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12.29.15

Links 29/12/2015: SparkyLinux 4.2, Ian Murdock’s Rants

Posted in News Roundup at 7:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 10 projects to fork in 2016

    2015 was a year of many new open source projects hitting the scene with a splash. From enterprise solutions to home brewed open source concoctions, many of the projects released as open source software this year have made a huge impact on the world of computing in a very short amount of time. While flash stardom isn’t always the best predictor of longevity, we think these 10 projects just might have come onto the scene with enough momentum to continue their success in the new year.

  • 32C3: A Free and Open Source Verilog-to-Bitstream Flow for iCE40 FPGAs

    The toolchain, or “flow” as the FPGA kids like to call it, consists of three parts: Project IceStorm, a low-level tool that can build the bitstreams that flip individual bits inside the FPGA, Arachne-pnr, a place-and-route tool that turns a symbolic netlist into the physical stuff that IceStorm needs, and Yosys which synthesizes Verilog code into the netlists needed by Arachne. [Clifford] developed both IceStorm and Yosys, so he knows what he’s talking about.

  • Codes of Conduct

    What is the role of programmers in software development? The question is never far away in free and open source software (FOSS). Last month, however, the issues surrounding the question were emphasized by Robert C. Martin’s attempt to write a programmer’s oath that states best practices and the resulting discussion.

  • Enterprise startups: Open source may be your only hope

    No, not because second-tier developers wrote it. You probably have great developers. Instead, the real problem is that your developers are stuck building new code on top of old code. Over and over and over again.

    Ironically, this is a sign of success. But, it also creates problems.

    As professor Zeynep Tufekci describes it, “We are building skyscraper favelas in code—in earthquake zones.” While she’s referring to the security vulnerabilities inherent in such code development, the problem is actually broader.

  • Open Source Software’s Role in Breach Prevention and Detection

    Security professionals are increasingly acknowledging an uncomfortable truth: No network is secure from a sufficiently skilled and determined attacker. So while every effort should be made to prevent intruders getting on to the corporate network, it’s important that you can quickly spot an intrusion and minimize the damage that can result.

    Anton Chuvakin, a security expert at Gartner, points out that if hackers are made to work hard to find what they are after, intrusion prevention and detection systems have a far greater chance of spotting them before they can do too much damage.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Mesosphere Releases Datacenter Operating System Version 1.4

      Version 1.4 of the Mesosphere Datacenter Operating System (DCOS) is now generally available, featuring user interface updates, support for Marathon 0.13.0 and Chronos, and the Mesos 0.25.0 kernel.

    • A 2016 to do list for the OpenStack board

      One look around the airport waiting lounge or family living room will tell you everything you need to know about where the cloud is headed. Christmas carols drift on by thanks to Pandora, gifts come without having to stand in line at the mall, and those holiday snaps of the family will be stored on someone else’s server.

      In the next 12 months, software running on clouds will rule our world more than ever—but unfortunately not many of those clouds are powered by OpenStack.

      While we rightly raise a glass to celebrate the substantial gains OpenStack has achieved in 2015, it’s time to recognize the vast potential to gain new ground in 2016. So, let’s put those New Year’s resolutions to good use by rallying application developers to the cause. To win them over, we must make OpenStack a more inviting and immediately valuable solution to serve their needs.

    • How Docker and containers improved software development at eZ

      Docker sparked the trend in software containers less than two years ago. And since its modest presentation at PyCon in 2013, the startup has vaulted to a value of nearly one billion dollars, drawn 2,500 attendees to DockerCon, and its namesake technology has become a marketable skill to have, entering Hacker News’ top 20 most frequently requested job skills.

    • Apache Turns to Big Data Projects — Big Time

      Kylin. Meanwhile, the foundation has also just announced that Apache Kylin, an open source big data project born at eBay, has graduated to Top-Level status. Kylin is an open source Distributed Analytics Engine designed to provide an SQL interface and multi-dimensional analysis (OLAP) on Apache Hadoop, supporting extremely large datasets. It is widely used at eBay and at a few other organizations.

      “Apache Kylin’s incubation journey has demonstrated the value of Open Source governance at ASF and the power of building an open-source community and ecosystem around the project,” said Luke Han, Vice President of Apache Kylin. “Our community is engaging the world’s biggest local developer community in alignment with the Apache Way.”

    • 10 cool tools from the Docker community

      Looking back at 2015, there have been many projects created by the Docker community that have advanced the developer experience. Although choosing among all the great contributions is hard, here are 10 “cool tools” that you should be using if you are looking for ways to expand your knowledge and use of Docker.

    • Linux Containers – Benefits and Market Trends

      In April, Docker announced a $95 million series D round of funding. This is one of many events over the past year that has demonstrated how the industry has shifted towards the use of Linux containers (LXC) to deploy online services. Even giant cloud services companies, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Redhat, IBM and VMware, are pushing towards containerization. With the market leaning in the direction of containers, let’s take a deeper look at what they are, their history and current developments.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Getting LibreOffice to Do the Write Thing

      We install Linux on every one of our Reglue computers. Included in that installation is the entire suite of LibreOffice. Unfortunately, a number of Reglue Kids began complaining about homework assignments being rejected. Most times they were scolded and told to re-submit the assignment in the proper format…you know, that well known proprietary one. Sometimes students were given a lower grade for not following the submission instructions.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • DragonFlyBSD Rebases Its Intel Kernel Graphics Driver Against Linux 4.0

      DragonFlyBSD’s Francois Tigeot has done some more great work in allowing their open-source Intel graphics driver to be more featureful and comparable to the Linux i915 kernel DRM driver for which it is based.

      While DragonFly’s i915 DRM driver started out as woefully outdated compared to the upstream Linux kernel code, the work done by Tigeot and others is quite close to re-basing against the latest mainline code. With patches published recently, the DragonFlyBSD driver would now be comparable to what’s in the Linux 4.0 kernel.

    • FuguIta-5.8

  • Public Services/Government

    • 18F site facilitates open-source bargain hunting

      To facilitate this, the team launched a new website — Micropurchase.18F.gov — as place to post new projects for registered users to peruse and bid on.

      “Our goal is to enable parts of our own agency and the rest of the federal government to use this platform to ask the developer community to create open source code for their project,” 18F said in an email to companies that expressed interest in the original micro-purchase pilot. “We anticipate posting auctions for micro-purchase tasks throughout 2016.”

    • Estonia updates X-Road server

      The X-road update is financed in part by the European Regional Development Fund. Estonia’s secure document exchange system is developed as open source.

  • Licensing

    • Shining a spotlight on free software: the FSF’s Licensing & Compliance Lab’s interview series

      In August of 2012, the Licensing & Compliance Lab kicked off a series of interviews with developers of free software. With 2015 in the rear-view mirror, we take a moment to look back on the series and highlight these great projects once again.

      In August of 2012, the Licensing & Compliance Lab kicked off a series of interviews with developers of free software. These interviews were a chance to highlight cool free software projects, especially those using copyleft licenses, and learn more about why they are dedicated to free software. What started as a single interview has grown into a regular feature of the Licensing & Compliance Lab blog. With 2015 in the rear-view mirror, we take a moment to look back on the series and highlight these great projects once again.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Google, HP, Oracle Join RISC-V

      RISC-V is on the march as an open source alternative to ARM and Mips. Fifteen sponsors, including a handful of high tech giants, are queuing up to be the first members of its new trade group which will host next week its third workshop for the processor core.

      RISC V is the latest evolution of the original RISC core developed more than 25 years ago by Berkeley’s David Patterson and Stanford’s John Hennessey. In August 2014, Patterson and colleagues launched an open source effort around the core as an enabler for a new class of processors and SoCs with small teams and volumes that can’t afford licensed cores or get the attention of their vendors.

    • An Open Source Reference Architecture For Real-Time Stock Prediction

      While this post does not cover the details of stock analysis, it does propose a way to solve the hard problem of real-time data analysis at scale, using open source tools in a highly scalable and extensible reference architecture. The architecture below is focused on financial trading, but it also applies to real-time use cases across virtually every industry. More information on the architecture covered in this article is also available online via The Linux Foundation, Slideshare, YouTube, and Pivotal Open Source Hub, where the components in this architecture can be downloaded.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Origins of the Irish down to mass migration, ancient DNA confirms

      Scientists from Dublin and Belfast have looked deep into Ireland’s early history to discover a still-familiar pattern of migration: of stone age settlers with origins in the Fertile Crescent, and bronze age economic migrants who began a journey somewhere in eastern Europe.

      The evidence has lain for more than 5,000 years in the bones of a woman farmer unearthed from a tomb in Ballynahatty, near Belfast, and in the remains of three men who lived between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago and were buried on Rathlin Island in County Antrim.

      Scientists at Trinity College Dublin used a technique called whole-genome analysis to “read” not the unique characteristics of each individual, but a wider a history of ancestral migration and settlement in the DNA from all four bodies.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • IDF admits spraying herbicides inside the Gaza Strip

      “The aerial spraying of herbicides and germination inhibitors was conducted in the area along the border fence last week in order to enable optimal and continuous security operations,” an IDF Spokesperson told +972 on Sunday.

      Palestinian Agricultural Ministry officials told Ma’an news that farmers said Israeli planes had been spraying their agricultural lands adjacent to the border fence for several days straight. Spinach, pea, parsley and bean crops were reportedly destroyed around the al-Qarrara area in eastern Khan Younis and the Wadi al-Salqa area in central Gaza, according to the report.

      The military spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up question about the destruction of agricultural crops.

    • USDA Whistleblower Accuses Agency of Censorship of Pesticide Research

      Dr. Jonathan Lundgren, an expert on the risk assessment of pesticides and genetically modified crops, worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research for more than a decade. But when his findings on the ill effects of systemic pesticides and RNAi (a biological process in which RNA molecules inhibit gene expression) on pollinators began to gain traction and visibility, the harassment and punishments did as well.

    • USDA whistleblower launches new bee research effort

      Scientist Jonathan Lundgren believes the USDA retaliated against him because of his research on neonicotinoid insecticides and potential effects on bees and butterflies.

      Neonicotinoids are among the most widely used pesticides. Some research shows they harm bees and butterflies, but the chemical industry disputes much of the research.

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Tuesday
    • Towards (reasonably) trustworthy x86 laptops

      Can we build trustworthy client systems on x86 hardware? What are the main challenges? What can we do about them, realistically? Is there anything we can?

    • Recently Bought a Windows Computer? Microsoft Probably Has Your Encryption Key [Ed: yes, flawed by design]

      One of the excellent features of new Windows devices is that disk encryption is built-in and turned on by default, protecting your data in case your device is lost or stolen. But what is less well-known is that, if you are like most users and login to Windows 10 using your Microsoft account, your computer automatically uploaded a copy of your recovery key – which can be used to unlock your encrypted disk – to Microsoft’s servers, probably without your knowledge and without an option to opt-out.

      During the “crypto wars” of the nineties, the National Security Agency developed an encryption backdoor technology – endorsed and promoted by the Clinton administration – called the Clipper chip, which they hoped telecom companies would use to sell backdoored crypto phones. Essentially, every phone with a Clipper chip would come with an encryption key, but the government would also get a copy of that key – this is known as key escrow – with the promise to only use it in response to a valid warrant. But due to public outcry and the availability of encryption tools like PGP, which the government didn’t control, the Clipper chip program ceased to be relevant by 1996. (Today, most phone calls still aren’t encrypted. You can use the free, open source, backdoorless Signal app to make encrypted calls.)

    • Chaos Computer Club: Europe’s biggest hackers’ congress underway in Hamburg

      Some 12,000 hackers are challenging the power of Google, Facebook and Youtube to filter information and shape users’ view of the world. One of them demonstrated how to hack into VW’s cheating software.

    • Password-less database ‘open-sources’ 191m US voter records on the web

      Austin-based Chris Vickery – who earlier this month found records on 3.3 million Hello Kitty users splashed online – says the wide-open system contains the full names, dates of birth, home addresses, and phone numbers of voters, as well as their likely political affiliation and which elections they have voted in since 2000.

    • The next wave of cybercrime will come through your smart TV

      Smart TVs are opening a new window of attack for cybercriminals, as their security defenses often lag far behind those of smartphones and desktop computers.

      Smart TVs are opening a new window of attack for cybercriminals, as the security defenses of the devices often lag far behind those of smartphones and desktop computers.

      Running mobile operating systems such as Android, smart TVs present a soft target due to how to manufacturers are emphasizing convenience for users over security, a trade-off that could have severe consequences.

    • Nemesis Bootkit Malware the new stealthy Payment Card.

      After I read many articles I got this infos about Nemesis Bootkit Malware:
      – suspected to originate from Russia;
      – infect PCs by loading before Windows starts
      – has ability to modify the legitimate volume boot record;
      – seam to be like another Windows rootkit named Alureon;
      – intercepts several system interrupts to pass boot process;
      – can steal payment data from anyone’s not just targeting financial institutions and retailers;
      – this malware hides between partitions and is also almost impossible to remove;

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Syria anti-Islamic State documentary maker ‘assassinated’ in Turkey

      A Syrian opposition film-maker was gunned down in broad daylight in the Turkish city of Gazientep on Sunday, apparently by Isil supporters.

      Friends said that Naji Jerf, 38, was shot twice in the head after being approached by an unknown car outside of a local restaurant.

    • Why Britishers left India in 1947? explains NSA Ajit Doval

      ncumbent National Security Advisor, had once said that the spark which Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose created within the Indian Army forced Britishers to quit India in 1947.

      In a video posted on Youtube, Doval has given a detailed explanation of the main reason as to why the mighty British Empire which, won the Second World War in 1945, decided to quit India in a hurry.

      On August 22, 1945, Tokyo Radio announced the ‘death’ of Netaji in an air crash in Formosa (now Taiwan) on August 18, 1945, en route to Japan.

      But the crash theory has been rejected by scores of Netaji’s followers and admirers and several claims of the revolutionary leader resurfacing continue to intrigue and divide Indians over the years.

    • Endless War, Undeclared and Undebated

      The Obama administration is waging war all over the world – without congressional authorization

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Saudi Arabia unveils record deficit as it succumbs to oil price rout

      A brutal sell-off in oil prices has forced Saudi Arabia’s government to post the largest budget deficit in its history, as the state’s revenues have crumbled.

      The country’s deficit rose to 367bn riyals (£66bn), after government spending rose 13pc above officials’ plans in the wake of declining oil prices and a war with Yemen. A Saudi official said that the deficit was “considered an acceptable figure” under the circumstances.

      Stock markets reacted positively to the government’s spending plans, as investors had feared far worse news was to come, anticipating an overshoot well in excess of 13pc. The total deficit stood at 16pc of the economy’s size, while analysts had expected a gap of 20pc. The Tadawul All Share Index made a daily gain of 0.7pc.

    • Here Are 58 Million Reasons to Care About California’s Drought

      The past four years of punishing drought have badly hurt California’s forests. Rain was scarce, the days were too hot, and this year’s wildfire season was the worst anyone has seen in years, burning up nearly 10 million acres across the West. For the first time, a team of researchers has measured the severity of the blow the drought dealt the trees, uncovering potential future destruction in the process. The resulting paper, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a rich visual testament to just how much California needs its trees and how close the state is to losing 58 million of them.

    • Fukushima Today

      Throughout the world, the name Fukushima has become synonymous with nuclear disaster and running for the hills. Yet, Fukushima may be one of the least understood disasters in modern times, as nobody knows how to fix neither the problem nor the true dimension of the damage. Thus, Fukushima is in uncharted territory, a total nuclear meltdown that dances to its own rhythm. Similar to an overly concerned parent, TEPCO merely monitors but makes big mistakes along the way.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Michael Moore just exploded the right’s biggest lie

      Michael Moore’s new film, “Where to Invade Next,” is sure to generate Oscar buzz. It is already on the short list of 15 documentaries from which the final five nominations will be announced on Jan. 14. But rather than wonder whether Moore will score a second Oscar (his first was for “Bowling for Columbine” in 2002), the question to ask is whether this film can spark a political revolution just in time for the 2016 election.

      “Where to Invade Next” has a wide release set for Feb. 12, which is also Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and the week of the New Hampshire primary. Coincidence? Definitely not.

    • Trump: Muslims Knew About San Bernardino Shooters But Didn’t Report Them

  • Censorship

    • How China Tries To Censor The Whole World
    • Time to take a re-look at Censor Board’s role: Arun Jaitley

      Having witnessed the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) getting embroiled in one controversy after the other through the past few months, the government is now considering taking a re-look at the body so as to make it “controversy free”.

    • Amid Censorship Flap, Steinmetz To Discontinue 81-Year-Old School Newspaper

      “School newspapers provide students with a powerful voice and a positive learning experience, and we are committed to providing journalism opportunities to our students,” CPS spokesman Michael Passman said. “Steinmetz High School will continue to offer journalism courses for the foreseeable future, and the Steinmetz Star will remain in operation as an online publication that will continue to serve as a valuable learning opportunity for students.”

    • Kremlin’s Censorship Of Shenderovich Interview Backfiring – OpEd

      But the Shenderovich case may provide the Putin regime with an object lesson because it is obvious that the Kremlin took this action because of Shenderovich’s criticism of Putin himself (openrussia.org/post/view/11565/) and because it is obvious that taking down the interview in one place won’t block the spread of the text.

    • China publisher pulls ‘racy’ Tagore poems translation

      A Chinese publisher has pulled a translation of Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore’s poems after it sparked controversy for racy content.

      The translation of works from one of India’s most famous poets was by Chinese novelist Feng Tang.

      His publisher said on Monday that it was removing the work from sale following the “huge debate” in China’s literary and translation circles.

      Mr Feng has defended his translation, saying a previous version lacked style.

      Tagore, known as the Bard of Bengal and seen as a literary god in India, was the first non-European to win the Nobel prize for literature.

    • Five reasons why we must NOT censor ISIS propaganda

      First of all, censoring ISIS in this way is simply not feasible. We can very well demand that mainstream newspapers and TV news stations limit their coverage of these issues, but that would leave the entire field of discussion to the unregulated areas of the internet, the “blogosphere” and social media. ISIS would still dominate in these areas, except now we will have removed from the discourse those outlets that would be most capable to hold the ISIS narrative to scrutiny.

    • Orwellian model won’t keep the internet free

      Last week brought a positively Orwellian moment to the debate about Internet freedom.

      Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke at a state-organised internet conference in Wuzhen, in Zhejiang province, where he was once party secretary. Xi declared, “As in the real world, freedom and order are both necessary in cyberspace.” He said, “Freedom is what order is meant for, and order is the guarantee of freedom.”

      These slogans are more than just propaganda from the leader of a country with the world’s largest internet censorship operation. Behind them lurks a dangerous ambition.

    • China Invokes UN Decree for Its Right to Censor the Internet

      China’s President Xi Jinping invoked “cyber sovereignty” to describe his country’s right to create its national cyber policy while giving the opening speech at the second World Internet Conference, held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang, on December 16.

      “We should respect the right of individual countries to independently choose their own path of cyber development, model of cyber regulation, and participate in international cyberspace governance on an equal footing,” said President Xi. “No country should pursue cyber hegemony, interfere in other countries’ internal affairs or engage in, connive at or support cyber activities that undermine other countries’ national security.”

    • Not allowing free speech on-campus is dangerous – universities need to defend their right to be offensive

      2015 has been an eventful year for freedom of speech. In January, #JeSuisCharlie was a global trend championing freedom of expression, lack of censorship, and the right to offend. Yet, as the year draws to a close, it seems the Facebook generation is becoming more and more suppressed.

      Once upon a time, universities were bastions of free speech, where world leaders would debate with fresh-faced 18-year-olds who were determined to save the planet. Once, just about anything could be discussed in the name of free speech. But, this year, there have been countless examples of speakers being banned, societies being stopped, and student media being censored, all in the name of “protecting students.”

    • Syria, France Deadliest Countries for Journalists

      The Committee to Protect Journalists says 2015 was one of the deadliest years on record for members of the press worldwide, with 69 journalists killed on-assignment. According to the CPJ, 2015 was the sixth year out of the last ten (and eighth since 1992) in which more than 60 journalists were killed in the line of duty—a figure that includes those targeted for their profession as well as those killed in combat, crossfire or while covering other assignments deemed dangerous.

    • Reading Everything Aaron Swartz Wrote

      It was cowardly, disrespectful, and it isolated Aaron again in death. He was The Boy, a tragic waste, not a murdered comrade or a martyr. Saying he was misguided served as an excuse for not being at his side.

    • Does The US Really Want A North Korean Internet?

      With all of the news about the holidays, one story you might have missed yesterday is that China passed with little fanfare its new antiterrorism law that bears substantial resemblance to proposals currently under review in the US and UK that would require backdoors or other weakened measures to allow encrypted communications to be secretly monitored by governments.

      The Chinese law requires that “telecommunications and Internet service providers should provide technical interfaces and technical support and assistance in terms of decryption and other techniques to the public and national security agencies in the lawful conduct of terrorism prevention and investigation.” It is remarkably similar to the wording of a UK proposal that would require companies to offer the government “permanent interception capabilities … [including] the ability to remove any encryption” and similar to calls by US intelligence officials for the ability to decrypt civilian communication.

      On the surface such proposals seem highly desirable: the ability to monitor and disrupt terrorist and criminal communications in order to protect life and ensure national security. The problem, as I pointed out last week, is that there is no universal definition of “terrorism” or “national security threats.” In fact, one of the focal points of the Chinese online censorship apparatus is the removal of material relating to protests and mass organization, which the government views as a threat to the stability and well-being of the nation.

      [...]

      North Korea is one of the few countries to take this model of a safe and secure internet to its logical conclusion, creating its own walled-off private version of the internet where only a small number of approved websites are accessible. The government even created its own operating system called Red Star OS, designed for total government surveillance. Yesterday two German researchers offered the latest in-depth look at the functioning of this operating system custom built for the world of a surveillance state.

    • Those Demanding Free Speech Limits to Fight ISIS Pose a Greater Threat to U.S. Than ISIS

      In 2006 – years before ISIS replaced Al Qaeda as the New and Unprecedentedly Evil Villain – Newt Gingrich gave a speech in New Hampshire in which, as he put it afterward, he “called for a serious debate about the First Amendment and how terrorists are abusing our rights–using them as they once used passenger jets–to threaten and kill Americans.”

    • Chinese president Xi Jinping blogged for the first time—and 48,000 people commented

      China’s biggest microblogging site, Weibo, is not unfamiliar to foreign head of states. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, UK prime minister David Cameron, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro—all have opened accounts on the site and have interacted with readers in Chinese. But China’s own leaders are more reluctant to engage with online audiences.

      Chinese president Xi Jinping’s limited number of social media contributions include a selfie with Cameron and Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero during Xi’s state visit to the UK in October, while Chinese premier Li Keqiang indulged Modi in a joint selfie, said to be Li’s first, at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven in May. Neither of these were posted by the Chinese leaders on Weibo. Instead, they surfaced on Twitter—a social media platform blocked by China’s elaborate censorship machine.

      But finally, on Dec. 25, during his visit to the headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army Daily—a mouthpiece newspaper of the Communist Party and the army—Xi crafted his first post on Weibo. It’s the first Weibo message from any of China’s senior officials, as far as we can tell. Xi wrote the message personally, according to state media.

    • Thai media decide junta chief no laughing matter

      Every New Year Thailand’s top political journalists traditionally come up with satirical nicknames for the government and senior ministers. But this year they will forego the pleasure, having decided the junta is no laughing matter.

      The occasion is usually a rare moment of light relief for reporters covering the febrile world of Thai politics, in a country which has witnessed a string of military coups, violent street protests and toppled governments – and where defamation is a criminal offence.

    • Was 2015 a Bad Year for Campus Free Speech? Let’s Ask the Experts

      Are easily-offended students and their allies within the university bureaucracy ushering in a new era of censorship on American college campuses? Even President Obama is worried that excessive political correctness is stifling legitimate debate at universities.

    • The militarization of the press in Syria

      Ahmed Abu al-Hamza, “Software” as he was known by his friends, stood behind the camera on November 6 as a gunman explained how rebel forces took Tel Sukayk, a strategic hilltop north of Hama, from government forces. Suddenly the camera’s sound recorder picked up the faint thud of a mortar shell firing in the distance. A few seconds of confusion then turned to horror as the shell exploded right in front of the camera, killing Abu al-Hamza and the rebel fighter and injuring several others.

    • Dr. Timaree: How to be mindful, ethical when it comes to porn

      Censorship, though, is not an effective way of fixing a social problem.

    • Why Latin America Needs PEN

      The Mexican way of death is unique, issuing from a symbiosis of indigenous beliefs and practices with Catholic rituals. To celebrate the return of the souls of the dead every November, Mexicans set up altars laden with the departed’s favorite food and drink and sugar skulls emblazoned with that person’s name, while images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and saints flank a photo of the deceased. Marigolds festoon the altars and the graves where relatives gather to share a meal and news of the past year with the visiting spirits.

      [...]

      Journalists are not only pursued by organized crime in all its forms, but also by local, state and federal governments, police forces, the military, and even by people whose job it is to impart justice. Not only must the federal government guarantee the safety of journalists, it must also resolve pending cases and punish the criminals, even if they work in government. Otherwise, as time passes most of the cases become enveloped in a tangle of conflicting lines of investigation where the real one is lost or the victim is morphed into the guilty party. A journalist friend recently told me about how when dealing with a notorious political crime, officials often present a new line of inquiry every once in a while which leads the investigation further away from reality, until it reaches a point where nobody knows anything for sure, a kind of legal shell game with the truth.

    • Pirate Bay’s Suspended Domain Names Spell Trouble for File-Sharing Sites

      Earlier in December, file-sharing site the Pirate Bay went down due to a problem regarding the registration of the thepiratebay.org domain — a seemingly innocuous hitch. But then, a week later, thepiratebay.com and several other of the site’s domain properties, including piratebrowser.com, piratebrowser.net, and piratebrowser.org — which link to the Pirate Bay’s TOR-based anti-censorship tool — also went down, suspended for similar violations of ICANN registration policy. And though thepiratebay.org was quickly restored after a transfer from EuroDNS to a new registrar, the other domains remain suspended.

    • YouTube dumps Holocaust memory

      “Why do I see beheadings and bestiality on YouTube, but the story of an aged Holocaust survivor must be removed? Is there an agenda going on? If so, what is it?” she asked. “This ministry is being targeted for some unexplainable reason. Is it because we tap in Michele Bachmann regularly? I do not hear of other ministries undergoing this kind of an exam and retribution.”

    • George Washington University apologizes for censorship of Palestinian flag

      Earlier this month, six weeks after receiving a “Warning Letter” for hanging a Palestinian flag out his dormitory window, George Washington University (GWU) student Ramie Abounaja obtained a formal apology from university president Steven Knapp for the attack on his free speech rights. The apology came after an implied threat of legal action against the university.

    • Silencing Students: The 8 Most Loathsome Campus Censors of 2015

      Every year brings new examples of ruthless college administrators trampling the free expression rights of students and faculty, and 2015 was no different. Here are eight of the most notable campus censors I wrote about this year.

