• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• The Bug Report

  So I get a bug report. It is on GNU/Linux, of course, because that is the only ecosystem that sends bug reports.

  So first I boot up my work box (Computer #1, Windows 10) which is the one that has the sweet monitor and try to VPN to the Server box (Computer #2, GNU/Linux Fedora Server, amd64). But, of course, at one point I’d stripped all the non-console-mode functionality off of the server, so VPN is a fail. I could have done the fix easily via ssh and emacs-nox, but, I figure it will only take a minute to get a graphical environment up and running.

  There’s a GNU Linux VM running on VirtualBox on the work box, but, I get distracted from the actual problem when I can’t figure out how to get VirtualBox to create a large screen. Totally not a problem, but, I get obsessed with this minutiae and can’t let it go. I waste time tweaking the virtual graphics card settings with no effect.

• Doom for Windows [Ed: by the creator of DirectX, who isn't pleased with Windows Update.]

  Windows failed to make the leap to new business models and new distributed computing paradigms such that now in the year 2016 Microsoft is on the cutting edge of adopting Apple’s 2007 business model for Windows 10. Here’s why Microsoft has reached the end of its road. They lost the mobile market, they lost search, they’re struggling to compete in the cloud and all they have left is a legacy OS with an architecture from the days of personal computing when connectivity was something only nerds and IT managers worried about. Now the idea of personal computer security is collapsing. It is readily becoming apparent that NOTHING can stop malicious attackers from eventually penetrating the best most advanced security measures of any personal device. Furthermore, as the Edward Snowden scandal has made plain to us all, if malicious attackers aren’t breaking into our computers, then the worlds governments are requiring companies to make their products vulnerable to intrusion. The idea that a lowly personal computer behind a frail consumer router… made in China… stands any chance of resisting serious hacking attempts is a fast fading dream.

  Back when I was making online game publishing DRM (Digital Rights Management) Solutions we measured the time it took Chinese and Russian hackers to crack our best latest security attempts in weeks. Today it can take a matter of days or hours.

  The Windows Operating system has become vast, bloated and cumbersome to maintain. It faces constant security bombardment by the entire worlds connected hacker community and government security agencies. The volume of patches it needs to maintain even the most rudimentary pretext of stability and security requires a constant and overwhelming flood of Windows updates. The seriousness of the situation and the sheer flood of data Microsoft is constantly sending to our computers is staggering. I wanted to show a screen shot of my HUGE Windows Update history but mysteriously, after this most recent disastrous update… Microsoft has seen fit to clear my machine of that information…

• No Free Upgrades, No New Users: Windows 10 Declines for First Time Since Launch [Ed: based on Microsoft-connected firm]

  The latest batch of market share statistics provided by Net Applications for desktop operating systems puts Windows 10 on the second position in the rankings, but it also reveals something totally unexpected that happened last month.

  Windows 10 has actually lost market share last month despite the fact that everyone expected the operating system to continue its growth, which could be a sign that Microsoft’s 1 billion devices running Windows 10 goal might take a bit longer to become reality.

Kernel Space

• You can crash Linux Systemd with a single Tweet

  System administrator Andrew Ayer has discovered a potentially critical bug in systemd which can bring a vulnerable Linux server to its knees with a single command line.”After running this command, PID 1 is hung in the pause system call. You can no longer start and stop daemons.

• How to reignite a flamewar in one tweet (and I still don’t get it)

• Multiple Linux Distributions Affected By Crippling Bug In Systemd

  System administrator Andrew Ayer has discovered a potentially critical bug in systemd which can bring a vulnerable Linux server to its knees with one command. “After running this command, PID 1 is hung in the pause system call. You can no longer start and stop daemons. inetd-style services no longer accept connections. You cannot cleanly reboot the system.” According to the bug report, Debian, Ubuntu, and CentOS are among the distros susceptible to various levels of resource exhaustion. The bug, which has existed for more than two years, does not require root access to exploit.

• Lennart’s Look At Systemd This Year, What’s Going To Happen In 2017

  We have already covered some of the interesting talks from this year’s systemd conference including how to use it for application sandboxing, a new wireless daemon coming to replace wpa_supplicant, and BUS1 is on the way. But saving the best for last in another presentation to watch this weekend for those interested in systemd: Lennart Poettering’s state of the union address for systemd and a look ahead to 2017 features.

  Lennart’s systemd presentation covered recent improvements/features to systemd as well as a look ahead at some of the ideas baking for future releases. A lot of emphasis was placed on Portable Services for systemd and sandboxing of applications. Some other future ideas are having a Dbus daemon within systemd, more work on containers support, and a variety of new tunables coming. Some of the future options coming include ProtectKernelLogs, ProtectClock, ProtectKernelModules, ProtectMount, ProtectKeyRing, DataDirectory, CacheDirectory, and RestrictNamespaces.

• October Should Be Very Exciting For Linux Enthusiasts

• Legends of Linux Part 1: Linus Torvalds

  AS PART of our visit to LinuxCon this week we’re going to ask five key players in the Linux story the same 10 questions to get an idea of where Linux has been, where it is and where it’s going.

  And who better to start with than Linus Torvalds, the often outspoken creator of Linux itself. Torvalds isn’t actually attending the celebrations this year, but was kind enough to chat to the INQUIRER by email.

• Linux Kernel 4.8 Released By Linus Torvalds — Here Are The 10 Best Features

• Linux Kernel 4.8 Officially Released, Merge Window for Kernel 4.9 Now Open

  Today, October 2, 2016, Linus Torvalds proudly announced the release and availability for download of the Linux 4.8 kernel branch, which is now the latest stable and most advanced one.

  Linux kernel 4.8 has been in development for the past two months, during which it received no less than eight Release Candidate (RC) testing versions that early adopters were able to compile and install on their GNU/Linux operating system to test various hardware components or simply report bugs. That’s right, the Linux 4.8 kernel series was one of those special ones that received that eighth Release Candidate.

• Linux 4.8 Kernel Released

  The Linux 4.8 kernel is now officially available.

  Linus Torvalds tagged Linux 4.8.0 and kept the codename as “Psychotic Stoned Sheep.”

• The Best Features Of The Linux 4.8 Kernel

  If all goes according to plan, the Linux 4.8 kernel will be officially released this afternoon by Linus Torvalds.

• Graphics Stack

  • Mesa May Move To A Date-Based Versioning System

    Beginning next year, Mesa developers so far appear favorable to moving towards a date-based versioning concept.

    Per the proposal laid out yesterday by AMD’s Marek Olšák, Mesa would move to a date-based version string. He explained, “2017 would start with 17.0, then 17.1, 17.2, 17.3 for following quarters of the year, respectively. 2018 would start with 18.0, then 18.1, 18.2, 18.3. The motivation is that you can easily tell when a specific Mesa version was released with an accuracy of 3 months.”

Applications

• NetworkManager 1.4.2 Released for GNU/Linux Distros with Various Improvements

  Beniamino Galvani announced a new stable release of the NetworkManager network configuration tool suite for GNU/Linux operating system, the second for the latest 1.4 series.

• Tux Paint Needs Mac Devs, Firefox OS Ends & More…

  Tux Paint needs a Mac maintainer: Everybody’s favorite FOSS paint tool is having a little trouble running on Macs these days — specifically on OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Designed with kids in mind, the app is used extensively at schools, with many school systems now upgrading to El Capitan, which was released a year ago.

  Bill Kendrick, the app’s lead developer, took to Facebook last week to explain that the upgrade evidently breaks Tux Paint, and the project doesn’t have a good Mac developer on hand to fix the problem. “Tux Paint works fine,” he wrote, “and packages/installers are maintained for Windows all the way back to Win95, Android, iPhone/iPad, and Debian/Ubuntu and RedHat/Fedora Linuxes. Are there actually Mac developers who care about open source?”

• GNU Rush Version 1.8 Released

• FreeIPMI 1.5.4 Released

• RcppAnnoy 0.0.8

  An new version 0.0.8 of RcppAnnoy, our Rcpp-based R integration of the nifty Annoy library by Erik, is now on CRAN. Annoy is a small, fast, and lightweight C++ template header library for approximate nearest neighbours.

• Proprietary

  • Instagraph Adds Photo Filters, Image Cropping and Editing Tools

    Filters, cropping and direct messaging are among the latest improvement arriving in an update to Instagraph, the unofficial third-party Instagram app for Ubuntu Touch. Instagraph 0.0.3 adds much-missed image manipulation tools.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • The Deletion of gcj

  • Install MyBB on Ubuntu 16.04

  • Raspberry Pi: How To Build A Digital Dashboard For An Older Car [Video]

  • How to Quickly Convert Comic Book files to PDF on Ubuntu

• Wine or Emulation

  • Wine 1.9.20 Adds Better Support for AMD Radeon HD 6480G and Nvidia GTX 690 GPUs

• Games

  • Steam Survey Linux Data Updated For September (2016)

    For September 2016 the Steam Linux usage increased by +0.11%, or an increase of 0.94% while Windows dropped by 0.33% and macOS increased by 0.25%. The 0.94% metric is still off the close-to-2% Linux numbers when Steam originally launched on Linux but at least higher than it’s been the past few months.

  • The Steam Hardware Survey for September 2016 shows Linux has grown some more

    Another month goes by and another Steam Hardware Survey was done, I got a pop up this month and it seems we have increased our share two months in a row on Steam.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • GTK+ 3.22 Gets Its First Point Release, Adds Mir and Wayland Improvements

    The recently released GTK+ 3.22 GUI (Graphical User Interface) received its first point release, version 3.22.1, on the first day of October 2016, bringing various improvements and bug fixes.

    As usual, we’ve managed to get our hands on the internal changelog to tell you all about the new release, and it looks like GTK+ 3.22.1 is indeed a minor point release that reduces the runtime warnings, makes the touchpad scrolling for the Mir display server more smooth, and addresses an animation issue with the Adwaita theme.

  • Looking ahead: Usability of open source software

  • GNOME release party in São Paulo, Brazil – a humble huge success

    While this release party was small, I was surprised how well the conversation flowed. I thought that 1 hour would be enough, but I was plain wrong! Stayed for 3 hours, and only leaved because I really had to.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • 4MRecover 20.0 Data Recovery Live CD Is Now in Beta, Includes TestDisk 7.0

    4MLinux developer and project leader Zbigniew Konojacki informs Softpedia today, October 2, 2016, about the release and immediate availability for download of the Beta pre-release version of the upcoming 4MRecover 20.0 Live CD.

    As you might know already, the 4MLinux 20.0 and 4MLinux Core 20.0 GNU/Linux distributions are in the works, which means that Zbigniew Konojacki is also preparing new versions of his other projects, including 4MRecover, a Live CD that can be used for data recovery independent of a computer operating system.

    Therefore, 4MRecover 20.0 Beta is based on the Beta release of the 4MLinux 20.0 operating system, which should be officially promoted to the stable channel on the first day of November 2016, and it ships, as usual, with the powerful TestDisk 7.0 data recovery and PhotoRec 7.0 image recovery software.

• Arch Family

  • Arch Linux 2016.10.01 Now Available for Download, Ships with Linux Kernel 4.7.5

    Another month, another installation medium of the popular and acclaimed Arch Linux operating system has been released. Arch Linux 2016.10.01 arrives on the first day of October with many goodies.

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • openSUSE Tumbleweed Gets Linux Kernel 4.7.5, openSSL 1.0.2j, and Firefox 49.0.1

    Today, October 2, 2016, Douglas DeMaio from the openSUSE project announced that the rolling release Tumbleweed distro received five new snapshots during the last week of September, which brought many goodies to users.

    As mentioned before, these new snapshots brought several updated components and applications for the openSUSE Tumbleweed operating system, which continually received the latest software releases a few days after they’re announced upstream. The most important one being the Linux 4.7.5 kernel.

    We’ve already reported last week that openSUSE Tumbleweed was the first stable GNU/Linux distribution to include the recently released GNOME 3.22 desktop environment, and the openSUSE team now reveals the fact that KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS is coming soon as well, along with Bash 4.4, Qt 5.7, Mono 4.6, and FreeType 2.7.

• Red Hat Family

  • Fedora

    • F24-20161001 updated Lives released

      New Kernel means new set of updated lives.

      I am happy to release the F24-20161001 updated lives isos with the kernel-4.7.5-200.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • DebEX KDE Live DVD Updated with KDE 4.14.2 and Plasma 5, Linux Kernel 4.8 RC8

      GNU/Linux developer Arne Exton informs us about the release of a new stable build of his Debian-based DebEX KDE Live DVD, which ships with the latest stable Linux kernel packages and up-to-date software components.

      Based on the Debian GNU/Linux 8.6 “Jessie” operating system, DebEX KDE Live DVD Build 161001 is out as a drop-in replacement to version 160604, but it looks like Arne Exton managed to implement the latest Release Candidate (RC) version of the just announced Linux 4.8 kernel, which should be out any moment now.

    • Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 Reached End of Life, Upgrade to Parsix GNU/Linux 8.10 Now

      As reported last month, the Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 operating system was about to reach the end of its life on September 30, 2016, so today being October 2 means that you need to upgrade your system right now.

