn’t even produce much oil; but of course Saudi Arabia does – and that’s why the Saudis are getting so much US support, despite Saudi Arabia’s despicable foreign and domestic policies. The US government ousts dictators in Iraq and Libya and loudly criticizes Iran’s bad human rights policies; in contrast, the United States mutes its criticism of Saudi Arabia’s atrocious human rights record, sweeps under the under the rug that the 9/11 attackers were mostly Saudi nationals, and ignores that Saudi Arabia is the biggest exporter of militant Sunni Islamism by its support for radical schools around the Islamic world. Why does the world’s only superpower tolerate a major ally supporting potential US enemies (the US has the same toleration for Pakistan doing a similar thing)?

    • US Military Leadership Resisted Obama’s Bid for Regime Change in Syria, Libya

      Seymour Hersh’s recent revelations about an effort by the US military leadership in 2013 to bolster the Syrian army against jihadist forces in Syria shed important new light on the internal bureaucratic politics surrounding regime change in US Middle East policy. Hersh’s account makes it clear that the Obama administration’s policy of regime change in both Libya and Syria provoked pushback from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

    • Does Bernie Sanders’ Imperialism Matter?

      When Sanders attempted to frame Hillary as “pro-regime change” in relation to the catastrophe she created in Libya, Hillary pointed out that Sanders voted “yes” to support that regime change. As the war machine rolled into Libya Sanders wasn’t a speed bump; he was a lubricant. Clinton and Sanders both have Libyan blood on their hands.

      Sanders has Afghan blood on his hands too, having voted for the invasion of the now-endless Afghan war that triggered the beginning of the flurry of Middle East wars. And while Sanders brags about voting “no” for the 2003 Iraq war, his vote soon morphed into a “yes,” by his several votes for the ongoing funding of the war/occupation.

      Sanders also voted “yes” for the U.S.-led NATO destruction of Yugoslavia, and supports the brutal Israeli military regime that uses U.S. weapons to slaughter Palestinians.

      When it was announced that Obama was choosing sides and funneling guns to the Syrian rebels — thus exacerbating and artificially extending the conflict — Bernie was completely silent; a silence that helped destroy Syria and lead to the biggest refugee crisis since World War II.

    • Saudi Arabia ‘Torpedoes’ American Middle East Policy With Execution Of Shia Cleric

      The execution of Nimr has already raised sectarian tensions in the Middle East between Iran, a country ruled by Shia Ayatollahs, and a few Sunni-majority states. The execution led to protests by Shia in Baghdad, Al Awamiyah in Saudi Arabia, Srinagar and Lucknow in India, and Tehran. A crowd stormed and torched the Saudi embassy in Tehran over the weekend, leading Sunni-ruled states Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Sudan, and Bahrain to suspend diplomatic ties with Iran.

    • Donald Trump Displays Profound Foreign Policy Incoherence on O’Reilly Factor

      First off, the US is already plenty involved in Yemen, with more than a billion dollars in sales of munitions (including internationally-banned cluster bombs) to the Saudis, as well the use of US military personnel offering direct “targeting assistance” for the relentless Saudi-led bombing campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who overthrew the Saudi-backed Yemeni government last year.

    • Agh Scary Dark Hordes Are Coming!

      So fetid real Donald Trump has released his first TV ad, a stunningly unsavory mess of race-baiting, fear-mongering and lies that highlights the long, dark, mournful plunge this country has taken from our better angels. The grainy=sinister black and white ad begins with images of Obama and Hillary quickly and subtly morphing into photos of the San Bernardino shooters – get it?!? – and goes downhill from there. The real Trump says Muslim terrorists are everywhere which is why we need a “temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until we can figure out what’s going on” – the most coherent policy proposal and Bestest Line Ever – and then Donald will “quickly cut the head off ISIS and take their oil,” even though actually it’s not theirs, and then he’ll “stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for.” This promise is accompanied by overhead video of ant-like brown folks swarming toward a wall that turns out to be Moroccan migrants trying to cross the border into Spanish territory in 2014; his campaign said “No shit, but that’s what our country is going to look like” – even though actually illegal immigration has steadily dropped – and the “Pants on Fire” lie was “1,000% on purpose,” so it’s all good. Or, umm, not.

    • Pentagon Slush Fund is Draining the Economy and Militarizing Foreign Policy

      Late last year, Congress authorized $514 billion in baseline defense spending for fiscal year 2016. However, on top of the baseline budget, another $59 billion was authorized for the war budget, also known as the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund. These budgets combined give the Pentagon a total of $573 billion to spend this fiscal year.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Power Imbalances in Ukraine

      The western press is ginning up alarm because hackers caused a power outage in Ukraine.

      [...]

      While the physical attack did get coverage, there seemed to be little concern about the implications of an attack aiming to undercut Russian control of the peninsula. Whereas here, the attack is treated as illegitimate and a purported new line in the sand.

    • US gives meat producers a pass on climate change emissions

      If the Paris climate pact is going to succeed at staving off climate change disaster, the 195 participating countries will need to achieve a difficult feat – trust.

      Yet the U.S. government already is failing to implement its own rules on tracking emissions. It is not collecting emission reports from one of the country’s largest sources of greenhouse gases: meat production.

    • ‘Volcanic’ Porter Ranch Gas Leak May Take Months to Close

      The gas leak in Porter Ranch, California that has been pumping tens of thousands of kilograms of methane into the air every hour since October 23 may take months to close up, according to state officials.

      Thousands of residents in the San Fernando Valley community, roughly 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles, have been forced to relocate due to health problems caused by the fumes—including, in some cases, bleeding eyes and gums.

      However, officials recently announced that fixing the broken pipe will take more time than initially planned, with emergency crews unlikely to finish closing it up before March or April due to unexpected safety concerns.

      Methane emissions are up to 87 times more polluting than carbon dioxide over a 20-year span. Advocates for the residents warned there could be untold public health consequences, while environmentalists note that the size of the leak, which continues full force, is roughly a quarter of California’s total annual methane emissions.

    • Sanders Blasts Trump On Weird Climate Change Claim

      Bernie Sanders is apparently fed up with Donald Trump’s offhand and often outlandish claims. On Monday night, the Democratic candidate blasted Trump’s claim that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.

      “What an insight,” the independent senator from Vermont told the audience at a New Hampshire rally. “How brilliant can you be? The entire scientific community has concluded that climate change is real and causing major problems, and Trump believes that it’s a hoax created by the Chinese. Surprised it wasn’t the Mexicans.”

    • Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Fate of Our Earth

      It’s clear that neither of these true terrors of our planet and our age has to happen (or at least, in the case of climate change, come to full fruition). To ensure that, however, we and our children and grandchildren would have to decide that the fate of our Earth was indeed at stake and act accordingly. We would have to change the world.

  • Finance

    • Trade negotiators won’t face the truth: investors don’t need special treatment

      The year started with a bang in the trade world. The Commission published initial findings from a 2014 public consultation on the reform of ISDS, or investor-state dispute settlement. The report found that less than 3% of the 150,000 participants supported this reform agenda. The remaining 97% opposed either ISDS reform or the mechanism altogether.

    • How The TPP Is Trouble: Public Interest Explicitly Tossed In Favor Of Corporate Interests

      Michael Geist is counting down the days to when the TPP can first be signed in the US (February 4th) by going through and highlighting problematic aspects of the agreement. He’s started with the simple fact that the TPP’s intellectual property section is explicitly designed to favor corporations over the public. We’ve obviously discussed some of this ourselves, such as the fact that the only reference to things like the public’s rights (such as fair use) is to recommend that countries consider them, but when it comes to stronger copyright and patents, the TPP requires them.

    • Wall Street Kicks Off 2016 With a Faceplant

      While the proximate cause of the current turbulence is China’s flagging manufacturing sector, the underlying reasons are even more important, like the dismal state of the US economy which continues to languish in a long-term coma. Here’s a brief recap from economist Jack Rasmus at CounterPunch:

    • Why Sanders’ Economic Plan Is Best For The 99 Percent

      Sanders would increase the public investments in jobs-creating infrastructure by $1 trillion over the same five-year period – creating one million new jobs, while helping to retool the U.S. economy to reduce carbon emissions.

    • ‘Break Em Up!’: Sanders Speech Takes Aim at Big Bank Greed
    • U.S. Laws Criminalizing Sleeping in Public Have Grown as Much as 60 Percent in Just a Few Years

      There is a war on, and it concerns the homeless’ right to sleep. Across the United States, recent years have seen a spate of municipal laws that criminalize the act of sleeping in public places. These laws often target the act of sleeping in private vehicles under the guise of “anti-camping” legislation.

    • People My Age Have Had Their Aspirations Crushed by Austerity – It’s Time to Change That

      We know the devastating impact austerity has had on our most vulnerable, but what we don’t talk about is how it has resulted in crushed aspirations for a whole generation.

    • Ghoulish Wall Street Speculators Pour Money Into Gun Companies

      Even before President Obama began explaining a slate of executive actions to tighten background checks for gun buyers on Tuesday morning, Wall Street speculators delivered a late Christmas present to gun manufacturers.

      Stocks in Smith & Wesson and competitor Sturm Ruger leapt dramatically in morning trading as investors flocked to the firms, anticipating that gun sales will spike in response to the modest tightening of background check rules.

    • Top bosses will earn ‘more than UK average salary’ by end of today

      Top FTSE 100 bosses will have earned more money by Tuesday afternoon than the average British worker will do in the entire year, a think tank has claimed.

      The High Pay Centre (HPC) compared the earnings of top executives with the average salary of UK workers and found that bosses would only need to work 22 hours to reach the median full-time employee salary.

    • Happy 2016! These CEOs Have Already Banked An Average Worker’s Salary

      By lunchtime Monday, Canada’s top chief executives had already banked an average worker’s annual salary.

      To put that another way, in 2014, the country’s top-paid CEOs took home 184 times as much as the average Canadian worker, according to an annual report on publicly-traded companies released Monday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

      According to the report, the average take-home for a CEO in the country was $8.96 million, accumulated through salaries, stock options, bonuses, and share grants. Meanwhile, the average worker earned a total of $48,636, while the average minimum wage worker got $22,010.

    • Who’s Being Fined? Not Corporate Criminals

      One way to check on government action against corporate crime is to type into Google News the word “fined.”

      Who is getting fined for wrongdoing?

      Five years or so ago, if you did this, you would get a smattering of corporate criminals on the first page.

      But let’s look and see what we get today.

      First story up out of the NBA — Paul George, Marcus Morris fined for Saturday’s altercation.

      Second story up also out of the NBA — Bucks’ Mayo fined $25,000 by NBA for dispute with referee.

      Then you have a story out of Thailand — Western tourists fined for flashing their breasts on Thai island of Phuket.

    • The ‘Pink Tax’ Is a Myth

      During the height of holiday shopping season, a consumer report stoked ample ill-will toward American manufacturers after purporting to show that women’s products are priced higher for completely arbitrary reasons. This so-called “pink tax,” said the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA), affects almost every product marketed at American females, “from cradle to cane.”

    • Dow Plunges 276 Points in First Trading Day of 2016

      Global stocks kicked off 2016 with a stumble, as a disappointing report on China’s economy rekindled concerns over slowing global growth and tempered hopes for a better year.

    • Forget the Market Plunge. This Year, the Global People Plunge Continues

      Though global stocks peformed gymnastics on Monday, the real problem for working- and middle-class people: The economy is rigged.

    • The Economy in 2016: On the Edge of Recession

      Consider: The median wage is 4 percent below what it was in 2000, adjusted for inflation. The median wage of young people, even those with college degrees, is also dropping, adjusted for inflation. That means a continued slowdown in the rate of family formation—more young people living at home and deferring marriage and children – and less demand for goods and services.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • O’Reilly Lets Trump Off The Hook For His Misleading TV Ad That Misrepresented US Southern Border
    • 12 Craziest Things About Trump’s Spokeswoman Katrina Pierson

      Pierson’s most recent act of provocation was wearing a necklace of bullets for a CNN interview, to show her love and support for the NRA. When she was criticized, she said she’d wear a necklace of fetuses next time, to bring “awareness to 50 million aborted people that will never [get] to be on Twitter.” She did not stop there, adding “the liberals freaking out about my accessories are sexist. They only approve of women in pantsuits and jackets. Oh, and tampon earrings.” That last bit was a reference to MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry’s unusual accessories in a July 2013 broadcast.

    • Debate Schedule Is Allowing GOP To Frame Election Narrative

      The last Democratic presidential debate was buried on a Saturday night up against the opening of Star Wars. Naturally it drew a fraction of earlier Republican debate audiences – and even of the earlier Democratic debates. The next debate is scheduled, astonishingly, on a Sunday night, January 17, the middle day of a three-day weekend. But just in case that might still draw an audience, it is also up against NFL playoff games. What is going on?

    • Jeb Bush May Seek a Campaign Boost From His “Very Popular” Brother

      With Hillary Clinton bringing her husband (and 42nd US president) Bill Clinton on the campaign trail with her in New Hampshire, Jeb Bush may soon follow suit with his presidential kin. The former Florida governor appeared on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning, and host Brian Kilmeade asked whether he would follow Clinton’s lead and recruit his brother, former president George W. Bush, to boost his struggling campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

  • Censorship

    • Schools’ PC censorship strangles the free mind

      In the face of spiraling campus demands for trigger warnings, safe spaces, mandatory diversity training and sanctions against offensive words, some pundits are asking where today’s college students learned to be so fearful of competing viewpoints.