    • Students of color frustrated with campus climate

      Multicultural student groups are calling for more inclusion at AU after a rash of anonymous social media posts and posters targeting minorities have appeared on and around campus.

      Yik Yak is a smartphone application that allows smartphone users to make posts anonymously and view posts made by those within close proximity to them. Racist posts on the platform prompted University forums last year and inspired an Undergraduate Senate discussion about race, the Eagle previously reported. In recent months, users have continued to write discriminatory comments in the the app around campus.

    • Chinese filmmaker claims victory in online film censorship lawsuit

      Beijing-based filmmaker Fan Popo, whose gay rights documentary was removed from Chinese video streaming websites, has claimed victory in a lawsuit over government censorship despite the courts ruling that regulators were not to blame.

      In its verdict released last week, Beijing’s No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court found censors had not ordered his documentary “Mama Rainbow” to be taken down from prominent streaming websites Youku, Tudou and 56.com.

    • Artists oppose Erdogan’s censorship

      Turkey welcomes private investors in the field of art and culture, but many artists feel oppressed by their government. Beyond censorship and commercial speculation, an alternative art scene offers some hope.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • DOJ’s Equitable Sharing Program Takes $1.2 Billion Hit, Much To Dismay Of Asset Forfeiture-Abusing Law Enforcement Agencies

      Good news (of sorts) on the asset forfeiture front: the same budget bill that delivered us into the hands of CISA also helped “rob” the nation’s highwaymen of $1.2 billion in equitable sharing funds.

    • Federal judge: Drinking tea, shopping at a gardening store is probable cause for a SWAT raid on your home

      In April 2012, a Kansas SWAT team raided the home of Robert and Addie Harte, their 7-year-old daughter and their 13-year-old son. The couple, both former CIA analysts, awoke to pounding at the door. When Robert Harte answered, SWAT agents flooded the home. He was told to lie on the floor. When Addie Harte came out to see what was going on, she saw her husband on his stomach as SWAT cop stood over him with a gun. The family was then held at gunpoint for more than two hours while the police searched their home. Though they claimed to be looking for evidence of a major marijuana growing operation, they later stated that they knew within about 20 minutes that they wouldn’t find any such operation. So they switched to search for evidence of “personal use.” They found no evidence of any criminal activity.

    • Italian president reduces sentences in CIA kidnapping case

      Italy’s president has shaved two years off the sentence of a former CIA base chief convicted in absentia in the 2003 extraordinary rendition abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect.

      With the decree, announced Wednesday night by the presidential palace, President Sergio Mattarella reduced to seven from nine years Robert Seldon Lady’s sentence. Mattarella also wiped out the three-year sentence handed down by a Milan court to another US defendant convicted in absentia, Betnie Medero.

    • Former CIA chief’s rendition sentence reduced in Italy
    • Italian president offers pardons in CIA rendition convictions

      Italy has partially pardoned the former CIA Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady who was convicted for his role in the kidnapping of an Egyptian Muslim cleric under the U.S. “extraordinary rendition” programme.

      Another U.S. citizen found guilty in the case, Betnie Medero, was also granted a pardon by Italian President Sergio Mattarella, his office said in a statement.

    • From the Shadows of the Cold War: the Rise of the CIA

      The longest running director of the CIA (1952-1961), Dulles helped coordinate extremely bloody coups throughout the world. Not surprisingly, he comes off as a nasty piece of work. He and his brother John Foster Dulles both worked with the prestigious Wall Street firm Sullivan and Cromwell, which made a fortune representing cartels that were part of the Nazi war machine (John Foster Dulles went on to become Eisenhower’s Secretary of State). The Dulles brothers were quite cozy with Nazi higher ups in the ’30s and remained staunch apologists for Hitler well into the the ’40s.

    • Sudanese security enjoys “good relations” with the CIA: NISS chief

      The director of Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) Mohamed Atta said his agency maintains “good ties” with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

    • Trump praises Putin after being told he kills political opponents

      “I’m saying when you say a man has killed reporters, I’d like you to prove it”, Trump argued. But, in all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. In response, Trump said he appreciated “when people call you brilliant” and that “it’s always good, especially when the person heads up Russian Federation”.

      McCain’s comments come after Putin complimented Trump last week, and Trump responded it was an “honor” to receive the compliment. “Not a bad thing”, Trump said. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports Russian journalists experience intimidation and censorship.

      “I think I’ll win the Hispanic vote”, Trump told reporters after touring the bridge.

    • Russia can only use the United States as an excuse for so long

      Sergei Guriev, Russia’s most prominent free market economist, left Moscow in 2013 for Paris, in fear of his liberty. He had publicly supported dissidents, criticized the administration’s policies, was an active and committed liberal, in politics as in economics. He produced, earlier this year, a 21st century equivalent of Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince”: a blueprint of how the modern autocrat rules, and remains.

      Unlike the Florentine, though, Guriev isn’t recommending a course of action, he’s describing it; and he doesn’t believe it will be good for the state, but ruinous. If, in this and other writings and interviews, he’s right about the nature of Russia’s governance, his country is in for a bad crash. And when Russia in its present condition crashes, the world will shake.

    • Why Russia Can Only Go Backward

      The Public Opinion Foundation conducted a survey this month asking Russians two questions: “What was the main event of the year in Russia?” and “What was the main global event of the year?”

      Noteworthy is that fully 40 percent of the respondents had trouble answering either question. And the most brutal political murder in modern Russia — the assassination of my father — did not even figure in the responses. State-controlled television hardly mentions it, with the exception of the first few days after the killing, when commentators spoke of him in contemptuous tones.

    • How Fox News’ Primetime Lineup Demonized Black Lives Matter In 2015

      In 2015, Fox News’ three primetime hosts engaged in a smear campaign against the Black Lives Matter movement, fearmongering about the alleged threat they pose to law and order and hyping racist canards aimed at discrediting the movement’s calls for justice.

      The Black Lives Matter movement — which emerged after the 2013 shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin — became a regular news fixture in 2015 following the high-profile deaths of several unarmed black civilians at the hands of police officers. The movement brought national attention to the issues of police brutality and racial disparities in criminal justice. One group associated with the movement introduced a set of concrete policy solutions, and the movement as a whole became a politically relevant force amid the 2016 presidential race.

    • WaPo Tallies Police Killings–but Holds Back Some of the Numbers That Count

      “The kind of incidents that have ignited protests…represent less than 4 percent of fatal police shootings”: That sure sounds like an attempt to play down the number, doesn’t it? Particularly since the write-up never presents the raw number for fatal police shootings of unarmed African-Americans in 2015—which is 37—or the more comprehensive number of all unarmed civilians shot and killed: 90. Those numbers can be found on a graphic that accompanied the story in the paper’s print edition, and in an interactive feature online–but are nowhere to be found in the Post‘s own article on its project. (“Just 9 percent of shootings involved an unarmed victim,” a sidebar accompanying the graphic began—that word “just” indicating that we should read that as “not so many.”)

      And the Post‘s “meanwhile,” juxtaposed against “incidents that have ignited protests,” implies that the categories that follow would not inspire protest: those killed “wielding weapons,” who were “suicidal or mentally troubled,” or who “ran when officers told them to halt.”

    • Egypt’s censorship authority raid Merit Publishing house in Cairo

      Egypt’s censorship authority raided and searched on Tuesday afternoon Merit Publishing house in downtown Cairo without providing any reason, owner Mohamed Hashem wrote on his Facebook page.

      Staff member Mohamed Zein, 23, was arrested during the raid then released a few hours later.

    • Egypt Raids 2 Major Independent Cultural Institutions In 2 Days

      Egyptian authorities have raided two pillars of the independent arts and culture scene in Cairo over the past 48 hours.

    • TSA Says It Will Stop Accepting Driver’s Licenses From Nine States

      The last time we took notice of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), it was to inform you that the unpopular, expensive, and ineffectual outfit had decided it could force travelers on domestic airline flights to go through full-body scanners. Previously, TSA had allowed folks to submit instead to a full-body pat-down.

    • Who Needs A No-Fly List When You Can Just Ground 91 Million Citizens?

      For the residents of Alaska, California, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Carolina, Minnesota and Washington (along with American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands), this means their ID cards are perfectly legal within those states, but only as long as they stay in those states. (And, apparently, never need to enter a government building — like, say, to acquire a new, compliant ID card).

    • Human Research Loopholes: Alive and Well

      In one of the darkest chapters in medical ethics, the United States government ran an experiment from the 1930s to the 1970s in which it withheld treatment and medical information from rural African-American men suffering from syphilis. The public uproar generated by the Tuskegee Syphilis Study eventually resulted in regulations restricting government-supported research testing on humans. These regulations are called the “Common Rule,” and they are right now up for their first full update.

      The Common Rule, also known as the “Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects,” is supposed to affirmatively protect us from the abuses of the future. However, the proposed regulation is lousy with loopholes, including ones that could exempt tracking online behavior and experiments related to intelligence activities.

    • Hospital Refuses Pregnancy-Related Care Again Because of Religious Directives

      Today we filed a lawsuit challenging Dignity Health’s use of religious directives to deny basic reproductive health care to its patients. Filed on behalf of patient Rebecca Chamorro and Physicians for Reproductive Health, the suit argues that withholding pregnancy-related care for reasons other than medical considerations is illegal in California.

    • Sadistic Cops Make K-9 Maul Unarmed Suicidal Teen – Caught Planning and Celebrating It in Texts

      Months after the Herald-Tribune exposed the North Port Police Department for routinely commanding their K-9 dogs to attack people without provocation, the department has done nothing to address the problem. In fact, it defends its officers even in the most egregious cases, including the mutilation of unarmed juveniles.

    • Extended Interview: Remembering Haskell Wexler, 93, Legendary Cinematographer & Activist

      In Part 2 of our look at the life and work of Haskell Wexler, we air clips from “Rebel Citizen,” a new documentary about his life, and speak to the film’s director, Pamela Yates. Wexler is perhaps best known for his 1969 film, “Medium Cool,” which captures the upheaval surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He won two Academy Awards for cinematography in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Bound for Glory,” about folk singer Woody Guthrie. His documentaries tackled political issues including the Southern Freedom Riders of the 1960s, the U.S. government’s destabilization of Nicaragua, U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and torture under the U.S.-backed junta in Brazil.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Stupid Patent Of The Month: Microsoft’s Design Patent On A Slider

      For the first time ever, this month’s Stupid Patent of the Month is being awarded to a design patent. Microsoft recently sued Corel for, among other things, infringing its patent on a slider, D554,140, claiming that Corel Home Office has infringed Microsoft’s design.

    • Trademarks

      • Canada Too Has An Issue With Abitrary Applications Of Morality In Trademark Applications

        In our recent discussion about the delightfully vulgar filing by the Washington Redskins in an effort to point out the arbitrary application of morality by the government to trademark law, the point in the filing was driven home by just how many similarly vulgar and offensive terms the USPTO has been happy to sanctify with a valid trademark. Perhaps some of you out there thought that this was a uniquely American problem, something resulting from our overabundance of political correctness. It’s not. A case in Canada over the trademark application for “Lucky Bastard Vodka” shows this quite well. It also shows the inherent problem in trying to have a government institution apply morality to business in this way.

      • Saskatoon distillery fights feds over ‘scandalous’ trademark

        A Saskatoon company’s attempt to trademark its flagship vodka has turned into a four-year battle with the federal government over the definition of “bastard.”

        In 2011, LB Distillers applied to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) to register “Lucky Bastard vodka” as a trademark. About eight months later, the agency responsible for trademarks, patents and copyright replied.

        “The examiner came back and said it was immoral, scandalous and obscene, and that the general population of Canada would agree that it was an immoral name,” LB Distillers co-owner Cary Bowman said.

    • Copyrights

      • The DMCA Has Delivered Us Into The Hands Of The Proprietary Internet Of Disconnected Things

        The phrase “Internet of Things” suggests connection. The problem is there’s nothing financially motivating about interconnectedness. Manufacturers of connected devices would prefer homogeneity, which leads to actions like Philips’ which recently pushed a firmware update that locked competitors’ bulbs out of its Hue “smart” lighting fixtures. Sure, it rolled back the update and (mostly) allowed owners to use bulbs they had already purchased, but it was also suggested in the same quasi-apology that the company would rather limit the options available to its purchasers in the future, funneling them through its “friends of Hue” program.

      • Book Publisher Has No Idea How Google Works But Pretty Sure It Could End Piracy If It Tried

        Here’s the stupidest thing on piracy you’re going to read today. Or this month. Maybe even this whole holiday season. Rudy Shur, of Square One Publishers, has a problem with piracy, which he thinks is actually a problem with Google.

      • 50 Cent Files Stupid, Hypocritical Lawsuit Over Another Rapper’s ‘Theft’ Of His Song In A Mixtape

        I can see why 50 Cent and his lawyers might feel this lawsuit is a good idea: 50 Cent is in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings. On top of that, the rapper owes $7 million to the plaintiff in a sex tape lawsuit — one that also involves rival rap star, Rick Ross. (The woman in the sex tape is the mother of one of Ross’ children. 50 Cent can be heard taunting Ross in the recording.) 50 Cent is also engaged in a $75 million lawsuit against his former legal team, so there’s bills to be paid there as well.

        50 Cent’s lawsuit takes aim at the rap industry’s standard operating procedure: mixtapes. Rick Ross rapped over 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” in his latest mixtape, much as thousands of rappers have rapped over the beats of others on mixtapes since the early days of the genre. It’s an accepted — if quasi-illegal — practice. Everyone raps over everyone else’s beats on mixtapes, almost all of which are given away as promotional tools.

12.28.15

Links 28/12/2015: Corporate Media Associates Linux With N. Korea and Abuses, Linux 4.4 RC7 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 3:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • On the OpenStack Scene, Get Credentials to Get Hired

      As part of its efforts to grow the OpenStack talent pool and global community, the OpenStack Foundation has announced a new professional certification program that is meant to provide a baseline assessment of knowledge and be accessible to OpenStack professionals around the world. Some of the first steps in advancing the program are taking place now, and other companies are also advancing OpenStack certification plans. Here is a sampling of the educational opportunities.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

  • Licensing

    • What topped the GitHub charts in 2015

      It’s been a year of open-source projects. Both enterprises and startups have been releasing their code into the wild as a way to grow their capabilities. It’s not just the code that’s important; it’s the programmers and contributors that can get their hands on it, alter it, fix it, and make it better.

    • Best of Opensource.com: Law
    • Answer to a Frequently Asked Question

      Q: Which open source license is best?

      A: Unlike bilateral copyright licenses, which are negotiated between two parties and embody a truce between them for business purposes, multilateral copyright licenses — of which open source licenses are a kind — are “constitutions of communities”, as Eben Moglen and others have observed. They express the consensus of how a community chooses to collaborate. They also embody its ethical assumptions, even if they are not explicitly enumerated.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Switzerland Wants a Single, Universal Phone Charger by 2017

      Apple’s Lightning cable cartel be damned: Switzerland is moving forward with a plan for a single, universal phone charger across the country, standardizing phone chargers across the board. While the exact standard hasn’t been mentioned yet, it wouldn’t be hard to guess the standard: Micro USB, used across phone platforms, most especially Android, which has a gigantic chunk of the cell phone market worldwide.

Leftovers

  • Security

    • Security Researchers Offer Warnings About Hackable Railroads

      The well-being of critical infrastructure and transportation has long been the elephant in the room when it comes to cybersecurity: plenty of researchers have warned about the possibility of attacks on power-plants, the national grid, and, more recently, even the emergence of internet connected cars.

      Now, researchers are warning of the gaping holes in the security of railroad systems. On Sunday at Chaos Communication Congress, a security, arts and politics conference held annually in Hamburg, Germany, members of the SCADA StrangeLove collective presented a long list of problems with railroad systems that attackers could exploit.

    • DLL Hijacking Just Won’t Die

      To make a long and complicated story short, a bad guy who exploits this vulnerability places a malicious DLL into your browser’s Downloads folder, then waits. When you run an installer built by an earlier version of NSIS from that folder, the elevation prompt (assuming it runs at admin) shows the legitimate installer’s signature asking you for permission to run the installer. After you grant permission, the victim installer loads the malicious DLL which runs its malicious code with the installer’s permissions. And then it’s not your computer anymore.

    • CA Council to Improve Internet Certificate Security in 2016

      At the heart of much of the Internet’s security is the use of Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS), which provides encryption for data in motion. Certificate Authorities (CAs) are the trusted entities that issue TLS certificates, and as a group, the CAs are gearing up for big year in 2016, with multiple efforts designed to improve the security of the Internet.

    • Backspace Flaw Enables Linux Zero-Day Attack
    • Monday’s security updates

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Thousands More Homes Face Flooding Threat

      Thousands of homes are being evacuated in York after “unprecedented” levels of rain caused the Foss and Ouse rivers to burst their banks and the city’s flood barrier to be lifted.

    • UK flooding: Government rejected warnings of high flood risk from own advisers

      Minsters were warned by the Government’s own climate change advisers that they needed to take action to protect the increasing number of homes at high risk of flooding – but rejected the advice.

      The decision not to develop a comprehensive strategy to address increased flood risk came in October just a few weeks before the flooding in Cumbria before Christmas and the most recent flooding in Lancashire and Yorkshire.

    • Why Engineers Can’t Stop Los Angeles’ Enormous Methane Leak

      One of the biggest environmental disasters in US history is happening right now, and you’ve probably never heard of it.

      An enormous amount of harmful methane gas is currently erupting from an energy facility in Aliso Canyon, California, at a startling rate of 110,000 pounds per hour. The gas, which carries with it the stench of rotting eggs, has led to the evacuation 1,700 homes so far. Many residents have already filed lawsuits against the company that owns the facility, the Southern California Gas Company.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Bill O’Reilly Had A Terrible 2015

      Numerous Journalists Took Apart O’Reilly’s Falklands War Tales. O’Reilly has repeatedly attempted to bolster his reporting credentials by claiming over the years that he reported “in the Falklands” during the 1982 Falklands War. A Mother Jones exposé, however, found that O’Reilly fabricated his reporting resume and his former colleagues said he was actually 1,200 miles away in Buenos Aires. O’Reilly also claimed to have reported on a 1982 Buenos Aires protest in which “many were killed,” but numerous journalists who reported from the scene and a historian disputed his story. Furthermore, O’Reilly claimed to have helped an injured CBS photographer during the protest, but his colleagues have no recollection of that incident.

  • Censorship

    • True or false, decide through self-censorship, says minister

      He said self-censorship was important to see that the information they received and believed were valid and not detrimental and disruptive to harmony in society and country.

    • Public should practice self-censorship on social media, says minister

      Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Dr Salleh Said Keruak today called on the people to use their power of self-censorship to reject or accept any information posted on the social media.

      He said self-censorship was important to see that the information they received and believed were valid and not detrimental and disruptive to harmony in society and country.

      “The important thing is, we should not be confused between news and views. Views are people’s own and not necessarily accurate and our views could differ from each other’s. But news contain facts, the veracity of which are verified before being disseminated.

    • Anonymous Attacks Asia Pacific Telecommunity website to protest Internet censorship

      The global hacktivist group, Anonymous has now turned its eyes to the varying degrees of censorship being practised in Asia. The Asia Pacific Telecommunity website (apt.int) has not only been hacked by members of the Anonymous hacker collective, and they also have got entry to the site’s admin panel (running Drupal), and also have been able to get their hands on a database dump.

    • Anonymous Hacks Asia Pacific Telecommunity Against Internet Censorship in Asia

      Anonymous hacker collective has attacked the official website of Asia Pacific telecommunity and defaced it in protest against growing plans for internet censorship in Asia.

      The hackers gained access of the website’s admin panel (running Drupal) and from there, leaked all the data stored on the website along with defacing the site with one of their own pages.

    • Court Orders Shutdown of Libgen, Bookfi and Sci-Hub

      A New York District Court has granted Elsevier’s request for a preliminary injunction against several sites that host academic publications without permission. As a result the site’s operators are now ordered to quit offering access to infringing content, while the associated registries must suspend their domain names.

    • Amidst censorship row, two “porn-coms” are releasing in India in January

      India’s 2016 film calendar will begin on a controversial note. Two Bollywood adult comedies starring the same actor are releasing within a week of each other in January. Both Maastizaade and Kya Kool Hain Hum 3 are releasing after facing considerable objections from India’s censor board.

    • The Splinternet: A New Era of Censorship, Surveillance, and Cyberwarfare

      For more than a decade, the internet has become a seemingly borderless land of free flowing information. It began as a not so open U.S. military data system decades ago, but it evolved over time into the public digital domain it has become.

    • On the Aggressive, Hilarious Theorizing in ‘Censorship Now!!’
    • Harvard Law Review Freaks Out, Sends Christmas Eve Threat Over Public Domain Citation Guide

      In the fall of 2014, we wrote about a plan by public documents guru Carl Malamud and law professor Chris Sprigman, to create a public domain book for legal citations (stay with me, this isn’t as boring as it sounds!). For decades, the “standard” for legal citations has been “the Bluebook” put out by Harvard Law Review, and technically owned by four top law schools. Harvard Law Review insists that this standard of how people can cite stuff in legal documents is covered by copyright. This seems nuts for a variety of reasons. A citation standard is just an method for how to cite stuff. That shouldn’t be copyrightable. But the issue has created ridiculous flare-ups over the years, with the fight between the Bluebook and the open source citation tool Zotero representing just one ridiculous example.

  • Privacy

    • Why ownCloud’s CEO isn’t worried about the death of Safe Harbor [Ed: Katherine Noyes should be smarter than that and not quote Microsoft propagandist Enderle]
    • Windows 10: Microsoft hits new low with ‘Upgrade Now’ or ‘Upgrade Tonight’ pop-up [Ed: how to push spyware]

      The latest pop-up message to consumers, outed on Reddit, removes the explicit option to opt out of the upgrade, instead offering two options: ‘Update Now’ or ‘Update Tonight’. Simply closing the box will make it go away (we’re still trying to ascertain for how long) but it seems that this is a deliberate attempt to prey on the less tech savvie.

    • The Tax Sleuth Who Took Down a Drug Lord

      “I’m not high-tech, but I’m like, ‘This isn’t that complicated. This is just some guy behind a computer,’” he recalled saying to himself. “In these technical investigations, people think they are too good to do the stupid old-school stuff. But I’m like, ‘Well, that stuff still works.’ ”

      Mr. Alford’s preferred tool was Google. He used the advanced search option to look for material posted within specific date ranges. That brought him, during the last weekend of May 2013, to a chat room posting made just before Silk Road had gone online, in early 2011, by someone with the screen name “altoid.”

    • China passes law requiring tech firms to hand over encryption keys

      Under the guise of counter-terrorism, the controversial law is the Chinese government’s attempt to curtail the activities of militants and political activists. China already faces criticism from around the world not only for the infamous Great Firewall of China, but also the blatant online surveillance and censorship that takes place. This latest move is one that will be view very suspiciously by foreign companies operating within China, or looking to do so.

    • New Chinese law takes aim at encryption

      A new law passed by China’s Parliament on Sunday requires technology companies to assist the government in decrypting content, a provision that the country maintains is modeled after Western law.

      A new law passed by China’s Parliament on Sunday requires technology companies to assist the government in decrypting content, a provision that the country maintains is modeled after Western law.

      ISPs and telecommunication companies must provide technical assistance to the government, including decrypting communications, for terrorism-related investigations, according to Xinhua, China’s official news agency.

    • China Using US Encryption Fight To Defend Its New Encryption Backdoor Mandate

      So, again, to all the politicians and lawmakers supporting backdooring encryption, what’s your response when China uses it to say that’s why they’re doing it as well?

    • Senator Richard Burr: Confused And Wrong On Encryption

      Right, except so far officials haven’t been able to show evidence of any of those cases actually using encryption. Similarly, law enforcement has failed to show that criminals using encryption have really been that much of a problem either. And that’s because it’s not a problem. Even in the (still mostly rare) cases where encryption is being used, criminals still reveal plenty of information that would allow law enforcement to track them down. It’s called doing basic detective work.

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • India Tells Facebook To Shut Down Controversial Zero Rating Program ‘Free Basics’

      The Indian government has spent much of the last year trying to craft net neutrality rules, and had recently been fielding public comment on whether or not Facebook’s zero rating effort, Free Basics, violates net neutrality. As we’ve covered at length, Facebook’s been trying to corner the developing nation ad market with a zero rated program that offers free access to curated, Facebook approved content. Critics and Free Basic content partners alike haven’t been comfortable with giving Facebook that much control.

    • How the Internet of Things Limits Consumer Choice
    • Why India’s Net Neutrality Activists Hate Facebook

      Facebook Inc. Chairman Mark Zuckerberg made a personal appeal in one of India’s leading newspapers for the country to allow a free Internet service that has stirred controversy and invited questions from regulators.

      Facebook’s proposed Free Basics plan allows customers to access the social network and other services such as education, health care, and employment listings from their phones without a data plan. Yet activists say the program threatens the principles of net neutrality and could change pricing in India for access to different websites.

      The backlash in India centers on net neutrality, the principle that all Internet websites should be equally accessible. Critics accused the world’s largest social networking company of favoring a limited swath of the Internet and excluding rival services. And Facebook’s broader Internet.org initiative, including Free Basics, is seen as an effective way to draw more users onto a social network already used by over a billion people.

    • Facebook’s Zuckerberg: If You Oppose Our International Power Grab, You’re An Enemy Of The Poor

      Last week we noted that India had shut down Facebook’s Free Basics program, arguing the company’s plan for zero rating Facebook-approved content and services is effectively glorified collusion; an attempt to eventually corner global ad markets under the banner of altruism. The country has been trying to craft net neutrality rules, and has slowly realized that whatever neutrality looks like, Facebook deciding what content Indians get access to isn’t it.

    • Comcast Cap Blunder Highlights How Nobody Is Ensuring Broadband Meters Are Accurate

      For years now we’ve noted that while broadband ISPs rush toward broadband caps and usage overage fees, nobody is checking to confirm that ISP meters are accurate. The result has been user network hardware that reports usage dramatically different from an ISPs’ meters, or users who are billed for bandwidth usage even when the power is out or the modem is off. Not only have regulators historically failed to see the anti-innovation, anti-competitive impact of usage caps, you’d be hard pressed to find a single official that has even commented on the problem of inaccurate broadband usage meters.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • El Paquete Semanal: How Offline Piracy Flourishes in Cuba

        For more than a decade many Cubans have been pirating the latest entertainment without a proper connection to the Internet. Instead, they have built their own person-to-person distribution network to share a weekly package of pirated material: El Paquete Semanal.

12.27.15

Links 27/12/2015: Perl 6, Solus 1.0

Posted in News Roundup at 8:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why Don’t You Contribute to Open Source?