      Dubbed Atticus, Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 was announced approximately months ago, on the 14th of February, and it was entirely based on the Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 “Jessie” operating system, which means that is shipped with the long-term supported Linux 4.1.17 kernel and thes GNOME 3.18 desktop environment with GNOME Shell 3.18.3.

Devices/Embedded

• Which Raspberry Pi should you choose for your project?

  There are a number of different models and versions of the Raspberry Pi computer. But which one is best for your project?

• Phones

  • Purism Want To Make a Truly Open-Source Linux Phone

    Would you buy a truly open-source phone running nothing but free software? If you would, Purism want to know the sort of hardware specs you’d expect to get from it.

  • Tizen

    • Samsung Z1 gets a small Firmware update, now Z130HDDUOCPI1 in india

      The Samsung Z1 Smartphone has received a software / firmware update taking it to version Z130HDDUOCPI1 in India. Don’t get all excited as this is only a small update weighing in at 3.2MB and it seems like it is mainly a performance / bugfix update. In Indonesia the recently released Z2 is running Tizen 2.4.0.5 and we would expect this to be launched in india very soon.

    • Samsung starts distributing Samsung Z2 in Indonesia. More apps to the Tizen store

      The Samsung Z2 was launched in Indonesia last week and the ads were all over the TV and social media in the country. However, despite the launch a large section of potential customers in the country reported that the phone was nowhere to be found in the local market. The news has reached all the way to Samsung Indonesia who have now replied that the Z2 will be distributed officially to its retail partners starting today. The device will be sold for a price of Rp 899,000.

  • Android

    • EU wants Google to stop anti-competitive Android practices, fine expected [Ed: Microsoft loves Linux? So why does it keep attacking it? "EU as MS proxy," says iophk.]

    • More details emerge about Nokia’s Android-powered comeback

      Nokia’s decline has been heartbreaking to watch. But the Finnish company is planning a comeback with a line of all-new Android phones. One of these is the D1C, which recently found its way to GeekBench. This gives us an insight into what’s inside.

      The D1C will use the new mid-tier, octa-core Snapdragon 430 SoC, with each core clocked at 1.4GHz. This will be backed up with 3GB of RAM, and run Android 7.0 Nougat.

    • Nokia D1C Smartphone Arrives At Geekbench, Reveals Partial Specs: Android 7.0 Nougat, Snapdragon 430 In Tow

    • Mysterious Nokia D1C Android smartphone spotted on Geekbench

      If you have been paying attention to Nokia’s rather low-key presence these past few years and its uncertain faith after the infamous April 2014 Microsoft deal, then, you already know the roller coaster of events that unfolded. If not, then we have great news for you and better still, minus all the heartbreaking uncertainty and denial. Yes, the Finnish titan is coming back to the smartphone scene and by all accounts is planning to out three or four Android devices, including phones and tablets in Q4 this year.

    • Sony’s new phone is Android’s answer to the iPhone SE

      Back in 2010, Dell launched a smartphone called the Streak. It had a 5-inch display.

      At the time, a phone that large was pretty much unheard of. “Is anyone really willing to carry an object this big all the time, as one would have to to use it as a phone replacement?,” read one Business Insider preview.

    • You can try Android 7.1’s launcher features right now through Action Launcher

    • Google Maps For Android Now Shows Your Calendar Events

    • Dolphin emulator adds Vulkan support for Android

    • The EU is considering major fines for Google over alleged Android antitrust violations [Ed: What Microsoft did behind the scenes using its lobbyists]

    • Leak shows how EU would punish Google over Android practices [Ed: What Microsoft - which claims it “loves Linux” - does to Linux behind the scenes]

    • Best Phone For Gamers

    • Android and chill: Google hardware could be about taking control

    • How To Keep Your Android Device Malware Free

    • How to Update Your Android OS

    • Must read: top 10 Android stories

    • How To Log Out of Facebook Messenger On Android

    • T-Mobile G1 revisited: Welcoming Android to the world

CoursePad to Become Open Source

Cornell’s most popular course scheduling website, CoursePad.me, became an open source platform on Github last Thursday after enjoying two years of popularity among students, according to Jingsi Zhu ’16, the website’s sole developer.

Zhu explained that he chose to open source his website — or make its code freely available for modification and redistribution — after he graduated last semester and realized that he would need to devote more time to his work than to CoursePad.

Yahoo open sources its NSFW-detecting neural network

Yahoo has open-sourced its NSFW (not suitable/safe for work) detecting neural network, allowing developers to work towards improving the algorithm. Jay Mahadeokar and Gerry Pesavento of Yahoo explained in a blogpost that defining NSFW material on Internet is subjective and identifying such images is non-trivial. “Since images and user-generated content dominate the Internet today, filtering NSFW images becomes an essential component of Web and mobile applications,” they said.

Open source drives companies to change hiring and development

“Do I want to play with this open source thing?” This was the question most people asked 20 years ago when I started reviewing PostgreSQL bug fixes and assembling like-minded database colleagues to help start the PostgreSQL Global Development Group.

It’s mind-blowing to see how much things have changed.

Today, not becoming a follower of some open source community almost means you’re cobaling yourself—excluding yourself from the reality of how organizations use open software today. As engineers, we always want to keep up with the latest technologies not only to satisfy our desire to create and innovate, but also to remain marketable in a business world where products and technology constantly evolve. What’s happened with the open source movement is different.

Open source today is not just about the products and technologies that companies use, but rather a whole rainbow of adjustments that have penetrated the corporate culture beyond the engineering department.

I heard some of the best examples of this during a discussion for data industry leaders at the forefront of open source software innovation this summer. The event was co-hosted by EnterpriseDB (EDB) and MIT Technology Review. We shared our experiences of data transformation with Postgres, NoSQL, and other solutions, and really learned a lot from each other.

Security analytics platform now an Apache open source project

Infosec pros have been hoping for some time that big data and analytics can be harnessed to improve cyber security. A fledgling open source project with genes from Intel and Cloudera is another step in that direction.

Events

• Indian language localization community meets in New Delhi

  Localization is one of the less glamorous aspects of computing. Despite the fact that less than 6% of the world speaks English, a majority of projects don’t feel inclined to accommodate the rest of the population. One of the primary reasons for sticking to English is the steep learning curve and the lack of standardization in various aspects of the localization process.

  The FUEL Project organized the GILT conference in New Delhi, India September 24-25 to highlight and address these issues. The annual event showcases the efforts of language technology organizations and volunteer communities, but this year’s also gave a platform for non-technical users to voice their concerns. The Indic computing developers were joined by academics, reporters, language researchers, publishers, and entrepreneurs who rely on localization tools to connect and interact with audiences in the various regional languages in India. The brainstorming between the two groups, both on and off the stage, was one of the highlights of the conference.

SaaS/Back End

• Contributor awards, job hunting tips, and more OpenStack news

• Big Data News: The Top Insights From Strata + Hadoop World 2016 In New York

  Just about every player in the Big Data and analytics game was in New York last week at the Strata + Hadoop World conference, to showcase their latest technologies.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Rehab Addict’s Nicole Curtis and Hackers Agree : Open Hardware Rules

    They say necessity is the mother of invention and it also happens to be responsible for transforming Nicole Curtis from a waitress/real estate agent into the TV star of Rehab Addicts. Much like the dozens of high-tech makers highlighted in Thomas’s book Making Makers, Nicole’s early challenge of “I had no money” galvanized her to find ways to turn beat up old houses and trash into high-value treasures.

    Her approach has been enormously successful. Nicole routinely shows her Rehab Addict fans how to remodel their homes and save a fortune. For example, she redid a bathroom by upcycling what others discarded for a tenth of the cost of putting in a new bathroom. Her videos provide the how tos for anyone with similar problems -they represent the “source code” to rehab a house.

French man walks into Apple store and smashes all of its iPhones, shouting ‘this is happening!’

A man has been caught on camera smashing thousands of pounds worth of new iPhones on display in an Apple shop.

The unidentified man, who is wearing dark glasses and carrying a steel ball used for boules, methodically removes display phones from their upright holders, and smashes the ball down onto the phones’ Retina HD displays.

Footage shows him destroying at least 12 iPhones at the shop in Dijon, before he is challenged by security.

EU plans to give free Interrail pass to every 18-year-old in Europe on their birthday

Plans to give all teenagers living in the EU a free Interrail pass on their 18th birthday are to be debated at the European Parliament.

The proposal aims to give young Europeans a “sense of belonging” to the continent and comes after the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker called for greater cooperation within the EU during his State of the Union speech in Strasbourg.

Revealed: How one Amazon Kindle scam made millions of dollars

He spent a little over 10 years working as a software development engineer for various companies, including Microsoft. He went on to co-found a startup, Alteroxity, which claims to help authors publish ebooks that are already “done for you” — that includes the writing, the creation, the publishing, and even “dozens of honest positive reviews”.

Science

• 80% of data in Chinese clinical trials have been fabricated

  A Chinese government investigation has revealed that more than 80 percent of the data used in clinical trials of new pharmaceutical drugs have been “fabricated”.

  The report uncovered fraudulent behaviour at almost every level, and showed that some pharmaceutical companies had hidden or deleted records of potentially adverse side effects, and tampered with data that didn’t meet their desired outcomes.

  In light of the findings, 80 percent of current drug applications, which were awaiting approval for mass production, have now been cancelled.

  The investigation, led by the Chinese State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), looked at data from 1,622 clinical trials for new pharmaceutical drugs currently awaiting approval. The applications in question were all for Western medicine, not traditional Chinese medicine.

• Vint Cerf: Modern Media Are Made for Forgetting

  Vint Cerf, the living legend largely responsible for the development of the Internet protocol suite, has some concerns about history. In his current column for the Communications of the ACM, Cerf worries about the decreasing longevity of our media, and, thus, about our ability as a civilization to self-document—to have a historical record that one day far in the future might be remarked upon and learned from. Magnetic films do not quite have the staying power as clay tablets.

  It’s more than a then-vs-now thing. It’s a progression through history. Clay tablets are more resilient than papyrus manuscripts are more resilient than parchment are more resilient than printed photographs are more resilient than digital photographs.

  At stake, according to Cerf, is “the possibility that the centuries well before ours will be better known than ours will be unless we are persistent about preserving digital content. The earlier media seem to have a kind of timeless longevity while modern media from the 1800s forward seem to have shrinking lifetimes. Just as the monks and Muslims of the Middle Ages preserved content by copying into new media, won’t we need to do the same for our modern content?”

Health/Nutrition

• This Is The Scariest Thing About Health Care In America Today

  I got an email from my husband’s nephrologist the other day that said: “I honestly do not think he will recover.” Before you gasp in horror and go to your dark place, just know that he and I have made our peace with this information. Kidney dialysis is a game-changer, not a game-ender.

  No, it actually wasn’t that particular sentence at all that made my heart sink. The Titanic that overcame me was when his doctor referred him to a vascular surgeon who is not within our insurance company’s network.

  The horrifying reality of my husband’s month-long hospitalization early this summer is that many of the doctors who paraded through his room and stayed for all of about 90 seconds were also out-of-network. And I have the bills to prove it.

  “Well gee, she probably has a cheap-o plan or should be blaming Obamacare,” you may be thinking. You’d be wrong. I work for a large company and we are covered by my large company’s group plan. We bought the best ― and most expensive ― plan offered, one that allowed us to go see any out-of-network doctor if we really wanted to. But somehow, during a hospitalization, the “if we really wanted to” part leaves your control.

• In Year Since Water Crisis Began, Flint Struggles In Pipe Replacement Efforts

  It’s been one year since health officials in Michigan warned people in the city of Flint to stop drinking the tap water after a research team from Virginia Tech discovered elevated lead levels.

• In Major Settlement, States Gang Up to Strike Deal with Soldier-Suing Company

  A coalition of attorneys general representing 49 states and the District of Columbia announced a settlement today with USA Discounters, requiring it to pay $40 million in penalties and wipe out more than $95 million in debt for its past customers.

  When ProPublica published its investigation of USA Discounters in 2014, the company was operating two dozen stores, most of them right outside the country’s largest military installations.

  To buy the marked-up furniture, appliances, and electronics the company offered in its showrooms, service members took out loans laden with high interest rates and extra fees. Soldiers who couldn’t pay were then subject to the company’s collection machine, which filed tens of thousands of collection suits in a local Virginia court regardless of wherever in the world the soldier might be.

  Late in 2014, the company underwent a rebranding, dubbing itself “USA Living.” Then, last year, it began to close its stores and later filed for bankruptcy.

Security

• Your next DDoS attack, brought to you courtesy of the IoT

  The internet is reeling under the onslaught of unprecedented denial-of-service attacks, the sort we normally associate with powerful adversaries like international criminal syndicates and major governments, but these attacks are commanded by penny-ante crooks who are able to harness millions of low-powered, insecure Internet of Things devices like smart lightbulbs to do their bidding.

  Symantec reports on the rising trend in IoT malware, which attack systems that “may not include any advanced security features” and are “designed to be plugged in and forgotten” without “any firmware updates” so that “infection of such devices may go unnoticed by the owner.”

