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10.11.16

Links 11/10/2016: Torvalds’ ARM Rant, End of Production of Galaxy Note 7

Posted in News Roundup at 5:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • A Look At The Most Promising Next-Gen Linux Software Update Mechanisms

    With traditional software package management solutions like APT and Yum showing their age and not adapting well to the embedded world and the slew of new areas for Linux like IoT, a new generation of atomic-based Linux software update solutions continue to be worked on. Matt Porter of the Konsulko Group is presenting at this week’s Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2016 with a comparison of these update technologies.

    Incremental atomic updates have been what’s being pursued by multiple Linux software vendors for delivering more reliable distribution updates, smaller sized updates via binary deltas, and generally allow rollbacks in case of problems. Some of the new distribution update mechanisms covered included SWUpdate, Mender, OSTree, and swupd. Interestingly, not mentioned in the slide deck is Ubuntu’s Snappy.

  • Desktop

    • Microsoft remains silent as Surface Pro 3 battery woes pile up

      Surface Pro 3 battery woes have gone from bad to dire. Microsoft, meanwhile, is hiding and stonewalling again.

      SP3 owners with LGC batteries have been complaining since the middle of September about bad batteries — greatly diminished capacities, tablets that refuse to run unless they’re plugged into the wall, and charge times measured in minutes, not hours. A month later, and the Microsoft Answers forum thread about bad LGC batteries is up to 18 pages. A separate thread for general SP3 battery problems is at 131 pages and growing rapidly.

  • Server

    • No SDN Kubernetes

      How these requirements are implemented is up to the operator. In many cases this means using a software defined network “SDN” also called an overlay network (e.g. flannel, weave, calico) or underlay network (MACvlan, IPvlan). The SDNs all accomplish the same three goals but usually with different implementation and often unique features.

      But the networking requirements doesn’t mean you have to run an SDN. It also means you can implement a traditional SDN product in a non-traditional way. Let’s look at the simplest solution for networking in Kubernetes.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME’s Epiphany Browser Is Quick To Working On 3.24 Features

        It’s been just over two weeks since GNOME 3.22 was released while already a ton of feature work has been landing in Epiphany, GNOME’s Web Browser.

        It’s looking like the Epiphany web-browser update in GNOME 3.24 will be another feature-packed release. Some of the work that’s landed in the past two weeks already includes a lot of work around redoing the browser’s bookmarks support, removing obsolete code in different areas, a lot of work on sync support, asynchronous Storage Server support, a new preferences dialog user-interface, and more.

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

    • New Releases

      • GoboLinux 016 Joins the 64-bit Revolution, First Alpha Is Based on Awesome WM

        GoboLinux developer Lucas C. Villa Real announced today, October 10, 2016, the general availability of the first Alpha pre-release version of the upcoming GoboLinux 016 GNU/Linux operating system.

      • Bodhi Linux 4.0.0 Beta released-Final release is expected at the end of month

        Bodhi Linux 4.0.0 is making its way to final release and it is now one more step closer to this by having its beta release.Yes, the Ubuntu based beauty with Moksha DE(Moksha is a forked version of well known Enlightenment DE) got its beta release i.e. Bodhi LInux 4.0.0 Beta after months of release of Alpha version.Back in July,Bodhi Linux 4.0.0 alpha released.

      • Bodhi Linux 4.0.0 Beta Out, Final Release Lands This Month Based on Ubuntu 16.04

        Today, October 10, 2016, Bodhi Linux developer Jeff Hoogland proudly announced the release and immediate availability of the Beta pre-release of the upcoming Bodhi Linux 4.0.0 operating system.

        Bodhi Linux 4.0.0 Beta comes exactly one month after the release of the second Alpha milestone, bringing the development cycle to an end, as the developer plans to launch the final version of the Ubuntu-based distribution by the end of the month. As expected, the Beta contains many improvements and fixes to some of the bugs reported by users since the Alpha builds.

    • Arch Family

      • Antergos – Best Arch based distro for beginners, whoever want to taste arch, give a try

        As we know Arch Linux is one of the best Linux Distribution ever because we can customize whatever we want. We can get all the latest software’s because of rolling release but its very difficult for freshers, installation & configuration. Today i’m going to show you, how to install Antergos – The Best Arch based distro for beginners, whoever want to taste arch Linux give a try, i can assure worth to try.

    • Slackware Family

      • You Can Now Run Linux Kernel 4.8.1 on Your Slackware 14.2 System, Here’s How

        GNU/Linux developer Arne Exton announced earlier, October 10, 2016, that he made a new, special kernel based on Linux kernel 4.8.1 for Slackware and Slackware-based distributions.

        Linux kernel 4.8.1 is the first point release to the Linux 4.8 series, which is the latest and most advanced stable kernel to date, and now you can install it on your Slackware operating system thanks to Arne Exton. The new build is designed for 64-bit (x86_64) installation and works with Slackware 14.2 (Current), Zenwalk, Slax, and SlackEX, but it should work on any 64-bit Slackware 14.2 derivative, such as Salix.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Arrow now offering Red Hat’s hybrid cloud solutions in UK

        Arrow has announced it has joined the Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider programme, allowing it to distribute the company’s hybrid cloud solutions to its channel customers in the UK.

        Now customers and independent software vendors can benefit from Arrow’s extensive partner network, which in turn, will be fully supported to sell Red Hat’s innovations.

        The products Arrow will be selling will help cloud hosting, system integrators and managed service providers resell Red Hat’s full range of products using its on-demand, via multi-tenant, dedicated, and managed models.

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Ease of 3D Printing in Fedora

          Fedora has been known to be the best OS for 3D printing already for some time, mainly due to the work of Miro (he packaged all the available open source software for 3D printing, prepared udev rules to automatically connect to 3D printers etc.), but I was still surprised how easy it is to 3D print with Fedora these days. It really took just a couple of minutes from a stock system to start of the actual printing. It’s almost as simple as printing on papers.
          There is still room for improvements though. Some 3D printing apps (Cura Lulzbot Edition is one of them) are available in the official repositories of Fedora, but don’t have an appdata file, so they don’t show up in GNOME Software. And it would also be nice to have “3D Printing” category in GNOME Software, so that the software is more discoverable for users.

    • Debian Family

      • Debian is participating in the next round of Outreachy!

        Following the success of the last round of Outreachy, we are glad to announce that Debian will take part in the program for the next round, with internships lasting from the 6th of December 2016 to the 6th of March 2017.

        From the official website: Outreachy helps people from groups underrepresented in free and open source software get involved. We provide a supportive community for beginning to contribute any time throughout the year and offer focused internship opportunities twice a year with a number of free software organizations.

        Currently, internships are open internationally to women (cis and trans), trans men, and genderqueer people. Additionally, they are open to residents and nationals of the United States of any gender who are Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.

      • Debian Fun in September 2016

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • The Open Source Era: A Q&A With Canonical CEO Jane Silber

            Canonical, a 750-person company with employees in more than 42 countries around the world, is the driving force behind Ubuntu open-source software. Although Canonical and Ubuntu are well-known and well-respected among hardcore technologists, most consumers have probably never heard of either.

            This is an unfortunate reality of open-source software. Products and projects dedicated to democratizing technology by making computer use free and fair for everyone often fly under the radar. Whether Canonical and Ubuntu become synonymous with the general consumer is largely dependent on whether or not consumers move away from traditional device usage. Can Canonical’s vision for a converged computing experience across a spectrum devices make the Canonical name as synonymous with desktop users as it is with users of its enterprise cloud and application performance management (APM) solutions?

            I chatted with Canonical CEO Jane Silber, a remarkable executive with a rich technological background, over email about the challenges Canonical faces in consumer computing and even television, as well as how the company plans to maintain its status in the enterprise cloud and software markets.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • ETSI releases first SDN software stack as open source

    This week, standardisation organisation ETSI published OSM Release ONE, an open-source software stack to implement Software-Defined Networking (SDN). SDN, or network virtualisation, brings the management of computer networks to a higher level by abstracting the physical infrastructure. This allows network administrators to manage their networks in a more flexible, or even a fully automated, dynamic way.

  • Google’s Open-Source Noto Font Covers All Languages
  • Google Noto is an open source font family for more than 800 languages
  • Google releases open source font Noto to eliminate the tofu problem

    You may not have heard of the tofu problem, but you have almost certainly experienced it. If you visit a website or open a document that can’t display a particular character, you’ll see a white box symbol resembling a cube of tofu. Now Google has a solution.

    The Noto font project (it’s a mashup of ‘NO more TOfu’) has been something of a labor of love, taking five years to reach its conclusion. But the result is an open source Noto font family which Google says includes “every symbol in the Unicode standard, covering more than 800 languages and 110,000 characters”.

    Talking about the new font family, Google says: “The Noto project started as a necessity for Google’s Android and ChromeOS operating systems. When we began, we did not realize the enormity of the challenge. It required design and technical testing in hundreds of languages, and expertise from specialists in specific scripts. In Arabic, for example, each character has four glyphs (i.e., shapes a character can take) that change depending on the text that comes after it. In Indic languages, glyphs may be reordered or even split into two depending on the surrounding text”.

  • Google’s New Fonts Chip Away at Written Language Barriers

    Project Noto, one of Google’s most ambitious undertakings ever, has reached a milestone. Noto now supports 800 languages and 100 writing scripts, the companies announced last week. Google and Monotype launched the open source initiative to create a typeface family that supports all the languages in the world, even rarely used languages. Both serif and sans serif letters with up to eight weights are supported, as well as numbers, emoji, symbols and musical notation. “Noto” is short for “no tofu.”

  • Syncano makes it’s dashboard open source

    Syncano has open-sourced its Dashboard platform, so that more developers will be able to access the libraries and repositories to help them build apps faster.

    Up to now, Syncano’s Dashboard has been a private project. With the company’s release of the Dashboard on GitHub, a new repository has been created that allows contributions, pull requests, and issue requests from any developer with a GitHub account.

  • AT&T plans to launch ECOMP into the open source community by Q1 2017

    AT&T is hopeful that it can launch its Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management and Policy (ECOMP) virtualization platform into the open source community during the first quarter of 2017.

    The telco said that this will further its goal to make ECOMP the telecom industry’s standard automation platform for managing virtual network functions and other software-centric network capabilities.

    Chris Rice, SVP of AT&T Labs Domain 2.0 architecture and design, said in a blog post that by launching ECOMP into open source, “community members can use and contribute to the evolution of this software platform.”

  • Open Source Initiative Welcomes Open edX as Newest Affiliate Member
  • Ulterius Dials In With Open-Source Remote Desktop PC Management

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • Best Open Source CMS

      Trying to determine the best open source CMS is a lot like choosing the best shoes. In the end, it’s a matter of perspective. However, it’s accurate to point out that the real differences between each open source CMS are usually feature related. The main items of concern range from add-ons to security and are factors you should consider when choosing the best CMS for your needs.

      In this article, I’ll share what I believe are the best open source CMS options available today. Bear in mind that not everyone is willing to sacrifice ease of use for security or security for ease of use. There is no single answer for everyone. Let’s get started, shall we?

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)/Microsoft

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD 11.0 Officially Released

      Following the recent delays, FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE is now officially available.

      FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE was announced this morning as the latest major update to this BSD operating system.

      Among the many changes for FreeBSD 11 is 802.11n WiFi support, better WiFi/wireless support in general, native graphics support for the Bhyve hypervisor, official support for ARM 64-bit / AArch64, vastly improved/updated DRM graphics driver code, and much more.

      FreeBSD 11.0 can be downloaded from the FreeBSD.org announcement.

    • FreeBSD 11.0 Operating System Officially Released, Here’s What’s New

      Today, October 10, 2016, the FreeBSD Foundation proudly announced the release and general availability of the FreeBSD 11.0 operating system based on the latest BSD and Open Source technologies.

      FreeBSD 11.0 has been in development since March 2016, during which it received a total of four Beta builds and three Release Candidates. FreeBSD 11.0 packs a large number of new features and improvements, among which we can mention support for the open source RISC-V instruction set architecture, support for NUMA memory allocation and scheduler policies, as well as out-of-the-box support for Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi 2, and Beaglebone Black peripherals.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Data

      • State Of The Map, Thanks!

        Thanks to everyone who made it to the international State Of The Map conference in Brussels two weeks ago. With around 400 attendees from 52 different countries, this was a fantastic event bringing our community together.

        Huge thanks to the team of organisers, and local volunteers in Belgium who helped make it such a success. We saw some of these people up on stage at the end of the conference:

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Zula Open Source Audiophile Amplifier Hits Kickstarter (video)

        Audioberry has unveiled a new open source amplifier they have created which has been designed to provide audiophile amplification for streaming devices as well as mini PCs such as the Raspberry Pi.

        The Zula amplifier has been developed to be the best in class, providing both exceptional value together with superb sound, and is now available to back. With pledges starting from just £24 for the Zula Raspberry Pi internal mount kit which will start shipping during November 2016.

  • Programming/Development

    • More software engineers over age 40 may join a lawsuit against Google

      Google suffered a setback in an age discrimination suit this week. A judge ruled that other software engineers over age 40 who interviewed with the company but didn’t get hired can step forward and join the lawsuit.

      The suit was brought by two job applicants, both over the age of 40, who interviewed but weren’t offered jobs.

      Specifically, the judge has approved turning the suit into a “collective action” meaning that people who “interviewed in person with Google for a software engineer, site reliability engineer, or systems engineer position when they were 40 years old or older, and received notice on or after August 28, 2014, that they were refused employment, will have an opportunity to join in the collective action against Google,” the ruling says.

    • RISC-V Backend For LLVM Making Progress

      The ongoing development of a RISC-V back-end for the LLVM compiler stack continues making progress and stepping closer to merging to mainline.

      Alex Bradbury issued a status update concerning the state of the RISC-V patches for LLVM. Six of the patches so far have been reviewed and ready to land, three are being reviewed still, and two patches are yet to be reviewed. It’s looking like within the months ahead this RISC-V back-end will be merged so LLVM can support this open-source CPU ISA.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • French Company Sues Apple Because of Improper HTML5 Support in iOS

      Nexedi, a French software development company, is suing Apple in a French court because of the sorry state of HTML5 support on iOS, and because Apple actively prevents third-party browser engines from running on iOS.

      The company filed a civil lawsuit in France because a local law gives it the best chances of succeeding in its effort. A local French law passed a few years back prevents large companies from imposing unbalanced contracts on smaller businesses.

      Nexedi says that Apple forces software developers to sign an unfair contract when submitting an app to the iOS App Store that states that all web content should be handled by a WebKit-based browser engine.

      The French company’s problem is that the WebKit engine is seriously lagging behind when it comes to supporting modern HTML5 features. Because Apple forces iOS app developers to use WebKit-based browsers, developers must invest serious time and effort into porting modern apps to work with the limited version of HTML5 supported in iOS, indirectly cutting down their profits.

    • Here’s Why These Open Source Programmers Have Sued Apple

      Nexedi, a French open source software vendor has sued Apple. The lack of support for standard web technologies on iOS irked the company, resulting in the allegations that Apple’s App Store contract is unfair. We have contacted Apple for a clarification and we’ll be keeping you in the know.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • WikiLeaks Reveals UFO ​Messages in Clinton Campaign Emails

      The former lead singer of the band Blink 182 was in recent contact with ‘s campaign chairman John Podesta about UFOs, newly disclosed emails show.

    • Neural Net Computing Explodes

      Neural networking with advanced parallel processing is beginning to take root in a number of markets ranging from predicting earthquakes and hurricanes to parsing MRI image datasets in order to identify and classify tumors.

      As this approach gets implemented in more places, it is being customized and parsed in ways that many experts never envisioned. And it is driving new research into how else these kinds of compute architectures can be applied.

    • Vint Cerf Warns Humanity: Can Our Data Survive Longer Than A Century?

      Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) co-author Vint Cerf is hailed as “the father of the internet,” but now he’s worried about an even larger communications protocol, on a scale of thousands of years. How will our civilization communicate with people in the future? When it comes to generations yet to come, how will we preserve the glory that is present-day, 21st-century society?

      Yes, we’ve got storage media — but for long-lasting durability, does it really compare with centuries past? “We’re going backward,” Cerf argued in his column published in Communications of the ACM looking fondly back at the history of humankind — and the way bygone eras preserved glimpses of their lives to echo down through the ages. It’s like a tour of humanity’s mediums over the last 17 millennia, offering the breath-taking perspective of a tumble through time.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Michigan paid more than FEMA for Flint emergency supplies

      The State of Michigan likely paid hundreds of thousands of dollars too much for emergency supplies related to the Flint drinking water crisis because it used no formal bidding process, relied almost exclusively on one out-of-state company with ties to a top aide to Gov. Rick Snyder, and didn’t turn to Michigan companies already approved to do business with the state, a Detroit Free Press investigation has found.

      The Free Press compared Flint purchasing records by the State of Michigan between October and January with purchasing by the Federal Emergency Management Agency between January and August.

    • New parents charged £30 to hold their newborn baby as part of popular skin-to-skin bonding experience

      A dad claims a hospital charged him and his wife £30 to hold their newborn son.

      Ryan Grassley says he had to pay the fee, worth $39.35 in US money, for his wife to hold their tiny newborn immediately after he was delivered by C-section.

      The Utah father shared a snap of the itemized bill, which included a charge for “skin-to-skin after c-sec,” on Reddit – with readers offering a mixed rection.

      Grassley said when his son was born by C-section at Utah Valley Hospital on September 4, the operating room nurse asked if the couple wanted to do “skin to skin.”

      They agreed and their baby was cleaned-up and handed over for his time with mum.

      The practice, viewed to have many benefits, is when a new baby’s bare skin is placed against its mother’s to help them bond.

    • US Media Don’t Need to Look Abroad to Find an Abortion Crisis

      US media saw a story in the work boycott and street protests by some 6 million women in Poland that led to a reversal of government plans to put through a complete ban on abortion, including in cases of rape or danger to a woman’s life. Stories in major outlets pointed out that Poland’s laws are already among the most restrictive in Europe; they noted the concerns of human rights advocates that the ban would criminalize women and doctors, and make women who have miscarriages subjects of suspicion and investigation. It was good to see, but it did make one wonder: If those conditions are unacceptable, they’re unacceptable whether they’re de jure or de facto, right?

    • It’s Time to Go, Hyde Amendment

      Enacted in 1976, the Hyde Amendment turns 40 years old this year. The Hyde Amendment was introduced by the late Henry Hyde, a Republican from Illinois who sought to ban abortions outright. Disappointed that the Supreme Court had just ruled that the Constitution protects the right to an abortion, Rep. Hyde introduced the amendment to restrict abortion access for those who qualify for Medicaid.

      The amendment withholds insurance coverage for abortion care in virtually all cases from women who qualify for Medicaid and others who access their health insurance through the federal government. Effectively, it reserves the right to an abortion for those privileged to afford it.

    • Is toxic trade in your backyard?

      If passed by Congress, two pending U.S. trade deals – the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – would give some of the world’s largest fossil fuel corporations broad new rights to challenge our climate protections in private tribunals. For the first time, these corporations could ask unaccountable panels of corporate lawyers to order U.S. government compensation if such protections interfered with their widespread fossil fuel projects.

  • Security

    • One election-system vendor uses developers in Serbia

      The use of proprietary systems in elections has its critics. One Silicon Valley group, the Open Source Election Technology Foundation, is pushing for an election system that shifts from proprietary, vendor-owned systems to one that that is owned “by the people of the United States.”

    • Europe to Push New Security Rules Amid IoT Mess

      The European Commission is drafting new cybersecurity requirements to beef up security around so-called Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as Web-connected security cameras, routers and digital video recorders (DVRs). News of the expected proposal comes as security firms are warning that a great many IoT devices are equipped with little or no security protections.

    • Internet of Things botnets: You ain’t seen nothing yet

      Internet of Things (IoT) botnet “Mirai” is the shape of things to come and future assaults could be even more severe, a leading security research firm warns.

      Mirai powered the largest ever DDoS attack ever, spawning a 620Gbps DDoS against KrebsOnSecurity. Source code for the malware was released on hacker forums last week.

      The malware relied on factory default or hard-coded usernames and passwords to compromise vulnerable IoT devices such as insecure routers, IP cameras, digital video recorders and the like.

      PenTestPartners, the UK security consultancy behind numerous hack on Iot devices ranging from Wi-Fi enabled kettles to cars, said that the botnet finally illustrates the consequences of IoT vendors cutting the corners on security.

    • The top three Wi-Fi pen testing tools in Kali Linux

      Every hacker and security researcher loves Kali Linux. The developers of Kali Linux ethical hacking distro have released the second Kali Rolling ISO release i.e. Kali 2016.2. Just like the previous one, Kali promises to deliver lots of new updates and changes in this release. Over the course of past few months, Kali developers have been busy adding new tools to Kali and fixing multiple bugs. For example, they have added HTTPS support in busybox that allows secure installation over SSL.

      Kali Linux provides you the flexibility to install your favorite desktop environment and personalizing your experience. However, Kali developers note that users often talk about how they would love to see another desktop environments instead of GNOME.

    • How ‘Security Fatigue’ Affects Our Choices Online

      A new study claims many users suffer from ‘security fatigue,’ which affects the choices we make online. What’s the real answer and where does the root cause sit?
      An overabundance of security news and alerts has led to “security fatigue,” which is causing users to make bad choices when it comes to online security, suggests a report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

    • Apache Milagro: A New Security System for the Future of the Web
    • Ransomware hackers are hitting the NHS in the knackers [ophk: "politicians’ heads should roll for running MS anywhere near the NHS”]

      Rashmi Knowles, chief EMEA security architect at RSA, said: “Ransomware is an extremely lucrative business for cyber criminals as once they are in they just need to encrypt the data. Whereas actually stealing data and then trying to resell makes it a much longer process.

      “Current data shows that ransomware cases are expected to double from 2015 to 2016, and it should come as no surprise that breaches continue to happen as frequently as they do.

      “The results show organisations relying on a fragmented foundation of data and technologies. Because it remains siloed, visibility is incomplete, making attacker activity difficult to scope.

      “As a result the speed with which they can detect and investigate threats becomes a real challenge.”

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Exclusive: As Saudis bombed Yemen, U.S. worried about legal blowback

      The Obama administration went ahead with a $1.3 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia last year despite warnings from some officials that the United States could be implicated in war crimes for supporting a Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians, according to government documents and the accounts of current and former officials.

      State Department officials also were privately skeptical of the Saudi military’s ability to target Houthi militants without killing civilians and destroying “critical infrastructure” needed for Yemen to recover, according to the emails and other records obtained by Reuters and interviews with nearly a dozen officials with knowledge of those discussions.

      U.S. government lawyers ultimately did not reach a conclusion on whether U.S. support for the campaign would make the United States a “co-belligerent” in the war under international law, four current and former officials said. That finding would have obligated Washington to investigate allegations of war crimes in Yemen and would have raised a legal risk that U.S. military personnel could be subject to prosecution, at least in theory.

    • Obama DOJ drops charges against alleged broker of Libyan weapons

      The Obama administration is moving to dismiss charges against an arms dealer it had accused of selling weapons that were destined for Libyan rebels.

      Lawyers for the Justice Department on Monday filed a motion in federal court in Phoenix to drop the case against the arms dealer, an American named Marc Turi, whose lawyers also signed the motion.

      The deal averts a trial that threatened to cast additional scrutiny on Hillary Clinton’s private emails as Secretary of State, and to expose reported Central Intelligence Agency attempts to arm rebels fighting Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi.

    • The Nobel Peace Prize Has Become A Cruel Joke

      Notable peace activists needn’t apply. Despicable war criminals time and again become Nobel Peace Prize honorees.

      This year was no exception, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos the latest recipient for negotiating dubious peace with FARC-EP freedom fighters.

      James Petras earlier called them “the longest standing, largest peasant-based guerrilla movement in the world…founded in 1964…legitimate resistance” against ruthless Colombian repression.

    • Isis recruiting violent criminals and gang members across Europe in dangerous new ‘crime-terror nexus’

      “Sometimes people with the worst pasts create the best futures,” reads the slogan, emblazoned on an image of a masked fighter wielding a Kalashnikov, walking into blinding light.

      The poster was shared on Facebook by Rayat al-Tawheed, a group of British Isis fighters from London calling themselves the “Banner of God”.

      Their target is young men looking for redemption from crime, drugs or gangs, willing to save their souls by waging jihad for the so-called Islamic State.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • WikiLeaks releases Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street speeches in ‘handy Kindle format’

      After months of calls upon Hillary Clinton to release her Wall Street speeches, they are now more available and accessible than ever before, with WikiLeaks publishing them in Kindle format.

      If a word document or a PDF does not suit the reader, all they need to do is download to file to their Kindle and read the extracts on the move.

      WikiLeaks dumped the excerpts online last Friday, claiming they showed excerpts of paid, closed-door speeches to Wall Street executives, out of a batch of more than 2,000 emails belonging to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.

    • Wikileaks: New York Times Caught Providing Bill Clinton Questions Before ‘Interview’

      The New York Times provided questions to former President Bill Clinton before an interview with Nicholas Kristoff, the Wikileaks release of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta emails has revealed.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • A military view on climate change: It’s eroding our national security and we should prepare for it

      In this presidential election year we have heard much about some issues, such as immigration and trade, and less about others. For example, climate change was discussed for an estimated 82 seconds in the first presidential debate last week, and for just 37 minutes in all presidential and vice presidential debates since the year 2000.

      Many observers think climate change deserves more attention. They might be surprised to learn that U.S. military leaders and defense planners agree. The armed forces have been studying climate change for years from a perspective that rarely is mentioned in the news: as a national security threat. And they agree that it poses serious risks.

      I spent 32 years as a meteorologist in the U.S. Navy, where I initiated and led the Navy’s Task Force on Climate Change. Here is how military planners see this issue: We know that the climate is changing, we know why it’s changing and we understand that change will have large impacts on our national security. Yet as a nation we still only begrudgingly take precautions.

    • Dahr Jamail on Climate Disruption, Richard Phillips on Trump’s Taxes

      This week on CounterSpin: From vanishing ice to animal die-offs to increasing wildfires, scientists use words like “unprecedented” and “staggering” to describe the evident impacts of human-driven climate disruption. Elite media say they take it all very seriously…. How far are they from taking it seriously enough?

      Dahr Jamail is a staff reporter at Truthout and author of a number of books, including Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq and the forthcoming The End of Ice.

    • Coverage of Haiti and Hurricane Reinforces a Sad, Static Storyline

      While the extent of the damage exacted by Hurricane Matthew on Haiti is not yet known, more than 500 deaths have been reported. But with the storm moving toward the US, media too are moving, leaving in their wake the sorts of stories you would predict: “Fragile Haiti in the Line of Fire From Matthew” (USA Today, 10/3/16), “Impoverished Haiti Braces for ‘Catastrophic’ Floods as Hurricane Approaches” (Reuters, 10/4/16) and, from the New York Times (10/4/16), “A List of Previous Disasters in Haiti, a Land All Too Familiar With Hardship.”

    • Proposed Pipeline Sparks Widespread Dissent

      The People over Pipelines march packed the streets with local activists in July who came together in protest and embarked on a five day trek across 55 miles, covering only a fraction of the proposed path for the high-pressure fracked natural gas pipeline we seek to stop. Despite such a powerful and outspoken movement, policymakers have neglected to restrain Spectra Energy from constructing the Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) pipeline. Such disregard for the resolution of the people, and a tendency to overlook what is truly best for our wellbeing, is not only a clear sign of rapacious ignorance, it’s simply undemocratic.

      Many people, including high schoolers like me, have raised countless concerns about this pipeline, ranging from local safety threats to the consequences of climate change. From neighborhood-disrupting construction and family displacement from the abuses of eminent domain, to water pollution from hydraulic fracturing, to transporting the explosive gas through leak-prone pipelines, to climate disruption—essentially every aspect of this pipeline is hazardous. Not to mention, scientists say we can’t afford to build even one more pipeline if we’re serious about avoiding catastrophic climate change.

    • ‘We Must Honor Our Mother’: Actress Shailene Woodley Arrested at DAPL

      Actress Shailene Woodley has been arrested for trespassing at one of the construction sites for the Dakota Access oil pipeline, multiple reports confirm.

      She was one of 28 people taken in for criminal trespassing, according to the Bismarck Tribune, which reported that more than 200 people were demonstrating at one of the construction sites outside a 20-mile buffer that the federal government had requested the company respect.

    • Hillary Clinton Touted Her Record of Spreading Fracking in Secret, Paid Speeches

      Behind closed doors on the paid speaking circuit, Hillary Clinton was far more candid than she has been in public about her prominent role as Secretary of State in exporting American-style hydraulic fracturing — the controversial, environmentally damaging technique best known as fracking — to countries all over the world.

      “I’ve promoted fracking in other places around the world,” she declared during a 2013 paid talk to Deutsche Bank, adding that she launched a new wing of the State Department devoted to the initiative.

      During a paid speech in Canada the following year, Clinton touted her role in “accelerating” natural gas development in Europe, calling attention to Poland’s embrace of fracking as a positive step.

      The contrast with the rhetoric Clinton has used on the campaign trail is striking. Clinton has rarely spoken in public of her role selling fracking abroad, and at times positioned herself as a skeptic of the controversial drilling technique. In the lead-up to the New York Democratic primary, Clinton’s campaign released a television advertisement that gave the impression that she has worked to discourage fracking.

    • The $20 Billion Arctic Pipeline That Will Haunt Canada Forever

      The vision came to Jonas Antoine during a drum session with the other men of the tribe. Jonas is not a medicine man, but it was a medicine dream, of the kind that visited his Dene ancestors. He was in the village of Wrigley in a remote section of Canada’s Northwest Territories, standing at the cliff on the edge of town, looking out over the massive river valley, and as he beat the hand-held drum and chanted with the men he saw something out on the horizon.

      “I saw skyscrapers rise out of the ground,” Antoine told me. “We’re drumming, drumming, and I saw them. In the distance, rising out of our beautiful mountains. And I thought, ‘This can’t happen here.’ I knew I had to stop it.”

    • Why Rush Limbaugh thinks Hurricane Matthew is liberal propaganda

      Conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh offered a bold assessment of Hurricane Matthew on Wednesday: the category 4 storm was exaggerated by the Obama administration in order to validate climate change theories.

      At the crux of Limbaugh’s argument was the so-called ‘hurricane drought’ in the United States, which ended when Matthew made landfall in Florida last week. After Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, former vice president Al Gore predicted that hurricane activity would increase as a result of man-made warming.

      “And then what happened? We had 11 years of no hurricanes – 11 straight years of no major hurricanes striking land in the United States, which just bores a hole right through the whole climate change argument,” Limbaugh said on his talk radio show. “They want people to think this way: Hurricane reported. Must be climate change.”

    • Climate Change Doubled the Size of Forest Fires in Western U.S., Study Says

      “No matter how hard we try, the fires are going to keep getting bigger”

      Man-made climate change has doubled the total area burned by forest fires in the Western U.S. in the past three decades, according to new research.

      Damage from forest fires has risen dramatically in recent decades, with the total acres burned in the U.S. rising from 2.9 million in 1985 to 10.1 million in 2015, according to National Interagency Fire Center data. Suppression costs paid by the federal government now top $2 billion.

      Now a new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found that a significant portion of the increase in land burned by forest fires can be attributed to man-made climate change. Other factors are also at play, including natural climate shifts and a change in how humans use land, but man-made climate change has had the biggest impact. That trend will likely continue as temperatures keep rising, researchers said.

  • Finance

    • The Dash For Cash: Leaked Files Reveal RBS Systematically Crushed British Businesses For Profit

      The Royal Bank of Scotland killed or crippled thousands of businesses during the recession as a result of a deliberate plan to add billions of pounds to its balance sheet, according to a leaked cache of thousands of secret documents.

      The RBS Files – revealed today by BuzzFeed News and BBC Newsnight – lay bare the secret policies under which firms were pushed into the bank’s feared troubled-business unit, Global Restructuring Group (GRG), which chased profits by hitting them with massive fees and fines and by snapping up their assets at rock-bottom prices.

      The internal documents starkly contradict the bank’s public insistence that GRG acted as an “intensive care unit” for ailing firms, tasked with restructuring their loan agreements to “help them back to health”.

    • Yle: State funding for sports bodies used mainly for admin and personnel costs, not athletes

      An Yle Sports analysis of available data has shown a sizeable 64-percent increase in state funding for Finnish sporting associations, much of it used to cover administrative and personnel costs, leaving athletes largely to fend for themselves. In many cases sports administrators are earning over 100,000 euros annually, while top athletes are trying to make ends meet on less than 1,200 euros a month.

    • ‘Poverty Is a Product of the Institutions We Have in Society’

      The new census data show the steepest one-year decline in the US poverty rate in decades. The dip from 14.8 percent to 13.5 percent was widely heralded, if some did indicate that declarations like the New York Times’ “Millions in US Climb Out of Poverty at Long Last” might be overblown. The rate was 11.3 percent in 2000, after all, and the gains aren’t evenly spread around, or necessarily sustainable.

      When corporate media talk about poverty, this is often what it looks like. “Experts” talk about what amount and sorts of resources it “makes sense” to allow people to have before they’re eligible for what amount or sort of assistance from the state, and how tweaks to those rules may affect the overall number of people who qualify to be labeled poor.

    • Facebook accused of ‘picking and choosing’ tax rules after paying just $5 million in UK

      Facebook ended up with an £11.3 million ($14 million) tax credit in the U.K. last year, which more than offset the amount it was charged, according to a new company filing, adding to concerns that the social media giant isn’t paying enough into the country’s coffers.

    • Facebook paid $5.16 million in UK taxes last year, 1,000 times what it paid in 2014

      Facebook paid £4.16 million ($5.16 million) in UK corporation tax last year, the company revealed on Sunday, a huge increase on the paltry £4,327 (around $5,367 at current exchange rates) it paid the year before. The company’s accounts show a turnover of £210 million, and a taxable profit of £20 million, on which it paid standard UK corporation tax rate.

      While technically compliant with UK tax laws, Facebook’s previous payments drew criticism from campaigners and politicians, who complained that the billion-dollar company was shirking its moral responsibility to pay tax in countries that it did business in. The criticism prompted Facebook to overhaul its UK tax structure, changing its policy so it counted UK ad sales as taking place the UK, rather than in Ireland — a tax loophole that had allowed to to pay minimal levels of tax on billions of dollars in profits.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • A Government Is Seizing Control Of Our Election Process (And It’s Not The Russians)

      There is an attempt underway for a government to take control of our election process and throw the election to Hillary Clinton. It is not the Russian government. Mark this day – it is when we came to understand that the American government decided to elect a president.

    • GOP ex-prosecutors slam Trump over threat to ‘jail’ Clinton

      Donald Trump’s debate-night vow to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton’s email setup and put her “in jail” provoked a sharp blowback from former U.S. prosecutors, who said Trump’s view of the Justice Department serving the whims of the president is antithetical to the American system.

      While presidents appoint the attorney general, they do not make decisions on whom to prosecute for crimes — and were Trump to do so, prosecutors warned, he would spark a constitutional crisis similar to that of the “Saturday Night Massacre” in the Nixon administration. In that case, Nixon attempted to fire the prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal, and the top two Justice Department officials resigned on the spot.

    • Trump Is Not the Only Grabber Who Must Go

      As far as I’m concerned, there are 54 Trumps in the US Senate and 237 Trumps in the House. You can’t make this look good by removing your endorsement from Trump. Yes, Trump has to go — but so do you, all of you. Starting with the election on November 8th, we need to show up at the polls and remove as many of you as possible. This abuse of women stops now. I believe that most women and many men are going to determine their vote with this one thought, thanks to you and Trump:

    • New Jersey’s Student Loan Agency Has Started Getting Good Reviews — By Giving Free Stuff

      Over the past few years, dozens of borrowers have written devastating reviews of the New Jersey state agency whose student loans, as we have detailed, have strikingly onerous terms.

      “This place doesn’t even deserve one star,” posted Ashante Patterson on Google’s review platform. “It is a scam and horrendous organization that preys on and belittles borrowers.”

      “You are better off not going to college,” wrote another reviewer, Nik Sharma, about the Higher Education Student Assistance Authority, also known as HESAA. “They are the absolute worst and are inhumane.”

    • NBC waited for green light from lawyers before airing Trump video

      NBC News was aware of video footage of Donald Trump making lewd and disparaging remarks about women for nearly four days, a network executive said Saturday, but held onto the recording until lawyers finished reviewing the material.

      The network’s caution led to an awkward result: NBC News was scooped by The Washington Post, which took just five hours to vet and post its story. A tip from an individual led to The Post breaking one of the most consequential stories of the 2016 presidential campaign.

    • Trump Shows His Inner Dictator

      “I didn’t think I’d say this,” Donald Trump said to Hillary Clinton, as he took a couple of steps across the stage at the second Presidential debate, on Sunday night in St. Louis. “But I’m going to say it—and I hate to say it.” At that point, just nineteen minutes in, it was already hard to imagine what might give Trump any qualms. He had already said that her record was “terrible” and “disgraceful,” and that she “should be ashamed”; called Clinton’s husband, Bill, the worst abuser of women “in the history of politics in this nation,” and claimed that Hillary had “viciously” attacked women who had made allegations against him (three of those women were Trump’s guests at the debate); accused her of “laughing at the girl who was raped” by a man she had represented as a young lawyer (he’d brought her, too); accused her of being behind birtherism, which he himself had pushed; and objected when Clinton referred to Michelle Obama, who has been campaigning for her, as her friend—objected, it seemed, to the idea that Clinton could have any friends but Sidney Blumenthal (“he’s another real winner that you have”).

      In those first nineteen minutes, Trump had also repeatedly insisted that a video that emerged last Friday—outtakes from “Access Hollywood,” in which he told the host, Billy Bush, that because Trump was “a star” he could do whatever he wanted to women without their consent (Anderson Cooper, the moderator, paraphrased one line as “grabbing their genitals”)—was an example of “locker-room talk.” Trump made a vague expression of contrition, but with the air of a man looking over the moderators’ shoulders for a sign pointing to said locker room. And he had claimed that Clinton had cheated in her primary victory over Senator Bernie Sanders. Referring to Sanders’s endorsement of Clinton, Trump said, “I was so surprised to see him sign on with the devil.” That was a few seconds before he sighed, overcame his supposed reluctance to speak harshly, and pushed American political discourse to even lower depths.

    • The media’s Weimar moment

      In June 1954 on national television, Joe Welch, the US Army’s chief counsel, exposed Senator Joseph McCarthy’s dubious morality with those two legendary questions: “Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Such was the novelty of television back then that having given McCarthy an authoritative forum for his views, TV could now serve as the instrument of his destruction.

      We all know what followed. The media attained the highest point of its legitimacy and authority during the Vietnam War with the publication of the Pentagon Papers and then the unfolding of the Watergate scandal. That ascendancy ran parallel to the rapid discrediting of politics as a vocation. Journalists were heroes. Politicians were scoundrels.

      Thirty years later, with the revelations of the media’s blindness to and sometimes complicity with the lies that led America into the Iraq War, journalists joined politicians in the space of detention into which public opinion puts those figures who betray the people’s trust. From that point on, America, once dubbed the oldest young country in the world by Gertrude Stein, began to experience the historical version of a senior moment. It began to undergo a Weimar moment.

      Existing between 1919 and 1933, the Weimar Republic was Germany’s first experience of democracy. Transparency of the political process, freedom of association, an openness to all groups and factions to express themselves and vie, through legitimate means, for power became established features of social and political life. Culture underwent a revolution as well. To borrow a formulation from Peter Gay’s landmark study of the Weimar period, outsiders such as Jews, homosexuals, experimental artists, and daring psychologists became insiders.

      The results, however, were disastrous. The instruments of democracy were appropriated by anti-democratic forces and used to undermine the democratic institutions that had made them available. And the breaking of cultural taboos reverberated from high culture into the depths of popular culture and custom, making once-taboo practices, from bestiality to pedophilia, semi-underground styles of gratification. Occurring simultaneously, the twin specters of economic despair and profligate wealth beset the population.

    • Donald Trump in 1993: ‘It’s fortunate I don’t have to run for political office’ – video

      In a 23-year-old video interview unearthed in New Zealand on Monday, Donald Trump says it is fortunate he is not running for political office given his belief that ‘certain women are more beautiful than others’. The TV interview by reporter Owen Poland was recorded in 1993, when Trump was making an ultimately unsuccessful bid to start a casino in New Zealand

    • Trump Taj Mahal Closes After 26 Years on Atlantic City Boardwalk

      Donald Trump opened his Trump Taj Mahal casino 26 years ago, calling it “the eighth wonder of the world.”

      But his friend and fellow billionaire Carl Icahn closed it Monday morning, making it the fifth casualty of Atlantic City’s casino crisis.

    • UN Critic of Donald Trump Must Be Silenced, Russia Says

      Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations filed a formal complaint last month demanding that the head of the world body’s human rights organization cease criticizing Donald Trump and other anti-Muslim politicians.

      Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, confirmed to the Associated Press on Friday that he had delivered a démarche, a form of diplomatic protest, to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon last month. The complaint was in response to comments from Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights, denouncing the racist rhetoric of Trump and European nationalists, including Geert Wilders, the Dutch populist who has promised to close mosques and ban the Koran if elected.

      “Prince Zeid is overstepping his limits from time to time and we’re unhappy about it,” Churkin told the AP.

      There was no indication that Trump requested Russia’s intercession on his behalf, or that he was even aware of the comments from the head of the UN rights group. Across the West, Russia has been accused of supporting inward-looking, nationalist demagogues who are considered less likely to be critical of Russian foreign and domestic policies. Hillary Clinton and her supporters have seized upon Trump’s boasts about being praised by Russian President Vladimir Putin as evidence of his naivety in world affairs.

    • What Got Left Out–and Right-Spun–at VP Debate

      The vice presidential debate (10/4/16) provided a stark picture of just how distorted corporate media’s priorities are compared to issues of actual consequence in people’s lives. Questions of national security and national debt consumed the evening, while issues such as abortion, poverty, LGBTQ rights and climate change were never asked about.

      Some of the topics that moderator Elaine Quijano of CBS News asked about: Russia, North Korea nuking the United States, ISIS/terrorism, why the US should bomb the Syrian and Russian air force and Donald Trump’s taxes.

      Topics that Quijano did not ask about: climate change, poverty, abortion, healthcare, student debt, privacy, LGBTQ rights or drug policy. There were no questions about these issues in the first presidential debate, either (FAIR.org, 9/27/16).

      Quijano did ask about immigration, a topic overlooked in the presidential debate. The economy was addressed via questions about the national debt and Social Security “run[ning] out of money.” Jobs and trade issues, which were discussed at some length by the presidential candidates, were not topics of questions in the VP debate.

      This is the 11th consecutive debate with a Democratic candidate for president or vice president that did not ask about poverty or abortion (FAIR.org, 5/27/16). The candidates did discuss abortion, but only in the context of an open-ended question about “balanc[ing] your personal faith and a public policy position,” which invited a religious reading of reproductive rights.

    • Both Campaigns Enthusiastically Violate Ban on Super PAC Coordination, Watchdog Says

      In another noble, doomed attempt to encourage the Federal Election Commission to enforce campaign finance law, the Campaign Legal Center filed complaints Thursday against Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and several Super PACs supporting them for illegal coordination.

      The Campaign Legal Center is a nonpartisan Washington, D.C., nonprofit that frequently files such complaints — including one based on The Intercept’s reporting — on which the FEC then generally takes no action.

      The FEC’s coma-like state is due to the ferocious opposition of its three Republican members to almost any restriction on money in politics. The FEC has six members, and by law no more than three can be from any one political party, so on many significant votes the commission deadlocks 3-3.

      Based on the CLC’s current complaints, it’s difficult to say whether the Trump or Clinton campaign more joyfully violates campaign finance rules.

      Several 2010 court decisions, including Citizens United, made it possible for Super PACs to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money supporting candidates for federal office. The Supreme Court determined that this would not “give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption” so long as Super PACs’ expenditures were truly independent — i.e., not coordinated with candidates’ campaigns.

    • We’re Not With Him: GOP Discovers Women’s Rights, Slams Donald Trump

      It takes a lot to rouse the feminist indignation of the GOP, but even Washington’s most diehard opponents of women’s rights are condemning Donald Trump’s comments in a 2005 recorded conversation with Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush. The Republican presidential nominee said, among other things: “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” and “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

      Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and other members of the Republican leadership distanced themselves from Trump’s comments.

      Pence issued a statement rejecting his running mate’s conduct. “As a husband and father, I was offended by the words and actions described by Donald Trump in the eleven-year-old video released yesterday. I do not condone his remarks and cannot defend them,” Pence said.

      Yet Pence’s record is not exactly out of sync with Trump’s words. Indeed, as a governor and legislator, Pence has been an innovator when it comes to measures that obstruct women’s rights. In Congress in 2007, he sponsored the first bill to defund Planned Parenthood. He is credited with starting the fight against the organization, which offers contraception, STI screenings, and primary care — as well as abortions.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Kosher Internet: A Niche, But Necessary Market for Ultra-Orthodox Jews

      Jonathan was 20 when he left orthodox Jewish school, or yeshiva, and got his first computer: a ThinkPad laptop to get him through his college program in engineering. Having grown up in Jerusalem in the 1980s and 90s, he had gone the entirety of his life without a computer, or even a television at home—as was, and remains customary to varying degrees among Haredim, or ultra-Orthodox Jews. Still, that didn’t stop the future programmer from falling in love with computers.

      While packs of yeshiva boys would sneak into town, crowding internet cafes to watch soccer or porn, or merely to cruise the web—the secular world only a click away—Jonathan hacked his school’s internet filters blocking certain websites in the name of ruchnius, or spirituality. Though he had ventured outside the insular Haredi community where he grew up, the Jerusalem College of Technology still adhered to strict codes of religiosity, which included filtering the internet.

    • Torrent-based websites that cannot be censored?

      This is exciting. The Web2Web project claims to be able to put web pages on the Internet that cannot be taken down, using torrents and Bitcoin. And it can be run from any modern browser.

    • Too many academics are now censoring themselves

      My colleague at another university showed a picture of an emaciated Hungarian Jewish woman liberated from a death camp. A student, yelled out, “stop showing this, I did not come here to be traumatised”, disrupting his lecture on the Hungarian Holocaust. After the student complained of distress, caused by the disturbing image, my colleague was told by an administrator to be more careful when discussing such a sensitive subject. “How can I teach the Holocaust without unsettling my students?” asked my friend. Academics who now feel they have to mind their words are increasingly posing such questions.

    • Users enraged, confused over YouTube censorship

      YouTube users are up in arms over the platform’s recent censorship of content, the most notorious example being the removal of videos showing Hillary Clinton stumbling during a 9/11 event.

      Users have already been complaining about the YouTube policy that denies revenue to content it deems as not “advertiser friendly.”

      Since late August, some users noticed that YouTube had removed ads from any videos that go against newly updated guidelines, which means the people who uploaded the videos wouldn’t make any money. The process is called “demonetization.”

    • What would Sixties rebels make of consent classes?

      If you want an example of how thoroughly today’s campus activists have lost the plot, look no further than mandatory consent classes. After starting life in the US, these workshops – now rolled out at more than 20 UK campuses – are at the cutting edge of campus Orwellianism. (As Brendan O’Neill has pointed out, there is a profound irony in making classes on consent mandatory.) But, more crucially, this creepy desire to regulate students’ sex lives – pushed, in the main, by student leaders themselves – is undermining the hard-won gains of student activism itself.

      As this new academic year has begun, there have been pockets of resistance to consent classes. At the University of York, students staged a walkout. ‘Consent talks are patronising’, 23-year-old student Ben Froughi told the Mail. ‘If students really need lessons in how to say yes or no then they should not be at university.’ Last week, at Clare College, Cambridge, a consent class was held, and no one showed up. Clare’s women’s officer posted a picture of the empty lecture hall on social media, decrying students’ evident apathy as a ‘huge step backwards’. She later deleted the post.

    • Ben Affleck’s ‘PR Dopes’ Called Out for ‘Censorship’ At Press Junket
    • NDTV’s Censorship Of Chidambaram’s Interview Is Rather Curious

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Facebook Workplace Tries to Muscle In on Your Job [iophk: "centralized surveillance"]

      One in four people on Earth use Facebook to connect with friends and family. But Mark Zuckerberg and company really want all those people to use the social network for office chatter, too.

      This morning, at an event in London, the company formally released Facebook Workplace, a service designed specifically for business communication. It first unveiled the service—originally called Facebook for Work—eighteen months ago, testing it with many businesses. Now, Workplace is available to any organization that wants it. Facebook will charge a monthly fee to businesses who use the service—the first time it will generate revenue through fees instead of ads.

    • Facebook Wants to Kill Work Email With This New App

      You can officially add Facebook to the list of software companies seeking to all-but-eliminate corporate email.

      The social network’s much-anticipated business edition—formally dubbed Workplace by Facebook, rather than the Facebook at Work moniker used during its 18-month beta test—has already been adopted by more than 1,000 companies, according to information that Facebook plans to share Monday evening during the product’s official launch event in London.

    • Apple Watch banned from UK cabinet meetings over Russian hacking fears

      Politicians in the UK have reportedly been banned from wearing the Apple Watch to cabinet meetings over fears the device could be hacked. According to a report from The Telegraph, the government is worried that the Apple Watch’s microphone could be used to listen in on high-level policy discussions, especially by Russian spies.

      It’s a justified paranoia, especially after the announcement last week from the US government that it is officially blaming Russia for the hack on the Democratic National Committee. A source in the UK told The Telegraph: “The Russians are trying to hack everything.”

    • In the UK, running a blog over HTTPS is an act of terrorism, says Scotland Yard

      In a bizarre case, Scotland Yard is accusing a person for six separate acts of preparing terrorism. Those six acts include researching encryption, developing an “encrypted version” of his blog, and instructing others how to use encryption.

      This is one of those cases where you do a double take. As reported by Ars Technica, UK’s Scotland Yard is charging a Cardiff person with preparing for terrorism – but the list of charges shows activities we associate with very ordinary precautionary privacy measures. “Developing an encrypted version of a blog” can be read as, and probably means, publishing it over HTTPS – such as this blog and many others, simply because it’s considered best practice.

    • U.S. Tech Giants Are Investing Billions to Keep Data in Europe

      In the battle to dominate Europe’s cloud computing market, American tech giants are spending big to build up their local credibility.

      Amazon Web Services, the largest player, announced last week that it would soon open multiple data centers in France and Britain. Google, which already has sites in countries like Finland and Belgium, is expected to finish a new multimillion-dollar data complex in the Netherlands by the end of the year.

    • NSA In Support Of Encryption Is ‘Disingenuous’: EFF Purports

      On Wednesday, CAMBRIDGE, Ma. – The NSA, National Security Agency appeared in support of encryption. But the stance was quickly contested by the privacy advocates, who criticizes the agency for peculiar definition of the term “encryption” than others.

      The general counsel for the NSA, Glenn Gerstell, asserted that the company “believes in strong encryption” during the panel, “Privacy vs. Security: Beyond the Zero-Sum Game,” on (CCS) Cambridge Cyber Summit conducted by MIT.

    • Unblinking Eyes: The State of Communications Surveillance in Latin America

      In December 1992, following a hastily-drawn sketch of a map given to him by a whistleblower, the Paraguayan lawyer Martin Almada drove to an obscure police station in the suburb of Lambaré, near Asunción. Behind the police offices, in a run-down office building, he discovered a cache of 700,000 documents, piled nearly to the ceiling. This was the “Terror Archive,” an almost complete record of the interrogations, torture, and surveillance conducted by the Paraguayan military dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. The files reported details of “Operation Condor,” a clandestine program between the military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Brazil between the 1970s and 1980s. The military governments of those nations agreed to cooperate in sending teams into other countries to track, monitor, and kill their political opponents. The files listed more than 50,000 deaths and 400,000 political prisoners throughout Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela.

    • Subpoena to Encrypted App Provider Highlights Overbroad FBI Requests for Information

      A recently revealed grand jury subpoena shows that the FBI is likely continuing to ask companies for more information than the law allows, according to technology and privacy attorneys interviewed by The Intercept.

      Earlier this year, the FBI served Open Whisper Systems, the creator of Signal, a popular end-to-end encrypted messaging application, with its first criminal grand jury subpoena. On Tuesday, Open Whisper Systems and its lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union successfully challenged a gag order forbidding the company from speaking about that request.

      The published documents show that the FBI requested “any and all subscriber information and any associated accounts to include subscriber name, address, telephone numbers, email addresses, method of payment, IP registration, IP history logs and addresses, account history, toll records, upstream and downstream providers, any associated accounts acquired through cookie data, and any other contact information from inception to the present” for two phone numbers.

    • What would a CYBERCOM-NSA split mean?

      Much has been made over the discussions surrounding a potential separation of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command. Such a determination would involve severing the “dual-hat” leadership of these organizations, which share the same chief, as well as raise questions of what CYBERCOM standing up as its own independent organization might look like.

    • Briefing Unsealed in Court Battle Over National Security Letters

      EFF Argues that NSL Secrecy Violates First Amendment and Chills Debate on Government Surveillance

      San Francisco – An appeals court published redacted briefing by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today arguing that national security letters (NSLs) and their accompanying gag orders violate the free speech rights of companies who want to keep their users informed about government surveillance.

      EFF represents two service providers in challenging the NSL statutes in front of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Most of the proceedings have been sealed since the case began five years ago, but some redacted documents have been released after government approval.

    • USA FREEDOM Act Requires Government to Declassify Any Order to Yahoo

      In the wake of reports this week that the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ordered Yahoo to scan all of its users’ email in 2015, there are many unanswered legal and technical questions about the mass surveillance.

      But before we can even begin to answer them, there is a more fundamental question: what does the court order say?

      We should be able to answer this question. Section 402 of the USA FREEDOM Act, passed in June 2015, specifically requires government officials to “conduct a declassification review of each decision, order, or opinion issued” by the FISC “that includes a significant construction or interpretation of any provision of law.” The Yahoo order would appear to fall squarely within this provision.

      Congress passed Section 402 to end decades of secret FISC-created law after learning that the court was interpreting federal statutes and the U.S. Constitution in secret and without the benefit of any other voices to counter arguments by the Executive Branch.

    • Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone

      In July I wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working without the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone). It is time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.

      The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use it regularly to chat with my loved ones. I had a major snag at the end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my setup, identify and keys. The reason behind this major mess was running out of disk space. To avoid that ever happening again I have started storing everything in userdata/ in git, to be able to roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake. I had to use it once after introducing the git backup. When rolling back to an earlier version, one need to use the ‘reset session’ option in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the problem. I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the protocol to detect rollback attacks. The git repository is rather big (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare time.

      I’ve also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this make it impossible to send messages using Signal. I could still receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send. I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and thus try to keep the number of support requests down.

      Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly, making the old patch fail to apply cleanly. Below is an updated patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal. The original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console and call a function from there. I got help from a friend with more JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI button instead. This mean that to get started you just need to run the wrapper and click the ‘Register without mobile phone’ to get going now. I’ve also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.

    • Self-driving cars won’t just log miles and road markers; they’ll be logging you

      A Silicon Valley company called Nauto announced a partnership with Toyota’s Research Institute, BMWi Ventures (a venture capital company founded by BMW), and insurance company Allianz Ventures to bring driver analysis to autonomous vehicles.

      Nauto currently produces a $400 aftermarket camera- and sensor-equipped device that attaches to a car’s windshield to analyze driver behavior. According to Reuters, the device is part-dash cam—snapping footage and tagging “events” like accidents—and part-driver monitor—detecting possible driver distraction in the car like drinking or texting. Nauto then collects and anonymizes this information to draw conclusions about driver habits, intersections, and congestion in certain areas.

    • Remotely accessing an IP address inside a target computer is a search

      First, several readers pointed out that the government actually has made this argument. You can read the government’s argument here in the Michaud case (pages 6-7) and here in the Lemus case (pages 8-12). My apologies for the misstatement, and thanks to reader Jonathan Mayer for sending on the briefs.

      Second, some readers argued that a Tor user loses a reasonable expectation of privacy in IP addresses because the user must disclose his true IP address to Tor. This is essentially the argument the government (briefly) makes in Michaud: By using Tor, you are sending your IP address to Tor, which is ultimately hosted by “an unknowable collection of strangers” who are running Tor exit nodes. You have put out your IP address to lots of people, which means that you have no expectation of privacy in it.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • How Sweden became an exporter of jihad

      Sweden is a peaceful democratic state that has long been a safe haven for those fleeing conflict. Yet many young people whose families took refuge there are now turning their back on the country. More than 300 people have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq, making Sweden per capita one of the biggest exporters of jihadists in Europe.

      I meet a young woman in the basement of a building in Gothenburg, Sweden’s second city. She seems like any other young Western woman, wearing tight clothing and make-up. But she has recently returned from Raqqa in Syria, where her husband died fighting for the so-called Islamic State (IS).

    • Pimping charges over escort ads could erode tech firms’ legal protection: experts

      The CEO and owners of Backpage.com are accused of heinous crimes, but California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ indictment of the three men could lead to a major upheaval for some Silicon Valley tech companies, experts said Friday.

      [...]

      In going after Backpage, Harris — in the midst of a U.S. Senate campaign — might have been emboldened by last year’s courtroom victory over the operator of a revenge-porn website. Kevin Bollaert was sentenced to 18 years in prison — despite a Section 230 defense, Goldman said.

      It was Bollaert’s design and operation of the site, rather than just the hosting of third-party content, that helped Harris get a conviction, Goldman said. “It’s possible they think they can hold (the Backpage defendants) accountable for the design and operation of Backpage, which has been in (prosecutors’) opinion optimized to facilitate online prostitution ads,” Goldman said.

    • Police Unions Reject Charges of Bias, Find a Hero in Donald Trump

      During the first presidential debate, Donald Trump answered a question about how to heal the country’s racial divide by boasting of his law enforcement endorsements.

      “We have endorsements from, I think, almost every police group,” he said, before rephrasing to “a large percentage of them.” Later in the debate, in response to a question about cybersecurity, he boasted again: “I was just endorsed by ICE. They’ve never endorsed anybody before on immigration. I was just endorsed by ICE.”

      As is often the case, the candidate’s statements were hyperbolic in the first claim and plain incorrect in the second. U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency operating under the Department of Homeland Security, did not, of course, endorse anyone, even though the National ICE Council, the union representing 7,600 of ICE’s 20,000 employees, did endorse Trump. And while the Fraternal Order of Police, the largest police association in the country, as well as some local police unions, also endorsed Trump, that’s hardly every police group in the country.

      But Trump did have a point: At a time when law enforcement is perhaps the only issue that divides Americans more than the presidential election itself, a notable number of police and immigration officers are throwing their weight behind his candidacy — at least through their unions and associations.

    • Ways You Can Be Killed During An Encounter with Police

      How do you defend yourself against individuals who have been indoctrinated into believing that they are superior to you, that their word is law, and that they have the power to take your life?

      Most of all, how can you maintain the illusion of freedom when daily, Americans are being shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, challenge an order or just exist?

      The short answer: you can’t.

      Now for the long answer, which is far more complicated but still leaves us feeling hopeless, helpless and vulnerable to the fears, moods and misguided training of every cop on the beat.

      If you ask police and their enablers what Americans should do to stay alive during encounters with law enforcement, they will tell you to comply (or die).

    • Avoiding Contempt of Court, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach Says He’ll Let People Vote

      Under the threat of contempt of court, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has agreed to register thousands of eligible voters and to properly notify them that they are registered. His announcement came after a federal judge summoned him to a contempt hearing for failing to fully carry out the court’s order and add about 18,000 voters to the rolls.

      Kobach is the architect of laws across the country that have created barriers for eligible voters to register and vote, including requirements that people present citizenship documents at the time of registration and restrictions on the forms of ID voters must provide. Kobach has helped develop model legislation for these restrictions and coached legislators in how to pass them. Other states have eliminated same-day registration and narrowed time periods for voting — mainly affecting people of color.

      Some legislators have admitted that it is part of their political strategy to spread false fear of electoral fraud in order to issue stricter rules for voter registration. Judges in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Texas, and North Dakota have recently ruled that states restrictions on voters discriminate on the basis of race.

    • Gov. LePage’s Binder of Black and Brown People Is Actually Pretty White

      According to our count, more than half of the people in Gov. LePage’s binder are white.