      One answer that has escaped scrutiny could lie in our public schools, where principals and school boards too often fail to teach and respect students’ speech rights.

      Writing in 1943, while the nation was at war, in a case on the right of students to refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance, Justice Robert Jackson proclaimed that individual rights must be respected even in grade schools “if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source.”

    • Turkey Has Released VICE News Journalist Mohammed Rasool On Bail

      VICE News journalist Mohammed Ismael Rasool has been released on bail in Turkey after spending more than four months behind bars on terrorism charges.

      Rasool was detained alongside two VICE News colleagues on August 27 and sent to a maximum security prison.

      A document issued by a court in Diyarbakir stated that no bail payment was made, that Rasool was detained “as a protective measure,” and he cannot leave the country. He must also report twice a week to a police station near where he lives.

    • US Copyright Office Asks For Public Comments On DMCA’s Notice And Takedown

      What comes out of this may certainly be interesting, but it’s not difficult to predict that there will be two huge piles of responses that are more or less diametrically opposed: a group of content creators who are obsessed with the fact that they have to send takedown notices and that their works still keep popping up will complain about all of this, and say that the notice and takedown process is too onerous for content creators, and that we should move instead to a world where platforms have to pro-actively monitor things, such as with a “notice and staydown” procedure. On the flip side, you’ll have plenty of people and internet platforms talking about how onerous things are from the other side: platforms are inundated with piles of requests, many of which are completely bogus, but which companies often feel compelled to take down to avoid liability. And end users face tons of censorship due to bogus and abusive takedowns.

    • ‘ISIS New Years Eve Terror Plot’ Story Is Totally Bogus

      Another major holiday, another sensational ISIS terror plot the FBI takes credit for preventing. This time, the case splashed across the news is that of Emanuel Lutchman, a 25-year-old panhandler in Rochester, New York who allegedly plotted to attack a restaurant on New Years Eve. All major network broadcasts lead with the story and it was breathlessly featured everywhere from The New York Times to CNN. There’s only one problem: the way the story is being presented is wildly inaccurate and in many ways factually false.

      Like almost all 11th hour FBI terror busts, the only thing the media has to go off is a DOJ criminal complaint that’s released to the press. Statements from the accused or their lawyer very rarely reach the public. And he criminal complaint and FBI press release are framed to deliberately deceive the media.

      Let’s run down some of the key claims made by the media and why they’re either factually incorrect or misleading.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Man Charged With Planning (Non-) Attack on Behalf of ISIS

      New York governor Andrew Cuomo said in an interview that “the arrest of Emanuel Lutchman is an important reminder of the new normal of global terrorism.”

    • Out of Options, California Ships Hundreds of Troubled Children Out of State

      At 14, Deshaun Becton’s life is a roadmap to California’s faltering efforts to care for its most troubled children.

      Over more than a dozen turbulent years, he lived with a half-dozen foster families and in five different group homes. Now he is among the more than 900 children that California sends to out-of-state residential facilities, most of them in Utah, a ProPublica analysis shows.

      Each of these children represents a surrender of sorts: a tacit acknowledgement that California — the nation’s biggest and, by some measures, richest state — somehow has no good answer for them.

    • Children Caught In Sweep as Feds Begin Mass Deportations
    • More Than 120 Central Americans Taken Into Custody In Large-Scale Deportation Raid

      Don’t open your door. Ask for a warrant when a stranger knocks on your door. Memorize the phone numbers of relatives and lawyers.

      These are just some of the pieces of advice that immigrant advocates have been giving Central Americans who entered the country after May 2014, now that the Obama administration has begun an aggressive immigration operation targeting them for deportation in the new year.

      Over the weekend, at least 121 Central American individuals primarily from Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina were taken into custody and are now in the process of being repatriated to their countries of origin.

    • Cliven Bundy’s Neverending War

      A year and a half after television news crews departed Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch, the revolution he hoped to spark against federal stewardship of public lands is still going. But it’s hard to say it’s going strong.

    • It’s Not Just Militia Members Who Want to Take Over Federal Land

      Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has also endorsed state or private control of federal land. “You run into problems now with the federal government being, you know, this bully,” Paul told a crowd in June before meeting with Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who refused to pay more than $1 million in fees for grazing his cattle on federal land. The meeting, Bundy said, helped show Paul “the difference between Cliven Bundy’s stand and Ken Ivory’s stand.” Bundy’s son Ammon is currently leading the armed occupation in Oregon.

    • The Rule Of Law No Longer Exists In Western Civilization — Paul Craig Roberts

      Bundy and militiamen, whose count varies from 15 to 150 in the presstitute media, have seized an Oregon office of the BLM as American liberty’s protest against the frame-up of the Hammonds on false charges. As I write the Oregon National Guard and FBI are on the way.

    • The Bundy Siege is a Wake-Up Call: American Extremists Are Getting Desperate and Dangerous

      Something scary is happening in the so-called libertarian west. Armed terrorists have taken over a federal building in Oregon. By now, you know the story, even as it plays out in real time. It’s an escalation of an ongoing battle that started with the Cliven Bundy Ranch fiasco, wherein a gutless Federal government let a bunch of armed kooks run roughshod over basic law enforcement. Bundy refused to pay his grazing fees, and instead decided to make his private profit with stolen public resources, threatening violence if authorities attempted to correct his infractions. This latest dustup is superficially about a couple of ranchers given five-year prison sentences for setting fires that destroyed public land, but that is only a flimsy pretext; this is another round of antisocial behavior by a group of (mostly) men who are watching the decline—if not outright elimination—of their power and influence in the west.

    • What’s Wrong With Laughing & Labeling Oregon Militants “Terrorists”

      There are others, who have made similar funny remarks. Cliff Schechter, a Daily Beast columnist, suggests, “Could be much worse. Could be group of 12 year-old African American kids wielding toy guns in Oregon. Then we’d use napalm.” And various others believe they are clever as they compose variations of, when will leaders in the White community renounce this violence?

      I have a joke of my own. Good thing these militants aren’t in North Waziristan. Otherwise, President Kill List would have an armed drone flying over their heads faster than one could say white caliphate.

      However, there is one issue with all of this humor: it is predicated on concepts of identity, which are reinforced through disproportionate actions of the State.

      The language is a product of understandable frustration and cynicism toward a government, which fails to apply a system designed to fight “terrorism” equally against all people regardless of their skin color or religion. It is rooted in a powerlessness, a recognition that there is no movement to meaningfully unravel a system, which fuels the disparity in law enforcement. But the target appears to be the government for failing to criminalize all people to the same extent as the government would criminalize brown or black people, who engaged in similar acts.

    • These Two Photos Are Worth a Million Words in Explaining Oregon Militia Leader Blain Cooper

      These two photos are pretty much all you need to know about the leader of the armed white men who have taken over the federal building in Oregon, a group the Internet has dubbed Y’all Qaeda.

    • Terrorism, American Style

      We in America thus must deal with the unfortunate fact that domestic terrorism is becoming a serious national security threat, greatly helped by the provocative rhetoric of the leading Republican presidential candidates. Since 9/11, “non-Islamic extremists” actually account for more lives lost than “Islamic extremists,” by 48 to 45. Yet, this predominantly white, male, Christian terrorism invariably escapes being labeled as such. Instead, the mass media uses more polite language, such as “militia men” and “armed activists”—words that probably would not be applied if the terrorists were American Indians, African Americans, Jews, or of course Muslims. As Janell Ross writesin the Washington Post, “The descriptions of events in Oregon appear to reflect the usual shape of our collective assumptions about the relationship between race and guilt—or religion and violent extremism—in the United States.”

    • Take a Bite Out of Crime

      Henderson, Nevada, officials have agreed to pay $13,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of a 17-month-old girl mauled by a police dog.

    • Confusion, language barrier contribute to Henderson police dog biting child — VIDEO
    • Who Killed Sammy Younge Jr.? SNCC, Vietnam, and the Fight for Racial Justice

      Issued more than a year before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous Riverside Church speech against the war, SNCC faced repercussions for its dissent. For example, the Georgia legislature denied SNCC spokesperson and elected state representative Julian Bond his seat because he stood by the statement. As he fought for his elected office, Bond wrote an educational comic book on the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the connection between the struggles of the Vietnamese and the struggles of African Americans for self-determination and human rights.

    • Attacks on Hoffman Report From Military Psychologists Obfuscate Detainee Abuse

      In the wake of the July 2015 Hoffman Report, which found that the American Psychological Association (APA) colluded with the Department of Defense (DOD) to ensure that no APA policy would constrain psychologists’ participation in DOD’s “enhanced interrogation” program, the APA Council of Representatives passed an historic ban on the involvement of psychologists in national security interrogations and at detention sites that operate outside or in violation of international law, including Guantánamo Bay Detention Center.

    • “Speed Trap Town” Dissolves Entire Police Dept After Years of Officials Getting Rich from Fines

      Despite issuing and collecting a record number of traffic fines, the money from those fines never found its way to the village bank account. The clerk of courts and the deputy clerk of courts, with the help of the ticket writing cops, enriched themselves to the tune of $260,000 before they were finally caught in October.

    • Report Finds Juvenile Program Failed to Reduce Robberies, but Police Are Expanding It

      For years, the New York Police Department has tried to stop robberies before they might happen by intervening in the lives of some young offenders. The approach was heralded by the author Malcolm Gladwell in a best-selling 2013 book as an innovative way to shake up the criminal justice process. Elected leaders gave $2 million over the last two years in support.

    • Upholding Power of the People, Court Says Voters Can Weigh In on Citizens United

      When it ruled Monday that California lawmakers can ask for voters’ opinions on campaign-spending laws, the state Supreme Court underscored “that the ultimate power of our government is vested in the people,” Common Cause senior vice president Karen Hobert Flynn declared in the wake of the decision.

      By upholding the legality of Proposition 49—which would ask voters whether Congress should propose an amendment overturning the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision known as Citizens United—the court spoke “directly to the question we have faced since the Citizens United ruling,” Hobert Flynn continued. “Are we a democracy of, by, and for the people, or are we to be ruled by an elite, moneyed class, where the power of government rests in the hands of a few wealthy special interests?”

    • California Supreme Court backs advisory ballot measures

      The unprecedented legal test stems from Proposition 49, a measure removed from the November 2014 ballot by the state’s high court that sought voter views on whether Congress should be asked to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial 2010 Citizens United ruling on unlimited independent campaign spending.

    • California Supreme Court Says Voters Can Advise on Citizens United

      A California Supreme Court ruling will let the state’s voters offer their collective opinion on political campaign financing. The court decision, which was handed down Monday, allows Californians to urge their members of Congress to pass a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United.

    • Conservatives Mock Obama For Crying About Child Victims Of Gun Violence During Speech

      Several conservative media figures attacked President Obama for crying as he spoke about child victims during a speech detailing executive actions designed to reduce gun violence.

    • ISIS’ War On Children

      Grace “Khadija” Dare’s camo-clad child might be one of the youngest to appear in an ISIS propaganda video, but the militant group has been eerily inclusive when it comes to children. Perhaps more than any other militant group, ISIS has made children into war machines. Children have long been brainwashed, drugged, and threatened children into picking up arms. ISIS has elevated their place in conflicts, given them revered roles as trained executioners, guards, and recruiters. The United Nations has confirmed that children as young as 12 are being trained by ISIS.

    • You Can’t Report Truthfully on Israel Without Facing Its Wrath

      Makarim Wibisono has announced his resignation as UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, the position I held for six years until June 2014.

      The Indonesian diplomat says that he could not fulfill his mandate because Israel has adamantly refused to give him access to the Palestinian people living under its military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

      “Unfortunately, my efforts to help improve the lives of Palestinian victims of violations under the Israeli occupation have been frustrated every step of the way,” Wibisono explains.

      His resignation reminds me in a strange way of Richard Goldstone’s retraction a few years ago of the main finding in the UN-commissioned Goldstone report, that Israel intentionally targeted civilians in the course of Operation Cast Lead, its massive attack on Gaza at the end of 2008.

    • Entire Florida Police Dept Busted Laundering Tens of Millions for International Drug Cartels

      The latest revelations show that at least 20 people in Venezuela were sent drug money from the Florida cops, including William Amaro Sanchez, the foreign minister under Hugo Chavez and now special assistant to President Nicolas Maduro.

      They wired a total of $211,000 to Sanchez, even while the U.S. government was investigating Venezuelan government leaders involved in the drug trade. Instead of reporting their knowledge of Sanchez to federal agencies, the cops went on laundering money, taking their cut, and all the while aiding Sanchez in his machinations, which likely included political corruption.

    • Cologne sex attacks: Merkel disgust at New Year gang assaults

      Women have made at least 90 criminal complaints to police about the harassment by gangs at Cologne’s main railway station on Thursday night.

      Germans have been shocked by the scale of the attacks, involving many groups of drunk and aggressive young men.

      Witnesses and police said the men were of Arab or North African appearance.

      Mrs Merkel called Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker on Tuesday and expressed her “outrage over these disgusting attacks and sexual assaults”.