  The USA and China are the two countries where people own most of these things, so they’re also where most of the malicious traffic originates. Symantec ran a honeypot that recorded attempts to login and compromise a system that presented as a vulnerable IoT device, and found that the most common login attempts used the default passwords of “root” and “admin,” suggesting that malware authors have discovered that IoT owners rarely change these defaults. Other common logins include “123456,” “test” and “oracle.”

• Meet Linux.Mirai Trojan, a DDoS nightmare

• Linux.Mirai Trojan Carries Out DDoS Attacks

• Fears of a hacked election may keep 1 out of every 5 voters home, says report

  Recent hacks of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and election databases have increased fears that cybercriminals will try to interfere with the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

  Concerns leading up to election day on November 8 could have a real impact on voter turnout, according to a study from cybersecurity firm Carbon Black. More than one in five registered U.S. voters may stay home on election day because of fears about cybersecurity and vote tampering, the study — an online survey of 700 registered voters aged 18-54 — found.

• Hostile Web Sites

  I was asked whether it would be safe to open a link in a spam message with wget. So here are some thoughts about wget security and web browser security in general.

• Bug Bounty Hunters Can Earn $1.5 Million For A Successful Jailbreak Of iOS 10

• How To Ensure Trustworthy, Open Source Elections [Ed: This reminds us Microsoft must be kicked out of election process [1, 2]

  A strong democracy hinges not only on the right to vote but also on trustworthy elections and voting systems. Reports that Russia or others may seek to impact the upcoming U.S. presidential election—most recently, FBI evidence that foreign hackers targeted voter databases in Arizona and Illinois—has brought simmering concerns over the legitimacy of election results to a boil.

• Source Code for IoT Botnet ‘Mirai’ Released

  The source code that powers the “Internet of Things” (IoT) botnet responsible for launching the historically large distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against KrebsOnSecurity last month has been publicly released, virtually guaranteeing that the Internet will soon be flooded with attacks from many new botnets powered by insecure routers, IP cameras, digital video recorders and other easily hackable devices.

  The leak of the source code was announced Friday on the English-language hacking community Hackforums. The malware, dubbed “Mirai,” spreads to vulnerable devices by continuously scanning the Internet for IoT systems protected by factory default or hard-coded usernames and passwords.

Defence/Aggression

• Pentagon Paid for Fake ‘Al Qaeda’ Videos

  The Pentagon gave a controversial UK PR firm over half a billion dollars to run a top secret propaganda program in Iraq, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal.

  Bell Pottinger’s output included short TV segments made in the style of Arabic news networks and fake insurgent videos which could be used to track the people who watched them, according to a former employee.

  The agency’s staff worked alongside high-ranking U.S. military officers in their Baghdad Camp Victory headquarters as the insurgency raged outside.

  Bell Pottinger’s former chairman Lord Tim Bell confirmed to the Sunday Times, which has worked with the Bureau on this story, that his firm had worked on a “covert” military operation “covered by various secrecy documents.”

  Bell Pottinger reported to the Pentagon, the CIA and the National Security Council on its work in Iraq, he said.

• As Brazil’s New Ruler Admits Lie Behind Impeachment, US Press Closes Eyes

  The Intercept‘s Inacio Vieira notes that the economic plan that Rousseff refused to implement called for widespread cuts to social programs and privatization, a radically different agenda from the one approved by the 54.5 million Brazilian voters who gave Rousseff’s Workers’ Party its fourth electoral victory in 2014.

  But Temer’s remarkable confession was not seen as newsworthy by virtually anyone in US corporate media—though the New York Times (9/19/16) did report on the speech by Temer to the United Nations a few days earlier in which he insisted in reference to the impeachment, “Everything happened with absolute respect for the constitutional order.”

• When Is Direct Military Intervention Not Direct Military Intervention?

  “President Obama has long refused to approve direct military intervention in Syria,” the New York Times asserted in an editorial (9/29/16) about “Vladimir Putin’s Outlaw State.”

  That’s a peculiar thing to say, given that the Times regularly covers the United States’ ongoing direct military intervention in Syria. Since 2014, according to official Pentagon figures, the US has carried out 5,337 airstrikes in Syria. According to the monitoring group Airwars, these airstrikes (along with a few hundred strikes by US allies) have likely killed between 818 and 1,229 Syrian civilians.

  Nor is direct US military intervention in Syria limited to aerial attacks. In May 2015, the New York Times (5/16/15) reported on a combat raid by US Delta Force commandos in eastern Syria. Later that year, the Times (10/30/15) observed that President Barack Obama had announced he was sending (in the paper’s words) “several dozen” special forces troops on an “open-ended mission” inside Syria.

• It’s Personal Now: Apologizing to My Daughter for the Last 15 Years of War

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  I recently sent my last kid off for her senior year of college. There are rituals to these things, and because dad-confessions are not among them, I just carried the boxes and kept quiet.

  But what I really wanted to say to her — rather than see you later, call this weekend, do you need money? — was: I’m sorry.

  Like all parents in these situations, I was thinking about her future. And like all of America, in that future she won’t be able to escape what is now encompassed by the word “terrorism.”

• Bring Back The Cold War

  Pundits have declared a “New Cold War.” If only!

• Colombia’s Santos, FARC scramble to revive peace after shock vote

  Colombia’s government and Marxist FARC guerrillas will scramble on Monday to revive a plan to end their 52-year war after voters rejected the hard-negotiated deal as too lenient on the rebels in a shock result that plunged the nation into uncertainty.

  Putting on a brave face after a major political defeat, President Juan Manuel Santos offered hope to those who backed his four-year peace negotiation with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Cuba.

  Latin America’s longest conflict has killed 220,000 people.

  “I will not give up, I will keep seeking peace until the last minute of my term,” he said moments after losing Sunday’s plebiscite to those who want a re-negotiation of the deal or an obliteration of the FARC on the battlefield.

• Colombia’s Brexit moment as politicians misjudge popular anger at Farc amnesty

  Colombia’s rejection of a peace deal with Farc rebels to end 52 years of war does not mean an automatic return to hostilities, but it makes the possibility of peace, which had looked close enough to touch, once again a faraway prospect.

  All the pieces were in place to begin implementation of a deal that was four years in the making after talks between government and Farc negotiators in Havana. The Farc had ratified the accord at a national conference, President Juan Manuel Santos and Farc leader Timochenko had signed it in a public ceremony and UN monitors were ready to oversee the bringing together and disarmament of the Farc’s 5,800 fighters. The Nobel committee was reportedly considering a peace prize for Colombia.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Bees added to US endangered species list for the first time

  Seven types of bees once found in abundance in Hawaii have become the first bees to be added to the US federal list of endangered and threatened species.

  The listing decision, published on Friday in the Federal Register, classifies seven varieties of yellow-faced or masked bees as endangered, due to such factors as habitat loss, wildfires and the invasion of non-native plants and insects.

  The bees, so named for yellow-to-white facial markings, once crowded Hawaii and Maui but recent surveys found their populations have plunged in the same fashion as other types of wild bees – and some commercial ones – elsewhere in the United States, federal wildlife managers said.

Finance

• How Donald Trump could have – legally – paid no taxes

  Trump claimed a $916 million loss in 1995, according to a few pages from his state tax returns obtained by the New York Times.

  Because of how Trump structured his businesses and because of the vast array of tax breaks available to real estate developers, it’s a loss that he could have used to reduce the income tax he might otherwise owe.

  CNN has not independently verified the authenticity of the documents published by the New York Times.

• ‘The Gender Pay Gap Follows Women Into All Areas’

  Janine Jackson: Every now and again, media will release a list of “best places to work if you’re a woman,” citing companies that treat women, well, fairly. Surely meant to be a spotlight on good guys, these features give the dispiriting impression that fair treatment for women at work is a matter of noblesse oblige, and the onus is on women to shop around till they find a job where they won’t be discriminated against.

  A fundamental reflection of that discrimination is, of course, the gender pay gap. The census data used to figure out the pay gap was released recently, and the American Association of University Women has put together their report analyzing it. Here to talk about where we’re at is Kevin Miller, senior researcher at AAUW and author of the new report, The Simple Truth About the Gender Pay Gap. He joins us now by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome to CounterSpin, Kevin Miller.

• Post-Debate, NYT Scores Points on Trade–Not So Much on Accuracy

  While China has recently been trying to keep up the value of its currency by selling reserves, it still holds more than $4 trillion in foreign reserves, counting its sovereign wealth fund. This is more than four times the holdings that would typically be expected of a country its size. These holdings have the effect of keeping down the value of China’s currency.

  If this seems difficult to understand, the Federal Reserve now holds more than $3 trillion in assets as a result of its quantitative easing programs of the last seven years. It raised its short-term interest rate by a quarter point last December; nonetheless, almost all economists would agree the net effect of the Fed’s actions is to keep interest rates lower than they would otherwise be. The same is true of China and its foreign reserve position.

  The piece goes on to say that NAFTA has “for more than two decades has been widely counted as a main achievement of her husband,” Bill Clinton. It doesn’t say who holds this view. The deal did not lead to a rise in the US trade surplus with Mexico, which was a claim by its proponents before its passage. It also has not led to more rapid growth in Mexico, which has actually fallen further behind the United States in the two decades since NAFTA.

• Alice O’Connor on the Politics of Poverty

  This week on CounterSpin: New data showing a drop in the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line is being rightly celebrated. But if eliminating poverty is really our goal, wouldn’t there be keener interest in asking exactly why the number went down—or what it means that it didn’t go down for everyone? For that matter, is monitoring the ups and downs in the poverty rate really the most useful way to think about the problem of persistent social inequity and hardship—or the best measure of the adequacy of the responses we’ve developed?

  We talk about the limits of how we talk about poverty with Alice O’Connor. She’s a professor of history at the University of California/Santa Barbara and author of Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy and the Poor in 20th Century US History.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Why Facts Don’t Matter to Donald Trump or the 2016 Electorate

  Between the hours of 3 AM and 5 AM Friday morning, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump went on a tweetstorm in which he was, you know, just saying that maybe Hillary Clinton helped former Miss Universe (and a target of Trump’s misogyny) Alicia Machado become a US citizen “so she could use her in the debate.”

  Is that true? Almost certainly not—but in this election season, truth and facts hardly seem to matter. Trump’s attacks on Machado are just the latest data point in an election cycle that has seen wild speculation, rampant exaggeration, and outright lies become accepted as fact by huge swaths of the electorate on both sides of the aisle.

• Challenge Donald Trump: The media needs to stop acting like the Republican nominee is reality TV

  According to the most recent polls — Donald Trump is now leading Hillary Clinton in the critical swing states of Ohio and Florida.

  And if their behavior in the primaries is any indication — the U.S. media is about to deliver this nation into the hands of Donald J. Trump, and there’s probably very little any of us can do about it.

  The “how” of this has played out in front of us for a year: While Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were debating issues on the Democratic side — and being largely ignored — Trump was getting wall-to-wall coverage as he bullied his Republican opponents in the primary.

  So the “how” was grounded in editorial and business decisions about who to cover and how.

• Trump Tax Records Obtained by The Times Reveal He Could Have Avoided Paying Taxes for Nearly Two Decades

  Donald J. Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years, records obtained by The New York Times show.

  The 1995 tax records, never before disclosed, reveal the extraordinary tax benefits that Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, derived from the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

  Tax experts hired by The Times to analyze Mr. Trump’s 1995 records said that tax rules especially advantageous to wealthy filers would have allowed Mr. Trump to use his $916 million loss to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income over an 18-year period.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Google Piracy Takedown Requests Double in a Year, Set New Record

  Google is coping with a continuous increase of takedown requests from copyright holders who are targeting pirate sites in its search results. The company currently processes a record-breaking 24 million links to “pirate” pages per week, which is more than double the amount it received around the same time last year.

• Banned-Books Week

  Banned-Books Week 2016 is here, and Mickey spends the hour in conversation with three defenders of the “freedom to read.” They explore some of the ways in which students’ access to books can be inhibited. In keeping with this year’s BBW theme of “diversity”, the guests note that most books targeted for removal from school library shelves are by and about people of color, LGBT individuals, or people with disabilities.

• Jailed Singapore teen blogger Amos Yee looks for ‘free haircuts in prison’

  Teen blogger Amos Yee, who stoked controversy with rants on Singapore’s national icon and former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, has been sentenced to six weeks in prison on charges of offending religious feelings.

  A court in Singapore awarded a 38-day prison sentence to the 17-year-old after he pleaded guilty to six charges of “wounding religious feelings” of Muslims and Christians.

• Racists are using these code-words online to avoid censorship

  Skittles aren’t just candies. Skype isn’t just a VoIP service. Google, Bing, and Yahoo aren’t just search engines. In fact, these are all codewords that are used by racists online in order for them to skirt censorship.

• How censorship breeds violence

• Anyone who shares religious satire on Facebook should care about this murder in Jordan

• Why a Jordanian Writer Was Killed in Amman

• Jordan vows crackdown on online incitement

• Milo Tour Reveals Insidious ‘Security Fee Censorship’

Privacy/Surveillance

• There’s exactly one way to prevent misuse of surveillance data: to never collect it in the first place

  A key conclusion in my latest column deserves elaboration: why all available empiric data tells us that the only way to prevent misuse of surveillance data is to never collect it in the first place. This is a very unpopular fact with surveillance hawks, but it’s nevertheless the truth: all collected surveillance data will be abused and turned against the citizen, and that with a mathematical level of certainty.