      Last month, Maine’s Gov. LePage once again got our attention when he claimed to be keeping a binder of “every single drug dealer who has been arrested in our state,” 90 percent of whom, he said, are Black or Hispanic.

      We couldn’t believe that was true, so we filed a public records request for the binder. On Monday, we got in line at the state house to receive our copy on CD.

      What we received could best be described as a scrapbook: a random, incomplete collection of newspaper clippings and press releases from the Maine Department of Public Safety. Some press releases don’t include photos of the arrested. Some contain handwritten notes from the governor himself: “get photo for my album;” “please be sure we get all mugs with release;” “file pictures in my binder for historical value.”

      While the binder paints an incomplete picture of the demographics of drug arrests in Maine, it very clearly does not support the governor’s assertions that over 90 percent of the people in his scrapbook are Black or Hispanic. While it is impossible to tell the race of all arrestees included in the binder, at least 50 of the 90 people pictured appear to be white. In other words, the governor greatly exaggerated the role people of color play in Maine’s drug trade.

    • For Mexican Towns Attacked by Cartel, Few Answers and No Justice

      It was a brazen attack. Some 60 gunmen linked to the brutal Zetas cartel descended on a quiet cluster of towns just south of the Mexican border in the spring of 2011 and launched a door-to-door extermination campaign that went on for weeks, leaving an untold number of people dead or missing. Yet in the five years since the slaughter in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, the Mexican government has failed to fully investigate, much less address the needs of the victims and their families, according to a preliminary report released today by a panel of scholars and human rights investigators.

      “It’s horrifying because it was all so blatant,” said Mariclaire Acosta, a veteran human rights investigator who advised the panel. “This wasn’t a hidden crime. It all happened out in the open, and not one government agency did anything to stop it.”

      Such charges have become a disturbing echo in Mexico, where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed by drug violence, either at the hands of traffickers or corrupt security forces, and the crippled — often complicit — justice system is incapable of pursuing those responsible. Sunday’s report suggests that Mexicans have begun to look for ways, at the very least, to get to the truth, rather than sitting idly and wait for justice from their government. They are increasingly calling for help from external experts, both at home and abroad, to oversee investigations into the most egregious crimes. And government leaders — who may or may not be committed to real reforms, but seem prickly about public opinion polls — are relenting.

    • Hell in “Dark Prison”: New forms of torture at CIA black site revealed

      Previously undisclosed methods of torture used by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency have been revealed in a new report by Human Rights Watch.

      Two Tunisian men detained without charge or trial in a CIA black site in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2015 independently described to the rights group several excruciating forms of abuse they endured at the hands of the CIA.

      The detainees, who were subjected to extreme sensory deprivation and hunger, recalled being brutally beaten all over their bodies with batons by U.S. interrogators. They also said they were repeatedly punched and kicked. One man suffered broken bones in these beatings.

      Even more grueling were the many weeks the detainees endured chained by their hands to the ceilings of their cells for repeated 24-hour periods. These days of torment were only punctuated by short breaks for interrogations or other forms of torture. One man said he was forced to hang like this for roughly three months; another said he suffered through it for a month.

    • 40 boys in mass brawl at troubled Danish asylum centre

      Around 40 underage asylum seekers participated in a mass brawl at the children’ asylum centres Børnecenter Tullebølle on Sunday, local news site Fyens.dk reported.

      Boys from the same centre were also involved in a fight involving upwards of 100 minor asylum seekers during a football match against another centre in July.

      The following month, five teenage boys from the centre were charged for sexual assaults committed during the Langelandsfestival. Three were charged with groping, and two for raping a 16-year-old girl.

    • Malmö nightclub rocked by powerful explosion

      A popular nightclub in Malmö was damaged in a powerful explosion in the early hours of Monday.

      No one was injured in the blast, which was heard across large parts of central Malmö shortly after 1.30am on Monday.

      Babel, a popular nightclub and concert venue in the Möllevången area, was damaged in the explosion, which shattered windows on the first floor. A car parked on the street outside was also damaged.

      Police examined the property overnight. The explosion is believed to have been intentional, but in the morning it was still unclear what had caused the detonation.

    • Girl under 15 married every seven seconds, says Save the Children

      One girl under the age of 15 is married every seven seconds, according to a new report by Save the Children.

      The study says girls as young as 10 are forced to marry much older men in countries including Afghanistan, Yemen, India and Somalia.

      Save the Children says early marriage can trigger a cycle of disadvantage across every part of a girl’s life.

      Conflict, poverty and humanitarian crises are seen as major factors that leave girls exposed to child marriage.

      “Child marriage starts a cycle of disadvantage that denies girls the most basic rights to learn, develop and be children,” said Save the Children International CEO Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

    • The Freedom to Associate

      In 1854, an Austrian priest and physics teacher named Gregor Mendel sought and received permission from his abbot to plant a two-acre garden of pea plants on the grounds of the monastery at which he lived. Over the course of the next seven years, he bred together thousands upon thousands of the plants under carefully controlled circumstances, recording in a journal the appearance of every single offspring that resulted, as defined by seven characteristics: plant height, pod shape and color, seed shape and color, and flower position and color. In the end, he collected enough data to formulate the basis of the modern science of genetics, in the form of a theory of dominant and recessive traits passed down in pairs from generation to generation. He presented his paper on the subject, “Experiments on Plant Hybridization,” before the Natural History Society of Austria in 1865, and saw it published in a poorly circulated scientific journal the following year.

      And then came… nothing. For various reasons — perhaps due partly to the paper’s unassuming title, perhaps due partly to the fact that Mendel was hardly a known figure in the world of biology, undoubtedly due largely to the poor circulation of the journal in which it was published — few noticed it at all, and those who did dismissed it seemingly without grasping its import. Most notably, Charles Darwin, whose On the Origin of Species had been published while Mendel was in the midst of his own experiments, seems never to have been aware of the paper at all, thereby missing this key gear in the mechanism of evolution. Mendel was promoted to abbot of his monastery shortly after the publication of his paper, and the increased responsibilities of his new post ended his career as a scientist. He died in 1884, remembered as a quiet man of religion who had for a time been a gentleman dabbler in the science of botany.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Members Still Debating Changes To Oversight At WIPO

      Stung by what some saw as a botched process for handling an investigation into allegations from senior officials about the head of the UN World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO members are working this week to agree on changes to procedures. A new draft text circulated this morning introduces additional responsibility for governments in the process, and is under discussion today. At press time, ambassadors from the African Group were meeting among themselves and asked to hold up the process until internal agreement could be reached on the text. The plenary is scheduled to reconvene at four o’clock today.

      The annual WIPO General Assemblies are taking place from 3-11 October.

      The latest draft text of the proposed changes to the WIPO Internal Oversight Charter changes is available here [pdf]. The latest version accepted many of changes in the previous version [pdf], but the latest text goes much further.

    • Promoting Transparency in Trade Act Would Bring Long-Needed Reforms to the USTR

      The one important thing that the current legislation omits to do is to require the publication of consolidated draft texts of trade agreements after each round of negotiations. This reform, alone, would be a significant advance which would bring trade negotiations into line with other intergovernmental treaty negotiations such as those that take place at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It is unfortunate that, although it was part of an earlier draft, this didn’t make it into the current draft bill. We are hopeful that the bill can be amended to include this in its final form.

      None of these three proposals, even including the omitted one, is particularly radical. They are far less radical, for example, than a separate proposal by Congressman Morgan Griffith that would actually divest the USTR of its authority and move it to a committee of Congress. EFF considers the Promoting Transparency in Trade Act to be an important and achievable step forward in making long-needed reforms to the USTR. Provided that it can be amended to include the publication of consolidated texts, EFF supports the bill.

    • Key takeaways from the IP Enforcement Forum 2016

      Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) provide a good example of a technology where different IP rights have a role to play, and Noam Shemtov, senior lecturer in IP at Queen Mary University of London, examined the merits of patents, trade marks, trade dress, unfair competition, registered designs and copyright in a discussion that covered cases including Apple’s slide-to-unlock feature and the pending dispute Microsoft v Corel (over Microsoft Office) in the US.

    • Examining the Madrid Protocol in Africa

      International Registrations are not being properly administered in several African countries, and take up by local businesses has been low. Wayne Meiring explains why this is a problem

      Much has been written about the Madrid Protocol in Africa. The focus has been on the common law issue and the issue regarding the accession of OAPI. This article, however, looks at two other issues. The first is that in many member countries International Registrations (IRs) are not being properly administered. The second is the fact that to a great extent, IRs are not being used by African IP rights holders to any significant degree.

    • Interview With Brazilian Culture Minister Marcelo Calero

      At last week’s first-ever Assembly of the Marrakesh Treaty, Intellectual Property Watch caught up with the Assembly Chair, new Brazilian Culture Minister Marcelo Calero. In a video interview with William New, he talked briefly about the importance of libraries and of implementing the Marrakesh Treaty.

    • The Whole VR Porn Industry Is Talking About These Patent Lawsuits

      For the past few years, the media’s been abuzz about the promise of VR porn. VR technology keeps getting better and more affordable, and adult entrepreneurs are eager to find a medium that might actually make them money. Throw in the fact that the immersive properties of VR are ideal for the intimate experience of porn viewing, and it starts to seem like a perfect storm for the future of high-tech erotic entertainment.

      What force could possibly derail the adult industry’s virtual reality dreams? Well, for starters, patents.

      Two weeks ago, the National Law Review reported that Virtual Immersion Technologies LLC had begun enforcing patent 6409599, an incredibly broad patent for an “interactive virtual reality performance theater entertainment system.” The patent is at the heart of a handful of active lawsuits—including one related to VR porn, and another about teledildonics—and other VR companies, even those that haven’t been sued themselves, are beginning to panic.

10.10.16

Links 10/10/2016: GNOME 3.24 With ownCloud Integration, Bodhi Linux 4.0.0 Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 4:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Links xx/10/2016: Links for the day

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • On the State of Open Source

    I was just a teenager when I got involved in the open source community. I remember talking with an old bearded guy once about how this new organization, GNU, is going to change everything. Over the years, I mucked around with a number of different OSS tools and operating systems, got excited when symmetric multiprocessing came to BSD, screwed around with Linux boot and root disks, and had become both engaged and enthralled with the new community that had developed around Unix over the years. That same spirit was simultaneously shared outside of the Unix world, too. Apple user groups met frequently to share new programs we were working on with our ][c’s, and later our ][gs’s and Macs, exchange new shareware (which we actually paid for, because the authors deserved it), and to buy stacks of floppies of the latest fonts or system disks. We often demoed our new inventions, shared and exchanged the source code to our BBS systems, games, or anything else we were working on, and made the agendas of our user groups community efforts to teach and understand the awful protocols, APIs, and compilers we had at the time. This was my first experience with open source. Maybe it was not yours, although I hope yours was just as positive.

  • OpenType 1.8 and style attributes

    In last week’s look at the new revision of the OpenType font format, we focused primarily on the new variations font feature, which makes it possible to encode multiple design “masters” into a single font binary. This enables the renderer to generate a new font instance at runtime based on interpolating the masters in a particular permutation of their features (weight, width, slant, etc). Such new functionality will, at least in some cases, mean that application software will have to be reworked in order to present the available font variations to the end user in a meaningful fashion.

    But there is another change inherent in the new feature that may not be as obvious at first glance. Variations fonts redefine the relationships between individual font files and font “families.” There is a mechanism defined in the new standard to bridge the gap between the old world and the new, called the Style Attributes (STAT) table. For it to work in a meaningful fashion, though, it must be implemented by traditional, non-variations fonts as well—which may not be an easy sell.

    There is no formal definition of a font family, but in general usage the term refers to a set of fonts that share core design principles and, in most cases, use a single name and come from the same designer or design team. The Ubuntu Font Family, for example, includes upright and italic fonts in four weights at the standard width, one weight of upright-only condensed width, and two weights (in upright and italic) of a monospaced variant.

  • An open source font system for everyone

    A big challenge in sharing digital information around the world is “tofu”—the blank boxes that appear when a computer or website isn’t able to display text: ⯐. Tofu can create confusion, a breakdown in communication, and a poor user experience.

    Five years ago we set out to address this problem via the Noto—aka “No more tofu”—font project. Today, Google’s open-source Noto font family provides a beautiful and consistent digital type for every symbol in the Unicode standard, covering more than 800 languages and 110,000 characters.

  • Students Hacked a Chip to Give Your Smartphone a Sense of Touch

    Project Soli, which debuted at Google I/O in 2015, is a tiny chip that uses radar to detect discreet hand and finger motions. It was designed as a unique way to interact with mobile devices, but students at the University of St. Andrews found a way to use the simple chip to give electronics an actual sense of touch.

    The chip, developed by Google’s Advanced Technologies And Projects group, or ATAP, uses the same kind of radar as airports use to track arriving and departing planes. As radio waves bounce back to the Project Soli chip from your hand, the unique signals detected can be used to decipher even the tiniest of motions.

  • Caged Heat: Using Open Source in a Windows Workplace

    I work primarily with Windows but let me say that I, like many of you, have no choice in the matter. We don’t live in a world where the company tells us, “Well, here’s Microsoft Office and everything we do is on a web app. Have fun!” My goodness, that would be a relative paradise for many people. You could potentially go hog wild and use the applications you want.

    Still, a lot of us work with very clunky tools sometimes set on a gray-haired version of Java and birthed from Windows installers. It’s a sad reality that a lot of highly-specialized practice software applications, many of which attach to MICROSOFT databases, will only run on Windows because the developer is selling these apps for profit and not for fun. They also happen to know that 95% of the market is drenched in……Windows.

  • European Open Source Jobs Surge

    According to a recent report, European open source jobs may be more sought after and more rewarded than anywhere else in the world. These findings were a key feature in the results of The 2016 Open Source Jobs Report which was released by Dice, a career site for technology and engineering professionals in association with The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit advancing professional open source management for mass collaboration.

  • Multivendor & MANO Will Dominate NFV Discussions

    NFV management and network orchestration (MANO) is sure to be a hot topic at next week’s SDN & OpenFlow World Congress at The Hague, Netherlands. For many, MANO has been considered to be a roadblock to not only deploying network functions virtualization (NFV), but also to making NFV agile and efficient.

  • ETSI open source MANO work launches Release One stack

    ETSI continues to move on its open source MANO work in support of telecom NFV plans, releasing the latest OSM stack focused on VNF, SDN controller support

    The European Telecommunications Standards Institute’s Open Source MANO initiative continued to feed software into the management and orchestration community with the launch of its OSM Release One stack.

  • Open Source Forking Demystified: Threats and Benefits

    Two researchers, Gregorio Robles and Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Spain, had embarked on a study of forks. Their paper titled “A Comprehensive Study of Software Forks: Dates, Reasons and Outcomes,” studied the sustainability of software projects in an open environment of sharing software. Key questions answered were—how many forks were in actual existence, was forking frequency increasing and understanding the root-causes for forking. Also, the researchers looked into the outcomes of forking—a point that may be of specific interest to CIOs. But first, let us understand what a fork truly means.

  • Rethink Robotics Leads in Research and Education with Open Source SDK

    Rethink Robotics today unveiled its high performance Sawyer robot for the global research and education markets. Built on the open source Robot Operating System (ROS) and equipped with a software development kit (SDK), Sawyer will help leading educators and researchers innovate in fields including machine learning, human-robot interaction, mechatronics and grasping, machine vision and manufacturing skills.

  • Open source in the enterprise: It’s about culture, not technology, says Github

    Collaboration platform provider gives its top tips on ‘inner source’, the idea of adopting open source software development principles within the enterprise

  • Transparency and Independence Drive Open-Source Adoption

    Open-source software is now not only acceptable; in many companies, it is required. In the past, enterprises looked at open source projects as if they were science experiments, lacking the support and “single throat to choke” in case of an escalation. But the tide has turned. It is now common to have one or more companies offering support on open source projects, enabling enterprises to not only get the same level of service formerly reserved for proprietary commercial software, but to also benefit from the vibrant communities surrounding open source projects.

    What are the benefits of community for the enterprise? Independence and transparency.

  • Tech Insider: Open source business models

    This week we’ll step back and revisit a few fundamentals of competition and cooperation and how this results in the open source ecosystem.

  • The power of open source is customer freedom

    The open source community is a diverse and fractious collection of individuals and organizations. In its infancy, in many ways it could be compared to the hippie movements of the ’60s: a lot of passion, a lot of fun, a lot of weirdness, and not a lot of organization. Over the last decade or so, it has evolved into a respected software development force that relies on the support of its members.

    As it’s grown and diversified over the last decade, it has gotten more mainstream in the sense that there are now many different players that are making quite a bit of money based on open source principles. It has more prestige and a lot more respectability. As they say, money changes everything.

    That’s what I was thinking as I read Max Schireson’s article, “The money in open source software,” on TechCrunch: how much things in the open source community have changed, and how much they have stayed the same. The article is a breakdown of how to plan for a profitable company based on open source software. It provides a lot of common-sense points: Have and stick to a business plan, pick a licensing model that makes sense, and maintain customer satisfaction. None of these are particularly earth-shattering ideas.

  • Events

    • Slides from Linuxcon Europe 2016
    • LinuxCon Europe 2016 – Veni, Vidi, Vici

      There we are. It feels like a dream. It happened too fast, and I did not get to absorb the full aroma of the conference. But never mind. There will always be another opportunity, and LinuxCon will be there next year, waiting, beckoning. Despite a somewhat less than perfect circumstances, I am quite happy. I enjoyed my session, if I’m allowed to say that, and I think I served my audience well, and their feedback was good and open. There is nothing that would have made it better except a little more time to network, talk to people, pilfer some more free shirts and electronics, and actually see the city.

      Anyhow, I hope you find these little field reports entertaining. And maybe we will meet somewhere next year, and you will come over and say, oh so you are that crazy guy, why are you not wearing a fedora huh? Indeed. 2017, so let the countdown begin. The Final Countdown. By a band called Europe. What can be more appropriate? OMG. See you next autumn.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Get Better Firefox Look on Linux With These Extensions

        Firefox is one of the most used web browsers on the Web. According to Clicky, it holds around 20% of the global market share. Firefox is also installed by default in almost all Linux distributions. So it’s very likely to see Linux users using it all the time, although many other alternatives are available like Chromium and Epiphany.

        Since the web browser’s window is all what many of us see the whole day, you may want to customize its appearance. We are not talking about “personas” or those simple backgrounds that you put to colorize a small part of the browser’s window. We are talking about changing the theme totally. Firefox does this using “Complete Themes“.

      • Firefox sandbox on Linux tightened

        As just announced on mozilla.dev.platform, we landed a set of changes in today’s Nightly that tightens our sandboxing on Linux. The content process, which is the part of Firefox that renders webpages and executes any JavaScript on them, had been previously restricted in the amount of system calls that it could access. As of today, it no longer has write access to the filesystem, barring an exception for shared memory and /tmp. We plan to also remove the latter, eventually.

      • Mozilla is working on Form Autofill for Firefox

        Mozilla is currently working on bringing form autofill functionality to its Firefox web browser.

        Firefox remembers form data by default that you enter on sites, but the browser does not ship with options to create profiles that you may use on any form you encounter while using the browser.

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Databases

    • RethinkDB database shuts down as its business falters
    • Company Behind RethinkDB Is Shutting Down, Database to Remain Open Source
    • BigchainDB Moves On From End Of RethinkDB
    • RethinkDB is shutting down

      I just installed RethinkDB 2.3.5 on a new laptop and took a few minutes to slow down and play with the product. I’m very proud of what we built alongside our community – RethinkDB’s technology more often feels like magic, and I hope it will continue to play an important role in advancing the state of the art in database technology.

      We’re working with members of our community to develop a continuity plan for RethinkDB and Horizon. Both projects will continue to be available, distributed under open source licenses. We hope to continue our open development process with a larger community of contributors.

      We’d like your help to ensure RethinkDB’s future as an open-source project! We don’t have all of the details figured out, but we wanted to be as open as possible during this process. If you’re interested in contributing, please join us in the #open-rethinkdb channel of our public Slack group. You can expect to see development slow down in the meantime, but everything will continue to be available on rethinkdb.com and horizon.io. We will post updates on our blog and Twitter as we continue working things out.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • An Emacs Update

      It’s been a while I have not written about Emacs and more particularly my personal use case for Emacs. I started using Emacs because I was looking for a text editor capable of handling formats such as HTML and CSS; then I found out Emacs had quite convenient IRC clients and I could even use a bit of Org mode for project management. That was in 2013 and early 2014. As I was impressed by the seemingly infinite power of Emacs, I started using Org-mode more and more on a daily basis (something I still do today); and I started learning (e)lisp both in order to understand Emacs a bit more in-depth and because I wanted to start to learn a programming language.

      Remember: I’m no software developer. When I’m not maintaining or creating websites for friends, I’m not doing much else in the way of “coding”. My Emacs usage remains however a daily experience that I would like to share here.

    • Report: Bash Skills Pay Off the Most (Wait, Bash?)

      It’s not surprising that a new skills survey rounds up the usual list of suspects for the most popular programming language, naming JavaScript, Python, Java, et al.

      What is surprising is the list of skills that pay off the most in terms of developer salaries: Bash, Perl and Scala. Bash topped the list at about $100,000.

      Bash?

      I read a lot of these surveys, and the Bash scripting language rarely makes a strong appearance. But it leads the list of respondents’ stated median salaries by programming language in a new report from Packt Ltd. titled “Skill Up 2016″ (free download upon providing registration info) which garnered more than 11,500 responses.

      “We’ve now seen what languages are the most popular,” the report says, “but what languages are the most lucrative in 2016? Our data shows that languages favored by more experienced developers command the highest salaries; it pays to be a Perl Monk or a Bash Scripter. Scala developers also manage to command high salaries, while the more ubiquitous JavaScript and Python hover around the middle, as they are likely favored by both highly-paid and more junior alike. If you’re still working with Visual Basic or PHP, you might want to consider an upgrade.”

  • Public Services/Government

    • Russia may require use of open source software

      The Russian government is reportedly drafting a Bill that would require government agencies to prefer the use of open source software, as part of efforts to reduce its reliance on US vendors Oracle, Microsoft and IBM.

      Russia’s Lower House of parliament is working on legislation that would further prohibit the use of foreign software, Bloomberg reported.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Standards/Consortia

    • The anatomy of a Vulkan driver

      Jason Ekstrand gave a presentation at the 2016 X.Org Developers Conference (XDC) on a driver that he and others wrote for the new Vulkan 3D graphics API on Intel graphics hardware. Vulkan is significantly different from OpenGL, which led the developers to making some design decisions that departed from those made for OpenGL drivers.

Leftovers

  • Hardware

    • Smallest. Transistor. Ever.

      For more than a decade, engineers have been eyeing the finish line in the race to shrink the size of components in integrated circuits. They knew that the laws of physics had set a 5-nanometer threshold on the size of transistor gates among conventional semiconductors, about one-quarter the size of high-end 20-nanometer-gate transistors now on the market.

  • Security

    • Cybersecurity: Complexity is Our Biggest Vulnerability

      Confucius once said, “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” For those of us in cybersecurity professions, we can easily relate to this philosophy. Cybersecurity has become exceedingly complicated in recent years, and the complexity might now be our biggest vulnerability.

      IT is evolving rapidly, but IT security is often left playing catch up in order to adapt to the changes in how businesses approach and deploy computing, applications, networks, databases, and devices. Many organizations rely on best practices such as defense in depth, secure development lifecycle, penetration testing, separation of duties, etc. However, these tactics do not allow cybersecurity to move at business speed, and they contribute to the lag in IT security.

    • Open source software is best for IoT security

      Art Swift, president of the prpl Foundation, pointed to high profile IoT hacking attacks saying that “regardless of whether these hacks were malicious or simply done in the name of research, the fact is that it is possible today to hack into just about any connected device.”

      Swift says that hackers can reverse engineer, exploit a weak implementation, modify or re-flash the firmware, and then move laterally across the system.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Syria no-fly zone would mean ‘killing a lot of Syrians’ warned Clinton in leaked speech

      The US former Secretary of State made the admission in a Wall Street speech in 2013.

      In the latest dump of classified emails, Mrs Clinton noted the problems with imposing a no-fly zone over Syria.

      She said: “To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defenses, many of which are located in populated areas.

    • How WWIII Can Start In The Last Place You Expect (And Soon)

      Hey America! Just checking in with another update on how a recent presidential election is going to doom us all! I’m not talking about the election that’s happening in this country right now. I will at some point, but it’s an election that happened thousands of miles away which deserves the bulk of our attention today. I’m speaking, of course, about the this year’s presidential election in the Philippines, where a legitimately crazy person named Rodrigo Duterte took control of the highest office of in a country of more than 100 million people. He’s said and done a lot of insane things since then, but if you’re only keeping track of the highlights, you probably have no idea just how insane things might get.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Hillary Clinton Expresses Support For Fracking In Wikileaks Document

      During the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton cast herself as a skeptic of hydraulic fracturing — the controversial process to extract natural gas. But newly released documents purporting to show excerpts of her paid speeches show that Clinton proudly touted her support for fracking, which environmental groups say can pollute groundwater and undermine the fight against climate change. The excerpts also show Clinton saying that some environmental organizations trying to restrict her work to promote fracking were front groups for Russian oligarchs.

      The transparency group Wikileaks published the document as part of what it says is a tranche of emails from John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman. Podesta has refused to say whether the excerpts are authentic but has not denied their authenticity, either.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • EXCLUSIVE: New Email Leak Reveals Clinton Campaign’s Cozy Press Relationship

      Internal strategy documents and emails among Clinton staffers shed light on friendly and highly useful relationships between the campaign and various members of the U.S. media, as well as the campaign’s strategies for manipulating those relationships.

      The emails were provided to The Intercept by the source identifying himself as Guccifer 2.0, who was reportedly responsible for prior significant hacks, including one that targeted the Democratic National Committee and resulted in the resignations of its top four officials. On Friday, Obama administration officials claimed that Russia’s “senior-most officials” were responsible for that hack and others, although they provided no evidence for that assertion.

      As these internal documents demonstrate, a central component of the Clinton campaign strategy is ensuring that journalists they believe favorable to Clinton are tasked to report the stories which the campaign wants circulated.

      At times, Clinton’s campaign staff not only internally drafted the stories they wanted published but even specified what should be quoted “on background” and what should be described as “on the record.”

    • Two-Faced Hillary: Clinton Says She Has ‘Both a Public and a Private Position’ on Wall Street: WikiLeaks Release

      Hillary Clinton told top banking executives that she has “both a public and a private position” on Wall Street reform and is reliant on wealthy donors to fund her campaign, leaked excerpts of the former first lady’s speeches seem to show, fueling claims of hypocrisy on the part of Mrs. Clinton at a crucial moment in the presidential campaign.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Youtube took down MEP’s videos about torture debate

      Marietje Schaake (previously) is a Dutch Member of the European Parliament who has a fantastic track-record for getting it right on issues related to technology, free speech, human rights, and privacy; she is the author of a report on export controls for spying technology used to identify dissidents to torture.

      She uploaded the videos from the debate about these tools to Youtube, only to receive a notice from Youtube informing her that a video had been removed had been reviewed and found to be in violation of Youtube’s standards, resulting a takedown for the video and a “strike” against Schaake’s Youtube account — enough of these strikes and she’ll permanently lose access to the service.

      The video that Youtube removed “included footage of European Trade Commissioner Cecila Malmstrom, who gave her opinion about the new law.”

    • When YouTube took down my video

      YouTube is now one of the most used platforms for videos online. It has over a billion users, and reaches more 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S. It has become a portal for sharing information and ideas, which is vital for any democratic society.

    • Russia Mulls Downloading Fines if Site Blocking Fails

      Faced with the possibility that website blocking may not achieve its goals, Russia is now considering fresh opportunities for decreasing online file-sharing. Sources familiar with negotiations say that authorities are mulling a system of fines which would target individual downloaders.

    • Internet Bill: Censorship or internet regulation?

      The Films and Publications Amendment Bill that was deliberated by the Portfolio Committee on Communications in Parliament last week has caused an uproar as people debate whether it is strictly an internet regulation or the government’s attempt at stifling and censoring freedom of speech.

      Also known as the Internet Bill, the proposed law aims to regulate the online distribution of digital films and digital games, among others, but it has come under attack from media organisations such as Multichoice, organisations such as the Right2Know campaign, and opposition parties such as the DA.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Fog of Cyber War

      A version of this post originally appeared in the Cyber Saturday edition of Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily tech newsletter.

      Last week produced a spate of cyber-security news, including revelations about Yahoo (again) and lousy counter intelligence at the NSA (again). But if there is a common thread, it’s that first reports often are false or incomplete and the story is not what it seems.

      Take the brouhaha over Yahoo using software to feed emails to the NSA. The news led to hyper-ventilating among privacy types and predictable high-horse behaviorf rom rival tech giants like Google and Microsoft. But as my colleague Robert Hackett explained, a lot of this fulminating took place before anyone really knew the facts — which are still emerging in dribs and drabs.

      Meanwhile, journalists (me included) breathlessly reported another security lapse at Edward Snowden’s old stomping groups, Booz Allen, which led the FBI to arrest a contractor for stealing secrets. But now it turns out the guy was probably just a kook and a hoarder. It’s still not a good situation but it sure doesn’t look like the stuff of a John LeCarre novel.

      Part of the trouble, from a media perspective, is that a lot of the incidents we learn about are delivered by anonymous sources and wrapped in national security laws. This makes it hard to verify information — easy to jump to conclusions.

      So call it the fog of cyber war. In an era where everyone is amped up about cyber attacks, a lot of first impressions are tinged with paranoia and misinformation or are just flat out wrong. I don’t know what to do about this except to say that, as with other dramatic events like mass shootings, it’s best to take first reports with a giant grain of salt.

    • Facebook Crowned Privacy Villain Of 2016 By European Privacy Rights Group

      A European civil society group defending rights and freedoms in the digital environment awarded Facebook the Belgian Big Brother Awards 2016 yesterday.

      The awards are based on a concept created by European Digital Rights initiative (EDRi) member Privacy International, and are negative prizes for “the worst privacy abuser.” The goal of those awards is to draw attention to violations of privacy, they said in a press release.

      The Belgian award was “unanimously granted to Facebook by the professional jury,” and the public confirmed Facebook’s title as the “ultimate privacy villain of the year.”

    • Yahoo May Have Exposed Rogers Customer Emails to US Spies

      On Friday, Motherboard reported that beleaguered US company Yahoo allowed someone—possibly a US intelligence agency such as the NSA or FBI—to install a backdoor on its servers, likely for scanning purposes, that afforded unfettered access to Yahoo’s systems, including users’ personal emails.

      “This backdoor was installed in a way that endangered all of Yahoo users,” a source familiar with the incident told Motherboard.

      This should concern Canadians, because Rogers, one of the largest telecom companies in the country, totally outsources its email systems to Yahoo. Emails sent from Rogers accounts are sent to Yahoo’s US servers for storage and processing, and Yahoo scans Rogers emails for spam, malware, and child pornography.

      This isn’t the first time that Rogers’ ties to Yahoo have compromised Canadians: The Toronto Star previously reported that Rogers customer data was included in the massive hack in September.

    • U.S. pressed to disclose secret court’s order on Yahoo email search

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Iranian judges sentence writer to jail for story about stoning to death

      Iranian judges have ordered a young female writer and activist to serve a six-year jail term for writing an unpublished fictional story about stoning to death in her country.

      Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee received a phone call on Tuesday from judicial officials ordering her to Evin prison in Tehran, where her husband, Arash Sadeghi, a prominent student activist, is serving a 19-year sentence.

      Ebrahimi Iraee told Voice of America’s Persian network this week that she had been sentenced to five years in prison for insulting Islamic sanctities and one extra year for spreading propaganda against the ruling system.

      “They haven’t issued a written summons [as required by the law],” she said in a Skype interview. “They called me using the telephone of one of my friends, Navid Kamran; they had gone to his shop to arrest him and they called me from there to summon me.”

    • Leaflet ‘handed out at east London mosque’ tells Muslims to kill all who insult the prophet

      Police today launched a hate crime probe after literature saying those who insult Islam “must be killed” was allegedly handed out at a London mosque.

      A Standard investigation has uncovered claims that the booklet, which says “any Muslim should kill” those who insult the Prophet Mohammed, was distributed at a gathering in Walthamstow.

      It points to a classical manual of Islamic law to justify killings without waiting for court judgments and says apostates “deserve to be assassinated”.

      The booklet discusses the case of Mumtaz Qadri, a fanatic who murdered a governor in Pakistan in 2011 because of his support for liberal reforms to the country’s strict Islamic laws.

    • Final hearing for Christian woman facing execution for blasphemy in Pakistan

      A Christian woman who has been facing execution in Pakistan for six years after being accused of blasphemy has been granted her final appeal.

      Pakistan’s supreme court will hear the case of Asia Bibi, a mother-of-five from the rural village of Ittan Wali in Punjab, eastern Pakistan, who was convicted of blasphemy in 2010 after allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhamed during a row with other women over water.

      All of Ms Bibi’s appeals in the lower courts failed before the supreme court temporarily suspended her execution in July 2015 ahead of a fresh hearing now scheduled to be heard on 13 October.

      If her final appeal fails, Ms Bibi will be the first woman to be executed under the country’s controversial blasphemy laws.

    • Mormon Rebel Went to WikiLeaks for Help

      When Kate Kelly, founder of the Mormon feminist group Ordain Women, was accused of apostasy, she couldn’t readily access the Church Handbook of Instructions, Volume 1, for the definition. So Kelly and Nadine Hansen, a lawyer representing her in her hearings, had to turn elsewhere.

      “The only way that women can access that volume is by accessing it online at WikiLeaks,” Kelly told The Daily Beast.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Gurry investigation dropped by WIPO member states; transparency and accountability are the losers

      The news that WIPO member states have endorsed a decision taken by the organisation’s Coordination Committee to drop any further investigation of the allegations of serious misconduct levelled against the organisation’s Director-General Francis Gurry is no surprise; a few days ago this blog predicted it would happen. However, for anyone who believes that the IP system is best served by transparency and accountability, the fact this outcome was so predictable does not make it any less depressing.

      Ever since the then WIPO deputy Director-General James Pooley first accused Gurry of being involved in taking WIPO staff members’ DNA and in interfering to alter the outcome of a procurement process in his April 2014 Report of Misconduct, IAM has taken no position on the claims. We don’t know if they were true; but we do know that they should have been investigated quickly, thoroughly, independently and with full protection for witnesses.

    • WIPO Workshop: African States Are Themselves To Blame, Should Compile, Publicize IP Statistics

      Each year, the World Intellectual Property Organization Economic and Statistics Division sends out questionnaires, which intellectual property offices worldwide are expected to complete and return.

      But because the survey is voluntary, many African countries, including some Africa Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) member states, do not respond to the questionnaires.

    • EU, US negotiators officially drop aim of concluding TTIP in 2016

10.09.16

Links 9/10/2016: Wine 1.8.5, KDE Frameworks 5.27, GDB 7.12

Posted in News Roundup at 2:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The legacy of Pieter Hintjens

    When I watched Chad Fowler’s GOTO Amsterdam 2014 Keynote it got me thinking about what our aims should be in life.

    He mentions Joel Spolsky’s post from 2001: Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To It, and says software typically only lasts five years so rarely gets to be very good.

    He asks, what does it take create legacy software with a positive meaning, that is software so good that you are fondly remembered for it for many years to come.

    How many very famous developers, or ex-developers are there in the world. You may disagree, but I would argue that Bill Gates is the only living person with worldwide fame partly associated with writing code.

    Only big company CEOs have any chance of becoming a household name. Even Sir Tim Berners Lee has only about half as many Twitter followers as Grumpy Cat.

  • AT&T Will Launch ECOMP Into Open Source in 2017

    A top AT&T executive said the company will launch its Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management, and Policy (ECOMP) platform into open source by the first quarter of 2017. And the Linux Foundation will be the host of the open source project.

    In a blog post, Chris Rice, SVP of AT&T Labs Domain 2.0 Architecture and Design, said that after the company developed ECOMP, it received a tremendous amount of feedback from service providers and virtual network function (VNF) providers that wanted more details about the platform. He also said the companies wanted AT&T to publicly state that it was going to open source the project.

  • What to Expect from OSCON London 2016

    It’s autumn/fall technology conference season… but you already knew that, so what’s coming next? O’Reilly’s OSCON event is just around the corner and the conference itself has seen the launch of many new projects from OpenOffice.org to OpenStack.

  • 8 Years Later: Saeed Malekpour Is Still In An Iranian Prison Simply For Writing Open Source Software

    We talk a great deal on Techdirt about the importance of free speech alongside the importance of not damning technological tools for the way third parties choose to use them. These matters can delve into minutiae in the American and Western forms of this conversation, with discussions about Section 230 protections and the like. But in other parts of the world, the conversation is much different.

    Back in 2008 in Iran, for instance, the government there elected to imprison a Canadian resident of Iranian lineage, initially under a death sentence, but later commuting that sentence to mere life imprisonment. His crime? Saeed Malekpour created some open source code for sharing photos on the internet that others within Iran used for pornography.

  • Why Implanted Medical Devices Should Have Open Source Code

    As medical implants become more common, sophisticated and versatile, understanding the code that runs them is vital. A pacemaker or insulin-releasing implant can be lifesaving, but they are also vulnerable not just to malicious attacks, but also to faulty code. For commercial reasons, companies have been reluctant to open up their code to researchers. But with lives at stake, we need to be allowed to take a peek under the hood.

    Over the past few years several researchers have revealed lethal vulnerabilities in the code that runs some medical implants. The late Barnaby Jack, for example, showed that pacemakers could be “hacked” to deliver lethal electric shocks. Jay Radcliffe demonstrated a way of wirelessly making an implanted insulin pump deliver a lethal dose of insulin.

    But “bugs” in the code are also an issue. Researcher Marie Moe recently discovered this first-hand, when her Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) unexpectedly went into “safe mode”. This caused her heart rate to drop by half, with drastic consequences.

    It took months for Moe to figure out what went wrong with her implant, and this was made harder because the code running in the ICD was proprietary, or closed-source. The reason? Reverse-engineering closed-source code is a crime under various laws, including the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998. It is a violation of copyright, theft of intellectual property, and may be an infringement of patent law.

  • Google releases open-source Cartographer 3D mapping library

    Google has released open-sourced Cartographer, a real-time simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) library in 2D and 3D with ROS (Robot Operating System) support. This technology which works with the open source ROS can be used by developers for many things, such as robots, drones and self-driving cars.

  • LinuxCon

    • Open Source Jobs Report Highlights European Trends
    • Google Open Sources Two Far Reaching New Tools
    • Hyperledger chain gang man explains Penguins’ blockchain play

      Jim Zemlin raises an eyebrow when I say Hyperledger is rather outside Linux Foundation’s usual domain, being a bit, er, consumery.

      “It’s totally enterprise,” the Foundation’s executive director tells me. “It’s infrastructure.” Just like Linux, he reckons. Hyperledger is the layer above the operating system, above Linux.

      Linux is the Linux Foundation’s oldest and hardest of hard-core projects – a technology fundamental that drives economies.

    • Why J.P. Morgan Chase Is Building a Blockchain on Ethereum

      J.P. Morgan Chase is developing a blockchain, commonly referred to as a public ledger, atop a crypto-network called Ethereum.

      The system, dubbed “Quorum,” is designed to toe the line between private and public in the realm of shuffling derivatives and payments. The idea is to satisfy regulators who need seamless access to financial goings-on, while protecting the privacy of parties that don’t wish to reveal their identities nor the details of their transactions to the general public.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Marrying Apache Spark and R for Next-Gen Data Science

      Recently, we caught up with Kavitha Mariappan, who is Vice President of Marketing at Databricks, for a guest post on open source tools and data science. In this arena, she took special note of The R Project (“R”), which is a popular open source language and runtime environment for advanced analytics. She also highlighted Apache Spark and its distributed in-memory data processing, which is fueling next-generation data science.

      Now, R users can leverage the popular dplyr package to sift and work with Apache Spark data. Via the sparklyr package, a dplyr interface for Spark, users can filter and aggregate Spark datasets then bring them into R for analysis and visualization, according to an RStudio blog post.

    • OpenStack Newton Debuts With Improved Container Features

      The latest release of widely deployed open-source cloud platform improves security, virtualization and networking.
      The open-source OpenStack project released OpenStack Newton on Oct. 6, providing the second major milestone update for the cloud platform in 2016.

      OpenStack Newton follows the Mitaka release, which debuted in April with a focus on simplifying cloud operations. In contrast, OpenStack Newton provides a long list of incremental updates and improvements, including improved security, container support and networking capabilities.

    • OpenStack’s latest release focuses on scalability and resilience

      OpenStack, the massive open source project that helps enterprises run the equivalent of AWS in their own data centers, is launching the 14th major version of its software today. Newton, as this new version is called, shows how OpenStack has matured over the last few years. The focus this time is on making some of the core OpenStack services more scalable and resilient. In addition, though, the update also includes a couple of major new features. The project now better supports containers and bare metal servers, for example.

      In total, more than 2,500 developers and users contributed to Newton. That gives you a pretty good sense of the scale of this project, which includes support for core data center services like compute, storage and networking, but also a wide range of smaller projects.

    • OpenStack Newton, the 14th Official Release, Arrives

      The OpenStack community today released Newton, and it’s hard to believe that this is the 14th version of the most widely deployed open source software for building clouds. “New features in the Ironic bare metal provisioning service, Magnum container orchestration cluster manager, and Kuryr container networking project more seamlessly integrate containers, virtual and physical infrastructure under one control plane,” the announcement notes. “These new capabilities address more use cases for organizations with heterogeneous environments, who are looking for speed and better developer experience with new technologies like containers, alongside workloads that require virtual machines or higher availability architectures.”

      Here is more on what’s under the hood and how this new version embraces virtualization and containers.

      The 14th release improves the user experience for container cluster management and networking, and the Newton release addresses scalability and resiliency. These capabilities will be demonstrated at the upcoming OpenStack Summit, happening October 25-28, in Barcelona Spain.

      “The OpenStack community is focused on making clouds work better for users. This is clearly evident in the Newton release, which tackles users’ biggest needs, giving cloud operators and app developers greater security, resiliency and choice,” said Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation. “The new features and enhancements in Newton underscore the power of OpenStack: it handles more workloads in more ways across more industries worldwide. OpenStack is a cloud platform that ties everything together—compute, network, storage, and innovative cloud technologies.”

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Reverse lookups in GNS

      DNS allows to resolve the name of an IP address. This is sometimes called “reverse lookup”. In fact, it is actually “normal” resolution of a PTR record. The name of such a record would be, for example, 4.4.8.8.in-addr.arpa. The .arpa TLD is managed by IANA.

      This blogpost is meant to spread ideas that have been exchanged via private email and might be interesting for a broader audience. If you feel like you have useful comments, don’t hesitate to do so.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Programming/Development

    • GDB 7.12 released!

      Release 7.12 of GDB, the GNU Debugger, is now available via anonymous FTP. GDB is a source-level debugger for Ada, C, C++, Objective-C, Pascal and many other languages. GDB can target (i.e., debug programs running on) more than a dozen different processor architectures, and GDB itself can run on most popular GNU/Linux, Unix and Microsoft Windows variants.

    • GDB 7.12 Released With Rust Debugging, Python Enhancements

      GDB 7.12 is now available as the latest feature release of the GNU Debugger.

      Arguably most exciting about GDB 7.12 is that it now supports debugging programs written in Rust! But if Rust support doesn’t excite you, there is also some Fortran support improvements and various Python language enhancements.

    • Should Math be a Prerequisite for Programming?

      In her LinuxCon Europe talk, “The Set of Programmers: How Math Restricts Us,” Carol Smith, Education Partnership Manager at GitHub, got us thinking about how math requirements impact our ability to bring more people into the field of computer programming.

      Carol kicked off her talk with a story about how she traveled to New Zealand with two friends, Boris and Natasha (not their real names), and learned that Boris has agoraphobia, which causes him extreme anxiety in open spaces. New Zealand, as it turns out, is full of wide open spaces. During one hike, Boris really struggled with crossing the long bridge across a gully. The more he told himself he could do it, the harder it was. He felt like he should be able to do this and felt like he was the only person who couldn’t do it. A lot of people get this feeling when they try to do math. They feel like everyone else can do math, and the more they think this, the more they feel like they are the only person who can’t do math.

    • Rust and Automake

      Yes it is. But it is also limited to build the Rust crate. It does one thing, very well, and easily.

      Although I’m writing a GNOME application and this needs more than building the code. So I decided I need to wrap the build process into automake.

      Let’s start with Autoconf for Rust Project. This post is a great introduction to solving the problem and give an actual example on doing it even though the author just uses autoconf. I need automake too, but this is a good start.

    • The most important coding languages for IoT developers

      We have seen a changing of the guard in the past few years as software takes center stage and once-beloved hardware simply becomes a canvas for developers. The ability to code is an important skill for the production of any modern technology, especially a product that falls within the “internet of things.” If IoT developers are to create the next big thing in tech, they will need to know the most important and popular IoT coding languages. Here is a list of top coding languages providing the backbone of IoT software:

    • French programmers haul Apple into court over developer rules

      Nexedi, an open source software company based in France, has filed a lawsuit against Apple in Paris alleging that Apple’s App Store contract is unfair.

      In a blog post, founder and CEO Jean-Paul Smets and UI designer Sven Franck said that the company has undertaken the lawsuit to force Apple to improve its support for the latest web technology in iOS.

      Smets and Franck point to technical shortcomings in mobile Safari such as lack of support for HTML5 service workers, webRTC, and WebM – web technologies necessary for running applications like the OfficeJS spreadsheet and Hubl.in online conferencing.

    • Why we are suing Apple for better HTML5 support in iOS?

      The primary reason for starting this lawsuit is because we hope that it will help Apple to sooner support the latest Web and HTML5 standards on its iOS platform – the operating system used by all iPhones.

      Anyone running html5test (http://html5test.com/) on his iPhone will find out that current iOS support of HTML5 Web technologies is lagging behind other platforms.

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • Skype issues fixed, iTWire editor gets back account

    On Thursday evening, Beer found himself locked out of his Skype account and had to chase Microsoft support for help.

    His emails finally made their way to Microsoft’s Global Escalation Services.

    On Friday evening, he was told that there were multiple users who were having trouble signing into their Skype accounts. “I believe we may be experiencing a bit of an outage,” the escalation supervisor wrote.

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Friday
    • surveillance, whistleblowing, and security engineering

      Imagine for a moment that you are a security engineer who discovers a backdoor that your company execs have been trying to hide from your team. Would you quit on ethical grounds or stay so that you can prevent this from happening again? I don’t think there is one right answer. Personally I am grateful both for those who left and blew the whistle, and for those who stayed to protect Yahoo’s 800 million users.

      Part of the job function of security engineers and pen testers is being ready for the moment you encounter something that you think should be disclosed but your company wants to keep secret. Think about what you would be willing to lose. Be prepared to escalate internally. Know the terms of your NDA and your exit agreement; try your best to honor them. Most of all, keep pushing for end-to-end encryption.

    • Digital Vigilantes Want to Shame DDoS Attackers And Their Corporate Enablers

      Hacker attacks that try to take down websites with a flood of bogus traffic, technically known as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, have become a daily occurrence on the internet. The rise of DDoS has created a cottage industry of companies dedicated to mitigating the attacks, and, on the flip side, professional DDoS-for-hire services and gangs.

      Now, a group of security researchers wants to name and shame not only the hackers responsible for such crippling attacks, but also the internet providers and traffic carriers that enable them by turning a blind eye to their actions, with a project called SpoofIT.

    • Russia Drafting Law to Favor Open Source

      I wrote the original cyber-vulnerability letter to the White House in 1994, and instead of acting responsibly, the US Government allowed NSA — with the active complicty of US communicaitons and computing provider CEOs — to compromise all US offerings. Not only are the communications and computing devices and related consulting compromised, but so are larger offerings (e.g. Boeing aircraft, which come with a computer system pre-configured for US Government remote control take-over — Lufthansa is reported to have discovered this and at great expense removed all US computers from every aircraft). NOTE: I am quite certain about both of the above indictments, but only a proper European Commission investigation can satisfy the public interest; I believe that the same problems infect C4I systems from China, France, Israel, and Russia, and I do not believe most people are aware that the electrical system is now easily used to enter computers that are nominally disconnected from the Internet.

    • Systemd vulnerability crashes Linux systems

      A new vulnerability has been discovered that could shut down most Linux systems using a command short enough to fit in a tweet.

    • Routers, IP Cameras/Phones & IoT Devices can be Security Risks even with the Latest Firmware, and a Strong Admin Password

      I’ve just read an interesting article entitled “who makes the IoT things under attack“, explaining that devices connected to the Internet such as router, IP cameras, IP Phones, etc.. may be used by Botnet to launch DDoS attacks, and they do so using the default username and password. So you may think once you’ve updated the firmware when available, and changes the default admin/admin in the user interface, you’d be relatively safe. You’d be wrong, because the malware mentioned in the article, Mirai, uses Telnet or SSH trying a bunch of default username and password.

      That made me curious, so I scanned the ports on my TP-Link wireless router and ZTE ZXHN F600W fiber-to-the-home GPON modem pictured below, and installed by my Internet provider, the biggest in the country I live, so there may be hundred of thousands or millions of such modems in the country with the same default settings.

    • US Gov’t Officially Accuses Russia Of Hacking… Question Is What Happens Next

      As I noted just the other day, cybersecurity should be a defensive game. Going offensive is really, really dangerous, because things will get worse, and we really don’t know what the capabilities of the other side(s) truly are. Focus on protecting critical infrastructure, not on some meaingless symbolic strike back.

      But, of course, in this day and age, people seem to feel that every action requires some sort of reaction, and in a computer security realm, that’s just stupid. But it seems to be where we’re inevitably heading. The cybersecurity firms will get wonderfully rich off of this. But almost everyone will be less safe as a result.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Attack on mourners in Yemen kills more than 140, say local health officials

      Saudi-led warplanes struck a funeral at a community hall in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, the country’s Houthi-run administration said on Saturday, but the coalition denied any role in the attack. More than 140 mourners were killed, according to local health officials cited by the United Nations, in an attack that prompted a strong rebuke from Washington, a key Saudi ally.

      Jamie McGoldrick, a UN official in charge of humanitarian efforts in the country, said more than 525 were injured.

      The death toll was 82, according to Ghazi Ismail, the administration’s acting health minister. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers was not immediately clear.

    • Russia warns it will shoot down alliance jets over Syria if US launches air strikes against Assad

      Russian forces could shoot down coalition jets if the United States launches airstrikes against pro-government forces in Syria, the Russian ministry of defence has said.

      American officials have reportedly discussed using limited airstrikes to force Bashar al-Assad’s government to halt its assault on Aleppo and return the negotiating table after a ceasefire collapsed last month.

      In Moscow’s starkest warning yet against Western intervention in the war, Russia’s chief military spokesman said that any airstrikes on government-held territory in Syria would be considered a “clear threat” to Russian servicemen.

    • Why We Should Close America’s Overseas Military Bases

      Despite our unorthodox presidential election, America’s overseas military bases are largely taken for granted in today’s foreign policy debates. The U.S. maintains a veritable empire of military bases throughout the world—about 800 of them in more than 70 countries. Many view our bases as a symbol of our status as the dominant world power. But America’s forward-deployed military posture incurs substantial costs and disadvantages, exposing the U.S. to vulnerabilities and unintended consequences.

      Our overseas bases simply do not pay enough dividends when it comes to core national interests. Here are seven reasons why it’s time to close them.

    • A Blatant Neo-Con Lie

      It is a plain lie that Russia was responsible for the leak of the Democratic National Committee emails to WikiLeaks. It is quite extraordinary that the Obama administration formally adopted the accusation yesterday.

      The US motivation is apparently to attempt to discredit in advance the further Hillary material that WikiLeaks plans to release in the coming month. The official statement that the leak was “consistent with the methods and motivation of Russian directed efforts” is carefully written by the NSA and, when you analyse it, extremely weak. What it says is “there is no evidence whatsoever but this is the sort of thing we think the Russians do”. As it happens, I have direct knowledge that there could not have been any evidence as it was not the Russians.

    • Washington Leads The World To War

      What must the world think watching the US presidential campaign? Over time US political campaigns have become more unreal and less related to voters’ concerns, but the current one is so unreal as to be absurd.

      The offshoring of American jobs by global corporations and the deregulation of the US financial system have resulted in American economic failure. One might think that this would be an issue in a presidential campaign.

      The neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony is driving the US and its vassals into conflict with Russia and China. The risks of nuclear war are higher than at any previous time in history. One might think that this also would be an issue in a presidential campaign.

      Instead, the issues are Trump’s legal use of tax laws and his non-hostile attitude toward President Putin of Russia.

    • The Headless UK European Movement

      What Freedland does not understand is that it was hatred of his political bubble chums which caused Brexit in the first place. The official Remain campaign director was Jack Straw’s son Will. Peter Mandelson was Vice-President. The top-down campaign was devoid of popular enthusiasm with an almost total lack of popular engagement and community events. It continually paraded figures like Blair, Cameron, Osborne, Straw, Clegg, Kinnock and others, which gave ordinary people a chance to give those they rightly despise a political kick in the pants by voting against their will. Brexit has been caused by a justified hatred of the UK political class.

      That those who caused the disaster see themselves as the answer to it is laughable. I remain hopeful that the English in particular will recover from the wave of jingoism which appears to have swept over them like a plague. But resistance must be organic and arise from the people themselves. I hope to see the emergence of a new, untainted and dynamic generation of young activists. My generation have bequeathed a terrible legacy.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • The Podesta Emails; Part One

      In April 2015 the New York Times published a story about a company called “Uranium One” which was sold to Russian government-controlled interests, giving Russia effective control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for the production of nuclear weapons, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of US government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off the deal was the State Department, then headed by Secretary Clinton. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) comprises, among others, the secretaries of the Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce and Energy.

      [...]

      What the Clinton campaign spokesman failed to disclose, however, was the fact that a few days before sending his rebuttal to the New York Times, Jose Fernandez wrote on the evening of the 17 April 2015 to John Podesta following a phone call from Mr Podesta (Email ID 2053): “John, It was good to talk to you this afternoon, and I appreciate your taking the time to call. As I mentioned, I would like to do all I can to support Secretary Clinton, and would welcome your advice and help in steering me to the right persons in the campaign”.

      Five days after this email (22 April 2015), Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon wrote a memo to the New York Times, declaring that “Jose Fernandez has personally attested that ‘Secretary Clinton never intervened with me on any CFIUS matter’,” but Fallon failed to mention that Fernandez was hardly a neutral witness in this case, considering that he had agreed with John Podesta to play a role in the Clinton campaign.

      The emails show that the contacts between John Podesta and Jose Fernandez go back to the time of internal Clinton campaign concern about the then-forthcoming book and movie “Clinton Cash” by Peter Schweizer on the financial dealings of the Clinton Foundation.

    • Wikileaks founder Assange reveals his next target: Google

      Assange, the notorious founder of Wikileaks, detailed plans to unleash a fresh batch of leaked documents each week until the November 7 presidential election. The first of these leaks was due yesterday, but instead of documents intended to derail the Clinton campaign, we got a plug of Assange’s book and an echo of previous statements that the leaks would come once a week between now and the election.

      The documents are said to expose Clinton, the military, the oil industry, and Google.

      Seriously. Google.

      Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and its current chairman seems to be the lynchpin in Assange’s new master plan. In an excerpt from his 2014 book ‘When Google Met Wikileaks,’ Assange accuses Schmidt of having ties to the State Department when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and working closely with her campaign.

    • WikiLeaks Releases Alleged Clinton Wall Street Speeches In Batch Of Campaign Emails

      The controversial whistleblower organization WikiLeaks on Friday released emails that they say are linked to Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

      While much of the new batch of hacked emails are benign newsletters and shared articles, one note in particular has gotten attention for offering a glimpse into Hillary Clinton’s paid Wall Street speeches. The email depicts Clinton acknowledging the security issues with using her BlackBerry and suggests that she considers herself a political moderate. It also alleges that she dreams of “open trade and open borders,” among other topics.

      But some of the most intriguing excerpts come when Clinton is addressing issues of Wall Street while actually on Wall Street. In the hacked email, the Democratic presidential nominee discusses the “rigged system,” and the causes of and solutions to the financial crisis in an unguarded tone, framing large banks and investment firms as partners rather than problems.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Solar panels surpass coal-fired electricity in previously ‘unthinkable’ feat

      Solar panels generated more electricity than coal in the past six months in a historic year for getting energy from the sun in the UK, according to a new analysis.

      Research by the Carbon Brief website found that solar generated nearly 7,000 gigawatt hours of electricity between April and September, about 10 per cent more than the 6,300GwH produced by coal during the same period.

      The figures represent a dramatic turnaround in the UK’s electricity supplies.

      The first ever day when solar produced more than coal was only on 9 April – when there was no coal-fired electricity for the first time since 1882. But then May became the first ever month when this happened.

    • Hurricane Matthew: In Haiti the death toll stands at 877 but the US media does not seem to care

      Four minutes before 10am on Friday morning, Reuters provided an update on the death toll in Haiti. At a minimum, the news agency said, 572 people had lost their lives as a result of Hurricane Matthew.

      At almost precisely the same time, CNN was broadcasting live footage of the storm as it passed northwest along the coast of Florida, from where more than two million people had fled. The winds were strong, the waves powerful and there was genuine concern about the potentially deadly impact of the storm surge.

      But at that moment, the number of US fatalities as a result of the category four storm was zero. The Haitian death toll barely made a mention in the network’s rolling coverage.

    • After Hurricane Matthew, Haiti Faces Crisis and Media Instantly Forgets

      Hurricane Matthew’s devastation in Haiti has left the nation facing a humanitarian crisis as corporate media shifts its focus to the storm’s encroachment onto U.S. shores.

      As the brief U.S. news coverage of Haiti dissipates, aid groups on the ground are still struggling to reach the most impacted regions, while residents grapple with flooding, mudslides, and a shortage of shelters. The storm’s 145 mile-per-hour winds also took down a bridge, tore the roofs off of houses, and damaged at least one hospital and clinic.

      Matthew killed at least 11 people in the Caribbean on Tuesday, with five of those in Haiti, including a 26-year-old man who was attempting to rescue a child from a rushing river, according to the Weather Channel. However, civil protection officials warned that the death toll is hard to calculate due to the extensive damage.

      “It’s the worst hurricane that I’ve seen during my life,” one official, Fidele Nicolas of Nippes, told the Associated Press. “It destroyed schools, roads, other structures.”

      Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, director of the Civil Protection Agency, also said Tuesday, “It’s much too early to know how bad things are but we do know there are a lot of houses that have been destroyed or damaged in the south.”

    • Hawaiian Deep Coral Reefs Reveal Unique Species

      NOAA-supported scientists working in the Hawaiian Archipelago have characterized the most extensive deep coral reefs on record. They found several large areas with 100 percent coral cover and concluded that deep coral reefs have twice as many species that are unique to Hawaii than their shallow-water counterparts.

  • Finance

    • LSE foreign academics told they will not be asked to advise UK on Brexit

      Leading foreign academics from the LSE acting as expert advisers to the UK government were told they would not be asked to contribute to government work and analysis on Brexit because they are not British nationals.

      The news was met with outrage by many academics, while legal experts questioned whether it could be legal under anti-discrimination laws and senior politicians criticised it as bewildering.

      “It is utterly baffling that the government is turning down expert, independent advice on Brexit simply because someone is from another country,” said Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats’ EU spokesman.

      “This is yet more evidence of the Conservatives’ alarming embrace of petty chauvinism over rational policymaking.”

      Sara Hagemann, an assistant professor at the London School of Economics who specialises in EU policymaking processes, EU treaty matters, the role of national parliaments and the consequences of EU enlargements, said she had been told her services would not be required.

    • Leaked documents reveal the EU’s desperation on Canada trade deal

      In an attempt to keep the EU-Canada trade deal CETA on track, the European Commission has drawn up a declaration aimed at reassuring those worried by the implications of the deal. A five page document was leaked last night and has been scrutinised by lawyers and trade experts.

      Guy Taylor, the trade campaigner for Global Justice Now said

      “These leaked documents prove just how much trouble this toxic trade deal is in. They show a panicky commission in Brussels issuing a series of defensive declarations, organising extraordinary meetings of ministers, and staying in a permanent state of crisis to try and legitimise a trade deal that is deeply unpopular and deeply undemocratic.