      The chancellor said everything must be done “to find the perpetrators as quickly and comprehensively as possible and punish them, regardless of their origin or background”.

      Up to 300 women demonstrated against the violence near the scene of the attacks on Tuesday evening. One placard read: “Mrs Merkel! Where are you? What do you say? This alarms us!”

      There is an intense debate in Germany about refugees and migrants, who arrived in record numbers last year. But Mayor Reker urged people not to jump to conclusions about the Cologne assailants.

      “It’s completely improper… to link a group that appeared to come from North Africa with the refugees,” she said, after crisis talks with the police.

    • Two Arab-Israeli passengers deplane following demands of Israelis on-board

      “The whole episode , which did indeed delay the flight for more than 1 hour and 30 minutes, is indeed very unfortunate and we are grateful that the two Israeli passengers affected did agree to fly the next day. We thank again the two Israeli passengers that agreed to disembark for their understanding and collaboration and we apologize for the whole episode which was indeed extremely unfortunate.”

      The Director of Amnesty International in Israel Yonatan Gher said the incident on the plane reflected the Israeli government’s incitement against the Arab Israeli community following the Tel Aviv shooting attack last week in which two people were killed.

    • Imagine If They Were Black: How Oregon Reveals the Real Story About Race and Whiteness in America

      I recently wrote two pieces on white privilege and the occupation of federal property in Oregon by a gun-toting terrorist insurrectionist “militia” that is led by the sons of Cliven Bundy—the Nevada rancher who, with the aid of an armed group of anti-government protesters, stood down federal authorities in 2014 because he did not want to pay his back taxes and grazing fees.

    • Families are taken into custody as push to deport immigrants denied refuge begins

      After searching the house, the agents showed Gutierrez a photo of her niece, 30-year-old Ana Lizet Mejia. Mejia fled Honduras when her brother was killed by gangs. She entered the U.S. illegally with her son as part of a wave of Central American migrants seeking refuge from violence in the summer of 2014.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • DSL Users Still Can’t Get Advertised Speeds They Pay For, Nation’s Telcos Couldn’t Care Less

      And that 12 Mbps mark is rather generous. There are tens of millions of DSL customers who are lucky to nab 3 Mbps downstream on a good day, thanks to phone companies that face no serious competitive incentive to upgrade. Worse, some of these companies (like AT&T and Verizon) are actively trying to drive these unwanted customers away with apathy and price hikes so they can focus on more-profitable wireless. Others, (like Frontier, Windstream and CenturyLink) are buying these aging assets up, but wind up being so saddled with debt meaningful upgrades aren’t possible (assuming they had competitive incentive to do so).

    • What Is P2P File Sharing And How It Works?

      The rudimentary internet was more like a peer-to-peer network – “Tim Berners-Lee’s vision for the World Wide Web was close to a P2P network in that it assumed each user of the web would be an active editor and contributor, creating and linking content to form an interlinked “web” of links”,” writes Wikipedia.

  • DRM

    • Warner Brothers, Intel Begin Futile Legal Assault To Defend Ultra HD And 4K DRM

      Believing it can keep the lid on HDCP 2.2 stripping technology, Warner Brothers and Intel’s daughter-company Digital Content Protection have filed suit (pdf) against LegendSky. According to the lawsuit, the company’s technology violates not only the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions, but also the Lanham Act by falsely claiming that its HDFury hardware complies with HDCP’s license requirements.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Understanding David Lowery’s Lawsuit Against Spotify: The Insanity Of Music Licensing

        We generally don’t talk much about musician David Lowery around here any more. We covered a few stories about him a few years ago, and he seemed to take it ridiculously personally, and continues to attack me with false and misleading claims. Every so often someone sends me a link to a blog post he’s written and it’s almost always laughably wrong (for example, in one recent story he falsely claimed that “Google” is on Spotify’s board — because a former Google exec who is no longer at the company also happens to be on Spotify’s board). So, take the following with that caveat in mind. I tried to be objective in the analysis, but some will likely suggest that’s impossible given his years-long attacks on me.

      • Daughters Sue ‘Big Bang Theory’ Over Infringing Use Of Mother’s 82-Year-Old Poem ‘Warm Kitty’

        A copyright infringement lawsuit has been filed against a long list of defendants — all of it related to the hit sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.” Supposedly, a poem written in 1933 is being used without permission of the putative rights holders (the author’s daughters) and making everyone involved with the show a lot of money.

        The poem, titled “Warm Kitty,” is often sung by one of the main characters. It has been used often enough to become its own cultural force, resulting in a pile of Big Bang Theory merchandise featuring the words and/or title.

      • Celebrate Aaron Swartz in Seattle (or Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, NYC, SF)

        I’m organizing an event at the University of Washington in Seattle that involves a reading, the screening of a documentary film, and a Q&A about Aaron Swartz. The event coincides with the third anniversary of Aaron’s death and the release of a new book of Swartz’s writing that I contributed to.

Patent Lawyers and People in ‘IP’ Jobs Warp the Debate About the Patent System: EPO-Funded Writers, Glorification of Patent Trolls, and Software Patents

Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 3:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

EPO media

Summary: The EPO’s ‘communication’ campaign is coming along nicely, with staff that is unable (not allowed) to criticise the EPO’s nefarious agenda, writers that are are indirectly paid by the EPO, and opportunistic patent lawyers that encircle the system like hungry vultures

“In stark contrast to this,” wrote one commenter today, “is the proposal of the European patent Office to forbid all former employees to continue their lives with a job in IP, pensioners and younger employees alike.”

Well, EPO patent examiners can, as Florian Müller pointed out last year, start a long and fulfilling career outside the field of so-called ‘IP’ (misnomer for patents as IP is a vague term that alludes to all sorts of things).

“Come on now,” one person responded to the above. “not all former employees. If you are a buddy of BB [Battistelli] then you’ll be all right … no restrictions will apply.”

Remember our recent discovery about prohibitions on free speech by some former EPO staff. Team Battistelli has been actively trying to suppress messages contrary to its agenda, including the UPC. Even people who leave the EPO are being subjected to gags. One might expect it from history’s most oppressive regimes; well, that’s the EPO.

“Team Battistelli has been actively trying to suppress messages contrary to its agenda, including the UPC.”“In a nutshell,” this one new article claimed today, “the new Spanish Patents Act will introduce a number of changes, both in prosecution and enforcement proceedings.” No mention of the UPC, which the Spanish historically resisted (and the Spanish language is being discriminated against — a subject of future articles of ours).

Will the UPC ever become a reality at all? That’s still an uncertainty, but Battistelli and patent lawyers try to induce defeatism by stating that it’s inevitable and just a matter of time. Germany is still not accepting it, so the EPO’s mouthpieces at IAM keep trying to shame it into it (we gave another example of it earlier today). There are even worse things going on at IAM at the moment*.

The German Parliament unambiguously opposes software patents, yet German patent lawyers pretend not to be seeing these unambiguous statements. They hope to exploit confusion and expand the scope of patents, though they’re even disputed by other patent lawyers [1, 2, 3, 4].

“Will the UPC ever become a reality at all? That’s still an uncertainty, but Battistelli and patent lawyers try to induce defeatism by stating that it’s inevitable and just a matter of time.”Not only in Twitter do we find these patent boosters, who are almost always patent lawyers. “I cover intellectual property issues to prevent IP horror stories,” wrote this one writer today. It’s just patent propaganda from a so-called ‘IP’ person at the billionaires’ propaganda mill, Forbes. This is just a bunch of patent lawyers and ‘IP’ people having a ‘circlejerk’ (pardon the term) framed as an in-depth article about Alice. They are a bunch of people who work for massive corporations (like those which Forbes glorifies on a daily basis), framing patents as necessary for what’s called “entrepreneurs”. █
______
* Joff Wild, writing at the (indirectly) EPO-funded IAM ‘magazine’, now sucks up to a famous proponent of software patents and an abusive patent aggressor (likely antitrust violator) called Qualcomm, which IAM dubbed “one of our IP personalities of the year.” We already showed how IAM organised an event for trolls (having been paid by some of the world’s nastiest trolls) and IAM ‘magazine’ now gives an award to a patent troll and defends these indefensible actions. According to this new report, patent trolls are a growing problem even in 2015. “According to a report by Unified Patents,” said the unnamed author, “an organisation that claims to fight ‘patent trolls’, published yesterday, January 4, NPEs were responsible for 66% of all infringement claims filed in US courts, an increase on last year’s figure of 61%. High-tech patents accounted for the majority of cases (64%) asserted in US courts. Following an overall drop in the number of claims filed in 2014 compared to 2013, the year 2015 saw infringement claims asserted at US courts rise by 14% compared with last year. In 2015, 5,769 cases were filed compared to 5,045 in 2014. More than 3,000 of the claims filed in 2015 were from NPEs.”

So Much for ‘Vocal Minority’… Half of EPO Staff Signed Petition in Support of SUEPO

Posted in Europe, Patents at 10:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Staff protects staff representatives and resents the management

SUEPO reps

Summary: Team Battistelli has gotten caught telling a Big Lie once again, serving to discredit pretty much anything it has to say not just to the public but even to its own staff

TWO weeks from now there will be another major protest in defense of EPO staff representatives, who are metaphorically being lined up for firing. According to this new article, support for the staff representatives is massive. Not only have nearly half of all EPO staff found the courage to publicly protest against their employer last month. “According to a SUEPO leaflet,” says WIPR, “a petition urging the suspension to be revoked has attracted almost 3,500 signatures, which has defied alleged claims from management that the three members only have the support of a “minority of staff”.”

“Nowadays we apprehensively observe that the EPO is little more than a self-serving, self-aggrandising propaganda mill which spies on every member of staff better than the Stasi ever did.”Got that? Team Battistelli claims only a “minority of staff” supports the representatives.

The EPO is basically run by a bunch of liars. Don’t believe anything they say, irrespective of the subject (e.g. the accusations against staff, the UPC). Nowadays we apprehensively observe that the EPO is little more than a self-serving, self-aggrandising propaganda mill which spies on every member of staff better than the Stasi ever did. Oh, and occasionally it also issues some patents… █

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.”

–Groucho Marx

The European Patent Office (EPO) Has Become a Propaganda Mill After the FTI Consulting Deal

Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

EPO and FTI Consulting

Summary: Only a few months after the EPO signed the €880,000 FTI Consulting contract there is little coming out of the EPO other than low-quality patents (including software patents) and a lot of self-serving, self-aggrandising propaganda

THERE is nothing but greenwashing this morning from the EPO’s PR department [1, 2]. Even a month later (if not more) they haven’t quite gotten tired of trying to associate EPO patents with ethics, using propaganda which they paid to create.

As Gordon B-P, a British Local Lay Minister, put it yesterday: “Why on earth should a Patent Office need a “PR Team” in the first place? Bizarre…” (in reference to this recent article of ours, as well as the FTI Consulting work)

“IAM’s EPO-friendly ‘magazine’ (also paid indirectly by EPO) is currently organising (with payment from the EPO’s PR agency) a pro-UPC event in the US.”IAM’s EPO-friendly ‘magazine’ (also paid indirectly by EPO) is currently organising (with payment from the EPO's PR agency) a pro-UPC event in the US. Yesterday this ‘magazine’ (paid by the EPO, a proponent of the UPC) kept trying to shame Germany — again! — into UPC endorsement (the last sentence says “Germany seems to have gone very quiet about ratification of the Unified Patent Court”). Is this reporting or advocacy? And if it’s advocacy (similar to PR), then whose? It’s not hard to see what’s going on here…

Yesterday we published a document from the A.C. (Administrative Council) which outlines further crackdowns on EPO staff. Here is a new comment about it which says:

“Some new CA-Docs are out.”

Self-serving and to be expected. “On a proposal from the President,,” nuff said?

This is why many of us (who have been here for a long time – and admittedly – know that it is difficult at this stage of life) are looking for a way out of the shambles that the EPO is becoming.

These people who are running (used jocularly) this place are beyond comprehension – they have no terms of reference – and yet they are given carte blanche. It only makes sense because the people that really count (elected politicians) are not just not interested enough or fail to see the bigger picture.

Luddites had the same problem back in the 18th century,,,,

Watch how the EPO is run; it’s a tyranny, not a democracy, and we know who benefits here. It’s just about as democratic as a corporation (which is inherently anti-democratic, by design). No wonder today’s EPO mostly serves large corporations, even when these corporations aren’t European at all. No wonder today’s EPO gently moves towards allowing software patents in Europe, much to the chagrin of Microsoft, IBM, and so on.

“When I said at 32C3 that “presentation of information” was also under attack, I was right. Graphical User Interfaces patentable in Germany, despite the exclusion of “presentation of information” in the EPC,” Benjamin Henrion wrote today [1, 2] in reference to his recent CCC talk, with link to this article from Bastian Best, who wrote: “Patent applications on new types of GUIs oftentimes run into trouble in Germany because the examiners consider them to be “presentation of information“. As the avid reader will know, the presentation of information is one of the items on the list of subject-matters excluded “as such” from patent protection.”