  While it can’t be logically proven that all surveillance data has been misused and that the surveillance power has been abused, there comes a point in time in any activity where all available empiric data gives the same indication of failure forcefully enough to make people stop and ask “hey, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea”. We’re there with the so-called War on Drugs, we’re there with a number of activities, but the establishment is still fighting forcefully for more surveillance – even though all the data against it is there, and has been for decades.

  Let’s take one example of a super-benign data collection. Around 125 years ago, the Netherlands wanted to serve their citizens better in city planning to make sure everybody had a place of worship nearby, so they started collecting data on people’s faith and where they lived, in order to make sure everybody had a short distance to walk to places of worship.

  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this on the surface, right? Making sure people have access to services? And yet, this is squarely in the “what could possibly go wrong” category.

• Shadow Brokers rant about people wanting stolen NSA-linked hacking tools for free

  The hacking group trying to auction off NSA-linked Equation Group hacking tools is unhappy because no one has coughed up the big bucks yet to buy the exploits.

  On Saturday, the Shadow Brokers took to Medium to release the group’s third message. The hackers sound hurt that people don’t trust them and – if cursing is any indication – the hackers are angry that the Equation Group cyber weapons auction has flopped so far.

Civil Rights/Policing

• This U.S. chess champion is missing the world contest in Iran to protest country’s hijab policy

  One female chess player is protesting Iran’s hijab laws by missing the world tournament.

  Nazi Paikidze-Barnes is the reigning U.S. women’s chess champion. But she won’t be going to the Women’s World Championship being held there in February.

  She explained her decision on Friday in a Facebook post in which she called the World Chess Federation’s decision to have the contest in Tehran “unacceptable.”

  SEE ALSO: Models in hijabs make history at New York Fashion Week

  “I think it’s unacceptable to host a WOMEN’S World Championship in a place where women do not have basic fundamental rights and are treated as second-class citizens,” she wrote on the site.

• O.C. Woman Says Airline Made Her Move Because 2 Pakistani Monks Can’t Sit Next To Female

  An Orange County woman said she is the victim of discrimination.

  Mary Campos says her pre-booked ticket was given away by United Airlines. The reason? She’s a woman, and two men didn’t want to sit next to a female.

  It’s a story that is Only On 2. Stacey Butler spoke to Campos.

  A a million-mile flier, Campos — a mom who lives in Coto de Caza — said she thought she’d seen it all.

  Until a gate agent handed her a new boarding pass just before she got on a flight to Houston last Monday.

  “He said this is your new seat,” Campos said, “And I said, ‘Excuse me?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this’”

  She said she continued by saying, “Yes?”

  [...]

  The letter said, in part, “What if I were handicapped, or transgender?” she wrote. “What if your entire crew were female? Any belief that prevents individuals from interacting with females should not travel on commercial aircraft.”

  She got a reply that said United would look into it. She said she didn’t hear from them again.

  But Butler did. A company spokesperson wrote, in part:

  “We regret that Ms. Campos was unhappy with the handling of the seat assignments on her flight. United holds its employees to the highest standards of professionalism and has zero tolerance for discrimination.”

• Egyptian MP calls for women to undergo virginity tests before being admitted to university

  An Egyptian MP has called for women to be forced to undergo virginity tests before being admitted to university, it has been reported.

  Parliamentary member Elhamy Agina called on the Minister of Higher Education to issue a mandate requiring him or his officials to enforce the virginity tests, Egyptian Streets reports. He has suggested that university cards could only been issued to female students on completition of a virginity test.

  In an interview with local media, he said: “Any girl who enters university, we have to check her medical examination to prove that she is a Miss. Therefore, each girl must present an official document upon being admitted to university stating she’s a Miss.”

  The term “Miss” in Egyptian culture is often used to refer euphemistically as to whether a woman is a virgin.

• Operators of baby factory risk 10 years imprisonment

  Henceforth, operators of baby factories, racketeering with human pregnancy and those involved in sale of new born baby across the country on conviction by Court of any competent jurisdiction will be subjected to 10 years imprisonment.

  The punitive measure was contained in the bill for an Act to amend “trafficking in persons (Prohibition) law enforcement and administration Act No. 28 of 2005 to prohibit racketeering with human pregnancy or operation of baby prosecution factory, harbouring or pregnancy persons under the age of 18 and above or selling or attempting to sell new born baby and for related matters, 2016.”

• California Governor Signs Major Civil Forfeiture Reform – Institute for Justice

  Today, California Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 443, a major overhaul of the state’s civil forfeiture laws. The bill marks one of the nation’s most significant reforms of its kind.

  “Civil forfeiture is one of the most serious assaults on due process and private property rights in America today,” said Institute for Justice Legislative Counsel Lee McGrath. “By generally requiring a criminal conviction, SB 443 would go far in curbing this abuse of power.”

• Don’t Abandon Due Process, Not Even For Terrorism

  The clash in American history between liberty and safety is as old as the republic itself. As far back as 1798, notwithstanding the lofty goals and individualistic values of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the same generation — in some cases the same human beings — that wrote in the First Amendment that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech” enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, which punished speech critical of the government.

  Similarly, the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process has been ignored by those in government charged with enforcing it when they deal with a criminal defendant whom they perceive the public hates or fears. So it should come as no surprise that no sooner had the suspect in the recent New Jersey and New York City bombings been arrested than public calls came to strip him of his rights, send him to Gitmo and extract information from him. This is more Vladimir Putin than James Madison.

• Big Papers Want Foreign Companies, Not War Crime Victims, to Sue US

  Notice that the possibility of other countries suing the US for war crimes its government commits is automatically assumed to be undesirable. The Washington Post puts “terrorism” in irony quotes because, of course, the US could never actually commit terrorism; claims to this effect could only be invoked “when convenient” by greedy non-Americans.

  The New York Times uses its trademark euphemisms to describe how the US is “engaged in the world” with “drone operations.” A nice way of saying the US uses drones to bomb people in a half-dozen countries with—so far—legal impunity. Changing this state of affairs is simply glossed over as a nonstarter.

  USA Today frames any attempt at legal recourse over American terrorism overseas as “retaliation”—presumably for some righteous kill executed by the United States in the service of freedom.

  The New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today are saying that exposing American military and intelligence personnel to foreign liability is per se bad—a nativism so casual and matter-of-fact one might hardly notice it until circumstances force them to explicitly state it. No account is taken of the 7 billion non-Americans or their rights. No explanation is given as to why victims of US terror–of which there are many–shouldn’t register in our moral calculus. They just don’t.

  The irony is that none of these publications were overly concerned with exposing the US to foreign lawsuits when they offered support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a corporate trade deal that includes a provision for Investor-State Dispute Settlement—meaning it permits corporations to sue governments, including the US, in the event that a regulation undermines corporate profits. So increased exposure to liability to the US government when it gives more power to corporations is permissible, even desirable, but when it might provide recourse for victims of US war crimes? Not so much.

• Death threats force Muslim woman into hiding

  Liberal Party politician Mostafa Geha was one of several speakers at the demo, arranged by the local Liberal Party and GAPH, an organisation against “honour violence.” It came in response to a sustained campaign of intimidation and violence on 21-year-old Walaa, who lives in Hedemora.

  In an interview with local radio station P4 Dalarna, she claimed that she has been harassed by both men and women in the town for “not living in the right way”. Tension heightened during a confrontation when she was hit in the face by a young man who had been harassing her over a long period.

  Walaa reported the incident to the police but in the following days the row spread over social media and the story was picked up by local Liberal Party leaders.

  “I decided we should organise a demonstration because that is the way we solve conflict in Sweden. We do it by trying to hold a discussion and say “this is not right”, Anna Eling, chairperson for the Liberals in Hedemora told TT.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• US government no longer manages internet’s technical functions

  The US government has ceded control of the technical management of the internet, in what has been called the “most significant change in the internet’s functioning for a generation”.

  Following a long legal battle, the California-based NGO Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will gain control over the organisation of unique online identifiers.

  The change will not affect ordinary internet users but is a reflection of the rapidly shifting online landscape and attitudes to it.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • “If KickassTorrents is a Criminal Operation, Google Should Start Worrying”

    Polish authorities have extended the arrest of Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of KickassTorrents. His defense team is currently preparing to fight the U.S. extradition request, which will start next month. According to Artem’s U.S. lawyer, operating a torrent site is not a criminal offense. “If KickassTorrents is a criminal operation, then Google should start worrying,” he says.

  • Watching Pirate Streams Isn’t Illegal, EU Commission Argues

    This week the European Court of Justice heard a crucial case that will give more clarity on the infringing nature of unauthorized streaming. Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN and the Spanish authorities argued that offering or watching pirate streams is a violation of the EU Copyright Directive. However, the European Commission believes that consumers who watch unauthorized streams are not breaking the law. […]

    Based on the hearing the Advocate General will issue a recommendation later this year, which will be followed by a final verdict from the EU Court of Justice somewhere early 2017.

  • Record Label Picks Copyright Fight — With The Wrong Guy

    An Australian record label may have picked a fight with the wrong guy. The label sent a standard takedown notice threatening to sue after YouTube computers spotted its music in a video.

    It turns out that video was posted by one of the most famous copyright attorneys in the world, and Lawrence Lessig is suing back.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac: the channel comparison

Linux is open source meaning you can customise and modify the code any which way you like. This flexibility has made the system hugely popular amongst the developer community. This is not the same in Windows and Mac. Neither the Windows and Mac programmes nor the operating systems are open source.

So there we have it, three entirely different operating systems offering unique experiences that can meet the differing demands of the modern user, whilst offering unique opportunities throughout the channel. So the real question now is, are you a Mac Linux or Windows user?

Linux Journal October 2016

There was a show a few years back called, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”. The premise of the show was to find families who needed their houses overhauled, but couldn’t afford to do it on their own. Generally, those chosen had sacrificed for others rather than spend time and money on themselves. Then the show would completely redo their houses, making it so nice the happy families no longer could afford the taxes, and they’d soon be homeless. I might have missed the point of the show, but the idea of improving on outdated infrastructure certainly rings true for IT folks. This month, we look at improving our lives by improving on the tech we depend on every day.

Desktop

• Xiaomi Notebook Air vs Macbook Air / Linux vs MacOS vs Windows 10

Server

• Kubernetes 1.4 Improves Container Security

  The latest release of the open-source container orchestration technology adds new security features, including TLS bootstrap.
  The open-source Kubernetes 1.4 release, which debuted Sept. 26, provides users with a host of enhanced security capabilities for container deployment and orchestration.

  Kubernetes originated at Google and is now part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, benefiting from the contributions of multiple vendors.

  Among the new features in Kubernetes 1.4 is TLS bootstrap, which is designed to improve the use of encryption for data in motion across a cluster. TLS (Transport Layer Security) is widely used on the internet today for encryption.

  “The TLS bootstrapping work done in Kubernetes 1.4 is a step toward automating the addition of new hosts to the Kubernetes cluster,” Clayton Coleman, Red Hat’s lead architect for OpenShift, explained to eWEEK.

Kernel Space

• Why kernel development still uses email

  In a world full of fancy development tools and sites, the kernel project’s dependence on email and mailing lists can seem quaintly dated, if not positively prehistoric. But, as Greg Kroah-Hartman pointed out in a Kernel Recipes talk titled “Patches carved into stone tablets”, there are some good reasons for the kernel community’s choices. Rather than being a holdover from an older era, email remains the best way to manage a project as large as the kernel.

  In short, Greg said, kernel developers still use email because it is faster than any of the alternatives. Over the course of the last year, the project accepted about eight changes per hour — every hour — from over 4,000 developers sponsored by over 400 companies. It must be doing something right. The list of maintainers who accepted at least one patch per day contains 75 entries; at the top of the list, Greg himself accepted 9,781 patches over the year. Given that he accepts maybe one third of the patches sent his way, it is clear that the patch posting rate is much higher than that.

  Finding tools that can manage that sort of patch rate is hard. A poor craftsman famously complains about his tools, Greg said, but a good craftsman knows how to choose excellent tools.

  So which tools are available for development work? Greg started by looking at GitHub, which, he said, has a number of advantages. It is “very very pretty” and is easy to use for small projects thanks to its simple interface. GitHub offers free hosting and unlimited bandwidth, and can (for a fee) be run on a company’s own infrastructure. It makes life easy for the authors of drive-by patches; Greg uses it for the usbutils project and gets an occasional patch that way.

• Fireside Chat with David Rusling and Linus Torvalds

• The Problem with Linux Kernel Documentation, and How We’re Fixing it

  The Linux Kernel has one of the biggest communities in the open source world; the numbers are impressive: over 4,000 contributors per year, resulting in about 8 changes per hour. That results in 4,600 lines of code added every day and a major release every 9-10 weeks. With these impressive numbers, it’s impossible for a traditional printed book to follow the changes because by the time the book is finally written, reviewed and published, a lot of changes have already merged upstream. So, the best way to maintain updated documentation is to keep it close to the source code. This way, when some changes happen, the developer that wrote such changes can also update the corresponding documents. That works great in theory, but it is not as effective as one might think.