    • I’m being stripped of my citizenship – along with 65 million others

      Britons are EU citizens too. What’s missing from the practical arguments about Brexit is the recognition that a solemn social contract is being destroyed

      [...]

      Theresa May values “the spirit of citizenship”. I know because she said so in her speech at the Conservative party conference. She waxed lyrical about an ethos “that means you respect the bonds and obligations that make our society work. That means a commitment to the men and women who live around you.”

      Forgive me if I choke on my rich tea biscuit, Theresa. I have a citizenship that I am proud of, that links me to a wider community, that guarantees me rights and freedoms, and it’s being revoked against my will.

    • The Poisoned Chalice: From Eurozone to Dead Zone

      James Galbraith’s articles and interviews collected in his book Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice trace his growing exasperation at the “troika” – the European Central Bank (ECB), IMF and EU bureaucracy – which refused to loosen their demand that Greece impoverish its economy to a degree worse than the Great Depression. The fight against Greece was, in a nutshell, a rejection of parliamentary democracy after the incoming Syriza coalition of left-wing parties won election in January 2015 on a platform of resisting austerity and privatization.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Excerpts of Hillary Clinton’s Paid Speeches to Goldman Sachs Finally Leaked

      Excerpts of Hillary Clinton’s remarks during paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, and other groups were leaked online Friday afternoon by WikiLeaks. Clinton, who was paid upwards of $225,000 per speech, earned more than $22 million on the paid speaking circuit after resigning as secretary of state.

      The excerpts are revealed in an email from Tony Carrk, the research director of the Clinton campaign, to John Podesta, the campaign chairman, and other top campaign officials. Carrk, who did not respond to a request for comment, highlighted in the memo the most politically damaging quotes from each paid speech, under headers including “CLINTON ADMITS SHE IS OUT OF TOUCH,” “CLINTON SAYS YOU NEED TO HAVE A PRIVATE AND PUBLIC POSITION ON POLICY,” and “CLINTON REMARKS ARE PRO KEYSTONE AND PRO TRADE.”

      The wealth Clinton accumulated was a topic at the paid events.

      Discussing middle class economic anxieties, Clinton told a crowd at a Goldman Sachs-sponsored speech that she is now “kind of far removed because the life I’ve lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy, but I haven’t forgotten it.”

      But the discussions were also an opportunity for Clinton to speak candidly about policy, politics, and her approach to governing.

    • US government: Russia behind hacking campaign to disrupt US elections

      The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security today jointly charged that the Russian government was responsible for directing a series of intrusions into the networks of US political organizations and state election boards. In a “joint security statement,” officials from the two agencies declared they were “confident” that the government of President Vladimir Putin was behind the hacks and the publication of data obtained from them—some of it doctored—specifically to impact the results of the upcoming US elections.

    • U.S. Publicly Blames Russia for Hacking to Disrupt Elections

      The U.S. said publicly for the first time that intelligence agencies are “confident that the Russian government directed” the hacking of American political groups and leaked stolen material in order to interfere with the Nov. 8 election.

      “These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process,” the Office of Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security said in a joint statement on Friday. “We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”

      While intelligence officials had previously said privately that they blamed Russia for the attacks, Friday’s announcement puts pressure on President Barack Obama’s administration to respond even as relations with Moscow rapidly deteriorate over everything from Syria and Ukraine to nuclear cooperation.

    • US intel officially blames the Russian government for hacking DNC

      In an official statement today, the Director of National Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security officially blamed Russia for stealing and publishing archived emails from the Democratic National Committee this summer.

      “The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts,” the statement reads. “We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”

    • Top GOP strategist shreds Trump: ‘He is not fit to be called a man’

      Republican strategist Ana Navarro delivered a passionate rebuke of Donald Trump during an appearance on CNN Friday night.

      Reacting to sexually aggressive comments about women the GOP nominee made in a leaked tape from 2005, Navarro said it was high time for the Republican party to call him out.

      “How many times does he get away with saying something misogynistic before we call him a misogynist?” she asked. “How many times does he get away with saying something sexist before we acknowledge that he is a sexist? It is time to condemn the man.”

      The former Jeb Bush supporter and John McCain adviser called Trump a “pig” and said his comments were “vile.”

    • Trump’s Tape Scandal: The Latest Updates

      With only 31 days to go until Election Day, a growing number of elected Republicans are demanding Donald Trump, their party’s nominee for president, step down.

    • The Crucial Campaign Day Most TV Journalists Won’t Tell You About

      States With an October 11 Voter Registration Deadline Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah Territories: American Samoa, District of ColumbiaNext to November 8, the most significant day in the electoral calendar this cycle may be October 11. That’s the deadline for voter registration in 16 states and territories, representing some two-fifths of the US population. The list includes seven of the top 10 states in terms of electoral votes, and several of the most hotly contested campaign battlegrounds, including Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

      In the 2012 election, some 66 million eligible voters, or 30 percent of the total, were unable to vote due to lack of registration. Unregistered voters account for the bulk of the US’s comparatively low voter turnout, as 90 percent of citizens who register typically go on to vote. Compared with registered voters, those who don’t register are more likely to be young, lower-income and people of color.

      Despite this—or perhaps because of this—corporate media have done little to alert the public about the upcoming deadline, or about voter registration in general. A search of Nexis transcripts from the three major broadcast news outlets—ABC, CBS and NBC—turned up no stories on any news show talking about registration deadlines over the past month. (These networks do have information about voter registration deadlines on their websites—but people looking online for information about the deadlines are people who don’t need to be informed that there are deadlines.) Considering the way shows like Meet the Press and This Week and Face the Nation are obsessed with the minutiae of campaign strategy, the failure to discuss the critical factor of the voter registration timeline seems like a major gap.

    • A Government is Seizing Control of Our Election Process, and It Is Not the Russians

      Here’s how:

      — Two days before the second presidential debate, the government of the United States officially accused Russia of a hacking campaign aimed at interfering in the U.S. election. In a joint statement, absent any specifics or technical details, the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence stated “the recent [hacked email] disclosures… are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts… based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”

      — The statement goes on to detail how only Democratic servers were attacked, meaning the American government is claiming that Russia is trying to throw the election to Donald Trump, plain and simple. It is left unsaid why the Russians would risk cyberwar with the United States to do this, as many have suggested Trump is a neocon in spirit whose loose finger will be on the nuclear button from day one. Clinton is much more of a political realist, comfortable with the business-as-usual of the past eight years that has gone in Russia’s favor in the Ukraine and Syria. She in fact seems like the stable known known, always a preference.

      — Though the first “Russian” hacks were reported in July, it is only 48 hours before the second presidential debate that the statement was released. It could easily have been held until Monday, there is no national security urgency for this to come out Friday. However, with the timing, Trump, essentially tied with Clinton in the polls, will now spend much of the debate defending himself. Since the statement includes no details, only accusations, it is hard to see how anyone could defend themselves. It would be near-impossible for Trump to come out ahead Sunday night; this is a near-coup.

      — Despite the certainty with which the U.S. government has accused Russia of trying to influence the election by hacking into secured email servers, the FBI maintains there is no evidence the Russians or anyone else accessed Clinton unsecured, unencrypted email server laden with actual classified materials, including during Clinton’s first trip to Moscow when she sent and received encrypted email over the Internet and WiFi.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Youtube grilled on censorship of Christian movie

      For some 11 months, the makers of the new movie “I’m Not Ashamed” about the young girl who was the first victim of the Columbine killers in Colorado in 1999 were unable to promote their movie through Youtube.

      The trailer was taken down late in 2015, and the movie’s entire channel then was suspended.

      It’s back now, with the movie opening on Oct. 21, but the makers still want to know why the Internet company took the damaging action.

    • Tom DeFrank explains past student media censorship, rivalry with Rudder

      Standing in Rudder Tower, the building named after his former rival, award-winning journalist and Aggie Tom DeFrank told the story of The Battalion’s censorship from Texas A&M administration during his time as an editor exactly 50 years ago on the birthday of the university.

      DeFrank is currently a contributing editor for the National Journal and was the White House correspondent for Newsweek. DeFrank has covered every president since President Lyndon B. Johnson, and has written a book on President Ford titled “When I’m Gone.”

      DeFrank was the speaker during the latest Aggie Agora session, a seminar and speaker series meant to educate students and community members willing to come. DeFrank’s speech focused on his time at The Battalion dealing with his advisor, Jim Lindsey, and James Earl Rudder, the 16th president of Texas A&M University, for articles depicting the university in a non-flattering light. The events eventually led to DeFrank being fired from The Battalion.

    • ‘Racist’ Gandhi statue banished from Ghana university campus

      A statue of Mahatma Gandhi will be removed from a university campus in Ghana after professors launched a petition claiming the revered Indian independence leader and thinker was racist.

      The statue of Gandhi was unveiled in June at the University of Ghana campus in Accra by Pranab Mukherjee, the president of India, as a symbol of close ties between the two countries.

    • Amazon forced to remove ‘disgusting’ costumes which turn traditional Muslim robes into skimpy party dress

      It could be bought for just under £20 and was described as a “sexy Saudi burka Islamic costume” with “a lovely soft stretch material”.

      Amazon users outraged by the product branded the online store as “disgusting racists”.

      One person said: “You’re all disgusting racists. My culture is not your costume.”

      While another commented: “A person’s culture is NOT a fancy dress costume,” and one more added: “Is this some sort of mockery to the religion.”

    • Digital Homicide Drops Its Lawsuit Against Steam Users, Says It’s Shutting Down Completely

      While we’ll try to keep the grave-dancing at a minimum, it wasn’t difficult to see this coming. Game publisher Digital Homicide has something of a history of lashing out against any negative reviews it might receive, of which there are many. Whether it is more high profile targets like well-followed YouTube game reviewers, or merely lowly Steam customers that offered reviews of Digital Homicide games, the company has taken to simply suing everyone for all the things as its reaction. It seemed easy to recognize that this was not a winning business strategy in general, but when Steam reacted to the latest attempts at litigation by simply dropping all Digital Homicide games from its store, things clearly became dire for the company.

      And now the story comes to a close with a conclusion pretty much everyone saw coming: Digital Homicide has filed a motion to dismiss its lawsuit against those Steam customers, declaring the company to be financially ruined and unable to move forward with the litigation.

    • Digital Homicide Drops $18 Million Lawsuit Against Steam Users, Says Their Company’s Been ‘Destroyed’

      A couple weeks ago, notorious developer of crappy Steam games Digital Homicide made waves by suing 100 anonymous Steam users, who they deemed a “hate and harassment group,” for $18 million. Now, however, the suit’s been dismissed.

      In a motion to dismiss filed last week, Digital Homicide said that their business had been “destroyed,” rendering them unable to continue pursuing the suit. On Friday, it was approved.

    • Protesters at Zuckerberg House Allege Censorship

      Waving a large Palestinian flag and holding signs reading “Stop censoring our movement,” some 15 protesters gathered outside of Mark Zuckerberg’s San Francisco house on Friday to protest Facebook’s temporary suspension of social media accounts that belong to Palestinian journalists.

      Nick Pardee, a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which put the protest together said the suspension of Palestinian accounts showed a pro-Israel bias. Accounts in Israel, including those of government officials, are not removed despite inciting violence against Palestine, he said.

      “These people are genocidal, and Mark Zuckerberg has no interest in censoring them,” he said.

    • ‘Unprofessional!’ Ben Affleck PR Team Accused Of ‘Censorship’ During Interviews

      Ben Affleck may have sat down for a slew of in-depth interviews promoting his new film The Accountant this week, but chances are you won’t get to see them in full.

    • Newton Emerson: Move to ban ‘Sun’ in North hypocritical

      Derry City and Strabane District Council has asked newsagents to stop selling the Sun to show “solidarity” with the families of the 1989 Hillsborough Stadium disaster, which was gratuitously misreported by the Tory tabloid. The council also backed a Liverpool-based campaign for all shops to boycott the newspaper.

      The request was proposed by Independent councillor Paul Gallagher, who has previously stood for the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP), the political wing of the INLA. His motion received unanimous backing from Sinn Féin, the largest party on the council, and the SDLP. All the unionists abstained, apart from one who voted against.

    • Art censorship concerns in South Korea affect film industry at Asia’s largest festival

      The disappointment is echoed by others in the audience as many are still unsure where the festival stands with its ongoing controversy over artistic freedom.

      Still, most are staying hopeful the festival will return to its former glory, back to normal again.

      For the past two years, Asia’s premier film festival has been in a fierce battle with the Busan metropolitan Government over its decision to screen a documentary that the Busan city mayor and former BIFF chairman adamantly opposed.

      The contentious film, The Diving Bell, criticized the South Korean Government’s rescue efforts in the aftermath of the Sewol Ferry disaster, which took the lives of more than 300, most of whom were high school students.

    • ‘Objectionable content’: SC tells govt to stop harassing film director

      The Supreme Court urged on Friday the federal government to stop harassing the director of feature film ‘Maalik’ and submit a report on objectionable content in the movie.

      Meanwhile, the Central Board of Film Censors (CBFC) admitted before the court that the ban on ‘Maalik’ had been imposed without investigating complainants.

      The court observed that there was nothing objectionable in the film under Section 9 of the Motion Pictures Ordinance, 1979.

      The two-judge bench, comprising Justice Umar Ata Bandial and Justice Qazi Faez Isa, is hearing the federal government’s appeal against the Sindh High Court judgment.

    • Justice Qazi blasts CBC chairman over censorship of movie ‘Maalik’
    • Banned Books Week celebrated the freedom to read
    • Censorship is alive and well in 2016: Banned Books Week, Sept. 25 is Oct. 1, is a celebration of intellectual freedom
    • To stage or not to stage: Theatre censorship in India
    • Play censorship: HC asks govt to file affidavit on Palekar’s
    • Maharashtra firm on censoring plays, scripts
    • Maharashtra government to pre-censor plays, scripts and drama

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Why Snowden the Movie Matters

      I’ve reviewed Oliver Stone’s movie Snowden elsewhere, and it’s well worth seeing just as a movie. But of course the issues brought up by Snowden the man, and Snowden the movie, are more complex than fit into two hours.

    • NYT Declares Snowden a Thief–and Journalism a Crime

      The article goes on to say, “The information believed to have been stolen by Mr. Martin appears to be different in nature from Mr. Snowden’s theft, which included documents that described the depth and breadth of the NSA’s surveillance.”

      The problem with all this talk about the “theft” and “stealing” of secrets is that while Snowden, one of the most prominent whistleblowers of the modern era, has indeed been charged by the federal government with theft—along with two violations of the Espionage Act—he’s been convicted of no crime. Were he to stand trial, he would no doubt try to offer a public interest defense of his actions—as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has urged that he be allowed to do—saying that the need to expose government wrongdoing overrode the law against unauthorized release of government documents.

      The Times may believe that such a defense would be unsuccessful—and no doubt many legal experts would agree with that assessment. Still, it’s unusual for journalists to assume that someone accused of a crime is guilty, in effect taking the role of judge and jury upon themselves.

      Such an assumption is particularly problematic in this case, because the same section of the legal code that is used to charge Snowden with theft of “any record, voucher, money, or thing of value” also criminalizes “whoever receives, conceals, or retains the same with intent to convert it to his use or gain, knowing it to have been embezzled, stolen, purloined or converted.” There is no explicit exception for journalists there, any more than there’s an exception for whistleblowers.

      If we’re going to call Snowden’s documents “stolen,” then journalists frequently receive “stolen” records from sources and use them as the basis for stories—as the Times itself has done with documents released by Snowden. If Snowden is a thief, then the New York Times is a fence.

    • FCC’s Final Internet Privacy Rules Will Likely Align With FTC

      In a shift from an earlier proposal, the Federal Communications Commission’s final rules to regulate the privacy practices of internet service providers are expected to be in line with the Federal Trade Commission’s approach, according to telecom and agency sources.

      FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has two other big-ticket items on his year-end agenda, cable set-top boxes and pricing for business data lines used by banks, hospitals and the like. As such, it appears the top telecom regulator will grant the private sector’s pleas to make the new privacy regulations distinguish between “sensitive” and “nonsensitive” data.

    • Continued Disagreement And Confusion Over Yahoo Email Scanning

      I’m guessing this is the same source who went to both publications, but it continues to raise more questions about this. Forcing Yahoo to actually install code is a big, big deal and gets back to the questions raised by the DOJ trying to force Apple to do the same thing. And, once again, this is the kind of thing the government isn’t supposed to be able to do in secret. Yes, individual orders and details about who or what is being searched can and should be kept secret, but requiring a company to install code that sniffs through every email… that’s not how these things are supposed to work.

    • EFF: NSA’s Support of Encryption ‘Disingenuous’

      The National Security Agency came out in support of encryption again Wednesday, but privacy advocates were quick to contest the agency’s stance, criticizing it for having a different definition of the term than others.

      Glenn Gerstell, general counsel for the NSA, stressed that the agency believes in strong encryption multiple times during a panel, “Privacy vs. Security: Beyond the Zero-Sum Game,” at Cambridge Cyber Summit here at MIT, on Wednesday.

    • Former NSA hacker demos how Mac malware can spy on your webcam
    • Former NSA employee: This hack gains access to your Mac’s webcam
    • Former NSA employee shows how any MacBook’s webcam and microphone can be hacked
    • NSA spy details how to tap into webcam on Mac without user noticing
    • The Intercept: There’s an NSA Data Center in the UK

      Technology has always played an inextricable role in spying, and today, that means one or more data centers underpin any spying operation.

      It comes as no surprise that a US surveillance outpost in the UK has a data center, as revealed by a story published last month by The Intercept, the aggressively anti-NSA investigative online magazine published by First Look Media. The story reveals an unprecedented amount of detail about the activities taking place at Menwith Hill Station, relying on classified US government documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

      Glenn Greenwald, one of The Intercept’s founding editors, was one of the key journalists who wrote the first series of stories based on the Snowden leaks in 2013. Greenwald wrote his for The Guardian.

    • Yahoo didn’t install an NSA email scanner, it was a “buggy” NSA “rootkit”

      Ex-Yahoo employees have spoken anonymously to Motherboard about the news that Yahoo had built an “email scanner” for a US security agency, likely the FBI or the NSA. These sources — at least one of whom worked on the security team — say that in actuality, the NSA or FBI had secretly installed a “rootkit” on Yahoo’s mail servers and that this was discovered by the Yahoo security team (who had not been apprised of it), who, believing the company had been hacked, sounded the alarm, only to have the company executives tell them that the US government had installed the tool.

      The sources in the article say that the “rootkit” was “buggy” and “poorly designed.”

      In the security world, a rootkit is a program that changes the operating system to create administrative (“root”) access that is invisible to the system’s actual administrator. For example, in 2005, Sony-BMG put a covert rootkit installer on more than six million audio CDs; when inserted into Windows computers, these CDs silently updated the Windows kernel so that it would not report the existence of files or processes whose names started with “$sys$”. Then the CDs installed an anti-ripping program that started with $sys$ and tried to shut down any attempt to rip an audio CD — because the program started with $sys$, users and their anti-virus software couldn’t see the programs’ files on their drives, nor would the programs appear in the computers’ process list.

    • Senator Ron Wyden Says White House Is Required By Law To Reveal Details Behind Yahoo Scanning

      So, one of the things in the USA Freedom Act is a provision requiring that the White House declassify any “novel interpretations” of the law in ordering surveillance. This was to avoid the situations, such as under the Section 215 program, where the intelligence community reads words to mean things differently than anyone else would read them. Now, given what we’ve learned so far about the Yahoo email scanning case and the fact that it clearly goes beyond what people thought the law enabled, it seems clear that there’s some interpretation somewhere that’s “novel.”

    • Court Shuts Down Argument That Warrantless Seizures Of Cell Phones Is Fine Because Criminals Use Cell Phones

      Furthermore, it finds that the 68-day gap between the seizure and search was unreasonable. The state argued that the investigation was “complex,” but the court points out investigators obtained five other search warrants during that same time period.

      Even if it had been more timely in its acquisition of a warrant, that still wouldn’t have been able to rescue the evidence it located on the suspect’s phone. Because the underlying seizure was performed without probable cause, the use of a warrant for the search did nothing but create a paper trail for “poisoned fruit.”

      Hopefully this reversal will deter future seizure attempts by state and local law enforcement. Without the ruling in place, anything from cars to computers could end up being taken and held by police under the assumption that criminals use such items. That’s not probable cause. That’s not even reasonable suspicion. It’s fishing expeditions waiting to happen and speculation taking precedent over Fourth Amendment protections.

    • Surprise: Intelligence Community Comes Out Against Congressional Plan To Weaken Intelligence Oversight

      Well, this is somewhat unexpected. Earlier this year, we noted that Congress was working on a plan to undermine the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). But apparently, the Intelligence Community, in the form of Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, is against this idea.

      The PCLOB was initially created as part of the PATRIOT Act, but was basically given no real power. In 2007, Congress finally gave it a bit more power and independence, only to watch both the Bush and Obama administrations ignore it by not appointing anyone to the board. That finally changed in 2012 — just in time for the Snowden leaks (though it has been without a chairperson, since the last one left earlier this year). The PCLOB then put out a scathing report about the NSA’s mass surveillance on Americans under the Section 215 program, though it wasn’t as concerned about PRISM and upstream collection under the Section 702 program. For years now, the PCLOB has supposedly been investigating surveillance under Executive Order 12333, which we’ve been told by insiders is the main program the NSA relies on for surveillance (the others just fill in the gaps).

    • Yahoo Email Scanning May Sink EU Privacy Shield Agreement

      After the US/EU “safe harbor” on data protection was tossed out thanks to NSA spying being incompatible with EU rights, everyone had tried to patch things up with the so-called “Privacy Shield.” As we noted at the time, as long as the NSA’s mass surveillance remained in place, the Privacy Shield agreement would fail as well. This wasn’t that difficult to predict.

      And there are already some challenges to the Privacy Shield underway, including by Max Schrems, who brought the original challenge that invalidated the old safe harbor. But things may have accelerated a bit this week with the story of Yahoo scanning all emails. This news has woken up a bunch of EU politicians and data protection officials, leading to some serious questions about whether it violates the Privacy Shield agreement.

    • Inspector General’s Report Notes Section 215 Requests Down Sharply Since 2013

      The Snowden Effect continues. In addition to actual oversight finally being applied to surveillance programs, the breadth and scope of some programs continues to be narrowed. Some of this narrowing has been forced on the NSA by legislation. But some of it also appears to be shame-related. It’s no longer as acceptable to harvest vast amounts of data domestically, apparently.

      Shane Harris at The Daily Beast notes that the latest Inspector General’s report [PDF] details a sharp decline in Section 215 requests since Snowden’s debut leak in June 2013.

    • Welcome to the machine—Yahoo mail scanning exposes another US spy tool

      Imagine a futuristic society in which robots are deployed to everybody’s house, fulfilling a mission to scan the inside of each and every residence. Does that mental image look far-off and futuristic? Well, this week’s Yahoo e-mail surveillance revelations perhaps prove this intrusive robot scenario has already arrived in the digital world.

      Days ago, Reuters cited anonymous sources and reported that Yahoo covertly built a secret “custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming e-mails for specific information.” Yahoo, the report noted, “complied with a classified US government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI.”

      Reuters then followed up, saying Yahoo acted at the behest of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Not to be outdone, The New York Times reported Yahoo used its system designed to scan for child pornography and spam to search for messages containing an undisclosed “signature.” The Times said a FISA judge found probable cause to believe that this digital signature “was uniquely used by a foreign power.” The scanning has ceased, the report noted, but neither of the news agencies said how long the search lasted and when it began.

      Yahoo denies how the reports portrayed its assistance, saying they are “misleading.” Other tech companies have denied participating in such surveillance as it was outlined in those reports.

    • Accused NSA contractor was workaholic hoarder into computers, says ex-wife

      Elizabeth Martin told the New York Times she would be shocked if her former husband Harold, whom she has not seen since 2009, betrayed his country by deliberately passing on government secrets.

      Harold Martin, 51, from Glen Burnie, Maryland, was secretly arrested by the FBI in August after federal prosecutors said he illegally removed highly classified information and stored the material in his home and car. Martin worked for the same NSA contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, that employed the whistleblower Edward Snowden, but his own motive remains a mystery.

    • Arrested NSA contractor may have hoarded secrets to work from home

      Investigators have little doubt that a National Security Agency contractor arrested in August hoarded mountains of classified material, but so far they’ve found no evidence that he leaked anything to anyone, The New York Times reported Friday.

    • Early Observations In Latest NSA Contractor Arrest

      “While very few details are available about the case of another NSA contractor stealing confidential information, based on the information available thus far, there are some observations that can be made.

      Mainly, there is no easy way to characterize insider threats.

    • Former Mentor Recalls NSA Contractor as Torn, Affected by War
    • N.S.A. Suspect Is a Hoarder. But a Leaker? Investigators Aren’t Sure.

      On a half-dozen occasions in the last three years, top-secret information has leaked from the National Security Agency and appeared on the web. Government analysts concluded with alarm that the documents, including intercepted communications from Europe and Japan and the computer code for the N.S.A.’s hacking tools, had not come from the huge collection taken by Edward J. Snowden.

      That meant there was at least one more leaker still at large, and when F.B.I. agents found in August that a former agency contractor had been taking home top-secret material, they thought they might have the culprit.

      Now they are not so sure.

      Harold T. Martin III, the contractor arrested by the F.B.I. on Aug. 27, brazenly violated basic security rules, taking home a staggering quantity of highly classified material. He had been doing this undetected, agency officials were chagrined to learn, since the late 1990s. But, officials say, they have not been able to definitively connect Mr. Martin, 51, a Navy veteran, to the leaked documents.

    • EU privacy watchdogs have questions about Yahoo’s secret email scanning

      European Union privacy watchdogs are concerned by reports that Yahoo has been secretly scanning its users’ email at the request of U.S. intelligence services.

      “It goes far beyond what is acceptable,” said Johannes Caspar, Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information in Hamburg, Germany.

      Reuters reported on Tuesday that Yahoo had built a system for U.S. government agencies to search all of its users’ incoming emails. Other tech companies were quick to distance themselves, saying they would have challenged any such request in court.

    • Yahoo’s email snooping: It’s all legal

      The revelation this week that Yahoo scanned the incoming emails of hundreds of millions of Yahoo users set off a storm of condemnation. The real outrage is that this kind of government surveillance, frequently abetted by the collaboration of telecom and tech companies, is pervasive and has little or no oversight.

      As told by Reuters and the New York Times, Yahoo received a secret order last year from a judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that compelled the company to customize an existing scanning system (used to find and report child pornography and malware) to search emails for a computer “signature” tied to the communications of a state-sponsored terrorist organization. Emails containing the signature were turned over to the NSA or FBI — and Yahoo was barred from disclosing the matter.

    • FBI says Minnesota mall attack was premeditated
    • FBI Tests The Waters On Another Attempt To Force Apple To Unlock An iPhone

      Earlier this year, as you recall, there were two big cases in which the DOJ and FBI sought to force Apple to make significant technological changes to iPhone software in order to allow the DOJ to brute force the passcode on some iPhones used by some criminals. Eventually, after Apple (and others) pushed back, and public opinion was turning against the FBI, the DOJ miraculously announced that it found its way into both iPhones and the cases were dropped. But the issue of forcing companies (and Apple especially) to backdoor their way into encrypted iPhones certainly has not been dropped. And it appears that the FBI may be testing the waters to see if it can try again.

    • The FBI wants to unlock another iPhone and is making big deal out of it

      IT IS TIME to look up déjà vu in the dictionary. The FBI needs to unlock another iPhone and it still doesn’t know how to do it, despite making all that fuss about the San Bernadino one.

      A report on Wired from an FBI press conference after a mass stabbing in America said that the FBI is in possession of an iPhone that belonged to now dead assailant Dahir Adan.

      FBI special agent Rich Thorton told the conference that it would be handy to get into the phone and find out more about Adan, but that the FBI can’t. He explained that the search for a solution is on. Again.

      “Dahir Adan’s iPhone is locked. We are in the process of assessing our legal and technical options to gain access to this device and the data it may contain,” he said.

      We thought that the FBI had this sorted. The agency made a lot of fuss when it set about breaking into the iPhone 5C of San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook earlier this year.

    • Facebook wins ‘Big Brother’ award in Belgium

      Facebook is watching you.

      The social media giant won the “Big Brother” Award in Belgium on Thursday. The award is named after the dystopian government surveillance in George Orwell’s “1984,” and given to the “biggest privacy-offender of the year,” according to the Flemish League for Human rights, which runs the awards, and its partners.

      Facebook, nominated by international digital advocacy group EDRi, won after being criticized for its default privacy settings in a unanimous decision. The social network didn’t respond to requests for comment.

      “Facebook has access to a wide range of personal data, and it tracks your movements across the web, whether you are logged in or not,” EDRi said. “And the devil is in the default: To opt out, you are expected to navigate Facebook’s complex web of settings.”

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • See What A Great Excuse The Drug War Is For Cops To Violate People’s Civil Liberties?

      It’s harder to get the police to believe somebody has 26 bodies buried in their backyard — which is probably why the police so rarely get tipped off about that sort of thing.

    • In the Chicago Police Department, If the Bosses Say It Didn’t Happen, It Didn’t Happen

      On May 31, the city of Chicago agreed to settle a whistleblower lawsuit brought by two police officers who allege they suffered retaliation for reporting and investigating criminal activity by fellow officers. The settlement, for $2 million, was announced moments before the trial was to begin.

      As the trial date approached, city lawyers had made a motion to exclude the words “code of silence” from the proceedings. Not only was the motion denied, but the judge ruled that Mayor Rahm Emanuel could be called to testify about what he meant when he used the term in a speech he delivered to the City Council last December, at the height of the political firestorm provoked by the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

      In that speech, Emanuel broke with the city’s long history of denying the existence of the code of silence. He spoke of “problems at the very heart of the policing profession,” and said: “This problem is sometimes referred to as the Thin Blue Line. Other times it’s referred to as the code of silence. It is the tendency to ignore, deny, or in some cases cover up the bad actions of a colleague or colleagues.”

    • Corrupt Chicago Police Were Taxing Drug Dealers and Targeting Their Rivals
    • How the Chicago Police Department Covered Up for a Gang of Criminal Cops
    • Chicago Police Bosses Targeted Cops Who Exposed Corruption
    • I’m a pro-democracy activist. Is that why Thailand chose to deport me?

      My flight touched down at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport without any problems, at about midnight on 5 October. I had been invited to share my experiences of Hong Kong’s umbrella movement at two universities in Bangkok and to talk about becoming a young politician.

      But as I left the plane, I started to feel paranoid that officials at the immigration counter might take me away and deport me back to Hong Kong on the very same flight. A strange feeling came over me. I could see more staff than usual ahead of me. But there was nowhere else to go. When I stepped on to the bridge leading off the plane, I saw a crowd of immigration police. I knew something was wrong.

      What surprised me was that, unlike when I was refused entry to Malaysia – in May 2015, this time I didn’t have to go to the counter to be taken away. This time the officials came to meet me.

      They asked if I was Joshua Wong. I told them I was.

    • Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male employees, lawsuit charges

      A prominent local media executive fired from Yahoo last year has filed a lawsuit accusing CEO Marissa Mayer of leading a campaign to purge male employees.

      “Mayer encouraged and fostered the use of (an employee performance-rating system) to accommodate management’s subjective biases and personal opinions, to the detriment of Yahoo’s male employees,” said the suit by Scott Ard filed this week in federal district court in San Jose.

      Ard, who worked for Yahoo for 3 ½ years until January 2015, is now editor-in-chief of the Silicon Valley Business Journal. His lawsuit also claims that Yahoo illegally fired large numbers of workers ousted under a performance-rating system imposed by Mayer. That allegation was not tied to gender.

      Yahoo spokeswoman Carolyn Clark defended the company’s hiring and performance-review processes, which she said are guided by “fairness.”

      “This lawsuit has no merit. With the unwavering support of our CEO, we are focused on hiring employees with broad and varied backgrounds, and perspectives,” Clark said. “Our performance-review process was developed to allow employees at all levels of the company to receive meaningful, regular and actionable feedback from others.

    • Yahoo hit with another lawsuit claiming anti-male discrimination

      The complaint (PDF) filed by Scott Ard says that Yahoo’s “stack ranking” system was “without oversight or accountability” and was “more arbitrary and discriminatory” than stack ranking used by other companies.

      The lawsuit claims that Yahoo’s Media Org employees were ranked from 0.0 to 5.0 before being subject to a “calibration” process by higher-level management. Ard claims employees weren’t told their numeric ranking but were only informed of their “Bucket” ranking, labeled “Greatly Exceeds, “Exceeds,” “Achieves,” “Occasionally Misses,” or “Misses.”

      Ard was hired at Yahoo in 2011, where he had editorial control of the Yahoo.com homepage. In 2014, following a leadership change that put Chief Marketing Officer Kathy Savitt in charge of Media Org, Ard was shifted to a role in which he managed Yahoo Autos, Yahoo Shopping, and Yahoo Small Business.

    • The Hong Kong outcasts who gave up their beds for Edward Snowden

      Vanessa Rodel didn’t realize she was sheltering the most wanted man in the world until the morning after he showed up unexpectedly at her door.
      Her houseguest from the United States had requested a newspaper. She discovered his high-profile identity when she recognized Edward Snowden’s face on the front page of the Hong Kong daily.

      “I said ‘oh my God,’” Rodel told CNN. “The most wanted man in the world is in my house!”
      The next Snowden arrested?
      Rodel — who fled the Philippines — is one of several asylum seekers in Hong Kong who are now going public with a secret they kept for years.
      For weeks in 2013, these impoverished people took turns hiding the man behind one of the biggest intelligence leaks in US history.

    • Argentina Not Only Wants To Bring In E-Voting, It Will Make It Illegal To Check The System For Electoral Fraud

      It’s one thing to bring in an e-voting system that most experts say is a bad idea in theory. But making it effectively illegal to point out flaws that exist in practice is really asking for trouble. Unless this proposed law is changed to allow independent scrutiny of the systems, Argentina will probably find this out the hard way.

    • Government must stop hiding torture record

      Just last week, there were fresh claims about CIA torture of detainees at a black site in Afghanistan. Two Tunisian men told Human Rights Watch they were strapped to a board and held with their heads upside down in a barrel of water. They were beaten with metal rods, anally raped and threatened with a makeshift electric chair.

      Yet the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr, still won’t release its full report on what was done to CIA captives.

    • What did the Foreign and Commonwealth Office say to the London School of Economics about foreign academics?

      In short: the government has not barred foreign academics from providing policy advice, at least not in any legal or other formal way.

      To do so would be almost certainly unlawful: for example, the government would be in breach of the law of public procurement if it discriminated in favour of UK citizens instead of EU citizens when commissioning research services.

      And there is no such bar set out in any published government document; it seems not to be in any contract specification or tendering document; and there does not even seem to be any written communication from the FCO stating the bar.

      But senior managers at the London School of Economics (LSE) believed they had been told by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) that there was now such a bar.

      How did LSE senior managers come to believe the FCO had said there was such a bar?

    • Opposing Populist Chauvinism is not Elitism

      History demonstrates the evils that arise from whipping up popular xenophobic nationalism. After the Tories trumpeted that companies will have to declare how many foreigners they employ, that foreign doctors will be phased out of the NHS, that taxi drivers will have to prove their immigration status, that fewer foreigners will be allowed to study at British universities and that landlords will have to check the papers of their foreign tenants, we will now be told by Theresa May that to oppose this surge of fascism is elitism. I call it fascist after careful consideration; I don’t know what else to call it. Immigrants to Britain are going to be hauled up to produce documents at numerous moments of daily life to prove their right to be here. They will not yet need to be identified by yellow stars, but anybody who does not see the direction of travel is a fool.

      The ability of politicians and media to whip up popular racism is well demonstrated historical fact. I am simply appalled by the catalogue I have outlined above. It is astonishing to me that popular opinion, particularly in England, has been conditioned to the point where outright racism has become the accepted everyday level of political discourse. And it is not just the Tories. Blairites are using populist anti-immigrant rhetoric as their most potent attack on Corbyn. Rachel Reeves made a speech last week that channelled Enoch Powell in predicting violent reaction to immigrants, and in some ways was worse than Powell’s classical allusion. But while Powell’s anti-immigrant rant ended his chances of becoming Prime Minister in a more decent age, Reeves is firmly in today’s UK establishment mainstream.

      The argument that immigration is impacting the living standards of ordinary working people is a demonstrable falsehood. If mass immigration made a country’s people poorer, then Germany and the USA would have the lowest living standards for ordinary citizens in the world. An economy is not a thing of fixed size with a set number of jobs. If it were not for immigration, there would have been no economic growth in the UK at all since the millennium.

    • Film Directors’ Peculiar Choice: Teaching Children That Nonwhite = Evil

      But Burton seems not to be alone in feeling the need to convey that message to a young audience. The animated film How to Train Your Dragon 2 also featured an all-white cast of characters—except for the villain, Drago Bludvist, who is depicted as dark-skinned, hook-nosed and dreadlocked, and voiced by Djimon Hounsou, an actor from Benin…

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Report: Facebook Wants to Expand ‘Free Basics’ Internet Service to US

      Facebook is reportedly bringing its campaign to connect millions more people to the Web to its own backyard.

      As The Washington Post reports, the social network is reportedly in talks with government officials and wireless carriers to bring its Free Basics mobile app to North America and serve the 37 million US residents who are not currently using the Internet. Facebook is reportedly looking for a way to roll out Free Basics without running afoul of net neutrality rules, which derailed the program in India.

      Similar to global versions, the US Free Basics would target low-income and rural Americans who can’t afford a reliable, high-speed Web connection at home or on their phone. The app allows folks to stretch their data plans by offering free Internet access to online resources like news, health information, and job offers.

      Exactly which apps will be included have not been determined, though Facebook will likely be among them.

    • Taking down the internet: possible but how probable?

      The hack of the Democratic National Committee this past summer, allegedly by Russia, prompted a political firestorm, but didn’t cause even a ripple in the US economy.

      But imagine the economic firestorm that would result if online attackers brought the entire internet down, even temporarily.

      You may not have to imagine it, according to Bruce Schneier, CTO of Resilient Systems, cryptography guru, blogger and international authority on internet security. In a recent post titled, “Someone is Learning How to Take Down the Internet,” he wrote that he had been told by multiple sources that, ““someone has been probing the defenses of … some of the major companies that provide the basic infrastructure that makes the Internet work.”

      But according to some of his fellow security experts, you don’t really need to imagine it, since the chances of the internet really being taken down are remote. And even if it happens, it won’t cause catastrophic damage. Several commenters on Schneier’s post wondered why even hostile actors would want to take down the internet, since if they do, they won’t be able to use it either.

    • Comcast Dramatically Expands Unnecessary Broadband Caps — For ‘Fairness’

      For years, we’ve noted how there’s absolutely zero financial or technical justification for usage caps on fixed-line networks. They don’t really help manage congestion, and as any incumbent ISP earnings report indicates, flat-rate broadband has proven incredibly profitable. But thanks to limited competition, caps are a great way to raise rates, hamstring streaming video competitors, and give incumbents a distinct advantage for their own services (aka zero rating). Ultimately, caps disadvantage startups and small businesses, while making broadband more expensive and confusing for everyone.

      Needless to say, Comcast is pursuing this option with reckless abandon.

  • DRM

    • Tim Berners-Lee just gave us an opening to stop DRM in Web standards

      This week, the chief arbiter of Web standards, Tim Berners-Lee, decided not to exercise his power to extend the development timeline for the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) Web technology standard. The EME standardization effort, sponsored by streaming giants like Google and Netflix, aims to make it cheaper and more efficient to impose Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) systems on Web users. The streaming companies’ representatives within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) were unable to finish EME within the time allotted by the W3C, and had asked Berners-Lee for an extension through next year.

      Berners-Lee made his surprising decision on Tuesday, as explained in an email announcement by W3C representative Philippe Le Hégaret. Instead of granting a time extension — as he has already done once — Berners-Lee delegated the decision to the W3C’s general decision-making body, the Advisory Committee. The Advisory Committee includes diverse entities from universities to companies to nonprofits, and it is divided as to whether EME should be part of Web standards. It is entirely possible that the Advisory Committee will reject the time extension and terminate EME development, marking an important victory for the free Web.

    • Homicide Commits Suicide, HP Says It’s Sorry & More…

      HP to remove DRM from printers: In a statement that was full of we-did-it-to-protect-you rhetoric, HP has said that it’s going to remove DRM that it installed as an update on certain models of its printers that prevented users from using ink cartridges with security chips not manufactured by HP.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Gurry Off The Hook, Investigation Ends, WIPO Says [Ed: see some background]

      The member governments of the UN World Intellectual Property Organization, after considering a confidential UN investigation report on whistleblower charges against WIPO Director General Francis Gurry, have decided to end the case without discipline, WIPO has said. Instead, members are working to bolster whistleblower protections, internal oversight and procurement procedures at the agency for the future.

    • WIPO Members Work To Toughen Up Procedures For Investigations Of High-Level Officials

      Member governments of the UN World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) are working intensively in a closed-door session today to make changes to the way allegations of wrongdoing against high-ranking WIPO officials are handled. What is not clear from the secretive discussions is whether any action will be taken against the director general as a result of a UN investigation of his activities, for which the UN report is on the meeting agenda.

    • Details Of Charges Against Backpage Execs For ‘Pimping’ Look Totally Bogus

      Backpage.com has been the target of lots of moralizing, grandstanding law enforcement types, who absolutely hate the fact that there’s a classified site out there where some users use it for prostitution (I know that some of the comments will discuss the question of whether or not prostitution should even be a crime, but right now it is, and so this article won’t focus on that other discussion). As we’ve noted time and time again, it’s bizarre that law enforcement folks keep blaming the platforms, when those platforms are actually really useful for law enforcement to track down, arrest, prosecute and convict people actually breaking the law. Still, the grandstanding forced Craigslist to completely shut down its adult section, and most of that traffic moved over to Backpage.

      And now, the CEO of Backpage, Carl Ferrer, has been arrested in Texas for “pimping,” with both Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and California Attorney General Kamala Harris pushing out grandstanding press releases to talk about how tough on prostitution and pimping they are.

      There’s just one big problem in all of this: the charges are almost certainly completely bogus, and Harris and Paxton are flat out ignoring federal law on this matter. Specifically, they’re ignoring the law we talk about all the time: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. As we’ve noted over and over again, CDA 230 says that internet platforms are not liable for the content created by users. There’s an exception for federal criminal acts, but not for states. Various state Attorneys General have been whining about this for years, and demanding Section 230 get a new exception just for them, but that hasn’t happened. So Harris and Paxton clearly know about Section 230, and clearly know that they’re just ignoring the law. They apparently don’t care. They’re either too focused on the publicity grandstanding value of pretending like they’re “tough on crime,” or they’re hoping that by presenting emotional stories, they’ll win over judges and convince them to ignore Section 230.

    • Gurry investigation dropped by WIPO member states; transparency and accountability are the losers

      The news that WIPO member states have endorsed a decision taken by the organisation’s Coordination Committee to drop any further investigation of the allegations of serious misconduct levelled against the organisation’s Director-General Francis Gurry is no surprise; a few days ago this blog predicted it would happen. However, for anyone who believes that the IP system is best served by transparency and accountability, the fact this outcome was so predictable does not make it any less depressing.

      Ever since the then WIPO deputy Director-General James Pooley first accused Gurry of being involved in taking WIPO staff members’ DNA and in interfering to alter the outcome of a procurement process in his April 2014 Report of Misconduct, IAM has taken no position on the claims. We don’t know if they were true; but we do know that they should have been investigated quickly, thoroughly, independently and with full protection for witnesses.

    • Copyrights

      • Father Sues for Copyright Infringement After Live-Streaming Baby’s Birth

        It seems each day more people are willing to share ever more personal things on the Internet. Along these lines, in May of this year Kali Kanongataa a California resident used Facebook to live stream his wife giving birth. After portions the live stream ended up on television and publicized on the Internet, he sued ABC and Yahoo for allegedly infringing his copyright by displaying the video.

        The day after the live stream, ABC’s “Good Morning America” ran a short segment about the live stream and showed a brief excerpt from the video that was up loaded by Mr. Kanogataa which had been widely viewed online since this airing. The clip also appeared on Yahoo, which has a partnership with ABC.

      • Court Asks How it Can Ban Illegal Pokemon Go Downloads

        Pokémon Go is not available to buy in India so the game is being heavily pirated by fans. With legal moves underway to try and bring this behavior to a halt, the Gujarat High Court is now seeking advice on how to stop downloads to protect the public interest.

      • Pirate Kodi Add-Ons Gain Massive Popularity

        Streaming piracy is on the rise with the popular media center Kodi at the center of attention. While Kodi itself is a neutral platform, millions of people use third-party add-ons to turn it into the ultimate pirate machine. In less than a year, the leading add-on repository has seen the number of unique users double, which may be just the beginning.

10.07.16

Links 7/10/2016: Linux Kernel 4.8.1, Wine Staging 1.9.20

Posted in News Roundup at 10:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Tesla vehicles to get a much-needed updated browser with new Linux OS in December, says Musk

    There are plenty of useful and well-thought-out features on Tesla’s 17-in touchscreen, but the internet browser is not one of them. For years now, we have been used to high-speed internet browsing on our laptops, desktop and now even or phones, but Tesla’s browser is so slow that it feels like it’s from another era.

    Model S and X owners have been asking for an update to the browser for a long time and unfortunately, it didn’t come with the recent 8.0 update, but Tesla CEO Elon Musk said yesterday that it will with an upcoming update, which will likely be in December.

    Tesla’s operating system is built on a modified version of Linux Ubuntu. Musk says that Tesla aims to upgrade the Linux OS to 4.4 in Tesla vehicles in December. That’s when he expects they will be able to update the browser.

  • Desktop/Microsoft

    • Detested snooping patch KB 2952664 reappears

      Perhaps the world has gone truly mad. Or maybe Microsoft’s trying to pull the wool over our eyes prior to its major shift in patching strategy — the patchocalypse — widely anticipated this month. It’s even possible Microsoft wants to bring back the “Get Windows 10″ campaign, to drive Windows’ reputation even deeper into the dirt.

      A Microsoft spokesman says it isn’t bringing back the “Get Windows 10″ campaign, but our old nemesis KB 2952664 reappeared suddenly yesterday afternoon, and Windows users are livid — and scared.

    • Microsoft’s Skype locks out iTWire editor-in-chief

      Login issues at Skype have bitten iTWire, with editor-in-chief Stan Beer being told his account has been suspended. After 16 hours of waiting, he is still unable to log in, and Microsoft now says it has lost his account and all its data.

      A furious Beer would not rule out legal action. “This is unacceptable. I have been using my account practically every day for the past 10 years. It is vital to the operation of my company. If I do not have it reinstated immediately I will have no alternative but to consider my options and take legal action,” he said.

      An email just received from Microsoft’s support team said: “We have checked our records and your account does not exist in the Microsoft system. Please check the spelling of your account. If you are sure this is the correct Microsoft account, it is also possible that it has expired due to inactivity.

      “Your account will expire if you do not sign in regularly or within the first 10 days after registration. When the account is deleted, all messages, folders, and contacts are deleted as well. Incoming messages will be sent back to the sender as undeliverable, but the user name is immediately available for registration.”

      After suffering repeated issues with Windows over many years, Beer thought he had escaped the clutches of Microsoft when he switched to OS X.

      But last evening he was given a sharp reminder that the Typhoid Mary of the Internet has a long reach and can still foul up one’s day.

    • Data loss services: Microsoft leads all the way

      When you have data you want to get rid of forever, whom are you going to call? There’s one sure place to go: Redmond. You are assured of losing your data when you hand it to Microsoft.

      The company is not in the habit of keeping backups. That’s so yesterday.

      No, Microsoft is out there in front of them all, modern-looking chief executive Satya Nadella in the lead, preaching the gospel of getting rid of the old and welcoming in the new.

      The bitter truth must now be acknowledged: veteran tech journo Bob Cringely said it first and I have repeated it for some time, but never seen it up so close. Microsoft is a marketing company, not a technology company.

    • BIOS Problems and Solutions

      When Lenovo released the Yoga 900-13ISK2 it became apparent that Linux and BSD users could not rely on closed source BIOSes. Of course while it is rather naive to think that a Microsoft Signature Edition PC would be Linux friendly, one could hope that at least it would not be Linux or BSD hostile. On further analysis one can see that this is not the case, and any would-be Linux user is in for a very difficult time trying to load any operating system other than Windows 10.

      The exact reasons for this problem boil down to the inability of the BIOS to set Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) mode for the SSD. Now I knew long ago that closed source BIOSes could become a problem back in the mid-1990s. I’ve spent considerable time researching the ways one can obtain a computer with FOSS firmware.

      Before I go into the specifics of which computers actually have a BIOS with freely available source code allow me to recap some computer history. When we look at the original IBM PC BIOS we can see that it’s been well analyzed and that no other operating systems have been locked out. In addition to this there was no way to alter the BIOS save for swapping out the BIOS chip and putting in a different one. So for several years people didn’t give much thought to the BIOS, as long as their computer booted they could load whatever operating system they wanted, be it Unix, Minix, MS-DOS, CP/M, etc.

  • Server

    • OCI Announces New Tools Projects and 1.0 Release Candidates

      With ContainerCon Europe currently underway in Berlin, we want to share some of the great progress the Open Container Initiative (OCI) has made.

      The OCI was launched with the express purpose of developing standards for the container format and runtime that will give everyone the ability to fully commit to container technologies today without worrying that their current choice of infrastructure, cloud provider or tooling will lock them in.

    • Never explain, never apologize: Microsoft silent on Outlook.com email server grief

      A tweak to Microsoft’s Outlook.com cloud service has blocked a good number of people from accessing their messages.

      Specifically, the baffling and unannounced change affects Outlook.com users with connected accounts: these are email accounts hosted on third-party servers (such as a company’s private server or an ISP’s mail server) that are accessed via the Outlook.com cloud. People with this setup are no longer able to send or receive mail through Redmond’s webmail service.

      Reg reader David Barrett, who runs an internet-facing server for his friends and a UK health charity, said the issue has left those users who run Outlook.com with outside mail systems unable to get their email for days now.

      “It happened around the end of last week/over the weekend and seems to have been a gradual rollout,” he told us.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • New “Qt Lite” adds 2D renderer, targets 16MB RAM Linux systems

        Qt 5.8 will include IoT-oriented “Qt Lite” technology that enables fine-grained configuration and supports small-footprint IoT gizmos without OpenGL.

        The Qt Company announced a Qt Lite project that aims to extend the Qt development framework to smaller footprint Internet of Things devices with as little as 16MB RAM and flash. The Qt Lite technology will initially appear in Qt 5.8, including a more flexible configuration system for the cross-platform development framework, as well as a new 2D renderer for devices that can’t run OpenGL. Qt Lite also provides a more accessible, lightweight set of development tools.

      • Plasma 5.8 LTS now available in KDE Neon

        KDE Neon, the newly popular distribution produced by KDE and Kubuntu developer Jonathan Riddell and based on Ubuntu is now available in version 5.8. The best part of this latest release? It includes the latest long term stable release of Plasma 5.8. You can get additional details about this release from Jonathan Riddell’s blog.

      • KDE neon 5.8 Linux Distribution Arrives With Plasma 5.8 LTS Desktop

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Wrapping up Outreachy

        Now that my time as an intern is over, I want to take a moment to thank Outreachy for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this amazing experience. Also a big thank you to my mentor Jim Hall and the GNOME design team (Allan and Jakub) for the guidance and encouragements they provided throughout these months. And finally, a thank you to GNOME community for being awesome ^_^

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Linux Lite 3.2 Beta Released With Lite Desktop Widget

        The Linux Lite 3.2 Beta release has arrived for developer testing and to give an idea about the recent changes made to the Linux Lite distro. It now features a new Lite Desktop widget. The GRUB bootloader has been set to its default configuration which enables multibooting other operating systems alongside Linux Lite.

    • Arch Family

      • The Arch Terminal Desktop

        This linux desktop is an homage to one of our favorite distributions, Arch Linux-and reader KudalGadgil shared it with us in our desktop show and tell pool. Here’s how you can get a similar look.

    • Slackware Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • #RedhatDID: Retrospective and a look ahead to future events

        The day several Redhat trainers and industry folks met to talk about best practices and give feedback on the vision and mission ( and speed of progression) of Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and upstream / downstream projects and products. Among one of the most popular Sessions was the one by Robin Price and Martin Priesler on OpenSCAP which was a standing room only session with nearly 1/3 of attendants in attendance for this talk / session. Rita Carroll and others setup a interest list for those that would like to attend another OpenSCAP Workshop (mainly centered on a hands-on event but other venues seemed open for debate). If you’d be interested regardless of whether you like me were in attendance please email Rita @ rita@redhat.com with a simple subject line referencing OpenSCAP Workshop (Tysons Area).

      • Installing the Red Hat Container Development Kit 2.2 Release

        When an application developer or architect tasked with exploring the possibilities that containerized applications offer, nothing is easier than the Red Hat Container Development Kit (CDK).

        The Red Hat CDK has all the Cloud tooling you need for your local OSX, Linux or Windows environment and it has a few containers pre-configured for you to explore.

      • RHEL containers on non-RHEL hosts

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Libre Application Summit 2016

          I had a great time at the Libre Application Summit in sunny, hipster moustachioed Portland – many thanks to Sri for inviting me. Sorry this blog post is a bit late, but things have been really busy with the Fedora 25 Beta release (which we signed off on today).

          For a first year conference without a crazy marketing budget or anything, attendance was great – it was a good size for the venue, the number of sessions, and the social events, things felt busy and there was a lot of people-getting-to-know-each-other going on. Sri, Adelia and friends did a great job of finding a good venue and getting a solid wifi network, providing food and coffee, and setting up some fun social events.

        • Design – Steps into tickets – the Track ticket.

          The first step in this is to make sure that the subject completely design team fedora. A second step is to check the validity according to legal terms.

          In this category are the rules established by the international community and the teams fedora.

        • Flatpak 0.6.12 Linux Application Sandboxing Makes Kernel Keyring Non-Containable

          Alex Larsson from the Flatpak project, an open source initiative sponsored by Red Hat in an attempt to make cross-platform app deployment easier, announced on October 6, 2016, the release of Flatpak 0.6.12.

        • Fedora 25 Is Still On Track To Use Wayland By Default

          Back in August Fedora 25 switched to using Wayland by default in time for the project’s alpha release. With next week’s beta release, Fedora 25 is still using Wayland by default and it looks like it will remain that way unless any showstoppers appear.

          Initially it wasn’t clear if Fedora 25 would continue using Wayland by default as it neared the final release, but so far so good. Adam Williamson of Fedora QA confirmed in the forums, “Wayland is the default for Fedora Workstation in F25 Beta, and barring any crazy showstoppers we didn’t know about showing up between now and Final, is likely to be the default for Final too.”

        • Fedora 25 Beta Will Be Released Next Week

          The beta of Fedora 25 will be released on-time next week.

          It’s a bit rare in the Fedora space, but all relevant parties have signed off on the Fedora 25 Beta for it to ship on-time, 11 October. Often Fedora releases are challenged by delays due to blocker bugs, including earlier with Fedora 25 Alpha, but all appears to be in shape for shipping the beta next week.

        • Outreachy with Fedora, Fall 2016

          GNOME Outreachy is a global program that offers historically underrepresented people of gender and race stipends to write code for several participating FOSS projects . Inspired by Google Summer Of Code, Outreachy offers participants hands-on internships for contributing to open source projects.

          In 2016, the Outreachy internship dates are from December 6, 2016 to March 6, 2017. Participants work remotely from home while getting guidance from an assigned mentor and collaborating within their project’s community.

    • Debian Family

      • Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier

        To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier, please join us on our IRC channel #debian-lego and join the Debian LEGO team in the Alioth project we created yesterday. A mailing list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)

      • About Pacemaker HA stack in Debian Jessie

        People keep ignoring the status of the Pacemaker HA stack in Debian Jessie. Most people think that they should stick to Debian Wheezy.

        Why does this happen? Perhaps little or none publicity of the situation.

        Since some time now, Debian contains a Pacemaker stack which is ready to use in both Debian Jessie and in Debian Stretch.

      • Reproducible Builds: week 75 in Stretch cycle

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Canonical Announces Snapcraft 2.19 Snap Creator Tool for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

            Canonical’s Sergio Schvezov announced recently the release and immediate availability of the Snapcraft 2.19 tool for creating Snap universal packages, in the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.10 repos.

          • Dell Launches Its New Ubuntu-Powered XPS 13 Developer Edition Laptop in US & EU

            Dell just launched its new XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop in the US and European markets, and, as usual, they’re partnering with Canonical to deliver you the best Ubuntu Desktop experience as possible.

            For those of you that aren’t aware yet, the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop was made possible as a part of a project called Sputnik, which attempted to identify the needs of developer when running an open source operating system like Ubuntu, which is currently one of the most popular GNU/Linux distributions in the world. Therefore, Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop now ships with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus).

          • Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) Final Freeze Now in Effect, It Launches on October 13

            A few hours ago, October 6, 2016, Canonical’s Adam Conrad announced that the upcoming Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) operating system has entered the Final Freeze development stage.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Tiny i.MX6 COMs gain enhanced CAN and wireless, eMMC option

      SolidRun has updated its tiny, Linux-ready i.MX6 based MicroSoM modules with optional eMMC and NOR flash, improved FlexCAN, and TI WiLink8 wireless.

      SolidRun has refurbished its NXP i.MX6-based MicroSoM computer-on-modules with new rev 1.5 versions featuring optional eMMC and/or NOR flash, among other additions. Despite some minor mechanical redesigns, the modules have the same 47 x 30mm dimensions, and are backward compatible. They can be plugged into existing MicroSoM companion products such as SolidRun’s sandwich-style, open-spec HummingBoard SBCs and CuBox-i mini-PCs. All the modules continue to run Linux or Android.

    • Desert Rotor’s Next Generation Drone Controller to Use Logic Supply’s ML100 NUC

      Logic Supply informs Softpedia about a recent case study they’re doing featuring drone control specialists Desert Rotor, a drone controller company that uses their ML100 industrial PC for its next-gen UAV control system.

      First, we’d like to inform the reader that Logic Supply is the leading industrial and embedded computer hardware manufacturer. The company is being known for creating some of the most powerful industrial products, from mini and rugged panel PCs and thin client computers to dust-resistant, fanless, and ventless units that can be used in virtualization and IoT (Internet of Things) markets, or other applications.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Samsung might soon be announcing a partnership with Mediatek

          It is no secret that Samsung uses Spreadtrum’s SOCs for most of its budget and mid range smartphones. Spreadtrum’s current best chip happens to be the SC9860- a 16nm process based 2GHz octacore 64 bit Cortex A53 SOC; these are chipset specifications from the yester-year and the technology is now moving into more powerful heterogeneous architectures involving ARM’s Cortex A73, A72 and A57 standards(and the low powered A53 cores for better battery efficiency). Now, this might not make any sense to a normal user. But over at Samsung, Spreadtrum’s slow development pace for its chips seems to be holding the Korean smartphone giant down from offering better (or more) midrange products.

      • Android

        • BMW Connected service adds Alexa and, finally, Android

          The smart car market hasn’t exactly settled along the usual Google vs Apple camps and some do take both sides, if not their own. When BMW launched its BMW Connected service early this year, it seemed to have actually put up a stake on Apple’s iOS side of the fence. Apparently, it was only bidding its time. In its new update, the service finally gets its first Android app. But that’s not the only thing that’s new, as BMW Connected is also gaining support for the Apple Watch 2 and Amazon’s Alexa.

        • Nexus 9 LTE Android 7.0 Nougat Update Officially Rolls Out
        • Upcoming HTC Bolt Smartphone To Run Android 7.0 Nougat
        • Google Pixel phone’s best feature won’t be coming to other Android phones, company suggests

          Google got us all hot and bothered with the launch of a new pair of smartphones earlier this week, but you can be forgiven for missing a major announcement regarding Android.

          The details of the latest version of the operating system, 7.1 Nougat, have been revealed, and it’s missing some of the key features Google waxed lyrical about on Tuesday.