    In my How Much Do You Cost? post last year, I said open-source contribution is a very important factor in defining who is good and who isn’t, as far as programmers go. I was saying that if you’re not contributing to open source, and if your GitHub profile is not full of projects and commits, your “value” as a software developer is low, simply because this lack of open-source activity tells everybody that you’re not passionate about software development and are simply working for money. I keep getting angry comments about that every week. Let me answer them all here.

  • Open Source Software Went Nuclear This Year

    Open source software—software freely shared with the world at large—is an old idea. A guy named Richard Stallman started preaching the gospel in the early ’80s, though he called it free software. Linus Torvalds started work on Linux, the enormously successful open source operating system, in 1991, and today, it drives our daily lives—literally. The Android operating system that runs Google phones and the iOS operating system that runs the Apple iPhone are based on Linux. When you open a phone app like Twitter or Facebook and pull down all those tweets and status updates, you’re tapping into massive computer data centers filled with hundreds of Linux machines. Linux is the foundation of the Internet.

  • ownCloud 8.2.2, 8.1.5, 8.0.10 and 7.0.12 here with Sharing, LDAP fixes

    The latest ownCloud stability and security updates are available, bringing improvements to sharing capabilities and performance enhancements to the ownCloud 8.2 series and LDAP, sharing and many minor fixes to the earlier releases. We recommend to upgrade as soon as possible! Please note the change in upgrade behavior for the Linux packages which require system administrators to manually run the occ upgrade command. Read on for more details about this end-of-year gift from your friends at ownCloud.

  • The problem with self-driving cars: who controls the code?

    The Trolley Problem is an ethical brainteaser that’s been entertaining philosophers since it was posed by Philippa Foot in 1967:

    A runaway train will slaughter five innocents tied to its track unless you pull a lever to switch it to a siding on which one man, also innocent and unawares, is standing. Pull the lever, you save the five, but kill the one: what is the ethical course of action?

    The problem has run many variants over time, including ones in which you have to choose between a trolley killing five innocents or personally shoving a man who is fat enough to stop the train (but not to survive the impact) into its path; a variant in which the fat man is the villain who tied the innocents to the track in the first place, and so on.

  • Events

    • Nha Trang ICT 2015

      I came to Nha Trang this year to bring Fedora back there after the successful event last year. This year, the event was held in another university in Nha Trang, TCU with more participants from other universities in Nha Trang and nearby cities.

      There was a academy/science conference in the morning with some talks from open source enterprises who sponsor the whole event. The afternoon was reserved for FOSS communities and I had a session to introduce about the Fedora project to all students and lectures. There were about 200 attendees join into a big classroom.

      During the session, I talked to them about the benefit of contributing to FOSS and Fedora. I told participants what the employers need in general when they recruit new employees, especially young students. Basically, they need candidates to have critical thinking, group working, English speaking and technical skills. Students can study those skills during participating in a FOSS project like Fedora.

  • BSD

    • 2.2.6-RELEASE Now Available!

      pfSense® software version 2.2.6 is now available. This release includes a few bug fixes and security updates.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • Little Helper: Open Source Hardware Hacker Multitool

        The open source gadget looks like an iPod (if an iPod had header pins sticking out of it). It has basic analog I/O capability, can generate PWM pulses, sniff I2C traffic, and do lots of other features. It is open source, so you can always add more capabilities if you need them.

  • Programming

    • Santa Claus in Linux Style: Top Linux Hardware and Free Linux/Programming Books & Courses Recommendations
    • PHP version 7.0.2RC1

      Release Candidate versions are available in remi-test repository for Fedora and Enterprise Linux (RHEL / CentOS) to allow more people to test them. They are available as Software Collections, for a parallel installation, perfect solution for such tests. For x86_64 only.

    • The Perl 6 release

      The December 25 entry follows with the Rakudo Perl 6 release. “This version of the compiler targets the v6.c ‘Christmas’ specification of the Perl 6 language. The Perl 6 community has been working toward this release over the last 15 years.”

    • Signs that you’re a good programmer

      The most frequently viewed page on this site is Signs you’re a bad programmer, which has also now been published on dead trees by Hacker Monthly, and I think that behoves me to write its antithesis. “Bad programmer” is also considered inflammatory by some who think I’m speaking down to them. Not so; it was personal catharsis from an author who exhibited many of those problems himself. And what I think made the article popular was the “remedies”–I didn’t want someone to get depressed when they recognized themselves, I wanted to be constructive.

      Therefore if you think you’re missing any of the qualities below, don’t be offended. I didn’t pick these up for a while, either, and many of them came from watching other programmers or reading their code.

Leftovers

  • Two men miraculously found alive 72 hours after Shenzhen landslide in China

    RESCUERS scrabbling through the aftermath of a huge three-day-old landslide discovered two people alive in the mud, as China’s cabinet announced a probe into the country’s latest industrial accident.

    Almost 72 hours after being buried alive by a tide of earth and rubble, 19-year-old Tian Zeming was pulled from the soil by emergency workers who have been battling around the clock in the search for survivors.

    Images from the scene showed dozens of firefighters and police thronging around a stretcher, apparently bearing the teenager to a waiting ambulance.

    [...]

    “The lack of safety supervision and passive attitude in taking precautions has caused the whole nation to shake with anger and shocked the world!” user Xizidan wrote in a post that was taken down by authorities, but found on the censorship tracking website Weiboscope.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Bottled air from Canada is selling like crazy in China

      The startup has been capturing that air in “massive cans” through a clean compression process, which according to Vitality Air, “lock[s] in the pure air without any contamination.” The siphoned air is taken back to the company’s bottling facility, where “we begin filling our convenient delivery cans to the brim with excellent air.”

      Vitality Air’s pitch might read like a throwaway joke on Silicon Valley, but the company has found a market for their version of Canada Dry. People in smog-filled Chinese cities have been buying up the cans in bulk.

  • Security

    • #OLEOutlook – bypass almost every Corporate security control with a point’n’click GUI

      In this tutorial, I will show you how to embed an executable into a corporate network via email, behind the firewall(s), disguised as a Word document. There is no patch for this issue.

    • Somebody Tried to Get a Raspberry Pi Exec to Install Malware on Its Devices

      Liz Upton, the Director of Communications for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, has tweeted out a screenshot of an email where an unknown person has proposed that the Foundation install malware on all of its devices.

      In the email, a person named Linda, is proposing Mrs. Upton an agreement where their company would provide an EXE file that installs a desktop shortcut, that when clicked redirects users to a specific website. (Raspberry Pi devices can run Windows as well, not just Linux variants.)

    • Botnet of Aethra Routers Used for Brute-Forcing WordPress Sites

      Italian security researchers from VoidSec have come across a botnet structure that was using vulnerable Aethra Internet routers and modems to launch brute-force attacks on WordPress websites.

    • Steam Had A Very Rough Christmas With A Major Security Issue

      The security issue looks like it might be resolved now, but resulted in gamers being able to see other account holder’s information. Seeing other accounts included partial credit card information, addresses, and other personal information. For a while, the Steam store was completely shut down. The issue seems to stem from some caching issues due to account holders being presented with the wrong information.

    • Xen Project blunder blows own embargo with premature bug report

      The Xen Project has reported a new bug, XSA-169, that means “A malicious guest could cause repeated logging to the hypervisor console, leading to a Denial of Service attack.”

      The fix is simple – running only paravirtualised guests – but the bug is a big blunder for another reason.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • US Has More than 200,000 Soldiers Deployed Around the World

      The United States armed forces now have more than 200,000 soldiers deployed in one hundred countries of all continents, according to Defense Department reports.
      About 9,800 remain in Afghanistan, while about 3,500 in Iraq and Syria under the pretext of fighting Islamic State (IS), most of the latest from the 82nd Airborne Division.

      The Navy maintains about 40 ships deployed, the largest of which is the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, with about 5,000 sailors and officers on board-.

      In recent days, this naval unit crossed the Suez Canal with its escorts ships to station in the Persian Gulf Gulf and from there to take part in the bombing against the IS targets in the region.

    • America’s Unending War On Terrorism Will Destroy Humanity And Planet Earth

      Ostensibly, the Arab Middle East is controlled and managed by the US intelligence network; otherwise, Arab leaders would have hard time to stay afloat. The authoritarian Arab leaders live in palaces, not with people to understand the outcomes of their political folly and ignorance. Ironically, the US-Russian air strikes and killings of the civilians in Syria and Iraq will instigate reactionary opposition and increased insurgency to topple the puppet regimes. Daveed Gartenstein-Rosss writing in Foreign Policy (“Thank you for Bombing-Obama- Why al Qaeda might be the biggest winner of America’s airstrikes on the Islamic State.”), argues that President Obama is using wrong strategy to attack ISIL: ‘But an emphasis on degrading and destroying IS while giving a pass to other jihadist groups in Syria could have serious consequences that could leave al Qaeda in the catbird seat.’ America enjoys a record of failure in strategic thinking and practices if you view the war theater in Afghanistan and Iraq and now the forged battleground is Syria.

    • Cameron, Spy Chiefs Trade Secrets With Merkel Over Daesh Terror Threat

      UK Prime Minister David Cameron and the chiefs of Britain’s three intelligence services have briefed German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the latest terror threats, including Daesh, also known as ISIL, in what analysts say is a rare move.

    • Letter: A reader’s election year thoughts

      The current crises with the ISIS/terrorist threat has political and media fear mongers salivating over the potential of going into another prolonged military conflict. Money would once again flow freely into corporations (mostly Cheney’s Halliburton) involved in supporting combat operations in addition to the weapons of war manufacturers and technology industries developing and maintaining hundreds of technology based combat support systems, most of which are not needed nor completed. In this greedy quest, there appears to be little, if any, concern for thousands of military and civilian deaths and the destruction of in-country vital infra-structure essential for post operation stabilization and reconstruction.

    • France out-Bushing George W. Bush in its terror fight

      France once led the world in lambasting George W. Bush’s “war on terror”. But as François Hollande looks to enshrine emergency powers in the constitution, the country’s leaders are suddenly sounding like the US president they once held in contempt.

    • Palace: No ISIS training camps in PH

      Malacañang on Tuesday denied reports that there is now an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) training camp in the country.

      Presidential Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma, Jr. said National Security Adviser (NSA) Cesar Garcia has denied the report.

    • NATO: Seeking Russia’s Destruction Since 1949

      In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, U.S. president George H. W. Bush through his secretary of state James Baker promised Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev that in exchange for Soviet cooperation on German reunification, the Cold War era NATO alliance would not expand “one inch” eastwards towards Russia. Baker told Gorbachev: “Look, if you remove your [300,000] troops [from east Germany] and allow unification of Germany in NATO, NATO will not expand one inch to the east.”

    • Exclusive: Islamic State sanctioned organ harvesting in document taken in U.S. raid

      Islamic State has sanctioned the harvesting of human organs in a previously undisclosed ruling by the group’s Islamic scholars, raising concerns that the violent extremist group may be trafficking in body parts.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Hundreds evacuated after further flooding in northern England – latest updates
    • More than 100,000 flee El Niño flooding in Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay

      More than 100,000 people evacuated their homes in the bordering areas of Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina due to severe flooding in the wake of heavy summer rains brought on by El Niño, authorities said.

      The Paraguayan government declared a state of emergency in Asunción and seven regions of the country. Several people were killed by falling trees, local media reported.

    • Hanging out with the orangutan whisperer

      But the modest, grey pony-tailed founder and president of the Orangutan Project has made world-first discoveries about the orangutan, which literally translates as a “person of the forest” in Indonesian.

    • Climate Change: A Tale of Two Governors

      That brief conversation in Miami would result in Florida becoming, however briefly, a pioneer in grappling with the effects of climate change — such as flooding and freshwater drinking supplies contaminated with saltwater. After Crist was elected governor, he convened a summit, appointed a task force and helped usher in new laws intended to address a future of climate change and rising sea levels. Crist and the Florida Legislature set goals to reduce emissions back to 1990 levels.

    • UK Deploys Army to Rescue People in North Western County Hit by Floods

      British Armed Forces personnel have been deployed to the English county of Cumbria to rescue people whose homes have been flooded, UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said Friday.

      Earlier this month, Storm Desmond brought record amounts of rain to Cumbria, resulting in several bouts of flooding in the region.

    • UK weather: M62 20ft sinkhole causes travel chaos as north of England battered by floods

      The M62 has been closed around a 20ft sinkhole which opened up in the road as the north of England was battered by a month’s rain in a few hours.

      The massive hole opened up between junctions 20 and 19 near Rochdale, Greater Manchester shortly after midday, bringing traffic grinding to a halt.

      The westbound carriageway has been closed as engineers examine the scene.

      Meanwhile, the Met Office has issued ‘danger to life’ flood warnings and the army has been called in to evacuate residents in flood-hit parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire.

    • Live updates: Homes evacuated, pub collapses, city centre on flood alert as rivers across Manchester burst their banks

      Greater Manchester is on flood alert after torrential rain throughout the night.

      Rivers across the region have burst their banks with many roads closed.

      Part of the Waterside pub in Summerseat in Bury has collapsed

      We will bring you all the latest updates here.

    • 10,000 properties without power across Lancashire and Rochdale

      Severe flooding has caused widespread disruption throughout the morning causing loss of power to customers in Rochdale and Lancashire with 10,000 properties currently off supply.

      30,000 properties are usually supplied with electricity from the main substation in Rochdale. Engineers from Electricity North West shifted 10,000 properties from the substation an hour before the flooding hit to secure supplies.

    • Govt looking at new insurance levy over floods

      The Government is considering whether a new insurance levy should be introduced to fund flood cover for homeowners who cannot buy policies.

      Insurance companies do not offer cover to homes and businesses in areas at risk of flooding.

      The Department of Environment, the Department of Finance and the Office of Public works are working on possible solutions.

    • Flooding Causes Manchester Gas Explosion

      Listen to this account from an eyewitness who says that flooding has caused a gas explosion in Bury, Greater Manchester.

    • Pub washed away in Summerseat on River Irwell

  • Finance

    • Capitalism – Not China – Is to Blame for the Current Global Economic Decline

      Capitalism, like a speeding train, barreled into a stone wall in 2008. Shocked and dazed, its leaders have been trying to “recover.” By that, they mean to fix the mangled tracks, reposition the locomotive and cars on those tracks and resume forward motion. No basic economic change, in their view, is needed or even considered. They see no absurdity in such a “recovery plan” – just as they saw no approaching catastrophe in the years leading up to 2008.

    • Prof. Wolff comments on U.S. exports of crude oil at RT International
    • Bitcoin: What It Is And How It Works

      In 2008, a programmer issued a white paper in which he argued that we need an Internet currency not subject to the fees and permissions of third-party intermediaries. So he came up with the digital equivalent of cash online, a system that lets participants send value to anyone else with a Bitcoin address the same way they might send an email. “Like the Internet flattened global speech, Bitcoin can flatten global money,” says computer scientist Nick Szabo, who is suspected as Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Robin Kelley, Malkia Cyril, Richard Rothstein: Do Black Lives Matter to Media?

      This week on CounterSpin: From community rallies around the country to the presidential election, the Black Lives Matter movement has changed the conversation. Keeping a spotlight on state-sanctioned violence against black people, activists have opened up a debate, including in corporate media, that addresses racism and white supremacy in ways more searching and less euphemistic than we’re used to. At least, fewer pundits tell us we’re living in a “post-racial” society—that’s a start.

    • Senate Bill 571 censors factual election information

      And helping taxpayers understand how these vital public goods are going to be delivered or paid for is important too. Which is why many people across Michigan are baffled by the Michigan Legislature’s desire to prevent school districts and other public bodies from distributing factual and unbiased information about ballot proposals within 60 days of the election.

      Gov. Rick Snyder should stand for more information and transparency, not less, and veto Senate Bill 571, now before him.

      Senate Bill 571 would prohibit a public body, or person acting for a public body from using public resources for factual communications referencing local ballot questions by radio, television, mass mailing, or prerecorded telephone message for 60 days prior to an election.

    • Donald Trump: Another Terrorist from the 1 Percent

      “What most concerns the [New York] Times is that the crude politics of Trump shatters the lying rhetoric used by Democrats and Republicans alike to justify the policies of the ruling class, at home and abroad. Thus, it worries that Trump is doing “serious damage” to the country’s “reputation overseas” by “twisting its message of tolerance and welcome.” What is the “tolerance and welcome” of which the Times speaks? Is it perhaps the Obama administration’s deportation of more immigrants to Mexico and Central America than any other president? Or the construction of brutal detention facilities in the southern US to hold men, women and children seeking refuge in the US. The Times writes that Trump “has not [yet] deported anyone, nor locked up or otherwise brutalized any Muslims, immigrants or others.” The newspaper fails to add, “Obama, however, has.”

    • Sanders-Clinton Voter Database Hack: a Campaign Pro’s Perspective

      As you probably already know, Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign was involved in some recent hijinks involving improper access to campaign data from the Hillary Clinton campaign, after a buggy software patch applied by the contractor maintaining the Democratic Party’s voter database, NGPVAN, inadvertently opened a data firewall. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) suspended the Sanders’ campaign access to Democratic voter lists (a subscription that the campaign had paid for); Sanders responded by suing the DNC; after a brief negotiation, the DNC restored the Sanders campaign access; and Sanders apologized to Clinton for the hack in Saturday night’s debate. Clinton accepted the apology, and noted that most Americans don’t care anyway.

  • Censorship

    • To tolerate or to take offence? That’s the question

      AMOS Yee’s most recent blog post has got him into trouble with the authorities again and has led to vehement responses online. However one response, by the President of the Humanist Society, has chosen not to focus on the 17-year-old himself, but on the perceived vitriol against the youth, in turn sparking two camps of responses both online and offline.

      Even though the letter Humanist Society president Paul Tobin wrote was in response to Amos Yee, his letter about the vitriolic responses towards Yee’s blog post has engaged citizens on a general discussion of intolerance towards offensive remarks online.

    • Tuesdays at Cheongster Cafe: Report Police Report

      It seems like Singaporeans have found themselves a new pastime – filing police reports. The past week alone saw two police reports filed against former Nominated MP Calvin Cheng, for incitement to violence. Add to that police reports filed against Amos Yee earlier this year, filed by National Solidarity Party, and another by Workers Party candidate Daniel Goh during GE2015 and so on, and it seems like our boys in blue have no time to nab criminals but spend their days attending to people with grievances to air.

    • Remembrance theme ranks high on Google Singapore searches

      Outspoken blogger Amos Yee, who sparked an uproar for his criticisms of Lee Kuan Yew, was high on the search list of Singaporeans who followed the controversy online.

    • Anonymous Hacks Asia Pacific Telecommunity Portal to Protest Against Censorship In Asia

      Members of the Anonymous hacker collective have defaced the Asia Pacific Telecommunity website (apt.int), gained access to the site’s admin panel (running Drupal), and also managed to get their hands on a database dump.

    • When Censorship is Really Tempting

      Needless to say competing voices and groups oppose this kind of censorship. Officially I think of censorship as acts of governments to limit or punish ideas that threaten them. On a less legalistic basis, I think we tend to use the term to refer to efforts to shut up any views by anybody that the other person or party or organization objects to. You could say, for example, that when our fellow citizens called us peace activists opposed to the Iraq War “unpatriotic” that were attempting to censor our speech. Bullying, peer pressure, threatened loss of livelihood…all are techniques for suppressing unpopular or unwanted ideas separate from any specific government action.

    • Free speech trumps censorship – be it Cecil Rhodes or Adolf Hitler

      Now they want the statue of the man the campaigners call “the Hitler of South Africa” removed. One can see why. Rhodes began enforced racial segregation in South Africa and was – avowedly – a racist, proclaiming the superiority of Anglo-Saxons. Looking back at him today, it is difficult not to regard him and much of his legacy as toxic.

    • International publishers blast censorship in Turkey

      The International Publishers Association on Dec. 22 condemned what it called “blatant political censorship” in Turkey, saying three journalists’ books had been pulled from shelves on court orders.

      “Books by Hasan Cemal, Tuğçe Tatari and Müslüm Yücel will be removed from sale merely because they were found in the possession of people arrested on suspicion of being members of various outlawed political parties,” the Geneva-based IPA said in a statement.

      The Third Criminal Court of Peace in southeastern Gaziantep province decided to remove a total of three books focusing on the Kurdish problem by journalists Hasan Cemal and Tuğçe Tatari from bookstores after being seized during an operation into a cell where suspected militants of the outlawed Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), youth-wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), were detained. The court ruled for the confiscation of the books on Dec. 4, arguing they spread terrorist propaganda and praised criminal activity.

    • Turkey attacked by international publishers for ‘blatant political censorship’

      The International Publishers Association on Tuesday condemned what it called “blatant political censorship” in Turkey, saying three journalists’ books had been pulled from shelves on court orders.

      “Books by Hasan Cemal, Tugce Tatari and Muslum Yucel will be removed from sale merely because they were found in the possession of people arrested on suspicion of being members of various outlawed political parties,” the Geneva-based IPA said in a statement.

    • How Websites Will Signal When They’re Censored
    • Bradbury-Inspired 451 Error Code Warns of Online Censorship
    • Error 451 is the new HTTP code for online censorship

      The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the body responsible for overseeing the internet’s technical standards, has approved HTTP 451, “an HTTP Status Code to Report Legal Obstacles”. The new status code will show viewers when a web page is being blocked for legal reasons.

    • Forget 404 Errors: HTTP Now Has a Code for Censorship

      HTTP status codes are not normally a thing that aids political dissidents, or really anything to get excited about. But the newly-made code 451, to be used when something is taken down for legal reasons, is a timely exception.

      Status codes are used when requesting and transmitting data over the internet, for example, pulling up this page. There are five classes, 100s-500s, and tens or hundreds of specific codes within those classes. You normally don’t encounter the codes unless something goes wrong—the infamous 404 error for a page not found, for example.

    • CALLING OUT CENSORSHIP BY NAME, OR AT LEAST BY NUMBER

      With those words, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) announced new HTTP status code 451, to be used when access to a website is denied due to legal demands.

      Most users pay little attention to status codes, which are numerical indicators of how a website is responding to a browser request. If they are familiar with status codes at all, they have most likely encountered a “404 – File Not Found” or possibly an occasional “403—Forbidden.”

    • Burmese artists caught in self-censorship

      Burmese artists lived under strict laws of censorship since 1964. Through their artworks they battled for freedom and it’s only since 2012 that censorship was abolished. Since then there was an explosion of political art but artists stayed very careful in their choice of subject.

      Walking through the streets of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, you could feel an air of silenced excitement. The first free elections in 25 years were only a month away and artist Khin Maung Zaw took me to his home and gallery. The idyllic paintings of Buddhist monks and Burmese landscapes on the wall express the love he feels for his country but “Myanmar is a shattered country. We need to choose democracy. It’s the only way we can talk about our needs.”, says a soft-spoken Zaw. Still, he doesn’t call his work revolutionary: “my works are snapshots of the daily lives of Burmese people.”

    • Mercury News editorial: China’s Internet conference is all about censorship

      If you were planning to hold an Internet conference for the world, where would you choose to hold it?

      “Anyplace but China” would be a reasonable response. Yet last week, no less a luminary that Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed more than 2,000 guests to the coastal city of Wuzhen, as they opened the World Internet Conference.

      That’s right. China hosted an Internet conference. Has one of world’s heaviest-handed cyber censors decided to join the digital marketplace of ideas? Hardly. Check out the guest list, including delegates from such freedom-loving places as Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

      The purpose of this conference was not to be to open the Internet, but how better to close it. China is promoting the idea of “Internet sovereignty,” which is basically a web of fiefdoms gagged by official censors.

    • China is Finally Taking its Seat at the Big Table
    • China’s Xi calls for cooperation on Internet regulation

      President Xi Jinping has defended his government’s broad censorship of the internet, in a high-profile speech underscoring China’s increasingly emphatic attempts to justify its strict online control.

    • Is American film industry pandering to Chinese censors?

      The director of China’s state-controlled film bureau, Zhang Hongshen, has said that China is at war with Hollywood. China’s propaganda chief, Liu Qibao, believes that Chinese movies should reflect the Chinese Dream. President Xi Jinping declared that art should be patriotic and that foreign films should be sanitized.

    • So you think Thai Internet censorship is bad?

      Every hotel I stayed at in China offered free WiFi, but it was a meaningless gesture. While some of my email got through, I was not able to reply to any of it until I returned to Thailand. Likewise Facebook was blocked, though many might see that as a blessing in disguise.

    • The Delicate Dance of a Chinese Journalist

      China jails more journalists than any other country, but media students say the landscape is changing.

    • Students Call for ‘Terrifying’ Wave of Censorship

      A video shows filmmaker and satirist Ami Horowitz on the campus of Yale University asking students to sign a petition calling for a repeal of the First Amendment.

      Horowitz said he was able to quickly gather more than 50 signatures in less than an hour and believes most who signed were students.

    • Trigger Warnings on College Campuses Are Nothing but Censorship

      Two Yale University professors recently said they would no longer be teaching classes after students expressed outrage that the instructors called for open debate and dialogue in an email. Increasingly, students are making demands of university faculty to limit exposure to material that the students deem to be discomforting. One way this is being expressed is in the call for trigger warnings in course syllabi. The student government at the University of California–Santa Barbara, for example, passed a resolution requiring trigger warnings on every syllabus with no penalties for students who skip a trigger class or assignment.

    • Self-censorship makes us victims of political jihad

      Well-respected ASIO chief Duncan Lewis has advised MPs to use soothing language when publicly discussing Islam, apparently to prevent a backlash. Malcolm Turnbull’s tacit support for the advice is not merely an error of judgment, it is profoundly misconceived.

      During the past week, the government has changed the parameters of the public debate on Islamism in Australia. Along with ASIO, it has reframed the debate to propose the cause of militant Islam is, in part, our response to it.

    • Tact is tactical. Obsequiousness signals surrender
    • Self-censorship? Lok Sabha Speaker expunges her own remarks after Congress raises concern

      Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge, who had returned to the House by this time, protested against Naidu making comments against the opposition in his absence.

    • e-Books help overcome Book Censorship in the Middle East

      The Middle East is notorious for banning books due to moral, political, religious, or commercial reasons. Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Syria are often heralded as the countries that tend to ban the most books.

    • Police encourage social media censorship
    • Students need education, not indoctrination

      There is, it turns out, a bright side to this otherwise depressing affair. A small group of brave and principled students, who identified themselves as ‘representatives of the Harvard undergraduate council’, made themselves heard and announced their outraged opposition to the administration’s latest experiment in thought control. A truly diverse array (just judging by last names such as Biebelberg, Ely, Gupta, Kelley, Khansarinia, Kim, Popovski and so forth) wrote ‘to express concern regarding’ the placemat dissemination. ‘Reject[ing] the premise that there is a “right” way to answer the questions posed’, the protesting students affirmed that ‘we should work to foster a climate that is conducive to frank, open discussion – especially among students who disagree’. The placemat, they complained, ‘gives the impression that the points it articulates are positions endorsed by the college and, more disturbingly, positions that the college thinks students should hold’. College, concluded the students, ‘should engage in the task of helping students to think and speak for themselves, not telling them what to think and what to say’.