• How To Use Systemd For Application Sandboxing & How To Easily Crash Systemd

  Another one of the interesting systemd.conf 2016 presentations in Berlin was a talk by Djalal Harouni of EndoCode for using systemd to carry out application sandboxing.

• Graphics Stack

  • Experimental Unity Vulkan Demos For Linux

    Some of the exciting news this week was Unity releasing their Vulkan renderer in preview form and this initial debut did contain Linux support. There are now some unofficial Unity demos built for Linux with the Vulkan renderer enabled.

    Levi Bard is hosting some sample Linux player builds with the Vulkan preview support enabled. There are two demos currently offered: Corridor Lighting Example and Viking Village. There are both x86 and x86_64 builds and should work with newer Vulkan Linux drivers.

  • The Talos Principle native radv vulkan amdgpu (SI)

  • We Might Never See A New OpenGL Version, At Least Not For A Long Time

    During past Khronos press briefings about OpenGL/Vulkan and in other communications, while Vulkan is the organization’s big graphics API focus, it was implied during these conversations that OpenGL would continue to march to its own beat and evolve as needed. While OpenGL continues to be significantly used by cross-platform graphics application/game developers, it turns out there might not be a new official version for a long time – if ever.

Applications

• Say not Goodbye, say Sayonara

  Sayonara is a new little player. But that’s it. If you don’t like its looks or the particular way it brings you songs, there is no reason for you to use it over any other generic player of choice you can find in your distro. Don’t get me wrong, work it does, yes, with an odd error or five, but then every other one offers pretty much the same bevy of features, pretty much the same experience. There’s nothing revolutionary in Sayonara to warrant extra chance, extra time. It’s as good as the rest, and then equally lacking, making it ill suited for the modern aural topography.

  Apart from the obvious stability and usability, I would love to see an easy way to integrate online streaming services, an ability to buy music directly through the player, some way to port and sync my collections, as well as better connectivity to external devices. It is Year 2016, and we can’t be so casual about the fact there’s an entire world out there built and designed to be consumed at 0.99 dollars per transaction. I’m not saying that’s all there is, but having this whole new world added into the player, as an optional extra, would make Sayonara far more appealing to a much wider audience. And it could also potentially help transform the world of Linux applications to a higher level. But the investment needed is dauntingly complex and big. Perhaps we won’t see it any time soon. Or maybe we will. Let us see what the next edition of Sayonara brings us. Worth testing, for sure, so do it.

• Luatex 1.0.0 announcement

  After some ten years of development and testing, today we have released LuaTeX 1.0.0! Instead of staying below one and ending up with versions like 0.99.1234, we decided that the moment is there to show the TeX audience that LuaTeX is stable enough to loose its beta status. Although functionality has evolved and sometimes been replaced, we have been using LuaTeX in production right from the start. Of course there are bugs and for sure we will fix them.

• Desktop app snap in 300KB

  KDE Neon developer Harald Sitter was able to package up the KDE calculator, kcalc, in a snap that weighs in at a mere 320KB! How did he do it?

• 7 Best Free Online Radio Apps for Linux Users

  Music is a breather in this fast life style of us. Music has been in our habits for centuries. In the olden days, it was the stages enact that people enjoyed or the street performers that entertained thousands. With the change in time and technology things are better and faster nowadays. Now, Music is not just meant for entertainment, it became huge business all round the world and has been a very successful industry since then with glamour and style within. Music is a source of stress buster.

  The world has changed from the old days to these days of technologies where people prefer faster and better life. People spend most of their hectic life at work. Although there are several ways of entertainment during the holidays and of the work period, Music is one such source that most people prefer for entertainment. One can enjoy Music in radio and MP3 players which are very popular everywhere nowadays. From shopping malls to multi complexes you can find these radio stations playing all over the places. With a broad range of Music and television serials has been successful in attracting thousands of people all round the world.

• issue #47: OpenSSL, ripgrep, httpstat, CouchDB, Latency & more!

• mailcow 0.14 is final

• BubbleKern

  At ATypI 2016 in Warsaw, Toshi Omagari presented an open-source tool he has developed to partially automate the repetitive task of generating kerning data for fonts. The program is called BubbleKern and, although it does not fully automate the kerning process, it may strike a balance that many font designers find useful.

  Kerning traditionally referred to carving cutouts into the physical metal sorts for particular letters, Omagari said, which we would today refer to as negative sidebearings. It enabled letters with an overhang, like “f”, which could otherwise not fit next to standard letters. The wood-type printing era used an approach more like what is done in digital type today, however. Many standard blocks would be cut down so that would fit together more closely. The visual gap between problematic pairs like “AW” is a common example; Omagari showed images of wood-type blocks cut down with carpentry tools to produce a better fit. That fine-tuning is akin to what designers do in digital type.

• Variations fonts and OpenType 1.8

  The first day of the 2016 ATypI conference was marked by the release of a major update to the OpenType font format. A panel of speakers representing the major players in font technology over the past several decades announced the update together. Although there are several changes under the hood, the key new feature is the ability for a single font file to encode sets of delta values that programs can use to automatically interpolate changes in font weight, width, and other features, each throughout a continuous range. When software support is fully rolled out, that will all but eliminate the need to distribute font families as collections of individual font files, as well as removing many longstanding assumptions about font usage.

• 11 Best Graphical Git Clients and Git Repository Viewers for Linux

  Git is a free and open source distributed version control system for software development and several other version control tasks. It is designed to cope with everything from small to very large projects based on speed, efficiency and data integrity.

  Linux users can manage Git primarily from the command line, however, there are several graphical user interface (GUI) Git clients that facilitate efficient and reliable usage of Git on a Linux desktop and offer most, if not all of the command line operations.

  Therefore, below is a list of some of the best Git front-ends with a GUI for Linux desktop users.

• Progress – A Tiny Tool to Monitor Progress for (cp, mv, dd, tar, etc.) Commands in Linux

  Progress, formerly known as Coreutils Viewer, is a light C command that searches for coreutils basic commands such as cp, mv, tar, dd, gzip/gunzip, cat, grep etc currently being executed on the system and shows the percentage of data copied, it only runs on Linux and Mac OS X operating systems.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to Install the Paprius Icon Theme for KDE on Kubuntu 16.04

  • Install Nextcloud on openSUSE Leap 42.1

  • Zsh magic: remove all raw photos that don’t have a corresponding JPEG

  • How to Fix “Username is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported” in Ubuntu

  • How to install and use KDEConnect on Ubuntu 16.04LTS

  • How to install OpenSC on IPFire Firewall

  • Learn How to Speed Up Websites Using Nginx and Gzip Module

  • Adding API dox generation to the build by CMake macros

  • How to Run Multiple Web Applications in One Apache Tomcat Server

  • Mount LVM filesystems in live session

  • Dave’s QML Binding Loop Backtrace Printer

  • How to Install Nmap From Source

  • Getting jiggy with Busybox and LD_PRELOAD

  • Advanced Multimedia on the Linux Command Line

  • Linux bcc Tracing Security Capabilities

  • Aspell and Hunspell: A Tale of Two Spell Checkers

  • How to Configure BIND On Linux (RHEL7/CentOS7)

  • How to Secure Your SSH Using Fail2Ban on CentOS 7

  • Arch Linux Hydra Build

  • How To Install and Configure Varnish with Apache on Ubuntu 16.04

  • How to use SSH keys for Authentication (for beginners)

  • Working with terrain in #FreeCAD

  • Making Viewer UIs for Pitivi

  • Install and Configure Chef Server on Ubuntu-14.04

  • Containerizing Graphical Applications On Linux With systemd-nspawn

  • Working with Logical Volume Management

  • Make the less Command More Powerful

  • How to install and run Dropbox from a headless Linux server

• Wine or Emulation

  • Wine Announcement

    The Wine development release 1.9.20 is now available.

  • Wine 1.9.20 Has New Clipboard API Reimplementation

    -
    Wine 1.9.20 is now available as the latest bi-weekly development release of this cross-platform program to run Windows programs/games on other operating systems.

  • The Wine Development Release 1.9.20 Is Now Available

  • Upcoming Native Xinput Support in WINE

    If you have ever looked at playing games on Linux through WINE, you are probably aware by now that there’s a bunch of hacks involved to getting a Xbox360 pad to work with games. Usually this means grabbing an older version of the little Windows tool called xbox360ce.exe, a few xinput dlls, and a xbox360 configuration file and dump that unholy mix into the Windows’ game’s folder, and pray that everything works as expected. It’s just like witchcraft, except that you won’t be burned for that anymore these days. Honestly, this situation is far from being satisfying. I know we all want clean ports for Linux anyway, but there’s always going to be a ton of games that will never get ported, and WINE can be a good solution for those. The less hackery tricks it needs to support controllers, the better.

• Games

  • The Humble Artifex Mundi Bundle has all its Hidden Object games with full Linux support

  • The Dolphin emulator for GameCube & Wii games merges in Vulkan support

  • Dolphin GameCube/Wii Emulator Lands Its Vulkan Backend

    The past few months we’ve written a few times about the Dolphin Emulator working on a Vulkan back-end. Dolphin is an open-source project providing cross-platform emulation for Nintendo’s GameCube and Wii games.

  • BUTCHER from Transhuman Design releases on the 5th, has a brutal new trailer

    I have an advanced copy and I can already say the Linux version works beautifully and it is rather gory. More thoughts after release.

  • ‘Cossacks 3′ officially due on Linux in the second half of October

    The developers of Cossacks 3 [Official Site, Steam] have now put up an official forum post on Steam about the Linux version. They say it will be officially available in the second half of October.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KDE neon Korean Developer Edition (… and future CJK Edition?)

    Among many other locations around the planet, the local community in Korea is planning to put on a KDE 20th Anniversary birthday party in Seoul on October 14th. The KDE neon Korean Developer Edition was directly created on request for this event, to be made available to attendees.

    That said – this is actually something we’ve been wanting to do for a while, and it’s not just about Korean.

    None of the bits that make up the new image are new per-se; KDE has supported Korean for a long time, both with foundational localization engineering and regular maintenance activity. And as of the Plasma 5.6 release, our Input Method Panel is finally bundled with the core desktop code and gets automatically added to the panel on first logon in a locale that typically requires an input method.

    Yet it’s pretty hard to keep all of this working well, as it requires tight integration and testing across an entire stack, with some parts of the whole living upstream or downstream of KDE.org. For example: After we attempted to make the Plasma panel smarter by making it auto-add the Input Method Panel depending on locale, we couldn’t actually be sure it was working as desired by our users, as it takes time for distros to get around to tuning their dependency profiles and for feedback from their users to loop back up to us. It’s a very long cycle, with too many opportunities to lose focus or domain knowledge to turnover along the way.

  • Qt Champion nominations for 2016 now open

  • MediaWikiToLearn Hackathon + Editathon

  • Mobile IMG 20160930-021219

  • KIO GDrive 1.0 released

    I’m happy to finally announce the first stable release of KIO GDrive. KIO GDrive enables KIO-aware applications (such as Dolphin, Kate or Gwenview) to access and edit Google Drive files on the cloud.

    Given the lack of an official Google Drive client for Linux, KIO GDrive can be used as replacement for managing your Drive files with Dolphin. Even better, you don’t have to use space on your disk! The files are still in the cloud, yet you can edit them as if they were locally stored on your machine.

    For example you can edit a text file in Kate or crop an image in Gwenview, and just save those files as you normally would. The edited file will be automatically uploaded on the cloud. This will also work with non-KIO applications, for example Libreoffice, but in this case a dialog will explicity ask if you want to upload the new version of the file.

  • In Defence for Permissive Licences; KDE licence policy update

  • My Adventures and Misadventures in Qt Quick Land

    I have the worst sense of timing when adopting technologies and always find myself at transition points. Python 2 to 3, OpenGL fixed to programmable pipeline, and Qt widgets to Qt Quick. Perhaps the most significant thing to come out of Nokia’s short stewardship of Qt, Qt Quick (originally Qt QUICK, or Qt User Interface Creation Kit) is perhaps the biggest, and somewhat most controversial, change in Qt in recent years. Unless The Qt Company makes a highly unlikely U-turn, it is also probably Qt’s future (without discarding regular widgets, of course). It is also definitely the future for Plasma, the KDE desktop. In fact, it is already its present. Of course, I just had to sink my teeth into it, if only briefly. Since I still wasn’t yet set firmly in the ways of the Widget, I thought it might be easier to wrap my head around this new way of coding. I was both wrong and right. Here is my story.

  • Qt on Android: How to create an Android service using Qt

  • Using Qt Quick for prototyping

  • KDAB talks at QtCon 2016

  • Tomorrow is a New Day – Joining Blue Systems

  • [Krita] New Stable and Development Builds

  • Kubuntu 16.10 Beta 2 is here! Test Test Test! And then more Testing

  • RFC: How to fix a tricky leak in QFormLayout?