          The biggest news is that Google Assistant, which is sort of like a souped-up version of Siri for Android, will remain exclusive to the Pixel and Pixel XL, in the near future at least. The virtual helper played a central role in Google’s event, with the company taking time to demonstrate how it supports two-way conversation and learns from you as you spend more time using it.

        • Android 7.1 Nougat won’t bring Assistant to everyone

          If, after seeing all the software goodies on Google’s new Pixel phones, you hoped that some of those cool features will trickle down to other Android phones capable of running Android 7.1 Nougat, you’ll be disappointed.

          Google’s smart personal assistant Assistant (Google did not do us a favor when naming this one), as well as unlimited, free backup for full-resolution photos and videos will remain Pixel-only for the time being. Somewhat less surprisingly, non-stop customer support service won’t be included, either.

        • Pixel won’t share Google Assistant with other Android phones
        • When is Android 7.1 Nougat coming to my phone?
        • Giphy Cam finally arrives on Android
        • Android and iPhone fail: Our lust has petered out
        • Verizon will control Android updates for Google Pixel phones it sells
        • Chatting with Google’s Hiroshi Lockheimer about Pixel, Android OEMs, and more

          There were big changes announced at Google this week as the company’s “Google Hardware” team came out of hiding and announced a slew of products. The star of the show was definitely the Google Pixel, Google’s new pair of smartphones that the company is saying it designed while using HTC as a manufacturer. The advent of Pixel phones means Google is an Android OEM again, harkening back to the days when it owned Motorola. This time, though, the company is serious about hardware and software integration.

          Android, however, is the world’s most popular operating system because of OEM partners like Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, and LG. And if Google wants Android to continue to deliver Google services to billions of people, it will still need all those partners. Google once again has a delicate balancing act to pull off. The company must do its best to deliver a Google-y Android phone while not stealing the thunder from other OEMs or putting them at a serious competitive disadvantage.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Netizen Report: Open Source Developers Endure Long Prison Sentences, And Worse

    It has been one year since Syrian-Palestinian open technology leader Bassel Khartabil disappeared from his prison cell in Syria.

    Bassel served as the public affiliate for Creative Commons Syria and contributed to Mozilla Firefox, Wikipedia, and other open communities online. He also was the CTO of Al-Aous, a publishing and research institution dedicated to archaeological sciences and arts in Syria. In November 2012, Foreign Policy named Bassel one of the world’s 100 top global thinkers.

  • Open source IT pros are in high-demand in Europe

    Open source employees in Europe have it good, especially when we compare that market to the rest of the world. This is according to a new report by Dice and The Linux Foundation. The report says that out of 1,000 European respondents 60 percent believe it would be fairly easy to find a new job this year. Globally, the figure stands at about 50 percent.

    “Demand for open source talent is growing and companies struggle to find experienced professionals to fill open roles”, says Bob Melk, president of Dice. “Rising salaries for open source professionals indicate companies recognize the need to attract, recruit and retain qualified open source professionals on a global scale. Regardless of where they reside around the world, these professionals are motivated by the opportunity to work on interesting projects”.

    Most sought after skills are application development, the report says, adding that European businesses are doing more than their counterparts in other parts of the world in order to keep hold of the staff. Four out of ten professionals in Europe say the best part about their jobs is that they get to work on interesting projects, as well as the fact that they get to use “cutting-edge technology”.

  • Google’s open source Noto: Free font covers 800 languages, including dead ones

    Google has released a new open-source font called Noto, which supports 800 languages and covers 110 writing systems.

    Short for ‘No more Tofu’, the name of the new typeface is a nod to what people call the default white boxes that appear when a computer doesn’t understand a character on a website.

    “One of the goals of the project was to support every language and every character, so one of the things we wanted to do was make sure there’s no tofu for all our users,” said Bob Jung, an director of internationalization at Google.

  • Google Releases Indoor Mapping Tool to Open-Source Community

    Cartographer, which Google initially used internally only, enables real-time mapping inside buildings, the company says.
    Like it often does, Google has released into the open-source community an indoor mapping tool called Cartographer that it has used internally.

    Cartographer is designed to enable what is known as real-time simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)—or the ability to build a 2D or 3D map while at the same time keeping track of an individual or robotic agent’s location within that map.

    The algorithms used in SLAM combine data from various sensors such as Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) systems and cameras to determine the position of an object within an environment and to map that environment.

  • Open Source Explained in Less Than Three Minutes

    Free Code Camp is an organization that teaches people to code. As part of this free training, student coders produce free code needed by nonprofit organizations. Free Code Camp doesn’t accept donations, but you can support them by buying t-shirts, hoodies and audiobooks through their store.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Promoting Cybersecurity Awareness

        We are happy to support National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), a global effort between government and industry to ensure everyone has the resources they need to be safer, more secure and better able to protect their personal information online.

        We’ve talked about how cybersecurity is a shared responsibility, and that is the theme for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month – the Internet is a shared resource and securing it is our shared responsibility. This means technology companies, governments, and even users have to work together to protect and improve the security of the Internet. We all have to do our part to make the Internet safer and more secure for everyone. This is a time for all Internet users to Stop. Think. Connect. This month, and all year long, we want to help you be more “CyberAware.”

  • CMS

    • Why I hate (all) software

      This article will be about OTRS, a ticket system we’re using at the FSFE for handling things like swag orders, internship applications and so on. But it could actually be about any software. OTRS just happened to be in the line of fire this time.

      This will be an example in how to (not) manage user expectations. You may know the principle of least astonishment, and this will be a typical example of where it fails. The problem is in how a program communicates (or fails to communicate) to the user what it will do based on some input.

      The design principle of least astonishment simply means you should aim for designing your software in a way that what the user expects should happen when performing a certain operation, should also happen. If something else happens, that’s bad design.

  • Education

    • Why public libraries need to support open source

      People turn to public libraries for answers, and a lot of times libraries are superb at providing them. But when it comes to providing answers about open source, libraries have an uneven track record.

      What can we do to make this better so that more people can turn to their public library to learn about open source software, hardware, and principles?

      Right now, if you walked into my public library and pelted me with questions about open source—like, “What is it?” “How does it work?” “How can I use open source?”—I’d rattle off answers so fast you’d be walking out with a new tool or technology under your belt. Open source is a big world, so of course there are some things I don’t know, but guess what? We have the Internet and books right at our finger tips. Saying that you don’t know the answer is fine, and patrons will respect you for it. The key is helping them find the answer.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • An even more distributed ActivityPub

      So ActivityPub is nearing Candidate Recommendation status. If you want to hear a lot more about that whole process of getting there, and my recent trip to TPAC, and more, I wrote a post on the MediaGoblin blog about it.

      Last night my brother Stephen came over and he was talking about how he wished ActivityPub was more of a “transactional” system. I’ve been thinking about this myself. ActivityPub as it is designed is made for the social network of 2014 more or less: trying to reproduce what the silos do, which is mutate a big database for specific objects, but reproduce that in a distributed way. Well, mutating distributed systems is a bit risky. Can we do better, without throwing out the majority of the system? I think it’s possible, with a couple of tweaks.

    • Register now for LibrePlanet 2017: “The Roots of Freedom” March 25-26, 2017 in Boston, MA
    • FSFE Newsletter – October 2016

      We’re still not over how cool it was to see so many from our community join the FSFE Summit in September. It was a good experience and we’re keen to repeat it. One of the highlights was the ending keynote where Julia Reda called out proprietary software as a threat to democracy. Be sure to view the keynote and some of the other talks from the Summit, either on our YouTube channel, or from our download server where you can get the available videos in webm format.

      We also celebrated the FSFE’s 15th birthday in C-Base with a ceremony where we honored many of our local heroes from around Europe. C-Base has kindly provided a recording of the ceremony if you’re interested in hearing the story of some of our heroes, all of whom you can find working in one of the FSFE’s teams today.

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Tips for building your own maker workspace

        I firmly believe that in the absence of any intentional organizational strategy a person’s workspace becomes a reflection of their mind. Like bits of knowledge stored in the brain, tools and assets instinctively find themselves organized in a way that feels right to the individual.

        If this holds true, it stands to reason that, more often than not, our workspaces are always naturally trending away from being tidy and highly-functional. At this point, the odds are good that I’m just trying to rationalize why my office is an unmitigated disaster most of the time, but since you’ve made it this far, let’s make one more assumption: No two people are exactly alike, therefore no two workspaces are exactly alike.

        With this assertion firmly in place, I’d like to share a few things I’ve implemented for creating my workspace that have worked well for my brain. Your workspace will look different, but the practices I chose to follow here can be used for anyone looking to match their setup to their brain.

  • Programming/Development

    • PHPUnit 5.6

      RPM of PHPUnit version 5.6 are available in remi repository for Fedorra ≥ 22 and for Enterprise Linux (CentOS, RHEL…).

Leftovers

  • Is Apple’s software getting worse or what?

    For over a year, Apple’s software has been the subject of more derision than might be expected for a company of its size.

    Developer Marco Arment took Apple to task early last year, arguing that OS X (recently rebranded macOS) is full of embarrassing bugs and that the company is trying to do too much on unrealistic deadlines.

    Arment subsequently disavowed his post because of the widespread media attention it received. But there was blood in the water and the feeding frenzy has continued at Apple’s expense, at least in part because controversy, manufactured or not, drives online traffic.

  • Science

    • The really secret lives of bees: Ingenious experiment shows they learn like we do, from each other

      The bumblebee brain is puny, at least compared with the massive and fatty organ locked in your skull. At about 0.0002 percent the volume of yours, bee brains are close in size to the seeds stuck on a hamburger bun. Thinking about insect brains in terms of size alone, however, is a trap. The intelligence of sesame-brained bugs should not be underestimated.

      A study reported in the journal PLOS Biology on Tuesday, for instance, takes bee smarts in a surprising direction: Scientists from the Queen Mary University of London suggest that the “insects possess the essential cognitive elements for cultural transmission,” as they wrote in their new paper. It is possible to teach a single bee a new trick, in other words, and a different bee can learn that behavior from her peer.

    • Younger adults prefer to get their news in text, not video, according to new data from Pew Research

      Digital publishers may be pouring time and energy into cranking up their video operations, but for a lot of their potential viewers, text is still the way to go.

      New data from Pew Research finds that, when it comes to the news, younger adults still prefer words over moving images. While 46 percent of Americans overall say they prefer to watch the news over reading it, that number is far lower for Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 — only 38 percent of that group named video as their preferred news consumption format. In contrast, 42 percent said that they actually prefer text (which they prefer to read online, of course). Just 19 percent of young adults named listening as their preference. (“Smelling the news” was not an option.)

  • Hardware

    • Lenovo in talks to buy Fujitsu’s loss-making PC business

      In the early 2000s, Fujitsu was one of the top 5 PC makers globally. Today, it’s a loss-making enterprise that’s seen its market eroded by smartphones and tablets. The margins have squeezed, and IT conglomerate Fujitsu has been working to offload its non-core businesses and improve profitability. The company spun off its PC division as a separate business in February, a move that’s typically a precursor to a sale or other major restructuring option.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Floridians Are Shrugging Off A Hurricane and Zika. But It’s Just the Beginning.

      Hurricane Matthew is whipping away at Florida’s shores this week—threatening lives and homes and parties.

      If you know any Floridians, you know that no one is really freaking out yet. We are masters of disaster in the worst kind of way, having endured hurricanes, tornados, weird crimes, Rick Scott, and a growing Zika virus problem in the past year alone. That’s why business owners in Miami this week were prepping for Hurricane Matthew with a kind of calm, cooperative indifference.

    • Four more states likely to legalize pot

      Voters in four states appear likely to approve ballot measures that would legalize marijuana for recreational purposes, according to recent surveys, while voters are split on the question in a fifth state.

      The polls, taken over the last few weeks, demonstrate a seismic shift in the politics of pot. Even a decade ago, voters rewarded politicians who promised to redouble the war on drugs. After November’s elections, nearly a quarter of Americans could live in states where marijuana consumption is legal.

      But proponents and opponents alike say that polls taken before Election Day often overstate support for legal marijuana measures.

      “If the pro-legalization side is not at 55 percent at this point, it will likely lose,” said Sean Noble, an Arizona-based Republican strategist working against that state’s legalization measure, Proposition 205. “We know that polling on legalization generally overperforms actual results.”

    • Over 140,000 women demonstrate against total ban on abortion

      Plans to impose a total ban on abortion have sparked a massive uncontrolled explosion of anger in Poland. On Monday 3 October a strike of Polish women was called, inspired by the example of Icelandic women, who held a nationwide strike in 1975. In Warsaw, over 50,000 demonstrated in the pouring rain, in Wroclaw 30,000 and Krakow 25,000. Tens of thousands more demonstrated all across the country. In Poznan, there were clashes with the police, while in Kielce demonstrators demolished a controversial homphobic exhibition. Even the police’s conservative estimates talk about 98,000 people demonstrating in over 143 separate protests across the country. Meanwhile, the left party Razem estimated that over 140,000 people had protested on the streets throughout the country. These are easily the biggest ever protests in defence of abortion rights in Poland, far exceeding the protests in 1993, when the current ban on abortion was introduced.

      The first wave of the movement started in spring with the anouncement that a right-wing pressure group had collected over 100,000 signatures (finally they collected 400,000) required to submit a draft law to the Polish parliament which would impose a total ban on abortion and punish women with up to three years in prison. The barbarity of the proposals is illustrated by the fact that all miscarriages would be treated as suspected abortions and would be subject to criminal investigation.

      However, already Poland has one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in Europe, allowing abortion only in the case of rape, a threat to the health or life of the woman, or deformation of the foetus. In practice, even when these conditions are fulfilled abortion is often prevented by doctors who exploit the so-called “conscience clause” and impose their own religious beliefs on patients by refusing vital treatment.

  • Security

    • Thursday’s security advisories
    • Fact Or Fiction? Sysadmin Claims This 48 Character String Will Crash Most Linux Distros
    • Crippling bug in Linux crashes system with a single tweet
    • keysafe with local shares

      If your gpg key is too valuable for you to feel comfortable with backing it up to the cloud using keysafe, here’s an alternative that might appeal more.

      Keysafe can now back up some shares of the key to local media, and other shares to the cloud. You can arrange things so that the key can’t be restored without access to some of the local media and some of the cloud servers, as well as your password.

      For example, I have 3 USB sticks, and there are 3 keysafe servers. So let’s make 6 shares total of my gpg secret key and require any 4 of them to restore it.

    • ‘Security fatigue’ is the worst thing to happen to people since insecurity

      CHANGING PASSWORDS is just too much for some people, according to research, and causes them to do stupid things.

      This is called ‘security fatigue’, apparently, and comes straight from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and a collection of clipboards and pens.

      “After updating your password for the umpteenth time, have you resorted to using one you know you’ll remember because you’ve used it before? Have you ever given up on an online purchase because you just didn’t feel like creating a new account?” asked NIST.

      “If you have done any of those things, it might be the result of ‘security fatigue’. It exposes online users to risk and costs businesses money in lost customers.”

    • The new BYOD backlash hides an ulterior motive

      Recent research from IDC shows a clear picture: IT organizations are increasingly unhappy about BYOD and now want to curtail or end the practice.

      Their stated concern: The costs are too high and the savings too low. But those concerns are misguided and likely masking a secret agenda to regain control over mobile devices, not to save money. Face it: BYOD was never popular with IT.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Here’s how the U.S. is dealing with Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte’s blitz of rants, insults and ultimatums

      Like those from a battering ram, the hits just keep coming from the recently elected president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte.

      Saying this week that President Obama could “go to hell,” Duterte has threatened to jettison decades of close security cooperation with the United States, suggesting Manila would turn to China or Russia for support.

      The latest anti-U.S. vitriol came as U.S. Marines and sailors practiced amphibious landings and other exercises with Philippine troops at coastal sites close to the strategic shipping lanes and disputed islands in the South China Sea, a regional hot spot.

      The joint exercises began Tuesday and are scheduled to run until Oct. 12. Last week, Duterte said this would be the final round of joint exercises with the U.S. military.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Top Climate Scientist: Tax Fossil Fuels to Save Younger Generations’ Future

      The report warns that future generations may be forced to use “negative emissions” measures to forcibly extract CO2 from the atmosphere as temperatures keep rising. (Photo: Joe Brusky/flickr/cc)

      Fossil fuels must be taxed out of existence to ensure that future generations are not saddled with a world of rising seas and extreme weather—and all the costs that come with them—according to a new research paper by renowned climate scientist and Columbia University professor James Hansen.

    • [Older] How to Talk About the Paris Climate Agreement at the Bar

      On October 5, the United Nations proudly announced that enough countries had agreed to the Paris Agreement for it to go into effect, 30 days from now. That’s great. But if you are a bit confused about what exactly this news means, fear not. I’m here to break it all down.

    • ‘Megadrought’ Risk In American Southwest Soars As Global Temperatures Rise

      Vast swathes of Southwestern United States — a region already grappling with parched conditions — may now have to brace for another threat — decadeslong “megadroughts.”

      According to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, there is roughly a 70 to 90 percent chance that the Southwest would experience a megadrought — an extreme dry spell lasting 35 years or more — before the end of the century. And, if precipitation is below normal, it’s 99 percent certain that such an event will occur.

      “Megadroughts are rare events, occurring only once or twice each millennium. In earlier work, we showed that climate change boosts the chances of a megadrought, but in this paper we investigated how cutting fossil fuel emissions reduces this risk,” lead author Toby Ault, a professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University, said in a statement. “The increase in risk is not due to any particular change in the dynamic circulation of the atmosphere. It’s because the projected increase in atmospheric demand for moisture from the land surface will shift the soil moisture balance.”

      The present-day Earth is 1 degree Celsius hotter than it was 150 years ago. The Paris climate agreement, which is to come into force next month, aims to restrict this rise to below 2 degrees Celsius — a target that many experts now believe is almost certain to be breached.

    • Hurricanes will worsen as planet warms and sea levels rise, scientists warn

      Hurricane Matthew is already feared to have caused seven deaths after it hit Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Tuesday, bringing 145mph winds, pounding rain and storm surges to coastal communities.

      The category 4 storm, the strongest hurricane to hit Haiti in 50 years, is expected to surge northwards towards Florida’s east coast and up the south-eastern US coast by the weekend. It follows September’s Hurricane Hermine, which was the first hurricane to hit Florida in nearly 11 years.

    • Amid Media Blackout over Climate Change Links to Hurricane Matthew, Top Scientist Speaks Out

      States of emergency have been declared in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas as Hurricane Matthew barrels toward the Southeast coastline. More than 2 million people have been urged to evacuate their homes. The record-breaking storm has already killed at least 26 people in Haiti and four in the Dominican Republic. The storm is soon expected to hit the Bahamas and then strengthen as it moves toward Florida. Meteorologists are predicting Matthew could be the strongest hurricane to hit the United States since Wilma in 2005. Many scientists are saying climate change has intensified Hurricane Matthew because warmer ocean waters help create stronger hurricanes. Matthew is already the longest-lived Category 4 or 5 hurricane in the Eastern Caribbean on record. To talk more about Hurricane Matthew and climate change, we speak to Guardian journalist Oliver Milman and Michael Mann, a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University. His latest book, co-authored with political cartoonist Tom Toles, is titled “The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy.” Mann is also author of “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines.”

    • Hurricane Matthew Drives Storm Surge Into Northeast Florida; Coastal Flood Damage Already in South Carolina; Dangerous Flood Threat in Carolinas, Georgia

      Hurricane Matthew’s eyewall continues to brush parts of Florida’s northeast coast with high winds and storm surge flooding, and will spread those impacts, in addition to potentially serious rainfall flooding into Georgia, South Carolina, and southern North Carolina through at least Saturday night.

  • Finance

    • Early indications show UK favouring ‘hard Brexit’, says expert

      The UK will trigger Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon, triggering the formal two-year Brexit negotiation process, by the end of March 2017, the prime minister has announced.

      The government also intends to publish a ‘Great Repeal Bill’ which, once given effect, will remove the 1972 European Communities Act from the UK statute book and enshrine any EU laws in effect on the date of the UK’s exit from the EU into UK law, Theresa May told the Conservative Party annual conference.

      May said that the process would give UK businesses and workers “maximum certainty as we leave” the EU, while retaining the government’s right to “amend, repeal and improve any law it chooses” at a later date. EU law expert Guy Lougher of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that the comments provided “a helpful indication of the government’s intentions and priorities”.

      “Although the prime minister has indicated her opposition to the shorthand labels of ‘soft Brexit’ and ‘hard Brexit’, it appears that the government’s negotiation intentions and the likely outcome are closer to the latter than the former,” he said.

    • A ‘Genius’ Like Trump

      Trump’s business “genius” relies on stiffing creditors and contractors, laying off workers and driving the equity of investors down while he just walks away.

    • Privatizing the public sector is actually costing taxpayers money

      Privatization is bad news for federal, state and local government workers, and the communities where they live. That’s according to a new report released Wednesday by In the Public Interest, a research group focused on the effects of privatization.

      The study, “How Privatization Increases Inequality,” explores the role privatization plays in the American economy—compiling data on the estimated $1.5 trillion of state and local contracts doled out each year.

      “A lot of decisions are small,” says Donald Cohen, executive director of In the Public Interest, but “if you add all that up, it’s very significant.”

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Can Facebook influence an election result?

      But Facebook’s most powerful political tool may be one that’s hiding in plain sight. Consider the “I Voted” button.

      The button, dubbed by Facebook a “voter megaphone”, allows users to report whether they have voted and shows which of their friends have also voted.

    • Mike Pence is gaslighting America

      Video of Mike Pence denying Trump said any of the horrible, racist, stupid, uninformed and generally embarrassing things he spouts all day long, matched with Trump saying the stuff.

    • Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein discusses her campaign

      She’s a dark horse in the presidential race, but green party nominee, Dr. Jill Stein could have a big impact on the outcome.

      Stein is campaigning in L.A. for a few days – trying to convince voters that she is the better choice. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein will make a campaign stop Thursday at Cal State Northridge.

      Stein is polling around the 2% mark in most of the national polls, but that is enough to sway the election to the winner.

    • CNN Censors Third Party Supporters as ‘Undecided’ in Focus Group

      After the first presidential debate on September 26, CNN hosted a focus group at the University of Richmond. According to Justin Smith, one of the 28 people included in the panels, CNN censored those who said they would be voting for a third party, declaring them “undecided.”.

      “Out of 28 panel members, five said they were decided on Clinton, two said they were decided on Trump, and 12 said they were going to vote 3rd party. But once they saw the response, they reshot the segment and replaced ‘3rd party’ with ‘still undecided.’ You’ll noticed on the live feed, I refused to raise my hand,” wrote Smith in a Facebook post. Smith is supporting Evan McMullin, former CIA operations officer and former chief policy director for the House Republican Conference in the U.S. House of Representatives, for president. “They then said they were going to reshoot it, except this time they changed ‘3rd party’ to ‘undecided.’ Some of us asked about the third party option, and they ignored us. They then said they were going to shoot it again, and still asked for ‘undecided’ voters and left out ‘3rd party.’ A lot of the members voted ‘undecided’ because it was the only option other than Trump or Clinton.” Smith posted the CNN video of the focus group and wrote that in the video he refused to raise his hand and vote “undecided” as a protest.

    • The Podesta Emails

      WikiLeaks series on deals involving Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. Mr Podesta is a long-term associate of the Clintons and was President Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff from 1998 until 2001. Mr Podesta also owns the Podesta Group with his brother Tony, a major lobbying firm and is the Chair of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington DC-based think tank.

    • Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005

      Donald Trump bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women during a 2005 conversation caught on a hot microphone, saying that “when you’re a star, they let you do it,” according to a video obtained by The Washington Post.

      The video captures Trump talking with Billy Bush, then of “Access Hollywood,” on a bus with the show’s name written across the side. They were arriving on the set of “Days of Our Lives” to tape a segment about Trump’s cameo on the soap opera.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • YouTube Takes Down European Parliament Video On Stopping Torture For ‘Violating Community Guidelines’

      Back in 2008, then Senator Joe Lieberman went on a ridiculous pro-censorship campaign, demanding that YouTube take down any “terrorist” videos. For reasons I still don’t understand, YouTube complied. As a result, watchdogs documenting Syrian atrocities had them censored from YouTube, because YouTube determined them to be in “violation” of its guidelines in publishing “shocking and offensive videos.”

      That was a few years ago, and it seems like the problem has only gotten worse — as have the ridiculous calls for YouTube and other platforms to be the giant censor in the digital sky. The latest victim? Would you believe it’s the European Parliament itself? Marietje Schaake, a really wonderful Member of the European Parliament (and a Techdirt reader), tweeted that the video she had posted of a European Parliament debate on “anti-torture” was taken down for “violating community guidelines.” Really.

    • Trump’s many, many threats to sue the press since launching his campaign

      Donald Trump’s outright contempt for journalists and press freedom is well known—but in the past month he has outdone himself.

      In the span of a long weekend in mid-September, Trump threatened to sue The New York Times, his staff had a Vice reporter arrested outside a campaign event, and he blamed the New York terrorist bombings on “freedom of the press.”

      This weekend, Trump struck again. After the Times’ huge scoop detailing how he took an almost billion-dollar loss on his 1995 taxes, Trump’s lawyer threatened “prompt initiation of appropriate legal action” against the Times once more. By my count, it is at least the 11th time Trump has threatened to sue a news organization or journalist during his campaign for president.

      I had intended to quantify how many journalists or news commentators Trump has threatened to sue over his lifetime, but that quickly turned into a fool’s errand. A simple Google search of “Trump threatens to sue” will return an overwhelming number of stories. In the past decade alone, he’s sued a former Times journalist who wrote a book about him that he later admitted he didn’t even read; he’s threatened to sue former View host Rosie O’Donnell for allegations that have been shown over and over again during this campaign to be correct; he’s sued HBO’s Bill Maher over a joke bet that involved proving he was not, in fact, born an orangutan.

    • Trump Adds To His Anti-First Amendment Legacy In Threatening To Sue Clinton For Campaign Ads

      Donald Trump keeps insisting that he’s a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights, but he appears to have skipped right past the 1st Amendment. We’ve discussed his stated plans to “open up” libel laws and his regular threats to sue newspapers for reporting on him in ways he dislikes. Trevor Timm, of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, recently tried to count how many times Trump had threatened to sue the media since his campaign began (ignoring all the threats from before the campaign).

    • Chrome and Firefox are blocking The Pirate Bay as a deceptive site, again

      THE PIRATE BAY is not a place you want to go, at least not according to the Chrome and Firefox browsers which have taken to warning people that the pages are perhaps poisoned and definitely deceptive.

      A post on TorrentFreak said that users are batting their heads against a blocking wall when they try to access magnets and that kind of stuff.

      We took to the water today in search of The Pirate Bay on Firefox. Virgin Media has put a cage around the site, but you can still get to it. Once there we were able to get to the main page, but no further.

      A search, with a capital R for research, took us to a page of links that took us to another page, but not one that we expect The Pirate Bay user base will enjoy.

    • Chrome and Firefox Brand The Pirate Bay As a “Phishing” Site…..Again

      Chrome and Firefox are again blocking direct access to The Pirate Bay’s download pages. According to Google’s safe browsing program, ThePirateBay.org is a “deceptive site” that may steal user information. The TPB crew has been alerted to the issue and hope it will be resolved soon.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Yahoo helps the government read your emails. Just following orders, they say.

      Not long after Edward Snowden’s revelations of massive government surveillance of the American public, Yahoo was one of the eight tech giants that called for strong reforms that would protect their customers.

      And back in 2007, Yahoo went to court to challenge a government surveillance program in order to protect its users’ privacy.

      Well, that was then.

      Now, in a move that has outraged privacy advocates, Yahoo reportedly has helped take government intrusion to a new level. Without apparent protest, according to news reports, it built a mechanism that allowed the National Security Agency and the FBI to scan all of its users’ incoming emails for specific characters or words.

    • Verizon wants $1B discount on Yahoo deal after reports of hacking, spying

      Verizon is pushing for a $1 billion discount off its pending $4.8 billion agreement to buy Yahoo, several sources told The Post exclusively.

      The request comes on the heels of the web giant getting bludgeoned by bad news in the past few days.

      Yahoo revealed two weeks ago that it had been hacked in 2014 and that usernames and passwords for 500 million accounts were swiped.

      Then, earlier this week, it was learned that Yahoo had been ordered by a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to scan emails for terrorist signatures.

      “In the last day we’ve heard that [AOL boss] Tim [Armstong] is getting cold feet. He’s pretty upset about the lack of disclosure and he’s saying, ‘Can we get out of this or can we reduce the price?’” said a source familiar with Verizon’s thinking.

      That might just be tough talk to get Yahoo to roll back the price. Verizon had been planning to couple Yahoo with its AOL unit to give it enough scale to be a third force to compete with Google and Facebook for digital ad dollars.

      The discount is being pushed because it feels Yahoo’s value has been diminished, sources said.

    • FBI Looking Into ‘Legal and Technical Options’ for Entering Another Terrorist’s iPhone

      A new case might lead the FBI and Apple into another fight over security and privacy on smartphones, following a confirmation yesterday by FBI special agent Rich Thorton that the FBI has the iPhone of Dahir Adan in its possession (via Wired).

      Adan was the culprit behind the stabbing of 10 people in a Minnesota mall in mid-September, and was eventually shot and killed by police. After the event, terrorist organization ISIS claimed credit for the attack on social media, but “no evidence has emerged to suggest ISIS had a hand in planning or executing the attack.”

      During a press conference in St. Cloud, Minnesota yesterday, Thorton confirmed that the FBI has Adan’s iPhone and that it is locked with a passcode. According to the special agent, the organization is “still trying to figure out how to gain access to the phone’s contents.” The issue currently is that the model and version of iOS running on the iPhone is known only to the FBI. Following the launch of iOS 8 in 2014, any iOS device running the software is encrypted to an extent that no malicious outsider — or even Apple itself — can get into the iPhone or iPad.

    • Ex-Yahoo Employee: Government Spy Program Could Have Given a Hacker Access to All Email

      Contrary to a denial by Yahoo and a report by the New York Times, the company’s scanning program, revealed earlier this week by Reuters, provided the government with a custom-built back door into the company’s mail service — and it was so sloppily installed that it posed a privacy hazard for hundreds of millions of users, according to a former Yahoo employee with knowledge of the company’s security practices.

      Despite this week’s differing media accounts, this much isn’t disputed: In 2015, Yahoo provided the U.S. government with the means to scan every single email that landed in every single Yahoo Mail inbox. The scanning was kept an absolute secret — and as this ex-Yahoo source describes, that meant keeping it a secret from security personnel who came to believe it endangered Yahoo’s hundreds of millions of unwitting customers.

      The employee, who worked at Yahoo before, during, and after the installation of the email-scanning program, requested anonymity because of a nondisclosure agreement formed when the individual quit several months after the program was discovered internally last summer. The source declined to share certain specific names for fear of violating that same NDA or the NDA of others, but The Intercept has confirmed details of the source’s employment at Yahoo, which would have put the then-employee in a position to know this information.

    • Police documents reveal how law enforcement keep Stingray use secret

      Police records obtained by the Daily Dot reveal in unprecedented detail how the Obama administration enables law enforcement to suppress information about controversial phone-surveillance technology used by police throughout the United States.

      The documents, which link the purchase of so-called Stingray devices to various North Carolina state and local police agencies, include a fill-in-the-blank warrant drafted by the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) and intended for use by state and local police that extends the veil of secrecy over law enforcement’s Stingray use.

      The records, originally acquired by Working Narratives under North Carolina public records law and shared with Daily Dot reporters, also offer new specifics about the capabilities of Stingrays bought by police in North Carolina from Harris Corporation, a leading U.S. manufacturer of cell-site simulators, and the company behind the original “StingRay” procured by the Pentagon and various intelligence agencies more than two decades ago. The North Carolina agencies referenced by the documents include the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office; the Wilmington Police Department; and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, an agency that reports directly to Gov. Patrick L McCrory (R).

    • At Booz Allen, a Vast U.S. Spy Operation, Run for Private Profit

      In the six weeks since federal agents raided a suburban Maryland home and arrested Harold T. Martin III on suspicion of stealing classified information from the National Security Agency, another organization has quietly prepared to face the fallout: Booz Allen Hamilton, Mr. Martin’s employer.

      Booz Allen, a consulting firm that earns billions of dollars by working for American intelligence agencies, has been called the world’s most profitable spy organization. News this week of Mr. Martin’s arrest in August could renew scrutiny of the firm’s operations and, more broadly, the lucrative contracting business that American intelligence now relies on to run its vast, global surveillance operations.

      Mr. Martin’s arrest is the second time in three years that a Booz Allen contractor has been accused of stealing potentially damaging material from the N.S.A. The company also employed Edward J. Snowden, who spirited out a cache of documents that, in 2013, exposed the extent of American surveillance programs in the United States and around the world.

      Booz Allen is one of a handful of defense and intelligence contractors that blur the line between the government’s intelligence work and private enterprise.

    • BT Yahoo! customers: Why! can’t! we! grrr! delete! our! webmail! accounts!?

      BT customers are unable to delete BT Yahoo email services – despite an exodus of users seeking to leave the security-challenged webmail biz.

      Since allegations arose that Yahoo built an app to enable it to scan all of its users’ emails at the request of US intelligence, many users have sought to delete their email accounts.

      That was in addition to Yahoo!’s confession last month that hackers had stolen the credentials for at least 500 million of its customer email accounts.

    • Imagining a Cashless World [Ed: Lack of anonymity in purchasing/payments now “driven in part by an epidemic of armed robberies in smaller shops,” says iophk]

      A fantastic heist (we like our crimes as smart and magical as dreams) took place some years back, when a stolen helicopter landed on the roof of a cash depot in Stockholm and three masked men smashed a skylight to climb inside. It was September 23, 2009. The depot was freshly stocked in expectation of a coming Swedish payday. Armed with a Kalashnikov, the invaders held employees at bay while their accomplices outside positioned road spikes to keep cop cars from swarming the building. Fake bombs had been set among the police helicopters to delay an aerial chase. The thieves loaded bag after bag of bills into their aircraft, then departed. Seven men were later caught and sentenced, but nearly all of the stolen cash—reportedly some $6.5 million—still has not been found.

      The robbery is known as the Västberga heist, and, like many capers, it became a source of public fascination. (It is the subject of Evan Ratliff’s e-book “Lifted.”) But it also earned astringent notice from some economic theorists, who saw in it a parable about the risks of paper money. Cash is the squirmy ferret of societal wealth—tricky to secure physically and, once liberated in the wild, almost impossible to get back—and money, as technology, has changed a lot in half a century. A day’s errands once called for bulging pockets. Now it’s possible to shop for groceries, pay rent, buy lunch, summon a taxi, and repay your sister for a movie without handling a checkbook, let alone fumbling with bills and coins. Most people think of card and electronic payments as conveniences, stand-ins for exchanging cold, hard cash. Yet a growing group of theorists, led in the United States by Kenneth S. Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, are embracing the idea that physical currency should be the exception rather than the rule.

    • Twitter tanks 20.1% as would-be suitors drop out

      Twitter shares plunged 20.1% Thursday after published reports said would-be suitors including Google would not bid for the struggling social media company.

      Technology news outlet Recode said Google and Disney would not pursue Twitter and Apple was unlikely to buy it either, deflating the stock that had soared on takeover speculation.

      Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, considered one of the more likely suitors for Twitter, also seemed to downplay his interest during an analyst meeting at his company’s annual Dreamforce event in San Francisco.

      “We look at everything and we don’t buy most things, and we haven’t agreed to buy that company,” he said Wednesday, emphasizing that Salesforce.com has a “disciplined M&A process.”

    • Yahoo email scan fell under foreign spy law -sources

      A Yahoo operation in 2015 to scan the incoming email of its customers for specific information identified by the U.S. government was authorized under a foreign intelligence law, U.S. government officials familiar with the matter said.

      Reuters on Tuesday reported that the Yahoo program was in response to a classified U.S. government request to scan emails belonging to hundreds of millions of Yahoo users.

      The revelation rekindled a long-running debate in the United States over the proper balance between digital privacy and national security.

      The Department of Justice obtained the order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, said the sources, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • The FBI Treated Clinton With Kid Gloves

      Tim Kaine repeatedly defended Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate. “The FBI did an investigation,” he said at one point, “and they concluded that there was no reasonable prosecutor who would take it further.” But such a statement is credible only if it follows a real criminal investigation—that is, the sort of investigation that the FBI and the Justice Department conduct when they actually care about a case and want convictions.

    • Google ‘screwed over’ its non-millennials – now they can all fight back

      Google has been hit with a class-action lawsuit accusing the ad giant of discriminating against older employees.

      The Northern California District Court has certified [PDF] the case brought against the Chocolate Factory, allowing aggrieved applicants aged 40 and older to join together in filing a single suit.

      By certifying the case, the court allows the plaintiffs to take on Google’s legal might as a combined force, rather than individually. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of a favorable settlement from Cali-based Google.

      The complaint, originally filed in April of 2015, claims that Google discriminates against job candidates over the age of 40 when screening them. The suit accuses Google of violating the US Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

    • Report: DEA Blowing Money On Liars, Thieves, And Amtrak Employees

      If the Drug War is US law enforcement’s wildly-swinging fist, the DEA is its middle finger. Once the pointless brutality stops, the finger is extended to everyone — especially taxpayers.

      Even the agency’s name inadvertently belies its twisted motivations: “Drug Enforcement Agency.” Without further information, the name, on its own, seems to suggest a shoring up of the drug trade, rather than an adversarial force.

      The DEA has a lot of skin in the drug game. Without the steady flow of drugs, it ceases to exist. It operates with a great deal of autonomy and is often excused its worst excesses because most people agree (without much thought) that drugs are bad.

      The DEA controls a vast network of confidential informants. Actually, to state it more accurately, the DEA oversees… Never mind. The DEA pays a great deal of money to confidential informants. Beyond handing out cash, the DEA apparently does little else to keep its informants in line.

      A just-released Inspector General’s report [PDF] on the DEA’s use of confidential informants finds the agency has no problem paying out vast sums of money to lying informants and that it maintains a small army of otherwise-employed citizens who moonlight as cash/drug-sniffing humans for the nation’s top drug warriors.

      This year’s report builds on the lowlights of last year’s examination of the DEA’s informant program, in which the OIG basically stated the entire program runs without sufficient oversight. Nothing has changed in the interim. This report includes even more details of excess, abuse, and stupidity.

    • Cops arrest hundreds of people allegedly involved in IRS phone scam

      Hundreds of people in Mumbai, India have been detained in relation to a massive telephone scam where fake callers “from the IRS” targeted Americans. In said calls, scammers tried to convince recipients that they were from the IRS in order to con victims into forking over thousands of dollars payable via prepaid credit cards.

      According to The Guardian, 200 Indian police officers raided nine locations across one of India’s largest cities.

    • Indonesian arrested for streaming porn on billboard

      Indonesian police have arrested a man accused of hacking into a public billboard in Jakarta and streaming a pornographic film.

      The 24-year-old IT analyst has admitted the crime, said police, for which he could face up to six years in jail.

      Motorists were left in shock last week when footage from a Japanese porn film was displayed on an electronic screen in south Jakarta.

      The video ran for five minutes on Friday before power was eventually cut.

      However the clip had already been captured on many mobile phones and soon spread across social media.

      The man, who was arrested in his office, allegedly carried out the prank after seeing login details displayed on the billboard.

    • [Older] Valley Fair mall guard pulled gun on shopper for hitting traffic cone, lawsuit alleges

      A shopper at Westfield Valley Fair mall claims in a civil lawsuit that a security guard pulled a gun on him after he hit a traffic cone while trying to leave the mall in December.

      In the Santa Clara County Superior Court filing submitted last week, San Jose resident Nicholas Buchanan, an Apple engineer, is seeking unspecified damages against the mall, a security contractor, and two security guards for a Dec. 5, 2015 encounter. The lawsuit also takes issue with how the guard who drew a pistol on Buchanan was not licensed to carry a firearm at the time.

    • Malaysia: Islamic dept launches app allowing public to report Syariah offences

      RELIGIOUS authorities in the Malaysian state of Selangor has launched a mobile application that allows members of the public to report Syariah-related crimes, adding to concerns of growing Islamic fundamentalism in the Muslim-majority country.

      Selangor’s Islamic Religious Department (Jais) director Haris Kasim told The Star that the app allows the public to become the eyes and ears of enforcers, making it easier for them to report offences that breach the Syariah code, such as pre-marital or extramarital sex, or alcohol consumption, which are forbidden to Muslims.

      “The application, which was launched Tuesday, is simple and easy to use. Once installed on a smartphone, people can send over information and make reports to Jais very easily,” he was quoted as saying.

    • Chess star to boycott World Chess Championship in Iran over hijab

      A top chess player is boycotting the World Chess Championship in Iran because women will be legally required to wear the hijab while competing.

      Nazi Paikidze-Barnes, a Geogian-American chess player, is petitioning the World Chess Federation (FIDE) in a bid to change the host country of the women’s world championship competition from Iran.

      “I think it’s unacceptable to host a women’s World Championship in a place where women do not have basic fundamental rights and are treated as second-class citizens,” the 22-year-old told the BBC.

    • Muslim killer stabbed his care worker wife EIGHT TIMES because she looked after men

      After being arrested, Khan told a police officer: “Never get an arranged marriage bro.”

      The butcher was handed a life sentence after pleading guilty to murdering Nasreen.

      Manchester Crown Court heard Khan told his wife “it’s not halal for you to work with men”.

    • 16-year-old boy killed by LAPD called 911 before the shooting and left a ‘farewell note,’ police say

      A 16-year-old fatally shot by a Los Angeles police officer in South Los Angeles called 911 himself before the shooting and left his family a “farewell note,” leading investigators to believe he had a “desire to end his own life,” LAPD chief Charlie Beck said Thursday.

      Coroner’s officials identified the boy Thursday as Daniel Enrique Perez, who police say was shot after pointing a realistic-looking replica gun at officers.

      Beck said detectives identified Perez through a cellphone he was carrying, which was used to call 911 about 20 minutes before the deadly encounter. The caller reported a man with a gun matching Perez’s description, Beck said.

    • Norway sets out plans for banning burqa in schools and universities

      The burqa veil is to be banned in schools and universities across Norway following similar measures in other European countries, according to the Norwegian education minister.

      The country’s right-wing government confirmed it was considering “national regulations prohibiting the full-face veil in schools and universities”, a move supported by the opposition Labour Party.

      Education minister Torbjorn Roe Isaksen confirmed the ban would only apply to the full-face veil and not to other Islamic headscarves including the hijab, chador and niqab.

    • Top CIA officers to face questions about brutal interrogations in civil suit

      Two former high-ranking CIA officials will be compelled to answer questions under oath about the agency’s brutal interrogations of terrorism suspects, a federal judge ruled Tuesday as part of a lawsuit brought against former CIA contractors by the American Civil Liberties Union.

      The ruling would require Jose Rodriguez, who was the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, and John Rizzo, the agency’s former acting general counsel, to submit to depositions about a program that used methods widely condemned as torture.

      “This ruling is a critical step towards accountability, and it charts a way forward for torture victims to get their day in court,” ACLU attorney Dror Ladin said in a statement released by the organization after the ruling in federal court in Spokane, Wash.

    • How the Heated, Divisive Election of 1800 Was the First Real Test of American Democracy

      On a windy afternoon in February 1959, 14-year-old Craig Wade scooped up what seemed to be a crumpled rag that was blowing, tumbleweed style, across a railroad track in his hometown, Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He later told a local newspaper that he simply “likes to save things.”

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Facebook wants to bring its free internet service to the US [iophk: "zero-rating, so as to decide what people do and don’t have access to"]

      Facebook is in talks with the government and wireless carriers to bring its “Free Basics” internet service to the U.S., reports The Washington Post.

      If the plan works, Facebook “would target low-income and rural Americans who cannot afford reliable, high-speed Internet at home or on smartphones,” the report notes.

      Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

      Free Basics isn’t a full-fledged internet provider, but rather an agreement with carriers that lets people use Facebook and other sites without it counting towards their data plan.

      Facebook has run into trouble with Free Basics abroad. The program, which currently operates in 49 countries, was shut down earlier this year in India due to net neutrality concerns.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • EU Copyright Reform: Outside the Safe Harbours, Intermediary Liability Capsizes into Incoherence

        As has by now been extensively reported, on 14th September the European Commission released its new copyright reform package. Prominent within this is its proposal for a new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.

        The proposal contains an array of controversial offerings, but from the perspective of this intermediary liability blogger, the most interesting provision is the proposed Article 13 on ‘Certain uses of protected content by online services’. This is highly problematic in a number of different ways.

      • BitTorrent Fires CEOs, Closes Los Angeles Studio, Shutters BitTorrent Now (EXCLUSIVE)

        BitTorrent has fired its two co-CEOs Robert Delamar and Jeremy Johnson and laid of an unknown number of staffers, Variety has learned from multiple sources. BitTorrent CFO Dipak Joshi has stepped in as interim CEO.

        The company is also closing its Los Angeles-based production studio and shuttering its BitTorrent Now video streaming efforts. This comes just months after BitTorrent announced a renewed focus on media under the leadership of Delamar and Johnson.

        BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen laid out the changes in an email to staff earlier this week, according to a source, but layoffs apparently began as early as two weeks ago. In addition to being ousted as CEOs, Delamar and Johnson were also removed from the company’s board of directors.

        The company had officially announced the appointment of Delamar and Johnson as new co-CEOs in April. At the time, the duo laid out a renewed focus on media production and distribution, which involved the opening of a new Los Angeles-based production studio.

        These efforts culminated in BitTorrent Now, an ad-supported music and video streaming platform that launched in June. BitTorrent Now built on the company’s efforts to strike media distribution deals with independent artists, but didn’t actually use BitTorrent’s P2P technology for streaming.

10.06.16

Links 6/10/2016: KDE Student Programs, Dell With Ubuntu Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 3:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux is a new frontier for young developer

    When I was 17 years old, I started using Linux because I wanted a desktop that resembled my brother-in-law’s Gentoo laptop, which used the KDE environment. Instead, I got the now-nostalgic brown and orange GNOME 2 environment because I’d installed Ubuntu. (Ubuntu has since changed its color palette.)

  • Server

    • HPE, Dell & Cisco Lead Cloud Infrastructure Sales

      Fifth place was a five-way tie between Lenovo, NetApp, IBM, Huawei, and Inspur. IDC declares a statistical tie when there is less than a one percent difference in revenue among two or more vendors.

    • Automation is not DevOps

      It may sound counterproductive from an Automation specialist to reveal the limitations of his job, but I have seen a wide range of inefficiencies, and many failed attempt to fix them.

    • Making Sense of Cloud Native Applications, Platforms, Microservices, and More

      As more and more of our infrastructure moves into the cloud, the proliferation of buzzwords, new terms, and new ways of doing things can be daunting. Fabio Chiodini, Principal System Engineer at EMC, spent some time helping us make sense of these concepts during his LinuxCon Europe talk, “Cloud Native Applications, Containers, Microservices, Platforms, CI-CD…Oh My!!”

    • Introducing InfraKit, an open source toolkit for creating and managing declarative, self-healing infrastructure

      Docker’s mission is to build tools of mass innovation, starting with a programmable layer for the Internet that enables developers and IT operations teams to build and run distributed applications. As part of this mission, we have always endeavored to contribute software plumbing toolkits back to the community, following the UNIX philosophy of building small loosely coupled tools that are created to simply do one thing well. As Docker adoption has grown from 0 to 6 billion pulls, we have worked to address the needs of a growing and diverse set of distributed systems users. This work has led to the creation of many infrastructure plumbing components that have been contributed back to the community.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

    • Wireshark 2.2.1 Network Protocol Analyzer Adds Ascend & K12 Capture File Support

      Today, October 5, 2016, the Wireshark development team announced the release of the first maintenance update for the Wireshark 2.2 series of the world’s most popular network protocol analyzer software.

    • Docker 1.12.2 App Container Engine Is Almost Here, Second RC Brings More Fixes

      The development cycle of the Docker 1.12.2 maintenance update to the widely-used open-source and cross-platform application container engine continues with a second Released Candidate, as announced on October 3, 2016, by Docker engineer Victor Vieux.

      Docker 1.12.2 Release Candidate 2 (RC2) comes one week after the unveiling of the first RC milestone, mainly to address more of the bugs and annoyance discovered lately or reported by users since the first point release of the major Docker 1.12 release. Again, the entire changelog is attached below if you like to read the technical details.

      As you might know, Docker 1.12 introduced a lot of exciting new features, such as the built-in orchestration and routing mesh, the brand new Swarm Mode, as well as a bunch of networking improvements for better security. And it looks like Docker 1.12.2 will attempt to further improve the Swarm Mode and networking functionalities.

    • Kodi 17 “Krypton” Beta 3 Adds More PVR and Video Playback Improvements, Bugfixes

      The day of October 5, 2016, also brought us a new Beta of the upcoming Kodi 17 “Krypton” open-source and cross-platform media center software, the third and most probably the last for this development cycle.

      As we told you in the report about the second Beta of Kodi 17, the final release of the popular media center is launching later this fall with numerous new features and improvements in areas like skinning, video playback, PVR/DVR, live TV, music library, etc. Beta 3 comes three weeks after the release of the second Beta milestone, and it includes a bunch of fixes for various issues reported by users since then.

    • Frogr 1.2 released

      Of course, just a few hours after releasing frogr 1.1, I’ve noticed that there was actually no good reason to depend on gettext 0.19.8 for the purposes of removing the intltool dependency only, since 0.19.7 would be enough.

    • Frogr Flickr Uploader for Linux Is Now Available as a Flatpak

      Like most people living in 2016 I don’t use Flickr. But if I did, I’d probably use Frogr to manage and upload my photos. Frogr is one of a few apps that I’ve written about across all 7+ years I’ve run this site.

    • Libvirt 2.3 Virtualization API Released

      The libvirt Linux virtualization API has been updated to version 2.3 today with some new features and plenty of bug fixes.

    • Harmony Music Player Gets A Gorgeous Dark Mode, Other Improvements

      If you’re a fan of the Harmony music player then listen up: there’s a new update waiting for you to download.

    • This Extension Adds Dynamic Transparency to GNOME Shell’s Top Bar

      Making the GNOME top panel transparent is something a lot of users like to do — but it can look a little out of place when you maximise a window. Dynamic TopBar is a nifty little extension for the GNOME Shell desktop that “makes the top bar transparent when no window is maximized.”

    • ActivityPub and MediaGoblin at TPAC 2016 (or: ActivityPub needs your review!)

      It seems a recurring meme in MediaGoblin land to say “we’ve been quiet, because we’ve been busy” (or maybe historically on every tech blog ever), but I guess I can’t resist repeating the mantra. It’s true! Though the weight of my focus has been shifted from where I expected it to be. From the last few updates over the last year, you would be right to anticipate that the main thing I would be working on would be merging the federation code Jessica has written and getting 1.0 out the door. That was the plan, and we’re still working towards that, but priorities shifted as we realized the opportunities and time pressures we were under with ActivityPub. After the Social Working Group face to face meeting in June, Jessica and I sat down and talked about what we should do. Jessica had recently started working at Igalia (great people!) and was busy with that and other transitions in her life, so we discussed whether we thought it was most sensible to focus my energy on MediaGoblin or on ActivityPub. It was clear that ActivityPub was shaping into a solid specification, but it was also made clear that the Social Working Group’s charter was running out by the end of 2016. We both think ActivityPub is key to MediaGoblin’s success and didn’t want to see our invested time go to waste, so decided my immediate focus should switch to ActivityPub so it could successfully make it as a standard.

      Which isn’t doom and gloom for MediaGoblin! MediaGoblin development has continued… the community is good enough that people have been able to work while I’ve been busy. I’m happy to say we also appointed longtime contributor Boris Bobrov as co-maintainer to help reduce me being a bottleneck. (Thank you Boris, and congrats!) Other contributors have also stepped up to the plate. I’m especially thankful of Ben Sturmfels for hosting MediaGoblin hackathons and being so responsive to community members. (And of course, there are many others to thank, too!)

      Anyway, I’m not going anywhere, I’ve just been shifting focus to standards work for a bit… but it’s all for the greater good of MediaGoblin. (Well, and the greater federated social web!) Soon, we’ll be putting the work we’re doing on ActivityPub directly into MediaGoblin. When we merge Jessica’s work on federation, we will also retool it so that the first federated release of MediaGoblin will be blazing the trails with ActivityPub.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • Kickstarter-Funded Game Drops DRM-Free Version It Promised, Then Promises It Again After The Backlash

        Readers of this site should know by now that, as a general rule, DRM is equal parts dumb and ineffective. What in theory is a way for game publishers to stave off piracy typically instead amounts to a grand digital method for making sure legitimate customers can’t play the games they buy. Now, not all DRM is created equally shitty, of course — one of the more benign forms of DRM is Valve’s Steam platform. Because games purchased on the platform check in with Steam servers for product keys and otherwise encrypts the individual files for the game each user downloads, it’s a form of DRM.

        And because DRM is almost always annoying even at its best, there are some gamers who will only buy DRM-free games. Many Kickstarter campaigns for video games, in fact, explicitly state that backers and non-backers will have a DRM-free option for the game available, either through platforms like GOG and HumbleBundle, or directly from the developer. Duke Grabowski, Mighty Swashbuckler! was one such game, with developer Venture Moon Industries promising both a Steam release and a DRM-free release when it collected funds from backers. Then, suddenly, once the company got a publisher on board for the project, it announced that the game would only be available on Steam.

      • Steam woes in OpenMandriva…. Again!

        Steam updated today and, as a nasty surprise, I hit the same problem I had before with it.

        I tried the solution here, but it was not working this time: the code reverted to its original form, preventing the Steam runtime to work.

      • Mad Max Open World Action-Adventure Video Game Is Coming to SteamOS and Linux

        You won’t believe this, by Feral Interactive announced a few hours ago, October 5, 2016, that it will port the awesome Mad Max open world action-adventure video game to the SteamOS, Linux, and Mac platforms.

        Developed by Avalanche Studios and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, the Mad Max has been officially released for Microsoft Windows operating systems, as well as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One gaming consoles a year ago, on September 2015.

      • A general guide for the best practices of buying Linux games

        Quite a number of people have asked me to talk about where to buy Linux games, how to make sure developers are supported and so on, so here I am.

        First of all, I am fully aware there will likely be a small backlash in the comments on certain points. We do seem to have a small minority of very vocal people who like to boast about buying dirt cheap games from places like G2A, which makes me sad. We also have a few who like to advocate piracy, which is not only sad, but makes us look really bad in the eyes of developers. For the most part though, the people commenting here are fantastic to talk to.

        To make this a point: I am not aiming to single anyone out, nor am I aiming to be hostile towards anyone. Read this as if we are all sitting around the table having a *insert favourite drink* and discussing the best way to support our platform. That’s what this is all about, everything I do is to help Linux gaming progress somehow.

        To get this out of the way; I flat out do not recommend buying from places like G2A and Kinguin, Samsai already wrote about that here. Read that as a starting point if you please. Basically, don’t pre-order, don’t buy from random reseller stores.

      • Shadow Warrior 2 may not come to Linux after all, it’s getting a bit confusing

        Shadow Warrior 2 was due to get a Linux version, then suddenly information on it vanished from the Steam page and Humble Store. The plot thickens from there.

        When queried about it, a developer for Flying Wild Hog blamed it on a publisher decision (Devolver Digital) not to have Linux at day-1. I personally spoke to Devolver on twitter, who claimed this was false and they didn’t know why the developer said so. That developer very quickly deleted their post after this, and then made a new one that was entirely different.

      • BUTCHER from Transhuman Design releases with day-1 Linux support, it’s brutal

        BUTCHER is a blood-soaked action platformer from Transhuman Design, the developer behind King Arthur’s Gold and Trench Run.

        It’s brutal, difficult, fast paced and it’s actually rather good. It’s almost as if Doom or Quake were re-designed as an action platformer, with the difficulty and speed of Broforce thrown in for good measure. That’s how I can best describe it. It has a similar atmosphere to Doom and Quake, and great action. There’s very little plot to it, no tutorials to get through and nothing standing in the way of getting in, killing stuff and getting on with it.

      • Slime Rancher updated, new slime types, new crops, and more
      • Dead Island Definitive Edition & Riptide Definitive Edition both patched to fix major issues

        It’s good to see both Dead Island Definitive Edition [Steam] & Riptide Definitive Edition [Steam] still being supported. Both have been patched to fix major issues.

      • ‘Stellar Tactics’, a space exploration RPG with classless character progression will come to Linux

        ‘Stellar Tactics’ [Official Site, Steam] is a rather expansive looking space exploration RPG and the good news is that the developer already has plans for a Linux version.

      • Wasteland 3 now on Fig ready to be funded, nearly hit the goal already
      • 7 Days to Die massive update released, Linux version seems to work okay now [Ed: Mono...]
      • Day of Infamy, the WWII FPS from New World Interactive updated, looks pretty good on Linux

        Day of Infamy [Steam] is the new FPS from the Insurgency developers New World Interactive. It has a Linux version, even though it’s not advertised yet. It seems to work pretty well and they just updated the game.

      • My triumph in Rocket League and why you need to own it on Linux

        I’m going to be honest, this is quite easily going to be my Game Of The Year on Linux.

      • If you need a decent action platformer, be sure to check out Super Time Force Ultra

        Super Time Force Ultra [GOG, Steam] was recently ported to Linux thanks to Aaron from Knockout Games, now I’ve had a chance to check out this action platformer I’ve given it a few thoughts.

      • Mad Max Is Making It’s Way To Mac And Linux

        Feral Interactive announced today that the open world, third-person action game Mad Max is coming to Mac and Linux on October 20th, 2016.

      • Mad Max is coming to Mac and Linux on October 20th
      • Feral Announces Open World Action Game ‘Mad Max’ is Coming to the Mac
      • ‘Wasteland Weekend’ Is Mad Max Meets Burning Man In The Coolest Possible Way

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Student Programs announces Season of KDE 2016-2017

        KDE Student Programs announces the 2016-2017 Season of KDE for those who want to participate in mentored projects which enhance KDE in some way. Projects from past Seasons of KDE include new application features, the KDE Continuous Integration system, new reporting for developers, as well as a web framework, porting and a plethora of other work.

        Successful mentees earn a certificate of completion along with a very cool t-shirt and other goodies. Any person who wants to complete a project is eligible to enter.

      • KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS released

        After many work around in the previous beta version of KDE Plasma 5.8 beta,KDE team is finally here with their first LTS of Plasma desktop software release, KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS.
        Believe it or not, this release is surely gong to attract plenty of non-techie or simple users.But Techies are also not going to lose interest, this Ubuntu based beauty is going to prove the beast features as well.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Web Engines Hackfest 2016!

        It had great talks that will eventually end up in videos uploaded to the web site. We were amazed at the progress being made to Servo, including some performance results that blew our minds. We also discussed the next steps for WebKitGTK+, WebKit for Wayland (or WPE), our own Clutter wrapper to WebKitGTK+ which is used for the Apertis project, and much more.

        [...]

        One of the main problems people reported was applications that use WebKitGTK+ not showing anything where the content was supposed to appear. It turns out the problem was caused by GTK+ not being able to create a GL context. If the system was simply not able to use GL there would be no problem: WebKit would then just disable accelerated compositing and things would work, albeit slower.

      • The GNOME 3.24 Release Date Is Set

        GNOME 3.24 is to be released on March 22, 2017 — providing that development goes to plan between now and then, of course!

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • i.MX6 UL COM has a carrier board with Raspberry Pi style expansion

      The Armadeus “Opos6UL” COM runs Linux on an i.MX6 UL SoC, and has eMMC, optional wireless, extended temp support, and a carrier board with RPi-style I/O.

      French embedded manufacturer Armadeus Systems, which last year shipped an APF6_SP computer-on-module with an i.MX6 and a Cyclone V GX FPGA, has now unveiled a more modest, but similarly Linux- and NXP-based COM aimed at IoT applications. The i.MX6 UltraLite (UL) based Opos6UL is designed for industrial products like IoT gateways, medical devices, small HMI, and autonomous robotics.

    • Phones

      • [Early Access] Sailfish OS Fiskarsinjoki

        It’s our great pleasure to announce that we are now starting to speed up deliveries of Sailfish OS updates.