    • In Hong Kong, Fears for an Art Museum

      “The problem in Hong Kong is not censorship,” said Pi Li, the Sigg senior curator at M+. “The problem in Hong Kong is self-censorship. It’s self-censorship hidden in the procedures, so it’s difficult to distinguish.”

    • Don’t Let Principals Censor the Internet

      Public schools should not have the power to punish off-campus speech.

    • The Palestinian-Israeli singer challenging everyone’s misconceptions

      Call her a traitor, call her a normalizer — Palestinian-Israeli singer Amal Murkus has heard it all. Now as she gets ready to release her brilliant new album, the avowed Marxist and feminist is speaking out against the racism of the Israeli mainstream as well as Palestinian attempts to silence her.

    • Closing down access to ‘free speech’ is not a joking matter

      The U.S. Supreme Court has a long string of decisions defending speech and speakers that many Americans would like to shut off or shut down. But within a just a few days of each other:

      • Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, said in an Op-ed piece for The New York Times that his company and others should create algorithmic “tools to help de-escalate tensions on social media – sort of like spell-checkers, but for hate and harassment.”

      • Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton called on Web companies to “disrupt” terror groups’ ability to use social media for recruitment and communication, to “deprive jihadists of virtual territory.”

      • GOP poll leader Donald Trump said at a South Carolina rally that “in certain areas” we should just shut down the Internet.

    • Why did Iranian TV censor interview with Zarif?

      After a highly promoted holiday interview with Iran’s popular Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was canceled at the last minute, Iranians cried foul, accusing state television of taking sides in a partisan quarrel ahead of the elections.

    • NY Times Warns About Europe Expanding The ‘Right To Be Forgotten’

      We recently warned about how the new Data Protection Directive in the EU, while written with good intentions, unfortunately appears to both lock-in and expand the whole right to be forgotten idea in potentially dangerous ways. A big part of it is that the directive is just too vague, meaning that the RTBF may apply to all kinds of internet services, but we won’t know for certain until the lawsuits are all finally decided many years in the future. Also unclear are what sorts of safe harbors there may be and how the directive protects against abusing the right to be forgotten for out and out censorship. Unfortunately, many are simply celebrating these new rules for the fact that they do give end users some more power over their data and how it’s used.

    • Keystrokes in the West may mean a death sentence in Saudi Arabia

      From posting a message on Facebook to watching the cursor blink on a screen, many of us take online communication for granted. For most, the idea that such activities might lead to severe punishment is absurd. But, in Saudi Arabia, the West’s treasured Middle East ally, keystrokes can result in public stoning, flogging, life imprisonment, crucifixion, or beheading. Saudi Arabia appears to be existentially threatened by freedom of expression.

      On 16 December Ensaf Haida, the wife of imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi accepted, on his behalf, the 2015 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Saudi authorities had sentenced the blogger to 10 years in prison with 1,000 lashes for posting comments that criticized the kingdom’s extremist Wahhabi ideology. They consider his views blasphemous.

      In January 2015, the Saudi authorities publicly gave Badawi 50 lashes. This first round of flogging resulted in such a serious deterioration in his physical health that doctors were able to halt the flogging for a while. But, a remaining 950 lashes still await Badawi.

      United Nations human rights expert David Kaye has expressed alarm at growing repression in Saudi Arabia: ‘Such attacks on freedom of expression deter critical thinking, public participation, and civic engagement, the very things that are crucial to human development and democratic culture,’ he said.

    • Rated R for Ridiculous

      MPAA ratings are more political than ever, so parents should do their own research

    • Why Did Facebook Block the Sharing of This New York Times Article About Nuclear Targets?

      When atomic weapons historian Stephen Schwartz tried to post information about 1950s U.S. nuclear targets to Facebook Wednesday, the site stopped him. “The content you’re trying to share includes a link that our security systems detected to be unsafe,” an automated error message announced. Here’s the strange thing: Schwartz—who pointed out the oddity on Twitter (where Washington Post journalist Dan Zak noticed it)—wasn’t sharing state secrets. He was posting a New York Times article.

      It’s not immediately clear why Facebook blocked the story—a fascinating and chilling historical narrative woven from publicly available information—or even whether the block was algorithmic or manual. At first, Slate colleagues told me they were able to link to it through the Facebook widget on the New York Times’ page, but attempting that method now generates a message that reads, “The server found your request confusing and isn’t sure how to proceed.” As some have noted, posting the mobile version of the article appears to work, and other articles about nuclear targets failed to generate the same issues. All this suggests that Facebook isn’t really taking issue with the article itself, so what exactly is going on here?

      [...]

      Again, whatever’s going on here clearly isn’t willful censorship. What’s troubling is the lack of transparency. The more powerful Facebook gets, the more such erratic quirks threaten to shape our everyday experience. At the very least, the company would do well to elaborate on what they mean by “unsafe.” Without providing further details, the site is effectively infantilizing its user base. Even if Facebook eventually explains what happened with the New York Times article, the initial mystery is a potent reminder of who really controls our ability to share information.

    • Thai high court upholds conviction of webmaster for postings

      Thailand’s Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the 2012 conviction of a webmaster for not acting quickly enough to delete online comments deemed insulting to the country’s monarchy, a decision decried by rights advocates as another blow to freedom of expression.

    • British pub’s Facebook account banned over ‘offensive’ name

      Facebook has suspended a 175-year-old British pub’s social media account over its “offensive” name, saying it was derived from a black cockerel — a male chicken, the media reported.

      The manager of the Blackcock Inn in Llanfihangel Talyllyn, a small village in Wales, in November this year received a message from Facebook saying the pub’s account he created had been suspended for “racist or offensive language”, he told the Independent in an interview.

    • Twitter says it is beating the trolls

      After making it easier to report abusive tweets and increasing the size of its anti-troll team, Twitter believes it is getting ‘bad behavior’ under control. As well as bullying of acquaintances and work colleagues, Twitter has also been used to attack celebrities, the gay community, religious groups, and more, with many people feeling driven from the site. It seems that the decision to take a very hands-on approach to troll tackling is starting to pay off.

    • ICFJ’s Butler: American journalists feel the attacks on colleagues in Turkey and elsewhere

      In the past several years, Turkey has been facing increasing unlawful government oppression on civil society and aggressive assaults against the media.

      After consolidating his power, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) government did not hesitate to arrest critical voices and media professionals, and has even seized private property and companies. While known as a democracy — even if not a liberal one — Turkey, embracing these tyrannical tendencies of President Erdoğan, has brought the entire nation to very unsteady ground.

      Patrick Butler, vice president for programs at the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), a Washington-based non-profit organization that works to improve the skills and standards of journalists and media around the world, says he is deeply saddened to see assaults on journalists in Turkey.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Digital Rights Battles in 2015: NSA Reform, Net Neutrality, CISA and Beyond

      From John Oliver quizzing Edward Snowden on whether the NSA is collecting our “dick pics” to EFF’s legal team obliterating the patent that was used to go after podcaster Adam Carolla, digital rights issues have been in the public spotlight this year. For the most part, 2015 found us winning hard-fought battles to advance our freedoms online.

    • 10 human rights cases that defined 2015

      It has been a fascinating year in which to edit this Blog. Political and social challenges – from continued government cuts to the alarming rise of Islamic State – have presented new human rights conundrums that have, as ever, slowly percolated to the doors of the country’s highest courts. And all this during the year of an astonishing General Election result and amid continually shifting sands around the future of the Human Rights Act.

      [...]

      This was a historic decision if only for the fact that it was the first time the Investigatory Powers Tribunal had ever found against the Government. It all began with the Edward Snowden leaks and revelations surrounding the US National Security Agency’s communications interception programme. Liberty and other NGOs cited breaches of Articles 8 and 10 ECHR as a result of the UK authorities’ reception, storage, use and transmission of material intercepted and shared with them by their US counterparts.

    • US revokes visa of British Muslim without explanation

      The imam, Ajmal Masroor has accused the United States of enacting the anti-Muslim policies propagated by Republican presidential hopeful, Donald Trump, who prompted global condemnation this month when he pledged to ban Muslims from entering the US.

    • Conservative Media’s Demand That Muslims Atone For Terrorism Is A Rigged Game
    • Iranian-Americans Are Once Again The Escape-Goats. Why?

      We reaffirm our commitment to the principled American ideals of equal opportunity, due process, and the transparent application of the rule of law and justice afforded to all citizens irrespective of one’s national origin, presumed religion, creed, ethnicity, or gender. I submit this note specifically to YOU to take appropriate action to ameliorate the adverse ramifications of certain aspects of HR158:

    • Congress Put Iranian-Americans and Others At Risk for Becoming Second-Class Citizens

      As a powerful Iranian-American community, we are politically passive. Many of our parents came to the US to avoid politics and politicians. But it seems our passive disposition relative to politics and lack of unity regarding politicians has hurt us and the passing of this legislation is a representative example. The legislation that passed last week by both democrats and republicans is un-American. This legislation is legally, socially, and morally wrong.

    • Yahoo now warns users if they’re targets of state-sponsored hackers

      Bob Lord, the company’s newly appointed chief information security officer, said in a blog post that it will notify users if it suspects suspect that their account may have been targeted by a state-sponsored actor.

      “We’ll provide these specific notifications so that our users can take appropriate measures to protect their accounts and devices in light of these sophisticated attacks,” said Lord.

    • Yahoo becomes the latest company to warn users of suspected state-sponsored attacks
    • Controversial China anti-terror law looks set to pass this month

      China’s controversial anti-terrorism law could be passed as soon as the end of this month, state news agency Xinhua said on Monday, legislation that has drawn concern in Western capitals for its cyber provisions.

      The draft law, which could require technology firms to install “backdoors” in products or to hand over sensitive information such as encryption keys to the government, has also been criticised by some Western business groups.

    • These are the people responsible for our out of control police…

      Matthew Harwood’s definitive article shows that America’s police have gone out of control.

    • Smiles and Nerves: Schools reopen in Ukraine’s frontline villages

      Children have been returning to schools in eastern Ukraine after the Red Cross provided materials to repair the damage and allow them to restart their studies this winter.

      Although the guns have been mostly silent since the early September in Ukraine, government troops and Russian-backed militant forces continue to report casualties in the region. Among the most vulnerable populations are children attending schools near the frontline.

    • Trump’s Muslim ban is as American as apple pie

      Genuinely appalled members of the public and press, as well as elements of the Republican establishment, desperate to stop Trump as a loose cannon not beholden either to the party or its decisive megadonors, labored mightily to make Trump’s Muslim ban blather a huge issue, the killer gaffe that would disqualify him as presidential material.

      However, efforts to neutralize Trump through public censure–“bigot” “fascist” etc.—do not appear to be getting much traction.

      I believe there’s a good reason for that.

      When confronted by discriminatory speech and actions, some make the high-minded appeal to Americans’ better nature: “this isn’t us.”

    • Western Democracy: Who’s Watching the Watchers?

      What kind of society do our so-called “Western and networked democracies” count as normal if humans are constantly objectified, monitored and profiled?

    • China’s cyber-diplomacy

      China’s World Internet Conference is last week’s news, but the event will likely reverberate for years to come, as China seeks international support for its notion of a “multilateral” approach to the governance of global cyberspace.

      The piece that follows is one of the most informative I have read so far on the so-called “Wuzhen Summit,” attended this year by President Xi Jinping. Published in The Initium, a Hong Kong start-up that has done some very good reporting on China over the past six months, the piece is written by Fang Kecheng (方可成), a former journalist at Guangzhou’s Southern Weekly newspaper.

    • The Advocates: Four Public Interest Lawyers To Know

      The Bay Area is home to several legal nonprofits focused on issue advocacy. We asked state and federal judges to identify the staff litigators they see as particularly effective advocates.

    • The Perfect Storm in Digital Law

      The final element in this perfect storm is differing cultural expectations about the role of digital laws. The United States, says the stereotype, sees Europe’s digital laws as anti-business, anti-free speech, and pro-regulation. The EU, in turn, sees the United States’ digital laws as anti-privacy, reckless, and dictated by corporate interests.

    • 2 fatally shot, 1 accidentally, by Chicago police on West Side; families demand answers

      Police responding to a call about a domestic disturbance shot and killed a 19-year-old engineering student and a 55-year-old mother of five, and authorities acknowledged late Saturday that the woman had been shot by accident.

      The families of both victims demanded answers after the deaths, which were the first fatal shootings by Chicago police officers since last month’s release of a 2014 video of Laquan McDonald’s death put a national spotlight on the city.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • There’s wi-fi in the middle of the only place in the U.S. where wi-fi is ‘outlawed’

      At the beginning of this year, the Washingtonian ran an incredible piece about “electrosensitives” who had moved to “the town without wi-fi.” These people believe all the signals crowding the air to power our telecommunications-dependent society are making them sick, so they fled to Green Bank, West Virginia, which exists in the US’s only federally-mandated “radio quiet zone.”

    • Facebook’s Fraudulent Campaign on Free Basics

      Facebook is back with its game of trying to pretend that its platform is a substitute for the Internet, particularly for the poor. The originally controversial Internet.org is now back, re-branded as Free Basics, with full page ads in major papers, hoardings and a completely misleading on-line campaign using Facebook itself.

      The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has issued a notice for public consultation on the issue. While TRAI has put on hold Facebook’s agreement with Reliance offering Free Basics for now, it has not stopped Facebook’s campaign.

    • 10 reasons that explain why you should oppose Facebook’s Free Basics campaign

      Free Basics violates a fundamental principle of the Internet.

  • DRM

    • Welcome to the Digital Dark Ages

      Historians and archivists call our times the “digital dark ages.” The name evokes the medieval period that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, which led to a radical decline in the recorded history of the West for 1000 years. But don’t blame the Visigoths or the Vandals. The culprit is the ephemeral nature of digital recording devices. Remember all the stuff you stored on floppy discs, now lost forever? Over the last 25 years, we’ve seen big 8-inch floppies replaced by 5.25-inch medium replaced by little 3.5-inch floppies, Zip discs and CD-ROMs, external hard drives and now the Cloud — and let’s not forget memory sticks and also-rans like the DAT and Minidisc.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Netgear Shows Customers How to Share Pirate Movies

        Showing users how to send large video files is a task undertaken by dozens of software and hardware manufacturers but for the folks at Netgear the issue is now a controversial one. Want to send a pirate movie to a friend after downloading it from a torrent site? Netgear apparently has an app for that.

      • New Zealand court rules that Kim Dotcom can be extradited

        Kim Dotcom, the New Zealand-based German entrepreneur behind the Mega Upload file-sharing website, can be extradited to the US along with three associates, an Auckland court has ruled.

        Dotcom and his three associates are accused by the US authorities of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering. However, Dotcom claims that his file-sharing website was little different from many other file-sharing websites.

      • Kim Dotcom Challenges U.S. Govt. in Christmas Address

        The past several years have been a roller-coaster ride for Internet mogul Kim Dotcom. As he continues to fight an aggressive government determined to extradite him to the United States to face serious criminal charges, this Christmas Day the Megaupload founder recaps his case here on TorrentFreak.

12.25.15

Links 25/12/2015: SolydXK Linux Christmas Release, Wine 1.9

Posted in News Roundup at 5:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 49 Open Source Office Tools

    The good thing about open source office tools: you can use them to save major cost in office productivity. As you’ll see on the list below, some of these free office tools replace highly expensive commercial software. In some cases, a business could equip itself for thousands of dollars less.

    In many ways, the following list of open source office tools shows just how far open source has progressed in the last several years. And, always, if you have recommendations to add to this list, use the Comments section below. Happy downloading!

  • 5 things you should know about the plan to open source artificial intelligence

    Arguably, the open source movement — the idea that a group of technologists freely contributing their own work and commenting on the work of others, can create a final product that is comparable with anything that a commercial enterprise might create — has been one of the great innovation catalysts of the technology industry.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla 2016 Outlook: Promising Despite Funding, Competitive Woes

        For Mozilla, 2015 has been a year of large challenges, with a shift in funding sources and increasing competitive pressures across the desktop and mobile markets. The biggest challenges for Mozilla, however, are likely yet to come in 2016.

      • Exclusive: Mozilla working on a tablet a stickTV, an intelligent keyboard and a router

        We mentioned earlier that Mozilla’s Firefox os isn’t dead. Mozilla has some great plans for firefox os. These internal documents obtained by Hypertext shows the future of Mozilla Firefox preparing detailed OS beyond smartphones and include Panasonic TVs & these documents detail the new plans of Mozilla.

      • Adding Community-Driven Wayland Support to Servo

        It’s been some time since the last Servo article on the OSG blog, but this has no relation to the speed at which the browser engine’s development has been progressing.

        In the last post, the Offscreen Rendering (OSR) integration status was explored, culminating in both some code snippets as well as videos of an embedded browser application. That post can be considered the foundation for the recently-tweeted screenshot of Servo running with Wayland support.

      • The next 12 months will change Firefox’s add-on landscape fundamentally

        A lot is going on at Mozilla, makers of the popular Firefox web browser. In the next 12 months, the organization plans to make fundamental changes to the Firefox web browser which affect core features of the browser including its add-on ecosystem.

      • Divergent News on FirefoxOS

        I said good-bye to my FirefoxOS phone because of Mozilla’s decision to stop the distribution of the devices.

      • Open letter to Mozilla: Bring back Persona

        It was on the news this mroing, Mozilla will stop developing FirefoxOS phones, and the top Hacker News comment really resonated with me. Sure, IoT is the future, and it would be great if we had more nifty stuff there (shameless IoT privacy plug), but these headlines make the bad taste that I’ve had in my mouth ever since Mozilla shuttered Persona stronger, and I can’t stay silent any more.

      • Temporary add-on loading coming to Firefox

        Andy McKay, Engineering Manager at Mozilla, announced yesterday on the official add-ons blog that Mozilla would implement temporary add-on loading in its Firefox web browser.

  • CMS

  • BSD

    • A BSD Wish List for 2016

      First things first: I know that the wide number of variants in the BSD family are primarily aimed at servers. That said, it’s clearly understandable that with the exception of PC-BSD and BSD variants like GhostBSD, desktop/laptop users are not the primary focus in the BSD constellation. I get that, and regardless I am still using it for about 80 percent of my overall computing needs, and still using it on a daily basis on my go-to daily laptop.

    • FreeBSD and Linux servers

      Linux server distributions get compared all the time. And in the end, the discussion typically ends up around CentOS (from RHEL) and Ubuntu (from Debian). Why is this? When Rackspace discusses Linux server options, many more distributions are mentioned: Gentoo, Arch, Fedora, etc. Let’s focus on Gentoo and Arch.

    • The Most Popular BSD Stories Of 2015

      While we primarily focus on Linux operating system news and releases, I do enjoy watching the *BSD space and covering their major events. This year has saw some great updates for DragonFlyBSD, FreeBSD, and friends. Here’s a look at the most popular BSD news on Phoronix for 2015.

    • Problems with Systemd and Why I like BSD Init by Randy Westlund

      For my part, I’m not a fan of systemd but I also don’t think it’s the end of the world. I watched a great interview with Lennart on the Linux Action Showabout why he implemented it, and he had some good reasons. To write a daemon for Linux, you need to maintain a different init script for each distro because they all put things in different places. And sysVinit isn’t the best with dependencies. Developing things for the Linux desktop is not as easy as it could be, due in large part to the fragmentation.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Intel PKU Instruction Support Lands In GCC

      Just a few days ago I was writing about LLVM working on PKU memory protection keys. It seems now GCC has support for Intel’s PKU instructions.

      PKU Memory Protection Keys are going to be a feature of future Intel CPUs as explained in the aforelinked article and with them come new PDPKRU and WRPKRU instructions. With this commit today to the mainline GNU Compiler Collection, it appears GCC has now support for these new PKU instructions.

    • What are the best plugins to increase productivity on Emacs

      Over a year ago now, I went looking for the best plugins to turn Vim into a full-fledged IDE. Interestingly, a lot of the comments on that post were about how Emacs already has most of these plugins built in, and was already a great IDE. Although I can only agree about Emacs’ incredible versatility, it is still not the ultimate editor when it comes out of the box. Thankfully, its vast plugin library is here to fix that. But among the plethora of options available to you, it is sometimes hard to know where to start. So for now, let me try to assemble a short list of the indispensable plugins to increase your productivity while using Emacs. Although I am heavily geared towards programming related productivity, most of these plugins would be useful to anyone for any usage.

    • The New GNU News Of 2015

  • Public Services/Government

    • Grenoble commits to free software

      Grenoble, France’s 16th largest city, is committed to the use of free software. This type of ICT solutions facilitaties the sharing of knowledge, empowers citizens and institutions and helps to cut costs, the city said in a statement. The city also sees free software as one of the tools to increase citizen participation.

    • Infrabel seeking support for range of open source solutions

      Infrabel, Belgium’s government-owned railway network management company, is requesting services and support for two enterprise Linux systems, Red Hat and Suse. Infrabel also seeks support many other open source solution, including network monitoring tools Logstash, Zabbix and Rsyslog, and Java applicatieserver Jboss (renamed WildFly).

    • Open source engine for Portugal’s online gazette

      Portugal’s online government gazette, Diário da República Eletrónico (DRE), runs on open source components, including enterprise content management system Liferay and Java application server Jboss (renamed WildFly). INCM, the country’s printing office and mint, is looking for IT services for these and other IT solutions. The two-year contract is estimated to be worth EUR 550,000.

    • Grenoble Set FREE

  • Programming

    • How GitHub is building a platform and supporting open source (podcast)

      We caught up with her recently to talk about how GitHub has evolved into a platform (and what it means to be a platform), how the company figures out which new features and products to build, and the role of open source software in stimulating innovation.

    • Perl 6 Is Ready For Release

      Perl 6 was unveiled back in October with plans to officially ship the Perl 6.0 for Christmas. Larry Wall and those involved in Perl 6 development have managed to deliver.

    • What’s new in Ruby 2.3?

      Ruby 2.3.0 will be released this Christmas, and the first preview release was made available a few weeks ago. I’ve been playing around with it and looking at what new features have been introduced.

    • Ruby 2.3 Released With New Language Features

      Ruby 2.3 features a frozen string literal pragma, a safe navigation operator, and more.

Leftovers

  • How to praise IT? Evangelize it

    For a lot of people within IT who’ve been at it for a while, it becomes very easy to continue doing your job and then at the end of a project move on to the next thing. Praise for success and hard work is a way to pause and assess what you’ve accomplished.

  • Science

    • Best of Opensource.com: Science

      This year has been another great one for open science. At Opensource.com we published several great stories about open science projects that are changing the way we research, collaborate, and solve problems.

  • Security

    • Thursday’s security updates
    • MMD-0047-2015 – SSHV: SSH bruter ELF botnet malware w/hidden process kernel module
    • Another “critical” “VPN” “vulnerability” and why Port Fail is bullshit

      The morning of November 26 brought me interesting news: guys from Perfect Privacy disclosed the Port Fail vulnerability, which can lead to an IP address leak for clients of VPN services with a “port forwarding” feature. I was indignant about their use of the word “vulnerability”. It’s not a vulnerability, just a routing feature: Traffic to VPN server always goes via ISP, outside of VPN tunnel. Pretty obvious thing, I thought, which should be known by any network administrator. Besides that, the note is technically correct, so nothing to worry about. But then the headlines came, and shit hit the fan.

    • Cracking Linux with the backspace key?

      The source of these reports is a mildly hype-ridden disclosure of a vulnerability in the GRUB2 bootloader by Hector Marco and Ismael Ripoll. It seems that hitting the backspace character at the GRUB2 username prompt enough times will trigger an integer underflow, allowing a bypass of GRUB2′s authentication stage. According to the authors, this vulnerability, exploitable for denial-of-service, information-disclosure, and code-execution attacks, “results in an incalculable number of affected devices.” It is indeed a serious vulnerability in some settings and it needs to be fixed. Unfortunately, some of the most severely affected systems may also be the hardest to patch. But language like the above leads reporters to write that any Linux system can be broken into using the backspace key, which stretches the truth somewhat.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Yemen: 1 More Reason to Re-evaluate Toxic US-Saudi Alliance

      After almost a year of civil war, the conflicting forces in Yemen sat down on Dec. 15 in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss the prospect of finding a political solution to the conflict that has been raging since March 2015. While this is a necessary step towards ending the violence that has killed thousands, crippled infrastructure had led to a critical humanitarian crisis, so the peace talks should include a mechanism for rebuilding this impoverished nation. Saudi Arabia, which is responsible for most of the destruction with its relentless bombings, should be forced to pay for the terrible damage it has wrought. So should the United States.

    • When Terrorism becomes Counter-terrorism: The State Sponsors of Terrorism are “Going After the Terrorists”

      And now in an unusual about turn, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has configured a coalition of 34 mainly Muslim countries “to go after the Islamic state”. In a bitter irony, the key protagonists of this counterterrorism initiative endorsed by the “international community” are Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey, i.e. countries which have relentlessly supported “Islamic terrorism” from the very outset in close liaison with Washington. In the words of Hillary Clinton in her declassified Emails: “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”

      Counter terrorism by the state sponsors of terrorism? A New Normal? The propaganda campaign appears to have reached an impasse.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • It’s time for the private sector to buy in to the COP21

      THE 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) concluded on December 12 with the European Union and 195 countries agreeing on limiting greenhouse gas emissions to a point where the global temperature rise is capped at less than 2° C. The agreement has a strong basis in the principles of shared responsibility and transparency as well as collective oversight in the form of periodic assessments. This has finally brought the world’s governments (including those of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) together and has steered them in a clear direction for making a positive impact in the arena of climate change. But as vital as this development has been, government action cannot fix the problem alone. The private sector is a key participant in this endeavour: it is bigger, more agile, and more influential than any government, or even group of governments, could ever be.

    • To slow climate change, you have to start here

      The phrase “climate change” often summons images of exhaust-spewing trucks and coal plants blackening the skies.

      [...]

      But even people who’ll never visit the region should fear Indonesia’s flaming jungles. When the forest fires rage hardest, they can spew out more emissions per day than the entire US economy, according to the pro-conservation World Resources Institute.

      The fires briefly turned Indonesia — a largely impoverished, Muslim-majority archipelago — into the world’s worst polluter. During particularly smoky spells in September in October, Indonesia daily churned out more greenhouse gases than even China or the US.

      When Indonesia’s fires are tamed, the country is usually pegged as the sixth-worst offender, behind China, the United States, the European Union countries (which are counted as one bloc), India and Russia.

  • Privacy

    • Marc Andreessen: ‘In 20 years, every physical item will have a chip implanted in it’

      The hype around the Internet of Things has been rising steadily over the past five years. In tech analyst Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report in 2015, the IoT is at the peak of “inflated expectations”, particularly for areas like the smart home, which involve controlling your lights, thermostat or TV using your mobile phone.

      But the era of sensors has only just dawned, according to renowned technology investor and internet pioneer Marc Andreessen. In 10 years, he predicts mobile phones themselves could disappear.