The EPO isn’t a European institution. It’s international, global, and globalist. It has become abundantly evident that Europe derives almost no value at all from the EPO and the UPC would only make things worse (unless you’re some non-European corporations seeking to sue the whole of Europe in one fell swoop). █

Links 4/1/2016: DNF 1.1.5, *ubuntu 16.04 Alpha 1

Posted in News Roundup at 8:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • What We Can Do with Ad Blocking’s Leverage

    The titles of ad blocking research studies also tell a story (see Resources for links). First came Ad-Blocking Measured, published by ClarityRay (later acquired by Yahoo) in 2012. Then PageFair brought us The Rise of Adblocking, Adblocking goes mainstream and The Cost of Adblocking, in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

    The catch-all term for tracking-based advertising is adtech, and nobody has studied or written more wisely about it than Don Marti, former Editor-in-Chief of Linux Journal.

  • The Technology That Made Nathalie Cole So Unforgettable

    For the album Unforgettable…With Love, Cole recorded versions of songs that had been made famous by her father, Nat “King” Cole, a huge figure in mid-20th-century popular music and culture. Among other things, he became the first black to host a TV show in 1956 and his versions of “The Christmas Song,” “Route 66,” and “Mona Lisa” and other songs are still standards. On that 1991 album, which ultimately sold around 7 million copies worldwide, Nathalie Cole used various types of overdubbings on the title track to sing a “duet” with her father, who had died in 1965.

  • There’s one great reason to see Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight in theaters

  • Science

  • Hardware

    • Richard Sapper, Designer Of IBM’s ThinkPad, Has Died

      Richard Sapper died New Year’s eve at the age of 83, his daughter Carola Sapper confirmed in an email to Co.Design. The German-born, Italy-based industrial designer created all manner of products, from household goods to cars, but is arguably best known for being the chief industrial design consultant for IBM and masterminding the first ThinkPad in 1992.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • How Denmark Dumped Medical Malpractice and Improved Patient Safety

      It was a distressingly close call. A patient had been sent home from the hospital with instructions to take a common medication at a dose that would have poisoned her.

      When Dr. Ole Hamberg heard about the mistake, he decided to investigate.

      Hamberg, the head liver specialist at Rigshospitalet, the Danish national hospital, soon found something troubling. The hospital’s electronic prescribing system was mistakenly prompting doctors to give the drug, methotrexate, for daily use when it is safely taken only once or twice a week.

    • Jeremy Hunt has torn up social contract between junior doctors and the state

      As doctors, we embark on a 40-year-plus career in the NHS knowing full well that work life is going to be tough. Long hours, a low starting salary compared to other professions (earning £23,000 a year, compared with the national average salary of £27,000), high levels of stress, regularly doing extra work for no extra pay, and emotionally difficult experiences with sick and dying patients await us.

      Although it is also extremely rewarding and a privilege to serve and be trusted by the public, a medical career takes its toll on work-life balance. Doctors have high rates of mental health problems and alcohol dependency. Family breakdown is common.

    • New junior doctors’ strike WILL go ahead after crunch talks with NHS break down

      Tens of thousands of junior doctors will stage their first strike in 40 years after crunch talks broke down.

      Medics confirmed today they will walk out three times including next Tuesday, January 12, over new contracts for Jeremy Hunt’s 7-day NHS.

      Striking doctors will provide emergency care only for 24 hours from 8am, followed by another 48-hour period of emergency care only from 8am on Tuesday, January 26.

      A full strike involving all doctors will then take place from 8am to 5pm on Wednesday, February 10 unless the crisis is resolved.

    • Enough With the Middle-Age Whites, Already

      These cohorts might change if you examine the data using different age buckets, different diseases, and a different timeframe. Who knows? Regardless, if you’re going to put forward an explanation about why this is happening, it better account for all three age groups. You can’t just pretend the data points only to “middle-age” whites and then spin your theories from that.

    • For More Than 50 Years, DuPont Concealed the Cancer-Causing Properties of Teflon

      Internal company reports have revealed that DuPont had for many years either known or suspected that Teflon contained a harmful ingredient.

      [...]

      On October 7, after less than a day of deliberations, the jury found DuPont liable for Bartlett’s cancer, agreeing with the defendant that the company had for years negligently contaminated her drinking water supply in Tuppers Plain, Ohio with a toxic chemical formerly used to make its signature brand of nonstick coating: Teflon.

  • Security

    • Microsoft Got Hacked And Didn’t Tell Anyone

      Microsoft knew that Chinese spies hacked people using Hotmail accounts for years — and didn’t tell any of the people who were hacked.

    • Are You Ready For Linux Ransomware? [Ed: Are you ready for Linux FUD? Here you go… ]
    • Secure Boot — Fedora, RHEL, and Shim Upstream Maintenance: Government Involvement or Lack Thereof

      Note that there are parts of this chain I’m not a part of, and obviously linux distributions I’m not involved in that support Secure Boot. I encourage other maintainers to offer similar statements for their respective involvement.

    • Security advisories for Monday
    • I am Using Let’s Encrypt on my server now

      I just moved my web server’s SSL/TLS certificates to Let’s Encrypt and I am positively surprised how relatively easy it was.

      In all honesty, it started as a simple “Hullo! What’s this all about?” and after toying with it a bit, I decided to simply use it to replace all my CAcert.org and StartSSL certificates.

    • Dutch govt says no to backdoors, slides $540k into OpenSSL without breaking eye contact

      The Dutch government has formally opposed the introduction of backdoors in encryption products.

      A government position paper, published by the Ministry of Security and Justice on Monday and signed by the security and business ministers, concludes that “the government believes that it is currently not appropriate to adopt restrictive legal measures against the development, availability and use of encryption within the Netherlands.”

      The conclusion comes at the end of a five-page run-through of the arguments for greater encryption and the counter-arguments for allowing the authorities access to the information.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Militants Attack Several Towns in Anbar; 198 Killed in Iraq

      Eight suicide bombers attacked a base outside Camp Speicher, where they killed 19 security members and wounded at least 18 more. Many of the casualties were police recruits in training.

    • About That ISIS Plan to Attack Munich…

      Now, in the clearer light of morning, we learn more about that “very concrete” tip that set all this off.

      According to Reuters, a German policespokesperson said “We received names. We can’t say if they were in Munich or in fact in Germany. At this point we don’t know if these names are correct, if these people even exist, or where they might be. We have no information that these people are in Munich or in Germany.”

      Germany’s interior minister added “Security forces anticipate the high threat of international terrorism to persist.” Who knew?

      The train stations were reopened by morning and the police presence significantly reduced, apparently because the vague tip from the night before was seen as even more vague a little while later. I guess “very concrete” tips have limited life spans, or Germany is really sure terrorists are always right on time with their suicide bombs. Heck, maybe they missed their bus or something, or their watches were still set to Syrian time.

      [...]

      Time to get a new catchphrase Mr. War of Terror — “out of an abundance of caution” has worn out its welcome and means little more than over reaction. Yes, yes, of course something could always happen somewhere. But that’s the point, and panic, overreacting and crying wolf does nothing to protect against that.

    • Hans Blix – a diplomatic life

      Hans Blix ponders his long career in international politics and diplomacy, the state of the Middle East…

    • Assassins Were Paid Less Than $30,000 to Kill Mexican Mayor

      GISELA RAQUEL MOTA OCAMPO, the first woman elected mayor of Temixco, a city in the central Mexican state of Morelos, was expected to take on organized crime directly. She never got the chance. The 33-year-old assumed office on New Year’s Day. Less than 24 hours later she was dead, murdered in her own home by an alleged crew of paid assassins.

    • Saudi Arabia was omitted from UK’s death penalty strategy ‘to safeguard defence contracts’

      The British Government left Saudi Arabia off a list of thirty countries to be challenged by diplomats over their continued use of the death penalty – despite executing over 90 people a year.

      The Kingdom is the only major death penalty state to be omitted from a 20-page Foreign Office document setting out the UK’s five-year strategy to reduce the use of executions around the world.

    • The Execution of Nimr Al-Nimr: One More Reason to Re-evaluate the Toxic US-Saudi Alliance

      The brutal Saudi execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr has led to protests around the globe, as well as the burning of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, followed by the Saudi severing of relations with Iran. This exacerbation of Sunni-Shia tensions is the result of the reckless Saudi action against a popular, nonviolent Shia leader. Also reckless is the US government’s response, which has failed to condemn the Saudi government and distance itself from the abusive regime.

      On January 2, the Saudi government executed 47 people, most of them by beheading. Those executed included Sunnis convicted of Al Qaeda-affiliated attacks, as well as Shia opponents—Sheik Nimr Al-Nimr and three others arrested when they were still juveniles. The killing of Al-Nimr has sparked a massive reaction because he was a prominent religious leader who defended the Shia minority and criticized the abuses—both domestic and foreign—of the Saudi regime. He supported the 2011 anti-government protests in the Eastern Province, protests that erupted in the wake of the Arab Spring. The oil-rich Eastern Province is home to some 2 million Shiites, who have long complained of discrimination by the Sunni government.

    • After Executing Regime Critic, Saudi Arabia Fires Up American PR Machine

      Saudi Arabia’s well-funded public relations apparatus moved quickly after Saturday’s explosive execution of Shiite political dissident Nimr al-Nimr to shape how the news is covered in the United States.

      The execution led protestors in Shiite-run Iran to set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, precipitating a major diplomatic crisis between the two major powers already fighting proxy wars across the Middle East.

      The Saudi side of the story is getting a particularly effective boost in the American media through pundits who are quoted justifying the execution, in many cases without mention of their funding or close affiliation with the Saudi Arabian government.

      Meanwhile, social media accounts affiliated with Saudi Arabia’s American lobbyists have pushed English-language infographics, tweets, and online videos to promote a narrative that reflects the interests of the Saudi regime.

    • Saudi Arabia Has Little to Worry About – No State Has the Moral Authority or Will to Attack This Butchery

      When Saudi Arabia was elected to the UN Human Rights Council in 2013 – with Dave Cameron’s help – we all regarded it as farce. Now, only hours after the Sunni Muslim Saudis chopped off the heads of 47 of their enemies – including a prominent Shia Muslim cleric – the Saudi appointment is grotesque. Of course, the world of human rights is appalled – and Shia Iran is talking of the “divine punishment” that will destroy the House of Saud. Crowds attack the Saudi embassy in Tehran. So what’s new?

    • Britain Has Sold £5.6 Billion Of Arms To Saudi Arabia Since David Cameron Came To Power

      David Cameron’s governments have overseen the sale of over £5.6 billion of military licences to Saudi Arabia since 2010, according to new research published by Campaign Against Arms Trade.

      The kingdom is by far the largest buyer of arms from the UK, and the UK is the largest military supplier in the world to the Saudis, selling them equipment including night sights, fighter jets, bomb components, machine guns, and tear gas. Some of these weapons have been used by the Saudi-led coalition in bombing raids in Yemen that have raised war crime concerns.

    • Riyadh’s Sectarian Move: Executing Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr
    • The cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran that’s tearing apart the Middle East, explained

      Only a few days into the new year, the Middle East has already taken a significant turn for the worse. The region’s greatest rivalry, between Saudi Arabia and Iran, has become rapidly and significantly more toxic in the past few days, and it could have repercussions across the Middle East.

      On Saturday, protesters in Tehran attacked the Saudi embassy, ransacking and burning it as Iran ignored or refused Saudi requests to protect the building. Saudi Arabia formally broke off diplomatic relations with Iran on Sunday, on Monday saying it would cut commercial ties and ban Saudi travel to Iran as well. Sudan and Bahrain, both Saudi allies, severed ties as well.

    • Fresh Concerns for Saudi Juveniles After Mass Execution

      Three Saudi juveniles remain at grave risk of execution, international human rights NGO Reprieve has warned, as fresh details emerged of the cases of several young protestors who were executed on Saturday.

      Ali Saeed al-Rebh and Mohammad Faisal al-Shioukh, two protestors who were teenagers when they were arrested in 2012, were among 47 prisoners executed across Saudi Arabia on Saturday (2nd). They were killed alongside a third young man, Mohammad Suweimal, and the prominent activist Sheikh Nimr.

    • Saudi Executions, Weapons and Influence

      He criticized U.S. political figures across the political spectrum for not meaningfully challenging Saudi Arabia and argued that money from Saudi Arabia and wealthy individuals from there had purchased influence in U.S. institutions including the Clinton Foundation. In contrast, the new leader of Labor in the UK has seriously challenged that country’s support for the Saudi regime, see: “Corbyn’s honourable record on Saudi Arabia puts Cameron to shame.” Also, see from the British Independent: Exclusive: UK Government urged to reveal its role in getting Saudi Arabia onto UN Human Rights Council.”

    • US ‘Regime Change’ Madness in the Middle East

      Seymour Hersh’s recent revelations about an effort by the US military leadership in 2013 to bolster the Syrian army against jihadist forces in Syria shed important new light on the internal bureaucratic politics surrounding regime change in US Middle East policy. Hersh’s account makes it clear that the Obama administration’s policy of regime change in both Libya and Syria provoked pushback from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

      That account and another report on a similar episode in 2011 suggest that the US military has a range of means by which it can oppose administration policies that it regards as unacceptable. But it also shows that the military leadership failed to alter the course of US policy, and raises the question whether it was willing to use all the means available to stop the funnelling of arms to al-Nusra Front and other extremist groups in Syria.