  • Kirigami 1.1

  • Kirigami 1.1

  • Emoji restyling

    I started to restyling and try to finish the Emoji.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • An Introduction to GNOME Boxes (virtualization) on Linux

    GNOME Boxes is a system virtualization application that is a core part of the GNOME desktop environment. Based on the QEMU machine emulator, it offers a simplified and user-friendly approach to the whole OS virtualization idea. This post is just an introduction to its capabilities and a statement that it finally works in other distributions besides Fedora.

    Once you launch Boxes, you are greeted with a message to press the “New” button to add a new system. Doing so will let the application quickly search in your home folder to find any supported image files. You may either select from the list, navigate your disk, or even insert a URL address.

Distributions

• This Week in Solus – Install #36

  Welcome to the 36th installation of This Week in Solus.

• Reviews

  • Sabayon Bizarre But Useful

    Sabayon, which gets its name from the the Italian egg-derived dessert known as zabaione, is a distribution that we don’t hear too much about these days, although the British Linux press gave it some love a few years ago. It was unassuming…with a hint of mystery. I tried it back then, when I was still fairly new to actually using Linux and thought it was a nice effort, but a little too weird. That wasn’t their fault; that was mine. I was still clinging sharply to Ubuntu at the time. Plus, I was a bit more shallow in those days because I was really set on the idea that an operating system had to look good before I would really put some hours into using it. I still am in many respects. I’m just not crazy about boring.

    So when I approached Matt with the idea of documenting a revisitation to Sabayon, he greenlighted it immediately. Team Sabayon has been very busy. It still has a hint of mystique that I find very attractive. It’s got a lot of applications at default and offers you a lot of decision-making power as well. More on that later.

• Screenshots/Screencasts

  • What’s New in Elementary OS 0.4 Loki

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • Mesa, Kernel, GNOME, KDE apps update in Tumbleweed

    Another week and another five snapshots for openSUSE’s rolling release Tumbleweed produced updates for openSSL, GNOME 3.22, Mesa and the Linux Kernel.

    Dominique Leuenberger, a core member of the openSUSE release team, informed subscribers of the openSUSE Factory Mailing List about some of the packages that were updated during the week and some packages users can expect over the next couple of weeks.

    Snapshot 20160928 produced an update for openSSL to 1.0.2j, which patched a high severity Online Certificate Status Protocol vulnerability. The same snapshot also gave users the updated 4.7.5 Linux Kernel.

• Red Hat Family

  • Heads up: CentOS 5 goes end-of-life in 6 months

    So you have 6 months left to plan and execute a migration to a newer OS, like CentOS 7 (which’ll get you to 2024).

    Let’s face it, CentOS 5 has had it’s prime and is long due for a more modern replacement. Go and get the benefits of a more up-to-date kernel and packages!

  • Finance

    • Red Hat Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Receives $88.33 Consensus Target Price from Brokerages

    • Pay Close Attention To These Analyst Ratings Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT), Oracle Corp. (NYSE:ORCL)

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu Phone pre OTA 14 quick view

      • Canonical Brings Kubernetes to Ubuntu

        It appears as if the guys and gals at Canonical have been working overtime to stay ahead in the cloud, where its Linux distribution, Ubuntu, is the decisive winner as far as the number of deployments goes. Evidently, they’d like to keep it that way. On Tuesday the company unveiled its own fully supported enterprise distribution of Kubernetes. This comes only a week after the company announced it had worked with IBM to bring its own implementation of OpenStack to Big Blue’s hardware.

        If you don’t know, Kubernetes is a container tool for DevOps that was originally developed by Google but which is now managed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and available under the Apache open source license. To develop its own distribution, Ubuntu copied its IBM mainframe move and worked with the source, in this case Google. They’ve come up with what Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth is calling a “pure, vanilla version” of the platform.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Mintbox Mini Pro: A Cheap Linux Machine With Compelling Specs

          The Mintbox Mini has been received a major hardware upgrade and it is now called Mintbox Mini Pro. The Linux machine comes at a price of $395 and features an all-metal casing which eliminates the need for a cooling fan. Significant bumps having been given to the storage, RAM, processor, wireless, and other hardware components.

        • budgie-remix 16.10 beta 2 is now available

        • Addressing FUD

          I find it really despicable to see developers, maintainers and communities from competing projects create and spread FUD about Linux Mint in an effort to promote their own distribution.

          At this cost, getting more users is futile. Of course, a project needs a large audience to succeed, but what matters the most is how happy your users are. If you want your project to work, make it great. If you want to promote it, highlight your own work and efforts.

          At the time when Ubuntu was dominant in the Linux market, it continuously received a huge amount of FUD. It was unfair, it was stupid and frankly, it was embarrassing for the entire Linux community. It still is and it has gotten worse for us because we’re now receiving a significant chunk of that FUD, some of it coming from the very same project who already suffered so much from it.

        • Monthly News – September 2016

          Many thanks to you all for your help, support and donations. This month has been very exciting for us because the release cycle was over, the base jump to the new LTS base was achieved, we had plenty of ideas to implement, nothing got in our way and we could focus on development. Not only that but the development budget was high, and that’s thanks to you, and it tightens the bonds a little more between us. It makes everybody happy, some developers start looking for a new laptop, others use the money to relax. No matter how it’s used, it always helps, and because it helps them, it helps us.

          Another team was set up recently to gather artists and web designers who are interested in improving our websites. This is a new team, with 9 members who just started to get to know each others. It’s hard to predict how the team will evolve, or if it will be successful. It’s hard to know also who in this team might end up being central to our designs and maybe not only to our websites but also to our software, our user interfaces.

Devices/Embedded

• Raspberry Pi launches new PIXEL desktop environment

• Raspberry Pi Launches New PIXEL User Interface For Desktops

• Raspberry Pi Adds Beautiful “Pixel” Desktop Environment To Raspbian Linux Distro

• Meet Pixel, a gorgeous, much-needed visual overhaul for Raspberry Pi’s main distro

• Raspberry Pi’s most popular operating system gets a visual overhaul

• The New Raspberry Pi OS Is Here, And It Looks Great

• Raspberry Pi gets its own official desktop environment: PIXEL

• 50 Great Raspberry Pi Projects In Latest Mag Pi Magazine

• Raspberry Pi gets VNC remote access bundle with Raspbian

• Raspbian PIXEL offers major UX overhaul for Raspberry Pi owners

• Raspberry Pi Pixel: Desktop Operating System Environment Built on Debian

• Raspberry Pi Gets ‘More Visually Appealing’ Pixel Desktop OS

• Raspberry Pi operating system gets a visual upgrade with the launch of PIXEL

• The Slashdot Interview With Raspberry Pi Founder and CEO Eben Upton

• PIXEL is the new desktop environment for Raspberry Pi’s Raspbian OS

• Introducing PIXEL

• Phones

  • Android

    • Oracle loses another appeal in never-ending Google Java battle

      ORACLE HAS LOST its appeal in its long-running Java battle with Google, in which it suggested that APIs should be subject to copyright and demanded as much as $9.3bn in compensation from the latter.

      Oracle wanted a new case after a conclusion was again found in Google’s favour in May this year, and has repeatedly appealed the decision in the six years since the company first brought the dispute to court.

      In this particular appeal, Oracle has accused Google of failing to disclose its intent to develop tools to run Android on the desktop using the Android App Runtime for Chrome (ARC). It claimed that this invalidated Google’s previous argument that its use of Java APIs was limited to mobile devices and could be considered fair use.

      However, San Francisco District Court Judge William Aslup denied Oracle’s motion, stating that Oracle and Google had agreed that the case was only concerned with how Java APIs were used Android smartphones and tablets.

    • Android Circuit: Note 7 Nightmare Haunts Samsung, Goodbye Faithful BlackBerry, New Galaxy S8 Leaks

    • Google is finally kicking out unsupported cards from Android Pay in mid-October, causing people to freak out

Trainline creates open source platform to help developers deploy apps and environments in AWS

The Trainline, the independent rail ticket retailer, has created an open sourced standardised way for its developers to deploy and manage individual applications and environments in Amazon Web Services’ public cloud.

The company has 150 staff in its development area, who focus on improving user experience, and in order to ensure that its underlying infrastructure wasn’t a constraint on time to market, the firm recently migrated all of its development, staging, UAT and production environments from a legacy private data centre to Amazon’s public cloud.

Trainline creates open source platform to let developers test apps in AWS

Yahoo open-sources machine learning porn filter

Yahoo is the latest tech company to open source its computer vision code. The beleaguered outfit’s application for it? Filtering porn. Yahoo hopes that its convolutional neural net (CNN) will empower others to better guard innocent eyes, but admits that because of the tech’s very nature (and how the definition of “porn” can vary wildly), that the CNN isn’t perfect.

“This model is a general purpose reference model, which can be used for the preliminary filtering of pornographic images,” a post on the Yahoo Engineering Tumblr says. “We do not provide guarantees of accuracy of output, rather, we make this available for developers to explore and enhance as an open source project.” The code is available on Github at the moment, and if you need any testing material, well, there isn’t exactly a shortage of it on Tumblr. Just ask Indonesia.

Jahshaka VR alpha release

We have finally managed to release the alpha version of the Jahshaka VR authoring toolkit under the GPL and wanted to invite people to jump in, look at the code and help out. We have been working on it for 6 months now and its starting to stabilize.

Events

• The Linux Foundation Announces Session Lineup for ApacheCon(TM) Europe

• OpenShift Commons Gathering event preview

  We’re just two months out from the OpenShift Commons Gathering coming up on November 7, 2016 in Seattle, Washington, co-located with KubeCon and CloudNativeCon.

  OpenShift Origin is a distribution of Kubernetes optimized for continuous application development and multi-tenant deployment. Origin adds developer and operations-centric tools on top of Kubernetes to enable rapid application development, easy deployment and scaling, and long-term lifecycle maintenance for small and large teams. And we’re excited to say, the 1.3 GA release of OpenShift Origin, which includes Kubernetes 1.3, is out the door! Hear more about the release from Lead Architect for OpenShift Origin, Clayton Coleman.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Firefox ready to block certificate authority that threatened Web security

    The organization that develops Firefox has recommended the browser block digital credentials issued by a China-based certificate authority for 12 months after discovering it cut corners that undermine the entire transport layer security system that encrypts and authenticates websites.

    The browser-trusted WoSign authority intentionally back-dated certificates it has issued over the past nine months to avoid an industry-mandated ban on the use of the SHA-1 hashing algorithm, Mozilla officials charged in a report published Monday. SHA-1-based signatures were barred at the beginning of the year because of industry consensus they are unacceptably susceptible to cryptographic collision attacks that can create counterfeit credentials. To satisfy customers who experienced difficulty retiring the old hashing function, WoSign continued to use it anyway and concealed the use by dating certificates prior to the first of this year, Mozilla officials said. They also accused WoSign of improperly concealing its acquisition of Israeli certificate authority StartCom, which was used to issue at least one of the improperly issued certificates.

    “Taking into account all the issues listed above, Mozilla’s CA team has lost confidence in the ability of WoSign/StartCom to faithfully and competently discharge the functions of a CA,” Monday’s report stated. “Therefore we propose that, starting on a date to be determined in the near future, Mozilla products will no longer trust newly issued certificates issued by either of these two CA brands.”

  • Firefox gains serious speed and reliability and loses some bloat

    There’s no way around it. Firefox has struggled. As of this writing, Firefox 47 is the top of the Firefox market share heap at a scant 3.14 %. Given that Chrome 52 holds 23.96 % and IE 11 holds 17.74 %, the chances of Firefox displacing either, anytime soon, is slim. If you scroll way down on the browser market share listing, you’ll notice Firefox 49 (the latest release) is at .19 %. Considering 49 is the stable release candidate that was only recently unleashed, that is understandable (to a point).

    Thing is, Firefox 49 is a really, really good browser. But is it good enough to give the open source browser any significant gains in the realm of market share? Let’s take a look at what the Mozilla developers have brought to the fore with the latest release of their flagship browser and see how much hope it holds for the future of the software that was once leader among its peers.

  • Mozilla’s Project Mortar Wants Pepper API Flash & PDFium In Firefox

    This week word of Mozilla’s “Project Mortar” surfaced, which aims to explore the possibility of bringing the PDFium library and Pepper API based Flash plugin into Firefox. This project is being led by various Mozilla engineers.

    Mozilla is so far developing Project Mortar in private while they plan to open it up in the future.

SaaS/Back End

• What’s Happening in OpenStack-Ansible (WHOA) – September 2016

  Welcome to the fourth post in the series of What’s Happening in OpenStack-Ansible (WHOA) posts that I’m assembling each month. OpenStack-Ansible is a flexible framework for deploying enterprise-grade OpenStack clouds. In fact, I use OpenStack-Ansible to deploy the OpenStack cloud underneath the virtual machine that runs this blog!

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

• Top Microsoft Open Source Projects You Must Know [Ed: when this site isn’t just plagiarising legit news sites it actually engages in Microsoft openwashing and promotion]

• Circulate on Fridays: Open source self-driving cars, portable solar panels and more!