    • Australian government tells citizens to turn off two-factor authentication

      The Australian government has repeatedly called for citizens to turn off two-factor authentication (2FA) at its main digital government portal, myGov. The portal’s Twitter account has recently been updated several times with cute pictures encouraging holidaymakers to “turn off your myGov security codes” so that “you can spend more time doing the important things.”

      The portal is the place where Australian citizens can use and manage a number of governmental services, including health insurance, tax payments, and child support. In case of myGov, two-factor authentication is implemented by sending users text messages that contain one-time codes to complement their usual passwords.

    • NSA Helped British Spies Find Security Holes In Juniper Firewalls

      A TOP-SECRET document dated February 2011 reveals that British spy agency GCHQ, with the knowledge and apparent cooperation of the NSA, acquired the capability to covertly exploit security vulnerabilities in 13 different models of firewalls made by Juniper Networks, a leading provider of networking and Internet security gear.

      The six-page document, titled “Assessment of Intelligence Opportunity – Juniper,” raises questions about whether the intelligence agencies were responsible for or culpable in the creation of security holes disclosed by Juniper last week. While it does not establish a certain link between GCHQ, NSA, and the Juniper hacks, it does make clear that, like the unidentified parties behind those hacks, the agencies found ways to penetrate the “NetScreen” line of security products, which help companies create online firewalls and virtual private networks, or VPNs. It further indicates that, also like the hackers, GCHQ’s capabilities clustered around an operating system called “ScreenOS,” which powers only a subset of products sold by Juniper, including the NetScreen line. Juniper’s other products, which include high-volume Internet routers, run a different operating system called JUNOS.

    • User Data Portability and Privacy – Comment on Recent News

      Anyway, I am happy that KDE signed the User Data Manifesto 2.0 a few months ago. Why wait for official legislation when we can do the right thing right now?

    • Resuming GPG

      Quite possibly Moxie Marlinspike is right, but for non-casual communications this can still be useful.

    • State considered harmful – A proposal for a stateless laptop (new paper)

      Two months ago I have published a detailed survey of various security-related problems plaguing the Intel x86 platforms. While the picture painted in the paper was rather depressing, I also promised to release a 2nd paper discussing — what I believe to be — a reasonably simple and practical solution addressing most of the issues discussed in the 1st paper. Today I’m releasing this 2nd paper.

      I think it is the first technical paper I’ve written which is not backed by a working proof-of-concept. Incidentally, it might also be one of the most important ones I have authored or co-authored.

  • Civil Rights

    • Media Reform Committee Considers a Crackdown on Online Media Using Article 44

      A junta appointed media reform committee is considering a new measure to control online media that incites “social unrest.”

      Pol.Maj.Gen Pisit Pao-in, the former commander of the Technology Crime Suppression Division who now oversees the government’s ‘reform’ of online media, said on Dec. 24 that he would ask to use the power of Article 44 to crack down on online media, including content deemed to be affecting national security and/or defaming the monarchy.

      Article 44 of the interim constitution grants junta chairman Prayuth Chan-ocha a power to enact any laws or take action to protect “national interests” and “national security.”

      After the talk between the media reform committee and police today, Pisit said representatives from Google are scheduled to meet the committee for a discussion on Jan. 14 and again on Jan. 21. According to the officer, these meetings will be followed by further meetings with representatives from Facebook and the messaging app, LINE, at as yet unspecified dates.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Why No to Free Basics by Facebook!

      There are other successful models (this,this,this) for providing free Internet access to people, without giving a competitive advantage to Facebook. Free Basics is the worst of our options.

      Facebook doesn’t pay for Free Basics, telecom operators do. Where do they make money from? From users who pay. By encouraging people to choose Free Basics, Facebook reduces the propensity to bring down data costs for paid Internet access.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Pirate Bay co-founder builds device that costs the music industry $10,000,000 a day

        Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde has created a device that he believes is costing the music industry $10 million a day, reports TorrentFreak.

        The ‘Kopimashin’, seen in the video below makes 100 copies of the Gnarls Barkley song ‘Crazy’ and sends them all to /dev/null – a technical term meaning the files are deleted as soon as they are saved.

      • Pirate Bay Founder Builds The Ultimate Piracy Machine

        Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde served his prison sentence last year but still owes the entertainment industries millions in damages. Some might think that he’s learned his lesson, but with a newly built copying machine he’s generating millions of extra ‘damages,’ which might be worth a mention in the Guinness Book of Records.

12.24.15

Links 24/12/2015: Manjaro Linux 15.12, Black Lab 7.0.2

Posted in News Roundup at 6:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why All The ‘Open Source’ Innovation?

    Open source software is nothing new. The roots go back to the 1980s from a global community of programmers who created free software. But the movement got a huge boost in the 1990s because of the Internet. If anything, this rapidly growing open-source community essentially became one of the first social networks.

    But there was always skepticism. After all, how can you really trust open source software? Was it really good for enterprise-level applications?

    Well, it seems that such arguments are quickly fading away, especially as seen with the success of standout companies like RedHat. But even the mega Internet operators like Facebook and Google have been major players.

  • OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams – nice free software

    A few days I came across the OpenALPR project, a free software project to automatically discover and report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the “car numbers” in a machine readable format. I’ve been looking for such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the automatic number plate recognition tool only is available in the hands of the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance. I discovered the developer wanted to get the tool into Debian, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian archive.

  • Why the open source debate around MBaaS is missing the point

    There has been lots of discussion around mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) and the merits of open source vs. proprietary options in this space. Arguments on either side of the fence are largely unchanged from when the same debate raged over a decade ago, across anything from operating systems – Linux vs. Windows vs. (Open) Solaris – to productivity software – Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice. Take the debate to the cloud, give it a mobile spin, update your FUD and you’re all caught up to what’s happening in the world of MBaaS.

  • What’s New in 3D Printing, Part I: Introduction

    One of the things that has interested me most as I’ve followed the 3D printing industry is just how similar it is to the story of Linux distributions. In my articles from three years ago, I discussed all of the open-source underpinnings that have built the hobbyist 3D printing movement, starting with the RepRap 3D printer—an open-source 3D printer designed to be able to build as many of its parts as possible. Basically every other 3D printer you see today can trace its roots back to the RepRap line. Now that commercial interests have taken the lead in the hobby though, it is no longer a given that you will be able to download the hardware plans for your 3D printer to make improvements, even though most of those printers got their initial designs from RepRaps. That said, you still can find popular 3D printers that value their open-source roots, and in my follow-up article on hardware, I will highlight popular 3D printers and point out which ones still rely on open hardware and open-source software.

  • Events

    • Going to FOSDEM

      It has become almost tradition for me, so yes, I’m attending FOSDEM 2016. It’s probably the best conference in Europe to meet other free software guys and that was always motivation for me to come – to see people I meet on mailing lists for rest of the year.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU MDK 1.2.9 release

      This release fixes documentation bugs (thanks to Joshua Davies) and adds support for the MIX instructions SLB,SRB,JAE,JAO,JXE,JXO (implemented by Sergey Litvin).

    • GNUnet e.V. Assembly 2015

      The p≡p foundation would like us to enter into an agreement. Their initial draft proposal (nothing final) is below (in DE and EN). Matthias and Christian can give some background on their motivations at the meeting. The goal of the discussion will be to get some feedback from the members and a mandate for the Vorstand in terms of the direction for how to proceed.

  • Public Services/Government

  • Programming

    • 5 favorite open source Django packages

      Django is built around the concept of reusable apps: self-contained packages that provide re-usable features. You can build your site by composing these reusable apps, together with your own site-specific code. There’s a rich and varied ecosystem of reusable apps available for your use—PyPI lists more than 8,000 Django apps—but how do you know which ones are best?

Leftovers

  • Science

    • EU referendum: Leading UK scientists warn against consequences of Brexit

      Britain would face an exodus of the best international scientific talent and lose millions of pounds in research funding if voters decided to pull out of the European Union, some of the country’s most eminent scientists have warned. Leaders from across scientific disciplines have told MPs that leaving the EU would relegate the UK to a bit player in worldwide research.

    • Scientists find 1500-year-old Viking settlement beneath new airport site

      When Norway announced plans to expand its Ørland Airport this year, archaeologists got excited. They knew that pre-construction excavation was likely to reveal ancient Viking artifacts. But they got far more than they had hoped.

      Ørland Airport is located in a region of Norway that changed dramatically after the last ice age ended. The area was once completely covered by a thick, heavy layer of ice whose weight caused the Earth’s crust to sink below sea level. When the glaciers melted, much of this region remained underwater, creating a secluded bay where today there is nothing but dry land. At the fringes of this vanished bay, archaeologists with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology Museum found the remains of what appears to have been a large, wealthy farming community.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Weirdly, Trump Is as Blased About Russia Killing Journalists as He Is About US Killing Journalists

      But there are killings of journalists by the US that aren’t counted in these tallies. In 2006, CPJ put out a list of 15 media workers killed by US forces in Iraq. The Pentagon dismissed these deaths as regrettable accidents, but there’s suspicion in at least some of these cases that reporters were targeted by the US military for doing their jobs. Regarding lethal airstrikes against Al Jazeera‘s Baghdad offices and a deadly military assault on journalists in the city’s Palestine Hotel, for example, Reporters Without Borders declared (4/8/03), “We can only conclude that the US Army deliberately and without warning targeted journalists.” (See “Is Killing Part of Pentagon Press Policy?” FAIR Press Release, 4/10/03.)

      Sometimes attacks on journalists by US forces are openly acknowledged. During the Kosovo War, the US military targeted and destroyed the offices of Radio/Television Serbia, killing 16 media workers. CPJ refused to include these casualties in its annual list of attacks on the press, saying that RTS fell “outside our extremely broad definition of journalism.”

      [...]

      Page rightly scorns “Putin’s casually dismissive attitude toward murdered journalists.” But how much has Page–as he discloses, a board member of CPJ–spoken out about CPJ’s dismissal of media workers deliberately killed by his own government? It’s easy to get outraged by the crimes of official enemies, and to forget or to justify the crimes of the state you identify with. What really sets Trump apart is that he seems lackadaisical about both types of crimes.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • What you need to know about Indonesian fires that are affecting global climate change

      Raging fires in Indonesia’s forests and peat lands since July this year are precipitating a climate and public-health catastrophe with repercussions across local, regional and global levels, said experts.

      Acrid smoke and haze have enveloped Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, and have reached Thailand, choking people, reducing visibility and spiking respiratory illnesses, according to Susan Minnemeyer, Mapping and Data Manager for Washington-based World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Global Forest Watch Fires initiative.

    • RSPO to publish members’ plantation maps in wake of Indonesia’s forest fires

      The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) will publish maps of all its members’ palm oil plantations – with the exception of Malaysia – in the hope closer monitoring will prevent forest fires and peat land destruction. But is this enough?

      The announcement comes as forest fires continue to burn across large swathes of Indonesia’s forests and peat lands, although the arrival of monsoon rains which have dampened fires in some hot spots.

      Except under exceptional circumstances, the RSPO operates a no-fire policy on its members’ plantations, and monitors compliance with this policy by studying data provided by the Global Forest Watch (GFW). But because there is no single up-to-date database of palm oil plantations, the data is not 100% accurate.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • The Donald and the Decider

      Almost six months have passed since Donald Trump overtook Jeb Bush in polls of Republican voters. At the time, most pundits dismissed the Trump phenomenon as a blip, predicting that voters would soon return to more conventional candidates. Instead, however, his lead just kept widening. Even more striking, the triumvirate of trash-talk — Mr. Trump, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz — now commands the support of roughly 60 percent of the primary electorate.

  • Censorship

    • New HTTP error code 451 to signal censorship

      After a three-year campaign, the IETF has cleared the way for a new HTTP status code to reflect online censorship.

      The new code – 451 – is in honor of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Fahrenheit 451 in which books are banned and any found are burned.

    • Should ISPs filter the Internet for their customers?

      The topic of Internet censoring … excuse me … filtering is certainly a controversial one. Some countries are taking a very active role in forcing ISPs to filter the Internet. But does this help or hurt their customers? A writer at Ghacks recently took a look at this divisive and very important issue.

    • Internet Service Providers should not filter the Internet

      I’m following the UK’s fight against porn on the Internet with fascination as it highlights how ideologists use something that everyone can agree on (protect children) to censor the Internet.

  • Privacy

    • 7 Insane Problems We’ll Have To Deal With In The Future

      As we remind you all the time, the future ain’t what it used to be. We have no jetpacks or robot butlers, and we’ve still not upgraded from Land Wars to Star Wars. The dreamers fell short … but it turns out that some of the pessimists came pretty close to the mark. In the same way that no one in the ’50s thought “millions of strangers across the world accidentally saw your dick” could ever become a realistic problem, our near-future will be filled with annoyances that sound completely ridiculous to us now.

      [...]

      Any denizen of the digital generation knows that anything you say on the Internet can and will be used against you, especially if it’s embarrassing fan fiction. However, that’s a logical extension of using written material as evidence, as we’ve done for centuries. The newest way to incriminate yourself online has far less precedent: the data collected from wearable technology, such as the Fitbit.

    • Young Danes ‘ditching Facebook for real world’

      The survey commissioned by state broadcaster DR found that 20 percent of respondents said that they use social media once or less per month.

      Of these, 70 per cent said that they had made a conscious choice to avoid logging on to Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and other such sites and apps.

      People polled said a major reason for staying away from social media was a belief that spending too much time online led to missing out on ‘real life’.

    • Drop Facebook and be happy: Danish study

      The Copenhagen-based Happiness Research Institute has a simple formula for increasing your happiness, social activity and concentration, but it might not be something you’re willing to do.

    • We Talked About Refrigerators with Vint Cerf, Father of the Internet

      The internet was once described by International Telecommunications Union secretary general Dr. Pekka Tarjanne as “a haven for pornographers, terrorists and hackers.”

      That was in 1995. Some things, it seems, never change.

      In fact, a scan of tech headlines today is like a time-warp into yesteryear. Encryption? Debates on limiting such protections were rife in the 1990s, and we’re still fighting about it today. Censorship? Foreign governments were trying to stifle the internet’s rising tide, even in its earliest days, and such attempts haven’t gone away. AOL may not be much of an ISP these days, but we’re still trying to get America online.

  • Civil Rights

    • Internet Freedom Is Actively Dissolving in America

      It’s the end of 2015, and one fact about the internet is quickly becoming clear this year: Americans’ freedom to access the open internet is rapidly dissolving.

      Broadband access is declining, data caps are becoming commonplace, surveillance is increasing, and encryption is under attack.

      This is not merely my opinion. The evidence is everywhere; the walls are closing in from all sides. The net neutrality victory of early this year has rapidly been tempered by the fact that net neutrality doesn’t matter if you don’t have solid access to said ‘net.

      A Pew Research Center survey released earlier this week showed that at-home broadband adoption has actually decreased over the last two years, from 70 percent of people to 67 percent of people. Among black Americans, that number has dropped from 62 percent to 54 percent; among rural residents, the number has dropped from 60 percent to 55 percent.

    • DoJ forced Google to turn over Jacob Appelbaum’s email, then gagged Google

      Google’s lawyers fought strenuously against the DoJ’s demands for access to the Gmail account of Jacob Appelbaum, a journalist, activist and volunteer with the Wikileaks project; they fought even harder against the accompanying gag order, arguing that Appelbaum had the right to know what was going on and have a lawyer argue his case.

      In both cases, a Federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled against the company, allowing the government to read Appelbaum’s email in secret.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Facebook “Free Basics” Curtailed in India Over Net Neutrality Dispute

      The controversial program allows mobile customers free access to a limited set of Internet services, including certain online shopping, employment and health sites, Wikipedia and, naturally, Facebook itself. While Facebook has said the program offers limited Internet access to more than 1 billion people, those who might otherwise have none, it’s come under fire from net neutrality activists and others in the industry who say it limits users to a walled garden populated solely by Facebook’s partners.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Judge’s Opinion On Kim Dotcom Shows An Unfortunate Willingness To Ignore Context

        Last night, we posted the news that a judge in New Zealand had ruled that Kim Dotcom and his colleagues were extraditable. Dotcom is appealing the decision, so it’s not over yet. Soon after the decision was announced, the full ruling by Judge Nevin Dawson was released. It’s a staggering 271 pages, and I’ve spent a good chunk of today reading it over. Some parts of it are more compelling than others, and there may even be enough to support the ruling. However, what troubles me is how frequently Judge Dawson appears to totally, without question, accept the US government’s arguments (as relayed by New Zealand prosecutors), despite the fact that many of them are clearly misleading at best, or downright incorrect.

      • Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload heyday is ancient history for the music industry

        You might expect champagne corks to be popping within major music labels at the news that a New Zealand court has ruled Kim Dotcom can be extradited to the US to face charges of copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering.

        In his heyday at cloud storage service Megaupload, Dotcom became a cartoon villain for music rightsholders – and their compatriots in the film, games and software industries – as they saw the company as a haven for illegal filesharing. Yet that heyday is ancient history for a music industry that has been going through an intense period of digital disruption in recent years. Dotcom was arrested and his site shut down nearly four years ago, in January 2012.

      • The Big Read: What next for Kim Dotcom?

        Finally, a decision, but don’t expect Kim Dotcom to be going anywhere fast.

        In an interview just before the extradition decision, Dotcom says no matter the outcome he is determined to live in New Zealand.

12.23.15

Links 23/12/2015: Plasma 5.5.2, Wine-Staging 1.8

Posted in News Roundup at 8:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Enterprises are embracing open source for business value, says SanDisk exec

    This year marked a real sea change for open source in the enterprise. With the advent of the cloud and Linux, many are looking to the open source community to further build out their businesses.

    On the vendor side, traditionally proprietary software companies from IBM to Microsoft popped the hood on some code to share with enterprises and developers.

  • 9 Biggest open source stories of 2015

    2015 was an extremely good year for open source, in general. Enterprise customers embraced open source at an unprecedented rate. Not only that, arch rivals came together to work on shared technologies like Cloud Foundry and OpenStack. And we saw traditional proprietary companies like Microsoft and Apple release their software as open source. It was an exciting year.

    Here are my picks for the top 9 open source stories of the year.

  • Five FOSS Wishes for the New Year

    For a major OEM to get behind GNU/Linux and push it as its operating system of choice: Like that’s ever going to happen.

    Back in my radio days, I worked with a salesman who was legendary in our local market, and he would tell hard-to-get prospective clients to “not buy just enough time to prove radio advertising doesn’t work” — which is exactly what the major OEMs have done with Linux. Several OEMs — Dell and HP come immediately to mind — have made feeble attempts to offer machines with Linux preinstalled, but if they haven’t buried the Linux offerings on a back page, they haven’t given customers a good reason to buy the penguin either.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • WebExtensions in Firefox 45

        WebExtensions is currently in an alpha state, so while this is a great time to get involved, please keep in mind that things might change if you decide to use it in its current state. Since August, we’ve closed 77 bugs and ramped up the WebExtensions team at Mozilla. With the release of Firefox 45 in March 2016, we’ll have full support for the following APIs: alarms, contextMenus, pageAction and browserAction. Plus a bunch of partially supported APIs: bookmarks, cookies, extension, i18n, notifications, runtime, storage, tabs, webNavigation, webRequest, windows.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • New document solution offers openness and accountability

      Public administrations that value openness and accountability of their cloud-based document data, should try out Collabora Cloudsuite, a combination of LibreOffice and OwnCloud, recommends Michael Meeks, General Manager Collabora Productivity. “This cloudsuite will enable complete transparency and control of cloud-based document data.”

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

    • DreamFactory: a RESTful backend shapes a nice MBaaS

      The great PR machine in the sky promised us an enterprise-centric, open source developer news nugget before the Christmas break — could this be it?

      DreamFactory is an open source firm dedicated to helping programmers manage REST APIs for mobile, cloud and IoT applications.

    • DreamFactory fuels enterprise mobility and IoT initiatives with new product for managing open-source REST API platform

      DreamFactory Software, the creators of the fast-growing open source DreamFactory REST API backend, announced the release of DreamFactory Enterprise. A new commercial software package, DreamFactory Enterprise gives users the ability to easily deploy, manage and transport multiple instances of DreamFactory across the entire application development lifecycle. Designed for enterprise development and IT teams, software development agencies, systems integrators, independent software vendors, managed service providers, and cloud infrastructure-as-a-service companies, DreamFactory Enterprise empowers development teams to provision, govern and report on DreamFactory instances so they can accelerate modern application development and deployment on a well-governed infrastructure.

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • France renews its free software reference list

      The 2016 edition of SILL (Socle Interministériel de logiciel libre – a reference list of free and open source software applications) has been published by France’s inter-ministerial working group on free software. The update to the list was approved at a meeting on 11 December of the government’s IT department (Dinsic) and ministries’ CIOs.

    • Open source for Austria’s historical calendar

      The website listing Austria’s historical commemorations and anniversaries is built on open source components, including the Linux operating system, web server Apache, search engine Apache Solr and content management system Typo3. The site, managed by Austria’s Federal Chancellery, list events, projects and publications that deal with historical events in the country. The site was launched in February.

    • Roskilde seeks open source services and support

      The Danish municipality of Roskilde is looking for service specialists to help support and extend Kitos, an open source IT project management system tailored to Denmark’s municipalities. Any improvements to Kitos will be made available as open source.

    • Adullact to reinvigorate repository of tools

      France’s platform for civil servants working on free software, Adullact, is to revitalise its repository of ICT solutions. On 11 December, the Montpellier-based NGO announced a ‘massive investment’ in its tool platform. The group plans to use the ADMS – a method to describe interoperability solutions – to make solutions on the repository easier to find.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • 2015 was a good year for creating the world’s ‘missing maps’ with OpenStreetMap

        The Missing Maps project, which launched in 2014, aims to literally and figuratively put more than 20-million at-risk people on the map using OpenStreetMap (OSM) as a platform. We need to fill in “missing maps” before the next disaster strikes, ensuring the maps have detail sufficient for emergency responders to hit the ground running.

        OpenStreetMap is an open and free source of geographic data. Anyone with a username can add, edit, or update data, so the Missing Maps project is community driven and focuses on local knowledge. Remote volunteers around the world use satellite imagery to trace features, such as roads and buildings. Community members and volunteers in the area then use the base map to add local data to these shapes, including street names, addresses, building types, and points of interest.

Leftovers

  • If the Olympics were the Miss U pageant…

    If it were the Miss Universe beauty pageant, the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea, would have taken a much shorter time to strip Ben Johnson of Canada the gold medal he supposedly won for ruling the 100-meter dash for men.

    But there was an official process for taking back the first-place mint from Johnson.

    After three days, it was established by a board of inquiry that the sprinter was indeed a fraud, with the dark episode for sports in general eventually becoming just a footnote to notoriety.

    The Canadian had been found to be relying on stanozolol, a banned anabolic steroid.

    No wonder the unbelievable time (9.79 seconds) he posted in track and field’s centerpiece event against a formidable field that included Carl Lewis, winner of three gold medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympiad.

    [...]

    Maybe, it’s time for the International Olympic Committee to be harsher with cheats by stripping them of any medal of any color right then and there (if technology would make it possible for fraudsters to be ruled instantly as having doped their way to the podium).

    At least that would be a consolation for Miss Gutierrez and Miss Wurtzbach.

    Congratulations to the two unflappable ladies but shame on Johnson, Jones and Armstrong and their ilk!

  • Why I will be voting to stay in Europe

    Clearly, some speculating journalist had mistaken my willingness to work with the EU’s institutions while I was Foreign Secretary for actually liking them enough to join them. And I am often asked whether the years I spent in EU meetings and negotiations made me less Eurosceptic than when I toured the country 15 years ago with my “Save the Pound” campaign.

  • Science

    • Poverty stunts IQ in the US but not in other developed countries

      As a child develops, a tug of war between genes and environment settles the issue of the child’s intelligence. One theory on how that struggle plays out proposes that among advantaged kids—with the pull of educational resources—DNA largely wins, allowing genetic variation to settle smarts. At the other end of the economic spectrum, the strong arm of poverty drags down genetic potential in the disadvantaged.

      But over the years, researchers have gone back and forth on this theory, called the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis. It has held up in some studies, but inexplicably slipped away in others, leaving researchers puzzled over the deciding factors in the nature-vs-nurture battle. Now, researchers think they know why.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • ‘Almost too late’: fears of global superbug crisis in wake of antibiotic misuse

      The director at Antibiotic Research UK, whose discoveries helped make more than £20bn ($30bn) in pharmaceutical sales, said efforts to find new antibiotics are “totally failing” despite significant investment and research.

      It comes after a gene was discovered which makes infectious bacteria resistant to the last line of antibiotic defence, colistin (polymyxins).

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Military to Military: Seymour M. Hersh on US intelligence sharing in the Syrian war

      Barack Obama’s repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and that there are ‘moderate’ rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him – has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration’s fixation on Assad’s primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasn’t adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washington’s anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and beyond Syria; like Washington, they believe that Islamic State must be stopped.

      The military’s resistance dates back to the summer of 2013, when a highly classified assessment, put together by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then led by General Martin Dempsey, forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos and, potentially, to Syria’s takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was then happening in Libya. A former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs told me that the document was an ‘all-source’ appraisal, drawing on information from signals, satellite and human intelligence, and took a dim view of the Obama administration’s insistence on continuing to finance and arm the so-called moderate rebel groups. By then, the CIA had been conspiring for more than a year with allies in the UK, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to ship guns and goods – to be used for the overthrow of Assad – from Libya, via Turkey, into Syria. The new intelligence estimate singled out Turkey as a major impediment to Obama’s Syria policy. The document showed, the adviser said, ‘that what was started as a covert US programme to arm and support the moderate rebels fighting Assad had been co-opted by Turkey, and had morphed into an across-the-board technical, arms and logistical programme for all of the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State. The so-called moderates had evaporated and the Free Syrian Army was a rump group stationed at an airbase in Turkey.’ The assessment was bleak: there was no viable ‘moderate’ opposition to Assad, and the US was arming extremists.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Why academics (and the US govt) are so terrified of WikiLeaks

      The International Studies Association (ISA) and its associated journal, the International Studies Quarterly (ISQ), have not always prevented the publication of academic analysis that relies on classified and leaked data. The ISQ published classified data from the Pentagon Papers

    • Sweden VS. Assange – 5 years of historic human rights transgressions

      The United Nations International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights says that the arresting of Mr Julian Assange can & should be put to an end. The extreme intervals and deferrals in the Swedish managing of the case has resulted in protracted period of five years, and in which Sweden has incurred in ostensible infringement of Article 9, paragraph 3, of the said International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This international-law pledge, of which Sweden is a signatory, stipulates that all individuals under prosecution investigation – even if they are only “detained” and thus, even if they are not being charged with any crime – as it is the case of Mr Assange – “shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release”.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Making ASEAN haze-free by 2020

      At the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Environment Ministers Meeting in October, the 10 member nations agreed to develop a roadmap towards a haze-free ASEAN by 2020. Each country is supposed to come up with its National Plan of Action.