    • FBI Closes Out 2015 With Another Questionable Terrorism Bust

      The mental hygiene arrests suggest Lutchman could be a dangerous person — not because of his allegiance to ISIL — but in general. Mental hygiene arrests occur when a person is considered to be a danger to themselves or others. He may have been a threat, thanks to his mental issues, but a terrorist? Certainly, the mental instability could have made Lutchman much more susceptible to outside suggestions that he commit violence, but his arrest record suggests Lutchman didn’t have the mental (and, apparently, financial) capacity to provide much “support” for the Islamic State’s violent aims.

    • Saudi Arabia Mass Executions Include Shiite Cleric, Iranian Protesters Attack Saudi Embassy, Sparking Regional Dispute
    • Saudi Mass Executions Provoke Region-Wide Escalation
    • Everything You Need to Know About the Iran-Saudi Arabia Crisis
    • Israeli Youth Lightly Wounded by Police Bullet in Aborted Jerusalem Stabbing Attempt

      One of the policemen shoved the would-be assailant. Another shot him, hitting him in the leg. The police chased him, shooting him in the legs again.

      None of the police officers were hurt in the incident, but the teenage girl was hit by what the police believe to be ricocheting bullet fragments.

    • Ecological Meltdown And Nuclear Conflict: The Relevance Of Gandhi In The Modern World

      A few months ago, entrepreneur Charles Devenish contacted me to tell me about his plans to develop various mining enterprises across India. He spoke about the massive amounts of untapped mineral resources lying beneath India that is just lying there and has been for a long time. What he thought I might find appealing were his plans for how small-scale mining could dovetail with a model of agriculture aimed at restoring Indian soils, which have been seriously degraded by decades of ‘green revolution’ chemical poisoning, and a rolling back of the increasing and harmful corporate control of farming.

      Devenish wants to set up co-operative mining enterprises in rural areas that would involve local farmers, who would then have a say and a stake in these local mines (see this report). The farmers would also benefit from the profits that would supplement their farming income and also be funnelled into investment in research and knowledge, which would enable them to restore their soils and move towards organic agriculture that would be in harmony with the local ecology.

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Singaporean smog and Indonesian fires
    • Thinking beyond the Age of Fire

      In December, in an unprecedented demonstration of international unity, 195 countries adopted the first-ever, universal, legally-binding agreement to take action on climate change.

      [...]

      Humans cannot go back to the beginning and start again, but if they had to, Walt Patterson’s new book would be as fundamental a guide to the challenges as any.

    • The Question isn’t of Saving the World via Renewables but of how Much can be Saved

      Humanity is not abandoning fossil fuels fast enough to avoid some massive changes to our world’s climate, with all the implications that change has for sea level, coastal erosion, extreme weather, and desertification and drought. There have been impressive advances in adoption of solar and wind technology in 2015, but compared to the crisis, it is not nearly enough. I say this not to provoke despair but simply to underline that the crisis can be bad, or worse, or the absolute worst. We get to decide for future generations the kind of world they will live in.

    • The Feds Just Sued Volkswagen Over Its Emissions Scandal
    • ‘Unlawful Pollution’: Volkswagen Charged With Crimes Against Climate
    • United States Files Complaint Against Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche for Alleged Clean Air Act Violations

      The U.S. Department of Justice, on behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, today filed a civil complaint in federal court in Detroit, Michigan against Volkswagen AG, Audi AG, Volkswagen Group of America, Inc., Volkswagen Group of America Chattanooga Operations, LLC, Porsche AG, and Porsche Cars North America, Inc. (collectively referred to as Volkswagen). The complaint alleges that nearly 600,000 diesel engine vehicles had illegal defeat devices installed that impair their emission control systems and cause emissions to exceed EPA’s standards, resulting in harmful air pollution. The complaint further alleges that Volkswagen violated the Clean Air Act by selling, introducing into commerce, or importing into the United States motor vehicles that are designed differently from what Volkswagen had stated in applications for certification to EPA and the California Air Resources Board (CARB).

    • Volkswagen Cheated On Its Emissions Tests. Now, It’s Getting Sued.

      The lawsuit, filed Monday by the U.S. Department of Justice, alleges that Volkswagen violated the Clean Air Act by finding ways to evade emissions standards on hundreds of thousands of its vehicles. It comes about four months after news of the emissions cheating scandal first broke in September.

    • Climate Change Is Taking A Toll On Farmers’ Mental Health

      The success or failure of a farming operation depends hugely on the vagaries of weather and climate. For a farmer, a single intense rain event or prolonged dry period can mean a year of lost crops and income.

    • China Isn’t Approving Any New Coal Mines For The Next 3 Years

      China, the largest coal producer in the world, won’t be approving new mines for the next three years as it grapples with alarming pollution and pursues other energy sources, including nuclear plants.

      The country announced the move last week, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. This ban on new mines is unprecedented, published reports note, though mines have been closed in the past and will continue to be shut down in the coming year.

    • Outdoor Burn Ban Lifted for Western Washington Tribal Reservations on January 4th (WA)

      EPA requests that reservation residents reduce all sources of air pollution as much as possible, including excess driving and idling of vehicles, and the use of woodstoves and fireplaces, unless they are the only adequate source of heat.

  • Finance

    • US Department Of Agriculture TAFTA/TTIP Study: Small Gains For US, Losses For EU

      As we are constantly reminded by its supporters, the TAFTA/TTIP agreement currently being negotiated between the US and the EU is huge: together, the two regions account for around half of global GDP. Given that scale, and the impact that TTIP is likely to have on both the US and EU, you might expect there would be dozens of detailed studies looking at the likely effects — and whether, on balance, it would be a good idea. And yet such studies are very thin on the ground.

    • Even in expensive cities, the sharing economy may just have its limits

      I’ve never been a fan of the “sharing economy”. Not that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with Uber, Airbnb and their peers, it’s just that there doesn’t really seem to be much “sharing” going on. It’s more like adding a technological middleman to a rental market.

      Now having shaken up the taxi and hotel market, the sharing economy has its eyes on a new market: housing for the digital workforce. This time it may have gone too far.

      Leading the charge is WeWork, a company that has turned the yawn-inducing business of leasing office space into a $10bn valuation by trendifying the office experience and attracting like-minded businesses to “share” its spaces. Sounds so much better than a lease, right? (Full disclosure: the Guardian’s New York office is in a WeWork building).

      The strategy has paid off for the startup real estate company. It is now bigger than all but the three largest publicly traded office management firms, if only in terms of the value its investors place on it: it manages only a fraction of the number of square feet of office space.

    • Why Small Debts Matter So Much To Black Lives

      If you are black, you’re far more likely to see your electricity cut, more likely to be sued over a debt, and more likely to land in jail because of a parking ticket.

      It is not unreasonable to attribute these perils to discrimination. But there’s no question that the main reason small financial problems can have such a disproportionate effect on black families is that, for largely historical reasons rooted in racism, they have far smaller financial reserves to fall back on than white families.

    • University President Explains Why His School Doesn’t Have Football

      “At Drexel we recognize the benefits of sports but are not burdened by the distractions that come with maintaining a football program,” Fry wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal on Sunday. “Drexel hasn’t fielded a team since 1973 when administrators realized its budget burden.”

    • Bernie Sanders vs. the Corporatocracy

      We are no longer a nation of self-governing people. Our democracy has been captured by American corporate enterprise, and now we confront a documented plutocracy in its place. If we intend to challenge this and contest it, we will need a President Sanders in the White House.

    • Sanders Breaks Fundraising Records as His Contest with Clinton Heats Up

      Sanders raised more than $33 million in the last three months of the year, bringing his 2015 total to $73 million “from more than 1 million individuals who made a record 2.5 million donations,” the campaign said in a release. “The 2,513,665 donations to Sanders’ campaign broke the record set four years ago by President Barack Obama’s re-election committee. Through Dec. 31, 2011, Obama chalked up 2,209,636 donations.”

    • The GOP and the Myth of Capitalism

      However, along with the other pretty banners behind which political candidates hide their true nefarious intentions, the word capitalism bears no relation to reality in how it governs the behavior of those who claim allegiance to it. The billionaire bankers certainly were not restrained by sacred free market principles when they accepted billions in government bailout money, and allegiance to capitalism doesn’t deter fat cat sports team owners from accepting public welfare to build new stadiums. Furthermore, adherence to laissez-faire philosophy never has amounted to much with the elected advocates of big business. From its inception that Grand Old Party that serves as the sword and shield of the rich has incorporated policies based upon those same insidious, destructive socialist ideas they decry in Bernie Sanders. Strangely enough, when and where they have done this the result has been prosperity for millions; not necessarily for billionaires but for the masses.

    • Did Minimum Wage Increases Hurt Employment During the Great Recession?

      Here’s the problem: as near as I can tell, the world is awash in minimum wage studies. With no disrespect intended toward Clemens—whose conclusions sound reasonable—a single study just isn’t that meaningful these days.

    • Paul Krugman: How Bad America Could Get If a 1%-Loving Republican Won in 2016

      Paul Krugman now has some official numbers on his side to make the case that having Obama in the White House instead of Mitt Romney has made a serious difference to the country. In Monday’s column, Krugman looks at the IRS’s tax tables for 2013, which were released last week, and concludes that elections have real consequences. His argument is directed to people on the left, who are disappointed with Obama and argue that there is no major difference between the two parties (except Bernie Sanders) and that the wealthy will always dominate.

    • Glenn Reynolds: Chicago sings blue-model blues

      For starters, look at Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago. Rahm Emanuel, a major inner-circle supporter of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, is not a stupid man. Nonetheless, he’s finding it harder and harder to hold things together.

    • Three Middle-Class-Killing Industries for 2016

      Capitalist enterprises have little incentive to work for ordinary people, and instead they do whatever is necessary to enrich the owners of their corporate stock. Choosing the leading job-killing industry is a difficult task with so many candidates. But technology, pharmaceuticals, and the “sharing economy” are clearly in the running.

      The companies in the spotlight are specialists in the disdainful business practices that permeate their industries.

    • IRS Identity Fraud Prevention Specialist Arrested For Identity Fraud, Filing Fraudulent Tax Returns

      In late spring of last year, more than 100,000 taxpayers had their personally-identifiable information accessed by criminals. It wasn’t a security breach, nor was it accomplished by “hacking.” Instead, it was the result of the IRS using common static identifiers to verify accounts — information that could easily be found elsewhere. These were deployed to access transcripts of taxpayers’ filing histories. The transcripts gave criminals the information they were actually seeking: Social Security numbers, birth dates and current addresses.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • WaPo: GOP Presidential Candidates Who Are Silent Over Oregon Standoff Previously Praised Cliven Bundy’s Cause

      The Washington Post highlighted how Republican presidential candidates “are staying mum as an armed group has taken over part” of the Malheur National Wildlife Headquarters in Oregon, even those candidates who previously championed the same cause as the protesters by criticizing federal land ownership.

    • Trump’s First TV Ad Embraces His Most Controversial Ideas
    • Donald Trump’s Border Ad Shows Chaotic Morocco, Not Boring America
    • MSNBC Points Out That Trump’s Misleading TV Ad Uses Morocco Border Images Instead Of US Southern Border
    • This Anti-Immigrant TV Ad Is Hitting The Airwaves This Week, Courtesy Of Donald Trump

      Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s first television ad relies on the same anti-immigrant sentiment that has characterized his positions on the campaign trail. In the ad, Trump promises to “make America great again” by banning Muslim immigration and building a southern U.S. border wall that he assures that Mexico will pay for.

      “He’s calling for a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until we can figure out what’s going on,” a narrator states in the television spot. “He’ll quickly cut the head off ISIS and take their oil. And he’ll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on the southern border that Mexico will pay for.”

    • Donald Trump Puts His Ridiculous Campaign Promises in TV Ad Form

      Donald Trump, who is currently leading the GOP primary field by an average of a little more than 15 points,* released his first TV ad this morning, after previewing it to The Washington Post yesterday. The tone of the ad is aggressively doomy and gloomy, with darkened images of masked men carrying the ISIS flag and grainy shots of what are supposed to look like crowds of immigrants, presumably streaking across the U.S. border. At the end, there’s a shot of Trump himself, standing at a rally, declaring his intention to “make America great again.”

    • Why Sanders Will Not be the Democratic Nominee, No Matter What Happens in the Primaries

      If you think Bernie Sanders will be the Democratic nominee for President in 2016, you’re out of your mind.

      There is no way the Democratic Party will allow that to happen, for two main reasons.

      First, this is Hillary’s turn to be the nominee. And although that’s pretty distasteful for many of Bernie’ supporters, it’s the truth and has been decided by people who actually matter in the party’s hierarchy (read: not you).

      Second, it is simply impossible that a neoliberal, right-wing political party like the Democrats in a country with a nominally right-leaning electorate will allow their standard bearer to be a self-described socialist.

    • All they want to do is screw over the president: Ryan, McConnell confirm they have no real agenda in ’16 besides blocking Obama

      Since President Obama took office, Congressional Republicans have made it their business to obstruct everything he does. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said it best in 2012: “Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.”

      And that’s how they’ve governed in the Obama era. Like political arsonists, they’ve pursued no real positive agenda, choosing instead to undermine the president and stage symbolic protest votes to appease a disillusioned base. This is a big reason why something like 13 percent of the country approves of the job Congress is doing.