        This post, as mentioned in the title, is about the next early access iteration, update Fiskarsinjoki. Fiskarsinjoki is a small Finnish river in the village of Fiskars. It passes through a park-like cultural landscape and lands in the Gulf of Finland – just some trivia for you to learn!

      • Jolla Puts Out Sailfish OS “Fiskarsinjoki” In Early Access

        Jolla is looking to push out Sailfish OS releases faster and thus today announced “Fiskarsinjoki” in early access form.

        This next iteration of Sailfish OS is codenamed Fiskarsinjoki over a small Finnish river. Fiskarsinjoki adds support for saving images/video directly to an SD card, easy conference calls support, an integrated scientific calculator, more editing options in the image gallery, file sharing support in the file manager, and various other small features and refinements.

      • While Google’s Ara Modular Phone Is Dead, Greybus Still Appears To Have A Future

        With the Linux 4.9 staging pull request comes the addition of the Greybus subsystem.

      • Tizen/ARTIK

        • Pre-Order Gear S3 Classic and Frontier Smartwatch in the UK

          The latest Tizen based smartwatch, the Gear S3, has been launched at the end of August. This gear device builds on the hit features of the Gear S2, the circular screen and rotating bezel immediately come to mind, and adds more features for the fashion and sports conscious amongst us.

        • Samsung Z2 is to be Launched in Kenya Today

          We’ve been following the launch of the Samsung Z2 closely, as you would expect from Tizen Experts, and we knew that Kenya was the next market to be graced by the Z2 and its 4G capabilities. Well it looks like today is the day as Samsung has been sending out Press Invites for the event over the last few days.

        • Xender File Transfer Sharing App Launched on the Tizen Store

          Many of our readers have been waiting for Xender, a file transfer & sharing app, to be released on the Tizen Store and today it finally has. Do you need to transfer a file between mobile phones or between your phone and the pc? This is what Xender is designed to do and it does it quite well. The app boasts at being the fastest all-in-one file transfer and sharing app!

        • SmartHome prototype using ARTIK Cloud and Particle Photon

          Samsung and hackster.io had announced an ‘IOT challenge Using ARTIK Cloud” a couple of months ago in order to bring the maker and developer community on board to samsung’s cloud platform. The deadlines for submissions of project ideas are about to close in 5 days at the time of writing. A huge list of entries have been flooding the doors of hackster.io and Samsung ever since the contest was announced.

      • Android

        • Google melts 78 Android security holes, two of which were critical
        • Remix OS Brings Android For PC
        • Lenovo exec: Nope, not building Windows Phones [Ed: learning from mistakes?]

          Lenovo will not build smartmobes running on Microsoft’s Windows operating system because it doubts the software giant’s long term commitment to the market.

          This is the view from Lenovo’s chief operations officer Gianfranco Lanci, who told attendees at the Canalys Channel Forum 2016 that Windows 10 was generating interest in the corporate market for PCs but that his company won’t entertain basing its phones on the OS.

          “We don’t have Windows phones or any plans to introduce a Windows Phone,” he said.

          “I don’t see the need to introduce a Windows Phone and I am not convinced Microsoft is supporting the phone for the future,” Lanci added.

          According to Gartner, Windows Phone/Windows 10 Mobile was the third most popular OS on the planet behind Android and iOS during Q2, running on 1.97 million phones compared to 297 million on Google’s OS and 44.39 million on Apple’s software.

        • Six reasons to have the Probox2 Air Android TV box in your home

          When it comes to home entertainment, especially the new wave of 4K-enabled products, it gets pretty expensive to kit out your home with equipment. And if you’re in a home with multiple screens, it’s even more so.

          The Probox2 is the latest Android-based TV box to hit the market and has a great number of features to at least tempt you to consider stumping up the cash to get quality visuals in all your rooms.

        • Introducing the Android Central Smartphone Buyer’s Guide

          It’s increasingly likely that you’re reading this on your smartphone. In fact, it’s likely you’re doing more on your phone than ever before, which is why it’s so important to buy the right one — for you and the people in your life.

          Here at Android Central, we don’t just play with phones — we live and breathe them. We’re constantly comparing them to the competition, seeking out the ideal device for each particular use case. We believe in the Android mantra of, “Be together, not the same,” which is why we are launching the Smartphone Buyer’s Guide to help you pick the right phone for your unique situation.

        • Android 7.1 Nougat Update vs. Pixel Android 7.1: Leaked Changelog Reveals Difference Between Pixel OS Features And Upcoming Update
        • Pixel’s best features aren’t coming to the new version of Android

          At Google’s hardware event this week, the new version of the Android operating system, Android 7.1 (Nougat 7.1), was barely mentioned. As it turns out, there was a reason for that: some of the new Pixel smartphones‘ best features won’t be arriving in the new OS. This includes features like Google Assistant, the built-in customer support service, unlimited and free backup of full-res photos and videos, Smart Storage, and more.

          Details on which features were “Pixel-only” were previously reported by Android Police, citing a changelog provided by a Google source. Google confirmed to us those changes are accurate.

          Some of the omissions make sense. For example, only Pixel phones will ship with the new, “quick switch” adapter that makes it easier to move your data from iPhone to Android. That requires hardware in the form of the adapter cable.

        • Google destroys the Android fan myth that the iPhone is too expensive

          For years the Android fanboy argument has been that the iPhone is too expensive and that Android offers them a way to get a high-end smartphone for a fraction of the price.

        • Andromeda Looks Like Android’s Ticket To The Big Screen

          Blending traditional and touch computer user input methods to create a satisfying experience and commercial success has proven elusive for the three big consumer operating system vendors. Apple, in fact, has mostly avoided the challenge by keeping the Mac and ther iPad distinct, with Tim Cook likening attempts to meld laptop and tablet interfaces to combining a refrigerator with a toaster.

          [...]

          If putting Android apps on Chrome OS has failed to excite, how about imbuing Android with elements of Chrome OS? That seems to be the idea behind Andromeda, a rumored forthcoming Google OS that would presumably aim to incorporate the best of both worlds. One model for how it may look and work comes from Remix OS, a tweaking of Android that debuted on a Surface-like device and has since become far more broadly available. It borrows desktop user interface elements from Windows even more aggressively than Chrome does.

          Five years ago, I wrote that Chrome OS was heading toward a niche—ultimately the education market—versus Android. Now, with Andromeda, the security and simplicity that makes Chrome OS great and the windowing user interface that makes it usable on laptops could become key ingredients in finally allowing Android to have an impact on larger-screen computing devices.

        • Best Android Camera

          Samsung introduced this camera setup in the Galaxy S7, and it’s just as fantastic today in the newer Galaxy Note 7. The 12MP resolution gives you plenty of pixels to work with, and the optical image stabilization (OIS) keeps everything clear whether you’re taking low-light shots or shooting video on the move.

          Just as important as the photo output is how quickly the camera operates. Two presses of the home button launch the camera in less than a second, and photos are taken instantaneously even when shooting in HDR or a tough lighting situation. The camera interface is simple but also powerful if you choose to move to the full Manual mode, which can enable great shots if you want to tweak and use a tripod.

        • Google’s new phones won’t solve Android’s fundamental problems

          It’s been a tougher question to answer recently, as Android phones have approached and in some cases beaten the iPhone in terms of design and capability.

          But there’s one major thing that keeps me recommending the iPhone over any Android phone: the iOS ecosystem.

          It’s the only platform with the best developer support and consistent updates with new features throughout the life of your device. Android can’t do that. In fact, many Android phones stop getting new updates and features after a year or so.

        • Best Rugged Android Phone

          It is truly a bummer that the Galaxy S7 Active is an AT&T exclusive because this is a smartphone worthy of all SIMs. Inside, it’s packed with the same stellar components as the rest of the Galaxy S7 family, including a Snapdragon 820 processor and 4GB of RAM. It also offers a massive 4000mAh battery, in addition to a rugged, dust-proof, and water-resistant enclosure. Its 5.1-inch Super AMOLED display is bright enough to see in the great outdoors and sits behind a shatter-resistant protective coating that can withstand the toughest of falls.

          Bottom line: The Galaxy S7 Active is what other consumer-oriented rugged smartphones should aim to be like.

        • ‘Android is not invincible’: What Google is risking by releasing its Pixel smartphone

          Android may be the dominant smartphone operating system (OS) but “it’s not invincible,” according to analysis firm IHS Markit, which argues that Google’s latest Pixel smartphone could risk antagonizing manufacturers reliant on the software.

          On Tuesday, Google – a subsidiary of Alphabet – held a hardware event in which it launched two smartphones – the Pixel and Pixel XL – a smart home hub called Google Home, a virtual reality (VR) headset, Wi-Fi routers and a new version of its Chromecast streaming device.

          The Pixel smartphone runs Google’s Android software and comes with Google Assistant – the technology giant’s digital personal assistant similar to Apple’s Siri, which is also present on its Home hub.

        • Google Play is reportedly streaming Android game demos
        • Google Patches Android for 78 Vulnerabilities in October Update
        • Shazam Lite for Android requires less storage and data
        • Samsung Galaxy S7 Android 7.0 Nougat Update Imminent? S7 Running Nougat Spotted On GFXBench

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source Pros Confident in Europe Job Market

    Open source careers may be even more in demand and rewarding in Europe than the rest of the world, according to new data from the 2016 Open Source Jobs Report released today by The Linux Foundation and Dice. European open source pros are more confident in the job market, get more incentives from employers, and more calls from recruiters than their counterparts worldwide, according to the data.

    The full report, released earlier this year, analyzed trends for open source careers and the motivations of professionals in the industry. Now, the data have been broken down to focus specifically on responses from more than 1,000 open source professionals in Europe, and how they compare to respondents from around the world.

  • How open source is enabling the digital art age

    This project was incredibly exciting to me because it demonstrated the freedom that digital art represents. Digital art allows traditional audio and visual methods to take on new forms by adding layers of data and interactivity. This means that your project can respond to events happening in its environment, or on the other side of the world. When a project begins acquiring hardware components like lighting or moving objects, the term digital art seems inadequate since the entire environment becomes the art piece.

    It is well-established that the open source movement has created an enormous amount of value for businesses and organizations. Often overlooked, however, is the amount of value that it has created for those looking to pursue creative ventures. The open source community has created a plethora of libraries and frameworks that reduce the barrier of entry for aspiring digital artists and musicians. Though there are many out there, I would like to focus on Processing and Arduino because they have most shaped my approach to both art and programming.

  • 4 open source alternatives for Google Calendar

    For many of us, our calendar is our lifeblood. Without it, we would be lost, perhaps both literally and figuratively.

    While some people can get away with a wall calendar or a paper day planner to organize their schedule, a whole lot of us have turned over the process of managing time allotments to a digital calendar. In truth, most of us are juggling quite a few calendars from both our work and personal lives, and often a few other organizations that we’re involved with, including anything from non-profits to tech meetups to social clubs.

  • Google releases open source ‘Cartographer’

    Machine learning and vision are essential technologies for the advancement of robotics. When sensors come together, they can enable a computer or robot to collect data and images in real-time.

    A good example of this technology in real-world use is the latest Roomba vacuums. As the robot cleans your dirty floor, it is using sensors combined with a camera to map your home. Today, Google releases Cartographer — an open source project that developers can use for many things, such as robots and self-driving cars.

  • Google open-sources Cartographer 3D mapping library

    Google today said that it’s open-sourced Cartographer, a library for mapping movement in space in both 2D and 3D. the technology works with the open source Robot Operating System (ROS), which makes the software easier to deploy in software systems for robots, self-driving cars, and drones.

    Cartographer is an implementation of simultaneous localization and mapping, better known by its acronym SLAM. But it’s not the only open source SLAM library; there are plenty others, like hector_slam. Proprietary alternatives are also available; for example, Apple recently acquired one company with SLAM software, Flyby Media. But this is Google we’re talking about — Google, the company with self-driving cars that have already driven more than 2 million miles without human control.

    “Our focus is on advancing and democratizing SLAM as a technology,” Googlers Damon Kohler, Wolfgang Hess, and Holger Rapp wrote in a blog post. “Currently, Cartographer is heavily focused on LIDAR SLAM. Through continued development and community contributions, we hope to add both support for more sensors and platforms as well as new features, such as lifelong mapping and localizing in a pre-existing map.”

  • Open Source As a Business

    It’s a script we’ve seen played out many times in the open source community. A great software idea becomes popular, and continues to be developed by a core group of people. Those people build a business around servicing the software. The business grows, and so does the company. In an effort to sustain growth, the company chooses to monetize their software.

    The business logic for this timeline is very clear, and from a certain point of view, hard to refute. Businesses exist to make money. Despite servicing a customer base that believes in the principles of open source, many companies choose – after a time – to abandon those principles to a larger or lesser degree for a traditional software business model.

  • FOSS Organizations, Judged on their Merits?

    The free and open source software community depends heavily upon the work of community-funded nonprofit organizations. These organizations develop software, organize community events, manage key infrastructure, and educate people about FOSS. They serve as key organizing points for the people and companies that develop and sustain FOSS.

    Historically, some of the most important FOSS nonprofits have been U.S. tax-exempt organizations—entities recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as exempt from federal income tax according to IRS regulations. But over the last few years, the community has witnessed changes in the IRS’s handling of applications for tax-exempt status from FOSS organizations. Most troubling, the IRS has denied applications from organizations whose missions and activities differ very little from existing (and exempt) FOSS nonprofits. The IRS’s actions raised concerns within the community about whether tax exempt status would be available to future FOSS organizations and what these changes might mean for the exempt organizations upon which the community already depends. The Open Source Initiative and the Software Freedom Conservancy formed a working group to explore these questions and gather more information about the issue.

    This post will cover what the working group has learned about how this issue developed, where things stand now, and what recent developments at the IRS mean for the future. In future posts, we’ll provide additional guidance to FOSS projects about organizational options, including when U.S. tax-exempt status is a viable option.

  • A guide to building trust in teams and organizations

    My travels globally have given me a feeling for how best to work in many different contexts—like Latin America, West Africa, North Africa, and Southeast Asia, to name a few. And I’ve found that I can more easily adapt my work style in these countries if I focus on something that plays a role in all of them: trust.

    In The Open Organization, Jim Whitehurst mentions that accountability and meritocracy are both central components of open organizations. Trust is linked to both of those concepts. But the truth, I’ve found, is that many people don’t have the information they need to determine whether they can trust a person or not. They need data, along with a system to evaluate that data and make decisions.

    I’ve found a way to measure trust, studied trust building, and developed a strategy for cultivating trust that’s worked for me over the years. I think it could work well in open organizations, where building trust is critical.

    Let me explain.

  • 5 Tips on Using OAuth 2.0 for Secure Authorization

    OAuth is an open standard in authorization that allows delegating access to remote resources without sharing the owner’s credentials. Instead of credentials, OAuth introduces tokens generated by the authorization server and accepted by the resource owner.

    In OAuth 1.0, each registered client was given a client secret and the token was provided in response to an authentication request signed by the client secret. That produced a secure implementation even in the case of communicating through an insecure channel, because the secret itself was only used to sign the request and was not passed across the network.

    OAuth 2.0 is a more straightforward protocol passing the client secret with every authentication request. Therefore, this protocol is not backward compatible with OAuth 1.0. Moreover, it is deemed less secure because it relies solely on the SSL/TLS layer. One of OAuth contributors, Eran Hammer, even said that OAuth 2.0 may become “the road to hell,” because:

    “… OAuth 2.0 at the hand of a developer with deep understanding of web security will likely result in a secure implementation. However, at the hands of most developers – as has been the experience from the past two years – 2.0 is likely to produce insecure implementations.”

    Despite this opinion, making a secure implementation of OAuth 2.0 is not that hard, because there are frameworks supporting it and best practices listed. SSL itself is a very reliable protocol that is impossible to compromise when proper certificate checks are thoroughly performed.

    Of course, if you are using OAuth 1.0, then continue to use it; there is no point in migrating to OAuth 2.0. But if you are developing a new mobile or an Angular web application (and often mobile and web applications come together, sharing the same server), then OAuth 2.0 will be a better choice. It already has some built-in support in the OWIN framework for .NET that can be easily extended to create different clients and use different security settings.

  • Tips for Evaluating a Company’s Open Source Culture

    There are four essential questions a company should ask before it decides to create an open source project, according to Duane O’Brien, open source programs evangelist at PayPal.

    Who cares?

    Are we still using it?

    Are we committing our own resources?

    Can we develop it all in the open?

    This framework, developed by O’Brien’s boss Danese Cooper, is useful in vetting internal software for release as open source projects.

  • Buggy code to the left of me, perfect source to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with EU

    Midway through SUPERSEDE, the EU three-year project backed by €3.25m in funding to make software better, software still sucks.

    It’s always been thus, but now that computer code has a say in the driving of Teslas, confronts everyone daily on smartphones, and has crept into appliances, medical devices, and infrastructure, it’s a more visible problem.

    Robert Vamosi, security strategist at Synopsys, told The Register in a phone interview that software quality matters more than ever.

    “We’re seeing real-world examples of automobiles remotely attacked and medical devices being suspended when they need to keep functioning,” he said. “It’s becoming life-critical.”

    The organizations involved in SUPERSEDE – ATOS, Delta Informatica, SEnerCon, Siemens, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), and the University of Zurich (UZH) – aim to improve the user experience of their software products with a toolkit to provide better feedback and analytics data to application developers.

  • ETSI Releases Its Open Source MANO Software Stack

    ETSI’s Open Source MANO (OSM) group today announced Release ONE, the first code out of the NFV management and orchestration (MANO) project.

    ETSI touts that OSM can natively support VIMs from VMware and OpenStack and can also support various software-defined networking (SDN) controllers. It can also create a plug-in framework to improve platform maintenance and extensions.

  • The Evolution of Open Source Networking at AT&T

    For many years AT&T has been on the forefront of virtualizing a Tier 1 carrier network. They’ve done so in a very open fashion and are actively participating in, and driving, many open sources initiatives. Their open initiatives include Domain 2.0, ECOMP, and CORD, all of which are driving innovation in the global service provider market. Chris Rice, Sr. VP of Domain 2.0 Architecture and Design of AT&T, provided an overview of how AT&T got where they are today during his keynote address at the ODL Summit.

    Providing a bit of history of this journey, Rice noted that today’s implementations and visions started years ago. One of the first steps was the creation of what he called a router farm, which was initiated because of the end of life of a router and there wasn’t a new router that could just take its place. The goal was to remove the static relationship between the edge router and the customer. Once this was done, AT&T could provide better resiliency to their customers, detect failures, do planned maintenance, and schedule backups. They could also move configurations from one router to another vendor’s router. The result was faster and cheaper; however, “it just wasn’t as reusable as they wanted.” They learned the importance of separating services from the network and from the devices.

  • The legacy of Pieter Hintjens

    When I watched Chad Fowler’s GOTO Amsterdam 2014 Keynote it got me thinking about what our aims should be in life.

    He mentions Joel Spolsky’s post from 2001: Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To It, and says software typically only lasts five years so rarely gets to be very good.

    He asks, what does it take create legacy software with a positive meaning, that is software so good that you are fondly remembered for it for many years to come.

    [...]

    Pieter was a man who knew all of this. His deep passion for optimal collaboration lead to the creation of C4: The Collective Code Construction Contract. Not only was he very talented technically, he also understood people and how to foster a strong community.

  • Events

    • FOSSCON

      This post is long past due, but I figured it is better late than never. At the start of the year, I set a goal to get more involved with attending and speaking at conferences. Through work, I was able to attend the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) in Pasadena, CA in January. I also got to give a talk at O’Relly’s Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Austin, TX in May. However, I really wanted to give a talk about my experience contributing in the Ubuntu community.

      José Antonio Rey encouraged me to submit the talk to FOSSCON. While I’ve been aware of FOSSCON for years thanks to my involvement with the freenode IRC network (which has had a reference to FOSSCON in the /motd for years), I had never actually attended it before. I also wasn’t quite sure how I would handle traveling from San Francisco, CA to Philadelphia, PA. Regardless, I decided to go ahead and apply.

      Fast forward a few weeks, and imagine my surprise when I woke up to an email saying that my talk proposal was accepted. People were actually interested in me and what I had to say. I immediately began researching flights. While they weren’t crazy expensive, they were still more money than I was comfortable spending. Luckily, José had a solution to this problem as well; he suggested applying for funding through the Ubuntu Community Donations fund. While I’ve been an Ubuntu Member for over 8 years, I’ve never used this resource before. However, I was happy when I received a very quick approval.

    • FOSS Wave: Bangalore at UVCE

      It was another lazy Saturday with a rare sight of empty Bangalore roads. This FOSS Wave event in Bangalore had been in planning for almost a month. Finally, here we were on September 10th, 2016 in front of the almost a century old structure of University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering.

      Five speakers reached the venue by 9:30am. We were to talk in two different sessions starting from 10:30am until 4:00pm on the following topics.

    • Fedora Join Meeting 26 September 2016 – Summary
    • systemd.conf 2016 is Over Now!

      A few days ago systemd.conf 2016 ended, our second conference of this kind. I personally enjoyed this conference a lot: the talks, the atmosphere, the audience, the organization, the location, they all were excellent!

      I’d like to take the opportunity to thanks everybody involved. In particular I’d like to thank Chris, Daniel, Sandra and Henrike for organizing the conference, your work was stellar!

      I’d also like to thank our sponsors, without which the conference couldn’t take place like this, of course. In particular I’d like to thank our gold sponsor, Red Hat, our organizing sponsor Kinvolk, as well as our silver sponsors CoreOS and Facebook. I’d also like to thank our bronze sponsors Collabora, OpenSUSE, Pantheon, Pengutronix, our supporting sponsor Codethink and last but not least our media sponsor Linux Magazin. Thank you all!

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Databricks Findings Show That Spark is Driving Cutting-Edge Innovation

      This summer, Databricks conducted a comprehensive Apache Spark Survey to identify insights on how organizations are using Spark and highlight growth trends since the company’s last Spark Survey in 2015. The 2016 survey results reflect answers from 900 distinct organizations and 1615 respondents, who were predominantly Apache Spark users, and the results are available now.

      The results show that the Spark community is still growing fast: the number of meetup members worldwide has tripled, and the number of contributors to the project has grown by 67% since last year. Moreover, Spark is driving cutting-edge innovation. Users arebuilding diverse apps, with significant growth in machine learning and streaming.

    • Transitioning from OpenStack Hobbyist to Professional

      To land your first OpenStack job, you’ll want to prove you have a functional understanding of OpenStack basics, can navigate the resources to solve problems, and have recognized competency in your focus area.
      Used with permission

      The hardest part of pivoting your career is proving that you are qualified in your new focus area. To land your first OpenStack job, you’ll want to prove you have a functional understanding of OpenStack basics, can navigate the resources to solve problems, and have recognized competency in your focus area.

      “A functional understanding of OpenStack” means you know how to work in OpenStack––not just naming the projects in alphabetical order or giving an overview of its history. While you’ll want to read up on its origins and future roadmap, you’ll also want to jump in by using tools like DevStack or TryStack to explore.

  • CMS

    • CMSpotlight: 5 CMS apps that deserve more attention

      Everybody knows about WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, although they are great and they are popular for a reason, there are quite a few other alternatives that you may have never heard of. Thousands of quality developers and designers work hard to create amazing masterpieces of applications. Most of them release their applications for free and they make them open source. The least we can do is spread the word so they can get the attention they well deserve. We’ve already listed a dozen CMS apps in our self-hosted alternatives post, but in this article, we’ll focus more on each CMS and its features. Here, 5 open source CMS apps will get the spotlight.

  • Education

    • Charlie Reisinger: FOSS in Education Proponent…and Practitioner

      “Charlie serves as the Technology Director for Penn Manor School District in Lancaster County Pennsylvania. A member of the senior leadership team, he directs instructional technology programs and technical infrastructure and operations. A passionate advocate and speaker on open source values in education, Charlie and his team implemented the largest classroom desktop Linux program in Pennsylvania.

      “Under his leadership, Penn Manor School District received the 2011 School of Excellence in Technology Award from the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA). In 2016, Penn Manor was recognized with the Districts of Distinction Award for the Open Source one-to-one Laptop Program.”

      The book’s title is The Open Schoolhouse: Building a Technology Program to Transform Learning and Empower Students. The Kindle version is only $4.99. I’ve read it. You should read it, too, if you’re a teacher, school administrator, student, parent, uncle or aunt or have friends or family with kids in school — or even if you’re a taxpayer someplace where they have public school or you’re connected in some way with a charter school or private school.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Classic Emacs editor gets a new-school makeover

      A new distribution of the Emacs editor, called Spacemacs, repackages the classic developer’s tool in a new skin for greater usefulness to a new generation of programmers.

      Emacs is one of the oldest text editors in existence. Its most popular variant (now 31 years old) is GNU Emacs, originally developed by Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman. The editor’s enduring popularity comes from its extensibility and programmability courtesy of the built-in Emacs Lisp scripting language — and from the culture of tooling that’s sprung up as a result. Extensions for Emacs (and, thus, Spacemacs) provide everything from integration with GitHub to Slack chat windows.

  • Project Releases

    • FontForge release

      There’s a new release of FontForge available. “This release introduces a new icon set, new functionality for custom icon selection graphics, support for GlyphOrderAndAliasDB files, and support for Unicode 9.0.”

  • Public Services/Government

    • IBM, Microsoft, Oracle beware: Russia wants open source, sees you as security risk

      Russia is drafting a new law requiring Russian government agencies to give preference to open source and to block US software from computer systems, citing security concerns.

      Just weeks after Moscow committed to removing Microsoft Outlook and Exchange on 600,000 systems under orders from Russian president Vladimir Putin, the nation’s lower house, the State Duma, is drafting a bill to make it harder for agencies even to buy Russian software products that are based on foreign-made proprietary middleware and programming frameworks.

      The bill marks Russia’s latest attempt at substituting imported software with local products, but casts a wider net than existing restrictions on IT procurement by agencies and state-run enterprises.

    • Russia Weighs Replacing IBM, Microsoft With Open-Source Software

      Russia is taking another step to reduce dependence on Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. technologies in the country’s $3 billion software market amid political tensions with the U.S.

      The State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, is drafting a bill to restrict government agencies from buying licensed software, giving preference to open-source software. This would complement legislation that curbed state purchases of foreign programs last year, restricting the choice to about 2,000 local software makers.

      “Many local software firms are offering products based on foreign frameworks such as IBM’s WebSphere or Microsoft’s ASP.net,” said Andrey Chernogorov, executive secretary of the Duma’s commission on strategic information systems. “We are seeking to close this loophole for state purchases as it causes security risks.”

      The end of IBM’s partnership with Russian vendor Lanit last year created a potential vulnerability for the government’s website zakupki.gov.ru, which is based on a proprietary IBM platform, according to an explanatory note to the draft law. Additionally, license fees that Russian software makers pay foreign partners inflate their products’ cost of use.

      Some Russian regional administrations already started switching from Oracle to free database software adapted for their needs by local programmers, according to Duma documents.

    • Public review of German municipal eGovernment manual

      Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior is organising a three-month, online public review of a new manual for municipal eGovernment services. From 22 September until 30 November, a website will allow readers to comment on the document.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Data

      • Udacity open sources an additional 183GB of driving data

        On stage at TechCrunch Disrupt last month, Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun announced that the online education company would be building its own autonomous car as part of its self-driving car nanodegree program. To get there, Udacity has created a series of challenges to leverage the power of community to build the safest car possible — meaning anyone and everyone is welcome to become a part of the open-sourced project. Challenge one was all about building a 3D model for a camera mount, but challenge two has brought deep learning into the mix.

        In the latest challenge, participants have been tasked with using driving data to predict steering angles. Initially, Udacity released 40GB of data to help at-home tinkerers build competitive models without access to the type of driving data that Tesla of Google would have. However, because deep learning models drink data by the pond rather than the gallon, the company pushed out an additional 183GB of driving data.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Mike Pence’s Defining Moment As Governor? Enabling An HIV Outbreak

      With the exception of a brief detour into Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s (R) anti-abortion beliefs during the vice presidential debate on Oct. 4, the night centered around foreign policy, not public health.

      It’s a shame, since lackluster public health efforts are what led to the defining moment of Pence’s one-term Indiana governorship: a massive HIV outbreak spurred by public health funding cuts and Pence’s moralistic stance against needle exchanges.

      A timeline of the HIV outbreak, the worst in state history, reads like a roadmap of what to do if you want to create a public health crisis.

    • Poland abortion: Parliament rejects abortion ban after women stage all-out strike

      Polish lawmakers have voted overwhelmingly to reject draft legislation that would introduce a near-total ban on abortion following mass protests in over 60 cities across the country.

      Some 100,000 women dressed in black staged nationwide demonstrations in Poland on Monday against plans to tighten the country’s already restrictive abortion rules, including banning the procedure even in cases of rape, with prison terms for women ending a pregnancy.

      The hastily arranged vote presents the first major domestic setback for the ruling conservatives, of which many members initially backed the proposal.

    • Water Wars: Two Indian States Are Fighting for This River’s Water

      As the world gets hotter, we’ve been warned that the next wars will be over water. In India, that future is here, and the latest proof is a battle between two neighboring states fighting over the river that runs through them.

      In the latest chapter of a century-old water war in southern India, riots rocked Bangalore, the techie capital city of Karnataka state, in September. Buses were set ablaze, and a man was killed by police trying to control the crowds. Protestors opposed a Supreme Court order for the state to release about 120,000 cusecs, or cubic feet per second of water, from the Cauvery river to Tamil Nadu, the state downstream, over 10 days.

    • Amid water crisis, Flint faces a Shigellosis outbreak

      Flint, Michigan, is dealing with another outbreak. This time it’s an infectious bacterial disease called Shigellosis, which can cause bloody diarrhea and fever and typically spreads when people don’t wash their hands.
      That’s exactly what’s happening in Flint, the county health director told CNN.

      A water crisis has plagued residents there for more than two years. Last year, people experienced rashes and hair loss when high levels of lead were found in the local water supply. In 2014, the area faced one of the worst outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease in US history.
      Still afraid and mistrustful of the water, people in Flint — who are still forced to use either filtered or bottled water because of damaged water pipes — are bathing less, and refusing to wash their hands.

    • GOP seeks to block ObamaCare settlements with insurers

      Republicans in Congress are plotting ways to block the Obama administration from paying insurance companies hundreds of millions of dollars as part of an ObamaCare program.

      GOP lawmakers say they are looking at “a dozen” options — including a possible provision in the year-end spending bill — to prevent the administration from using an obscure fund within the Treasury Department to pay out massive settlements to insurers.

      The insurance companies are suing over a shortfall in an ObamaCare program that they say is damaging their businesses.

      Settling the cases could help insurers deal with losses on the ObamaCare marketplaces, but Republicans argue the move would be a “bailout” that would circumvent the will of Congress.

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Wednesday
    • 10 basic linux security measures everyone should be doing

      Akin to locking your doors and closing your windows there’s some really basic things everyone should be doing with their Linux installs (This is of course written from a Fedora viewpoint, but I think this pretty much applies to all computer OSes).

    • EFF Asks Court to Block U.S. From Prosecuting Security Researcher For Detecting and Publishing Computer Vulnerabilities

      The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a court Thursday for an order that would prevent the government from prosecuting its client, security researcher Matthew Green, for publishing a book about making computer systems more secure.

      Green is writing a book about methods of security research to recognize vulnerabilities in computer systems. This important work helps keep everyone safer by finding weaknesses in computer code running devices critical to our lives—electronic devices, cars, medical record systems, credit card processing, and ATM transactions. Green’s aim is to publish research that can be used to build more secure software.

    • Malta unveils Cyber Security Strategy

      The government of Malta has unveiled a National Cyber Security Strategy. The strategy provides the legal context to defend the country’s computer networks infrastructure and its users from threats.

    • Mirai “internet of things” malware from Krebs DDoS attack goes open source

      Last week, we wrote about a DDoS attack on well-known investigative cybercrime journalist Brian Krebs.

      To explain.

      A DDoS attack is an aggressive sort of DoS attack, where DoS is short for denial of service.

      A DoS is a bit like getting into the queue at the station to buy a ticket for the next train, only to have a time-waster squeeze in front of you and slow you down.

      By the time the miscreant has asked, innocently enough, about the different sorts of ticket available, and whether it costs extra to take a bicycle, and how much longer it would take if he were to change trains in Manchester, only to walk off without buying a ticket at all…

      …you’ve watched your train arrive, load up with passengers, and depart without you.

      A DDoS attack is worse: it’s short for distributed denial of service attack, and it’s much the same thing as a DoS, except that the trouble-stirrer doesn’t show up on his own.

    • Johnson & Johnson Warns Insulin Pump Owners They Could Be Killed By Hackers

      Initially the lack of security on “smart” Internet of Things devices was kind of funny as companies rushed to make a buck and put device security on the back burner. And while hackable tea kettles and refrigerators that leak your Gmail credentials just seem kind of stupid on the surface, people are slowly realizing that at scale — we’re introducing millions of new attack vectors into homes and businesses annually. Worse, compromised devices are now being used as part of massive new DDoS attacks like the one we recently saw launched against Brian Krebs.

      Unfortunately, companies that service the medical industry also decided a few years ago that it would be a good idea to connect every-damn-thing to networks without first understanding the security ramifications of the decision. As a result, we’re seeing a rise in not only the number of ransomware attacks launched on hospitals, but a spike in hackable devices like pacemakers that could mean life and death for some customers.

    • J&J warns diabetic patients: Insulin pump vulnerable to hacking

      Johnson & Johnson is telling patients that it has learned of a security vulnerability in one of its insulin pumps that a hacker could exploit to overdose diabetic patients with insulin, though it describes the risk as low.

      Medical device experts said they believe it was the first time a manufacturer had issued such a warning to patients about a cyber vulnerability, a hot topic in the industry following revelations last month about possible bugs in pacemakers and defibrillators.

      J&J executives told Reuters they knew of no examples of attempted hacking attacks on the device, the J&J Animas OneTouch Ping insulin pump. The company is nonetheless warning customers and providing advice on how to fix the problem.

    • Who Makes the IoT Things Under Attack?

      As KrebsOnSecurity observed over the weekend, the source code that powers the “Internet of Things” (IoT) botnet responsible for launching the historically large distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against KrebsOnSecurity last month has been publicly released. Here’s a look at which devices are being targeted by this malware.

      The malware, dubbed “Mirai,” spreads to vulnerable devices by continuously scanning the Internet for IoT systems protected by factory default usernames and passwords. Many readers have asked for more information about which devices and hardware makers were being targeted. As it happens, this is fairly easy to tell just from looking at the list of usernames and passwords included in the Mirai source code.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Is WikiLeaks still relevant?

      It was once celebrated as a champion of transparency. But now 10 years old, WikiLeaks has lost a lot of friends.

      The whistle-blowing website serves as the world’s best known source for leaked government and intelligence information.

      It has exposed corruption and misuse of power in many countries, including the United States.

      But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has become increasingly controversial over the past decade.

      Critics say his site is manipulated by politicians, and the way it releases classified documents is irresponsible.

      Assange has been hiding in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid possible extradition to Sweden, where he faces questions over allegations of sexual assault.

    • What Really Happens When You FOIA UK Police

      British authorities have a reputation for keeping incredibly tight-lipped about surveillance, especially when asked to release even basic details of programs or technologies under the Freedom of Information Act.

      But a lot more goes on behind the scenes of requests around surveillance topics than one might realise. By requesting the processing notes and communications for FOIA requests, it’s possible to gain insight into what really happens when someone asks for information on a controversial subject, and how, in some cases, police forces develop a national strategy to ensure that no information seeps out.

      For example, Motherboard has been using the FOIA to dig up details of UK law enforcement’s use of “equipment interference”, the government’s term for hacking. While managing to get some information out of agencies, such as how a few of them will share hacking technologies, many of the requests have been stonewalled.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • ‘Great Pacific garbage patch’ far bigger than imagined, aerial survey shows

      The vast patch of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean is far worse than previously thought, with an aerial survey finding a much larger mass of fishing nets, plastic containers and other discarded items than imagined.

      A reconnaissance flight taken in a modified C-130 Hercules aircraft found a vast clump of mainly plastic waste at the northern edge of what is known as the “great Pacific garbage patch”, located between Hawaii and California.

      The density of rubbish was several times higher than the Ocean Cleanup, a foundation part-funded by the Dutch government to rid the oceans of plastics, expected to find even at the heart of the patch, where most of the waste is concentrated.

      “Normally when you do an aerial survey of dolphins or whales, you make a sighting and record it,” said Boyan Slat, the founder of the Ocean Cleanup.

      “That was the plan for this survey. But then we opened the door and we saw the debris everywhere. Every half second you see something. So we had to take snapshots – it was impossible to record everything. It was bizarre to see that much garbage in what should be pristine ocean.”

    • Indonesia’s peat fires add to global warming

      The really scary thing about climate change is not simply that humans may fail to get their emissions under control. It is that, at some point, the Earth could take over and start adding even more emissions on its own.

      A new study underscores this risk by looking closely at Indonesia, which has a unique quality – some 70 billion tonnes of carbon that have built up in peatlands over millennia. In this, Indonesia is much like the Arctic, where even larger quantities of ancient carbon are stored in permafrost, and is also vulnerable.

      In each case, if that carbon gets out of the land and into the atmosphere, then global warming will get worse. But global warming could itself raise the odds of such massive carbon release. That is a dangerous position to be in as the world continues to warm.

    • Enjoy Earth While It Lasts: Atmospheric Carbon Levels Pass the Point of No Return

      The bad news: Earth’s climate change problem just passed a point of no return. Atmospheric carbon levels have passed 400 parts per million, and they won’t return to more environment-friendly levels “ever again for the indefinite future.”

    • Disappearing Yosemite glacier becomes symbol of climate change

      When naturalist John Muir explored Lyell Glacier in Yosemite National Park about 150 years ago, the river of ice stretched as far as 10 football fields between the peaks of the Lyell Canyon, a glacier one might expect to see in Alaska, not California.

      Today, it’s a sliver of the natural feature Muir called a “living glacier.” Over the last 130 years, the glacier has lost 78 percent of its surface, shrunk from about a half square mile to 66 acres.

      Stand on the glacier and it’s hard to hear anything except the sound of melting water rushing underneath. A big patch of bedrock is exposed in its middle.

      In its dying state, Lyell Glacier has become a vivid example of the effects of climate change and a touchstone for National Park Service officials increasingly concerned about global warming.

      In a speech about climate change at Yosemite this summer, President Barack Obama highlighted Lyell Glacier as a warning for the future.

    • Hurricane Matthew is about to slam Donald Trump’s most prized real estate

      Mar-a-Lago, the country club in West Palm Beach that is one of Donald Trump’s marquee pieces of real estate, is at risk of sustaining damage due to Hurricane Matthew.

      The storm will soon bear down on the east coast of Florida, with the National Hurricane Center issuing a serious warning about Matthew’s potential impact. The warning indicates the “potential for devastating damage across coastal Palm Beach County,” which is where Mar-a-Lago sits.

      In addition to seeing hurricane force winds of greater than 74 miles per hour, West Palm Beach, which is along the state’s east coast, where Mar-a-Lago sits, could receive more than three feet of standing water from the hurricane’s storm surge, according to a projection from the National Hurricane Center.

      The experimental storm surge inundation map below shows West Palm Beach with an arrow to the rough location of Mar-a-Lago.The inundation levels refer to a reasonable worst-case scenario for the flooding of normally dry land. There is about a 1-in-10 chance that storm surge flooding at any particular location, including the area where Mar-a-Lago is, could be higher than the values shown on the map.

  • Finance

    • Big Business Declares TPP the Winner in Vice Presidential Debate

      The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has already picked the winner in Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate between Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Gov. Mike Pence, R-Ind.

      It’s free trade! (Or, more accurately, corporate-friendly trade agreements.)

      Previewing the debate Tuesday morning, the Chamber tweeted merrily that both candidates have a “great track record on trade.”

      Their running mates are both on the record opposing the hugely controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, but as the Chamber notes so happily, Kaine and Pence both have a long history of siding with big business. Both have praised the TPP and backed similar deals in the past.

      The Chamber, a trade group that represents some of the largest corporate entities in the world, from Goldman Sachs to Dow Chemical, has spent over $1.2 billion just on lobbying since 1998, making it by far the largest influence peddler in Washington, D.C.

    • Latest eGov Benchmark decries lack of decisiveness

      Europe’s governments lack decisiveness in digitising their public services and organisations, conclude the authors of the “eGovernment Benchmark 2016”, which was made public by the European Commission on 3 October. Progress in eGovernment is incremental, the study shows. The authors urge “an acceleration in order to keep up with private sector, and citizen’s expectations”.

    • Exclusive: WikiLeaks Guccifer 2.0 Teaser Exposes Pay-to-Play and Financial Data

      Hours after WikiLeaks held an early morning press conference commemorating their 10th anniversary, hacker Guccifer 2.0 released a trove of documents he claimed were from the Clinton Foundation. WikiLeaks tweeted the 800+MB of files hacked by Guccifer 2.0 shortly after. The documents include several Democratic National Committee (DNC), Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and Virginia Democratic Party documents, though Guccifer 2.0 said he obtained them in a hack from the Clinton Foundation.

      The Clinton Foundation has denied this. Alleged communication files were leaked from the Clinton Foundation to the Observer upon request through Guccifer 2.0’s Twitter account, but the Clinton Foundation has not yet responded to a request for a statement on those specific documents.

    • NY Times Reporter Tells the Story Behind the Story of the Trump Tax Leak

      Donald Trump is the first major party presidential candidate in 40 years not to release his tax returns. However, the New York Times has obtained three pages of Trump’s 1995 income tax returns, which it revealed in a controversial investigative report published Saturday.

      “Donald Trump Tax Records Show He Could Have Avoided Taxes for Nearly Two Decades, The Times Found,” read the headline on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Jill Stein Is The Only Presidential Candidate Embracing the Term Latinx This Election

      On September 29, Green Party nominee Jill Stein’s campaign sent out an email with the title, “Join our Latinx movement!”, marking the first official appearance of the term “Latinx” in the 2016 election. The term, which arose from the desire to find a non-binary, gender inclusive word to refer to our community, has been gaining traction since it first came into use online in October of 2014. Today, it’s increasingly common to see “Latinx” used in media headlines (including some of our own), academic texts and activist literature – but the word has not arrived on the scene without its fair share of controversy and resistance. In 2016 much ink has been spilled making cases for or against the term – and in the comments of Remezcla posts we frequently see our usage of the term hotly debated.

    • Playboy Editor Claims Trump Forced Maples to Pose: ‘He Wanted Her to Do the Nude Layout; She Didn’t’

      Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his campaign have spent the week slut-shaming former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, saying she posed in Playboy and that there was a sex tape depicting her in it (there is not). An old New York Daily News article has surfaced that tells a story of Trump pressuring his future wife, against her will, to pose for Playboy magazine. Trump personally negotiated the fee, according to the report.

      The article, tweeted by historian Jeff Nichols, outlines how Trump insisted that Maples do the centerfold and negotiated a million-dollar check to compensate her.

    • Trump Joins Clinton In Pushing For Cyberwar

      We’ve noted a few times in the past our serious concerns about Hillary Clinton’s hawkish and tone deaf views on cybersecurity, in which she wants the US to go on the offensive on cyberattacking, even being willing to respond to attacks with real world military responses. She seems to ignore the fact that the US has a history of being some of the most aggressive players on offense on such things (Stuxnet, anyone?), and doesn’t seem to recognize how escalating such situations may not end well at all.

      Of course, her opponent, Donald Trump has been totally incomprehensible on cybersecurity during the course of his campaign. There was his first attempt to respond to questions about cybersecurity in which it’s not clear he understood the question, and started talking about nuclear weapons instead. Or the time he took a question on cybersecurity and answered by talking about the latest CNN poll. Or, of course, who can forget his debate performance on the topic, where his key insights were that his 10 year old was good with computers and a 400 lb. hacker may be responsible for the DNC hacks.

      It appears that the Trump campaign finally decided that maybe Trump should say something marginally coherent on the subject, and sent him out earlier this week with a prepared teleprompter speech, which Trump actually managed to get through without going too far off script. And… it’s basically the same kind of bullshit as Clinton — pushing for more aggressive and offensive cyberattacks.

    • Expanding the Debate: Green Ajamu Baraka “Debates” Pence & Kaine in Democracy Now!

      Vice-presidential candidates Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Tim Kaine faced off in Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, Tuesday night in their first and only debate before next month’s election. Third-party vice-presidential candidates, including Libertarian William Weld and the Green Party’s Ajamu Baraka, were excluded from the debate stage under stringent rules set by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is controlled by the Democratic and Republican parties. On Tuesday night, Democracy Now! aired a special “Expanding the Debate” broadcast, where we gave major third-party candidates a chance to respond to the same questions in real time as the major candidates. The Green Party’s Ajamu Baraka joined us live from Richmond, Virginia. Baraka is a longtime human rights activist and the founding executive director of the U.S. Human Rights Network and coordinator of the U.S.-based Black Left Unity Network’s Committee on International Affairs.

    • ‘Deplorable’: Donald Trump’s long war with veterans.

      Donald Trump Monday turned his destructive mouth on a group he ostensibly supports, displaying his trademark lack of sense and compassion when talking about the unseen wounds that too many vets carry home with them from war.

      “When you talk about the mental health problems, when people come back from war and combat and they see things that maybe a lot of folks in this room have seen many times over and you’re strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can’t handle it,” he said during a question-and-answer session sponsored by the conservative Retired American Warriors PAC, referring to veterans who commit suicide.

      Most appallingly, this was probably Trump’s idea of tact and/or empathy for those who have seen combat. But contra his faux tough guy image and what he seemed to be suggesting, PTSD isn’t a symptom of weakness; it’s an at times debilitating wound of war. “To effectively argue that veterans with PTSD are somehow weak is both wrong and insulting.” Steve Benen wrote Monday. “The fact that Trump, even now, still doesn’t understand the basics of this issue is extraordinary.”

    • Jill Stein Polls: National Polling Is Likely Significantly Underestimating Support For The Green Party Candidate

      Jill Stein could soon be making a big jump in the polls, with the race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton starting to turn into a blowout and polls likely underestimating the growing support for the Green Party.

      Stein, running to the left of Hillary Clinton, has been lingering around the 2 percent mark in most of the national polls to come out in recent weeks. While it would take something of a miracle for Stein to win a state — or even grab double-digit support — the Green Party’s goal may be the 5 percent threshold that would guarantee matching federal funding for the next election cycle. And that could be well within reach.

      Although Stein appears to be only about halfway there in the polling, there are a number of signs that the current polling is underestimating the support for the Green Party this election cycle.

    • Amazon bans incentivized reviews tied to free or discounted products

      Amazon is making a significant change to its Community Guidelines, announced today, which will eliminate any incentivized reviews, except for those that emerge from within its own Amazon Vine program. This program allows Amazon – not the seller or vendor – to identify trusted reviewers, and has a number of controls in place in order to keep bias out of the review process.

      Amazon has historically prohibited compensation for reviews – even going so far as to sue those businesses who pay for fake reviews, as well as the individuals who write them, in an effort to make its review and rating system fairer and more helpful to online shoppers. However, it has allowed businesses to offer products to customers in exchange for their “honest” review.

      The only condition was that those reviewers would have to disclose their affiliation with the business in question in the text of their review. Reviewers were generally offered the product for free or at a discounted price, in exchange for their review.

      Although, in theory, these reviewers could write their true opinion on the product – positive or negative – these incentivized reviews have tended to be overwhelmingly biased in favor of the product being rated.

    • Iceland’s Pirates head for power on wave of public anger

      A party that hangs a skull-and-crossbones flag at its HQ, and promises to clean up corruption, grant asylum to Edward Snowden and accept the bitcoin virtual currency, could be on course to form the next Icelandic government.

      The Pirate Party has found a formula that has eluded many anti-establishment groups across Europe. It has tempered polarising policies like looser copyright enforcement rules and drug decriminalisation with pledges of economic stability that have won confidence among voters.

      This has allowed it to ride a wave of public anger at perceived corruption among the political elite – the biggest election issue in a country where a 2008 banking collapse hit thousands of savers and government figures have been mired in an offshore tax furore following the Panama Papers leaks.

      If the Pirates emerge as the biggest party in an Oct. 29 parliamentary election – as opinion polls suggest – they will deliver another defeat to Europe’s mainstream politicians.

    • Hacking an election is about influence and disruption, not voting machines

      Every time there’s an election, the topic of hacking one comes to the surface. During a presidential election, that conversation gets louder. Yet, even the elections held every two years see some sort of vote hacking coverage. But can you really hack an election? Maybe, but that depends on your goals.

      The topic of election hacking is different this year, and that’s because someone is actually hacking political targets. Adding fuel to the fire, on Aug. 12, 2016, during an event in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump warned the crowd that if he loses the battleground state, it’s because the vote was rigged.

      “The only way we can lose, in my opinion — and I really mean this, Pennsylvania — is if cheating goes on,” Trump said. This was no random remark either, Pennsylvania voting has been called in to question before. Such was the case when Republican supporters claimed Mitt Romney lost the state in 2008 due to fraud.

      When it comes to hacking elections, most people imagine voting machines compromised in such a way that a vote for candidate ‘A’ actually counts as a vote for candidate ‘B’ – or the votes just disappear.

    • If the election is hacked, we may never know

      The upcoming U.S. presidential election can be rigged and sabotaged, and we might never even know it happened.

      This Election Day voters in 10 states, or parts of them, will use touch-screen voting machines with rewritable flash memory and no paper backup of an individual’s vote; some will have rewritable flash memory. If malware is inserted into these machines that’s smart enough to rewrite itself, votes can be erased or assigned to another candidate with little possibility of figuring out the actual vote.

      In precincts where vote tallies raise suspicions, computer scientists will be called in the day after the election to conduct forensics. But even if a hack is suspected, or proven, it would likely be impossible to do anything about it.

    • The Clinton Foundation’s Legacy in Haiti – “Haitians are more than upset…”

      The Miami Herald has a video of Haitian activists protesting the Democratic National Convention, primarily because of the “Clinton Foundation’s spending in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.” According to The Nation in a piece titled The Shelters That Clinton Built, the Clinton Foundation provided Haiti with trailers “structurally unsafe and laced with formaldehyde” that “came from the same company being sued for sickening Hurricane Katrina victims.” Pertaining to the Clinton Foundation’s legacy in Haiti, The New York Times writes “the Clintons have become prime targets of blame for the country’s woes.”

      As a result of the Clinton Foundation’s controversial involvement with Haiti, The Huffington Post reports that Florida’s Haitian-American community might have a profound impact on Election Day. Ryan Grim explains the influence of Florida’s Haitian-American community in a piece titled With All Eyes On Haiti, Its Diaspora In Florida Could Swing A Close Election. With a sudden shift in U.S. immigration policy dividing Haitian families, alongside the Clinton Foundation’s role in Haiti, Florida’s Haitian community’s discontent might impact other ethnic groups on Election Day.

      It’s this backdrop that motivated me to interview Harvard-trained investor and financial analyst Charles Ortel. Dady Cherry of Haiti Liberte’ refers to Ortel as “one of the world’s finest financial analysts” and Mr. Ortel has spent over one year investigating the financial peculiarities of the Clinton Foundation. He’s also researched extensively on the Foundation’s involvement with Haiti and other countries around the globe.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • EFF Exposing The Back-Room Deals That Allow Corporations And Governments To Control The Web

      The EFF is publishing a series looking at the multitude of ways gatekeepers and governments can make content disappear from the web — using everything from legislation they helped craft to applying pressure to multiple points between the content they want removed and the person who put it there.

      But not every tool used to remove content comes in a form that can be contested by the general public. Some of these tools are the result of private agreements with private entities — agreements in which users have no say. The EFF calls it “Shadow Regulation.”

    • Shadow Regulation: the Back-Room Threat to Digital Rights
    • Singapore jails teenager YouTube blogger for ‘insulting Christians and Muslims’ with videos

      A teenage boy has been jailed in Singapore for “wounding the feelings of Muslims and Christians” in a series of YouTube videos, sparking condemnation from the United Nations.

      It is the second time 17-year-old Amos Yee has been imprisoned over his blogs, being sentenced to four weeks in jail last year over footage where he compared revered former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to Hitler and Jesus.

      He has been jailed for six weeks and fined $2,000 (£1,150) on six charges of intending to wound the feelings of Muslims and/or Christians and two of failing to attend a police station, the Straits Times reported.

    • Indonesia wants to criminalize memes

      If Trump’s job was to punish every internet user who ridiculed him with a meme, he’d sure have a lot of work to do. Luckily, U.S. netizens have enough freedom of speech to laugh at him as often as Harambe memes appear on Twitter.

      Yet making the use of memes illegal is not out of this world. Indonesia’s government is looking to criminalize internet users for posting them.

      Its Electronic Information and Transactions Law (ITE) punishes any electronic media communication that incites fear or embarrassment under its defamation article. The public has continuously called for the article’s removal, but instead Indonesia is introducing more restrictions to freedom of expression. Posting memes, texts, pictures, or videos would be punishable if found to have a defamatory or slanderous tone.

      According to the Indonesian government, this provision stands to prevent and control cyberbullying. But it can further be used as a political tool against opposition during elections.

    • Indonesia Government Introduces Vague Law Making Offensive/Embarrassing Memes Illegal

      Confession time: I think memes generally suck. Yes, yes, I know you love them, but when I think of memes, I tend to think of political memes on Facebook that I then have to drop Snopes.com links into the comments on, stupid copyright trolling over them, and that time Axl Rose tried to DMCA a meme so that nobody would see that he dipped into the chocolate fudge too much recently.

      Which is why I’m going to move to Indonesia, where the government has decided it’s time to put a strict control policy on any memes it finds offensive, embarrassing or that incite fear.

    • Jack Dorsey Is Losing Control of Twitter

      A few days before Twitter’s Sept. 8 board meeting, as the company’s finance team readied a presentation, it received conflicting directions on a crucial question. Should their slides reflect Twitter’s prospects as an independent company or delve into the benefits of getting acquired?

      Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive officer, argued that the 10-year-old company should remain on its current course and work to capitalize on recent product improvements and success in streaming live video, people familiar with the discussions said. Ev Williams, a former CEO who has a history of clashing with Dorsey, was in favor of exploring a sale. Other directors agreed they had a fiduciary duty to consider that option. The board ultimately decided to consider takeover prospects after getting an expression of interest from a potential acquirer, which led it to hire Goldman Sachs and Allen & Co. to evaluate possible bids.

    • Kerry Dougherty: Censorship backfires in Neptune Festival sand sculpture competition

      They never learn.

      When those in power try to silence the little guys, it often backfires. And when heavy-handed actions to stomp out tiny voices of dissent are exposed, the resulting tsunami of publicity often helps the group that was targeted.

      Case in point: Last weekend’s sand sculpture caper.

      A coalition of grassroots groups, opposed to light rail but unable to afford expensive radio and TV spots, entered the freelance division of the Neptune Festival sand sculpture competition. For a $15 entry fee, they created a modest little mound of sand with a simple message: “Please vote no light rail.”

    • How countries like China and Russia are able to control the internet

      In January 2011, protests broke out across Egypt to demand an end to the despotic and repressive regime of Hosni Mubarak. The protests were largely organized online, through social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Mubarak quickly realized this, and launched a counterattack: He severed all access to the internet from within Egypt.

    • Dam Busters screenwriter fell foul of Hollywood’s Nazi
    • British screenwriter was caught up in a censorship battle with Nazis

      A new book has revealed that the British Dam Busters screenwriter was caught up in a censorship battle with ‘Hitler’s Hollywood consul’ over the ‘negative’ portrayal of Germany after World War I.

      The book on RC Sherriff’s life suggests that Nazi agent Georg Gyssling managed to persuade Universal Pictures to halt The Road Back, All Quiet on the Western Front and Three Comrades in the 1930s.

      Roland Wales, who has written From Journey’s End to the Dam Busters: The Life of RC Sherriff, Playwright of the Trenches, said the studios bowed down to Gyssling’s demands in fear of losing revenue from German box offices.

      He said: ‘The Germans had a Consul in LA, a man called George Gyssling, part of whose job it was to keep up to date with the studio’s plans, and to encourage them to amend their films’

    • Art, Censorship and Race in Small-Town Idaho

      A home across the street from the school, where a Confederate flag regularly flies, became the center of the counterprotest movement with people running up and down the street waving Confederate flags, shouting “All Lives Matter” and “White Power.” In one instance, counterprotesters offered the students fried chicken and watermelon, saying, “Not that fried chicken and watermelon is racist or anything.”

      In the quiet of this past Sunday morning [Sept. 25], with nobody to witness but God and the approving eyes across the street, school officials painted all the parking spaces black, including Tamia’s. I wonder who painted the spaces and how they felt. Tamia was not informed.

    • A Call for Difficult Conversations, Not Censorship

      Re “Will the Left Survive Millennials?,” by Lionel Shriver (Op-Ed, Sept. 23):

      My initial response to Ms. Shriver’s keynote address at the Brisbane Writers Festival last month — walking out and writing about why — seemed to be largely misunderstood. Many took the reaction to be a call for censorship and responded with fury. They took as a given the right to say and write what they want, without critique, consequence or interrogation of intent.

      The debate is not about censorship: People can write in the voices they please. The real question is whether they should. It is about the structures that define the world in which we live and work.

      Fiction does not exist in a vacuum: It becomes people’s realities, because so often the only exposure we have to those with very different lived experiences to our own is through stories. But this discussion is larger than the world of fiction.

      Ms. Shriver claimed that those who now fight for equality have become the oppressor. Her words betrayed a disappointment that the times are changing, and lamented that people are so terrified of being caught saying the wrong thing that they instead choose not to say anything at all.

    • Here Are the Racist Code Words Trump’s Twitter Fans Are Now Using to Avoid Getting Banned
    • Racist Users Use Secret Codes on Twitter to Avoid Censorship
    • Ben Affleck Called Out for Censorship During ‘Accountant’ Press Junket
    • How Media Censorship Is Bringing Journalists Out On The Streets Of Kashmir
    • Even in difficult times, primary duty is to report: Mir Hilal, editor of banned daily Kashmir Reader
    • Banning Kashmir Reader
    • #Day90: Veteran Journalist Joins Protest Against ‘Kashmir Reader’ Ban, Recounts Experiences
    • Shutting down the messenger
    • Journalists hold sit-in outside Civil Secretariat
    • Government Bans Kashmir Newspaper, Fearing Anti-India Violence
    • #Day89: Ban on ‘Kashmir Reader’, Journalists Take Protest March To Secretariat
    • To Beat YouTube Censorship, Well-Known YouTuber Experiments With WebTorrent

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Other people’s computers

      The Internet of Things (IoT), which are devices connected to the internet, is gaining momentum. On the positive side, the idea of being able to remotely activate your central heating, or for your fridge to tell you when you’re nearly out of milk, is rather exciting. However, the darker side of IoT is its vulnerability to hacking, privacy concerns and consumer rights. This was a common theme at last Friday’s Gikii conference, an event dedicated to combining law, technology and popular culture. Think of tech law enthusiasts using episodes of Hannibal to illustrate cybersecurity flaws. Stand-up for geek lawyers.

      An opening talk by Jon Crowcroft, described the IoT as, ““Take all the stuff in the world with moving parts, and now make it as easy to use and reliable as your printer – then put it the far side of the Internet.” (Quote attributed to Derek McAuley.) The idea is that everyday objects are enhanced with internet connectivity. Done well, it should convey health, energy efficiency and productivity benefits. Done badly, and you have privacy concerns, hacking and consumers not being able to access goods and services they’ve paid for.

      Crowcroft noted some challenges of current IoT models, which largely rely on conveying information from devices to the cloud, and back again. He suggested three main critiques: 1) Poor Availability & Latency (connecting through the cloud introduces latency, dependent on internet connectivity), 2) Higher energy use and expense, and 3) Lower security and vulnerability to attack. Combined, these factors imply that the IoT does not currently offer the promised automated world.

    • Neighbor Describes NSA Contractor’s Arrest: “I Thought the Third World War Started”

      The raid took place on August 27. “I thought the Third World War had started,” Bennett told me via telephone, describing the sight of his neighbor of 10 years being hauled away by heavily armed FBI agents.

      Bennett recalls seeing “two dozen of these guys in camo uniforms, with rifles, come running across the yard knocking down his fence. … They dragged him out, threw him on the ground, handcuffed him, and took him away.” He says the FBI agents remained at Martin’s home until “3 or 4 o’clock in the morning” removing computer equipment and papers.