BSD

• Next Tech Book

  Instead, I’m starting a book on OpenBSD’s web stack.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• ​For lessons on digital swaraj, Gandhi is an open source

  Gandhi engaged with the copyright law to subvert the economics he disagreed with, and to infuse it with values close to his heart, wrote a US law professor in a 2013 paper titled ‘Gandhi and Copyright Pragmatism’. “Toward the later part of his life, he also came to deploy copyright law to curtail market-based exploitation when he could. In many ways then, Gandhi’s approach did with copyright law what open source licensing and the Creative Commons Project would begin doing with copyright in the 21st century,” wrote Shyamkrishna Balganesh of University of Pennsylvania Law School.

  Now, consider the life and work of Richard M Stallman (callsign RMS in the geek-verse). A champion of the movement for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), he is more commonly known as the pioneer of ‘Copyleft’. “If you want to accomplish something in the world,” says his Wikiquote page, “idealism is not enough — you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal. In other words, you need to be pragmatic.” RMS was among the first to call for a free online encyclopaedia. Wikipedia, no surprise, is governed by Creative Commons licensing.

• GNU project- the free software movement turns 33

  On September 27, 1983 he had announced the launch of GNU, which was a free software replacement for UNIX.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• A $5 Linux server, open source software in China, and more news

The makers of the video game “No Man’s Sky” are under investigation for false advertising

No Man’s Sky was billed as a revolutionary video game—one that contained such multitudes of programmatically generated planets and animals that the developers said even they weren’t sure what players would find in its vast universe.

Science

• Sexual harassment in STEM: ‘It’s tragic for society’

  These are the experiences of three women who spoke to CNN about a culture of pervasive sexual harassment in academia, especially in the sciences. They were harassed by different men, throughout different parts of their education and careers.
  “We see it in anthropology, we see it in philosophy, we see it in physics, we see it in the humanities, we see it in the social sciences. We see it in engineering in particular. Astronomy just happened to be, sort of, first” to get attention, said Alessondra Springmann, a rocket scientist at the University of Arizona who studies asteroids and comets.
  Distinguished scientists in the field of astronomy have been making headlines for harassing students they are supposed to be advising.
  And it’s happening at the same time as a nationwide push to get more American women into science careers. Young girls are increasingly encouraged to embrace STEM — the acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics — in elementary and middle school.

• 9 Bizarre and Surprising Insights from Data Science

  Data is the world’s most potent, flourishing unnatural resource. Accumulated in large part as the byproduct of routine tasks, it is the unsalted, flavorless residue deposited en masse as organizations churn away. Surprise! This heap of refuse is inherently predictive. Thus begins a gold rush to dig up insightful gems.

  Does crime increase after a sporting event? Do online daters more consistently rated as attractive receive less interest? Do vegetarians miss fewer flights? Does your e-mail address reveal your intentions?

Health/Nutrition

• Clinical Trial Reporting Biased; Full Disclosure, Transparency Needed, Speakers Say

  A conference on clinical drug trials held today shed a harsh light on the availability and honesty of clinical trial reports. Many factors concur to possible distortion of results, speakers said, calling for more stringent obligations to provide all data for analysis. They also noted legislative efforts to tackle the issue. Speakers also pointed out a growing trend for pharmaceutical companies to conduct clinical trials in developing countries.

• Developing Countries Should Be Able To Shield Their Markets From Cheap Food Imports, Panel Says

  On the first day of the World Trade Organization Public Forum, which took place from 27-29 September, a panel organised by Our World Is Not for Sale (OWINFS), and The Right to Food campaign, looked at ways to reduce hunger and achieving the right to food in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. In particular, the panel considered the possibility of developing countries investing in domestic production for food security.

• DEA has kratom users holding their breath, lawmakers write more letters

  Starting today, the US Drug Enforcement Administration is free to list a popular herbal supplement called kratom as a Schedule I controlled substance. This would put kratom in the same lineup as heroin and make its sale and use a felony. But, in statements to the press, the agency said it has no timetable for officially listing kratom—it could be next week or longer—leaving users on the edge of their seats.

  Since the DEA announced its plan to ban kratom at the end of last month, thousands of users have frantically sought to reverse the decision, as well as buy up as much of the drug as they can. Users claim kratom, or Mitragyna speciosa, a tree in the coffee family, is effective at treating chronic pain, as well as depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other ailments. The main active ingredients in kratom are mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, which can interact with opioid receptors in the brain. While the data to back up medical use of the plant is scant, users are adamant that it’s a lifesaver, allowing them to kick deadly and all-too-common opioid addictions.

Security

• Report: Linux security must be upgraded to protect future tech

  The summit was used to expose a number of flaws in Linux’s design that make it increasingly unsuitable to power modern devices. Linux is the operating system that runs most of the modern world. It is behind everything from web servers and supercomputers to mobile phones. Increasingly, it’s also being used to run connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices, including products like cars and intelligent robots.

• security things in Linux v4.6

  Hector Marco-Gisbert removed a long-standing limitation to mmap ASLR on 32-bit x86, where setting an unlimited stack (e.g. “ulimit -s unlimited“) would turn off mmap ASLR (which provided a way to bypass ASLR when executing setuid processes). Given that ASLR entropy can now be controlled directly (see the v4.5 post), and that the cases where this created an actual problem are very rare, means that if a system sees collisions between unlimited stack and mmap ASLR, they can just adjust the 32-bit ASLR entropy instead.

• Let’s Encrypt Wants to Help Improve the CA Model

  Let’s Encrypt, a non-profit effort that brings free SSL/TLS certificates to the web, was first announced in November 2014 and became a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project in April 2015. To date, it has provided more than 5 million free certificates.

  While having an SSL/TLS certificate to encrypt traffic is an important element of web security, it’s not the only one, said Josh Aas, executive director of the Internet Security Research Group and leader of Let’s Encrypt.

  “There is a lot in the total picture of what makes a website secure, and we can do a lot to help a certain part of it,” he said in a video interview.

• How to Throw a Tantrum in One Blog Post

  The systemd team has recently patched a local denial of service vulnerability affecting the notification socket, which is designed to be used for daemons to report their lifecycle and health information. Some people have used this as an opportunity to throw a fresh tantrum about systemd.

Defence/Aggression

• Rodrigo Duterte compares himself to Hitler and pledges to ‘slaughter three million drug addicts’

  The Philippine President has likened his national crackdown on drug crime to the Holocaust, saying he would be “happy” to kill as many addicts as Hitler slaughtered Jews.

  Rodrigo Duterte said he had been compared to a “cousin of Hitler” by critics during a press conference in southern Davao city on Friday. “Hitler massacred three million Jews… there’s three million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them,” he said.

  At least six million Jews and other minority groups are known to have been killed by the Nazis before and during the second world war.

  Since taking up office in June, Mr Duterte has overseen a vicious anti-drug campaign in which more than 3,000 suspected drug dealers and users are understood to have been killed by police operations or vigilantes. The bodies of those killed are often left in the streets with signs listing their crimes.

Finance

• Panic, Anxiety Spark Rush to Build Luxury Bunkers for L.A.’s Superrich

  Given the increased frequency of terrorist bombings and mass shootings and an under-lying sense of havoc fed by divisive election politics, it’s no surprise that home security is going over the top and hitting luxurious new heights. Or, rather, new lows, as the average depth of a new breed of safe haven that occupies thousands of square feet is 10 feet under or more. Those who can afford to pull out all the stops for so-called self-preservation are doing so — in a fashion that goes way beyond the submerged corrugated metal units adopted by reality show “preppers” — to prepare for anything from nuclear bombings to drastic climate-change events. Gary Lynch, GM at Rising S Bunkers, a Texas-based company that specializes in underground bunkers and services scores of Los Angeles residences, says that sales at the most upscale end of the market — mainly to actors, pro athletes and politicians (who require signed NDAs) — have increased 700 percent this year compared with 2015, and overall sales have risen 150 percent. “Any time there is a turbulent political landscape, we see a spike in our sales. Given this election is as turbulent as it is, we are gearing up for an even bigger spike,” says marketing director Brad Roberson of sales of bunkers that start at $39,000 and can run $8.35 million or more (FYI, a 12-stall horse shelter is $98,500).

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• USA TODAY’s Editorial Board: Trump is ‘unfit for the presidency’

  In the 34-year history of USA TODAY, the Editorial Board has never taken sides in the presidential race. Instead, we’ve expressed opinions about the major issues and haven’t presumed to tell our readers, who have a variety of priorities and values, which choice is best for them. Because every presidential race is different, we revisit our no-endorsement policy every four years. We’ve never seen reason to alter our approach. Until now.

  This year, the choice isn’t between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences. This year, one of the candidates — Republican nominee Donald Trump — is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency.

  From the day he declared his candidacy 15 months ago through this week’s first presidential debate, Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents.

  Whether through indifference or ignorance, Trump has betrayed fundamental commitments made by all presidents since the end of World War II. These commitments include unwavering support for NATO allies, steadfast opposition to Russian aggression, and the absolute certainty that the United States will make good on its debts. He has expressed troubling admiration for authoritarian leaders and scant regard for constitutional protections.

• A principled option for U.S. president: Endorsing Gary Johnson, Libertarian

  As Nov. 8 looms, a dismayed, disconsolate America waits and wonders: What is it about 2016?

  How has our country fallen so inescapably into political and policy gridlock? How did pandering to aggrieved niche groups and seducing blocs of angry voters replace working toward solutions as the coin of our governing class? How could the Democratic and Republican parties stagger so far from this nation’s political mainstream?

  And the most pressing question: What should tens of millions of voters who yearn for answers do with two major-party candidates they disdain? Polls show an unprecedented number of people saying they wish they had another choice.

• Jill Stein Eagerly Pointed Out All The Holes In The First Debate

  After being escorted away from Hofstra University ahead of the first presidential debate on Monday, Green party candidate Jill Stein took to Twitter to share her views as the two major party candidates faced off. Stein fell far short of the Commission on Presidential Debate’s requirement that candidates must be polling at 15 percent or more to earn a spot on the stage — Stein was averaging 3.2 percent, according to the commission. But still, she jumped on the opportunity to have her policies lined up next to Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s. Ultimately, Stein’s tweets made me wish she had debated on the main stage to present her extremely progressive politics.

  Stein’s policies skew much farther left than those of Clinton or Trump on nearly every issue — and even farther left than many of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposals. Given the impact that Sanders arguably had on Clinton’s positions throughout the primaries, it would have been interesting to see if Stein’s presence on the debate stage exerted a leftward pull on not only Clinton, but Trump as well. But more importantly, it would have been a service to the viewing public to hear from someone other than the major-party candidates, with whom the electorate is not thrilled.

• Poll: Desire for major third party grows

  Most Americans say that the country needs a third major political party according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.

  Fifty-seven percent say that the two major parties aren’t enough to represent the country’s voters.

  The majority opinion represents an increase from recent elections. In 2012, some 46 percent said a third party was needed.

  Those who currently want to see another major party include 73 percent of independents, 51 percent of Republicans and 43 percent of Democrats.

• Ukip denies that Farage is coaching Donald Trump for next debate

  Ukip has denied reports that Nigel Farage has flown to the US to coach the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, for his next debate with Hillary Clinton.

  Farage hinted in his farewell speech at Ukip’s conference last month that he might return to Trump’s side following an appearance with the Republican candidate in August, saying: “Who knows, I may even go back to the United States of America at some point.” Ukip sources at the conference also confirmed Farage would travel to the US to help support Trump before the election.

• Leaked Tape Exposes Hillary Mocking Bernie’s Supporters in Front of Big Donors

  The Democratic nominee said that Bernie’s supporters believed in a fictional world and are “living in their parents’ basement” hoping the United States becomes “Scandinavia, whatever that means.”

  A leaked audio recording of Hillary Clinton from a high-dollar fundraiser in February shows the Democratic nominee mocking not just progressive firebrand Bernie Sanders, but also the cadre of young supporters who favored the insurgent candidacy of the Vermont Senator, a revelation that is bound to have damning ramifications for Clinton’s campaign.

Censorship/Free Speech

• [Older] Facebook thanks Norway PM after censorship row [Ed: publicity stunt after an ugly act of revisionism by censorship]

  After a protracted debate on censorship and Facebook’s outsized role in today’s media world, the social media giant has thanked Prime Minister Erna Solberg for raising “important issues”.
  Facebook restored a post by Solberg which it had taken down over an iconic Vietnam War photo of a naked girl escaping a napalm bombing. The world’s leading social network later backtracked on the decision to remove the PM’s post, which is believed to be the first such online censorship involving a government leader.

• Evidence of Feared Israel-Led Censorship as Zuckerberg Facebook Bans Palestinian Editors

• To Stage Or Not To Stage: Theatre Censorship in India

  In December 1872, the Calcutta National Theatrical Society staged Nil Darpan, a play written by Dinabandhu Mitra, that exposed the atrocities committed by British indigo planters on Indian farmers. While the play received glowing reviews in most newspapers with nationalistic leanings, it was expectedly criticised by the British press. There was a demand that the play be banned. Other plays followed, criticising and making fun of the white rulers. Finally, in 1876, came the Dramatic Performances Act, putting restrictions on the public performance of plays.