      For a brief moment, when Paul Ryan was elected Speaker of the House, there was hope that things might change, if only a little. Although Ryan is hardly a moderate, he is nonetheless a serious legislator. His victory, one hoped, was a sign that House Republicans finally saw the light, finally realized that obstructionism wasn’t a viable governing philosophy.

  • Censorship

    • Denmark: Facebook blocks Little Mermaid over ‘bare skin’
    • Facebook censors Little Mermaid photo for nakedness and sexual suggestiveness
    • Facebook reverses Little Mermaid censorship
    • Unless a film can cause a riot, there should be no censorship: Shyam Benegal

      Artistic and cultural freedom was at the centre of a heated political debate throughout 2015. And the Censor Board was under the scanner in many controversies, thanks to a chairman with clear political leanings enforcing a range of arbitrary bans.

    • Pakistani Censorship ‘Runs Counter’ to Times Values
    • 14 Years of Censored News Coverage Denies Americans Context to Understand ISIL Attacks

      Fourteen years ago, after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the United States government initiated its “war on terror,” with the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001, which expanded into Pakistan, and of Iraq in 2003. The conventional methodology of American politics emphasizes American financial, strategic, and human costs. Since then, the corporate media has occasionally acknowledged the 6,800 American soldiers, and the 7,000 contractors who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, corporate media and the American government have consistently ignored Iraqi and Afghani deaths, which exceed one million. Without acknowledging this modern “reign of terror,” the western public has no context to understand the current attacks lead by the Islamic State in Syria and Levant (ISIL).

    • The Significance of Miscegenation: Israel Bans Arab-Jewish Romance Novel Because We Can’t Have Both Sides Loving Each Other Now Can We?

      The Education Ministry of Israel – you know, the People of the Book – has banned an award-winning young adult novel of love between an Israeli translator and a Palestinian artist because it “threatens the separate identity” of Jews. Explaining their disqualification of Dorit Rabinyan’s “Gader Haya” (published in Hebrew as “Hedgerow,” but “Borderlife” in English), officials cited the need to maintain “the identity and the heritage of students in every sector,” worrying that “young people of adolescent age don’t have the systemic view that includes considerations involving maintaining the national-ethnic identity of the people and the significance of miscegenation.” Ministry officials, including one who’s boasted he’s “killed lots of Arabs in my life and (has) no problem with it,” argued that young readers don’t have “the full tools to weigh the decisions” of inter-racial love – Translation: “They’re not quite sure yet who to hate” – and that “many parents… would strongly object to having their children study the novel” – Translation: “They’re racist, too, so let’s go with it.” The book was recommended for advanced curricula by the literature head of secular state schools and a committee of academics, and had been requested by multiple teachers.

    • ‘Censorship is nonsensical’

      Singaporean film director Tan Pin Pin withdrew her film from a festival celebrating Singapore-Malaysia ties this month after Malaysia’s Film Censorship Board insisted that a scene be amended as it was a “security threat”.

      The director of Singapore GaGa said the board wanted a scene where a character says “binatang-binatang” (Malay for animals) to be removed from the film, liberal news portal Malaysian Insider reported.

    • Tan Pin Pin pulls documentary Singapore GaGa from Malaysia festival after censors demand cut

      It was the first made-in-Singapore documentary to get a theatrical release here and has been shown in festivals around the world.

    • Where Has the Media Been? How Campus Censorship Never Went Away

  • Privacy

    • WeeChat – WeeChat Relay and Let’s Encrypt

      I decided to enable the WeeChat Relay plugin. Until now, I only used the ZNC IRC bouncer because it allows me to use any standalone IRC client. Now, I also want to have acces to weechat-android and Glowing-bear so I enabled the Relay plugin.

    • A Redaction Re-Visited: NSA Targeted “The Two Leading” Encryption Chips

      On September 5, 2013, The Guardian, The New York Times and ProPublica jointly reported – based on documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden – that the National Security Agency (NSA) had compromised some of the encryption that is most commonly used to secure internet transactions. The NYT explained that NSA “has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world.” One 2010 memo described that “for the past decade, NSA has led an aggressive, multipronged effort to break widely used Internet encryption technologies.”

      In support of the reporting, all three papers published redacted portions of documents from the NSA along with its British counterpart, GCHQ. Prior to publication of the story, the NSA vehemently argued that any reporting of any kind on this program would jeopardize national security by alerting terrorists to the fact that encryption products had been successfully compromised. After the stories were published, U.S. officials aggressively attacked the newspapers for endangering national security and helping terrorists with these revelations.

      All three newspapers reporting this story rejected those arguments prior to publication and decided to report the encryption-cracking successes. Then-NYT Executive Editor Jill Abramson described the decision to publish as “not a particularly anguished one” in light of the public interest in knowing about this program, and ProPublica editors published a lengthy explanation along with the story justifying their decision.

    • House Intelligence Committee Orders Investigation Into Surveillance Of Congress That It Authorized

      So, yes, it was just revealed that, of course, the NSA spied on Congress as it was intercepting phone calls of foreign leaders, leading to hypocritical bloviating from folks in Congress who regularly support the NSA.

    • Government Officials Think NSA Spying That ‘Incidentally’ Swept Up Congressional Phone Calls Still Not Enough Spying

      The Wall Street Journal’s recent revelation that the NSA swept up Congress members’ communications in a dragnet, which had been assumed to have shut down, has provoked a variety of reactions from Capitol Hill. Some Congress members have angrily expressed their displeasure at being spied on like so many citizens of so many nations (including ours).

  • Civil Rights

    • Migrant crisis: Sweden border checks come into force

      Sweden has introduced identity checks for travellers from Denmark in an attempt to reduce the number of migrants arriving in the country.

      All travellers wanting to cross the Oresund bridge by train or bus, or use ferry services, will be refused entry without the necessary documents.

    • The Latest: Sudanese man who walked the Channel Tunnel to England granted asylum

      A Sudanese man who was arrested after walking through the 31-mile (50-kilometer) Channel Tunnel from France to England has been granted asylum in Britain.

      Police detained Abdul Rahman Haroun in August near the British end of the tunnel at Folkestone in southeastern England. He was charged with “obstructing a railway carriage or engine” under the Malicious Damage Act.

    • When He Was 16, This Man Threw One Punch—and Went to Jail for Life

      One was Louisiana, where Taurus exemplified how mandatory sentencing could render a defendant’s youth meaningless. Once he was charged with second-degree murder, Taurus was automatically tried as an adult because he was over the age of 14. If convicted, he would automatically be sentenced to life without parole.

    • Undercover Cop Disgracefully Tricks Autistic Student into Selling Weed, Court Denies Family Justice

      Riverside County, CA — Simply put, the War on Drugs is a war on people. One of the more despicable ways in which it manifests is the manipulation of vulnerable school kids by undercover cops. These “drug stings,” better known as entrapment, typically prey on special needs students who have a hard time making friends.

    • How We Found the People Who Were Sent to Prison for Life as Kids

      From May to October of 2015, the Phillips Black Project collected information about people sentenced to life without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles. Using this data, we recently issued a report concluding that juvenile life-without-parole sentences are clustered in a handful of counties, and that these sentences are disproportionately handed to people of color.

    • 3 Anger-Inducing Charts About Kids and Prison
    • A Man Slaughtered And Burned 3 Of His Neighbor’s Dogs. Now The Police Are Coming To His Defense.

      The release references the Indiana criminal code regarding the killing of domestic animals. Under Indiana law, it is legal to kill a domestic animal if someone “reasonably believes” that killing the animal is necessary to “protect the property of the accused person from destruction or substantial damage.”

    • Edward Herman and Willy Nyamitwe

      Edward Herman is professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania; he writes about politics and media, and is best known as the co-author (with Noam Chomsky) of “Manufacturing Consent.”

    • It’s official: There never was a ‘war on cops’

      This year will go down in the record books as one of the safest for police officers in recorded history, according to data released this week from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. There were 42 fatal shootings of police officers in 2015, down 14 percent from 2014, according to the organization.

    • Washington Post’s Christopher Ingraham: 2015 Data Contradicts Right-Wing Media’s “War On Cops” Myth
    • Erdoğan loses the game show
    • Turkish Pres. Erdogan cites Hitler in case for Presidential System

      Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday cited Hitler in support of his contention that a presidential system can coexist with a “unitary state,” i.e., with a non-federal government. The United States has a presidential system, but the presidency’s powers are limited because it is a federal system with enormous rights and prerogatives retained by the state. I suppose the context is that people are arguing to Erdogan that if he takes Turkey into a presidential system, it could break up the country because there would be regionalist responses to this concentration of power. He was trying to deflect this critique, and what his mind happened on was the example of fascist Germany!

    • Erdogan and Hitler
    • Saudi Arabia’s Mad Head-Choppers

      Saudi Arabia’s binge of head-choppings – 47 in all, including the learned Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, followed by a Koranic justification for the executions – was worthy of Isis. Perhaps that was the point. For this extraordinary bloodbath in the land of the Sunni Muslim al-Saud monarchy – clearly intended to infuriate the Iranians and the entire Shia world – re-sectarianised a religious conflict which Isis has itself done so much to promote.

    • Beheadings
    • Chicago Needs More Tasing

      The impetus for the change is a series of fatal shootings by cops. One of the most infamous involved 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was carrying a pocketknife and walking away from police when Officer Jason Van Dyke shot him 16 times. The other officers at the scene had called for a Taser and were waiting for it to arrive.

    • The War on Women Is About to Get a Whole Lot Worse

      Between the shooting deaths of three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood, the Supreme Court’s decision to hear its first abortion-related case in nine years, and the more than 50 new abortion restriction laws enacted by state governments, abortion access was one of the most important issues of 2015. With presidential politics and ongoing legal challenges in the states, abortion rights will continue to be under fire in 2016.

      “Last year’s big events, like the Planned Parenthood videos and the Supreme Court case, have actually ginned up even more interest in restricting abortion,” Elizabeth Nash, a senior state issues associate at the Guttmacher Institute, tells Mother Jones. “If it was possible, they’ve actually added more energy to decreasing abortion access.”

      And that is despite the fact that even-numbered years are generally slow when it comes to legislative pushes—elections cut off the legislature calendars, and general assemblies in many states don’t even meet. But Nash says next year will be different.

    • Saudi Arabia’s reckless regime

      SAUDI ARABIA’S King Salman has dedicated his first year on the throne to bold and sometimes reckless moves to shore up the royal family’s power both at home and abroad. Now he has taken a step that was as risky and ruthless as it was unjustified: the execution of a leading Shiite cleric who had spoken out for the kingdom’s repressed minority sect. It was an act that appears bound — and maybe was intended — to further inflame conflict between Shiites and Sunnis across the Middle East.

    • Fox Promotes Conspiracy Theorist Who Threatened Sexual Violence Against Hillary Clinton As Militia Spokesperson
    • Fox News Contributor Defends Armed Occupation Of Government Building By Militants

      On Saturday, a group of heavily armed anti-government militia members, including three members of the notorious Bundy family, seized a government building in Oregon. They are still occupying the building and say they are prepared to stay “for years.”

      But according to Fox News Contributor Deneen Borelli, any criticism of these actions is the result of dishonesty by the “the left-wing media.” During the segment, which aired Monday morning, the chyron on Fox News was “DEBATE SPARKED OVER WHETHER MILITIA IS TERRORIST GROUP OR PATRIOTIC.”

    • Ballots Not Bullets Coalition Calls for Laws to Be Enforced in Oregon Standoff

      The Ballots Not Bullets Coalition, a group of organizations from across the country concerned by the increasing use of violence—and threats of violence—to affect public policy in the United States, is deeply concerned about the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and other heavily armed anti-government radicals. In response, the Coalition is calling on federal authorities to enforce the laws and hold the occupiers accountable for their criminal actions.

    • What’s Happening in Oregon Is Nothing Less Than Armed Sedition

      And, in related news, of course, Tamir Rice is still dead.

    • How the Leader of the Oregon Armed Protest Benefited From a Federal Loan Program
    • Meet The Child-Abusing Arsonists That Inspired The Oregon Militia Standoff
    • The Absurdly Harsh Penalties That Sparked the Oregon Rancher Protest

      As Ed Krayewski noted yesterday, the armed men who are occupying an office building at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon broke off from a demonstration protesting the sentences received by two ranchers, 73-year-old Dwight Hammond and his 46-year-old son Steven, who in 2001 and 2006 set fires on their own property that spread to public land. In addition to the long-running conflict between ranchers and the federal government over control of land in the West, the case illustrates the practical impossibility of challenging harsh mandatory minimum sentences as violations of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishments.”

    • Militants continue occupation of Oregon refuge, police keep low profile

      Law enforcement agencies are remaining mum about plans to end militiamen’s occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters.

      A splinter group of militia in town to support a local ranching family took over the federal office Saturday afternoon in a development that stunned the community and visiting militia.

    • Tennessee Lawmaker Wants To Support Armed Militia Occupying Federal Building

      Tennessee state Rep. Andy Holt (R) tweeted on Sunday evening asking how to “send support” for an armed militia occupying a federal facility in Oregon.