      Prior to this conversation, Bennett had not been informed of the reason for his neighbor’s arrest. He describes Martin, age 51, as a “good neighbor,” but someone who never talked about his work: “I knew he worked in Washington, but I didn’t know what he did.” Bennett added that he didn’t recall Martin ever talking about the U.S. government or fellow Booz Allen NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

    • NSA has lost some terrorists because of encryption, its top lawyer says [Ed: more anti-crypto hysteria]
    • Embarrassed about your cyber hygiene? UK’s new NatCybSecCent can help

      This week, the UK’s new National Cyber Security Centre, NatCybSecCent for short (and NCSC for super-short), has begun its operations. It’s part of GCHQ and will bring together a number of related groups: CESG—the information security arm of GCHQ—the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, CERT-UK, and the Centre for Cyber Assessment. The NCSC will ultimately be based in London, with a team of around 700 led by Ciaran Martin.

      Mr Martin is a man with his finger on the pulse. Fully three weeks before prime minister Theresa May announced that the UK no longer wanted migrants coming over here and daring to save people’s lives in our health system, Mr Martin had already announced the digital equivalent: the Great British Firewall, presumably building on the glorious tradition of The Great British Bake Off.

    • UK Stands Up GCHQ National Cyber Security Center in London
    • Government takes fight to hackers with National Cyber Security Centre
    • National Cyber Security Centre opens doors
    • NSA contractor from Glen Burnie charged with stealing top-secret information
    • NSA contractor charged with stealing highly classified information
    • FBI Arrested NSA Contractor For Walking Off With ‘Highly Classified Information’

      The NY Times story about this claims that the information Martin had was “computer code.” There’s a lot of speculation on the Twitters that this is related to the infamous Shadow Brokers “leak” of NSA hacking tools. The dates don’t fully line up. The Shadow Brokers leak involved code from 2013. The DOJ claims that the code it found Martin had is from 2014 — though it’s certainly possible that the investigation into Shadow Brokers led them to Martin (the arrest came the week after the Shadow Brokers info went public).

      [...]

      As always, it will be interesting to hear the other side of this story. We’ve certainly seen the DOJ come down hard on former NSA employees and contractors, claiming they had made off with classified information, when the later details turned out to show a lot less. But this is clearly a story worth following…

      It should also make you wonder just how many “controls” the NSA has really put in place to keep employees and contractors from walking off with highly classified information. We know that Snowden did it back in 2013, but the NSA keeps insisting that it’s put in place more controls to stop it from happening again. And, if this truly is exploit code, this is much worse. Snowden made off with information about certain programs — but not actual code.

    • Judge Overturns Denied Email Search Warrant, Says Gov’t Can Get It All, Dig Through It Later

      The “Magistrate’s Revolt” was fun while it lasted. Post-Snowden, a few magistrate judges began viewing law enforcement’s electronic search warrant applications with a bit more skepticism. These judges also rolled back a bit of the deference extended to the federal government, forcing the DOJ to narrow search requests or drop gag orders.

      The first flames of the revolt to be snuffed out occurred in a DC district court — the same district where “In re Sealed Case” is the most common docket entry — when Judge Richard Roberts overrode two decisions by magistrate judge John Facciola. The deference to “government knows best” was reinstated and the feds got their gag order and broad search requests approved.

      The same thing is happening in the center of the country. Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy reports that a Kansas district court judge has reversed magistrate judge David Waxse’s denial of an email search warrant.

    • Yahoo calls report of secret email scanning ‘misleading’
    • FU Yahoo!

      The security scare that surfaced about two weeks ago after it was revealed that information on about 500 million Yahoo users had been compromised was bad enough. Even worse was the fact that the compromise began in 2014, with word just now being revealed. The bullet in the head was the revelation Wednesday by Reuters that in 2015 the company evidently searched through its customers incoming emails, spying for either the NSA or the FBI.

      With that news, any nostalgia I had left for the brand completely disappeared. As far as I’m concerned, the site can now completely disappear from the Internet and I won’t feel so much as a twinge of regret that it’s gone. I can forgive the type of incompetence that led to the big breach, but I can’t forgive a website that betrays the trust of its users.

      On Tuesday, just hours after Reuters published its exclusive story on Yahoo’s cooperation with our spymasters, the Electronic Frontier Foundation called the incident “the next front in the fight against mass surveillance.”

      The EFF article concluded by saying “this is a perfect example of why we need to reform Section 702 and rein in the NSA’s mass surveillance programs. Absent such reform, Congress must not reauthorize Section 702 when it expires at the end of next year.”

    • Yahoo Issues Tone Deaf Non-Denial Denial Of Email Scanning Report

      Of course, people are parsing every word of that and noting some… remaining questions. The article is misleading? Okay, how? Which parts? What did it get wrong? You narrowly interpret every government request? Great. So explain what was found here, or explain the specifics of what Yahoo is doing. “Does not exist on our systems”? Did it ever? Does it exist on someone else’s system? Does a different mail scanning system exist? Lots of people would like to know.

      More importantly, note that they say they want to minimize disclosures. But that’s not the key issue here, as Chris Soghoian points out. The Reuters report was on the searching of all emails, not the disclosure bit. Yes, sure, it seems clear that after searching everyone’s email, Yahoo likely only “disclosed” a small number to the NSA, but that’s not really the point, is it?

      I mean, I guess this statement is better than Yahoo’s original: “Yahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States” statement. But, it’s not very reassuring. Much more important is what Yahoo could have said, but didn’t.

    • NY Times And Reuters Claim Totally Different Explanations For Yahoo’s Email Scanning

      On Wednesday afternoon the NY Times released a report that appeared to clarify some of the questions around Tuesday’s Reuters report about Yahoo scanning all emails. According to the NY Times, unlike the original Reuters report that talked about a “directive” (which would imply an NSA surveillance program such as the one under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act), the scanning was actually the result of a more traditional FISA Court order.

    • Yahoo denies building secret app to bulk scan emails for US intelligence

      YAHOO HAS unconvincingly denied accusations that it built an application to enable it to bulk-scan emails on the request of intelligence agencies following a demand by the US government.

      The decision by CEO Marissa Mayer to comply with the order, rather than fight it, reportedly led to the departure of Yahoo’s highly rated chief information security officer, Alex Stamos, although Stamos has chosen to keep schtum on the matter.

      The revelation was made on Tuesday in a Reuters report quoting three former employees of the company.

      However, Yahoo has finally got round to hitting back, describing the reports as “misleading”.

      “We narrowly interpret every government request for user data to minimise disclosure. The mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems,” said Yahoo.

      However, in a series of tweets, privacy campaigner Christopher Soghoian described the company’s curt denial as “carefully worded”, and said that Yahoo “has a history of putting out carefully written, deceptive denials when it comes to NSA surveillance”.

    • Yahoo Said to Have Aided U.S. Email Surveillance by Adapting Spam Filter

      A system intended to scan emails for child pornography and spam helped Yahoo satisfy a secret court order requiring it to search for messages containing a computer “signature” tied to the communications of a state-sponsored terrorist organization, several people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

      Two government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the Justice Department obtained an individualized order from a judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court last year. Yahoo was barred from disclosing the matter.

    • Facebook Messenger now lets you toggle end-to-end encryption [Ed: False, misleading claims. The FBI's Comey never even mentioned or shamed Facebook with the T word. It’s not because he forgot; it’s because they’re supine, complicit. When Facebook talks about encryption, safety, privacy etc. it’s probably alluding to resistance to China/Russia/boogeyman, not NATO/5 Eyes. How much is the corporate media willing to lie about Facebook encryption and privacy to entrap, mislead, potentially kill activists? Facebook helps the governments spy, retains private keys, we bet...]

      With the flick of a switch back in April, the popular international messaging service WhatsApp turned on end-to-end encryption for every conversation in its system, dramatically boosting security for its 1 billion-person userbase. At long last, parent company Facebook has finally rolled out the same protections for users of its standard Messenger service. Today, users can toggle the “Secret Conversations” feature on in settings to enable end-to-end encryption, ensuring that nobody can pry into chat content but the participants.

    • Basically All Big Tech Companies Deny Scanning Communications For NSA Like Yahoo Is Doing

      So, the big story yesterday was clearly the report that Yahoo had secretly agreed to scan all email accounts for a certain character string as sent to them by the NSA (or possibly the FBI). There has been lots of parsing of the Reuters report (and every little word can make a difference), but there are still lots of really big questions about what is actually going on. One big one, of course, is whether or not other tech companies received and/or complied with similar demands. So it seems worth nothing that they’ve basically all issued pretty direct and strenuous denials to doing anything like what Yahoo has been accused of doing.

      Twitter initially gave a “federal law prohibits us from answering your question” answer — and a reference to Twitter’s well documented lawsuit against the US government over its desire to reveal more details about government requests for info. However, it later clarified that it too was not doing what Yahoo was doing and had never received such a request. Microsoft’s response was interesting in that it says it’s not doing what Yahoo is, but refused to say if it had ever received a demand to do so. Google said it had never received such a request and would refuse to comply if it had. Facebook has also denied receiving such a request, and, like Google, says it would fight against complying. This still leaves lots of unanswered questions about why Yahoo gave in. Again, historically, Yahoo had been known to fight against these kinds of requests, which makes you wonder what exactly was going on here.

    • Government contractor arrested for stealing top secret data

      A federal contractor suspected of leaking powerful National Security Agency hacking tools has been arrested and charged with stealing highly classified information from the U.S. government, according to court records and a law enforcement official familiar with the case.

      Harold Thomas Martin III, 51, of Glen Burnie, Md., was charged with theft of government property and unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials, authorities said. He was arrested in August after investigators searched his home in Glen Burnie and found documents and digital information stored on various devices that contained highly classified information, authorities said.

      [Read the full criminal complaint filed against Harold Thomas Martin III]

      Investigators are probing whether Martin was responsible for an apparent leak that led to a cache of NSA hacking tools appearing online in August, according to an official familiar with the case. Those tools included “exploits” that take advantage of unknown flaws in firewalls, for instance, allowing the government to control a network.

    • N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets

      The F.B.I. secretly arrested a National Security Agency contractor in recent weeks and is investigating whether he stole and disclosed highly classified computer codes developed to hack into the networks of foreign governments, according to several senior law enforcement and intelligence officials.

      The theft raises the embarrassing prospect that for the second time in three years, an insider has managed to steal highly damaging secret information from the N.S.A. In 2013, Edward J. Snowden, who was also a contractor for the agency, took a vast trove of documents that were later passed to journalists, exposing N.S.A. surveillance programs in the United States and abroad.

      The contractor was identified as Harold T. Martin 3rd, 51, of Glen Burnie, Md., according to a criminal complaint filed in late August. He was charged with theft of government property, and unauthorized removal or retention of classified documents. During an F.B.I. raid of his house, agents seized documents and digital information stored on electronic devices. A large percentage of the materials found in his house and car contained highly classified information.

      At the time, F.B.I. agents interviewed Mr. Martin, and he initially denied having taken the documents and digital files. The agency later said he had stated that he knew he was not authorized to have the materials. According to the complaint, he told the agency that “he knew what he had done was wrong and that he should not have done it because he knew it was unauthorized.”

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • ‘National Bird’ Exclusive Trailer: Errol Morris and Wim Wenders Present Story of Drone Warfare Whistleblowers

      Errol Morris and Wim Wenders both have new films out this year: Morris’ “The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography” examines the life and work of polaroid portrait artist Elsa Dorfman, and Wenders’ “The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez” captures a conversation between a man and woman that encompasses the totality of life. But the two acclaimed directors have also executive produced Sonia Kennebeck’s documentary feature debut “National Bird,” about drone warfare and the three whistleblowers determined to break the silence around the controversial affair. Watch the trailer for the film below.

    • Feds indict 80 people — including 18 corrections officers — in ‘massive’ Maryland prison corruption case

      Federal authorities have won indictments against 80 people, including corrections officers and inmates, in an alleged conspiracy to sneak heroin, cocaine, cellphones, pornography and other contraband into the Eastern Correctional Institution in Westover.

      The largest federal indictment in Maryland history is the latest to allege that officers and inmates used sex, drugs and violence to run a criminal enterprise out of a state prison facility.

      It mirrors the 2013 case in which the Black Guerrilla Family gang used similar methods of bribery and intimidation to seize control of the Baltimore City Detention Center.

      Federal prosecutors now charge 18 corrections officers, 35 inmates and 27 others in a scheme in which the officers allegedly took bribes to sneak contraband into ECI, the state’s largest prison.

    • Decolonization—not western liberals—established human rights on the global agenda

      A paradox sits at the heart of the human rights movement. For decades it has made strong claims about the universality of human rights but then proceeded to present a discounted version of the universality story.

      Standard historical accounts have privileged the role of western actors, and their perspectives on historical causalities. These have been accompanied by an overemphasis on the 1940s and 1970s in explaining the emergence of human rights—an emphasis that reveals a scholarly addiction to “human rights moments” and iconic histories, instead of more richly contextualized narratives over time.

      The above-mentioned emphasis has resulted in a huge gap in knowledge concerning the intervening period – covering about 25 years from 1948 to the mid-1970s. In this period, the largest transformation of sovereign power in world history took place, namely decolonization. Surely, this structural transformation in the international system of states played a role in the post-1945 emergence of human rights en route to their contemporary significance?

    • Court acquits activist for violent anti-Zwate Piet protest

      The court acquitted anti-Zwarte Piet activist Jerry Afriyie on Thursday. Afriyie was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer during a violent protest in Gouda two years ago, NOS reports.

      During the Sinterklaas arrival festival in Gouda in 2014 supporters and opponents of blackface Zwarte Piet gathered to protest at the town hall. They had no permission to protest there and the police ordered them to leave. The atmosphere turned nasty and a total of 90 people were arrested, both in the pro- and anti-Zwarte Piet groups.

      Afriyie was the only one to end up in court, according to NOS. According to the Public Prosecutor, he resisted arrest and injured a police officer by pinching him hard in the leg.

    • Imam beaten with a SHOE on live TV after claiming women SHOULDN’T wear the burka

      The Muslim cleric was repeatedly beaten with a shoe when an on-air row over the Islamic veil turned violent.

      The fight broke out live on Egypt’s popular LTC TV during a discussion about the place of the burka in the Islamic world.

      Sydney imam Mostafa Rashid claimed that the headscarf is a cultural tradition rather than a religious duty.

    • Undercover Video Inside Islamic School In The UK — A Teacher Instructs That Gays Must Be Thrown From Tall Buildings

      Good news: If you aren’t married when you have sex with someone, you just get beaten — perhaps to death — because you are to be given 100 lashes.

    • Ramsey Orta, who filmed Eric Garner death, sentenced to 4 years

      The Staten Island man who filmed Eric Garner’s final breaths was sentenced Monday to four years in prison for possession of a weapon and drug charges.

      Ramsey Orta told his family “it will be okay” in Staten Island Supreme Court as Justice Stephen Rooney read out his sentence.

      As court officers put handcuffs on Orta, protesters stood up in the courtroom, holding their fists in the air, flashing peace signs and chanting, “No justice no peace! F–k these racist police!”

    • Thailand bars entry to teenage HK activist ‘at China’s request’

      Thailand on Wednesday barred entry to a Hong Kong student activist who helped organize pro-democracy protests in the Chinese-ruled city in 2014, with a Thai newspaper saying he had been deported and “blacklisted” at China’s request.

      Bespectacled Joshua Wong, 19, was detained in Bangkok where he had been invited to speak at universities about Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Movement” street protests and on setting up his political party, Demosisto.

      He was later put on a plane back to Hong Kong where he told reporters Thai authorities had not given him a reason for refusing him entry but had shown him a document citing a security law. One officer had mentioned a “blacklist”, he said.

      “As a Hong Kong person, I did not expect that even if I do not enter mainland China, I would be inside a foreign detention center, detained by other police. This is unbelievable,” he said.

    • Officers tried to run over man before shooting him 14 times, video shows

      In the last seconds before he was shot 14 times, Joseph Mann dodged the police cruiser once, then twice. Dashboard video recorded the officer’s words inside the car: “Fuck this guy. I’m going to hit him.”

      “OK, go for it. Go for it,” his partner replies.

      The Mann family’s attorney amended his complaint against the city of Sacramento on Friday and sent a letter to the justice department requesting a civil rights investigation into the Sacramento fatal police shooting of Mann, a 51-year-old homeless man with a history of mental illness.

      “It’s disgusting,” attorney John Burris told the Guardian. “It raises the question that this might have been a deliberate, premeditated murder, that they intended to do what they did.”

    • Victims of Pakistan’s ‘honor’ killings

      Tasleem was just 18 years old when her brother shot her in the head. Her crime was marrying a man of her choice, considered a betrayal of a family’s honor among many in Pakistan who live by an ancient code of conduct.

      Last year, three people a day were killed in the name of “honor” in Pakistan: a total of 1,096 women and 88 men, according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, which says the true figure is likely higher because many such crimes go unreported.

      In 2014, the number was 1,005 women, including 82 children, up from 869 women killed a year earlier.

      Outrage at the practice has grown in recent months as Pakistani news channels have reported on girls who are shot, strangled or burned alive, most often by a brother or a parent.

      Pakistan’s conservative Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has promised to introduce legislation that will remove a legal loophole that allows the family of a murder victim to effectively pardon the murderer. The loophole is often invoked in honor killings to prevent any prosecution.

    • Tougher penalties proposed for carrying a knife

      People caught carrying knives in the street will be jailed for longer under new proposals.

      Carrying a knife while in a group or gang, or filming attacks for social media could also spell more jail time.

      The Sentencing Council for England and Wales says it wants sentences to better recognise public concern amid a rise in recorded knife offences.

      Justice Minister Sam Gyimah said sentences should reflect the “devastation” caused by knife crime.

      Police recorded almost 29,000 crimes involving knives in the 12 months to March 2016 – a 10% rise on the year before.

    • Pakistani scholar ordered home from Australian tour after anti-Semitic video emerges

      A Pakistani scholar visiting Australia for a speaking tour has been ordered home after a video sermon surfaced of him saying the world will be purified when every Jew is wiped out.

      Muhammad Raza Saqib Mustafai, who has a Facebook fan base of almost a million people, spoke at the Ghausia Masjid in Blacktown and the Al-Madinah Masjid in Liverpool over the long weekend.

    • California Passes Asset Forfeiture Reform Bill That Closes Federal Loophole, Adds Conviction Requirement

      After years of civil asset forfeiture abuse, legislators are finally fighting back. Reform bills have been offered up all over the country. Unfortunately, very few of them have made it to state governors’ desks intact. The DOJ itself has played an integral part in thwarting true forfeiture reform, but legislators are also battling powerful police unions and a law enforcement lobby that needs to do little more than say the words “drug dealer” to convince fence-straddlers to come down on their side.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Charter Joins AT&T In Using Lawsuits To Try And Slow Down Google Fiber

      For decades, incumbent broadband ISPs have all but owned state legislatures, often to the point where they’re quite literally allowed to write awful state law that actively harms state consumers. That’s why it has proven amusing to see these same ISPs cry like petulant children at Google Fiber’s disruption of the uncompetitive broadband market. AT&T, for example, has sued Louisville and Nashville for passing pole attachment reform that would speed up broadband deployment, all while claiming that doing so gives Google Fiber an unfair advantage.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • WIPO Conference Archive Missing Video Critical Of Artificial Intelligence, Social Media Giants

      This morning at the World Intellectual Property Organization General Assemblies, WIPO Director General Francis Gurry commented on the success of the WIPO Conference on the Global Digital Content Market, which took place in April. But the full video of the keynote speaker, who had sharp words for corporate internet giants and other new technologies, is missing from the archive.

      His comments were made during the WIPO General Assembly, as delegates were about to discuss the report of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. A short video was then aired presenting a summary of the conference. The keynote speaker [pdf] of the conference was Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist, music composer and performer, and author of numerous books, the latest “Who Owns the Future.”

    • WIPO Development Agenda Needs More Promotion, Country Involvement, Experts Say

      Has the adoption of the World Intellectual Property Organization Development Agenda in 2007 changed the culture of the organisation, and what did it achieve? According to panellists at a side event to this week’s WIPO General Assembly, the Development Agenda has not yet changed the culture of the organisation and its primary focus to support and protect intellectual property. However, WIPO should follow the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and collaborate with other UN agencies to include development consideration in its work, they say.

    • Vibrant Lauding Of “Historic” Marrakesh Treaty For The Blind At WIPO

      “Great victory”, “life-changing”, “historic milestone” – no adjectives were strong enough yesterday to celebrate the entry into force of the Marrakesh treaty at the World Intellectual Property Organization. The treaty, which went into effect on 30 September, “opens the door to the world’s knowledge,” to visually impaired people, but will need many more countries join, in particular countries that are major producers of special format books – the United States and the European Union.

10.05.16

Links 5/10/2016: New KDE (LTS), Mad Max Coming To GNU/Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 8:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop/Microsoft

    • Lenovo won’t make Windows 10 phones due to Microsoft’s commitment issues

      Lenovo’s COO, Gianfranco Lanci, has said that the Chinese tech giant doesn’t intend to release any new phones running Windows 10 Mobile. This is because he doubts Microsoft’s commitment to its floundering smartphone platform.

      Speaking at the Canalys Channel Forum 2016, Lanci said that while Windows 10 for desktops has been doing well in the business world, it has no plans to build smartphones using the operating system.

    • Latest Windows 10 Anniversary Update Build Sends Some Users To Reboot Loop Hell

      Those of you rocking a PC with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update may want to hold off on letting your system apply the latest round of fixes. There are several user complaints that Build 14393.222 (KB3194496), the seventh Cumulative Update since the Anniversary started flooding PCs in August, is borking systems by putting them into an endless reboot loop.

      The latest update package is supposed to deliver “quality improvements” in the form of several bug fixes for various issues, as well as improve the reliability of certain tasks, such as downloading and updating games from the Windows Store. Unfortunately, in many cases the installation fails somewhere along the way and rolls back the changes it made, as indicated by complaints posted to Microsoft’s support forums and Twitter. It also happened to me when I tried installing the update on my primary desktop.

    • More than half of PCs don’t have Windows 10 AU yet, and no one’s quite sure why

      Just 34.5 percent of all PCs are running Windows 10 version 1607, aka the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, according to AdDuplex, maker of a Windows 10 SDK for third-party app makers. The majority, 59.9 percent, are still running Windows 10 version 1511, also known as the Fall Update.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linus Torvalds admits ‘buggy crap’ made it into Linux 4.8

      Linus Torvalds gave the world Linux 4.8 earlier this week, but now appears to wish he didn’t after spotting some code he says can “kill the kernel.”

      When Torvalds announced Linux 4.8 on Sunday he said the final version added “a few stragging fixes since rc8.”

      But by Tuesday he was back on the Linux Kernel Mailing list apologising for a bug fix gone bad.

    • Open source compliance specs advance at LinuxCon

      The Linux Foundation announced the SPDX 2.1 and OpenChain 1.0 specs, which aim to clarify and standardize open source compliance and management.

      At LinuxCon Europe in Berlin, the Linux Foundation announced two new releases from different groups attempting to standardize open source license tracking, compliance, and supply chain management. The Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) Project announced SPDX 2.1 for tracking complex open source license dependencies, adding new “Snippets” and appendix features, and the OpenChain Workgroup released OpenChain 1.0 for managing the open source supply chain.

    • Linux: The free operating system alternative that changed computing

      For most of us, when we think of PCs, we think of Windows. But Microsoft’s popular and well-known operating system isn’t the only option.

      Many users choose to live without Windows and run different operating systems like Linux instead.

      This year is a special one for Linux, as October 5 marks 25 years since the release of the Linux kernel.

      If you’re discovering Linux for the first time, find out all about it below.

    • Linux 4.8 adds Pi, Surface support but Linus Torvalds fumes over ‘kernel-killing’ bug [Ed: Linux foes go full swing to make the kernel look bad]

      Announcing the 4.8 release on Sunday, Torvalds’ correspondence on the Linux kernel mailing list appeared calm despite a few “pretty small” issues carried over from the eighth and final 4.8 release candidate. He signed off with his usual “go forth and test” command.

      The several highlights of 4.8 include support for the touchscreen on Microsoft’s Surface 3 device and the Raspberry Pi 3′s System on a Chip.

    • Linux 4.8 Kernel Support for Microsoft Surface 3 touchscreen [Ed: Microsoft sites put a "Microsoft" slant on Linux]
    • Solving the Linux kernel code reviewer shortage

      Operating system security is top of mind right now, and Linux is a big part of that discussion. One of the questions to be solved is: How do we ensure that patches going upstream are properly reviewed?

      Wolfram Sang has been a Linux kernel developer since 2008, and frequently talks at Linux conferences around the world, like LinuxCon Berlin 2016, about ways to improve kernel development practices.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • An Everyday Linux User Review Of Kubuntu 16.04

        My experience with Kubuntu has done nothing to convince me that I want to use KDE in the long term. If I did want to use KDE long term then my experience with Manjaro would definitely make me lean in that direction.

        This is an LTS release yet there are so many little niggles. New users to Linux will not be enamoured with having to find solutions to simple things like installing software.

        The problems are worse than those that I experienced with Ubuntu. At least with Ubuntu I could install a separate application for installing the good stuff like Chrome. With Kubuntu it is command line all the way and searching forums for solutions.

        With Linux Mint being so good it is hard for me to recommend Kubuntu 16.04.

        I am not the only person to have issues with Kubuntu, read this review by Dedoimedo, he runs into many of the same issues as I did.

      • KDE Neon 5.8 User Edition Linux OS Offers the Latest KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS Desktop

        The KDE Neon development team proudly announced a few minutes ago the release of the KDE Neon 5.8 User Edition GNU/Linux distribution with the recently released KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS desktop environment.

      • KDE 5.8 LTS, Fedora PSA, Magic Security Dust

        The top story today was the release of KDE Plasma 5.8 which was covered by all the top sites. This release brings some new features and long term support. It’s already in KDE neon as well. Elsewhere, The Inquirer began a new series on the legends of Linux and Fedora’s Adam Williamson posted a public service announcement for version 24. A bit of drama emerged from Andrew Ayer’s systemd post and Martin Owens ruminated on Free Software Faith.

      • KDE Turning 20, Launches Plasma 5.8 LTS Desktop To Celebrate Its Birthday
      • openSUSE: Beta 3 Release Updates FireFox, KDE Applications, VirtualBox

        The openSUSE Leap 42.2 Beta 3 was released today one day ahead of schedule and the last beta for 42.2 brought quite a few new versions for people to test.

        VirtualBox was upgraded from version 5.0.24 in Beta 2 to version 5.1.4 and there were an enormous amount of fixes applied to this newer version, which was released in August.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • Arch Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Releases WildFly Application Server Version 10.1

        Improved load balancing is accomplished through a new profile, called “load-balancer” in the default domain.xml file. Profiles in domain mode allow for centralized management of multiple nodes (physical or virtual). This allows for multiple instances of WildFly that can be configured to provide different services.

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • FOSS Wave: Goa, India

          These sessions mark the beginning of FOSS Wave: Goa, India. We have seen a lot of enthusiasm in this event and many people were interested in learning about FOSS and cutting-edge technologies. Contributors are already flowing in and we expect more in the near future!

        • X crash during Fedora update when system has hybrid graphics and systemd-udev is in update

          Hi folks! This is a PSA about a fairly significant bug we’ve recently been able to pin down in Fedora 24+.

          Here’s the short version: especially if your system has hybrid graphics (that is, it has an Intel video adapter and also an AMD or NVIDIA one, and it’s supposed to switch to the most appropriate one for what you’re currently doing – NVIDIA calls this ‘Optimus’), DON’T UPDATE YOUR SYSTEM BY RUNNING DNF FROM THE DESKTOP. (Also if you have multiple graphics adapters that aren’t strictly ‘hybrid graphics’; the bug affects any case with multiple graphics adapters).

        • Fedora 24 Users: Don’t Run “DNF Update” From The Desktop

          Fedora 24 users are advised against currently updating your system using the common dnf update command when running GNOME, KDE, or any other graphical desktop. Due to an awkward bug being explored, it could leave your system in an unhappy state.

        • Fedora Devs Warn Users Not to Run “dnf update” Inside a Desktop on Fedora 24

          Earlier today, October 4, 2016, Fedora Project’s Adam Williamson published a public service announcement (PSA) to inform the Fedora Linux community about an important issue with the internal update process.

          It appears that many users of the Fedora 24 operating system have reported in the last 24 hours that they are getting “duplicated packages” and “kernel updates not working” errors when attempting to run the “dnf update” command to update their installations with new package versions released through the official software repositories.

    • Debian Family

      • My Free Software Activities in September 2016

        My monthly report covers a large part of what I have been doing in the free software world. I write it for my donators (thanks to them!) but also for the wider Debian community because it can give ideas to newcomers and it’s one of the best ways to find volunteers to work with me on projects that matter to me.

      • Derivatives

        • Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15 “Nev” Is Shipping with Linux Kernel 4.4 LTS, GNOME 3.22

          We reported a couple of days ago that the Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 “Atticus” operating system had reached end of life on September 30, 2016, and its repositories will be closing too on October 10 to make room for the next Parsix GNU/Linux release.

          That’s right, we’re talking here about Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15 “Nev,” which was already announced last week by the developers of the Debian-based operating system and reported right here on this space. It looks like work on Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15 “Nev” had already begun, and the development team is teasing us with its new features.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Dell EMC ‘backs’ Huawei open-source management disrupter

    LinuxCon Berlin Huawei today announced OpenSDS, an open-source project to replace vendor-specific storage controllers and says it has the weight of world number three Dell EMC behind it.

    It’s understood OpenSDS was presented to Linux Foundation reps on a recent visit to China.

    The idea is that vendors’ products would plug into one side of the finished OpenSDS and third parties’ tools and software, such as Docker, Kubernetes or OpenStack, into the other.

  • What CIOs need to know about open source forking

    Forking is a concept that can strike terror into the heart of any CIO that relies on open source software. Here’s how to make sure you’re on the right side of the split.

  • Open Source MANO Issues First Release

    ETSI’s Open Source MANO (OSM) group has today announced the availability of its OSM Release ONE, an open source Management and Orchestration (MANO) software stack closely aligned with ETSI NFV, and focused on helping industry accelerate the implementation of network virtualization. The OSM community aims to deliver a production-quality open source MANO stack that meets the requirements of commercial NFV networks.

    Available less than six months since the inaugural meeting of the OSM community, Release ONE has been engineered, tested and documented to allow for rapid installation in operator labs worldwide that seek to create a scalable and interoperable open source MANO environment. Release ONE substantially enhances interoperability with other components (VNFs, VIMs, SDN controllers) and creates a plugin framework to make platform maintenance and extensions significantly easier to provide and support.

  • Magisk Updated to v7, Now Completely Open Source

    Amongst the most notable changes, Magisk is now fully open source from v7 onwards, including the binaries that it makes use of. In addition to this, the Magisk Manager is now a completely different app altogether, becoming a part of the core experience. New features and improvements are planned, so we can be sure that things will continue to improve in the future.

  • Nextcloud 10.0.1 Maintenance Release Improves the Updater, Patches Over 40 Bugs

    The Nextcloud developers have released recently the first maintenance update to the Nextcloud 10 series of the open-source and cross-platform self-hosting cloud server forked from ownCloud.

  • Study: open source groups take security serious

    The IT security practices of some open source communities are exemplary, shows a study for the European Commission and European Parliament. Many communities use experts to ensure software security and to help their developers avoid security flaws. “These communities take security serious”, says Alberto Dominguez Serra, one of the authors working for Everis, a IT consultancy.

  • ZeroMQ founder Pieter Hintjens dies

    Pieter Hintjens, Belgian software developer and past president of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), gave much of his time and effort to the open-source community.

    He did so even up until the day he planned for his own death, which was today.

    Hintjens, who chose euthanasia today after dealing with terminal cancer, was a writer and a programmer who spent much of his life building large software systems and online communities, which he described as “Living Systems.”

  • It’s good to be an open source pro in Europe

    Open source employees in Europe have it good, especially when we compare that market to the rest of the world. This is according to a new report by Dice and The Linux Foundation. The report says that out of 1,000 European respondents, 60 per cent said it would be fairly easy to find a new job this year. Globally, the figure stands at about 50 per cent.

    “Demand for open source talent is growing and companies struggle to find experienced professionals to fill open roles,” said Bob Melk, President of Dice. “Rising salaries for open source professionals indicate companies recognize the need to attract, recruit and retain qualified open source professionals on a global scale. Regardless of where they reside around the world, these professionals are motivated by the opportunity to work on interesting projects.”

  • The 2016 Open Source Jobs Report Update: Insights From European Open Source Professionals
  • Walmart opens website to OS community
  • @WalmartLabs applies Electrode to get current with web dev
  • WalmartLabs open sources platform that powers Walmart.com
  • WalmartLabs open sources its React-powered universal application platform that underlines Walmart.com
  • Introducing Electrode, an open source release from WalmartLabs
  • These open-source compute technologies can help you build and scale your apps faster

    From ordering food, to finding a good doctor in the vicinity or enhancing our learning skills, most of us use an app, whether we are a teenager, in our 30s or even a septuagenarian.

    Not just big brands or multi-national companies, even small and medium businesses and startups are going down the app route. In fact, even your small neighbourhood street food joint wants you to rate their food and service on a popular restaurant search and discovery app because it means better business and value.

    For most organisations today, there are no second thoughts on whether an app is vital for their growth or not. The advantages of having an app are evident – from being able to stay on top of the customers’ mind and building brand loyalty, to being able to provide value to the customers, and doubling up as a marketing channel, apps are playing a vital role.

  • Tibco releases IoT integration toolkit to open source
  • Open Source Project Flogo Pushes IoT Integration and Connectivity to the Edge

    TIBCO Software Inc., a global leader in integration and analytics, today announced the immediate availability of its ultra-lightweight IoT integration solution, Project Flogo™. Its tiny open source integration engine allows application and business logic to run on edge devices, simplifying IoT integration challenges, avoiding technological lock-in, and reducing costs.

  • Tips from a software engineer for a balanced life

    Kent Dodds is a busy, busy guy. He’s a full stack JavaScript engineer at PayPal, hosts JavaScript Air, co-hosts React30, is an instructor on Egghead.io, is a Google Developer Expert, and spends a lot of time on Twitter and GitHub.

    He’s speaking at All Things Open this year on automating the open source contributions and maintenance management process in two sessions: Managing an Open Source Project and How to Open Source Your Stuff.

  • How to champion your committers

    A number of companies today proudly wear the open source badge to show their dedication to various projects, particular communities, or simply the idea of free software licensing. Many have gone down the Red Hat business route, creating a revenue model based on support and services, while others have built their business around proprietary features and add-ons to open source projects.

  • Aditya Mukerjee: Crossing the Language Divide in Open Source

    This fascinating talk from September’s GitHub Universe 2016 in San Francisco by Aditya Mukerjee, an engineer at Stripe, made me think a lot about language privilege and global digital inclusion. Mukerjee grabs you in his opening remarks, “I always keep my eye out for the ways technology can empower the disenfranchised — how it can amplify the voices of the subaltern. And it’s crucial to listen to those voices if we want to solve the biggest problems that the world faces.”

  • Web Browsers

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Free Software Faith for the Long Term

      But that naturally led to the in-fighting. It’s typical for the front runner to be targeted by all the also-ran distributions. The FSF targeted Ubuntu’s practicalist concessions (even though they were fairly minimal), Other distributions ripped Ubuntu and their community apart, trying to block Ubuntu’s success. I’m not saying they meant to do it, or that it was a conspiracy. But that these other communities did not see Ubuntu’s success as their own success and naturally tried to undermine it as humans are likely to do.

      So for very human reasons, we’re here with no real champion for Free Software in the practical arena. Ubuntu has fallen for its own hype and is not able to being the Free Software faith with it, even if it was successful. The societal and long term benefits of Free software remain largely unknown to the majority of the world and we wait patiently for a successor that can try again to change the world.

    • Free Software Directory meeting recap for September 30th, 2016
    • Twenty-two new GNU releases in September

      apl-1.6a
      autoconf-archive-2016.09.16
      autogen-5.18.12
      bash-4.4
      denemo-2.0.12
      drgeo-16.10a
      emacs-25.1
      gawk-4.1.4
      global-6.5.5
      gnucash-2.6.14
      gnuchess-6.2.3
      gnu-c-manual-0.2.5
      gnutls-3.5.4
      gsl-2.2.1
      libmicrohttpd-0.9.51
      libosip2-5.0.0
      nano-2.7.0
      parallel-20160922
      readline-7.0
      texinfo-6.3
      unifont-9.0.02
      xorriso-1.4.6

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Access/Content

      • Amyris and Autodesk Offer Powerful Open Source Tools for Genetic Design to Enable Rapid DNA Engineering

        Genotype Specification Language (GSL), is a programming language that facilitates the rapid design of large and complex DNA constructs used to engineer genomes. The GSL compiler implements a high-level language based on traditional genetic notation, as well as a set of low-level DNA manipulation primitives. The language allows facile incorporation of parts from a library of cloned DNA constructs and from the “natural” library of parts in fully sequenced and annotated genomes. GSL was designed to engage genetic engineers in their native language while providing a framework for higher level abstract tooling. GSL was developed and open sourced by Amyris.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • OpenMYR Open Source Wireless Motors (video)

        The creator of the wireless motors Kyle Berezin explains more about their inspiration, design and features as well as some of the applications that they can be used for.

  • Programming/Development

    • The cost of forsaking C

      The C programming language is not trendy. The most recent edition of the canonical C text (the excitingly named The C Programming Language) was published in 1988; C is so unfashionable that the authors have neglected to update it in light of 30 years of progress in software engineering. Everyone “has been meaning to” learn Rust or Go or Clojure over a weekend, not C. There isn’t even a cute C animal in C’s non-logo on a C decal not stuck to your laptop.

      But Myles and I are not trendy people, so we insist that all of our students become fluent in C. A fresh class of C converts has just finished working through the K&R bible, making this a good time for me to reflect on why we deify this ancient tongue.

      We give students four reasons for learning C:

      It is still one of the most commonly used languages outside of the Bay Area web/mobile startup echo chamber;
      C’s influence can be seen in many modern languages;
      C helps you think like a computer; and,
      Most tools for writing software are written in C (or C++)

      The first is easy to dismiss if one likes the Bay Area web/mobile startup echo chamber, the second if one hates C’s influence on many more modern languages. Most engineers should take head of reason three, although our students also learn computer architecture and at least one assembly language, so have a firm mental model of how computers actually compute. But reason four is hard to ignore.

      Forsaking C means forsaking anything below the level of abstraction at which one happens to currently work. Those who work for instance as web developers forsake thoroughly understanding the browsers, operating systems and languages on top of which their own work stands.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Revealed: MRSA variant found in British pork at Asda and Sainsbury’s

      Meat produced from British pigs has been shown to be infected with a livestock strain of MRSA, the Guardian can reveal, raising concerns that the UK is on the brink of another food scandal.

      Tests on a sample of 97 UK-produced pork products from supermarkets show that three – sold at Asda and Sainsbury’s – were contaminated with the superbug strain which can cause serious health problems.

      The Guardian, working with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ), has also established that a loophole in import regulations is leaving an open door for MRSA CC398-infected live pigs from countries such as Denmark, where the disease is rife.

    • Poland abortion strike: Thousands of women in over 60 cities refuse to work in protest over restrictive laws

      Thousands of Polish women dressed in black have boycotted work and taken to the streets in protest against a plan to ban abortions.

      Without half their workforce, government offices, universities and schools in 60 cities across the country closed their doors.

      For the day of action, dubbed “Black Monday”, women donned dark-coloured clothes in a symbol of mourning for the loss of reproductive rights they fear.

      Poland already has one of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws and opinion surveys show very little support for an even stricter law, despite the nation’s deep Catholicism and conservative political direction.

    • Flint Hit With Bacterial Illness as Residents Shun City Water

      Residents of Flint, Mich., affected by the contaminated-water crisis have added a new complication to their lives: an outbreak of shigellosis, a bacterial illness that is easily transmitted when people do not wash their hands.

      Health department officials in Genesee County, where Flint is the largest city, said there has been an increase in the gastrointestinal illness, which can lead to severe diarrhea, fever, nausea, vomiting, cramps and stools containing blood and mucus, according to a statement issued last month.

    • UNITAID-FIND Partnership To Scale Up Hepatitis C Diagnostics

      New medicines have revolutionised HCV treatment in high-income countries, yet the lack of appropriate diagnostic tools for HCV infection remains a challenge. Catharina Boehme, chief executive officer of FIND, outlined that HCV is “a silent killer which goes unnoticed until it is almost too late.” Accordingly, 85 percent of cases occur in low- and middle-income countries, with fewer than 1 percent of persons aware of their infection.

      The US$38.3 million project aims to develop “better, simpler, point-of-care diagnostic tools for HCV, and will introduce HCV testing and treatment in HIV programmes” with national governments and local implementation partners in Cameroon, Georgia, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, over the next three years.

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Putin Suspends Weapons-Grade Plutonium Deal With US

      resident Vladimir Putin on Monday suspended a Russia-U.S. deal on the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium, a move that comes amid escalating tensions over Syria between Moscow and Washington.

      Putin’s decree released by the Kremlin cited Washington’s “unfriendly actions” and the United States’ inability to fulfill its obligations under the 2000 deal as reasons for the move.

      However, the decree says that the weapons-grade plutonium that has fallen under the agreement will be kept away from weapons programs.

    • Clinton: ‘I don’t recall any joke’ about droning WikiLeaks founder

      Hillary Clinton on Tuesday said she doesn’t remember ever commenting — joking or otherwise — about using a drone strike against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

      “I don’t recall any joke,” Clinton said, when asked Tuesday at a press conference in Pennsylvania.

      “It would have been a joke, if it had been said, but I don’t recall that.”

      The website TruePundit posted a report Sunday that alleged Clinton had in 2010 spoken of a drone strike against Assange.

      The report cited State Department sources and claimed Clinton had said: “Can’t we just drone this guy?”

    • Sen Mitch McConnell blames Obama for bill that Obama vetoed and McConnell repeatedly voted for

      Congress has overridden Obama’s repeated veto for the “Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act,” which allows US citizens to sue the Saudi government over its alleged complicity in the 9/11 attacks — and which may allow people in other countries hamed by actions sponsored by the US government sue the US in those countries’ courts.

      However you feel about the Saudi role in 9/11, or the US government’s actions abroad, there is one absolutely unequivocal fact: Obama opposed the bill, and Republicans in the House and Senate passed it over his strenuous, repeated objections.

      But those facts haven’t stopped senior GOP senator Mitch McConnell from blaming Obama for the law, despite the fact that McConnell vote for the law, voted again for it, then voted “Aye” on the proposition, “Shall the Bill S. 2040 Pass, the Objections of the President of the United States to the Contrary Notwithstanding?” (McConnell was joined by 28 senators who’d also written a letter condemning the law, warning of the risk of “potential unintended consequences”).

      McConnell said “I hate to blame everything on him, and I don’t” but “it would have been helpful had we had a discussion about this much earlier than last week.” The White House had repeatedly sent information to the Senate about the potential negative consequences of the bill for US interests. Nevertheless, McConnell accused Obama of “dropping the ball” by merely repeatedly vetoing the bill and pleading with Congress to reconsider, which left Congress in a state where “[n]obody [in Congress] really had focused on the potential downside in terms of our international relationships.”

    • Philippine president: Obama to hell, EU to purgatory

      Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has told President Barack Obama “you can go to hell” in his latest tirade against the U.S. over its criticism of his deadly anti-drug campaign.

      He also lashed out anew at the European Union in a speech Tuesday saying the 28-nation bloc, which has also criticized his brutal crackdown, “better choose purgatory, hell is filled up.”

      Duterte, who took office in June, has been hypersensitive to criticisms over his anti-drug fight, which has left more than an estimated 3,000 suspected drug dealers and pushers dead in just three months, alarming the United Nations, the E.U., the U.S. and human rights watchdogs.

    • PM wants British troops pulled out of European convention on human rights

      The Tory government want British soldiers to be exempt from the European Convention on Human Rights during future conflicts so they cannot be sued, in a move that has outraged activists.

      The plans were announced by prime minister Theresa May and defence secretary Michael Fallon at the Conservative party conference on Tuesday.

      The ECHR was established in 1953 by the Council of Europe with Britain as a founding member. Now, after more than 60 years, May wants out of the bits she doesn’t like.

    • FBI’s Comey: Actually, Chasing ISIS Off Twitter Makes It More Difficult For Us To Follow Them

      Over and over again we keep hearing politicians and others going on and on about the need for social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google to kick ISIS users off their platforms. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have called for this. And some people at these companies are supportive of this idea. Twitter regularly feels compelled to talk about how many ISIS accounts it removes.

      Yet, as we’ve pointed out each time it’s done so, this seems backwards. We’ve noted that intelligence officials have claimed that they actually get really good intelligence from following these social media accounts. But generally those voices aren’t heard as much. So it’s actually great to see FBI Direct James Comey (someone we rarely agree with) come out and say it directly: kicking ISIS members off Twitter makes things more difficult for law enforcement.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Indexing the Empire: How to Use Wikileaks’ Public Library of US Diplomacy

      “The Public Library of US Diplomacy,” or “PlusD,” is a very large and constantly expanding collection of internal documents from the US Department of State, published by WikiLeaks in a searchable archive. The library began in 2010 and at the time of writing contains 2,325,961 individual documents made up of about 2 billion words, spread over three collections of cables: Cablegate, the Kissinger Cables, and the Carter Cables. The State Department is the foreign affairs department of the US government and oversees the embassies and consulates of the United States all over the world. Each embassy or consulate corresponds with the State Department in Washington, DC, by sending daily telegram reports, or “cables,” between them, using a special electronic communications system.

      PlusD contains within it the WikiLeaks publication known as Cablegate: the collection of State Department cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010 and 2011. Cablegate itself consists of 251,287 cables, accounting for 261,276,536 words in total. If printed out in a standard-sized font, Cablegate alone would form a single line over 6,000 kilometers long — the distance to the center of the Earth. The cables are an average of 1,039 words long, revealing detailed internal information about the operation of 274 US embassies and consulates, and their activity within their host country.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • How the Earth will pay us back for our carbon emissions with … more carbon emissions

      The really scary thing about climate change is not that humans will fail to get their emissions under control. The really scary thing is that at some point, the Earth will take over and start adding even more emissions on its own.

      A new study underscores this risk by looking closely at Indonesia, which has a unique quality — some 70 billion of tons of carbon that have built up in peatlands over millennia. In this, Indonesia is much like the Arctic, where even larger quantities of ancient carbon are stored in permafrost, and are also vulnerable.

    • Research Suggests Peat Fires In Indonesia Could Worsen Global Warming In This Century

      The really scary thing about climate change is not simply that humans may fail to get their emissions under control. It’s that at some point, the Earth could take over and start adding even more emissions on its own.

      A new study underscores this risk by looking closely at Indonesia, which has a unique quality – some 70 billion of tons of carbon that have built up in peatlands over millennia. In this, Indonesia is much like the Arctic, where even larger quantities of ancient carbon are stored in permafrost, and are also vulnerable.

      In each case, if that carbon gets out of the land and into the atmosphere, then global warming will get worse. But global warming could itself up the odds of such massive carbon release. That’s a dangerous position to be in as the world continues to warm.

      In the new study in Geophysical Research Letters, a team of researchers led by Yi Yin of the French Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement look at the potential of peat bogs in equatorial Asia – a region that includes Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and several other smaller countries but is dominated by Indonesia and some of its largest islands, Kalimantan and Sumatra – to worsen our climate problems. It’s timely, considering that last year amid El Niño-induced drought conditions Indonesian blazes emitted over 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalents into the atmosphere. That’s more than the annual emissions of Japan (or, needless to say, of Indonesia’s fossil fuel burning).

  • Finance

    • Bitcoin makes inroads with new ATM in Kouvola

      A new Bitcoin ATM to be located in the southeastern city of Kouvola at the end of October will bring the number of such machines in Finland to nine. Officials say that because Bitcoin is a virtual currency that knows no borders, it’s difficult to estimate the number of users in Finland. Current guesstimates range from hundreds to tens of thousands.

    • Ericsson Slashes 3,000 Jobs in Sweden

      Ericsson AB said Tuesday that it plans to lay off nearly 20% of its home-country workforce, as the Swedish maker of telecom-network equipment races to cut costs amid intensifying competition from Chinese rivals and weak demand for its specialty wireless products.

    • Ericsson to slash about 3,000 jobs – up to 175 in Finland

      Some 175 Ericsson employees in Finland will be affected by the employer-employee negotiations that the Swedish telecom company announced it was starting on Tuesday.

      The company said that it plans to reduce up to 3,000 positions globally in production, research and development and sales and administration. Most of the personnel cuts will be made in Sweden.

      In a press release issued on Tuesday, Ericsson said that dismissals will be carried out using a combination of voluntary and forced reductions, as well as other measures, such as outsourcing.

      Altogether some one thousand of the affected employees work in Ericsson’s production unit, about 800 in research and development and around 1,200 in other departments.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Tim Kaine brings Wall Street fundraising muscle to Clinton campaign

      Pundits were quick to point out the benefits Sen. Tim Kaine may bring Hillary Clinton as her running mate in helping win his home-and-battleground state of Virginia.

      But what flew under the radar was that Kaine may play a key role in helping Clinton raise money, especially when it comes to Wall Street.

      Clinton has proven herself a capable fundraiser, announcing nearly $90 million in contributions for the past month. The former secretary of state is a known quantity with Wall Street as well, having delivered speeches to banks and representing the heart of the financial services industry as a senator from New York.

      In the lead-up to Clinton’s pick of a running mate, the potential that she might choose Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — who has made cracking down on banks a centerpiece of her agenda — had Wall Street ready to tighten its pockets for donations.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • After Facebook “censors” anti-Muslim posts, hate groups sue US gov’t

      In July 2016, an organization called the “American Freedom Defense Initiative” joined another group called Jihad Watch in suing US Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Both entities felt slighted by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

      In their 25-page civil complaint, the two anti-Muslim activists and their respective organizations made a ludicrous argument. The groups claimed that as the country’s top cop, Lynch “enforces” Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law that limits libel and other civil suits filed against websites, service providers, and other online publishers. However, the Communications Decency Act is a civil, rather than a criminal, statute.

      AFDI—which the Southern Poverty Law Center designated last year as an anti-Muslim hate group—is the same group that opposed the proposed Park51 Islamic center that was to be built two blocks from Ground Zero. In 2013, the AFDI’s co-founder, Pamela Geller, and her fellow co-founder, Robert Spencer (who also founded JihadWatch), were banned from entering the United Kingdom for their “extremist” views.

    • ‘The end of Trump’: how Facebook deepens millennials’ confirmation bias

      HBO host John Oliver achieved the destruction of Donald Trump on 29 February 2016. At least, according to the Daily Beast.

      Fansided, a popular social news aggregator, dates Trump’s destruction at 1 August while the Daily Good called it for 21 March. Salon found no fewer than “13 glorious times” that Oliver had destroyed the real estate tycoon.

      Sharp-eyed consumers of the news might note that it is impossible to, as the dictionary says, “put an end to the existence of something” more than a single time. But for #NeverTrump Facebook users who love any content they see as bringing Trump down a peg, the formulaic headline is indicative of the Facebook media landscape: the most shareable, clickable and likable content on the site aligns strongly with its readership’s pre-existing biases, assumptions and political affiliation.

      For millennials who have never known an election without Facebook, the political landscape of the social media network has massive implications for the upcoming contest between Hillary Clinton and Trump – not least of which because of Facebook’s outsized influence on their exposure to political news.

      Six out of every 10 millennials (61%) get their political news on Facebook, according to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center, making the 1.7 billion-user social behemoth (which includes more than 200 million in the United States) the largest millennial marketplace for news and ideas in the world. But within Facebook’s ecosystem exists a warren of walled gardens, intellectual biomes created by users whose interest in interacting with opposing political views – and those who are them – is nearly nonexistent.

    • Spare me the campus ayatollahs ruining my student life: An undergraduate’s fearless broadside against the joyless PC takeover of our universities

      The drunken travails of Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim — a shambolic junior academic — have long become a byword for the excesses of university life.

      Flirting, seduction and seeing how many pints you could fit in between lectures were once relatively harmless pastimes on campuses across Britain.

      Yet today, too many universities seem determined to nanny students who are deemed too fragile to be exposed to the rough and tumble of the real world.

      Consider the fact that, this week, it emerged that all new students arriving at Oxford and Cambridge are being asked to attend ‘consent classes’ aimed at preventing rape and sexual harassment at the universities.

      At Oxford, the courses are compulsory as part of freshers’ week, while the student union is urging rugby players to attend anti-sexism workshops to fight ‘lad culture’.

      At Cambridge, consent classes are also being held for freshers, with students of some colleges having to opt out if they don’t wish to attend.

    • Censorship turns up the volume
    • NO, HATE CRIME LAWS AREN’T CENSORSHIP – AND HERE’S WHY
    • Far-right Twitter and Facebook users make secret code to avoid censorship
    • Right-wingers and ‘free speech’ trolls devise secret internet language to dodge online censorship
    • White supremacy worms around censorship to create larger threats

      The alt-right has found a way to evade the censorship policies on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram.

      The far, far, far-right hate group has begun using the names of Internet applications like “Yahoo” and “Google” as stand-ins for racial slurs and insults. This way, they can still congregate online to spread slander and white supremacy without the worry that their accounts will be flagged and deleted.

      This amount of hatred one group can have towards — seemingly — every population of non-white non-heterosexual people is flabbergasting.

      It’s hard not to feel helpless when trying to minimize the threat of a movement that is so dead-set on cultivating heinously racist views it feels it must re-code innocuous household words.

    • Eduardo Hernández Santos: Conflict, Censorship & the Male Body

      Following part one of his conversation with Lidia Hernández Tapia, Eduardo Hernández Santos talks about his groundbreaking early exhibitions, his recent series El Muro, and the “boom of the phallus” in Cuban art.

    • U.S. universities in China get academic freedom, but face internet censorship – report

      U.S. universities operating in China say they are given the freedom to teach what they like in class, but face restrictions such as internet censorship, according to a report by an independent, nonpartisan U.S. agency.

      In the recent report released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), its survey of 12 U.S. universities found that while administrators had control over curriculum content, fewer than half of them had unrestricted access to the internet.

      For example, at one of the universities reviewed by GAO for the survey, users were unable to access Google’s search page and other sites that were available to users at other universities.

    • Propaganda and censorship remain China’s favoured tools of control

      Two recent court battles over historical facts have demonstrated how tight China’s ideological control is and how anxious the party leadership is about its legitimacy of rule.

      Two weeks ago, a Beijing court ruled against a popular blogger and a Hong Kong-based beverage company for mocking a Communist Party propaganda tale about a Korean war hero.

      And in August, a Beijing court upheld a libel ruling against a writer for two articles published in 2013 questioning certain details about five second world war heroes.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Hackable Speed Cameras Highlight Risk Of Rush Toward IoT-Enabled ‘Smart’ Cities

      We’ve been talking at length about how the lack of security in the Internet of Things space is seen as a sort of adorable joke, but isn’t always a laughing matter. While the hillarious stupidity of some of the “smart” products flooding the market is undeniable, the reality is that the abysmal state of security in “IoT” devices (read: little to none) is creating millions of new attack vectors every year. And as Bruce Schneier recently warned, it’s only a matter of time before the check comes due, and these vulnerabilities contribute to hacking attacks on core infrastructure resulting in notable fatalities.

      Refrigerators that leak your Gmail credentials are one thing, but this looming calamity is going to be made notably worse by the rush toward “smart” cities. The same hardware vendors that can’t bother to secure their consumer-side hardware haven’t done a much better job securing the gear they’re shoveling toward cities under the promise of a better, more connected tomorrow.

    • AT&T Stops Charging Broadband Users Extra For Privacy

      A few years ago, AT&T came up with an “ingenious” idea: charge broadband consumers more money if they want to protect their privacy. Under this plan, users ordering AT&T’s U-Verse broadband service could get broadband for, say, $70 a month. But if you want to opt out of AT&T’s Internet Preferences program (which uses deep packet inspection to study your movement around the Internet down to the second) you’ll pay $30 to $50 more, per month. AT&T also made opting out as cumbersome as possible, knowing full well that few people would dare take the option.

      With its decision, AT&T effectively made user privacy a luxury option.

    • Subpoenas and Gag Orders Show Government Overreach, Tech Companies Argue

      It has been six months since the Justice Department backed off on demands that Apple help the F.B.I. break the security of a locked iPhone.

      But the government has not given up the fight with the tech industry. Open Whisper Systems, a maker of a widely used encryption app called Signal, received a subpoena in the first half of the year for subscriber information and other details associated with two phone numbers that came up in a federal grand jury investigation in Virginia.

      The subpoena arrived with a court order that said Open Whisper Systems was not allowed to tell anyone about the information request for one year.

      Technology companies contend that court-imposed gag orders are being used too often by law enforcement and that they violate the Bill of Rights. The companies also complain that law enforcement officials are casting a wide net over online communications — often too wide — in their investigations.

    • ShadowBrokers NSA Cyber-weapon Auction Generates Collective Yawn
    • Hackers find little demand for their stolen NSA hacking tools
    • Hacker group finds almost no takers for stolen NSA cyber tools
    • New Documents Reveal Government Effort to Impose Secrecy on Encryption Company

      When it comes to this country’s courts, longstanding practice, history, and the Constitution make clear that openness—of doors, of evidence, of arguments, of opinions—is the rule. Like the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech, that rule is not absolute. But it puts in place a default, one that forces those who want to keep court proceedings secret to show, in each case, that secrecy is warranted—and that the need for secrecy overcomes the traditions and values of openness that animate the default rule in the first place.

      But in far too many cases across the country, the government appears to have reversed the presumption that the First Amendment establishes, opting to keep secret information about its demands for private data where transparency is required and would serve the public good.

    • Feds Gagged Encrypted Communications Firm Open Whisper Systems Over Massively Overbroad Subpoena

      This morning the ACLU announced that it had convinced the government to remove a ridiculous gag order on a subpoena that had been sent to Open Whisper Systems, the makers of the popular Signal encrypted messaging app, and whose encrypted communication protocol is used by many others, including WhatsApp, Facebook and Google for their encrypted messaging offerings. It’s not that surprising that a grand jury would issue a subpoena to Open Whisper Systems demanding “subscriber name, address, telephone numbers, email addresses, method of payment, IP registration, IP history logs and addresses, account history, toll records, upstream and downstream providers, any associated accounts acquired through cookie data, and any other contact information from inception to the present” for certain accounts being investigated. But, of course, Open Whisper Systems has basically none of that data.

    • Decentralise (in a kind of centralised way)

      Once a month I am involved in running an informal session, loosely affiliated with Open Rights Group and FSFE, called Cryptonoise. Cryptonoise explores methods for protecting your digital rights, with a leaning towards focusing on privacy, and provides a venue for like minded people to meet up and discuss the state of the digital landscape and those that may try to infringe on the rights of digital citizens.

      We’ve all made it easy for large enterprises and governments to collect masses of data about our online activities because we perform most of those activities in the same place. Facebook, Google and Twitter spring to mind as examples of companies that have grown to dangerous sizes with little competition. This is not paranoia. This is real. We make it a lot more difficult when we spread out.

    • Surprise! Millennial office workers love email [Ed: Overreliance by young people on unencrypted communications]

      Millennials hate email, and they will finally kill this business scourge — or so you would think from popular discussions on the topic. But do a little research, and you discover that millennials not only don’t hate email, they use it more than any other age group.

      Yes, the text-obsessed and social-media-loving millennials are addicted to email, a recent survey of 1,004 mobile-using American office workers by Adobe Systems has found. Millennials (born between 1981 and 2001) check their email more often than any other group — even more than Gen X (born between 1961 and 1981) and baby boomers (born between 1947 and 1961) for whom email is the mainstay business communication method.

    • Bulk surveillance review is ‘fiction’, claims former NSA technical director

      Former NSA technical director Bill Binney talks about the Investigatory Powers Bill and the UK government’s independent review of bulk surveillance powers

    • Yahoo ‘secretly monitored emails on behalf of the US government’

      Some surveillance experts said this represents the first known case of a US internet company agreeing to a spy agency’s demand by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time.