      Since then, Indonesia, where forest fires caused parts of the region to be shrouded in toxic haze this year, has made some important commitments. These include the review of a much-criticised law that still allows farmers to burn up to 2ha of land and the banning of all development on peatland, which is wetland made up of decayed vegetation and organic matter.

      Peatlands are vital carbon sinks, and it is also heartening that Jakarta has pledged to start a new peatland restoration agency as well as to mandate green financing by banks by 2018.

      Nevertheless, some questions remain. First, who will foot the bill? Around S$5.1 billion will be needed for the restoration of 2 million ha of peatlands. Indonesia has said that it would seek international funding, including at the recent Paris climate change summit. But it is unclear how much support Indonesia can garner from international partners.

      Second, will companies causing the peatland degradation take responsibility for restoration projects?

      Third, how will Indonesia ensure the enforcement of its laws?

      Indonesia does not have a good track record of keeping its conservation areas free from fire. In fact, 30 per cent of fire hotspots detected this year occurred in conservation areas.

    • Indonesia – Increasing Demand Could Have Worldwide Implications

      Indonesia, or the Republic of Indonesia, is the largest island country in the world with more than 10 thousand islands and a population of more than a quarter billion people. The company also has the 16th largest nominal GDP in the world with a GDP per capita of more than $3500.

  • Finance

    • Bitcoin: Mixed Signs of A Fee Market

      Six months ago in a previous post I showed that 45% of transactions have an output of less that $1, and estimated that they would get squeezed out first as blocks filled.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Mark Levin Attacks Wall Street Journal Editorial Highlighting The Uncompromising Conservative Media Standard For GOP Candidates

      Radio host Mark Levin responded to an editorial from The Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens that criticized right-wing media for their obsession with electing an ideologically pure conservative candidate at the expense of electability. Levin attacked Stephens as a “mouthpiece for amnesty” and “a jester for big government Republicans.”

      In a December 21 editorial, Stephens claimed conservatives are building a wall around the Republican Party by supporting a frontrunner who insults “Mexicans, Muslims … and others.” Stephens highlighted conservative desire to elect a candidate that “has passed all the Conservative Purity Tests (CPTs), meaning we’ve upheld the honor of our politically hopeless cause.” Stephens concluded that this nonsensical ideology would alienate “not just Hispanics, or Asian-Americans or gays and lesbians, but also moderates turned off by loudmouth vulgarians” and lose elections.

    • Trump Demands Media Focus On Clinton’s Video Comment, Ignore That ISIS Can Use His Words To Recruit

      Jonathan Karl: “Is There Any Doubt That ISIS Would Use What You’re Saying About Muslims?”

    • Do Racists Like Fox News, or Does Fox Make People Racist?

      Is there any merit to such criticisms? Do media and racial polarization reinforce each other? Is there a connection between news media viewing habits and attitudes about racial equality? Based on an analysis of the American National Election Studies 2012 dataset, we find that white respondents who regularly watch Fox News are more likely to express attitudes of symbolic racism and racial resentment. This is especially true of those Fox News viewers who live in the South.

    • Fox News’ 10 Most Cringe-Worthy Sexist Moments Of 2015

      Fox News has a long history of promoting sexism on-air, and 2015 was no different. Media Matters rounded up the 10 most cringe-worthy instances of sexism that happened on Fox this year — as well as a bonus cringe-inducing moment from CNN.

    • Fox Business Displays On-Air Graphic Saying “Dear Santa: Bring Guns”

      On the December 22 edition of his show, Charles Payne discussed increasing gun sales in the holiday season due to fears of terrorism and of Obama taking action to limit gun access. Payne invited Erick Erickson, a Fox contributor who claimed Obama will take executive action to limit access to guns.

    • For Democrats, Debate Night Means Being Quizzed From the Right by Corporate Media

      The Democratic and Republican debates have this asymmetry: Republican candidates are presumed to need ideological sympathizers among their questioners—Fox News, for example, or Salem Media, which teams up with CNN for GOP debates—while Democrats are thought content to be quizzed by representatives of mainstream corporate media outlets like CNN, CBS and ABC (FAIR Action Alert, 10/9/15).

      This set up resulted, on the Republican side, in the spectacle of Salem Media‘s Hugh Hewitt pressing GOP contender Ben Carson to declare his willingness to “kill innocent children by not the scores, but the hundreds and the thousands.” (Carson’s response: “You got it. You got it.”)

      And on the Democratic side, the result is debates like the one we got on December 19.

      Although primary debates are ostensibly intended to help members of each major party select their nominee, the questions asked by the debate moderators from ABC—World News Tonight anchor John Muir and national security correspondent Martha Raddatz—consistently posed questions from the right.

    • Obama Is Right: Terrorism Has Taken Over Cable News

      In an interview with NPR this week, President Obama complained that the media is oversaturated with coverage of terrorism. “If you’ve been watching television for the last month, all you have been seeing, all you have been hearing about is these guys with masks or black flags who are potentially coming to get you,” Obama said.

    • If This Is What MSNBC Considers ‘Hard News,’ Things Are Worse Than We Thought

      Of course, during Lack’s lifetime, the world was a more dangerous place when Soviet and American attack submarines were playing chicken with each other every day in the north Atlantic, to say nothing of a certain 13- day stretch in October of 1962. (Also, too, Berlin.) But let’s take his opinion at face value and stipulate the world is in such unprecedented peril that a pivot to “hard news” was called for. What has Lack’s response been to the most dangerous situation in his lifetime so far?

    • No longer pretending to be objective, NYT turns 3rd debate into “The Hillary Clinton Show”

      Corporate media outlets often pretend to be “objective” and “neutral.” People who work in the media nevertheless understand that this is an impossible task — and that publications that present themselves as such do so only as a cynical marketing tactic to attract larger audiences (after all, Fox News’ slogan is “Fair and Balanced”).

      Sometimes, however, media outlets throw the charade out the window altogether and expose whose side they are really on.

      The New York Times did just this today, in its coverage of the third Democratic presidential debate, which was held last night in New Hampshire.

      The first article on the front page of the Times this morning reads “Clinton’s Focus In 3rd Debate Is G.O.P. Field.” This is the headline for the newspaper’s coverage of the debate. It does not have a separate article about Bernie Sanders’ role in the debate, yet alone about fellow candidate Martin O’Malley.

    • [Older] No, Bernie Sanders is not going to bankrupt America to the tune of $18 trillion

      Holy cow! He must be advocating for some crazy stuff that will bankrupt America! But is that really an accurate picture of what Sanders is proposing? And is this the kind of number we should be frightened of?

      The answer isn’t quite so dramatic: while Sanders does want to spend significant amounts of money, almost all of it is on things we’re already paying for; he just wants to change how we pay for them. In some ways it’s by spreading out a cost currently borne by a limited number of people to all taxpayers. His plan for free public college would do this: right now, it’s paid for by students and their families, while under Sanders’ plan we’d all pay for it in the same way we all pay for parks or the military or food safety.

    • Hillary Clinton is just Republican lite: Sorry, boomers, but this millennial is still only voting Bernie Sanders

      My last article, in which I take the position of “Bernie or bust,” seemed to set off a fierce debate, and drew heavy criticism from Hillary supporters. I would like to address some of those concerns, and elaborate points that I made.

      I’ll start with a briefly recap of my main point: If Hillary gets the nomination, and is elected, she will inadequately address the problems this country faces, that are angering people, by negotiating from the center/right and then moving right as a compromise, to give us mere half measures or quarter measures. I fear, given her New Democrat background, that she will likely use social programs and financial reform as bargaining chips.

    • In blockbuster poll, Sanders destroys Trump by 13 points

      Stop the presses! According to a new poll by Quinnipiac University on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) destroys Republican candidate Donald Trump in a general election by 13 percentage points. In this new poll, Sanders has 51 percent to Trump’s 38 percent. If this margin held in a general election, Democrats would almost certainly regain control of the United States Senate and very possibly the House of Representatives.

  • Censorship

    • Sky is switching on porn filters by default from 2016

      Sky Broadband is to switch on its porn filters by default for all new customers from 2016.

      The company announced the decision would lead to “much greater use of home filters”, but said customers could opt-out if they wanted to.

      Two years ago, David Cameron announced plans for every home in the UK to have pornography blocked by their internet providers unless the homeowner specifically opted-in to be able to view adult content.

      [...]

      However, a year later only 3 per cent of its existing customers had opted to switch it on, the BBC reports.

  • Privacy

    • Santa Claus confirms NSA attack on naughty or nice database

      A press conference was organised this morning on behalf of Mr Santa Claus. At the conference, a spokes–elf confirmed that there had been repeated attempts to hack the “naughty or nice (NON)” database. The NON-database was thought to be used by Mr Claus to keep records of young inhabitants of planet earth, in order to set gift-giving priorities on 6, 24 and 25 December each year.

      Mr Claus’ spokes-elf stressed that the security of the database was not compromised in any way. He also confirmed that the IP addresses associated with the attack were traced to the US National Security Agency (NSA). In response, a spokesperson for the NSA said that he could neither confirm nor deny that the attack took place. He also refused to confirm the rumour that the attack took place in order to check whether or not the boys and girls working at the NSA were on the naughty list.

    • How the Investigatory Powers Bill will affect Internet Service Providers

      The draft Investigatory Powers Bill (IPB) has serious implications for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), who could be both obliged to assist the state in surveillance and also adversely affected by other provisions in the Bill, such as new hacking powers.

    • Thailand’s netizens are living in a climate of fear

      Sasinan also pointed a finger of blame squarely at Microsoft Thailand for divulging users’ private or identifying information in many of her cases. “The prosecutors love Microsoft as they give them all the information they ask for,” she said.

      [...]

      Arnon Chalawan from iLaw said that since the coup 17 people had been prosecuted for article 112 of the criminal code for their Facebook activity. He said that in many cases it was the defendant pressing like rather than re-sharing the offending post that got them arrested.

    • So-Called Oversight in OmniCISA

      I did a working thread of the surveillance portion of the version of CISA in the omnibus funding bill here. The short version: it is worse even than CISA was on most counts, although there are a few changes — such as swapping “person” in all the privacy guidelines to “individual” that will have interesting repercussions for non-biological persons.

      As I said in that post, I’m going to do a closer look at the privacy provisions that didn’t get stripped from the bill; the biggest change, though, is to eliminate a broad biennial review by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board entirely, replacing it with a very narrow assessment, by the Comptroller (?!) of whether the privacy scrub is working. Along with the prohibition on PCLOB accessing information from covert ops that got pulled in as part of the Intelligence Authorization incorporated into the bill, it’s clear the Omnibus as a whole aims to undercut PCLOB.

    • The controversial ‘surveillance’ act Obama just signed

      President Barack Obama signed into law a $1.1 trillion spending bill last Friday, staving off a potential government shutdown — and in the process, quietly inaugurated what some have called a second Patriot Act.

      As part of the more-than-2,000-page document, the 14th rider to be exact, the appropriations omnibus includes the Cybersecurity Act of 2015. Buried within that section is the text of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), a bill that seeks to permit private companies to handover information to federal agencies.

    • Routing ‘Feature’ Can Expose VPN Users’ Real IP-Addresses

      A VPN is generally touted as an ideal tool to remain anonymous online, but this is more easily said than done. This week ProstoVPN revealed a widespread issue that can in many cases expose the true IP-addresses of users, unless proper action is taken.

    • The Juniper VPN backdoor: buggy code with a dose of shady NSA crypto

      Juniper was using a known flawed random number generator as the foundation for cryptographic operations in NetScreen’s ScreenOS and the safeguards it put in place were ineffective.

      Security researchers and crypto experts have spent the last few days trying to figure out the details of a recently announced backdoor in Juniper NetScreen firewalls that could allow attackers to decrypt VPN (Virtual Private Network) traffic. They believe that they found the answer: a combination of likely malicious third-party modifications and Juniper’s own crypto failures.

    • Panopticlick 2.0 Launches, Featuring New Tracker Protection and Fingerprinting Tests

      Today we’re launching version 2.0 of our tracking and fingerprinting detection tool, Panopticlick. This version brings new tests to our existing tool, such as canvas and touch-capability fingerprinting, updating its ability to uniquely identify browsers with current techniques. In addition, we’re adding a brand new suite of tests that detect how well your browser and extensions are protecting you from (1) tracking by ads; (2) from tracking by invisible beacons; and also (3) whether they encourage compliance with the Do Not Track policy, which EFF and a coalition of allies launched earlier this year. We’ve also redesigned the site look and feel, including friendlier layout on mobile devices. If your browser lacks protections, Panopticlick 2.0 will recommend installing tools that are available on your platform, such as Privacy Badger, Disconnect or AdBlock, in order to get better protections as you navigate the Web.

    • EU Data Protection Regulation: Approval expected soon

      The new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GPDR) took a significant step forward ​on 17 December when the European Union’s trilogue (Parliament, Council and Commission) reached agreement on the proposed EU GPDR. All that is needed now is for the full parliament and member state governments to approve it in January next year. Once that has happened, a date will be set for the two-year run in period before the new Regulation comes into being and organisations processing personal data about European citizens will be required to be compliant. The big but in this though is that some data protection regulators may decide to implement some of the coming changes earlier.

  • Civil Rights

    • US Military Tired of Questions From Media, Restricts Access to Guantanamo

      General John F. Kelly, the commander of United States Southern Command who is in charge of Guantanamo military prison, has restricted media access because he is increasingly frustrated with reporters, who “question officials” about President Barack Obama’s failure to close the facility.

      The Associated Press reported on Dec. 17 that journalists will now be allowed four trips to Guantanamo per year. The trips will last no more than one day. Reporters will be prohibited from accessing either of the two prison camps, “where a majority of the 107 current prisoners are held.”

      The New York Times additionally reported, “The general said he no longer wanted reporters to talk to lower-level guards because it was not their role to opine about detention operations, or to go inside the prison because that could cause disruptions. However, he said, depending on what else is going on, exceptions might be made to let first-time visitors inside.”

    • The Whistleblower: An Interview with Thomas Drake

      SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Thomas Drake, former senior executive of the NSA – and whistleblower – who in 2010 was indicted on 10 felony counts; charges that would have carried decades of prison time had Drake been convicted. Instead, in early June 2011, the government dropped all of the charges and agreed not to seek any jail time in return for Drake’s guilty plea to a misdemeanor of misusing the NSA’s computer system. Although the legal case was settled, the controversy would continue, as a new wave of whistleblowers (or leakers – depending on your perspective) burst on to the public scene, and dramatically changed the way many Americans viewed the power of their government.

    • The Corey Williams Story

      You likely have not heard of Corey Williams but the story of his dubious murder conviction is another story that lays bare the scope of injustice that pervades Louisiana’s criminal justice system — and Caddo Parish in particular. It is a story that merits national attention not just for the shoddy work of police and prosecutors in the case but for the way state judges so far have refused to use their authority to unwind what surely is an inaccurate and unreliable result.

    • LAPD Investigated 1,356 Racial Profiling Complaints Against Itself, Dismissed Them All

      The Los Angeles Police Department has announced that of 1,356 allegations of biased policing against them by civilians, zero of those allegations were valid. Sure, sure, sure, sure.

      The claims of biased policing—a euphemism for racial profiling—were submitted to the LAPD from 2012 to 2014, according to the LA Times, and not even the president of the Police Commission can support the idea that an investigation would turn up no instances of wrongdoing whatsoever.

    • Millionaire businessman cleared of raping teenager after he told court he may have accidentally penetrated her

      A Saudi millionaire has been cleared of raping a teenager after claiming he might have accidentally penetrated the 18-year-old when he tripped and fell on her.

      Property developer Ehsan Abdulaziz, 46, was accused of forcing himself on the girl as she slept off a night of drinking on the sofa of his Maida Vale flat.

      He had already had sex with her 24-year-old friend and said his penis might have been poking out of his underwear after that sexual encounter when he tripped on the 18-year-old

      The 18-year-old met Abdulaziz in the exclusive Cirque le Soir nightclub in the West End on 7 August last year where she had been spending the evening with her friend, who was known to the businessman.

      He invited them to join him at his £1,000-per-night table and then offered them a ride home in his Aston Martin.

    • UK Government attempting to keep details of secret security pact with Saudi Arabia hidden from public

      The British Government signed a secret security pact with Saudi Arabia and is now attempting to prevent details of the deal from being made public.

      The Home Secretary Theresa May agreed to the so-called ‘memorandum of understanding’ with her Saudi counter-part Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef during a visit to the Kingdom last year.

      The Home Office released no details of her trip at the time or announced that the deal had been signed. The only public acknowledgement was a year later in a Foreign Office report which obliquely referenced an agreement to “modernise the Ministry of the Interior”.

    • General Kanene: Zambia pardons singer who raped 14 year old – makes him ambassador against sexual violence

      UN human rights experts have criticsed Zambia after it pardoned a singer who was convicted of the rape of a 14-year-old girl – then appointed him as an ambassador in the fight against gender violence.

      Clifford Dimba, known as General Kanene, was convicted in 2014 and sentenced to 18 years in prison, but was pardoned by President Edgar Lungu after serving one year.

    • Brunei cancels Christmas: Sultan warns those celebrating could face up to five years in jail

      Anyone found illegally celebrating Christmas in Brunei could face up to five years in prison, according to a reported declaration by the Sultan of the tiny oil-rich state.

      Brunei introduced its ban on Christmas last year over fears that celebrating it “excessively and openly” could lead its Muslim population astray.

    • Sultan of Brunei bans Christmas ‘because it could damage faith of Muslims’

      Tiny conservative nation on Borneo warns citizens that putting up festive decorations or singing carols could threaten the country’s Muslim faith

    • Coe Better Protected Than Blatter By Corrupt National Authorities

      Why are the Metropolitan Police not feeling Tory Lord Sebastian Coe’s collar and trawling his hard drives? I blogged recently about his involvement in awarding the World Athletics Championships without a vote to the hometown of his long term paymasters and sponsors, Nike. Plus the £12 million his promotions company made from VIP hospitality packages for the Olympics, the VIP tickets for which were allocated by the Organising Committee of which he was the £600,000 pa chairman.

    • Calls for David Cameron to step in after US bars British Muslim family from trip

      The prime minister is facing calls to challenge the US over its refusal to allow a British Muslim family to board a flight from Gatwick to Los Angeles, to visit Disneyland.

      Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, has written to the prime minister after a family party of 11, about to embark on a dream holiday for which they had saved for months, were approached by officials from US homeland security as they queued in the departure lounge and told their authorisation to travel had been cancelled, without further explanation.

    • ‘The Tendency Is to Just Publish the Police Blotter’

      At times when media or politicians talk about video, like that of a Chicago police officer killing a 17-year-old, as inciting public unrest, you’d think they believe it is not the horrific action shown, its context and implication, that inflamed—but simply the video itself. It’s as if when it comes to police violence against mostly poor, mostly people of color, some believe things would go easier if we just didn’t know.

      That’s a luxury, of course, and affected community members don’t actually need more proof of their experience. But for journalists, we would hope that “it’s better to know” would be a core principle.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • The world’s first website went online 25 years ago today

      Today the world’s first website turns 25 years old. Created by 60-year-old British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, while he was a researcher at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the website still exists today.

      The site’s address is info.cern.ch, and provides information about the world wide web – the platform that sits on top of the Internet, where documents and pages on the Internet can be accessed by URLs, and connected to each other via hyperlinks, like this.

    • Inside Tim Berners-Lee’s first website on its 25th birthday

      Berners-Lee, by his own admission, “just” had to take the concept of hypertext linking – as developed in the 1960s – and convince CERN that widespread use of this idea between organisations and institutions could result in a globe-spanning network of information.

    • The first website went online 25 years ago today

      If the web were a person, it wouldn’t have trouble renting a car from now on: the world’s first website, Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web, went online 25 years ago today. The inaugural page wasn’t truly public when it went live at CERN on December 20th, 1990 (that wouldn’t happen until August 1991), and it wasn’t much more than an explanation of how the hypertext-based project worked. However, it’s safe to say that this plain page laid the groundwork for much of the internet as you know it — even now, you probably know one or two people who still think the web is the internet.

    • Facebook Spam Tricks The Internet Into Supporting Company’s AOL-ification Of Developing Nations

      For much of the year Facebook has been under fire for trying to dress up its attempt to corner developing nation ad markets under the banner of selfless altruism. Facebook’s plan is relatively simple: through a program dubbed Free Basics, Facebook plans to offer developing markets a Zuckerburg-curated, walled garden version of the Internet, for free. Under Facebook’s vision of this program, Facebook becomes the axle around which online access (and therefore online advertising) spins for generations to come, with the tangential bonus of helping low-income communities get a taste of what online connectivity can offer.

  • DRM

    • Facebook ditches Flash video in favour of HTML5

      FACEBOOK HAS MADE the switch from Flash to HTML5 for playing video content on the social media website.

      Facebook said in a blog post that it has changed to HTML5 for all video content in News Feed, Pages and the Facebook embedded video player.

      “From development velocity to accessibility features, HTML5 offers a lot of benefits. Moving to HTML5 best enables us to continue to innovate quickly and at scale, given Facebook’s large size and complex needs,” said the firm’s front-end engineer Daniel Baulig.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Adidas sues rival in three-stripe TM dispute

        Sportswear designer Adidas has slammed the design of a line of shoes which it has described as a “confusingly similar imitation” of its own three-stripe trademark.

        In a lawsuit filed on December 17 at the US District Court for the District of Oregon, Adidas has claimed a line of shoes manufactured by Delaware-based Tweak Footwear infringes its three-stripe trademark and is “irreparably harming Adidas’s brand”.

        ThinkGeek, a Delaware-based e-commerce company, has also been named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

    • Copyrights

      • Court rules that Kim Dotcom can be extradited to the U.S.
      • Kim Dotcom Can Be Extradited to the United States, Judge Rules

        Following an extradition hearing lasting 10 weeks, today New Zealand District Court Judge Nevin Dawson ruled that Kim Dotcom and his colleagues can indeed be extradited to the United States to face criminal charges. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Dotcom confirmed that an appeal to the High Court would go ahead.

      • New Zealand Judge Rules Kim Dotcom Can Be Extradited to U.S.

        The case raises questions about how far U.S. jurisdiction extends in an age when the Internet has erased many traditional borders

      • Kim Dotcom to be finally extradited to the US, New Zealand judge rules

        On Tuesday afternoon (Wednesday, Auckland time) a New Zealand judge ordered that founder Kim Dotcom and his co-defendants are eligible to be extradited to the United States to face criminal charges over alleged massive copyright infringement on his now-shuttered site, Megaupload.

        The judgement, which almost certainly will be appealed, sets the stage for the winding down of Dotcom’s tenacious years-long legal fight against the American judicial system.

      • New Zealand Says Kim Dotcom Eligible For Extradition; Dotcom To Appeal

        This doesn’t come as a huge surprise, but minutes ago in New Zealand Judge Nevin Dawson gave the US Justice Department a bit of an early Christmas present in declaring that Kim Dotcom and his co-defendants in the Megaupload case are eligible for extradition, following the long extradition trial earlier this year. The judge apparently said that the evidence was “overwhelming” against the defendants. This does not mean that Dotcom and crew are boarding a plane across the Pacific just yet. They have 15 days to file an appeal and Dotcom’s lawyers have already indicated that such an appeal is on the way (what did you expect?). Dotcom’s lawyer Ira Rothken points out that under New Zealand’s extradition agreement with the US, there is no extradition over copyright issues — and argues this ruling renders such a safe harbor “illusory.” Of course, even if that fails, there’s still a separate process for approving the actual extradition, which would take place with New Zealand’s Justice Minister, but that part of the process is more of a formality than anything else. It’s not over yet, but at this point things are leaning strongly towards Dotcom and his colleagues being shipped to Virginia to face a US criminal trial.

      • Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom can be extradited to the US to face copyright charges

        Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is set to be extradited to the United States to face charges including copyright infringement, money laundering, and racketeering, a court in New Zealand has decided. District court judge Nevin Dawson gave the verdict today at 2PM local time (8PM ET), decreeing that the US had fulfilled requirements to get Dotcom, plus associates Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato, and Bram van der Kolk extradited to face further time in court, fines, and possible jail time.

        Dotcom was originally indicted in the United States back in 2012, with the Department of Justice claiming that Megaupload — the web storage service he created and operated — cost music and film studios in excess of $500 million dollars as people used it to download pirated songs and movies. He was arrested in a high-profile armed raid on his Auckland home soon after the charges were leveled against him, but it’s taken almost four years for the New Zealand courts to reach a decision on whether to send Dotcom to America.

      • Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom loses fight to avoid extradition to the US

        German tech entrepreneur Kim Dotcom hs lost a bid to block his extradition from New Zealand to the United States to face charges including copyright infringement and money laundering, a major victory for the U.S. Department of Justice in the long-running case.

        The decision by a New Zealand court comes almost four years after police raided Dotcom’s mansion west of Auckland at the behest of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and shut down his popular filesharing website, Megaupload.

      • Kim Dotcom loses extradition case, files immediate appeal

        A judge has ruled internet mogul Kim Dotcom is eligible for extradition to face charges in the United States.

        However, Dotcom immediately said he would file an appeal, ensuring the long-running courtroom drama will continue for some time yet.

        Following lengthy arguments in the North Shore District Court Judge Nevin Dawson called a last minute hearing on Wednesday to give his ruling.

12.22.15

Links 22/12/2015: Linux 4.4 RC6, Solus 1.0 Imminent

Posted in News Roundup at 8:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Diversity in open source highlights from 2015

    The pool of people participating in open source communities still lacks diversity, but the good news is that many people, projects, and organizations are working to improve it. I’ve collected a few highlights from 2015 efforts to increase diversity in open source communities. Which 2015 diversity in open source stories would you add to the list? Let us know in the comments.

  • Inside the Robot Operating System, the robotics industry and the Open Source Robotics Foundation

    Eight years ago, the Robot Operating System (ROS) project began, and since then there have been huge advancements made to the robotics industry. Robots are teaching kids to code, becoming companions, have been given X-ray vision, and even started to fly.

    But adding these features aren’t easy, and that is where the Robot Operating System comes in, according to Brian Gerkey, CEO of the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF).

  • The Year of Crowdfunded Open Source Small Businesses

    2015 was crowded with events for Linux and open source. It was a year in which the runaway success of OpenStack continued, fuelling — among other things, rumors of a Canonical Software public offering. It was also the year of unsuccessful ventures into smartphones by Mozilla, Sailfish, and Ubuntu, and the first appearance of a Steam Machine for gamers.

  • Adafruit’s best open source wearables of 2015

    Wearable electronics have exploded in the past year. Countless small devices are now on the market for not only fitness tracking, but posture improvement, sunscreen reminders, muscle-sensing gesture control, and much more. As technology on the body becomes more pervasive than ever, having open source tools for developing wearable technology is more important than ever, so that we can create the future of fashion tech while maintaining data privacy of biometric sensor data.