    • D.M. officer fires gun while practicing ‘quick draw’

      Officer Brady Pratt, 23, was inside an office at the airport Wednesday around 4 p.m. when he drew his gun from his holster to practice “his quick draw skills,” according to a police report. Pratt, who joined the force in 2013, “unknowingly” had his finger on the trigger and fired a round from the gun, the report states.

    • Rightwing Terrorism on Display as Militants in Oregon Beckon Reinforcements

      Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said the FBI has been monitoring the situation and is in “close coordination” with the state police and the Harney County Sheriff’s Office.

    • Why Aren’t We Calling the Oregon Occupiers ‘Terrorists’?

      The sometimes-coded but increasingly overt ways that some Americans are presumed guilty and violence-prone while others are assumed to be principled and peaceable unless and until provoked — even when actually armed — is remarkable.

    • Inside The Backwards Ideology Driving The Right-Wing Militiamen Who Captured A Federal Building

      Two interlocking issues drove what appears to be slightly more than a dozen armed men to seize control of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service building in Oregon on Saturday evening. The first was the incarceration, release and eventual reincarceration of two men convicted of arson by a federal court. The second is a much broader dispute over whether ranchers are free to encroach upon federal lands without interference by the federal government itself.

    • Cops: Too Crazy to be Trusted With Guns

      We’re not supposed to question juries. They’re our peers. They put in long hours, working hard essentially for free. Most of all, they see all the evidence. We don’t. We have to assume that they know what they’re doing.

      Sometimes, however, a jury verdict relies on so many false assumptions, baseless assignments of privilege and twisted logic that you have to call it out. The decision of a Cleveland grand jury not to indict the cop who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice to death is one such time.

    • Should Used Tea Leaves Give Probable Cause for Drug Raids?

      Former CIA employees Robert and Adlynn Harte, along with their 7- and 13-year-old children, were held at gunpoint by sheriff’s deputies for several hours as a search for drugs was conducted in their home. The probable cause that led to the raid? A visit to a hydroponics store for a horticultural project and wet tea leaves in the family’s garbage bin.

    • Venice tenants complained to the city, then wished they hadn’t

      Worried that their new landlord was trying to turn their Venice apartment building into a kind of illegal hotel, Phyllis Murphy and her neighbors wrote a letter to city officials.

      The residents complained that some of the units were being rented out to tourists for short stays, bringing a revolving door of strangers into the complex on a tranquil stretch of Third Avenue. Murphy said her landlord once asked her, not-so-subtly, what it would take to get her out of the building.

      The landlord denies saying that. He also said that a tenant, not he, was responsible for the rentals. But the city housing department nonetheless ordered him to make sure they came to a halt.

    • The Origins of Totalitarianism Part 3: Superfluous Capital and Superfluous People

      The driving force of imperialism the search for profits, The people pushing it were the bourgeoisie, the principal capitalists. Until the 1870s, the bourgeoisie were content to leave politics to others, and focus on manufacturing and infrastructure in the home country. Politicians were generally wary of the push into foreign countries.

      Beginning in the 1870s as the money invested in foreign lands increased, the risks to the bourgeoisie and their money increased, as nations expropriated their assets or refused to cooperate, or threw them out. The bourgeoisie liked the enormous profits of these investments, but were not interested in taking the risks. They demanded that the nation-state provide the armed forces necessary to protect their profits, and the nation-states complied. Arendt says that this demand for intervention was its assertion of control of the government. She dates the Imperialist period to 1889-1914.

      The goal of imperialism was neither assimilation nor integration.

    • Welcome to Cop Land

      Beyond the storm of commentary and criticism, however, quite a different reality presents itself. In the simplest terms, there is no war on the police. Violent attacks against police officers remain at historic lows, even though approximately 1,000 people have been killed by the police this year nationwide. In just the past few weeks, videos have been released of problematic fatal police shootings in San Francisco and Chicago.

    • FBI data show assaults on police officers dropped sharply in 2014

      The FBI recently released its data on assaults on police officers in 2014. The good news is that reported assaults are down sharply. Unarmed and assaults with guns both dropped, while assaults with knives and edged weapons went up slightly. But overall, as this chart tweeted by University of South Carolina law professor Seth Stoughton shows, assaults on cops are at their lowest point since 1996 and have been dropping consistently since 2008.

    • The Dividing Lines of Race, Ethnicity and Religion

      What do you think the response would be if a bunch of black people, filled with rage and armed to the teeth, took over a federal government installation and defied officials to kick them out? I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be wait-and-see.

      Probably more like point-and-shoot.

      Or what if the occupiers were Mexican-American? They wouldn’t be described with the semi-legitimizing term “militia,” harking to the days of the patriots. And if the gun-toting citizens happened to be Muslim, heaven forbid, there would be wall-to-wall cable news coverage of the “terrorist assault.” I can hear Donald Trump braying for blood.

    • America’s Real Racial Double Standard: How the Law (and White People) Turn “Race-Neutral” Into “Pro-White”

      In 2011, high school senior Taylor Bell, a local rapper in Itawamba County, Mississippi, made a song in support of several female classmates who claimed they had been inappropriately touched and subjected to harassing comments by two male coaches. In Bell’s song, he rapped: “Looking down girls’ shirts / drool running down your mouth / Going to get a pistol down your mouth.” For these remarks, school officials accused Bell of harassment and intimidation. He was suspended and sent to another school. In the next few weeks, the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear the case of Bell v. Itawamba County School Board.

    • If the Oregon Militiamen Were Muslim or Black, They’d Probably Be Dead By Now

      Extremism comes in different colors, ethnicities, beards and head coverings – which is why racial profiling cannot protect us from all extremist violence.

    • How Media Turned Right-Wing ‘Willing to Kill’ Extremists Into Peaceful ‘Rancher’s Rights Protesters’

      AP published a more detailed follow-up piece on the night of January 3 with the ambiguous, contextless headline, “Oregon Standoff Latest in Dispute Over Western Lands.” This article did point out in the opening line that the right-wing occupiers are armed and motivated by “anti-government sentiment.”

      [...]

      NBC (1/3/16) characterized the militants as “rancher’s rights protesters.” It headlined its report on the story “Ammon Bundy, Rancher’s Rights Protesters Occupy Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.”

      [...]

      The infamous “terrorism” double standard was sometimes remarked upon in corporate media itself. The Washington Post (1/3/16) published an op-ed asking “Why Aren’t We calling the Oregon Occupiers ‘Terrorists?’” CNN (1/3/16) ran a more forceful opinion piece, “Face it, Oregon Building Takeover Is Terrorism.”

      Media double standards vis-à-vis far-right extremism are a commonplace by this point. The hands-off response of the government—which said it had no plans to deal with the armed occupation—is striking, if not unexpected; the response of the media even more so.

      As much as the right complains about the US media’s supposed “liberal bias,” news outlets were enormously euphemistic and gracious in their portrayal of the Oregon occupation. Such graciousness is not extended to other extremist groups.

    • Police Should Be Able to Accept Constructive Criticism

      Did last month’s mistrial of an officer charged in connection with the death of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore man who died of a severed spine while in police custody, reveal a paradox that limits the potential of achieving serious police reform through the legal process?

    • Here’s What Happened When Black People Tried Armed Occupation

      And 30 years ago, a similar standoff between police and a black anti-government group in Philadelphia played out very differently. Armed members of a fringe liberation group called MOVE were bombed and burned alive for directing their weapons at police. The bombing highlighted the stark contrast in the way cops treat black and white radicals.

    • The Bundy Militia Raid on Burns: What the Media Left Out
    • The Bundy Family’s Odd Mormon Connection, Explained

      Bundy’s family reportedly fasted and prayed for the “spirit of their forefathers to be with them” during the 2014 incident, and Bundy’s son, Ammon Bundy, articulated a similar vision to explain his involvement in the recent takeover in Oregon. In a video posted on January 1, Ammon — whose name is the same as a famous figure from the Book of Mormon — explained that it was God who called him to leave his home and campaign on behalf of the Hammond family in Oregon.

    • More Than 200,000 Petition for Release of Making a Murderer Star Steven Avery

      This wrongful rape conviction wasn’t the result of some vengeful ex or whatever else stereotypes might conjure. A wealth of evidence suggests Avery was failed by the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office’s single-minded commitment to proving and maintaining his guilt. By fall 2005, Avery was in the midst of a major lawsuit against Manitowoc County, with individual liability at stake for various local officials.

    • Cops getting away with murder: It’s a warped legal system and law enforcement culture that lets them do it

      It seems fitting that 2015 would end with yet another example of our justice system failing to hold police accountable for killing an unarmed African-American. The Tamir Rice case was especially poignant because the victim was only 12 years old. He was playing in the park with a toy gun — like millions of kids do all over the country. And the video that everyone saw with their own eyes showed that police rolled up and within seconds shot him dead. The prosecution and a grand jury decided they were justified in doing that for reasons that make little sense to rational people.

    • Death of man who was put in restraints at a D.C. hospital ruled a homicide

      The D.C. medical examiner’s office said Monday that McBride’s cause of death was “blunt force injuries” of the neck. It also said the injuries involved “cervical spinal cord transection” and “vertebral artery compression.” They did not offer a further explanation.

    • Preventing the return of Europe’s authoritarian right

      So now it’s Poland. For the last five years Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban has dismantled democratic checks and balances and declared the end of the liberal aspect of liberal democracy.

      The other EU member states and Brussels huffed and puffed, but did not want to take any serious action against the erosion of democracy.

    • Turkey’s religious body says engaged couples should not hold hands

      The Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), Turkey’s top religious body, has stated that engaged couples should not hold hands or spend time alone together during their engagement period.

      “In this period, it is not inconvenient for couples to meet and talk to get to know each other, if their privacy is considered. However, there could be undesired incidents with or without their families’ knowledge … such as flirting, cohabitating or being alone [with one another]. This encourages gossip and holding hands, which Islam does not allow,” the Diyanet said, responding to a public question.

      It urged couples to fulfil their engagement period “in line with Islamic norms,” encouraging couples not to have a religious marriage unless a civil marriage had been decided upon.

      The Diyanet – which is one of Turkey’s best funded state institutions, largely provided for by public taxation – has previously made headlines with controversial rulings on the usage of toilet paper and cleaning products containing alcohol.

    • The Good, the Sad and the Ugly

      The use of cattle chutes has been developed by our police since 9/11 and it now is a weapon in their arsenal used unabashedly to divide and control the population when there is some volatility in the air. Interestingly, the city of Philadelphia virtually shut the city down when Pope Francis was here recently. Many felt the control was way over the top. The most absurd use of metal cattle chutes is to create “first amendment zones” in an out of the way place where those in power won’t be bothered by discordant voices. But their use in something so humanly joyful as the Two Street Mummers Parade — something that’s about the interaction between performers and citizens — seems a particularly distasteful omen for Philadelphia’s future.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • IPv6 celebrates its 20th birthday by reaching 10 percent deployment

      Twenty years ago this month, RFC 1883 was published: Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification. So what’s an Internet Protocol, and what’s wrong with the previous five versions? And if version 6 is so great, why has it only been adopted by half a percent of the Internet’s users each year over the past two decades?

    • EFF Confirms: T-Mobile’s Binge On Optimization is Just Throttling, Applies Indiscriminately to All Video

      The first result of our test confirms that when Binge On is enabled, T-Mobile throttles all HTML5 video streams to around 1.5Mps, even when the phone is capable of downloading at higher speeds, and regardless of whether or not the video provider enrolled in Binge On. This is the case whether the video is being streamed or being downloaded—which means that T-Mobile is artificially reducing the download speeds of customers with Binge On enabled, even if they’re downloading the video to watch later. It also means that videos are being throttled even if they’re being watched or downloaded to another device via a tethered connection.

    • T-Mobile Is Flat Out Lying: It’s Throttling Video Even Though It Says It’s Not

      Big companies often have a way of tap dancing around the truth. It’s rarely lying, because they will choose their words carefully, in a manner that clearly misleads or distorts, but is not necessarily outright lying. T-Mobile, however, appears to be flat out lying. We recently wrote about the charges from YouTube that T-Mobile was throttling YouTube videos as part of its Binge On program that zero rates video on mobile phones so it doesn’t count against data caps. We noted the problems with this program when it launched, but YouTube’s claims take it even further.

    • Facebook’s ‘Free’ Internet Program Had a Rough Week

      Up to 3 million Egyptians lost their connection to the internet last week when Facebook’s Free Basics program was shut down on Wednesday. The reason for the shutdown of Facebook’s controversial Free Basics program, which launched in Egypt in October, is still not clear.

    • T-Mobile’s Binge On Indiscriminately Throttles All Video Content

      The more we learn about T-Mobile’s “Binge On” video streaming program, the more it seems to violate one of the basic tenets of the open internet: the idea that service providers shouldn’t have any control over what their connections are used to access.

      A new investigation by the Electronic Frontier Foundation has found that T-Mobile is throttling data speeds for videos from services that are not Binge On participants.