    • Yahoo Secretly Scanned Users’ Emails For The NSA and FBI: Report

      Reuters says that U.S intelligence officials were searching for a specific set of characters within Yahoo emails, but it is unknown what exactly they were looking for. Reuters also reports that the order to search user emails came in the form of a “classified directive” sent to Yahoo’s legal team.

    • How American Companies Enable NSA Surveillance

      Without the cooperation of American companies — both voluntary and compelled — the National Security Agency’s system of mass surveillance simply would not have been possible. And on Tuesday, Reuters added the name of yet another American corporate giant to the list of those who have made it possible for American intelligence to intercept huge troves of information: Yahoo.

      According to the news service, the American internet giant designed custom software to filter its users’ emails according to a set of search terms, and deliver those messages to the NSA. The decision to enable NSA surveillance was reportedly made by CEO Marissa Mayer and without the knowledge of the company’s security chief, who quit in protest when he learned of the program.

    • Google and Microsoft Not Part of NSA Email Scanning Tied to Yahoo

      The details of the Yahoo email surveillance program, reportedly installed in 2015, are still emerging, but they immediately raise questions about whether other companies are participating as well. So far, four tech giants say they are not.

      “We’ve never received such a request, but if we did, our response would be simple: ‘no way’,” said a spokesperson from Google in response to a query about whether the NSA asked the company to build similar custom software to scan Gmail.

    • Yahoo Secretly Built Software To Scan All Emails Under Pressure From NSA Or FBI

      So Reuters has big exclusive report this morning about Yahoo creating “custom software to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific information” at the behest of the NSA or FBI. This was built last year — which came well after the Snowden disclosures, and after Yahoo had been revealed to have legally challenged earlier NSA dragnet attempts — and after it had rolled out end to end encryption on email.

      Apparently, this was a decision made at the top by Marissa Mayer, and pissed off the company’s top security guy, Alex Stamos (who is awesome and a big supporter of end-to-end encryption) leading him to leave the company (and move to Facebook, where he is currently).

    • Exclusive: Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for U.S. intelligence – sources

      Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter.

      The company complied with a classified U.S. government demand, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said three former employees and a fourth person apprised of the events.

    • Delete Your Yahoo Account

      There’s no good reason to have a Yahoo account these days. But after Tuesday’s bombshell report by Reuters, indicating the enormous, faltering web company designed a bespoke email-wiretap service for the U.S. government, we now know that a Yahoo account is a toxic surveillance liability.

      Reuters’s Joseph Menn is reporting that just last year, Yahoo chose to comply with a classified “directive” to build “a custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials” — the NSA in particular.

    • Yahoo! spied on users’ email at spy agencies’ behest: report

      Yahoo! searched all its users’ emails using a specially built program in order to try and locate specific information demanded by American intelligence officials, according to a Reuters report.

      The company, which was bought by Verizon in July for US$4.83 billion, agreed to scan all mail accounts in line with a classified directive from the US government, Reuters said, citing two former Yahoo! workers and a third person who had been informed about it.

      The directive came from the NSA or the FBI, the sources said.

      What the spy agencies were after was not specified by the sources, who said only that they had asked Yahoo! to search for a set of characters.

      Reuters said it had not been able to determine what kind of data, if any, was handed over to the spooks, and if other email providers had been confronted with similar demands.

    • Yahoo Reportedly Scanned Millions of Email Accounts for Intelligence Agencies

      Yahoo reportedly scanned hundreds of millions of email accounts at the behest of U.S. intelligence or law enforcement. The scans, reported by Reuters, allegedly selected incoming messages that contained a string of unknown characters.

      Yahoo did not deny the report, saying only that it is a “law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States.”

      According to the Tuesday report, Yahoo acceded to a 2015 government directive to give email access to the National Security Agency or the FBI. Reuters cited anonymous sources including two former employees and another person with knowledge of the events.

    • Yahoo ‘secretly scanned emails for US authorities’

      Yahoo secretly scanned millions of its users’ email accounts on behalf of the US government, according to a report.

      Reuters news agency says the firm built special software last year to comply with a classified request.

      “Yahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States,” the tech firm said in a statement provided to the BBC.

      The allegation comes less than a fortnight after Yahoo said hackers had stolen data about many of its users.

    • Are smart toys spying on kids and stealing their imagination?

      Last weekend, I saw my first Christmas ad. And what a Smart Christmas it will be, judging by the haul on offer. Over the past year, companies have been teasing the various connected must-haves for the holidays: bots that can respond to kids’ questions and movements, and capture audio and video; an imitation smartwatch that chats with other devices over Bluetooth; not to mention the Barbie Hello Dreamhouse, a pink-and-white smart house for the iconic doll.

      Not everyone is excited about the intelligence creeping into kids’ toys. Privacy activists and developmental psychologists have objected on grounds ranging from security and privacy to fundamental worries about the nature of play. So should you be crossing these gadgets off your list? Or is this just a new variation on a familiar old song?

      As it happens, Barbie was at the centre of the last big smart toy brouhaha. Hello Barbie, perhaps 2015’s most controversial toy, could hold court on a wide range of topics – from fashion and family to dreams and paddleboarding. “Did you know that butterflies live everywhere in the world except Antarctica?” she might say, before confessing in a less guarded moment to “daydreaming about cupcakes”.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Islamic communities contain ‘tsunamis of atheism’ that are being suppressed, says leading ex-Muslim

      Thousands of ex-Muslims in Britain are living in fear of violent revenge for abandoning the Islamic faith while others are afraid to admit they no longer believe, a support group for ex-Muslims has said.

      Maryam Namazie, founder of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, described a “tsunami of atheism” in Muslim communities and urged that more needs to be done to recognise the dangers often faced by those who choose to renounce their faith.

      Speaking ahead of the release of Exposure, an ITV documentary that explores the lives of ex-Muslims faced with abuse and discrimination, Ms Namazie told The Independent: “There is a large group of people who are not seen and heard. Many young people living in Britain have left Islam and are facing huge ostracisation and isolation from their communities as a result.

    • State Appeals Court Says Not Just Any Nonexistent Law Can Be Used To Initiate Traffic Stops

      The US Supreme Court issued law enforcement fishing licenses with the Heien decision. Vehicle stops no longer needed to be predicated on legal violations. (If they ever were…) Law enforcement officers were no longer required to know the laws they were enforcing. The Supreme Court’s decision combined reasonable suspicion with an officer’s “reasonable” grasp of moving violations, further deteriorating the thin Fourth Amendment insulation protecting drivers from suspicionless, warrantless searches.

      With the standards lowered, officers can now stop anyone for almost any reason, provided they can make the justification stated in their report sound like a reasonable approximation of what they thought the law was, or what they wanted the law to be. (The Supreme Court’s Rodriguez decision still allows for bogus traffic stops. It just puts a highly-subjective time limit on the fishing expedition.)

      The Supreme Court’s case originated in North Carolina. Oddly enough, further down the judicial food chain, a North Carolina state appeals court has just suppressed evidence based on a traffic stop with no legal basis. (h/t The Newspaper)

      Antwon Eldridge was pulled over because his vehicle was missing the driver’s side mirror. This led to a search of his vehicle and the discovery of crack and marijuana. But the reason for the stop failed to hold up in court, even with the Heien decision in place.

  • DRM

    • HP Issues Flimsy Mea Culpa For Recent Printer Cartridge DRM Idiocy, But It’s Not Enough

      A few weeks ago we noted how HP had effectively delivered a DRM time bomb in the form of a software update that, once detonated, crippled customers’ ability to use competing third-party print cartridges in HP printers. While such ham-fisted behavior certainly isn’t new, in this case HP had actually first deployed the “security update” to its printers back in March — but didn’t activate its stealthy payload until last month. Once activated, the software update prevented HP printers from even detecting alternative ink cartridges, resulting in owners getting a rotating crop of error messages about faulty cartridges.

      HP customers were obviously annoyed, and the EFF was quick to pen an open letter to HP, quite correctly noting that HP abused its security update mechanism to trick its customers and actively erode product functionality. Ultimately HP was forced to respond via a blog post proclaiming the company was just “dedicated to the best printing experience” and wanted to correct some “confusion” about its DRM sneak attack. In short, HP strongly implied it was just trying to protect consumers from “potential security risks” (what sweethearts)…

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Taco John’s Continues To Wage A Long-Lost Trademark War To Keep ‘Taco Tuesday’ From Becoming Generic

        Way back in 2010, Mike wrote about how the Taco John’s restaurant chain had threatened a small restaurant in Oklahoma for daring to use the phrase “Taco Tuesday” in a promotion for cheap tacos on…you know…Tuesdays. Taco John’s did indeed have a trademark on the term in 49 of our 50 states, with the exception being New Jersey, because life is strange. The question at the time, as tends to be the question in most trademark disputes, was whether or not there was any potential customer confusion to worry about. Given the somewhat descriptive nature of the phrase, not to mention its widespread use both commercially and in common parlance, the whole thing seemed rather silly.

        Six years does little to change things, it seems. Taco John’s recently fired off a cease and desist notice to the Old Fashioned Tavern and Restaurant in Wisconsin for using the phrase.

      • The Trademarking of “Taco Tuesday”

        When the owners of the Old Fashioned Tavern and Restaurant received a cease and desist letter demanding they stop holding Taco Tuesdays, they thought it was a joke.

        For almost a decade, the restaurant had sold $2 tacos on Tuesday night. Other restaurants and bars in the area had similar promotions, and in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, Taco Tuesday specials are as plentiful as yoga classes.

        But the author of the letter claimed that “Taco Tuesday” was a federally registered trademark that belonged to Taco John’s, a chain of around 400 Mexican-style fast food restaurants. And as Old Fashioned manager Jennifer DeBolt told the local Cap Times, they quickly realized that “the law firm is completely legit.”

      • Following Coverage Of Trademark Dispute, Lawyer Demands Image On News Story Be Taken Down As Infringing

    • Copyrights

      • Judge: Vague IP-Address Evidence is Not Enough to Expose BitTorrent ‘Pirates’

        While relatively underreported, many U.S. district courts are still swamped with lawsuits against alleged film pirates.

        The copyright holders who initiate these cases generally rely on an IP address as evidence. This information is collected from BitTorrent swarms and linked to a geographical location using geolocation tools.

        With this information in hand, they then ask the courts to grant a subpoena, forcing Internet providers to hand over the personal details of the associated account holder.

        In most cases, courts sign off on these subpoenas quite easily, but in a recent case California Magistrate Judge Mitchell Dembin decided to ask for further clarification and additional evidence.

10.04.16

Links 4/10/2016: KDE Plasma 5.8, Google Pixel and Andromeda Predictions

Posted in News Roundup at 3:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • 26 open source projects from Linux’s 25 years

    Linux is often credited for pioneering the open source development model and it has led to the creation of many open source projects and communities. Here are some of the major open source projects that were created around Linux in the past 25 years.

  • Server

    • Keeping Linux containers safe and secure

      Linux containers are helping to change the way that IT operates. In place of large, monolithic virtual machines, organizations are finding effective ways to deploy their applications inside Linux containers, providing for faster speeds, greater density, and increased agility in their operations.

      While containers can bring a number of advantages from a security perspective, they come with their own set of security challenges as well. Just as with traditional infrastructure, it is critical to ensure that the system libraries and components running within a container are regularly updated in order to avoid vulnerabilities. But how do you know what is running inside of your containers? To help manage the full set of security challenges facing container technologies, a startup named Anchore is developing an open source project of the same name to bring visibility inside of Linux containers.

    • The History of Pets vs Cattle and How to Use the Analogy Properly

      I have been meaning to write this post for a long time, but one thing or another has gotten in the way. It’s important to me to provide an accurate history, definition, and proper usage of the Pets vs Cattle meme so that everyone can understand why it was successful and how it’s still vital as a tool for driving understanding of cloud. The meme has taken off because it helped created an understanding of the “old way” vs. the “new way” of doing things. That’s great, but the value of the meme becomes muddied when misused. We can all agree there’s enough muddy terminology and phraseology already, such as “cloud,” “hybrid,” and “DevOps”. So this post aims to set the record straight and assure a canonical history that everyone can reference and use.

    • Running Stateful Applications in Kubernetes: Storage Provisioning and Allocation

      To appreciate how Kubernetes manages storage pools that provide persistence to applications, we need to understand the architecture and the workflow related to application deployment.

      Kubernetes is used in various roles — by developers, system administrators, operations, and DevOps teams. Each of these personas, if you will, interact with the infrastructure in a distinct way. The system administration team is responsible for configuring the physical infrastructure for running Kubernetes cluster. The operations team maintains the Kubernetes cluster through patching, upgrading, and scaling the cluster. DevOps teams deal with Kubernetes to configure CI/CD, monitoring, logging, rolling upgrades, and canary deployments. Developers consume the API and the resources exposed by the Kubernetes infrastructure. They are never expected to have visibility into the underlying physical infrastructure that runs the master and nodes.

    • [Old] Technical Debt

      Building happy engineering teams needs to be your top priority if you want to build great products. Through collective ownership, increasing trust, removing noise, and being bold with new ideas, you can begin to not only improve your practices but also allow new ideas to flourish organically. Allow new eyes to push you to both fix issues and take their fresh perspective not as criticism but as a catalyst for change.

      After our strategic investments, our paging volume is down, service quality is up, and we’re better positioned to move even faster to make email suck less.

    • “I just want to run a container!”

      I wrote “what’s up with containers: Docker and rkt” a while ago. Since then I have learned a few new things about containers! We’re going to talk about running containers in production, not on your laptop for development, since I’m trying to understand how that works in September 2016. It’s worth noting that all this stuff is moving pretty fast right now.

      The concerns when you run containers in production are pretty different from running it on a laptop — I very happily use Docker on my laptop and I have no real concerns about it because I don’t care much if processes on my laptop crash like 0.5% of the time, and I haven’t seen any problems.

      Here are the things I’ve learned so far. I learned many of these things with @grepory who is the best. Basically I want to talk about what some of the things you need to think about are if you want to run containers, and what is involved in “just running a container” :)

    • Hot Startup Nets $5 Million to X-ray and Secure Software Containers
    • Anchore Gets $5M For Software Container Security
    • Anchore 1.0 Delivers Container-Based Compliance and Certification

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • LXQt Memory Usage On Par With LXDE, Lower Than Xfce

      LXQt developers have done a desktop memory consumption comparison to show that Qt programs are not necessarily bloated.

      The tests done by developer “PCMan” show that LXQt 0.11 uses a bit more memory than the GTK2-based LXDE while using less memory than the GTK2-based Xfce.

    • Benchmark: Memory Usage: LXQt desktop environment vs XFCE

      It has always been rumored that Qt is bloated so programs written in Qt should be bloated. Some even argued that the LXDE developers made a wrong decision on the migration to LXQt.
      Why not replace the assumptions with some experiments?
      In fact, LXQt 0.11 even uses slightly less memory than XFCE (with gtk+ 2). After cold boot, LXQt uses 112 MB in the testing environment.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Sysprof Plans for 3.24

        The 3.24 cycle is just getting started, and I have a few plans for Sysprof to give us a more polished profiling experience in Builder. The details can be found on the mailing list.

        In particular, I’d love to land support for visualizers. I expect this to happen soon, since there is just a little bit more to work through to make that viable. This will enable us to get a more holistic view of performance and allow us to drill into callgraphs during a certain problematic period of the profile.

      • GNOME From Scratch Project

        This morning i got an email from Rafael Tavares about his new project, GFS (GNOME From Scratch), a personal project that makes possible to use GNOME on Slackware GNU/Linux operating system without systemd or wayland programs. The GFS project will attempt to bring GNOME 3.22 to Slackware Linux. This is the latest version of GNOME available at this moment.

      • WebRTC in WebKit/WPE

        For some time I worked at Igalia to enable WebRTC on WebKitForWayland or WPE for the Raspberry Pi 2.

        The goal was to have the WebKit WebRTC tests working for a demo. My fellow Igalian Alex was working on the platform itself in WebKit and assisting with some tuning for the Pi on WebKit but the main work needed to be done in OpenWebRTC.

  • Distributions

    • Hardware Firewall: Choosing the Right Firewall Distribution

      Over the years I’ve bought some less than impressive consumer routers, so these days I run my own self-built hardware firewall appliance. Surprisingly, deciding on which option was best for my needs was not as easy as I had hoped.

      Building a hardware firewall requires you to decide on the hardware your firewall/router computer operating system will be installed on. Like myself, some people might use an old PC. Others might decide to install their selected firewall operating system onto a rack mount server. However one decides to do this, the completed act of installing this OS onto the dedicated hardware creates a dedicated hardware firewall.

      And unlike a software firewall, hardware firewalls serve a single dedicated purpose – to act as a gateway appliance for your network. Having had experience with three popular firewall operating systems in the past, I found that choosing the “right one” is a matter of perspective.

      In this article, I’m going to share my experience and overall impressions about those three different firewall solutions. Some of these are highly advanced while others are incredibly easy to use. Each of these solutions share something that I feel good about sharing with my readers. All of the firewalls are easily downloadable without any annoying sign-up pages (I’m looking at you, Sophos).

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • The October 2016 Issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine

        The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the October 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.

      • Our warm thanks to a long time contributor and friend

        It is with a heavy heart that we address our warmest thanks to our friend Thomas Spuhler for his Mandriva and Mageia contributions over the last decade. After fighting colon cancer for over a year, he finally had to surrender on Saturday September 17, 2016, at the age of 68. He leaves behind his beloved wife, sons and grandchildren, to whom our thoughts go in this difficult time.

        Thomas had been contributing to Mageia, and Mandriva before that, since 2009 as a packager, and much earlier already partaking in email discussions and bug reports. His packaging interests were mostly web and server-related components, for which his contributions were invaluable. He had to step back from his Mageia responsibilities in early August due to his health condition.

    • Gentoo Family

      • GNUnet for Gentoo

        In summer 2015 I started to package GNUnet for Gentoo as contributor to the youbroketheinternet-overlay.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • AppData content ratings for games shipped in Fedora

          GNOME Software developer Richard Hughes recently e-mailed the Fedora developers mailing requesting Fedora package maintainers to update their AppData files to include age ratings using OARS.

        • Linaro Connect Las Vegas 2016

          I spent last week at Linaro Connect in Las Vegas. Nominally I was there for some discussions about Ion. The week ended up being fairly full of the gamut of ARM topics.

          IoT is still a top buzzword. Linaro announced the founding of the LITE (Linaro IoT and Embedded) group. The work that this group has done so far is mostly related to Cortex-M processors which don’t run Linux. This is a change of pace from a consortium that has exclusively focused on Linux. The Linux Foundation has done the same thing, given their focus on the Zephyr Project. I see this shift for three reasons: 1) vendors want an end-to-end solution and reduced fragmentation and Linaro/Linux Foundation provide a good forum to do this because 2) both Linaro and the Linux Foundation are very good at courting companies and engaging in ‘corporate hand holding’ through open source projects especially 3) when bootstrapping relatively new projects. This is not intended to be a negative, sometimes companies need to throw money at outside entities to inform them what needs to be done (even when internal employees are shouting the same thing). Corporate influence in open source can certainly be critiqued but I’m optimistic about that not being a problem for Linaro.

          Red Hat also announced its involvement in the LITE group. Red Hat’s interest aren’t in the RTOS Microcontroller space but the higher level gateway. All those IoT devices have to communicate somewhere and a centralized gateway makes it easier to manage those devices, especially for industrial use cases. Hearing the full-stack story of IoT was a good learning experience for me, as I mostly have my head in the kernel. Everyone seems to be learning everywhere and most of the work is brand new. The Zephyr project was talking about writing new IP stacks which should give you some idea of where these projects are right now.

        • How to debug Fedora rawhide compose problems
        • Fedora Linux’s DNF Package Manager Hits the 2.0 Milestone, Now in Fedora Rawhide

          On October 3, 2016, DNF developer Jan Šilhan proudly announced the release of the DNF 2.0.0 package manager for Fedora Rawhide, the development version of the Fedora Linux operating system.

          DNF 2.0.0 is a major update of the default package management system used in the Red Hat-based Fedora distribution, but it doesn’t look like it landed in the stable Fedora 25 version just yet, most probably because of the incompatibilities with the DNF 1.x series. Therefore, DNF 2.0.0 is now available in Fedora Rawhide.

        • HackMIT meets Fedora

          HackMIT is the annual hackathon event organized by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. HackMIT 2016 took place on September 17th and 18th, 2016. This year, the Fedora Project partnered with Red Hat as sponsors for the hackathon. Fedora Ambassadors Charles Profitt and Justin W. Flory attended to represent the project and help mentor top students from around the country in a weekend of learning and competitive hacking. Fedora engaged with a new audience of students from various universities across America and even the globe.

        • HackMIT meets Fedora

    • Debian Family

      • HPE Donates Hardware to Debian Project, GNOME Sans systemd

        The Debian project today announced the “in-kind” donation of several servers to “boost reliability of Debian’s core infrastructure.” The new hardware will be deployed in Canada, US, and Australia to replace some aging machines as well as expand core services and storage. In other news, a new project aims to provide GNOME 3.22 to Slackware without systemd or Wayland, right as a new ugly systemd bug gives another reason to avoid it. Mageia bid farewell to a lost friend and contributor today and Matt Hartley shared his picks for best firewall distribution.

      • Harden Debian with PIE and bindnow!

        Shipping Position Independent Executables and using read-only Global Offset Table was already possible for packages but needed package maintainers to opt-in for each package (see Hardening wiki) using the “pie” and “bindnow” Dpkg hardening flags.

        Many critical packages enabled the extra flags but there are still way more left out according to Lintian hardening-no-bindnow and hardening-no-pie warnings.

        Now we can change that. We can make those hardening flags the default for every package.

      • My Free Software Activities in September 2016

        Welcome to gambaru.de. Here is my monthly report that covers what I have been doing for Debian. If you’re interested in Android, Java, Games and LTS topics, this might be interesting for you.

      • Several donations boost reliability of Debian’s core infrastructure

        Over the last several months, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), one of Debian’s primary hardware partners, has made several large in-kind donations in support of Debian core services. The donated equipment will be deployed in the data centers of multiple hosting partners in Canada, the United States, and Australia.

      • Gitano – Approaching Release – Work

        I have been working quite hard, along with my friend and colleague Richard Maw, on getting Gitano ready for a release suitable for inclusion into Debian Stretch.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • $39 network switching Pico-ITX SBC runs Linux on Cortex-A53

      Globalscale’s “EspressoBin” network switching Pico-ITX SBC offers Marvell’s dual-core, Cortex-A53 Armada 3720 SoC, plus 2x GbE, 1x WAN, SATA, and mini-PCIe.

      Globalscale Technologies and its hardware partner Marvell, which have previously collaborated on products such as the Armada 370 Mirabox, have joined forces on a Linux-fueled EspressoBin network switching single-board computer. The EspressoBin is based on a more powerful Marvell Armada SoC: a dual-core, Cortex-A53 Armada 3720 clocked to 1.2GHz.

    • Open IoT gateway SBCs run Linux on NXP QorIQ and i.mX6 SoCs

      ArgonBoards has launched two Linux-driven SBCs for IoT gateways: an i.MX6 SoloLite reference board and an open source QorIQ LS1021A SBC.

      India-based embedded manufacturer VVDN Technogies, which owns RadiumBoards, the makers of products such as the HD Camera Cape for the BeagleBone Black and MIPI Camera Board for the Wandboard, has also launched a single-board computer subsidiary. The ArgonBoards SBC division recently announced a $499, open source LS1021A Community Board and a $199 i.MX6SL IoT gateway reference board based on the SoloLite SoC, both running Linux. (VVDN is a member of NXP’s partner ecosystem.)

    • Dueling Arduinos reunite with new Arduino Foundation

      Arduino LLC and Arduino Srl have settled their legal disputes, and will reunify under an Arduino Holding company and a not-for-profit Arduino Foundation.

      At the World Maker Faire New York, the Arduino LLC (Arduino.cc) and Arduino Srl (Arduino.org) organizations announced they have signed a settlement agreement concerning the legal dispute that has, for the past two years, split the open source MCU-oriented Arduino hardware community in two. The forked entities will reunite before the end of the year under a new “Arduino Holding” company and not-for-profit “Arduino Foundation.” The identical announcements were posted at Arduino.cc and Arduino.org.

    • Two Arduinos become one (Arduino Blog)
    • Two Arduinos become one

      Arduino, the world’s leading open-source ecosystem for educators, Makers and IoT developers of all ages, today announced that Arduino LLC (aka Arduino.cc) and Arduino srl (aka Arduino.org) have settled their differences and signed a settlement agreement.

      Massimo Banzi and Federico Musto took the stage today at World Maker Faire New York to announce the good news.

      At the end of 2016, the newly created “Arduino Holding” will become the single point of contact for the wholesale distribution of all current and future products, and will continue to bring tremendous innovations to the market.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Create your own Tizen themes with the Tizen Theme Editor

          Tizen’s theme store is one of the main ways in which users can customize their Tizen smartphones. However, if you are not impressed by all the themes available in the store, then Samsung’s Tizen Theme Editor tool is just what you should be looking out for. This Windows desktop only program lest you create your Tizen themes. The theme editor doesn’t require you to have any programming knowledge as the process only involves clicks, drags and drops to get most of the work done.

        • Samsung and SoftBank discuss IoT cooperation

          Samsung Electronics Co. and Japanese internet and telecommunications conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp. met recently to discuss how both companies could co-operate in the world of Technology as well as the Internet of Things (IoT) , according to sources. The meeting took place between Lee Jae-yong, vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, and SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son at the Samsung office in Seocho Ward.

          SoftBank made the news lately with its $32 billion deal to acquire ARM Holdings PLC, the UK based company that produces the microprocessors that power over 95% of the world’s smartphones. Both companies are known to want to increase their presence in the IoT sector and can complement each other in this regard.

      • Android

        • 3 Android phones that offer long battery life
        • ‘Andromeda’ will be Google’s NT

          If you were to design a client operating system with the goal of being used by two billion people, what would it look like?

          We might soon find out what Alphabet’s looks like. Today’s announcement’s from Alphabet’s Google is expected to reveal “Andromeda”, the merged Android/Chrome OS. Executives have been hyping today’s event as the most “significant” since the first Android device in 2008, and we already know they’re writing a new operating system from a clean slate. We can also have a good guess about what it looks like.

          Google’s goal for the successor is to unify the rival Chrome and Android platforms while providing a clean code base free of the Java legacy. Google’s big advantage here is that it now has a blank slate.

          After Google acquired Android in 2005, Sun Microsystems’ then CEO Jonathan Schwartz offered Google “congratulations on the announcement of their new Java/Linux phone platform”. Android founder Andy Rubin had already figured Java worked, and seen how it decreased time to market, and how much developers liked it. (Anything was preferable to writing for Symbian, the dominant smartphone platform of the time.)

        • Full Google Pixel and Pixel XL specifications leaked by retailer

          Google just found out, the hard way, how difficult it can be to coordinate a major smartphone launch. Details about its first self-branded smartphones, the Pixel and Pixel XL, have been published by several retailers ahead of their official unveiling tomorrow.

          The most revealing leak comes from Carphone Warehouse. The British retailer put up, and quickly removed, product listings for the Pixel and Pixel XL. The listings confirm much of what we were anticipating thanks to older leaks, and add a handful of new details. A mirror of the Pixel XL is available here, thanks to Reddit user krackers.

        • Live from Google’s mega announcement: Pixel phones, Android updates, 4K Chromecast and more!

          Google is hosting a press event today in San Francisco… and if the rumors are true, it should be a doozy. We’ve heard whispers about everything from new phones, to new Chromecasts, to a new VR headset, to a complete rethinking of Android as we know it.

          You might’ve assumed we’d be at the event covering it live with up-to-the-second updates from the scene… and, well, you’d have assumed right.

          The event is scheduled to start at 9 a.m. Pacific, so tune in then. In fact, chances are good we’ll start warming up the ol’ liveblog a bit before then — so if you don’t want to miss anything, tune in early.

        • Xiaomi’s 4K Android TV box is now on sale in the U.S. for $69

          We told you last month that Xiaomi’s Android TV box would go on sale in the U.S. in October, and true to our word it has. The Chinese company is best known for its affordable smartphones, but today it launched a set-top box priced at $69 that looks like great value.

          Originally unveiled at Google I/O in May, the new Mi Box offers 4K video at 60 FPS and supports Dolby Digital Plus audio playback and HDR content. Xiaomi partnered with Google to integrate Google Cast and Google voice search while there are Android games and apps for the likes of Netflix, HBO, and Showtime alongside support for Sling TV, which itself brings TV shows without the need for cable.

        • The Mi Box is officially launching today for $69

          Google unveiled the Mi Box with Android TV way back in May at Google I/O. Then for months, nothing. We were starting to wonder if the device would ever come out when it began appearing on Walmart shelves last month. Now, the Mi Box is official. It’s going on sale today on Mi.com and at Walmart for $69.

          The Mi Box is one of only a few Android TV boxes that have been released. Google’s original Nexus TV was a flop, and the Razer Forge TV never even got support for Netflix (which is absolutely insane). The NVIDIA Shield has been the only Android TV box worth having, but it’s $200. The Mi Box includes many of the features of the SHIELD for a lot less cash.

        • Why Android Fans Are Feeling Anxious Ahead of Google’s Next Hardware Event

          Recently there has been some anxiety amongst Android enthusiasts who are frustrated by Google’s apparent disregard for consumer satisfaction.

          So what gives? A few days ago Google released a new mobile messaging app called Allo that seeks to insert some Amazon Echo-like smarts into a familiar chat interface. While the app appears to be doing well on the charts, some Android fans have criticized its mobile-only approach (it can’t be used on the desktop) and the fact that it can’t be used to talk to people using Hangouts, another Google messaging app.

        • Google has until October 31 to reply to EU’s Android antitrust charges [Ed: Google has until October 31 to reply to Microsoft’s Android antitrust charges; EU as a Microsoft proxy here]

          Alphabet’s Google has been given until the end of October, the fourth extension, to rebut EU antitrust charges that it uses its dominant Android mobile operating system to block competitors, the European Commission said on Monday.

          The Commission in April said the U.S. technology giant’s demand that mobile phone makers pre-install Google Search and the Google Chrome browser on their smartphones to access other Google apps harms consumers and competition.

          The EU watchdog had initially set a July 27 deadline for Google to respond to the charges. This had been extended three times at the company’s request, with the previous deadline Sept. 20.

          The new deadlines are Oct. 31 for the Android case and Oct. 26 and Oct. 13 for cases relating to online search advertising and shopping.

        • Why Google’s EU Android Probe Bears Close Watching [Ed: Why Google’s [Microsoft proxy attack via regulators against] Android Probe Bears Close Watching]
        • Nokia’s Android-powered return? New mid-range smartphone surfaces [Ed: Microsoft had ruined Nokia before this happened]

          Details have surfaced on a benchmarking site that suggest Nokia may have a new mid-range phone waiting in the wings.

          For Nokia, IoT tech is firmly in its future plans, while smartphones are out. But die-hard Nokia fans may still be able to get their hands on a Nokia smartphone thanks to a little-known Finnish firm called HMD, which has a license and $500m to design, make, and market Nokia-branded smartphones running Android.

          The licensing deal was signed in May, but HMD has yet to announce its first phone, leaving fans with little more than speculation about future launches.

        • iPhone 7 comes last in battery test against Android smartphones

          If you want a smartphone with a long battery life, then testing carried out by UK consumer magazine Which? suggests that you’re far better off going with an Android device from HTC, LG, or Samsung. In fact, when the new iPhone 7 was pitted against the HTC 10, LG G5 and the Samsung Galaxy S7, it came last in all the tests.

        • How to factory reset an Android phone
        • How to Recover Deleted Photos on Android
        • Everything you need to know about Android 7.1 Nougat and the Pixel Launcher
        • Google Maps Now Displays Google Calendar Events on Android
        • Alert: some cards losing Android Pay support October 14th
        • [Finally] Nexus 6 gets official Android 7.0 Nougat with October 5th security patch

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source for Business: Pros and Cons

    Open source software offers benefits like high quality and faster application development, but some businesses have concerns about support and security.

  • OSI Welcomes Powering Potential: Open Source Advocates Extending Education in Tanzania

    The Open Source Initiative® (OSI), the premiere organization working globally to champion open source in society through education, infrastructure and collaboration; announced today that Powering Potential has joined the OSI as an Affiliate Member.

    Powering Potential provides access to educational resources on solar-powered computers running open source software at schools in rural Tanzania. The technology initiative works to enhance education and stimulate imagination of students in Tanzania while respecting and incorporating values of the local culture.

    “The Board of Directors at the OSI is pleased to have Powering Potential as an OSI Affiliate Member,” said Patrick Masson, general manager and director at the Open Source Initiative. “Their work fully aligns with our mission to raise awareness and adoption of open source software, and as our first African Affiliate Member, build bridges among different constituencies in the open source community.”

  • Riot Founder Describes Vision of Open Source Collaboration

    Initially built by developers for developers, Riot is free and open source software. It publishes all of the code on GitHub, where anyone can see, modify and run it.

  • Yahoo Open Sources Porn-Hunting Neural Network

    The artificial intelligence system is trained to automatically identify risque images using a probability scale between zero and one. Scores below 0.2 indicate the image is likely safe for all eyes. But those above 0.8 signal the high probability of a long chat with your boss if they spot your computer screen.

  • Yahoo is open sourcing its deep learning model to identify pornography
  • Avoiding quality assurance disasters with openQA

    OpenQA started in 2009 inside the openSUSE community and is now an integral part of the openSUSE ecosystem. It tests software the same way a human being does: Input is given by keyboard and mouse and results are recorded by comparing screenshots of the process to a set of predefined images. Just like a human tester, openQA detects failures and error messages by comparing what it sees with what it expects.

    The first step is the package submission to a new operating system (OS) build. OpenQA runs through a basic pre-build package set to detect basic issues very early. After building a new version of the OS in the Open Build Service, this ISO will be automatically recognized by openQA and validated. The next step is extended “post-validation” testing.

  • SOGo v3.2.0 released

    The Inverse team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of SOGo v3.2.0. This is a major release of SOGo which focuses on important new features and improved stability over previous versions.

  • Recent ownCloud Releases

    Even though we just had the nice and successful ownCloud Contributor Conference there have quite some ownCloud releases happened recently. I like to draw your attention to this for a moment, because some people seem to fail to see how active the ownCloud community actually is at the moment.

    There has been the big enterprise release 9.1 on September 20th, but that of course came along with community releases which are in the focus here.

    We had server release 8.0.15, server release 8.1.10, server release 8.2.8 and release 9.0.5. There are maintenance releases for the older major versions, needed to fix bugs on installations that still run on these older versions. We deliver them following this plan.

    The latest and greatest server release is release 9.1.1 that has all the hardening that also went into the enterprise releases.

    Aside a ton of bugfixes that you find listed in the changelog there have also been interesting changes which drive innovation. To pick just one example: The data fingerprint property. It enables the clients to detect if the server got a backup restored, and saves changes on the clients to conflict files if needed. This is a nice example of solutions which are based on feedback from enterprise customers community running ownCloud, who help with reporting problems and proposing solutions.

  • Evolving Your Open Source Project Infrastructure: There’s No Such Thing As Done

    When it comes to infrastructure for your open source project, you are never done, said Amye Scavarda, Gluster Community Lead at Red Hat, and Nigel Babu, Gluster CI/Automation Engineer at Red Hat. One theme during their LinuxCon Europe talk, “Making More Open: Creating Open Source Infrastructure for Your Open Source Project,” is that you can get closer to being done, but there is no such thing as “done” when it comes to infrastructure. Momentum is important – things are always moving, changing, and evolving. The work never ends as you figure out what can be left behind, what should be upgraded and how you can move into the future to incorporate new technologies.

    Amye and Nigel talked about how when you start an open source project, you tend to focus on shipping and releasing your code. You don’t necessarily worry too much about how you got there and what you did to get it shipped. In the early days of Gluster, almost everyone had root access to the build machine, since it was only a few people working closely together. Fast forward a few years now that Red Hat has acquired Gluster, and there are many people across a wide variety of time zones working on the project. How to manage communication across a large, growing open source project became a big challenge.

  • WalmartLabs open sources the application platform that powers Walmart.com

    Walmart probably isn’t the first company that comes to mind when you think about open-source software (or the second or third, really), but WalmartLabs, Walmart’s innovation-focused tech division, has already launched a number of open-source projects into the wild. The most interesting of these so far was OneOps, its DevOps platform, but today it is launching a similarly ambitious project.

    Over the course of the last year, Walmart.com — a site that handles 80 million monthly visitors and offers 15 million items for sale — migrated to React and Node.js. In the process of this transition, the WalmartLabs team built Electrode, a React-based application platform to power Walmart.com. It’s now open sourcing this platform.

    Electrode provides developers with boilerplate code to build universal React apps that consist of a number of standalone modules that developers can choose to add more functionality to their Node apps. These include a tool for managing the configuration of Node.js apps, for example, as well as a React component that helps you render above-the-fold content faster.

  • Walmart Open Sources Key Infrastructure Tool That Runs its Site

  • Events

    • Linux Foundation Leader Jim Zemlin to Keynote Postgres Vision 2016

      The Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin will keynote Postgres Vision 2016, the international conference for technology and industry visionaries to explore the future of enterprise Postgres, open source, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Postgres Vision will be held October 11-13, 2016, at the iconic Innovation Hangar (iHangar) in the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla awards $300,000 to four open source projects

        Mozilla’s love of open source is nothing new — just look to the Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) program. Loving a philosophy is one thing, but Mozilla has also put its money where its mouth is.

        In the third quarter of this year, MOSS awarded more than $300,000 to four projects which it either already supported, or which were aligned with the organization’s mission. One of the smallest awards — $56,000 — was made to Speech Rule Engine, a text-to-speech style component that makes mathematical and scientific content more accessible.

      • MOSS supports four more open source projects in Q3 2016 with $300k
      • Mozilla Funds a Series of Promising Open Source Projects

        You can always count on Mozilla for an interesting spin on open source. Last year, Mozilla launched the Mozilla Open Source Support Program (MOSS) – an award program specifically focused on supporting open source and free software. As The VAR Guy notes: “The Mozilla Foundation has long injected money into the open source ecosystem through partnerships with other projects and grants. But it formalized that mission last year by launching MOSS, which originally focused on supporting open source projects that directly complement or help form the basis for Mozilla’s own products.”

        Now, the company has announced that In the third quarter of this year, MOSS awarded over $300,000 to four projects which it either already supported, or which were in line with the Mozilla mission.

      • Is Chrome faster than Firefox in Linux?

        The browser wars have been raging for many years now, and Linux users have often been on one side or the other. One Linux redditor recently noted that Chrome was much faster for him than Firefox, and a long discussion ensued with folks sharing their experiences with Chrome and Firefox.

  • Databases

    • What’s new in PostgreSQL 9.5

      Fedora 24 ships with PostgreSQL 9.5, a major upgrade from version 9.4 that is included in Fedora 23. The new version 9.5 provides several enhancements and new features, but also brings some compatibility changes, as it has been very common between PostgreSQL major versions. Note that in the PostgreSQL versioning scheme, 9.4 and 9.5 are two major versions, while the first number is mostly marketing and increments when major features are introduced in the release.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • NetBeans IDE 8.2 Download is available now

      NeatBeans doesn’t need an introduction but still who doesn’t know about NetBeans IDE then NetBeans IDE is an IDE(integrated development environment) that supports multiple programming languages like JAVA,HTML5,JAVAScript,C/C++,PHP etc. Well,It’s vastly used by many coders and developers for developing mobile,pc or web applications.
      NetBeans has a great set of pre-installed tools that makes coding and developing more convenient and easy on fingers.The GUI builder really makes the things easy on head when it comes to developing JAVA SE applications.

  • BSD

    • OpenBSD 6.0 – an exercise in precision

      The OpenBSD project is well known for its strong focus on security and for its precise documentation. The OpenBSD operating system generally gives preference to security and properly behaving software over features. OpenBSD is lightweight, sparse and relatively locked down by default. This makes the platform particularly popular among administrators who need a firewall or other minimal and stable platform.

      OpenBSD 6.0 introduces many small changes and a handful of important ones. Looking through the release notes we find support for the VAX platform has been dropped. There have been several security updates to the OpenSSH secure shell service. Perhaps one of the more interesting security features in the operating system is strict enforcement of W^X: “W^X is now strictly enforced by default; a program can only violate it if the executable is marked with PT_OPENBSD_WXNEEDED and is located on a file system mounted with the wxallowed mount option. Because there are still too many ports which violate W^X, the installer mounts the /usr/local file system with wxallowed. This allows the base system to be more secure as long as /usr/local is a separate file system. If you use no W^X violating programs, consider manually revoking that option.”

      I decided to play with the 64-bit x86 build of OpenBSD which is 226MB in size. Booting from this ISO presents us with a text console where we are asked if we would like to install OpenBSD, upgrade an existing copy of the operating system or perform an auto-install. I chose to perform a normal installation.

    • OpenBSD and NetBSD machines at Open Source Conference 2016 Nagaoka

      The Japan NetBSD Users’ Group and Echigo BSD Users Group members held booth at the Open Source Conference 2016 Nagaoka on Oct.1 2016…

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Licensing/Legal

    • GCC RISC-V Support Allegedly Held Up Due To University Lawyers

      While there has been talk about RISC-V architecture support in the GCC compiler and for LLVM too going back months, a developer is reporting that the GCC RISC-V support is being delayed due to UC Berkeley lawyers.

      Contributions to the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) require a copyright assignment to the Free Software Foundation for this GPLv3-licensed compiler. It turns out the University of California Berkeley lawyers are taking issue with this, temporarily holding up the compiler back-end from merging.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • France is developing a free consultation platform for public authorities

      Etalab and the CNNum (Conseil National du Numérique, the National Digital Council) planned to collaborate with civil society members and the Open Government ecosystem in France to develop an consultation platform. The idea was presented during an Open Democracy Now Hackathon, which took place in Paris on September 17 and 18.

    • France to develop a toolbox for Open Government

      Etalab, the French government agency in charge of Open Data and Open Government, and the French authorities are currently working, in collaboration with other OGP members, on an Open Government toolkit.

      This is aimed at helping governments to implement Open Government principles in their countries. This OGP Toolkit is to be finalised for the OGP Paris Summit in December. Every OGP member will have access to the toolkit.

      “This toolkit is designed to facilitate the implementation of OGP commitments, by referencing the available solutions and documenting their uses”, Etalab said on its website.

      It is being developed to be “a database of digital tools and uses made of them by organisations and citizens all over the world”. Basically, “the aim of this catalogue is to increase the visibility of these tools and encourage their sharing and reuse”.

    • Open Access/Content

      • Rutgers libraries launch open source textbook program

        It’s no secret that textbooks are expensive, but Rutgers Libraries are giving students’ wallets a break with a new open source textbook program.

        “Hopefully going forward we will have more students who will not have to make the difficult decision of deciding whether or not to purchase a book for their class because of the cost,” said Lily Todorinova, undergraduate experience librarian and liaison to School of Communication and Information.

        The Rutgers libraries are working closely with the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group to launch the Open and Affordable Textbook Project for all Rutgers campuses — New Brunswick, Camden and Newark, she said.

Leftovers

  • 4chan is running out of money

    The infamous message board 4chan is struggling to stay afloat and will have to make changes to reduce costs, the site’s owner wrote in a post on Sunday. “4chan can’t afford infrastructure costs, network fee, servers cost, CDN and etc, now,” writes Hiroyuki Nisimura, who bought the site from its founder last year.

    Nisimura says ads haven’t been effective enough to support the site, nor have subscriptions offering additional features. “We had tried to keep 4chan as is. But I failed,” Nisimura writes. “I am sincerely sorry.”

  • How to prevent coworker competition from ruining company culture

    Over the next few weeks, they would unknowingly be the subjects of one of the most widely known psychological studies of our time. And the ways these groups bonded and interacted with each other draw some interesting parallels to our understanding of workplace culture.

  • Man Gets Attacked Twice By Grizzly Bear, Films Video Of Himself Covered In Blood

    Todd Orr’s story isn’t for the faint of heart.

    The 50-year-old was enjoying a solo hike Saturday near Ennis, Montana, when he was attacked by a grizzly bear.

    Bitten and bleeding, Orr managed to start back down the trail toward his truck ― only to be attacked again by the same bear a few minutes later.

    The encounter left him mangled and drenched in blood, but alive.

    “Legs are good, internal organs are good, eyes are good,” Orr says in a graphic 50-second video that he filmed just after the second attack. “I just walked out three miles and now I’ve got to go to the hospital.”

  • Science

    • Uncovering Texas’ Strategy to Slash Much-Needed Special Education Services

      Federal law mandates that school districts provide special education services to students with disabilities–physical, emotional or developmental. But outside the public’s view, the state of Texas has decided that fewer students should get those services. It pressured school districts to meet an artificial benchmark of 8.5 percent, a rate far below that of any state, according to a Houston Chronicle investigation.

      The article, by Brian M. Rosenthal, documents how “unelected state officials have quietly devised a system that has kept thousands of disabled kids” out of special education.

      “We were basically told in a staff meeting that we needed to lower the number of kids in special ed at all costs,” one former teacher told Rosenthal. “It was all a numbers game.”

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Polish women strike over planned abortion ban

      Women wearing black clothes and waving black flags are demonstrating across Poland, boycotting their jobs and classes as part of a nationwide strike in protest against a new law that would in effect ban abortion.

      Many men also took part in demonstrations on the streets of Warsaw, Gdańsk and elsewhere across the largely Catholic nation.

      Thousands of people also protested on Saturday in front of the parliament in Warsaw. Women were wearing black in a sign of mourning for the feared loss of reproductive rights; they have also warned that some women will die if the proposal passes as it stands now.

      Poland already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, with terminations legally permitted only when there is severe foetal abnormality, when there is a grave threat to the health of the mother, or if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

      But the new law would criminalise all terminations, with women punishable with up to five years in prison. Doctors found to have assisted with a termination would also be liable for prosecution and a prison term.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Monday
    • Impossible is impossible!

      Sometimes when you plan for a security event, it would be expected that the thing you’re doing will be making some outcome (something bad probably) impossible. The goal of the security group is to keep the bad guys out, or keep the data in, or keep the servers patched, or find all the security bugs in the code. One way to look at this is security is often in the business of preventing things from happening, such as making data exfiltration impossible. I’m here to tell you it’s impossible to make something impossible.

      As you think about that statement for a bit, let me explain what’s happening here, and how we’re going to tie this back to security, business needs, and some common sense. We’ve all heard of the 80/20 rule, one of the forms is that the last 20% of the features are 80% of the cost. It’s a bit more nuanced than that if you really think about it. If your goal is impossible it would be more accurate to say 1% of the features are 2000% of the cost. What’s really being described here is a curve that looks like this

    • What is the spc_t container type, and why didn’t we just run as unconfined_t?

      If you are on an SELinux system, and run docker with SELinux separation turned off, the containers will run with the spc_t type.

    • The importance of paying attention in building community trust

      Trust is important in any kind of interpersonal relationship. It’s inevitable that there will be cases where something you do will irritate or upset others, even if only to a small degree. Handling small cases well helps build trust that you will do the right thing in more significant cases, whereas ignoring things that seem fairly insignificant (or saying that you’ll do something about them and then failing to do so) suggests that you’ll also fail when there’s a major problem. Getting the small details right is a major part of creating the impression that you’ll deal with significant challenges in a responsible and considerate way.

      This isn’t limited to individual relationships. Something that distinguishes good customer service from bad customer service is getting the details right. There are many industries where significant failures happen infrequently, but minor ones happen a lot. Would you prefer to give your business to a company that handles those small details well (even if they’re not overly annoying) or one that just tells you to deal with them?

    • Why health implants should have open source code

      As medical implants become more common, sophisticated and versatile, understanding the code that runs them is vital. A pacemaker or insulin-releasing implant can be lifesaving, but they are also vulnerable not just to malicious attacks, but also to faulty code.

      For commercial reasons, companies have been reluctant to open up their code to researchers. But with lives at stake, we need to be allowed to take a peek under the hood.

      Over the past few years several researchers have revealed lethal vulnerabilities in the code that runs some medical implants. The late Barnaby Jack, for example, showed that pacemakers could be “hacked” to deliver lethal electric shocks. Jay Radcliffe demonstrated a way of wirelessly making an implanted insulin pump deliver a lethal dose of insulin.

      But “bugs” in the code are also an issue. Researcher Marie Moe recently discovered this first-hand, when her Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) unexpectedly went into “safe mode”. This caused her heart rate to drop by half, with drastic consequences.

    • Hack Crashes Linux Distros with 48 Characters of Code

      With just a mere 48 characters of code, Linux admin and SSLMate founder Andrew Ayer has figured out how to crash major Linux distributions by locally exploiting a flaw in systemd.

      Ayer said the following command, when run as any user, will crash systemd: “NOTIFY_SOCKET=/run/systemd/notify systemd-notify”

    • Systemd is not Magic Security Dust

      Systemd maintainer David Strauss has published a response to my blog post about systemd. The first part of his post is replete with ad hominem fallacies, strawmen, and factual errors. Ironically, in the same breath that he attacks me for not understanding the issues around threads and umasks, he betrays an ignorance of how the very project which he works on uses threads and umasks. This doesn’t deserve a response beyond what I’ve called out on Twitter.

      In the second part of his blog post, Strauss argues that systemd improves security by making it easy to apply hardening techniques to the network services which he calls the “keepers of data attackers want.” According to Strauss, I’m “fighting one of the most powerful tools we have to harden the front lines against the real attacks we see every day.” Although systemd does make it easy to restrict the privileges of services, Strauss vastly overstates the value of these features.

    • A single command needed to crash Linux server – expert
    • Bitcoin Linux Users Need To Beware of Critical Systemd Vulnerability
    • This Single Line Of Code Can Crash Your Linux System In No Time
    • 48 characters enough to crash most Linux distros, says sysadmin
    • ‘We’re From Microsoft and We’ve Been Remotely Watching Your Computer’

      We are going into our third year of living in the Gardens of Taylor. When you come off of the city street and onto this property, you can sometimes get a creepy feeling, like this is familiar in an unpleasant sort of way. It can feel like you’ve just stepped into Stepford Village. Every yard has been manicured to match the ones on either side of it. The edging along all driveways and sidewalks is a perfect two inches across and if a weed or mushroom happens to grow within that etched space, it is gone the next time you look for it.

      Stuff like that just vanishes. Spooky like.

      Fact is, the property manager pays the lawn service to make a drive through every other day in order to take care of any anomalies. Once I got used to it, I became comfortable with living here, being that it’s for people with physical disabilities and age 55 or over.

      On moving-in day, we hadn’t been there an hour before people began to take notice of us from across the street. They would stop just long enough to pretend they weren’t checking us out, then they would be on their way. Some even stopped to help.

      [...]

      Now Claude and Jane both run Linux. Their money is safe, and if anyone calls giving them instructions how to get a virus off of their Windows’ computer, they just laugh and hang up, but not before telling them they run Linux.

      There will come a day, maybe sooner than any of us think, when a scam like this might actually work on a Linux machine. In the past two years we’ve seen stories of Linux servers being compromised, and there is constant news that this or that piece of malicious code might be making its way to Linux computers soon.

      Being prudent, I run both Avast for day-to-day stuff and various Clam iterations for biweekly sweeps for rootkits. I exchange a lot of Windows stuff with my Reglue kids, so that’s only smart. Not that I expect anything to go south in the near future. Everything I’ve seen coming down the Linux pike demands hands-on the target computer to inject the badware.

      Here’s a Helios Helpful Hint: Don’t let someone you don’t know have access to your computer, sans the repair guy.

      However I do believe in preparedness. Jane’s Linux Mint install runs the same security as mine and I administrate it remotely (from home. I’ll get Claude up to speed on Wednesday.

      How long ago was it that many of us gave up on the “disconnected generation?” For a while I didn’t work with people who were so set in their ways that they bucked any suggestion of having to learn something new. And honest-to-goodness, a lady in the neighborhood asked me to make her computer the same way it was when she bought it. That would be the Windows Vista release. Sigh.

      “No ma’am. Not for any amount of money. Sorry.”

      I’m not into any more stress than necessary these days.

      Vista? Really?

    • Security Design: Stop Trying to Fix the User

      Every few years, a researcher replicates a security study by littering USB sticks around an organization’s grounds and waiting to see how many people pick them up and plug them in, causing the autorun function to install innocuous malware on their computers. These studies are great for making security professionals feel superior. The researchers get to demonstrate their security expertise and use the results as “teachable moments” for others. “If only everyone was more security aware and had more security training,” they say, “the Internet would be a much safer place.”

      Enough of that. The problem isn’t the users: it’s that we’ve designed our computer systems’ security so badly that we demand the user do all of these counterintuitive things. Why can’t users choose easy-to-remember passwords? Why can’t they click on links in emails with wild abandon? Why can’t they plug a USB stick into a computer without facing a myriad of viruses? Why are we trying to fix the user instead of solving the underlying security problem?

    • Security Design: Stop Trying to Fix the User [It says (scroll down) "Getting a virus simply by opening an email was an urban legend, a technically impossible but scary sounding thing to frighten normies with, as late as the 90s. ...Microsoft made that myth real with the first release of Outlook"]
    • A tiny PC as a router

      We needed a router and wifi access point in the office, and simultaneously both I and my co-worker Ivan needed such a thing at our respective homes. After some discussion, and after reading articles in Ars Technica about building PCs to act as routers, we decided to do just that.

      The PC solution seem to offer better performance, but this is actually not a major reason for us.

      We want to have systems we understand and can hack. A standard x86 PC running Debian sounds ideal to use.

      Why not a cheap commercial router? They tend to be opaque and mysterious, and can’t be managed with standard tooling such as Ansible. They may or may not have good security support. Also, they may or may not have sufficient functionality to be nice things, such as DNS for local machines, or the full power if iptables for firewalling.

      Why not OpenWRT? Some models of commercial routers are supported by OpenWRT. Finding good hardware that is also supported by OpenWRT is a task in itself, and not the kind of task especially I like to do. Even if one goes this route, the environment isn’t quite a standard Linux system, because of various hardware limitations. (OpenWRT is a worthy project, just not our preference.)

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Race and Militarism from Ferguson to Syria: A letter to African Americans

      “A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life.” Ida B. Wells

      The Black radical tradition has always understood the inextricable link between racism and militarism: racism as a manifestation of white supremacist ideology, and militarism as the mechanism to enforce that ideology.

      That fundamental link grounds our analysis of the Obama administration’s policies in Iraq and Syria. But the link between race ( white supremacy) and the deployment of violence to enforce the interests of white supremacy also explains the repressive mission and role of the police in the colonized barrios and segregated African American communities within the U.S.

    • United Nations: Targeting Wikileaks Founder With Drone Strike Criminal Violation of Human Rights

      Targeting or “taking out” Wikileaks founder Julian Assange via military drone strike would be a criminal violation of international human rights laws, a United Nations envoy said Monday.

      “A State could theoretically seek to justify the use of drones by invoking the right to anticipatory self-defence against a non-state actor and by arguing that it had no means to capture their targets or cause another state to capture the target,” said Dr. Agnes Callamard, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Executions during an interview with True Pundit. “To do so, the State would have to demonstrate an ‘instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment of deliberation’ necessity. This is not only a very high threshold to meet; it is also impossible to see how this could be used or justified in the case of Mr. Julian Assange.”

      Dr. Callamard’s statements come on the heels of a scathing published account by True Pundit detailing that in 2010 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reportedly asked top aides if it was possible to use a drone strike against Assange. While Dr. Callamard said she had no knowledge of the assertions contained in the True Pundit story, she did speak to the alarming generalities of using a drone strike to silence someone of Assange’s global stature. Dr. Callamard stated “the use of drones for targeted killing outside the context of armed conflict, is almost never likely to be legal and to meet human rights law limitations on the use of lethal force.”

      Dr. Callamard, an expert on human rights and humanitarian work globally, in civil society organizations, the United Nations and in academia. Prior to her post at the UN, Dr. Callamard spent nine years as the Executive Director of ARTICLE 19, the international human rights organization promoting freedom of expression globally. Dr. Callamard also serves as director of Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression initiative.

    • Hillary Clinton considered drone attack on Julian Assange – report

      Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reportedly wanted to drone Wikileaks founder Julian Assange when she was secretary of state.

      According to True Pundit, Clinton and the state department were under pressure to silence Assange and Wikileaks in the months before the whistleblowing site released a massive dump of 250,000 diplomatic cables from 1966 up to 2010, dubbed CableGate.

      “Can’t we just drone this guy?” Clinton asked, according to unidentified state department sources.

      Published by True Pundit on Sunday, Wikileaks posted a link to the story on their official Twitter account on Monday, along with a screenshot of the article.

    • Hillary Clinton suggested taking out Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with drone: Report

      A new report reveals that an angry and frustrated Hillary Clinton once pondered obliterating Wikileaks’ Julian Assange with a drone strike.

      The shocking revelation comes as the Democratic presidential nominee and the party’s brain trust brace themselves for an “October Surprise” from Assange.

      Wikileaks has vowed to unleash a torrent of emails expected to be highly damaging to the former secretary of state — and her bid for the White House.

      The True Pundit says the U.S. government was tasked with neutralizing Assange. And Clinton was the point person.

      “Can’t we just drone this guy?” she pondered during one high-charged meeting, State Department sources reportedly told True Pundit. According to the website, others in the room laughed.

      But not Clinton, who called the Assange a “soft target.”

    • Pentagon Paid for Fake ‘Al Qaeda’ Videos

      The Pentagon gave a controversial U.K. PR firm over half a billion dollars to run a top secret propaganda program in Iraq, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal.

      Bell Pottinger’s output included short TV segments made in the style of Arabic news networks and fake insurgent videos which could be used to track the people who watched them, according to a former employee.

      The agency’s staff worked alongside high-ranking U.S. military officers in their Baghdad Camp Victory headquarters as the insurgency raged outside.

      Bell Pottinger’s former chairman Lord Tim Bell confirmed to the Sunday Times, which has worked with the Bureau on this story, that his firm had worked on a “covert” military operation “covered by various secrecy documents.”

    • CNN Celebrates Iraqi Housewife Who Beheaded and Then Cooked the Skulls of ISIS fighters

      When Islamic State beheads someone it is terrorism. When an Iraqi housewife beheads an ISIS fighter and cooks his skull, it is freedom. That is the CNN doctrine.

      CNN reports the story of 39-year-old Wahida Mohamed aka Um Hanadi, an Iraqi woman who supposedly leads a tribal militia force of around 70 men south of Mosul. She and her band allegedly helped “government forces” drive Islamic State out of a small town.

      “I began fighting the terrorists in 2004, working with Iraqi security forces and the coalition,” she told CNN. CNN cites no other source other than Um Hanadi herself and Facebook in its coverage.

      As a result, Um Hanadi said, she attracted the wrath of what eventually became al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which later morphed into ISIS. “I received threats from the top leadership of ISIS, including from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi himself,” she says. “I’m at the top of their most wanted list, even more than the [Iraqi] Prime Minister.”

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • It Seems Like Nobody’s Getting the Cash Bonuses Promised by the Reducing Over-Classification Act

      It often feels like everyone inside and outside the government agrees that over-classification of government records is a major problem. Yet a series of Freedom of Information Act requests by EFF has found that even when Congress allowed agencies to offer cash rewards to government employees to be less secretive, nobody has been collecting the money.

      Recognizing the threat posed by over-classification, Congress passed legislation in 2010 to counter the pervasive problem of bureaucrats making benign government records secret. One of the most highlighted provisions of the Reducing Over-Classification Act (ROCA) was a new tool for agencies: cash incentives for employees who accurately classify (and declassify) documents.

      Congress hoped that by offering a proverbial carrot to the line-level employees making initial and derivative classification decisions within federal agencies, it could increase transparency and allow greater information sharing between federal agencies and local law enforcement. Responses to EFF’s FOIA requests with 27 agencies demonstrates, however, that those carrots have rotted on the shelf.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Scientist: World won’t avoid dangerous warming mark

      A team of top scientists is telling world leaders to stop congratulating themselves on the Paris agreement to fight climate change because if more isn’t done, global temperatures will likely hit dangerous warming levels in about 35 years.