  • The Keys to Success When Launching Your Own Open Source Concept

    Have you been thinking of launching an open source project or are you in the process of doing so? Doing it successfully and rallying community support can be more complicated than you think, but a little up-front footwork and howework can help things go smoothly. Beyond that, some planning can also keep you out of legal trouble. Issues pertaining to licensing, distribution, support options and even branding require thinking ahead if you want your project to flourish. In this post, you’ll find our newly updated collection of good, free resources to pay attention to if you’re doing an open source project.

  • Why Pinterest just open-sourced new tools for the Elixir programming language

    At Pinterest, that company with a popular app for pinning images and other content to boards, much of the source code is written in the longstanding Python programming language. But in the past year, a few of the company’s software engineers have called on a young language called Elixir.

    Pinterest’s notification system now uses Elixir to deliver 14,000 notifications per second. The notification system runs across 15 servers, whereas the old system, written in Java, ran on 30. The new code is about one-tenth of the size of the old code.

  • Puppet Labs Plugs in Kubernetes Orchestration Framework for Containers

    Rather than continuing to use low-level tools such as YAML, says Carl Caum, technical marketing manager for Puppet Labs, IT organizations can now make use of the declarative programming environment that Puppet Labs created to configure containers alongside the operating system and virtual machines that many of them already rely on Puppet to configure.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • An open vision: Strategic planning is transparent at Mozilla [Ed: but now they support the evil which is DRM to support a rotten business model (opposite of transparency)]

        This month marks a milestone for me. It’s been five years since I started working in—and learning from—an open organization.

        But it also marks another important milestone. My organization, the Mozilla Foundation, just finished drafting a strategic plan for what the next five years may hold.

        And we created that plan through open collaboration between our staff and community.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Collabora making modest profits on LibreOffice

      A little more than two years ago, the open source consulting company Collabora took over the job of commercialising LibreOffice, the free office suite that is produced by an army of developers.

      At that time, a number of LibreOffice developers moved from the Germany-based Linux company SUSE and became staff of Collabora.

    • LibreOffice Online is here!

      There are however a few comments I would like to make about this testing release. First, I’m very happy to see LibreOffice Online become a reality. By reality, I mean more than an announcement and more than a demo with chunks of code and configuration notes. Today, LibreOffice runs in the cloud. Which leads me to my second comment: the relevance of LibreOffice in the future is now pretty secure. Running LibreOffice in the browser needs you can access it without having to download the code and just by using the access gateway to everything these days: the browser.

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GnuCash 2.6.10 released

      The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.6.10, the tenth maintenance release in the 2.6-stable series. Please take the tour of all the new features.

    • The Fight For Freedom

      There’s a problem with the word ‘free’. Specifically, it can refer to something that costs no money, or something that isn’t held down by restrictions – in other words, something that has liberty. This difference is crucial when we talk about software, because free (as in cost) software doesn’t necessarily give you freedom. There are plenty of no-cost applications out there that spy on you, steal your data, and try to lock you in to specific file formats. And you certainly can’t get the source code to them.

    • GNU MediaGoblin 0.8.1 Open-Source Media Server Fixes Critical OAuth Security Flaw

      Jessica Tallon from the MediaGoblin project, open-source media server software designed for GNU/Linux operating systems, announced this past weekend the immediate availability of a patch for GNU MediaGoblin 0.8.

    • GnuCash 2.6.10 Free Accounting Software Squashes over 15 Bugs, Adds Improvements

      The developers behind the GnuCash Project were happy to announce this past weekend the immediate availability for download of the tenth maintenance release in the GnuCash 2.6 series, bringing all sorts of improvements, updated translations, and numerous bugfixes.

    • Stallman on happiness and perseverance

      It’s amazing to think that a broken printer lead to the creation of the Free Software movement which, many years later, would give me a professional career, an education, and incredible friends around the world.

    • Join with me to support the Software Freedom Conservancy
    • GPL enforcement is a social good

      Vendors who don’t release their code remove that freedom from their users, and the weapons users have to fight against that are limited. Most users hold no copyright over the software in the device and are unable to take direct action themselves. A vendor’s failure to comply dooms them to having to choose between buying a new device in 12 months or no longer receiving security updates. When yet more examples of vendor-supplied malware are discovered, it’s more difficult to produce new builds without them. The utility of the devices that the user purchased is curtailed significantly.

    • Donate to Conservancy!

      Conservancy needs 750 Supporters to continue its basic community services & 2,500 to avoid hibernating its enforcement efforts! The next 38 supporters who sign up by December 24th will count twice thanks to an anonymous match donor!
      552 have joined so far and match pledges reduced our 2,500 maximum need by 178 !

    • MediaGoblin 0.8.1: Security release

      We have had a security problem in our OAuth implementation reported to us privately and have taken steps to address it. The security problem affects all versions of GNU MediaGoblin since 0.5.0. I have created a patch for this and released a minor version 0.8.1 (see the release notes page). It’s strongly advised that everyone upgrade as soon as they can.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Commission begins overhaul of Joinup

      The European Commission has started working on the next version of Joinup, the collaboration platform for eGovernment professionals. Users are the main focus of the upgrade, which will make the platform easier to use. Access to and sharing of interoperability solutions will be streamlined, and the developers are making it more straightforward to contribute to the platform’s projects and communities. If all goes well, the new version could go live in June.

  • Licensing

    • Open Source Software: Usually Cash-free, but with Strings Attached [Ed: lawyers in a lawyers’ site spread FUD about FOSS and pretend it was all along just about cost]

      While everyone knows of the need to comply with contractual terms in software licenses (and elsewhere), the salient point in this context, is that under several recent cases, failure to do so with respect to a license for copyrighted material (which is usually applicable to software), allows the pursuit in United States District Court of claims for infringement damages under the Copyright Act and related items, such as attorney fees. This is in addition to traditional contract damages, which may be non-existent or difficult to prove. For example, if the evidence establishes (among other things) that the work infringed was a registered work in the U.S. Copyright Office and the infringement was willful, then the court may, in its discretion, award statutory damages of up to $150,000 (regardless of the retail cost of the underlying work).

  • Programming

    • Know Your Language: PHP Lurches On

      Presumably there are people that think the PHP language is awesome. An afternoon spent writing PHP code is like a fine meal and a backrub in one transcendent coding experience while JavaScript and client-side scripting can just go to hell.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • New data porting rules mustn’t overburden businesses with costs, says UK minister

      Baroness Neville-Rolfe said that the planned new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is likely to give consumers “more control over how their data is to be used” but she raised concern about the impact data portability rules could have on “new ideas, innovation and competition”.

      Various drafts of the GDPR have contained proposed new rules which would, if finalised, require businesses to ensure that they can hand over the personal data they possess on a consumer in a usable transferable format.

Leftovers

12.20.15

Links 20/12/2015: OpenMandriva Server Version, Alpine 3.3.0

Posted in News Roundup at 5:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • LEGO: The New Open Source Toy?

    Perhaps surprisingly, the majority of these open sourced projects involve LEGOs. When perusing through Github, developers will find a variety of projects based around LEGOs—for example, a project that allows you to create custom decals (or clothes) for LEGO minifigs (LEGO people). Or, a developer may stumble upon a project that enables him or her to create music, electronically, with a 32×32 inch LEGO plate and 2×2 inch LEGO bricks. The latter of the two involves a little more technology—a webcam, basic coding knowledge, and music software—but nonetheless, it is possible to achieve.

  • License Plate Tracking Has Gone Open-Source

    Computer vision-assisted license plate reading seems to be a favorite spectre of a certain sort of privacy worrier, at least anecdotally speaking. Something to do with its potential for tracking and profiling an activity that seems to make Americans in particular feel their most, uh, liberated (driving cars).

    The technology has had a steady uptake among law enforcement agencies, who of course think it’s wondertool for busting crimes, but now an open-source implementation is starting to make some waves in the developer world and beyond. This is OpenALPR, and, as Mike James notes at I-Programmer, it’s not a new thing but is getting some new attention in the wake of a recent code release. LPR is here for the masses and it’s incredibly easy to use.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Funding

    • FUUG grant for Obnam development: what happened then

      In September, The FUUG Foundation gave me a grant to buy some hardware for Obnam development. I used this money to buy a new desktop-ish machine, see below for details. It’s sat in a corner, and I use it as a server: it’s not normally connected to a monitor or keyboard. It runs Obnam benchmarks. Before this, I ran Obnam benchmarks and experiments on my laptop, or on BigV virtual servers donated by Bytemark.s

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Programming

    • Why Many Still Turn to Private Servers for Testing Environments

      With the evolution of the cloud, it may come as a surprise to some that there are so many businesses still using dedicated servers. In fact, according to Zephyr’s annual How The World Tests Report, nearly half of respondents host their test environments in their private servers, while 36 percent chose a mix of cloud and hardware solutions. The question, then, is what conditions do these organizations have and why are private servers so essential to their workflows?

Leftovers

  • New Zealand approves the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and other reasons to fear for humanity

    This is on the BBC so must be true: New Zealand has given approval to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to carry out marriage ceremonies in the country. Members of the church call themselves Pastafarians and believe that the world was created by an airborne spaghetti and meatballs-based being, although its own website notes that some followers consider it to be a satirical organization. The N.Z. registrar-general said his decision was based solely on whether the organization upholds or promotes religious beliefs, or philosophical or solely convictions, not whether the beliefs are all a big joke or not.

  • Security

    • BadWinmail Microsoft Outlook Bug Can Give Attackers Control Over PCs [iophk: "These kinds of bugs have been in Outlook as long as Outlook has been around. This is nothing new. What's needed are fines for people hooking Windows up to the Internet."]

      Just by looking at an email message in Outlook, attackers can now take control over your PC. The good news is that Microsoft has patched the issue, but unless you updated Outlook after December 8, you’re still vulnerable to this issue.

      Security researcher Haifei Li discovered this peculiar Outlook bug, which he named BadWinmail. According to a technical report he put together after the vulnerability’s discovery, the attack is extremely easy to carry out and does not require any complex interaction from the end user.

    • MacKeeper Leaks 13 Million Mac Owners’ Data, Leaves Passwords Open To Easy Cracking

      Researcher Chris Vickery said he uncovered four IP addresses that took him straight to a MongoDB database, containing a range of personal information, including names, email addresses, usernames, password hashes, phone numbers, IP addresses, system information, as well as software licenses and activation codes. All Vickery had to do was look for openly accessible MongoDB databases on the Shodan search tool.

    • Penetration Testing

      Penetration testing, also called pentesting, is an attack method which scans for broad vulnerabilities in networked computers. It is primarily used in professional settings in order to ascertain the status of security in a machine.

    • Exploit Logs You Into Linux Systems After Hitting Backspace 28 Times
    • Insane bug makes it incredibly easy to hack many Linux systems

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Spymasters: CIA documentary sheds little light on drones, 9/11 or torture

      There are a few ways to judge The Spymasters: CIA in the Crosshairs, a new documentary which interviews all 12 living former heads of the CIA (and several other key personnel) and premieres on Showtime at 9pm on Saturday. You can view it as a piece of filmmaking, as an apologia for the tactics the agency has to employ to get its very difficult job done, or as a rewriting of history from the CIA’s point of view. On two out of three of these criteria, it sadly comes up short.

      As a film, The Spymasters is a bit of a failure. In aesthetic, tone and pacing it seems directly based on The Gatekeepers, a 2012 film that interviewed all the former heads of Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police. However, the former spooks in Spymasters aren’t nearly as candid as the Israelis. This new film is slow-moving and, at a solid two hours, long-winded. The first 15 minutes consist of throat-clearing platitudes, it is often hard to tell who is speaking, and interruptions from directors Gedeon and Jules Naudet frequently take the viewer out of the experience entirely.

    • Oh, the suffering of the CIA: In Showtime’s “The Spymasters,” America’s chief spooks bare their souls on the pain of the terror war

      Whom to waterboard? Which village to drone? A bizarre documentary explores the spy elite’s secret suffering

    • Weapon Used in November 13 Paris Attacks Came From CIA-linked Arms Dealer

      At least one of the guns used in the November 13 terror attacks in Paris was purchased by Century International Arms and then re-exported to Europe. One of the largest arms dealers in the United States, Century Arms has close ties to the CIA and has faced charges in America and Europe of involvement in illegal arms deals.

      The weapon, an M92 semiautomatic pistol, was produced at the Zastava arms factory in Kragujevac, Serbia. Last week, factory manager Milojko Brzakovic told AP he had checked its records on seven weapons that it manufactured that were used in the Paris attacks. It delivered several of the weapons inside Yugoslavia before that country dissolved amid capitalist restoration and civil war in the 1990s, but it delivered the pistol in May 2013 to Century Arms, based in Delray Beach, Florida.

    • Anonymous war with Isis could lead to spread of internet censorship, group warns

      Social media campaigns will “legitimize the spread of internet censorship and will lead to the increased censorship for everyone, including Anonymous,” the message reads. “Dealing with government agents et al will not only result in many more informers in Anonymous but will also damage its reputation as it will lead to a view that Anonymous is too close to US intelligence interests.”

    • There Have Been Zero Terror Attacks in the U.S. by People Radicalized by ISIS Through Social Media

      The term “radicalized” is a problematic one, namely because virtually no one who carries out sub-state political violence (which we’ll broadly refer to as terrorism) follows the same pattern. Some are hyper-religious while others have but a passing knowledge of the Bible or Quran. Some are battle-hardened fighters, while others carry out their “jihad” in a typical workplace violence mode. But in the wake of a terrorist attack, authorities and the press alike scramble to ask the question: When exactly did the attacker begin to show signs of violent ideology? In the case of Islamic-tinted violence, the question more specifically is: When did they first show support for either al Qaeda or ISIS ideology?

    • Why wasn’t San Bernardino prevented? The hard truth that no one wants to admit.

      Americans want to treat San Bernardino and the risk of future such attacks — and that risk is real — as purely a terrorism problem, because that feels like a problem with difficult but achievable and politically palatable solutions. We want to ignore the ways in which this is also a mass shooting problem, because American political and social factors have made addressing the broader mass shooting problem seem just about impossible.

    • Stephen Zunes: No Candidates Are Looking at Root Cause of ISIL, “This Monster We Created.”

      Juan González: GOP to Puerto Rico–”Drop Dead”; GOP Debate: Trump Defends Muslim Ban, Other Candidates Debate How to Restrict Rights & Go to Wa; Democracy Is Being Dismantled Before Our Eyes: Bob Herbert on Sheldon Adelson-Backed GOP Debate; Ben Carson: I am OK with Killing “Thousands of Innocent Children and Civilians”; Trump Calls for Closing Parts of Internet as Cruz & Rubio Debate NSA Powers; Stephen Zunes: No Candidates Are Looking at Root Cause of ISIL, “This Monster We Created.”

    • Our say: Why did arrested man have guns in his trunk?

      How could a man barred from possessing guns because of a 2009 conviction for illegal possession of a firearm have a 30-30 lever-action rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun in the trunk of his car?

  • Transparency Reporting

    • A Victory for Privacy and Transparency: HRW v. DEA

      In a victory for millions of people in the U.S. who have placed telephone calls to locations overseas, EFF and Human Rights Watch have confirmed that the Drug Enforcement Administration’s practice of collecting those records in bulk has stopped and that the only bulk database of those records has been destroyed.

      From the 1990s to 2013, the DEA secretly and illegally collected billions of records of Americans’ international calls to hundreds of countries around the world. In April 2015, we filed a lawsuit on behalf of our client, Human Rights Watch, challenging the constitutionality of the program and seeking to have the records purged from the government’s possession.

      Today, HRW has agreed to voluntarily dismiss that suit after receiving assurances from the government, provided under penalty of perjury, that the bulk collection has ceased and that the only database containing the billions of Americans’ call records collected by the DEA has been purged from the government’s possession.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Carbon emissions from Indonesian peat fires vary considerably based on fire type, research shows

      Revised carbon loss estimates for recurrent fires on tropical peatlands have been revised by a research team. The study also found that peatlands closer to canals have a higher probability of high frequency fires, which release harmful carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

    • Experts say efforts to stop Indonesian fires may not work for 2016

      Those fires have contributed to the smoke crisis choking Southeast Asia almost annually.

      But many experts believe fires in Indonesia are likely to start up again when the rainy season ends in March. They say not enough has been done yet to head off the risks.

      Slash-and-burn clearance of land – much of it to plant oil palm, and trees to make pulp and paper – is the main culprit fuelling the fires that smoulder deep underground in peat. They have pushed up pollution levels, disrupting daily life from Indonesia to Singapore and Malaysia.

      Who is responsible for starting the fires is unclear, although the finger is often pointed at small-scale growers of the palm which produces cheap, edible oil.

      Mansuetus Alsy Hanu, national coordinator for Indonesia’s Palm Oil Smallholder Union, said his members are often unfairly blamed, and better mapping of the land would show some fires break out on larger holdings.

      Still he admitted that financial pressure on small growers pushes them towards slash-and-burn clearance.

    • Efforts to stop Indonesian haze fires may not work for 2016

      South Sumatra’s governor, Alex Noerdin, is adamant there will be a “significant reduction” next year in fires on deforested and peat land in his province.

      Those fires have contributed to the haze crisis choking South East Asia almost annually.

      But many experts believe fires in Indonesia are likely to start up again when the rainy season ends in March. They say not enough has been done yet to head off the risks.

    • MORTON MARCUS: Global warming, NSA among mounting problems up in Santa Land

      Often at this season, I visit Elvin Elfenhausen, my inside guy at the North Pole. “How’s the Jolly Old Man?” I ask.

      “Not very jolly,” he sighs. “Nor would you be jolly if everything around you was turning from reliable snow and ice to slush and water.”

      “I forgot,” I say. “Global Warming?

      “Yes, but not just Global Warming,” Elvin says. “That supposedly slow disaster is happening with disturbing quickness. And it seems everything else is going to pot. Santa’s thinking of moving.

      “Santa moving his workshop from the North Pole?” I exclaim. Immediately, I wonder which of my friends in the economic development business I should call with this startling opportunity.”

      “Where’s he thinking of going?” I prod. “How many jobs? What incentives? Cash? Tax abatement? A frozen TIF district? Labor training support? Does he want a new building or would an existing structure, zoned manufacturing, suffice? Does he demand a sleigh launching and landing site?”

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

    • Geo-blocking | Digital Single Market

      Geo-blocking and other geographically-based restrictions undermine online shopping and cross-border sales. The Digital Single Market strategy includes a commitment for an initiative to end unjustified geo-blocking by way of legislative proposals to change the e-Commerce framework or the Services Directive framework

    • Facebook and Google combine to beat off online hate speech in Germany [iophk: "Who decides what is "offensive"? Between censorship and zero-rating, FB is going to fully destroy the net."]

      GERMANY HAS managed to get the large internet companies to come together and agree to smash hate speech off the internet.

      People say that the internet is mostly pornography, but actually a huge chunk of it is hate speech and nasty talk of some kind. Taking it offline would be a challenge, but it is a challenge that companies like Google are ready to accept, according to Germany’s justice ministry and a number of reports.

    • Want To Know How Ridiculous The Omnibus Bill Is? It Has A Meaningless Porn Filter Clause Four Times

      Following Congress passing the Omnibus spending bill, it of course did not take long for President Obama to sign the bill, meaning that the fake cybersecurity bill/actual surveillance bill, is now law. Particularly ridiculous is that in his little speech about it, Obama talked about how he “wasn’t wild about everything in it” but that he was happy that it was a bill “without ideological provisions.” Except, you know, for the many ones that did get in there.

      But, what do you expect with a 2000+ page bill that Congress was only given a couple of days to look at before voting on. Zach Carter, over at Huffington Post has examples of a couple of ridiculous provisions in the omnibus, starting with a ban on giving any funding to ACORN, the organization that was the target of scorn from Republicans a few years back. So what’s so ridiculous about that? Following the pile on against ACORN years ago the organization shut down. It hasn’t existed in years. Preventing funding for it seems, you know, kinda pointless, as it doesn’t exist.

      [...]

      So Congress can’t seem to get much of anything done, but it does pass an omnibus bill that includes a weird meaningless porn filter requirement four times… and a damaging surveillance bill. And you wonder why people dislike and distrust Congress.

    • Indonesia’s Forgotten Genocide

      October marked 50 years since the Indonesian military launched one of the twentieth century’s worst mass murders. Yet the anniversary passed almost unnoticed. The massacre of some 500,000 members or sympathizers of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) during 1965-1966 is the least talked-about genocide of the last century.

    • It is 50 years since the Indonesian massacre of 1965 but we cannot look away

      As 250 million Indonesians face up to the 50th anniversary of one of the most crushing episodes of our nation’s history – the massacre of up to 500,000 or more alleged Communists between 1965 and 1968 by the Suharto regime – the business of confronting the past has reached a new urgency. And it is an urgency that has only a week ago was sharpened by new disappointments.

      That new disappointment is our president Joko Widodo’s stance on “1965” – as the tragedy is commonly referred to. In a statement in front of the leaders of the Muhammadiyah, the country’s second largest Muslim organisation, he has refused to apologise to the victims of 1965. And so ended the campaign promises he made –hollow ones to start with, of giving priority to the country’s unresolved cases of human rights violations, including 1965 – that earned him the people’s votes.

    • Vitriol from ‘offended’ individuals a concern

      Our biggest concern is not Amos’ posts, which the authorities are already addressing, but the vitriol coming from “offended” individuals.

      Such vitriol has seemingly got a free pass in spite of its obscene, threatening, abusive or insulting nature – the very offences that Amos was previously convicted for.

    • Singaporean blogger Amos Yee in new police investigation over alleged anti-Islamic comments

      According to a statement released by the Singapore Police Force, 17-year-old blogger Amos Yee is again under police investigation, after he allegedly made offensive anti-Islamic comments on his personal blog.

      In a November 27 blog post, Yee wrote about former Singapore Nominated Member of Parliament Calvin Cheng and allegedly made anti-Islamic comments. He expressed similar sentiments in a Facebook post the next day.

    • Amos Yee to be interviewed by police for offensive remarks

      The police have said officers will interview teenage blogger Amos Yee “upon his return to Singapore”, in connection with investigations into offensive remarks made online about religion.

      Yee, 17, was to have shown up at Jurong Police Division on Monday (Dec 14) to assist with investigations, but he failed to do so.

      In a blog post last month, Yee had responded to remarks supposedly made by former Nominated Member of Parliament Calvin Cheng and made references to Islam.

      The police said in response to media queries that Yee is not prohibited from travelling overseas.

    • Amos Yee is top trending person on Google in Singapore this year, after Lee Kuan Yew [Ed: watch the Streisand Effect below]

      Amos Yee, a teenaged blogger detained for a video he posted about Lee Kuan Yew in March, was the second highest-trending person on Google in Singapore this year – after the late former prime minister.

      The haze was the top trending news story of 2015, with ‘PSI Singapore’ the top news search of the year, followed by the Southeast Asia Games. MERS was the most popular international news search.

      Reality TV show Bigg Boss was the top trending TV show in a list featuring four Korean dramas. The iPhone 6s was the most searched for gadget.

    • ‘PSI Singapore’, ‘Lee Kuan Yew’ the top Google searches in S’pore this year

      Other top searches included “SEA Games”, which were held in Singapore in June; “WhatsApp Web”, the web version of the chat app released this year; “iPhone 6s”; “QZ8501″, the AirAsia flight which crashed on route from Surabaya to Singapore; and “Amos Yee”, the controversial teenage blogger.

    • The highest Google searches in S’pore this yr

      Blogger Amos Yee, who drew consideration for his criticisms of the previous prime minister, was looked for as individuals stored tabs on the controversy on-line.

    • ‘PSI Singapore’ tops Google’s search phrases
    • What’s hot in 2015… according to Google
    • “PSI Singapore” was Singapore’s top trending search on Google in 2015

      Rounding up the rest of the list is teenage blogger Amos Yee, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers) virus and the Indonesia AirAsia Flight QZ8501, which crashed in December 2014, killing 162.

    • ‘PSI Singapore’ tops Google’s search terms

      Blogger Amos Yee, who drew attention for his criticisms of the former Prime Minister, was looked up as people kept tabs on the controversy.

    • Haze was Singaporeans’ top Google search term for 2015

      While Mr Lee did not take top spot overall, he was the most trending person followed by controversial YouTuber and blogger Amos Yee and Mr Lee’s daughter, Dr Lee Wei Ling.

    • Art review: For Those Who Have Been Killed

      Somewhat different from this pair is the painting titled Wheelbarrow, which is oddly dated to “1990-2015”. It’s an incongruity that is revealed to be part of a tranche of old paintings of Leow’s, most of which lie rolled up in a custom-made coffin next to Wheelbarrow. The damage wrought by time seems to mirror the relentless march of the news cycle, which Leow tops off by painting an overlay of a quote from the nation’s current potty-mouth of the year, Amos Yee.

    • And on Saturday…

      Otherwise, we might have to call out – as surely as Amos Yee can’t stop himself trolling for attention – “Humbug!”

    • 8 free speech concerns the Community Action Network highlighted for the UPR

      In January 2016, Singapore’s human rights record will face international scrutiny at the United Nations (UN) for the second time.

    • Universities ‘are killing free speech’, says group of leading academics

      Universities are “killing free speech” by banning anything that causes offence, a group of leading academics have warned.

      Students are being denied the opportunity to debate opposing views due to political correctness and censorship, the group argued in a letter published in The Telegraph.

    • Politically correct universities ‘are killing free speech’
    • Universities must halt student censorship culture – academics

      Because universities increasingly see fee-paying students as customers, they do not dare to stand up to the “small but vocal minority” of student activists who want to ban everything from the Sun newspaper to the historian David Starkey.

      The letter says: “Few academics challenge censorship that emerges from students. It is important that more do, because a culture that restricts the free exchange of ideas encourages self-censorship and leaves people afraid to express their views in case they may be misinterpreted. This risks destroying the very fabric of democracy.

      “An open and democratic society requires people to have the courage to argue against ideas they disagree with or even find offensive. At the moment there is a real risk that students are not given opportunities to engage in such debate.

    • Academics Warn Politically Correct Universities ‘Are Killing Free Speech’ With Censorship
    • Will China’s Censorship Spread?

      On Monday, prominent human-rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang went on trial for writing seven social-media posts criticizing Chinese policies and government officials. Supportive online messages posted during the trial were swiftly taken down.

      At the same time, China’s Internet began to fill with images of Wuzhen, a scenic southern river town that is playing host to China’s biggest annual Internet conference this week. And on Wednesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping, in the presence of leaders of several Central Asian countries and a who’s who list from China’s biggest and richest online companies, laid out his vision for an Internet where governments like Beijing’s could regulate the Web how they see fit.

    • China tells the world to respect its censorship

      Chinese president Xi Jinping opened the World Internet Conference by telling world leaders to respect other nation’s cyber sovereignty. The leader went on to say that every country has the right to govern the web in accordance with local laws, and that China stands against “internet hegemony.” The move reinforces China’s right to suppress information on a whim, like when it shuttered Instagram during the Hong Kong democracy protests. By making it an issue of sovereignty, the country is effectively shouting “back off” to rivals who would dare criticize its heavy-handed attitude toward censorship.