    • Everything You Need To Know About New Wi-Fi for the Internet of Things

      So far, the Wi-Fi Alliance is being pretty vague on the details about the new standard in terms of how much power it will consume, how far it will travel, and how much data it will be able to transfer (and how quickly). It does say that the new standard will use the 900 megahertz spectrum, which is currently unlicensed and used by microwave ovens, baby monitors and all sorts of other wireless devices. This means Wi-Fi will now work in three bands; the 2.4 GHz band, the 5 GHz band and the 900 MHz band.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • University Students Energise Global Campaign For Medical R&D Agreement

      UAEM, the international student organisation, has turned its attention to narrowing the gap in access to affordable medicines, especially those affecting developing countries, by calling for a new model for delinking the cost of R&D from prices of medical products.

    • Trademarks

      • ‘Le Journal d’Anne Frank’: sufficiently distinctive to be a trade mark, says OHIM Fourth Board of Appeal

        In a decision issued last summer that has so far escaped the IPKat’s attention, the Board overturned the earlier decision of the examiner and allowed designation of the European Union (EU) in respect of the international registration of the word mark ‘Le Journal d’Anne Frank’.

        The following analysis provided by IP enthusiast Nedim Malovic (Stockholm University) – also to be published as a Current Intelligence note for the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (Oxford University Press) – explains what happened.

    • Copyrights

      • And Of Course: Authors Guild Asks Supreme Court To Overturn Fair Use Ruling On Google Books
      • The Authors Guild files to take Google to the Supreme Court

        The Authors Guild has officially asked the Supreme Court to hear its case against Google — a long-running dispute over whether copyright law allows for Google to scan and post excerpts from books for its Google Books service. The group filed a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court Thursday.

      • Homeland Security Admits It Seized A Hip Hop Blog For Five Years Despite No Evidence Of Infringement; RIAA Celebrates

        Last month, we were actually the first publication to report that Homeland Security had very quietly “returned” two domains that it had “seized” five years ago based entirely on totally bullshit claims from the RIAA. We focused our story on the search engine torrent-finder, but also mentioned that it appeared that DHS had returned OnSmash.com as well. As we had noted, back when the domain was first seized, OnSmash was a popular hip hop blog that many in the industry purposely sent their music to, because it was great for marketing and publicity. In fact, Kanye West had been known to promote OnSmash himself. That doesn’t sound like a site “dedicated to infringement” as Homeland Security’s ICE division claimed in the affidavit used to seize the website.

      • Here We Go Again: All The Works That Should Now Be In The Public Domain, But Aren’t

        Each year, for the past few years, the wonderful Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University publishes a blog post highlighting key works that should have entered the public domain on January first, but did not. And each year, we write about it again. Here is the list for 2016. These are mostly works that were published in 1959. Under the law at the time they were created, the maximum copyright term was 56 years, and that apparently was more than enough of a bargain for the work to be created. That we retroactively extended those works, taking away the public domain for no actual benefit, remains a travesty. The list includes books like Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, William Burroughs’ The Naked Lunch, Richard Condon’s The Manchurian Candidate, and Strunk and White’s famed The Elements of Style. Films that should be in the public domain today include Ben-Hur, North by Northwest, and Some Like It Hot. The original season of the seminal Rocky and Bullwinkle show would also be in the public domain.

      • ‘Mein Kampf’ copyright expires

        “Mein Kampf”, the manifesto of Adolf Hitler, will be available to buy in Germany for the first time in 70 years after the book’s copyright expired.

      • Anne Frank’s Diary… And Hitler’s Mein Kampf Hit The Public Domain In Europe – Despite Concerns About Both

        Anne Frank and Adolf Hitler both died in 1945 — with Frank’s death being caused by Hitler. European law (for now) says that copyright lasts 70 years “after death” of an author, and that means that the published writings of each of those individuals are now in the public domain in Europe — though there’s serious controversy about both. Even though we won’t see any new public domain works here in the US for quite some time, over in Europe, at least some works are able to enter the public domain each January 1st.

      • Dropbox Scores Patent for Peer-to-Peer Syncing

        Dropbox has obtained a patent for peer-to-peer synchronization. The technology allows users to securely share files across different devices without uploading these to Dropbox’s centralized servers. According to the company this should improve download speeds while cryptographic keys ensure that there are no sync conflicts.

01.04.16

Shedding Light on the Secretive Mock Trial of Elizabeth Hardon and Others (EPO Union Busting)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The EPO’s management metaphorically sets up the firing line right now

“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words: it is war minus the shooting.”

–George Orwell

SUEPO reps

Summary: The despicable union-busting actions by the EPO’s management are advancing to their next stage while no journalists and probably not even EPO staff (having just returned from holiday) pay attention

FOR THOSE WHO do not know this yet, union busting at the European Patent Office (EPO) is now being dressed up as an "investigation", with harassment against staff representatives and incredible accusations (see this original J’accuse) that we wrote about before on numerous occasions. The first in the firing line is Elizabeth Hardon, possibly because of her popularity and exceptionally long service at the EPO (the higher the profile of the scapegoat, the greater the deterrence, as per decapitation strategy or decapitation strike). Elizabeth Hardon knows that this is unjust (a lot of guilt by association and personal attacks based on very old events) and we previously published her lawyers' response. We also shared other related documents to help convince our readers that Hardon is merely a scapegoat. The guilt by association is established (see the original J’accuse) by associating Hardon with another person who is likely innocent, whose only ‘offense’ as far as we can tell is that he anonymously (for his own protection) contacted delegates to warn them about serious abuse at the EPO’s management (a very just and defensible claim, based on very extensive and ever-broadening evidence).

“The first in the firing line is Elizabeth Hardon, possibly because of her popularity and exceptionally long service at the EPO (the higher the profile of the scapegoat, the greater the deterrence, as per decapitation strategy or decapitation strike).”I too have written to delegates. I wrote to them about the EPO's attacks on yours truly. Yes, the EPO isn’t just attacking inwards (e.g. staff representatives and judges) but also outwards. They’ve got some nerve! This is not consistent with European standards on anything. The EPO is now just a rogue entity, whose closest institutions (in terms of ethical parity) are probably entities like GCHQ or the CIA, with many notorious undercover operations. This is what we now have at the very heart of Europe, so everyone in Europe should be up in arms over it.

Several delegates from several countries have been in touch with yours truly, a European citizen. I attempted to explain to them the severity of the situation (impacting me personally but also others). One delegate said to me this morning, “I would like to assure you that we are currently paying increased attention to all the issues related to EPO governance. Your complaint has been forwarded to the Chairman of the AC EPO.”

“The problem isn’t SUEPO; the problem is the EPO’s management. Patent lawyers and inventors all agree on that. Unless we haven’t spoken to enough of them.”Despite public optimism, and increased/improved awareness of the situation among delegations, the EPO management wants to toss out SUEPO representatives in less than two weeks. This isn’t justice, it’s just akin to Martial Law. The EPO declares a crisis and then tries to blame and eventually literally attack those whom it views as a destabilising force (irrespective of the legitimacy of the claims of this force). We have been contacted by European inventors and patent lawyers over the past week and they too are worried by the situation. Not only patent examiners (and other EPO staff) fear the consequences to the reputation and function of European patents. The problem isn’t SUEPO; the problem is the EPO’s management. Patent lawyers and inventors all agree on that. Unless we haven’t spoken to enough of them. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that SUEPO speaks truth to power, hence it suffers retribution.

I shall continue to exercise my right as a European citizen to communicate with delegations. “Remember that the AC is full of non-politicians,” one person reminded me, but that can be seen as a good thing, except many are (patent) lawyers from their national patent offices (this in itself isn’t a big issue).

Now that the staff representatives are under attack (the New Year has brought no reprieve, only silence that serves the silent accuser) we encourage everyone in Europe to contact local delegates (all the contact details are here). Time is crucial as later today Elizabeth Hardon will be filing her response to the EPO’s J’accuse. “This is the deadline for her response,” someone reliable told us. “She is planning to share it with staff on the 12th/13th of January and a final decision from the EPO on her job is due out on the January 17th.”

Since the papers are to be dealt with and decided on by the accuser (judge and executioner too), what kind of a trial is this? It’s a mock trial, theatre, show trial, or whatever. No wonder it’s kept under the wraps, so closely guarded as though transparency of the court would in itself be some kind of heinous crime.

“I shall continue to exercise my right as a European citizen to communicate with delegations.”The EPO’s management will try to paint this “investigation” or “justice”. This would be a colossal injustice however. It would be a shame to Europe; an embarrassment! It could be one among more to come as there are interestingly and increasingly absurd cases involving the other two staff representatives (photographs of them are shown at the top). The firing line has a line not only of shooters (Bergot et al) but also a line of people to be metaphorically shot. Don’t forget the judge whom the EPO has nothing substantial against (except some potentially fabricated allegations, put on a USB stick that they claim to be his). So who’s the “sniper”, Bergot? Who’s acting like an armed “Nazis” now? Which party is acting violent? So desperate to guard an unspeakable career hop [1, 2, 3, 4] rather than resign? The hypocrisy needs to stop the the unjust suspensions need to be dropped, not extended. If in order for these suspensions to be dropped Team Battistelli needs to be sacked in bulk, then so be it. It would be “good riddance” and a positive signal from the EPO, whose public view now rightly competes with FIFA’s (among those who are sufficiently well-informed, not just regarding football).

Just released by the EPO’s Web site team is what Mr. Kongstad (AC Chairman) had done [PDF], elongating suspensions. This is Battistelli’s wishlist, changing rules to suit his agenda as he goes along. Welcome to North Korea. Here it is as text:

CA/D 18/15

DECISION OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE COUNCIL
of 17 December 2015
amending Articles 2 and 95 of the Service
Regulations for permanent employees of the
European Patent Office

THE ADMINISTRATIVE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN PATENT ORGANISATION,

Having regard to the European Patent Convention, and in particular Articles 10(2)(c), 11 and 33(2)(b) thereof,

Having regard to the Service Regulations for permanent employees of the European Patent Office (hereinafter referred to as “the Service Regulations”), and in particular Articles 2 and 95 thereof,

On a proposal from the President of the European Patent Office, submitted after consulting the General Consultative Committee,

HAS DECIDED AS FOLLOWS:

Article 1

Article 2(6) of the Service Regulations shall read as follows:

“The President may extend the terms of office of all members of the bodies under paragraph 1(b), (c), (d), (f) and (g) beyond the duration defined in the applicable provisions of these Service Regulations, within the limits of the terms of office of the Staff Committee members.”

Article 2

Article 95 of the Service Regulations shall read as follows:

“Article 95

Suspension

(1) (unchanged)

(2) (unchanged)

(3) A final decision in the proceedings shall be given within the following period, as from the date of the decision to withhold remuneration:

(a) 4 months for those employees whose appointing authority is the President;

(b) 24 months for those employees whose appointing authority is the Administrative Council. This period may be extended in exceptional cases by decision of the Administrative Council. If no decision has been given by the end of the period specified under (a) or (b), the employee shall again receive his full remuneration.

(4) (unchanged)

(5) (unchanged)”

Article 3

This decision shall enter into force on 17 December 2015. It shall have immediate effect. This immediate effect shall include suspensions decided under Article 95 of the Service Regulations and which are ongoing on the date of entry into force.

Done at Munich, 17 December 2015

For the Administrative Council
The Chairman

Jesper KONGSTAD

Suspension has therefore been formally extended to “24 months”, as we pointed out before. It serves to further weaken supervisory departments or functions. As one comment put it the other day:

At the recent EPO Caselaw Conference in Munich I was surprised how many of the audience were from locations outside Europe, and from courts and Patent Offices rather than patent attorneys in private and company practice.

In the USA, as we know, the post-issue inter-partes proceedings at the USPTO feature very limited scope to amend. At the EPO, the Boards of Appeal are increasingly strict about admitting claim amendments to the proceedings. Even when they do, the only claims given any attention are the independent claims. If one of those is bad, the whole patent goes down.

I suspect that judges in other jurisdictions are influenced by what is discussed at Conferences such as the one in Munich at the end of last year, without necessarily grasping that in a self-sufficient jurisdiction, every element of the procedure (like “Auxiliary Requests” at the EPO) interacts with every other element. You can’t fairly “Pick and Mix” but these days I fear that there is far too much picking and mixing going on.

Jurisdictions try in good faith to keep on trend and reach international standards, but understanding well enough how the law is made in several foreign jurisdictions, both civil and English law, is beyond human capability.

But as of now, declining to look at dependent claims is “Flavour of the Month”, isn’t it?

Worth noting, as per the above, that conferences about the EPO were full of “audience [...] from locations outside Europe, and from courts and Patent Offices rather than patent attorneys in private and company practice.”

“It serves to further weaken supervisory departments or functions.”It’s quite revealing, isn’t it? The EPO does not quite prioritise Europe’s interests and it shows. Remember who’s excited about the UPC. There are legitimate concerns here. Earlier today we found this newly-published press release that relates to controversial cancer patents in the EPO. Cantargia, the grantee, is a Swedish company whose main bragging right at the moment (see their homepage) is a patent they got. There are no products mentioned in the site and the press release says “a European protection exists until 2032 and covers Cantargia’s method to utilize IL1RAP as a target molecule for treatment and diagnostics of solid tumors.”

We have already written about the EPO’s cancer kerfuffle (and compared its management to a tumour inside Europe). Thankfully, this long ongoing series, titled “Insensitivity at the EPO’s Management”, is far from over and will most likely resume later this month. It has a lot to do with cancer. █

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