      Six scientists who were leaders in past international climate conferences joined with the Universal Ecological Fund in Argentina to release a brief report Thursday, saying that if even more cuts in heat-trapping gases aren’t agreed upon soon, the world will warm by another 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit by around 2050.

      That 1.8 degree mark is key because in 2009 world leaders agreed that they wanted to avoid warming of 3.6 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Temperatures have already risen about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, so that 2 degree goal is really about preventing a rise of another degree going forward.

      Examining the carbon pollution cuts and curbs promised by 190 nations in an agreement made in Paris last December, the scientists said it’s simply not enough.

    • [Older] 7 Popular Foods That Might Disappear Because of Climate Change

      Search is on for ancient or near-extinct crops that might be better suited for this new reality

      Throughout history, different types of food have surged and dropped in popularity, and some foods that existed at one point just aren’t around anymore. But we’re not talking about foods that aren’t popular, quite the opposite in fact. Some of our favorite foods and drinks could be considered “endangered” because the places where they are grown are being severely impacted by climate change. If this isn’t proof that we need to do something about climate change, I don’t know what is. To start off, here are a few foods that are part of our every lives that might not be around for long.

    • India ratifies Paris climate agreement

      India, one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, has ratified the Paris global climate agreement.

      Under the deal, India has committed to ensuring that at least 40% of its electricity will be generated from non-fossil sources by 2030.

      CO2 emissions are believed to be the driving force behind climate change.

      Last December in Paris, countries agreed to cut emissions in a bid to keep the global average rise in temperatures below 2C.

      The Paris deal is the world’s first comprehensive climate agreement.

      It will only come into force legally after it is ratified by at least 55 countries which between them produce at least 55% of global carbon emissions.

      Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced last month that India would ratify the agreement on 2 October, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the struggle for independence from Britain.

    • FMI: September warmer than usual for eighth year running

      According to the Finnish Meteorological Institute FMI, September’s balmy weather was caused by temperatures that were one to two degrees higher than usual across the country. Temperatures were particularly mild in northwest Lapland, where they were from two to four degrees higher than the norm.

      Last month’s highest temperature, 23.2 degrees Celsius was recorded at Kumpula in Helsinki on September 7. It was coolest in Naruska, Salla, in the northeast on September 18, when the mercury dropped to -5.3 degrees.

      The summery conditions persisted throughout the month, given that the last time daytime highs crossed the 20-degree mark was on the 15th and even as late as the 27th, highs passed 17 degrees as far north as Oulu.

      September marked the eighth year running that temperature records were higher than usual. Last year, the month that typically heralds autumn and the advent of decidedly cooler conditions was even warmer than this September. However according to FMI it’s still too early to make predictions about what the rest of the autumn will be like.

  • Finance

    • IMF cuts UK economic forecast for second time since Brexit vote

      The International Monetary Fund has cut its forecast for the UK economy next year for the second time since the Brexit vote.

    • Alyn Smith: Theresa May’s speech killed off lingering hope of salvaging something from the ruins of Brexit

      ANYONE who did not believe that the European Question is the defining attribute of politics in these islands is in no doubt after Sunday. Different people come to independence for different reasons. I’ve always been motivated by the difference Scotland could make in the world, and the difference we could make to the lives of Scots by taking control over our own lives and making decisions here.

      So Sunday was a stand-out awful day in what has been a pretty bleak few months, watching a Tory party we didn’t vote for making statements about how we’ll interact with the world, and presuming to make the decisions for us, to boot. And by any yardstick not giving one jot about the national interest, neither ours nor the UK’s. We have seen, clearly, that the UK Government’s first priority is the unity of the governing party itself.

      Party conferences can be awful things for outsiders. Part reunion, part beauty contest, part theatre and, somewhere among the open or crypto power-struggles, some business might actually get done. But, much as it pains me, this Tory conference matters, and isn’t just the usual theatre because it is the first glimpse of a carefully constructed facade put forward by the people who seek to make decisions over our lives and the lives of future generations. And it isn’t pretty. I was actually more hopeful. I still had some hope that the canny Remain-voting new PM was keeping her powder dry while the UK civil service worked on a clever fix. But even I have to admit now that the extremists are in charge.

    • Petition: make the FBI explain why they didn’t bring criminal charges against bank execs

      Last month, Senator Elizabeth Warren published an open letter to FBI director James Comey observing that, in revealing details of its investigation into the Clinton email scandal, the Bureau had seemingly abandoned its longstanding policy of not sharing its deliberations, meaning that there was no longer any reason to keep secret its reasoning for not bringing criminal charges against the bankers who did trillions of dollars’ worth of damage to the world economy, sparking wars, starvation, and personal ruin for millions of people.

    • Saudi Arabia switches to ‘Western’ Gregorian calendar so it can pay workers less and save money

      Saudi Arabia has switched to the “Western” Gregorian calendar to pay its civil servants in one of a number of financial reforms announced by the Council of Ministers.

      The Kingdom has used the lunar-based Hijri calendar since it was founded in 1932, but switched to the solar-based Gregorian calendar for paying public sector staff on 1 October.

    • Robert Reich: Why it’s time to start considering a universal basic income

      Imagine a little gadget called an i-Everything. You can’t get it yet, but if technology keeps moving as fast as it is now, the i-Everything will be with us before you know it.

      A combination of intelligent computing, 3-D manufacturing, big data crunching, and advanced bio-technology, this little machine will be able to do everything you want and give you everything you need.

      There’s only one hitch. As the economy is now organized, no one will be able to buy it, because there won’t be any paying jobs left. You see, the i-Everything will do … everything.

      We’re heading toward the i-Everything far quicker than most people realize. Even now, we’re producing more and more with fewer and fewer people.

      Internet sales are on the way to replacing millions of retail workers. Diagnostic apps will be replacing hundreds of thousands of health-care workers. Self-driving cars and trucks will replace 5 million drivers.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Clinton manager ‘reticent to comment’ on report about droning Assange

      Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager declined Monday to comment on recent reports alleging the Democratic nominee once suggested sending a drone strike after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

      “I’m reticent to comment on anything that the WikiLeaks people have said. They’ve made a lot of accusations in the past,” Robby Mook said Monday in an interview with WTTG.com.

      WikiLeaks tweeted a screen grab Sunday evening from a report alleging that Clinton once asked during a State Department briefing, “Can’t we just drone this guy?”

      She supposedly asked this when she served as secretary of state.

    • Biden: Trump ‘completely uninformed’ on veterans and PTSD

      Vice President Joe Biden chastised Donald Trump Monday for his comments about veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), calling the GOP presidential nominee “thoroughly and completely uninformed.”

      Many have interpreted remarks Trump made Monday about veterans and PTSD as a slight, though the campaign insists his comments were misrepresented by the media.

      “Where in the hell is he from?” Biden asked at a campaign stop for Hillary Clinton in Sarasota, Fla.

      “I don’t think he was trying to be mean. He is just so thoroughly, completely uninformed.”

      Biden, who said he has been “in and out” of Afghanistan and Iraq more than 29 times, said the U.S. has only one sacred obligation and that is to “care for those we send to war and to care for them and their family when they come home.”

      “What are the chances Trump honors commitment to those who are wounded?

      “It’s not just that he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t want to find out,” Biden added.

    • The New York Times and Trump’s Taxes: Another Marker on the End of Journalism

      I don’t support Trump. I don’t support Clinton. But what I really don’t support is shoddy journalism, and that’s what is all awhirl regarding the leak of three pages of Trumps’ federal tax return from 21 years ago.

    • More Media B.S. — OMG, Trump Company Legally Rented Office Space to Iranian Bank!

      Once again a story that Trump did nothing illegal is somehow front page news. His crime this time? Continuing to legally rent out office space to a bank already in a building he bought 18 years ago.

      So the big news is that Donald Trump’s real estate organization rented space to an Iranian bank later linked to Iran’s nuclear program.

      Bank Melli, one of Iran’s largest state-controlled banks, was already a tenant in 1998 when Trump purchased the General Motors Building, above, in Manhattan, but he kept them on for another five years, until 2003.

    • Ron Paul criticizes Gary Johnson, praises Jill Stein
    • Third-Party Voters Know What They Want

      On Tuesday night, two men who want to be vice president will face off in a debate. If Bill Weld had his way, he’d be up on that stage, too.

      Mr. Weld, who served as governor of Massachusetts in the 1990s, is running as the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential pick this year, alongside Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico. Last week, Mr. Weld spoke to students and supporters at Temple University in Philadelphia. Outside Morgan Hall, two students wearing Gary Johnson shirts directed people to the event.

      A group of young white men wearing baseball caps walked past, saw the Gary Johnson shirts, and jeered: “What’s Aleppo?”

      One of Mr. Johnson’s supporters, Alex Pack, rolled his eyes. Were those guys Trump supporters?

      “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Backward hats.”

    • Here Are 7 Questions Mike Pence Should Be Asked at the Vice Presidential Debate

      When Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Tim Kaine take the stage Tuesday night for the 2016 vice presidential debate, there are a few things we hope that debate moderator Elaine Quijano of CBS News will ask Pence to account for.

      While promoted as the sane member of a GOP ticket headed by the likes of Donald Trump, Pence, who is governor of Indiana, uses a demeanor of reasonableness to offset some mighty extreme views on the role of women, climate change, creationism and Social Security, to name a few. The vice presidential candidates meet only once before a national television audience, so this forum will likely be an introduction of these candidates to most voters.

      Kaine, the U.S. senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia, is pretty much your basic liberal; not much by way of surprise in his background. But Pence, a convert to hard-core right-wing Protestant evangelicalism, embraces a range of positions far afield of the views of mainstream voters—views he doesn’t flaunt on the campaign trail. He’s a favorite of donors to the Koch network, as well as Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, the ground-organizing group founded by Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers at the helm of Koch Industries. (According to Follow the Money, David Koch has spent some $300,000 on Pence’s political campaigns.) Pence has also enjoyed the largess of Erik Prince, founder of the mercenary firm once known as Blackwater (since renamed Academi), from whom he received thousands of dollars in donations for his congressional campaigns.

      If voters are to know what they’re getting when they pull the lever on November 8, Quijano will need to dig deep into Pence’s record. Here a few topics that would prove most enlightening to the electorate.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Fair Processes, Better Outcomes

      Yesterday we exposed the dangers of Shadow Regulation; the secretive web of backroom agreements between companies that seeks to control our behavior online, often driven by governments as a shortcut and less accountable alternative to regulation.

    • Record Labels Make New Grab For Website-Blocking Power in YouTube-MP3 Suit

      Once again, major record labels are asking a court to give them power over the Internet’s basic infrastructure. This is the very power that Congress has refused to give them, and the very power they have proven unable and unwilling to use responsibly. This time, their alleged target is the website Youtube-MP3.org, a site that extracts the audio tracks from YouTube videos and allows users to download them. But as in other recent lawsuits, the labels’ real target appears to be nearly every company that operates or supports the operation of the Internet. The labels are seeking a court order that would bind all of these companies to assist the labels in making Youtube-MP3 disappear from the Internet.

      Even if that website is found to be liable for copyright infringement, the law doesn’t give copyright or trademark holders such sweeping power to edit the Internet. And it never should.

      Record labels have been filing many lawsuits against websites that they deem to be connected to copyright infringement. These sites, run from outside the U.S., don’t bother appearing in U.S. court to defend themselves—and the labels know this. When one party doesn’t show up to court and the other wins by default, judges often grant the winning party everything they ask for. Record labels, along with luxury brands and other frequent filers of copyright and trademark suits, have been using this tactic to write sweeping orders that claim to bind every kind of Internet intermediary: hosting providers, DNS registrars and registries, CDNs, Internet service providers, and more. Some of these requested orders claim to cover payment providers, search engines, and even Web browsers. Judges often sign these orders without much scrutiny.

      Then, the labels and brands, armed with an overbroad and often, in our view, legally invalid order they wrote themselves, try to force Internet intermediaries into helping make the website disappear, and sometimes to filter their services to keep the website from coming back. The central defect of these orders is that they purport to bind third-parties who have no notice or opportunity to challenge them before they issue. Some intermediaries, faced with these orders, cut off websites without asking questions. Others, including Automattic (WordPress), CloudFlare, and the domain name registrar Tucows, have stood up for Internet users by insisting on proper, legally binding orders. A group of major Internet companies including Google, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Yahoo! also pushed back against this abuse in an amicus brief last year.

    • Singapore Jails Teen Blogger for Videos Critical of Islam, Christianity

      Amos Yee, 17, a blogger from Singapore, has been sentenced to six weeks in prison, plus a fine of $1,500 U.S., because he “deliberately elected to do harm by using offensive and insulting words and profane gestures to hurt the feelings of Christians and Muslims.”

      Such was the pronouncement of district judge Ong Hian Sun, according to CNN, which reports Yee was facing six charges of “wounding religious feeling” with his social media posts — he has a preference for YouTube rants. He was also slapped with two charges of failing to report to the police station when summoned.

    • Microsoft Bing Debuts New DMCA Notice Dashboard

      Microsoft’s Bing has just debuted a new system which allows any copyright holder to submit and monitor the status of their DMCA complaints to the search engine. At the center of the tool is a brand new dashboard, available to anyone with a Microsoft account.

    • Cox Wants Music Group to Pay for False Copyright Claims.

      Internet provider Cox Communications is demanding over $100,000 in compensation from Round Hill Music, for the legal fees it incurred based on false copyright claims. The music group sued Cox last year over alleged infringements committed by the ISP’s subscribers, without actually owning any of the copyrights in question.

    • DOJ To Anti-Muslim Troll Pam Geller: You’re Suing The Wrong Entity, Genius

      There simply aren’t enough derogatives in the dictionary to apply to Pam Geller’s lawsuit against the DOJ for its “enforcement” of Section 230. Geller doesn’t appear to know what she’s doing, much less who she’s suing. Her blog posts portray her lawsuit against the DOJ as being against Facebook. Facebook has earned the ire of Geller by enforcing its terms of use — rules Geller clearly disagrees with.

      Somehow, Geller has managed to construe the actions of a private platform as government infringement on her First Amendment rights. The connective tissue in her litigious conspiracy theory is Section 230 — the statute that protects service providers from being sued for the actions of their users.

      Considering Geller’s fondness for posting inflammatory content, you’d think the last thing she’d want to attack is Section 230. A successful dismantling of this important protection would mean Geller would be even less welcome on any social media platform.

      But the burning stupidity propelling Geller’s white-hot hazardous waste dump of a lawsuit knows no bounds. Somehow, actual lawyers — working in concert with Geller — came up with this breathtakingly wrong interpretation of Section 230.

    • Students, alumni, faculty ‘ban together’ against censorship

      In a small room in the back of Wicker Park’s Davenport Piano Bar Sept. 26, performers, including Columbia students and alumni, squeezed onto the small stage to act out 14 scenes with censored content previously deemed unworthy for theater.

      The censored content performed at the bar, 1383 N. Milwaukee Ave., is part of “Banned Together: A Censorship Cabaret” and was chosen after being challenged or banned by schools and organizations in the past. “A Censorship Cabaret” was organized by the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization created by the Dramatists Guild to advocate freedom of expression in theater.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • After Appeals Court Flip-Flop, Aaron Graham Asks Supreme Court To Examine Warrantless Access To Cell Location Info

      Aaron Graham — the defendant at the center of a Fourth Amendment dispute over the warrantless acquisition of cell site location info — is hoping to get one more court to take a look at his case.

      Last summer, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals became the first appeals court to institute a warrant requirement for historical CSLI. As was noted then, the court found that the records generated by cell phones (and held by phone companies) had an expectation of privacy — at least when obtained for a significant period of time. In Graham’s case, the government obtained 221 days of historical cell site location data — the sort of extended period the Appeals Court found troubling… originally.

      The government appealed and attempted to differentiate its long-term, post-facto tracking of Graham’s movements with eight months of CSLI from the Supreme Court’s Jones decision — which (sort of) found that deploying a surreptitious GPS tracker required the use of a warrant. It claimed this form of location tracking was completely different than the other form of location tracking, mainly because in Graham’s case the tracking was done by the phone company. The government simply benefitted from the warrantless collection of records the phone company was already compiling.

      The court bought the government’s arguments the second time around. The short-lived warrant requirement was removed and the 1979 definition of the Third Party Doctrine (Smith v. Maryland) was reinstated. The dissent correctly pointed out that no cell phone user voluntarily turns over location data to service providers. It’s just something that has to happen for phones to make calls or access data. It also pointed out that, unlike other third-party records, customers aren’t allowed to access their own cell site location data. Only the phone company and the government can do that, even though it’s the customer generating the records and paying for their collection and storage.

    • Victory! Gov. Brown Signs Bill to Overhaul California’s Broken Gang Databases

      Over the last few weeks, a broad coalition of civil liberties and social justice organizations rained down letters, tweets, and op-eds on Gov. Jerry Brown, urging him to sign A.B. 2298, a bill to begin the process of overhauling the state’s CalGang gang affiliation database.

      On Wednesday, it all paid off.

      Gov. Brown signed the legislation, creating a requirement that law enforcement inform a person before they add them to a shared gang database such as CalGang. The new law also gives the person the opportunity to challenge their inclusion in a gang database in court. Starting in January 2018, law enforcement agencies will be required to produce detailed transparency reports on each of their shared gang databases.

    • Trump calls for U.S. to use offensive cyberweapons

      The U.S. government needs to be ready to use its offensive cyberweapons in response to attacks from other nations, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Monday.

      The U.S. has significant offensive cybercapabilities, but it has been shy about deploying them, Trump said during a speech in Herdon, Virginia. “This is the warfare of the future,” he said.

      The U.S. should also increase its use of cyberweapons to attack terrorists, Trump said.

      President Barack Obama has failed to protect the nation’s cybersecurity and a new focus is needed, added Trump, who has largely avoided technology issues in his campaign.

    • Trump Calls For ‘Crippling’ Cyberwar Attack Capabilities

      Donald Trump has made no secret of his “bomb the s&*$t out of them” approach to foreign conflict. But when it comes to America’s digital security, his prescriptions have mostly been limited to vague calls to “get tough on cyber” and invitations to Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s email. Today, however, Trump got a bit more specific about the digital security postures he would favor as president—and set a new benchmark for a hawkish approach the online world.

      “As a deterrent against attacks on our critical resources the United States must possess…the unquestioned capacity to launch crippling cyber counter attacks,” Trump told the crowd at a Retired American Warriors town hall in Virginia today. “I mean crippling. Crippling.”

    • Facebook eyeing data centre in Odense

      There is strong evidence that the US social media colossus Facebook is keen on setting up shop in Denmark by erecting a massive 184,000 sqm data centre near Odense.

      According to Fyens Stiftstidende newspaper, Facebook wants to build three large server halls and a number of other buildings in the business area of Tietgenbyen, located just south of Odense.

      Facebook, meanwhile, has not yet revealed any of its hands, although it has conceded it is interested in the Odense site.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • The Playpen Story: Rule 41 and Global Hacking Warrants

      The warrant the FBI used in the Playpen investigation—which resulted in the delivery of malware to over a thousand computers, located around the world—violated Rule 41, an important rule of federal criminal procedure. Although Rule 41 may seem obscure, it plays a vital role in limiting when federal law enforcement agencies can conduct lawful searches and seizures.

    • This November, Know Your Voting Rights

      When voters go to the polls this November, they will encounter a patchwork of different laws and policies, many of them new since the 2012 presidential election — on everything from new voter registration deadlines to new identification requirements at the polls.

      Since the last presidential election, 17 states have sought to implement new barriers to voting — including states like Alabama, Kansas, and Texas — with new ID requirements, disproportionately affecting minorities and low-income communities. As discussed below, some but not all of these laws have been blocked thanks to litigation by the ACLU and other organizations.

    • In Syracuse, A Child Can Be Thrown in Solitary for Singing Whitney Houston

      A NYCLU lawsuit exposes a nightmarish jail where children are kept for months in isolation for minor misbehavior.

      Charnasha still suffers through sleepless nights because of her experience at the Onondaga County Justice Center.

      The Syracuse, New York, jail keeps 16- and 17-year-old children — many of whom have mental illness — locked up in solitary, often for weeks or even months for transgressions as insignificant as wearing the wrong shoes or getting into a water fight. For the benign “offense” of speaking too loudly, Charnasha was sentenced to solitary for 32 days.

      Young girls in solitary at the Justice Center are watched by adult male guards and forced to shower without a curtain. Charnasha described a guard making comments about her naked body and calling her and other girls “little bitches.” Her experience in solitary was so traumatic that Charnasha wrote a letter to her mom telling her she wanted to end her life.

      “I felt uncomfortable and exposed. I still can’t sleep at night because of the nightmares,” Charnasha said. “No other kids should be allowed to go through what we went through.”

      Since 2015, at least 86 children were placed in solitary more than 250 times at the Onondaga County Justice Center.

    • ‘Air passengers are treated like cash cows’: Fury over Government’s plan to let travellers pay £17.50 to beat queues at airport security

      Passengers are to be charged up to up to £17.50 for the chance to jump lengthy queues at airport passport control points.

      Ministers have confirmed they are ‘working closely’ with airports across the country to extend a scheme that allows travellers to pay a premium to avoid delays at border security when they arrive in the UK.

      The ‘fast-track’ fees would be aimed at easing congestion at passport desks, which has soared to unprecedented levels at some airports.

    • Grooming gang leader loses appeal after claiming all-white jury was part of anti-Islam conspiracy

      A paedophile who led a child a child sex grooming ring in Rochdale tried – and failed – to overturn his convictions with a European court claiming an all-white jury was part of a conspiracy to scapegoat Muslims.

      Shabir Ahmed wrote to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) claiming his convictions for child sex offences were part of anti-Islam witch hunt.

      The 63-year-old attempted to use human rights laws to argue his criminal convictions were unsafe and unfair, but failed.

      Ahmed is in Wakefield prison having being caged in 2012 and given a 19-year sentence.

      European Court of Human Rights papers show he claimed the all-white jury at his trial was biased.

      He desperately claimed that breached Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees a fair trial.

    • Hadi: Only Islam can rule, others must be ‘pak turut’

      As various opposition parties begin to corral against BN, PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang said those who want to court them must be mindful that only “Islam” can rule the country.

      “Islam has to be the leader and ruler, those who are not of Islam must be followers (pak turut).

      “Let’s not place religion and politics in separate corners,” he was reported saying in Sinar Harian today.

      “Don’t ask PAS to cooperate with you, when you will not make any change towards (prioritising) Islam, that is wrong.

      “As long as the power of Islamic governance isn’t upheld, then those who rule would not care about sin and reward, would rob the people’s wealth and so on.

      “Only Islam can correct people’s (behaviour). PAS can only cooperate with those who are willing to uphold Islam only,” he was reported saying at an event in Kemaman last Thursday night, at the launch of the Harapan Semua (Harap) gathering attended by roughly 1,500.

    • Extremist Imam Tests F.B.I. and the Limits of the Law

      For more than a decade, Suleiman Anwar Bengharsa has served as a Muslim cleric in Maryland, working as a prison chaplain and as an imam at mosques in Annapolis and outside Baltimore. He gave a two-week course in 2011 on Islamic teachings on marriage at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, where President Obama made a much-publicized visit this year.

      But in the last two years, Imam Bengharsa’s public pronouncements have taken a dark turn. On Facebook, he has openly endorsed the Islamic State, posted gruesome videos showing ISIS fighters beheading and burning alive their enemies and praised terrorist attacks overseas. The “Islamic Jurisprudence Center” website he set up last year has condemned American mosques as un-Islamic and declared that homosexual acts should be punished by death.

    • Are students in Detroit being denied their right to literacy? Lawsuit filed against state officials in Michigan says yes

      This month, a unique lawsuit was filed in Michigan against Gov. Rick Snyder and numerous state education officials, claiming that students in Detroit are being denied their constitutional right to literacy. The 133-page complaint, filed by the pro-bono Los Angeles-based firm Public Counsel, is attempting to gain class action status.

      The lawsuit highlights poor conditions in Michigan schools, like classrooms so hot teachers and students literally vomit, vermin in schools, outdated and limited books, an overall lack of teachers, and much more. Detroit’s school districts have some of the lowest performing schools in the country.

      “In one elementary school, the playground slide has jagged edges, causing students to tear their clothing and gash their skin, and students frequently find bullets, used condoms, sex toys, and dead vermin around the playground equipment,” the lawsuit reads.

      The lawsuit is attempting to build off of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education, and assert that students have a right to literacy under the Fourteenth Amendment. That may sound like a heavy lift, but many legal scholars not involved in the case believe the case could be successful and historic.

    • Federal Court Says Ballot Selfie Ban Is Like Burning Down the House to Roast a Pig

      In First Amendment victory, the court unanimously struck down New Hampshire’s law banning “ballot selfies.”

      In a victory for the First Amendment, a federal appeals court unanimously struck down New Hampshire’s law banning “ballot selfies.”

    • Keith Lamont Scott’s Disability May Have Gotten Him Killed, and He’s Not The Only One

      Last week in Charlotte, North Carolina, police shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott, a Black man with a disability. This happens with gut-wrenching frequency. It happened again this week in El Cajon, California, where police shot and killed Alfred Olango, a Black man with mental illness. Yet disability is often overlooked as a factor in police killings and use of force.

      A recent widely cited report on the issue estimates that up to one half of all use of force incidents involve individuals with disabilities, noting that “[d]isability is the missing word in media coverage of police misuse of force.” People with mental disabilities, especially people of color, are particularly at risk of being shot or beaten by the police.

      Mr. Scott’s horrific killing, captured on video, is far too typical. Just before police shot and killed Mr. Scott while he was sitting in his car, his wife shouted, “He has a TBI. He’s not going to do anything to you guys. He just took his medicine.”

      A “TBI” is a traumatic brain injury, and it’s a term widely known within law enforcement and other emergency service providers. As with a number of disabilities in the U.S., African-Americans are more likely to have a TBI. People with brain injuries experience problems in cognitive skills and typically think, speak, and process information more slowly than other people. A person with a traumatic brain injury easily becomes confused with sudden changes in their environment and may not be able to immediately understand and comply with police commands.

    • John Oliver Takes On Police Accountability And The Colossally-Stupid ‘Bad Apple’ Defense

      And that’s exactly what has happened. Officers — sheltered by extra rights, less-than-strenuous internal investigations, policies that allow for the destruction of discipline records, civil immunity, revolving door policies that allow “bad apples” to infect new law enforcement agencies — basically answer to no one.

      In rare, rare cases, police officers have been convicted and jailed. But this is usually the end result of outside pressure or behavior so repulsive and toxic the agency housing the officer can’t bring itself to defend them.

      As Oliver points out, when officers are caught committing criminal acts, they’re often given the option to resign rather than face an investigation. In other cases, they’re swiftly cleared of serious charges and allowed to desk job their way back into their old positions.

      Until recently, the DOJ and FBI expressed zero interest in compiling data on police use of force — to say nothing about regular, non-deadly police misconduct. Years of neglect have resulted in a data gap, with private citizens picking up the government’s slack to produce more credible numbers about civilians killed by law enforcement officers.

    • Yes, Police Are Snooping Through Criminal Databases For Personal Reasons All The Time

      The more journalists and other FOIA enthusiasts gain access to public records, the more we discover that a combination of access and power tends to result in abuse. Even as this abuse goes unaddressed, law enforcement agencies are striving to add more personal information to their databases, extending far past the usual “name/last known location” to encompass a vast array of biometric data.

      Privacy watchdogs have been fighting against these for good reason: very little is known about the contents of these databases or the controls put in place to protect the info from inappropriate access. What is known is that these databases are misused by law enforcement officers routinely. What’s also been discovered is that this routine misuse is rarely ever punished to the extent the law allows. Warnings about possible jail time are meaningless when the usual punishment usually ranges from nothing at all to short suspensions.

      The Associated Press has obtained another pile of documents from public records request that show little has changed. Abuse of access is still a common occurrence, as is the lack of meaningful consequences. There’s no almost no oversight and no federal law enforcement body holding agencies accountable for misuse of databases under their control.

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • EFF Asks Court To Block The DOJ From Prosecuting Researcher For DMCA Violations

        A few more wrinkles have appeared in the EFF’s attempted legal destruction of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clause. Back in July, the EFF — along with researchers Bunny Huang and Matthew Green — sued the government, challenging the constitutionality of Section 1201 of the DMCA. As it stands now, researchers are restricted by the limitations built into the anti-circumvention clause. The Library of Congress can grant exceptions, but these are only temporary, lasting three years and generally vanishing at the end of that term.

        Projects and research efforts continue to be thwarted by this provision, opening up those who circumvent DRM and other protective measures to the possibility of prosecution. And their options when facing charges are severely limited. There is no “fair use” exception to Section 1201 of the DMCA — something the EFF would like to see changed.

        The threat of prosecution may be mostly existential, but it’s still far from nonexistent. This is why the EFF has requested a preliminary injunction that would prevent the DOJ from trying to put its client in jail.

      • MPAA Applauds Derailment of FCC Cable Box Competition Plan Because, Uh, Jobs!

        Last week we noted how the FCC had to scrap its plan to bring competition to the cable box after an unprecedented PR and disinformation campaign by the cable and entertainment industries. In short, using consultants, think tanks, payrolled politicians, a soundwall of misleading editorials and even the US Copyright Office, the cable industry was able to convince many in the press, public and even at the FCC that the plan would have ripped the planet off its very orbital access, violated copyright, eroded consumer privacy, and even harmed diversity programming.

        [...]

        Except the FCC’s proposal wouldn’t hurt jobs in the slightest. Under the FCC’s plan, customers still would pay for cable, they’d just have more flexibility in how that programming is consumed. And if anything, you’d see more jobs as the cable hardware itself was opened to multiple hardware competitors and streaming vendors looking to make headway in the space. But just like their previous whining session on this subject, the MPAA can’t just admit it’s terrified of evolution and consumer empowerment, so it apparently has to conflate “copyright” with a loss of control.

        Meanwhile, while many media outlets continue to insist this plan is simply on hold, there’s really only two likely outcomes moving forward thanks to cable lobbyists, the US Copyright Office, and folks like the MPAA: either the plan gets scrapped entirely, or the end result winds up being so watered down as to be utterly useless.

      • European Allows Copyright Owners to Demand Open Wifi Networks be Password Protected

        The European Court of Justice (ECJ) recently announced its decision in Sony v McFadden with important consequences for open wireless in the European Union. The court held that providers of open wifi are not liable for copyright violations committed by others, but can be ordered to prevent further infringements by restricting access to registered users with passwords. EFF reported on the legal aspects of the case last year and collaborated on an open letter to the ECJ on the costs to economic growth, safety and innovation of a password lockdown.

        Free wifi is rare in Germany compared with other EU countries due to legal uncertainty generated by the doctrine of Störerhaftung, a form of indirect liability for the actions of others, which has deterred cafes, municipalities and others from offering free connectivity. Many in Germany hoped that the McFadden case would remove these doubts, but it is now clear that a legislative fix is needed instead.

      • Will the European Commission’s copyright rules spell destruction for Wikimedia?

        The European Commission’s Copyright Directive – full of bad ideas, or full of the worst ideas ever?

        That’s the question that many of us campaigning for positive copyright reform are asking ourselves in the wake of the Commission’s recently announced copyright package.

        We’ve extensively discussed the problems with the Commission’s link tax – see here, here and here – but equally important, are the Commission’s proposals with regards to intermediaries, such as websites like Wikipedia which host user-generated content, and the role of ‘Internet cops’ they will be forced to play if the Commission is successful in its aims.

        Right now, many such websites have an exemption under the current rules and, quite sensibly, are not expected to police the activities of all their users. Unfortunately this might not be the case for much longer. In the Commission’s new paradigm, websites will suddenly be responsible for monitoring the activity of their users, and filtering content to disable and remove instances of alleged copyright infringement.

10.03.16

Links 3/10/2016: GNU Linux-Libre 4.8, DNF 2.0.0

Posted in News Roundup at 3:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Down the rabbit hole, part 3: Linux and Tor are key to ensuring privacy, security

      So, I’ve decided I need to improve the privacy and security of my life (especially as it relates to computing). And I’ve come to the conclusion that in order to effectively do this, I need to focus on utilizing open source software as much as possible.

      What next?

      Let’s start at a very simple, basic level: the operating system of my laptop computers (I don’t actually have a desktop currently, but the same ideas will apply) and how they connect to the internet.

  • Server

    • Mellanox Deploys Standard Linux Operating Systems over Ethernet Switches

      Today Mellanox announced the availability of standard Linux kernel driver for the company Open Ethernet, Spectrum switch platforms. Developed within the large Linux community, the new driver enables standard Linux Operating Systems and off-the-shelf Linux-based applications to operate on the switch, including L2 and L3 switching. Open Ethernet provides data centers with the flexibility to choose the best hardware platform and the best software platform, resulting in optimized data center performance and higher return on investment.

    • Mellanox Introduces New Driver for Open Ethernet, Spectrum Switch Platforms
    • Mesos and Kubernetes on a hybrid (IBM Power and x86) architecture scenario

      Currently, there are several popular containers clustering system for Linux®, such as Kubernetes, Mesos and so on. Google Kubernetes and Apache Mesos are probably two commonly used tools to deploy containers inside a cluster. Both are created as helper tools that can be used to manage a cluster of containers. However, they differ greatly in their approaches.

      Always, our customs have a hybrid architecture that includes IBM® Power® and x86. So, this article provides the reference solutions about how to apply Mesos and Kubernetes into Linux on a hybrid architecture (including Power and x86) environment.

      See Figure 1 for the reference architecture.

  • Kernel Space

    • GNU Linux-libre 4.8-gnu Released, Deblobs More Drivers

      Hot off the release of the official upstream Linux 4.8 kernel, the GNU Linux-libre 4.8-gnu kernel is now available as the deblobbed code that strips out support for loading non-free firmware and other references to non-free kernel support.

      With GNU Linux-libre 4.8-gnu, there is a change to allow AMD Evergreen GPUs to be able to successfully initialize correctly without any binary-only blobs, a port from a change these developers did back for R600 hardware on an earlier kernel.

    • Linux Kernel 4.8 released with Microsoft Surface 3 touchscreen support [Ed: How on Earth have some people spun a Linux release as a “Microsoft” thing? Part of the “Microsoft loves Linux” Big Lie or is “Microsoft” the biggest Linux feature now? Maybe just headline baiting.]
    • Linux 4.8 kernel will support newer hardware, including your Microsoft Surface 3
    • Systemd bug allows ordinary user to crash Linux systems

      The systemd project is yet to release a fix for a bug that was disclosed on 28 September but at least one GNU/Linux distribution has patched the same.

      The bug, allowing a user to crash a system by using a short command as an ordinary user, was disclosed by a developer named Andrew Ayer.

      After running this command, according to Ayer, “You can no longer start and stop daemons. inetd-style services no longer accept connections. You cannot cleanly reboot the system. The system feels generally unstable (e.g. ssh and su hang for 30 seconds since systemd is now integrated with the login system).”

    • Major Linux distributions suffer from the latest system crippling bug

      A system administrator, Andrew Ayer discovered a crippling bug while working with his Linux System. He reported the issue at length in a blogpost pointing out how anyone could crash Systemd by one single tweet. The system will not collapse as soon as the tweet is rendered on screen by the system. Instead, what it meant was that any Linux distribution could be crippled by a command that can fit into one tweet. He even posted a tweet with the command to prove his point.

    • Linux 4.9′s CPUFreq To Make Greater Use Of Scheduler Info, IOWait Boosting

      The past few kernel releases there’s been a redesign of CPUFreq and P-State code for being able to make use of the kernel’s scheduler utilization data by these CPU frequency scaling drivers. That work also led to the introduction of the Schedutil governor. Work along this line has continued for Linux 4.9.

    • EFI Test Driver Added To The Mainline Linux 4.9 Kernel

      The EFI material is one of the early pull requests for the Linux 4.9 kernel and its bringing a new driver via EFI_TEST.

    • Linux 4.9 On x86_64 To Support Vmapped Stacks

      With the forthcoming Linux 4.9 kernel, x86_64 builds will support CONFIG_VMAP_STACK where kernel stacks are allocated with vmalloc_node for greater security.

    • Mellanox Platform Support Coming In Linux 4.9

      The x86/platform updates for the Linux 4.9 kernel that entered development on Sunday is bringing initial support for the Mellanox systems platform.

    • Linux Should Soon Start Receiving “Make WiFi Fast” Improvements

      In the months ahead the Linux kernel should start receiving the work out of the “make-wifi-fast” initiative for improving WiFi reliability and performance.

      The Bufferbloat project has been working on the Make-WiFi-Fast project because “the current Linux WiFi stack and drivers are far from optimal.” The project aims to reduce latency, develop new packet scheduling and AQM techniques, and improve the stack to allow 802.11ac MU-MIMO to properly work.

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • Apricity OS, a beautiful way to to enter Arch era

        Last time we told you about Manjaro Linux, which is an Arch based linux distribution. Now the point is there is not only one fork but there are others too. Today we will discuss about another fork of Arch in this 12th segment of “Introduction with Linux Distro”. The distribution we will see today is one of the most beautiful distributions in linux world and it is named Apricity OS.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • DNF 2.0.0 and DNF-PLUGINS-CORE 1.0.0 Released

          DNF-2.0 is out! This major version release of DNF brings many user experience improvements such as more understandable dependency problem reporting messages, weak dependencies shown in transaction summary, more intuitive help usage invoking and others. Repoquery plugin has moved into DNF itself. Whole DNF stack release fixes over 60 bugs. DNF-2.0 release was focused on getting rid of yum incompatibilities i.e. treat yum configuration options the same (`include`, `includepkgs` and `exclude`). Unfortunately this release is not fully compatible with DNF-1. See the list of DNF-1 and DNF-2 incompatible changes. Especially plugins will need to be changed to the new DNF argument parser. For complete list of changes see DNF and plugins release notes.

        • DNF 2.0 Released For Improved Package Management On Fedora

          Version 2.0 of the DNF package manager is now available in release candidate form as a major update to this Yum successor. Meanwhile, DNF-Plugins-Core reached version 1.0 for testing.

        • When every Beta closes another Alpha opens…

          As many of you may know, deadlines for Beta packaging for Fedora 25 have recently come and gone. With this said, designs for the default wallpaper are underway and I’m continuing to work through quirks in the design in order to represent the subtle, yet bold and memorable aesthetic that is present in Fedora wallpapers. Getting closer to the Alpha package deadline, I figured that I’d post another progress picture of where I’m at so far. Be sure to check out https://fedorahosted.org/design-team/ticket/473 for more information as to the background and thought process of the design as well!

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Software Can Now Show Screenshots of Snap Apps

            A small fix this one, but it’s something that will help Snap apps stand out in the Ubuntu Software store.

            Snap apps are already available to find and install from the GNOME Ubuntu Software app, on both Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.10. As there’s (still) no way to search for Snap app specifically you need to know the Snap app you want to find before you can find it.

            But until recently Snap apps didn’t display application screenshots, a valuable feature of any app store.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Arduino on Arduino battle ends in reconciliation, merger

      On Saturday, the two rival groups—Arduino LLC (Arduino.cc) and Arduino Srl (Arduino.org)—announced that they had “settled their differences,” and agreed to merge. At present, the similarly-designed sites both carry the official Arduino logo, and both sell official Arduino products.

      The electronics platform Arduino describes itself as “the world’s leading open-source ecosystem for educators, Makers and IoT developers of all ages.” Its board plans are published under Creative Commons (CC) licences, while its software is released as open source. Ars interviewed one of Arduino’s co-founders, Massimo Banzi, back in 2013.

    • ROS: An Open Source Robotics Platform on Linux

      ROS is an open source framework allowing you to create advanced robots. Using ROS takes much of the tedious work out of creating useful robots because it supplies code for navigation, arm manipulation, and other common robot tasks. ROS allows various software components to communicate between one or more computers and microcontrollers, and it allows you to control one or more machine robot networks from a desktop, web browser, and/or other input device. Although ROS stands for Robot Operating System, it is really a framework that sits on top of an existing operating system such as GNU/Linux. Packages are provided for Ubuntu Linux to help get your robot up and rolling.

    • ORWL Open Source, Physically Secure Personal Computer $699 (video)

      First unveiled back in 2012 the ORWL open source personal computer has been designed with your data security in mind and is being marketed as the very first open source physically secure computer.

      What’s the promotional two-minute video below to learn more about the ORWL and how it can be used to keep your personal data safe. ORWL is currently in the final days of its crowdfunding campaign and has nearly raised double what the team requires to take the secure personal computer into production. For more information, full specifications and to make a pledge jump over to Crowd Supply via the link below.

    • Phones

      • Linux V4.8 on N900

        Basics work, good. GSM does not work too well, which is kind of a problem. Camera broke between 4.7 and 4.8. That is not good, either.

      • Android

        • Best Phones for Rooting and Modding

          If you’re not content with the software some company decided you are allowed to use and are willing to roll up your sleeves and do something about it, the Nexus 5X is the best phone to do it with.

          Because it’s a phone directly from Google, the bootloader is easy to unlock using tools and directions Google gives you, and you’ll have no restrictions on the software you can install. If you keep going until the phone just stops working getting back to the factory software is just as easy, and Google provides a downloadable image you can use to restore.

        • EU to Google: stop Android anti-competitive deals, or else [Ed: Remember Microsoft was behind this, remember Android is Linux based, ask yourself if "Microsoft loves Linux"]
        • White Google Pixel and Pixel XL leaked by Bell
        • Google Maps for Android Update Brings Calendar Integration, Shows Upcoming Events
        • Most Secure Android Phone

          The Nexus 6P is the most secure Android phone you can buy, and one of the most secure phones of any available today.

          Without disabling any security protections, the Nexus 6P is protected against known public security exploits and remote installations are monitored by Google’s scanning software which blocks potential malicious content. While security and privacy are two very different things, when you decide you want private things to stay private you need to make sure your phone is secure to keep them that way.

Free Software/Open Source

  • How startups can use open source software to compete against the big guys

    Open source software allows more small businesses in industries that haven’t yet been completely disrupted by technology to create agile software with a small team. This kind of access is what helped my team create our own content marketing software to better service our clients in-house. We did it with a small dev team, and we aren’t alone in that. I think we’re going to start seeing more companies use open source software to create custom tech solutions to fit their needs and make them more competitive against industry giants. – John Hall, Influence & Co.

  • Zeppelin: a Secure Smart Contracts Open-Source Framework for Blockchain Applications

    On September 15, the roadmap proposal for Zeppelin, a MIT licensed open source framework for building secure smart contracts, was published. This comes at an appropriate time as evidenced by the number of talks and discussions at DevCon2 surrounding formal verification of smart contracts.

    Demian Brener and Manuel Aráoz, founders of Smart Contract Solutions, are pioneering the effort around Zeppelin. Zeppelin is a community effort to enable the development of secure, tested and audited smart contract code. Earlier this year, “The DAO”, the largest smart contract application to date, was hacked for $60M by exploiting a loophole in its smart contract. This has justified many concerns in the community bringing formal verification to the forefront.

  • Google Open Sources Powerful Image Recognition Tool

    On the artificial intelligence front, there is a true renaissance going on right now, and it includes a slew of new open source tools, many of which are likely to give rise to businesses built around them. For example, Google recently open sourced a program called TensorFlow. It’s based on the same internal toolset that Google has spent years developing to support its AI software and other predictive and analytics programs. You can find out more about TensorFlow at its site, and you might be surprised to learn that it is the engine behind several Google tools you may already use, including Google Photos and the speech recognition found in the Google app.

    Now, Google has open sourced a “Show and Tell” algorithm to developers, who can purportedly use it recognize objects in photos with up to 93.9 percent accuracy, and help to automate smart photo captioning. It’s based on TensorFlow, and here are details.

  • Events

    • OpenStack Summit to Include Distinguished Contributor Awards

      Not long ago, the OpenStack Foundation created a Superuser publication to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaborative problem solving among individuals who are running OpenStack clouds. It’s actually become a very rich site, and if you are at all involved with OpenStack, it’s worth investigating.

      As the Superuser site has announced, at the upcoming OpenStack Summit in Barcelona, a special round of community awards will be handed out by the OpenStack Foundation. The idea is to recognize esteemed contributors, and here are the details on how you can enter a submission for consideration.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GnuCash A Free & Open Source Accounting Software For Linux

      GnuCash is a free open source accounting program launched in 1998 for small business. GnuCash implements a double entry bookkeeping system. It was first designed for Linux but later in 2004 it was released for Mac and in 2007 was available for Windows. Its current version is 2.6.14. GnuCash is also available for Android in Playstore.

  • Public Services/Government

Leftovers

  • Security

    • security things in Linux v4.7
    • Microsoft warns Windows security fix may break network shares

      The latest of these, Preview Build 14936 – for testers on what Microsoft refers to as the Fast Ring – comes with the usual set of updates, new features, and fixes for things that the previous release managed to break.

      However, what caught our eye was a warning that after updating, users may find that shared devices such as NAS boxes have mysteriously disappeared from the home network folder, and that any previously mapped network drives are unavailable.

      Microsoft offers a fix for this; if you change your network to “private” or “enterprise”, it should start working again.

      It seems that the cause of this hiccup is a fix that Microsoft made earlier in September to address a security hole severe enough that it might allow remote code execution with elevated permissions on an affected system, although this would require an attacker to create a specially crafted request.

      The fix addresses this by, among other things, “correcting how Windows enforces permissions”.

      Windows Insiders are typically no newbies and used to preview builds breaking stuff, but it is likely that this change will find its way into the Windows 10 code everybody else is running sooner or later.

    • Android Devices Are Targeted By New Lockscreen Ransomware

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Inside the Shadowy PR Firm That’s Lobbying for Regime Change in Syria

      On September 30, demonstrators gathered in city squares across the West for a “weekend of action” to “stop the bombs” raining down from Syrian government and Russian warplanes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo. Thousands joined the protests, holding signs that read “Topple Assad” and declaring, “Enough With Assad.” Few participants likely knew that the actions were organized under the auspices of an opposition-funded public relations company called the Syria Campaign.

    • Under Intense Pressure to Silence Wikileaks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Proposed Drone Strike on Julian Assange

      Julian Assange and his free-speech brainchild Wikileaks were once lauded as global heroes of public service among United States politicians and policy makers. But by 2010, four years after its inception during the President George W. Bush administration, Assange and his organization were no longer considered lovable troublemakers and mavericks.

      A year into President Barack Obama’s first term, Wikileaks was suddenly considered an out-of-control free-speech Frankenstein wreaking havoc on United States foreign policy and intelligence gathering at the direction of Assange, its proverbial Dr. Frankenstein.

      The honeymoon for the whistle-blower web site, once a darling of the Democratic Party, was now over. Even more alarming, Assange’s personal safety and organization were increasingly at risk from U.S. concerns.

      By November 2010, Assange was a household name globally, but especially on Capitol Hill. And in the State Department alone his prowess of releasing otherwise secret, damning military documents and emails were filling conference rooms at Foggy Bottom and the White House with policy wonks and bureaucrats desperately seeking to squelch the upstart Wikileaks. At the State Department, meeting after meeting was conducted about how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her inner circle were going to squash Assange and Wikileaks latest planned document dump on the United States. Deemed “CableGate,” Assange planned to release confidential cables, or communications, unveiling damaging internal conversations between State Department personnel and its foreign assets and allies.

      Prodded by the looming CableGate, Clinton met with staff on Tuesday November 23, 2010 shortly after 8 a.m. on Mahogany Row at the State Department to attempt to formulate a strategy to avert Assange’s plans to release an enormous batch of 250,000 secret cables, dating from 1966 to 2010. Assange had professed for months to rain the internal cables down on Clinton and President Obama. The collective fear was the context of the secret cables would hamper U.S. intelligence gathering and compromise private correspondences and intelligence shared with foreign governments and opposition leaders. Splashing such juicy details on television news shows and the front pages of major newspapers in the country was great for the media but lousy for intelligence and foreign policy. Many, including Clinton and her elected boss, expressed fear these revelations would embarrass and expose intelligence allies of the United States and set America’s already fragile foreign policy back decades.

    • The Empire Strikes Back

      A decade ago left-wing governments, defying Washington and global corporations, took power in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Venezuela, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador. It seemed as if the tide in Latin America was turning. The interference by Washington and exploitation by international corporations might finally be defeated. Latin American governments, headed by charismatic leaders such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, won huge electoral victories. They instituted socialist reforms that benefited the poor and the working class. They refused to be puppets of the United States. They took control of their nations’ own resources and destinies. They mounted the first successful revolt against neoliberalism and corporate domination. It was a revolt many in the United States hoped to emulate here.

      But the movements and governments in Latin America have fallen prey to the dark forces of U.S. imperialism and the wrath of corporate power. The tricks long practiced by Washington and its corporate allies have returned—the black propaganda; the manipulation of the media; the bribery and corruption of politicians, generals, police, labor leaders and journalists; the legislative coups d’état; the economic strangulation; the discrediting of democratically elected leaders; the criminalization of the left; and the use of death squads to silence and disappear those fighting on behalf of the poor. It is an old, dirty game.

      President Correa, who earned enmity from Washington for granting political asylum to Julian Assange four years ago and for closing the United States’ Manta military air base in 2009, warned recently that a new version of Operation Condor is underway in Latin America. Operation Condor, which operated in the 1970s and ’80s, saw thousands of labor union organizers, community leaders, students, activists, politicians, diplomats, religious leaders, journalists and artists tortured, assassinated and disappeared. The intelligence chiefs from right-wing regimes in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and, later, Brazil had overseen the campaigns of terror. They received funds from the United States and logistical support and training from the Central Intelligence Agency. Press freedom, union organizing, all forms of artistic dissent and political opposition were abolished. In a coordinated effort these regimes brutally dismembered radical and leftist movements across Latin America. In Argentina alone 30,000 people disappeared.

    • Colombia referendum: Voters reject Farc peace deal

      Voters in Colombia have rejected a landmark peace deal with Farc rebels in a shock referendum result, with 50.2% voting against it.

      The deal was signed last week by President Juan Manuel Santos and Farc leader Timoleon Jimenez after nearly four years of negotiations.

      But it needed to be ratified by Colombians in order to come into force.

      Addressing the nation, President Santos said he accepted the result but would continue working to achieve peace.

    • Democracy At Its Worst – Colombians Choose War

      The recent result in Colombia is very unsatisfactory. It allows both sides to see victory is achievable with a little more killing or screaming or whatever…

      The world is not a better place when democracy decides that war is better than a few compromises and wider participation of groups in society. Let’s hope that cooler heads prevail and people care enough to do the right thing sooner or later.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Reykjavík: the geothermal city that aims to go carbon neutral

      Reykjavík used to be marketed as a place of ‘pure energy’, run on geothermal power – and now Iceland’s capital is trying to become the world’s first carbon neutral city.

      Last month, Iceland became the one of the first countries to ratify the Paris climate deal with a unilateral parliamentary vote, shortly after Reykjavik announced its aim to be carbon neutral by 2040.

      It wants to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from 2.8 tonnes per person in 2013 to zero – largely by changing the shape of the city to reverse urban sprawl and encouraging Icelanders out of their beloved cars to walk, cycle or use public transport.

      The city already has a head-start thanks to its reliance on geothermal energy. The US, for example, has a greenhouse gas footprint of 16.5 tonnes per person.

  • Finance

    • 589 million Chinese tourists will spend $72 billion in just seven days celebrating “Golden Week”

      Nearly 600 million Chinese tourists will flock to local tourist spots or fly overseas during the country’s 67th National Day holiday, a seven-day break nicknamed “Golden Week.” Unexpectedly, the new hot destination is Morocco, the North African country.

      South Korea, Thailand and Japan continue to be the top 10 most popular travel destinations (link in Chinese) for Chinese tourists, but there was a 3500% year-on-year increase in visa applications to Morocco processed by Ctrip, a Nasdaq-listed travel agency based in Shanghai, China, according to a 2016 National Day Holiday travel prediction report by Ctrip and the state-backed China Travel Academy. The report also said the United Kingdom, Cambodia, Russia and New Zealand will each see a 60% year-on-year increase.

    • After article 50, Brexit will be easy. A trade deal will be anything but

      Article 50, providing for Brexit, will be triggered by the end of March next year, Theresa May has promised. Two years after it is triggered, Britain will find itself outside the European Union, unless there is unanimous agreement among the other member states to extend the time limit.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Trump Campaign Threatens To Sue NY Times For Sharing His 1995 Tax Returns

      It’s kind of amazing how quickly Donald Trump’s lawyers seem to threaten any media outlet for publishing information about him that he doesn’t like. The latest target is the NY Times which ran a big story over the weekend with some leaked pages of his 1995 tax returns, suggesting that the guy who repeatedly claims he’s great at business, reported personal losses of $916 million. We’ll leave the analyzing of the tax returns to those who do that sort of thing (though I will recommend reading this analysis, which suggests that it’s likely a key part of the NYT article is wrong concerning Trump’s ability to use those losses to avoid taxes for 18 years), but we did want to focus in on something more relevant to what we discuss here at Techdirt.

      [...]

      But, it’s not that simple. The NY Times would have a pretty strong First Amendment defense that what they’re doing here is very much in the public interest. After all, Trump himself has made his tax returns (and his supposed acumen as a business man) an issue in this campaign by refusing to release them, despite every other major party candidate for President releasing tax returns going back decades (and even Trump himself mocked Mitt Romney for taking too long to release his own tax returns in 2012). So there’s no argument here that this isn’t newsworthy. It clearly is, and that certainly helps the NY Times’s case. To me it seems like it should be a clear First Amendment win for the Times — and plenty of others agree.

      Plus, there’s the fact that if Trump actually did sue, he’d have to admit the returns are really his and are accurate.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Hackers auctioning NSA code disappointed in bidding
    • NSA Secrets Could Be Yours for Only $1,083!
    • Hacker group finds no takers for NSA exploits
    • Nobody wants hacked NSA tools; The Shadow Brokers go on an angry rant in broken English
    • No-one wants to buy the Shadow Brokers’ stolen NSA tools
    • The Peculiar Case of Email in the Cloud [Ed: All E-mail goes through a server; stop using the Clown Computing buzzword, it’s misleading and harmful]

      If you install Postfix on your server, it’s possible to use a Gmail account to send all e-mail on your system. There are a few downsides to this method, but the configuration is simple, and Google’s e-mail servers are very reliable. Plus, because you’re not acting as an e-mail server yourself, you don’t have to worry about having your e-mail rejected by recipients. It’s legitimately coming from gmail.com.

      The first unfortunate consequence is that for its simplest implementation, you need to enable “less secure apps” to log in to your Gmail account. I actually set up a separate gmail.com account for my server, and then I don’t worry about the less secure setting. Thankfully, if this is a concern, it’s possible to use two-factor authentication (more on that later).

    • Snowden — see this film!

      You’ve seen the news stories, and maybe the documentary. The film Snowden will still scare and inspire you. Oliver Stone has made a film that will draw you in, engage you, and even feel anxious about Snowden’s safety. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is amazingly like the man you’ve seen on TV or Youtube.

      Imdb says about Snowden: Its performance during its opening weekend was the lowest opening of Oliver Stone’s career for a film playing in over 2,000 theaters. So go to a theater near you, and see it!

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • UNSOLVED: The Murder of Ferguson Activist Darren Seals

      It’s been three weeks since the body of 29-year-old Ferguson, Missouri protester Darren Seals was discovered inside his burning vehicle with a gunshot wound to the head. St. Louis County police say the homicide investigation is still without leads. However, some community members are questioning the legitimacy of that investigation.

      Darren Seals was one of the most visible and vocal activists to emerge from Ferguson following the 2014 police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. Seals was known as a “day one-er” – meaning he was a visible presence from the very beginning.

      Watching, from just outside the yellow police tape on the afternoon of August 9th, 2014, as Brown’s body lay in the middle of Canfield Drive, and then demonstrating later that same day just a few blocks away on West Florissant Avenue – where clashes between police and protesters would eventually capture the world’s attention.

    • Chelsea Manning’s Integrity

      In Laura Poitras’s documentary, Citizenfour, Edward Snowden worries to Poitras and Glenn Greenwald that “they” (the press and government) will use his “personality” as a distraction when Greenwald starts publishing stories about the documents that Snowden has leaked. Snowden’s concern was meaningful considering the media coverage of Chelsea Manning, who was on trial at the time Poitras was filming the documentary for charges arising from the Espionage Act, including the charge of aiding the enemy.

      Manning’s queerness, gender nonconformity (she now identifies as trans*), and experiences of being bullied in the Army made her an easy target for claims that her leaking of documents was not true whistleblowing, but amounted simply to a private vendetta against the Army and government. In one of the first articles on Manning in the New York Times, for example, Ginger Thompson suggested that Manning might have leaked documents as a way of seeking revenge for being bullied in the military, or for her struggles under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, or out of “delusions of grandeur.”

    • Arkansas Congressman Who Helped Protect Citizens’ Right To Record Police Arrested For Recording Police

      While the recording of police activities has been covered here for years, I think we’re starting to see what is at least a slight ratcheting down of the drama over the issue. Once almost universally rejected by law enforcement groups, the freedom to record police as they go about their public duty has become more recognized rather than less. That doesn’t mean the issue is settled, though, as shown in a recent example in which Arkansas police arrested a state Congressman who had helped push through a state law protecting the rights of citizens to film police.

    • Arkansas lawmaker who pushed law protecting right to video police is arrested for videoing an arrest

      Officer Jeff Thompson of the Little Rock Police Department arrested Arkansas state Representative John Walker for recording their treatment of a black man who had been put in handcuffs during a traffic stop.

    • Green Party vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka on Palestine and Syria

      Ajamu Baraka: Well, of course. The linking of these struggles for liberation in Central America and South Africa with the struggles in the US is a part of the tradition of black internationalism, the center of which is a struggle against the continuity of the colonial, capitalism system. So the quite natural connection has always been with Palestine. In fact, one of the first real structural, organizational connections we point to is the fact that SNCC, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee issued a statement standing in solidarity with the liberation aspirations of the Palestinians in the mid-1960s. And of course there was a very negative backlash for that. So solidarity with Palestinian struggles for self-determination has always been part of the black internationalist tradition. The connection for us has always been clear.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Domain name system transitions to private sector

      ICANN, the body that regulates the domain name system, is no longer under US government oversight as of October 1

      The contract between ICANN and the US Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration to perform the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions expired at midnight on Friday.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Big Week For WIPO Marrakesh Treaty On Access For Visually Impaired; Human Rights Side Under Focus [Ed: WIPO is attacking its own staff and Gurry needs to resign]

      The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled was adopted on 27 June 2013, and the 20th WIPO member ratified it on 30 June 2016, bringing it into force 90 days later on 30 September. The first-ever meeting of the Marrakesh Treaty Assembly is scheduled to take place on 5 October at WIPO.

      The Social Forum of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is taking place from 3-5 October at the UN Palais. The theme of the 2016 session of the Social Forum is the “promotion and full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities in the context of the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD),” according to the event website.

    • External Offices, WIPO Normative Work At Heart Of General Assemblies

      WIPO Director General Francis Gurry, in his opening speech, said “very good process has been made across the organisation over the course of the past 12 months.” He remarked on the last biennium’s (2014-2015) overall surplus of CHF 70.3 million (US$ 72.3 million). WIPO is faring well in the current biennium, he said, and is foreseen to yield an overall surplus as well.

    • Copyrights

      • Phoneix Police Issues Totally Bogus Cease & Desist To Trump Campaign Claiming Copyright Infringement

        Yes, yes, we know that resorting to copyright to take down speech from a politician you don’t like is pretty common. Most of the time it involves musicians not liking politicians playing songs, but lately we’ve seen some other ones as well. Last week, for example, we wrote about a photographer successfully using the DMCA to remove the now infamous image of a bowl of Skittles that Donald Trump Jr. tweeted.

        The latest, however, is even more ridiculous. The city of Phoenix Arizona has sent a cease & desist letter to the Donald Trump campaign, arguing (incorrectly) that Trump was violating their copyrights and publicity rights, by using imagery of Phoneix police officers in an advertisement (first reported by a local NBC affiliate in Arizona). The ad is available on YouTube, and don’t blink or you might miss the Phoneix police officers. It’s a pretty generic politician ad, frankly, but there’s a very brief shot of Trump shaking hands with some Phoneix police officers on a tarmac somewhere (I’m guessing Phoenix…). It appears to last all of about a second.

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