  Cut to 2016. Nearly seven decades after the country’s independence from British rule, actor-director Amol Palekar moved the Mumbai high court in September, challenging rules framed under provisions of the Bombay Police Act, 1951, which make pre-censorship of drama scripts mandatory by the Maharashtra State Performance Scrutiny Board. In his petition, Palekar said the rules framed under the provisions of the Act were arbitrary and violated citizens’ fundamental right to freedom of expression, guaranteed under the Constitution. However, on September 26, the state government told the Bombay High Court that in March this year, the then commissioner of police had repealed the rule which required prior scrutiny of theatre scripts. Palekar has not replied to HT’s email requesting an interview. Repeated calls to advocate Sugandh Deshmukh, who is representing him in court, also went unanswered. But veteran theatre personality Alyque Padamsee who had filed an affidavit in support of Palekar’s petition said he is not surprised by the court proceedings. “It is the way bureaucracy works,” he says.

• Your right to read trumps censorship

  “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” “To Kill a Mockingbird.” “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”

  Three very different books that share a common thread.

  Each year, individuals across the country take it upon themselves to decide what books you should and should not read. These are three that apparently you should not.

  Yes, censorship and attempts at censorship are alive and well in 2016. In most instances, the censor is someone who is sincerely concerned about a societal issue and feels strongly that censoring a book, magazine, film or artwork will improve society, protect children, and restore their idea of moral values.

  However, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution gives each of us the right to read, view and listen to things that others might find offensive. No one, no matter how well-intentioned, can take away that right.

• Recreation of removed art echoes 40-year-old accusations of censorship

  A piece of public art is set to be erected in the Plateau next week, 40 years after its predecessor was torn down amid accusations of censorship towards city hall – accusations being echoed towards the current mayor.

  A reclining cross, designed by artists Pierre Ayot, once sat at the corner of Park and Pine, but it didn’t last long.

  Longtime resident Michael Hendricks remembered how in 1976, just before Montreal would host the Olympic Games, then-Mayor Jean Drapeau ordered 16 large works of art torn down.

  “For us, it was a shock,” he said. “It was so beautiful.”

  “It was done in the night, a sneaky dirty trick and that was the end of it,” he added. “The artists weren’t respected, nobody was respected.”

  At the time, Drapeau called the artworks “indecent” because some of them criticized overspending on the Olympics.

• Racist social media users have a new code to avoid censorship

  Racist online communities have developed a new code for racial, homophobic and bigoted slurs in an attempt avoid censorship, according to an online report from Buzzfeed News.

  The code, using terms like Google, Skittle, and Yahoo as substitutes for offensive words describing blacks, Muslims and Mexicans, appears to be in use by various accounts on Twitter and elsewhere. Many tweets using the code are doing so in support of Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Privacy/Surveillance

• The U.S. presidential candidates on technology, privacy issues

  Stein: “End-to-end encryption should be an internet standard, just like SSL for financial transactions.”

• ‘Shadow Brokers’ Whine That Nobody Is Buying Their Hacked NSA Files

  The hacking group responsible for stealing a large cache of National Security Agency hacking tools is very upset that no one seems to be bidding on their pilfered files.

  Early Saturday morning, the person or group which calls itself “TheShadowBrokers” authored another bizarre rant, expressing their annoyance at the seeming lack of interest in ponying up bitcoins to release the full set of stolen files.

• Hackers Angry That People Don’t Want To Pay For The NSA Tools They Stole

• Spotify’s 40 Million Tunes Won’t Go Far With CD-Happy Japanese [Ed: music that spies on the listeners]

  On a recent muggy afternoon in Tokyo, 21-year old Shintaro Naganuma joined several hundred customers browsing CDs at the eight-story downtown outpost of music retail chain Tsutaya.

  Having discovered a couple of new rock artists on YouTube, the third-year university student hit Tsutaya Co.’s flagship store in trendy Shibuya to look up their albums. That process encapsulates the dilemma now facing Spotify Ltd.’s head Daniel Ek, who on Thursday presided over the music streaming service’s long-awaited entry into the world’s second-largest music market.

  On the one hand, the nation’s consumers have grown accustomed to finding music or listening casually through smartphones, which should help the Swedish company attract users for its free ad-supported version. But when it comes time to hand over the cash, most people in Japan continue to buy CDs and even vinyl. That’s largely because record labels remain wary of signing away their music to streaming services.

• The US government can’t protect its dirtiest laundry, so what makes anyone think a government is capable and willing to protect data about you?

  Governments collect insane amounts of data about ordinary people, and officials get caught red-handed again and again using governmental surveillance networks to stalk private relations. It’s been the NSA, it’s been the FBI, and now it’s the police abusing collected data. The U.S. government has shown it can’t even protect its own dirtiest laundry, so what makes anyone think any government is willing and capable of protecting the data of a random citizen?

  Yesterday, there was yet another story breaking about abuse of surveillance, as police was discovered abusing law enforcement surveillance to spy on basically anybody they were personally interested in. It’s not the first story and it won’t be the last.

• Networks of Control by Wolfie Christl and Sarah Spiekermann

  The collection, analysis and utilization of digital information based on our clicks, swipes, likes, purchases, movements, behaviors and interests are now part of everyday life. But, while individuals become increasingly transparent, companies take control of the recorded data. Wolfie Christl and Sarah Spiekermann show in their book “NETWORKS OF CONTROL” how today’s networks of corporate surveillance are constantly tracking, profiling, categorizing and rating the lives of billions – across platforms, devices and life contexts.

• On Phone Numbers and Identity

  Coinbase sees a lot of motivated attackers, it’s one of the things that makes working in security at Coinbase so interesting. I want to deep dive into one recent attack for a few reasons: 1) when we share we all get stronger; 2) It was a really interesting way to end-run around a lot of traditional security protections and highlights, the extent of which personal and corporate systems are linked; 3) we found very little in the way of public discussion around this set of attack vectors and want to help move it from ‘theoretical’ to ‘this really happens’. To be crystal clear, I’m happy to say, no customer data or funds were lost or at risk of loss.

  Rewind back to 25 Aug. It’s around 9 AM when one of our high profile employees wrote in to our on call security engineer. The user said that something weird was happening with his phone.

• GCHQ gave private Dutch data to Australian firm: report

  The private conversations of thousands of Dutch citizens have ended up in the hands of the Australian technology company Appen which develops software for converting speech into text.

  A report in the Dutch online site Volkskrant said telecommunications experts had opined that the only way this could have happened was by the British spy agency GCHQ tapping the information and then handing it over to Appen.

  Both Appen and GCHQ have been contacted for comment.

  According to Volkskrant, the matter came to light through a Dutch woman who had been employed by Appen in the UK. The company has four main offices: in Sydney, Seattle, San Rafael (California) and Davao City (the Philippines).

Civil Rights/Policing

• Women competitors must wear hijabs at chess world championship, oddly awarded to Iran

  If you thought soccer’s world cup being awarded to baking-hot Qatar marked the zenith of sporting corruption, give FIDE a chance: the international chess federation’s forthcoming world championship is headed to Iran, and women players must wear the hijab to compete. UK tabloids quote leading women chess players as threatening to quit the tournament rather than obey.

• Female chess players from around world outraged after being told to wear hijabs at tournament in Tehran

  The world’s top female chess players have reportedly been told they must wear hijabs if they wish to compete in next year’s world championships.

  The next Women’s World Championships are due to be held in Tehran, Iran in March 2017 but several Grandmasters have threatened to boycott the tournament if female players are forced to conform to the country’s strict clothing laws.

  Iran, which has been welcomed back into the diplomatic fold after signing a nuclear deal with the US and several other countries last year, is a theocratic country which strictly polices how women dress, behave and where they go.

• Justice Watchdog Rips D.E.A.’s Use of Confidential Sources

  The Drug Enforcement Administration is running a freewheeling confidential sources program that leaves the agency vulnerable to fraud and constitutional abuses, according to an audit by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General (OIG).

  While DEA officials boast that the use of informants is the “bread and butter” of their enforcement, the agency does not adequately oversee their activities. Nor does it sufficiently track the payments made to them, the investigation found.

  The lack of oversight, according to the report: “exposes the agency to an unacceptably increased potential for fraud, waste, and abuse, particularly given the frequency with which DEA offices utilize and pay confidential sources.”

  Over the last five years, the DEA has employed more than 18,000 sources, paying them roughly $237 million. The inspector general stated, however, that the agency is unable to analyze the quality of information they provide.

• Ex-drug squad chief gets three-year prison sentence

  Former head of the Helsinki Police anti-drug unit, Jari Aarnio, was handed a three-year unconditional prison sentence in Helsinki Appeal Court on Friday after being convicted of charges including malfeasance, fraud and accepting bribes.

• Saudi Arabian teen arrested for online videos with American blogger

  A male Saudi Arabian teenager has been arrested in Riyadh over a series of online videos of conversations between him and a female Californian streaming-video star that went viral.

  A Riyadh police spokesperson, Colonel Fawaz Al-Mayman, said the teenager, known online as Abu Sin, was arrested on Sunday for engaging in “unethical behaviour” in videos with Christina Crockett, a popular broadcaster on the conversational live-streaming site YouNow. Abu Sin’s real name is not known.

  “His videos received many comments and many of the commenters of the general public demanded for him to be punished for his actions,” Al-Maymann added, according to the Saudi Gazette.

  The two amassed thousands of fans on the YouNow network, and later on YouTube after videos of the two speaking were uploaded there. The videos featured Abu Sin – a nickname given to him for his broken teeth – and Crockett communicating despite their significant language barriers.

  The popularity of the videos of the two of them surprised Crockett, she told the Guardian in an interview. As a broadcaster on YouNow, she can invite her fans to join her broadcasts on split-screen, which is known as “guesting”.

• Kodi boxes are now a key target in the UK government’s piracy crackdown

  Kodi boxes and other devices which can be configured to enable the streaming of pirated content are to become key targets in a UK government intellectual property crime crackdown.

  Revealing the extent to which so-called “fully-loaded” Kodi boxes are being used to circumvent copy protection laws, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) has stated that half of its investigations currently centre around streaming devices using third party piracy software or add-ons.

  Set top boxes are of course legal, and the open-source Kodi software in its vanilla configuration is a harmless media centre. But, Kodi can be tweaked to facilitate the illegal streaming of premium content, ranging from current cinema releases to streams of cable TV channels.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Last Formal Tie To Historic US Internet Control Is Cut

  “The federal court in Galveston, Texas denied the plaintiffs’ application for declaratory and injunctive relief. As of 1 October 2016, the IANA functions contract has expired.” This two-sentence statement from Assistant US Commerce Secretary for Communications and Information and National Telecommunication and Information Administration Administrator Lawrence Strickling ended an era of direct United States oversight over changes to the authoritative root zone of the internet domain name system, and as a contractor for a set of core internet databases.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • J.J. Abrams Can’t Stop Copyright Lawsuit Against Star Trek Fan-Film

    Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios have no plans to end their lawsuit against the crowdfunded Star Trek spin-off ‘Prelude to Axanar’. Director J. J. Abrams previously announced that the case would be dropped soon. However, paperwork filed in court this week reveals that the movie studios dismiss this claim as an irrelevant third party statement.

  • RIAA Label Artists & A-List Stars Endorse Megaupload In New Song

    MegaUpload is currently being portrayed by the MPAA and RIAA as one of the world’s leading rogue sites. But top music stars including P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg and Kanye West disagree and are giving the site their full support in a brand new song. TorrentFreak caught up with the elusive founder of MegaUpload, Kim Dotcom, who shrugged off “this rogue nonsense” and told us he wants content owners to get paid.

  • ‘When Is A Chair Just A Chair?’ And Other Annoying Copyright Questions

    Last year, the UK decided to repeal a part of its copyright law that enforced a drastically reduced copyright term for “industrially exploited artistic works” including “works of artistic craftsmanship” — in other words, the industrial design of manufactured objects that are primarily functional, like appliances and furniture. Rather than the full life-plus-seventy term, the copyright on such works was limited to 25 years from the date of manufacturing, making it somewhat closer to the US approach where functional designs can’t be copyrighted but can qualify for 15-year design patents. It was a sensible rule (at least far more sensible than giving them full copyright, even if giving them any at all is still questionable) that allowed industrial designs to rapidly enter the public domain and be used by multiple manufacturers for everything from inexpensive reproductions to retro-chic luxuries — or, in the eyes of IP maximalists and the furniture industry, it was a travesty of a rule that cruelly robbed aging designers and flooded the market with cheap knockoffs and brazen cash-grabs.

    In any case, the rule was repealed and it was repealed retroactively: furniture designs that had already entered the public domain were shoved back under life-plus-seventy copyrights, and the industry was given a grace period to purge their stocks. The repeal officially came into effect in July, and the transitional window will end in January. Then we can watch the lawsuits begin to flow — and they are going to involve a whole lot of wrangling over stupid, highly subjective questions, with lots of flowery protestations about artistry and judges thrust unwittingly into the role of critic, because the question of what exactly this law applies to is one big gray area.