    • ‘Freedom requires strict order’: China preps for second World Internet Conference

      China on Wednesday will kick off its World Internet Conference, a three-day gathering in the eastern city of Wuzhen. With Chinese leaders stressing all things Internet as a major economic development strategy, and with foreign tech firms salivating over the massive but tightly managed market, many are looking to the conference for signposts to the future.

    • Xi Jinping defends China’s right to ‘sovereign’ internet
    • The chill behind China’s vision of a ‘beautiful’ internet

      Wuzhen, I can only imagine, has been chosen as the venue for China’s World Internet Conference because it is beautiful.

      That is one of the recurring themes of the event: that the internet is a thing of beauty which should be shared and cherished by all mankind.

      And Wuzhen is a water town, a village held together by interconnecting canals, criss-crossed by elegant stone bridges.

      So that kind of works for the internet metaphor too. But the town, as it happens, is also unbearably cold at this time of year.

    • China lays out its vision of the internet: more control, more censorship

      President Xi Jinping has defended his government’s broad censorship of the internet, in a high-profile speech underscoring China’s increasingly emphatic attempts to justify its strict online control.

      Mr Xi said cyberspace was not a “place beyond the rule of law” and that countries must not interfere in the internal affairs of others, in remarks made to an international audience of world and business leaders at a technology conference in Wuzhen on Wednesday.

    • Hong Kong Newspaper’s Sale to Alibaba Fans Censorship Fears

      Chinese Internet giant Alibaba’s announcement this week that it’s buying Hong Kong’s premier English-language newspaper has set off concerns that the move will stifle the city-state’s free press.

      The e-commerce site on Monday said it had agreed to buy media assets of the SCMP Group Ltd., whose holdings include the South China Morning Post. Alibaba executives said the purchase was aimed at improving China’s image and countering what it calls the bias of Western news outlets.

    • Tiatr doesn’t need censorship, says Wagh
    • Govt shouldn’t censor tiatrs, but, tiatrists should have self-censorship: Wagh

      “Tiatrists are not mere artists but defenders of society and have a right as well as do enjoy the freedom of expression to speak out and criticise the government and other personalities,” remarked Kala Academy chairman Vishnu Surya Wagh on Monday.

    • ‘Censorship problem is not unique to India’

      The c-word is just another one of India’s tales of paradoxes, the way William Ma-zzarella, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago known for authoring Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicity sees it as he revisits the way the censorship story has been unfolding in the country the recent times.

    • Censorship is about the opportunity to exert power: William Mazzarella

      William Mazzarella, a professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, has authored Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicity (2013) and co-edited Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction (2009). Currently in Mumbai to talk about film censorship in India, Mazzarella on how censorship is used as a tool for publicity. Excerpts from an interview:

    • The theatre of censorship

      This past year, censorship has made big and recurring news in India. The Censor Board for Film Certification (CBFC) under Pahlaj Nihalani’s chairmanship has proved to be simultaneously a bane for filmmakers and a god-given-muse for Twitter humorists. The CBFC has gone where few previous iterations of the board have gone before. Whether it’s a list of banned words —including ‘Bombay’ and ‘masturbation’ — or cutting short James Bond’s kisses on screen. There has been a heightening of the old desi variety of crowd-sourced censorship.

      Our society seems to take offense easier and insist more volubly on our right to silence each other. And yet, while traditional channels of censorship have increased their scope and heightened their intensity, India is seeing a wide open space of cultural production online, which is somewhat free of the claustrophobic pressures of moral policing.

      The Godrej Cultural Lab this Friday is hosting a talk titled ‘Censoring India’ by William Mazzarella from the University of Chicago.

    • An uncensored talk

      Of course the government has and continues to try to regulate access to various internet sites, not least pornographic ones. At the same time, we all know that people find ways to access what they want to see. I think the interesting question is why and how censorship persists despite the fact that it obviously is unable to exert tight control — even the authorities themselves admit that. So the only answer has to be that censorship is in fact not only, or not even mainly, about control. Instead, as I was saying earlier, it’s about what can be gained from harnessing the controversy around a particular set of words or images and using that controversy to bolster authority. Of course that’s always a delicate and volatile game.

    • Encryption And Censorship In A Globalized World

      For example, an Iranian man was recently jailed when images were shared online of him posing with several women dressed in miniskirts and crop tops. Photographs of women in provocative Western attire are deemed immoral and illegal in the nation, even while such images are relatively commonplace on Western social media accounts. In fact, in just the last eight months more than 700 people have been arrested in the country for “economic, moral and social” crimes.

    • Filmmakers’ investigation shows how Angola’s regime attacks critics
    • Angola: Nicki Minaj concert causes controversy

      Given the swathes of corruption and human rights abuses in Angola, the rapper’s performance should not lend credibility to the dos Santos regime

    • Latin American journalism and advocacy groups recognized by Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Awards
    • How drug cartels impose censorship on Mexican newspapers

      In Monday’s Guardian, in reporting on the number of journalists around the world who have been killed so far this year, I noted that only four of the 55 victims came from Mexico.

      But that relatively low figure, plucked from the death toll compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists, conceals a terrible truth because it follows years of murders of media workers in that country.

      To put the situation in context, I turned to a special report published on Friday by the Washington Post, Censor or die: The death of Mexican news in the age of drug cartels.

    • Media Comment: When the media engages in self-censorship

      Balancing journalism’s twin goals of telling the public what it wants to know and what it needs to know is not only an ethical matter for journalists but a very real concern for the media consumers.

      [...]

      It is fair to ask whether two major newspapers, Yediot Aharonot and Israel Hayom, are suffering from problems that may lead to self-censorship.

      Our well-researched assumption from years of review is that the former is very anti-Likud and almost pathologically anti- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while the latter is at the other end of the spectrum, being consistently sympathetic to Netanyahu and his policies.

      The mainstream media has been lax, both the pro- and the anti-Netanyahu press, claims Yoav Yitzhak in a November 29 report at his News1 web site on whether Sara Netanyahu had “hidden away” gifts she and her husband received, as he has published, when visiting abroad rather than handing them over to the proper government clerks responsible for their storage.

    • How one Iranian TV show is breaking censorship boundaries

      In the 1980s, the main form of home entertainment in Iran consisted of two TV channels and two radio stations. For those who were tired of watching or hearing news about the ongoing war with Iraq and sanctions, there was only one source of entertainment: old movies from the time of former Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Despite the danger of being arrested and having to pay a fine or go to jail, people continued to watch videos by renting smuggled and banned VCRs. Media expert Dr. Fereydoun Ahmadvand told Al-Monitor, “One of the reasons videos became so popular among people and ultimately forced a retreat in the state’s position was the need for diversity and the desire to hear several voices and have cultural pluralism, which did not at all exist in Iran during the years of war.”

    • Iranian State-Run Newspaper Runs Unprecedented Anti-Censorship Editorial
    • Ian F. Svenonius’ ‘Censorship Now!!’ offers a smarter, more precise model of the D.C. punk hero’s shtick

      To remix an old saw for the Internet age: Familiarity breeds a particularly nasty, exhausted sort of apathy—the burnout of overexposure to a brand, whether it be Hulu’s fusillade of unchanging ads, Upworthy’s smug click bait, or an artist’s monomaniacal shtick. For a longtime devotee, the first few pages of Ian F. Svenonius’ “Censorship Now!!” carry plenty of that checked out disappointment. A longtime D.C. indie-punk fixture, Svenonius has spent two books (2006′s “The Psychic Soviet” and 2012′s “Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock ‘n’ Roll Group”)—and 20 years as frontman for The Nation of Ulysses, the Make-Up, Weird War, and Chain and the Gang—mining a narrow melange of socio-musicological history, academic inquiry, and Marxist camp.

    • Censorship Now!! by Ian Svenonius Review

      Svenonius posits some rather radical steps concerning a remedy for censorship, takes a deep dive into the often unacknowledged cultural ramifications seeded during the earlier (and even earliest) days of the Internet and the corporate cooption of college rock that robbed it of its teeth, its vitality, its integrity. He also discusses the historical role of sugar in empire building, the potential corruptive powers (or misinterpretations) of backward-messages on vinyl records and, as we said, the 1988 film Heathers (concerning copycat crime sprees and the culpability of pop culture icons.) But there isn’t a shred of facetious snark or anecdotal wiseass-ery going on here. Each subject is thoroughly investigated and ruminated upon, scrutinizing some of the historical gunk that may have been disregarded from our more popular discourses and shrewdly polishing some ponderous interpretations to provide insight to the curious reader.

    • Lebanese Cartoonists Launch Indiegogo Campaign to Fight Censorship in Beirut

      The Lebanese nonprofit cartoon collective Samandal is in dire financial straits after the central government cracked down on them with censorship charges and fines.

    • Accused of Blasphemy, Lebanese Comic Book Combats Censorship
    • Argentines protest media law change, fear censorship

      Supporters of Argentina’s former president protest fearing new conservative leader Mauricio Macri will change media ownership laws. Natasha Howitt reports.

    • Argentina: Mass protest outside Buenos Aires congress over media censorship fears

      Hundreds of people have protested outside Argentinas congress amid fears of censorship and media monopoly. Protesters gathered in Buenos Aires on 17 December to demand the new president, Mauricio Macri, and his government reconsider proposed reforms that could lead to private organisations taking control of the countrys mass media.

      They say they are worried about censorship in Argentina if the anti-monopoly laws are loosened or repealed, and demanded that the president keeps the rules against market concentration.

      Martin Sabetella, director of the Federal Authority of Audiovisual Communication Services (AFSCA) watchdog – which is in charge of enforcing the legislation – said: We have come here to defend the audiovisual communications law, which is a tool to ensure freedom of expression, a plurality of voices, to guarantee a deep democracy that is enriched by all voices.

    • Republican hopefuls cut up on NSA surveillance, Trump needs to ‘shut down’ elements of web
    • Donald Trump doesn’t understand how the internet works

      The internet is a powerful tool for good as well as evil. So like almost every organization, ISIS has used it to organize and to spread its message. And Donald Trump wants to put a stop to that.

      “We’re losing a lot of people because of the internet, and we have to do something,” Trump said at a rally earlier this month. “We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them maybe in certain areas closing that internet up in some way.”

    • Stupidity and lies: Presidential candidates flunk the tech test

      When it comes to political theater these days, there’s no lack of boneheaded ideas backed by deliberately misleading statements (aka lying) and topped with a heaping helping of fearmongering.
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      Presidential candidates at this week’s debate were falling over each other in their rush to embrace bad policies, from dismantling the Internet to banning encryption and restarting NSA phone surveillance (not that it’s needed).

    • #Index100: Unveiling this year’s 100 global free speech heroes

      A graffiti artist who paints murals in war-torn Yemen, a jailed Bahraini academic and the Ethiopia’s Zone 9 bloggers are among those honoured in this year’s #Index100 list of global free expression heroes.

    • National Secular Society defends cinemas’ freedom not to screen religious adverts

      The NSS has defended cinema chains’ freedom to refuse religious or political advertising after the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) accused them of “failing to uphold Britain’s long tradition of freedom of expression.”

      The EHRC has offered its legal expertise to the Church of England, should the Church seek to use the law to force cinemas to screen its advert featuring the Lord’s Prayer. The EHRC also said it would examine issues raised by Digital Cinema Media’s (DCM) decision not to screen the advert as part of its ongoing examination of the laws protecting freedom of religion and belief.

    • Lord’s Prayer ad ban ‘slippery slope towards censorship’ – Equality Commission

      The ban on an advert featuring the Lord’s Prayer from being shown in cinemas could be part of a “slippery slope towards increasing censorship”, and will be investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, it was announced on Friday.

    • The Music as Resistance playlist

      Music has long been used as a form of resistance, from civil rights movements to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine, focusing on taboos and the breaking down of social barriers, features an exclusive new short story by Ariel Dorfman about a military trumpeter who plays a defiant, rebellious song on his instrument.

    • Egypt lawyer challenges censorship law

      The prosecution and imprisonment of journalists by the Egyptian government has garnered widespread criticism from governments and rights groups worldwide. In August Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi [BBC profile] approved [JURIST report] a 54-article counter-terrorism law that has been met with significant controversy, as many believe it infringes on the freedom of the press. Many have said that the law defines terrorism too broadly and imposes harsh sentences and fines on violators. Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] (HRW) criticized [JURIST report] Egypt’s new counterterrorism law saying it infringes on freedom of the press. HRW opposes the fact that the new law gives prosecutors the power to detain suspects without a court order. Also in August Egyptian police arrested [JURIST report] three people under the law for their role in spreading propaganda related to the Islamic State on Facebook.

      [...]

      The prosecution and imprisonment of journalists by the Egyptian government has garnered widespread criticism from governments and rights groups worldwide. In August Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi [BBC profile] approved [JURIST report] a 54-article counter-terrorism law that has been met with significant controversy, as many believe it infringes on the freedom of the press. Many have said that the law defines terrorism too broadly and imposes harsh sentences and fines on violators.

    • Cecil Rhodes was a racist, but you can’t readily expunge him from history

      Quintessential racist and British supremacist though he was, Cecil Rhodes cannot simply be written out of Oxford’s history

    • [Old] Dell responds to accusations of censorship

      Dell says it is not censoring IdeaStorm, merely responding to IdeaStorm community requests to “merge” ideas.

      Commenting in response to our post Dell censors IdeaStorm Linux dissent, Dell spokesperson John Pope said that the company isn’t censoring dissent on IdeaStorm.

      “If ideas are submitted and they turn out to be the same, we have been asked by the IdeaStorm community to merge them — as well as any votes cast and comments logged — for simplicity,” said Dell spokesperson John Pope.

    • Mark Zuckerberg’s plea for internet freedom means nothing if he keeps kissing up to China

      Mark Zuckerberg is an extremely competent CEO when it comes to building an enduring internet company. But he’s less skilled when it comes to navigating the politics of the internet, as evidenced by his statement during Brazil’s unexpected crackdown on WhatsApp.

    • WhatsApp-ening? Brazil briefly censors Facebook-owned app for 48 hours
    • The awkward irony in Brazil blocking WhatsApp

      It wasn’t long ago that Brazil was trumpeting its bona fides on electronic surveillance, slamming the National Security Agency’s spying programs as a “grave violation of human rights and of civil liberties” in a 2013 speech to the United Nations.

      Now, though, Brazil is finding itself in an awkward position as it moved to block an immensely popular messaging app within its own borders for 48 hours. Prosecutors demanded that the service, WhatsApp, be shut off for its 100 million Brazilian customers after the company did not comply with a secret order for user data. (That ban was soon reversed by a higher court, but the damage was done.)

    • WhatsApp service has been restored in Brazil, but more Internet trouble is still on the way
    • Dutch Gallery Accused Of Censorship After Removing ‘Offensive’ Names Of Artworks

      AN art gallery has been criticised after removing words such as ‘negro’ and ‘Mohammedan’ from the descriptions of its artworks in case they cause offence.

      ‘Indian’ and ‘dwarf are two other words that have been altered at the the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam – leading to accusations that it is pandering to political correctness.

      It has removed ‘offensive’ words from around 200 titles and descriptions of it works of art, replacing them with less racially charged terminology.

      Martine Gosselink, head of the history department at the Rijksmuseum and initiated the project, said: ‘The point is not to use names given by whites to others.

    • Why Facebook Isn’t Censoring Trump’s Hate Speech

      Facebook has had a super-clear policy on hate speech spelled out on the service since March 2015. What’s off limits? “Content that directly attacks people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, serious disabilities, or diseases.”

    • Facebook Inc (FB) Supports Donald Trump Hate Speech

      Fast Company posted, simply, “I’m with Trump, it’s time for a ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.’” The comment was flagged and removed for violating community guidelines.

    • Are Facebook’s censorship policies politically motivated?

      During a recent United Nations summit in New York, Mark Zuckerburg was put in the hot seat when German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, directly called him out about Facebook’s inaction over anti-immigration comments.

      Zuckerburg responded that his team “needed to do some work on the issue.”

      Censorship on Facebook is nothing new, but the social media site’s stance on global issues has been unpredictable and at times confusing. In this article we will take a more in depth look into Facebook’s reaction about censorship of anti-immigration content, and then investigate FB’s stance on a number of controversial topical issues in the past.

    • Wyoming ‘Data Censorship’ Law Under Fire In Federal Court

      Way back in March, I wrote about a freshly passed Wyoming law that criminalized “collecting resource data.” The law appeared designed to stop pesky journalists and activists from documenting abuses on ranches and poultry and dairy farms — a so-called ag-gag law. But the actual language of the law was exceptionally broad. In my earlier post, I wrote that “by my reading, you’ve technically violated this law and could be subject to a year’s imprisonment if you idly counted the dandelions in a Wyoming farmer’s front yard without asking the farmer first.” (I see now that your dandelion count would have to be reported to the government, or you’d have to intend to report it, to violate the law — but still.)

      And so I concluded my post with these (abridged) words: “Bad laws like this do accomplish one good thing: they keep public interest lawyers employed. Lawyers like those at the Center for Food Safety should be lining up already to see Wyoming’s law struck down.”

    • ‘NK girl band cancelled concert due to censorship’

      North Korea’s Moranbong Band abruptly cancelled its scheduled performances in Beijing in protest of China’s request not to sing propaganda songs praising its young leader, a lawmaker claimed Tuesday.

    • Turkey’s decades-old censorship law may be amended

      Article 298 of the Constitution, which stipulates heavy fines and bans on TV stations during every election period in a blatant display of censorship, may be amended, as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered changes to the article used to justify bans by the Supreme Election Board (YSK) that oversees elections.

      The possible amendment was reported after the president met İlhan Yerlikaya, head of Turkey’s television and radio watchdog, the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK), earlier this week. Yerlikaya and Erdoğan discussed bans on private-run TV channels during the meeting.

    • Censors can try, but won’t stop digital speech

      If you were planning to hold a Internet conference for the world, where would you choose to hold it? Silicon Valley? Boston? London? Germany? Tokyo?

      Whatever locale you guessed, it is a pretty safe wager that China was not among the top 10 options.

      Yet, on Wednesday, no less a luminary that Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed more than 2,000 guests to the coastal city of Wuzhen, China as they began participation in the something called the World Internet Conference.

      That’s right. China is hosting an Internet conference. Has the nation noted as one of world’s heaviest-handed cyber censors suddenly gone soft and decided to join the digital marketplace of ideas?

    • Facebook Content Police Censors Image from a German Museum

      The clash of cultures is inevitable once you move beyond your own borders. A lot of American companies had issues being present in China, for example – and that lead to bans of particular companies. Watching YouTube or being on Facebook (NYSE:FB) in China is impossible without a friendly VPN/Proxy server, because those companies refused to ‘play ball’ with the Chinese authorities. And yes, all the companies which were targeted would often criticize their policy and refused to abide to censorship. Yet, every once a while, a slight ‘what the he…’ happens when the censorship scissors of Facebook’s Political Correctness Police appears. This time, a victim was none other than Bundeskunsthalle – National Museum of Art in Germany.

    • Al-Jazeera blocks article slamming Saudi Arabian human rights record

      The Qatar-based news network, Al-Jazeera, has prevented an article slamming human rights in Saudi Arabia from being viewed outside the US.

      The article, titled “Saudi Arabia Uses Terrorism as an Excuse for Human Rights Abuses” and published on Al-Jazeera America’s website on 3 December, cites reports 50 people are intended to be executed for alleged terrorist crimes, injustices in the treatment of Saudi’s minority Shia population and criticises the country’s relationship with the US.

      The article is understood to still be available in the US, but when viewed in other countries is replaced with an error page.

      A tweet from Al-Jazeera America’s account with the article’s headline, pictured on a Bahraini website, appears to have been deleted, while the Saudi Arabian newspaper Okaz quotes Al-Jazeera’s director apologising for the article, The Intercept reports.

    • Al Jazeera Blocks Anti-Saudi Arabia Article

      THE CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS of Al Jazeera appears to have blocked an article critical of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record from viewers outside the United States. The news network, which is funded by the government of Qatar, told local press that it did not intend to offend Saudi Arabia or any other state ally, and would remove the piece.

      The op-ed, written by Georgetown University professor and lawyer Arjun Sethi and titled, “Saudi Arabia Uses Terrorism as an Excuse for Human Rights Abuses,” ran on the website of Al Jazeera America, the network’s U.S. outlet. It comments on reports of 50 people recently sentenced to death for alleged terrorist activity and criticizes the U.S. government’s silence on Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.

    • It’s time for the arts world to look hard at its own racism

      We are condoning our forefathers’ bigotry if we fail to modify or rename portraits with offensive titles

    • South Korea’s art community expresses concerns about new museum director

      Bartomeu Marí, the new director of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, attempted to ban a satirical sculpture from an exhibition during his previous role in Barcelona

    • Should we censor art and books to fit our times?

      The Tate’s director, Nicholas Serota, says he would never remove offensive words from the title of an artwork on display in his gallery. His views contrast with those of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which has changed the titles of several of its paintings to take account of modern sensibilities. For example, Young Negro Girl, painted around 1900 by the Dutch artist Simon Maris, has been retitled Young Girl Holding a Fan. Serota says he would only do this if the artist gave permisison to do so – which means that for historic art he’d do nothing.

      We should tread with extreme caution before taking such a drastic step as renaming art, and there’s a clear danger of oversensitivity in making any decision. But for Serota to say “never” is wrong. There are many words and phrases which, while accepted in their day, are clearly insulting and derogatory in the modern context and distort or confuse our understanding of the art itself.

    • HRW: Drop dubious case against rights activist

      Malaysian authorities should immediately drop charges under the Film Censorship Act against rights activist Lena Hendry, Human Rights Watch and 11 Malaysian and international human rights organisations said on 11 December 2015 in letters to Malaysia’s prime minister and attorney general.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • The Hit List

      The Islamist war on secular bloggers in Bangladesh.

    • Drastic New Security Measures Put in Place for CES

      Attendees at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas January 5-9 will be subject to metal detector screening, pat downs and bag checks. Even laptop bags are being discouraged.

    • Ethiopia: Lethal Force Against Protesters

      Police and military forces have fired on demonstrations, killing at least 75 protesters and wounding many others, according to activists. Government officials have acknowledged only five deaths and said that an undisclosed number of security force members have also been killed. On December 15, the government announced that protesters had a “direct connection with forces that have taken missions from foreign terrorist groups” and that Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Task Force will lead the response.

    • CIA torturers could still face justice: UN envoy

      Those responsible for the torture of suspected terrorists in the wake of the 11 September attacks cannot dodge justice forever, a top UN human rights official, Juan Mendez, told Middle East Eye.

      Mendez criticised US officials for not prosecuting intelligence agents for the widespread use of torture that was detailed in the US government’s own report – a damning probe that was released a year ago this week.

      “I’m certainly disappointed that the official policy of the US is to consider that bygones be bygones and to let torturers off the hook, but I wouldn’t say that this will never happen,” Mendez, the UN special rapporteur on torture, told MEE on Sunday.

    • Luncheon for Miss World Canada, Anastasia Lin, Examines Censorship, Free Speech

      She should be in China competing to wear the Miss World crown on Dec. 19. But the Chinese regime denied Anastasia Lin, Miss World Canada, entry into the country and declared her “persona non grata” because she speaks out about human rights in China.

    • Western democracy’s new maxim: surveillance and soft despotism

      September 21, 2014, was a day of global climate action. To testify to the scale of the protest in cities around the world, people at the Sydney rally were asked to smile for the drones flying above us.

      It was the first time I had been asked to smile at a drone. I felt uncomfortable. I was being watched, becoming an object of my own protest – a pixel, not an agent.

      What kind of society do our so-called “Western and networked democracies” count as normal if humans are constantly objectified, monitored and profiled?

    • Millionaire found not guilty of rape after claiming he tripped and fell on woman

      The Saudi property developer said he had already had sex with the young woman’s 24-year-old friend and it was possible his penis may have been poking out of his underwear when he tripped.

    • Donald Trump stands firm on proposed US travel ban for Muslims

      Republican front-runner Donald Trump has stood firm over his provocative call for banning Muslims from the United States as his party’s presidential candidates pushed their own plans for fighting Islamic State (IS) militants.

    • EFF Publishes “Pwning Tomorrow,” a Speculative Fiction Anthology

      As part of EFF’s 25th Anniversary celebrations, we are releasing “Pwning Tomorrow: Stories from the Electronic Frontier,” an anthology of speculative fiction from more than 20 authors, including Bruce Sterling, Lauren Beukes, Cory Doctorow, and Charlie Jane Anders. To get the ebook, you can make an optional contribution to support EFF’s work, or you can download it at no cost. We’re releasing the ebook under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International license, which permits sharing among users.

    • EFF’s 2015 Holiday Wishlist

      For the last four years, EFF has greeted the holiday season by publishing a list of things we’d like to see happen in the coming year. Sometimes these are actions we’d like to see taken by companies, and sometimes our wishes are aimed at governments, but we also include actions everyday people can take to advance our digital civil liberties. This year has seen a few wishes come true. For example, our FOIA lawsuit against the NSA led them to disclose the (redacted) details of their Vulnerabilities Equities Process. We’ve also been pleased to see more journalists and news organizations using SecureDrop to securely accept documents from anonymous sources and the House Judiciary Committee is finally considering reform of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Let’s shut down the internet: Republicans vacate their mind bowels

      The presidential debate did not score highly on accuracy or sense.

    • Please Don’t Shut Down the Internet, Donald Trump

      What, exactly, did Trump mean? If you look at his different statements on the subject, it seems that he wants to knock out the infrastructure that provides Internet access in areas of Syria and Iraq that are controlled by ISIS. That’s one way to disrupt their recruitment, and the plan is technically feasible, at least in part. In theory, the United States could sever fibre-optic cables, destroy satellite dishes, and knock out cellular towers. It could also put pressure on telecommunications companies in the region. The headquarters of ISIS’s media operations, according to a defector who was quoted in the Washington Post, uses a Turkish wireless provider. Turkey is a NATO ally, and its government hasn’t recently shown any particular affection for free speech online. President Trump could call up its leaders and make a deal.

    • F.C.C. Asks Comcast, AT&T and T-Mobile About ‘Zero-Rating’ Services

      The Federal Communications Commission said on Thursday it was exploring whether new services from Comcast, T-Mobile USA and and AT&T violate net neutrality rules.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • The fate of branding as we know it in a 3D-printing world

      We recall that the basic framework for 3D printing consists of a person who downloads a CAD file or the like, which digital file then instructs the 3D printing device to produce the desired product, using the proper materials. If there is a brand that is identified with the product, then the brand will appear on the product. The consumer may carry out the production process either within the confines of his home or business (think of a dental implant or airplane wing) or at a fulfillment center. In either situation, the ultimate manufacturer is the consumer (or the fulfillment center acting on the consumer’s instructions). The result is that 3D printing largely renders redundant the traditional product distribution function-—from manufacturer to distributor/importer to retailer to customer.

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