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10.28.16

Links 28/10/2016: NetBSD 7.0.2, Linux Mint 18.1 Will be “Serena”

Posted in News Roundup at 6:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux Voice / Linux Magazine Merge

    Issue 32 is the last issue of Linux Voice as a stand-alone magazine as we have joined Linux Magazine. This newly merged magazine will bring the best bits of Linux Voice and Linux Magazine together into a single volume. All four of us Linux Voice founders will still be here contributing to the newly merged magazine – you’ll find us in the aptly named Linux Voice section. We’ll continue to write about the things that excite us in the world of open source software and we’ll continue making our popular podcast.

  • Desktop

  • Server

    • Managing OpenStack with Open Source Tools

      Day 2 operations are still dominated by manual and custom individual scripts devised by system administrators. Automation is needed by enterprises. Based on the above analysis, Ansible is a leading open source project with a high number contributions and a diverse community of contributions. Thus Ansible is a well supported and popular open source tool to orchestrate and manage OpenStack.

    • Databricks Weaves Deep Learning into Cloud-Based Spark Platform

      Databricks, a company founded by the creators of the popular open-source Big Data processing engine Apache Spark, is a firm that we’ve been paying close attention to here at OStatic. We’re fans of the company’s online courses on Spark, and we recently caught up with Kavitha Mariappan, who is Vice President of Marketing at the company, for a guest post on open source tools and data science.

      Now, Databricks has announced the addition of deep learning support to its cloud-based Apache Spark platform. The company says this enhancement adds GPU support and integrates popular deep learning libraries to the Databricks’ big data platform, extending its capabilities to enable the rapid development of deep learning models. “Data scientists looking to combine deep learning with big data — whether it’s recognizing handwriting, translating speech between languages, or distinguishing between malignant and benign tumors — can now utilize Databricks for every stage of their workflow, from data wrangling to model tuning,” the company reports, adding “Databricks is the first to integrate these diverse workloads in a fast, secure, and easy-to-use Apache Spark platform in the cloud.”

    • OpenStack Building the Cloud for the Next 50 Years (and Beyond)

      Two OpenStack Foundation executives talk about what has gone wrong, what has gone right and what’s next for the open-source cloud.
      BARCELONA, Spain—When OpenStack got started in 2010, it was a relatively small effort with only two companies involved. Over the last six years, that situation has changed dramatically with OpenStack now powering telecom, retail and scientific cloud computing platforms for some of the largest organizations in the world.

    • The Myth of the Root Cause: How Complex Web Systems Fail

      Complex systems are intrinsically hazardous systems. While most web systems fortunately don’t put our lives at risk, failures can have serious consequences. Thus, we put countermeasures in place — backup systems, monitoring, DDoS protection, playbooks, GameDay exercises, etc. These measures are intended to provide a series of overlapping protections. Most failure trajectories are successfully blocked by these defenses, or by the system operators themselves.

    • How to assess the benefits of SDN in your network

      Software-defined networking has matured from a science experiment into deployable, enterprise-ready technology in the last several years, with vendors from Big Switch Networks and Pica8 to Hewlett Packard Enterprise and VMware offering services for different use cases. Still, Nemertes Research’s 2016 Cloud and Data Center Benchmark survey found a little more than 9% of organizations now deploying SDN in production.

  • Kernel Space

    • Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement

      In a recent interview with Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, at approximately 14:20 in the interview, he made a quick point about coding with “good taste”. Good taste? The interviewer prodded him for details and Linus came prepared with illustrations.

      He presented a code snippet. But this wasn’t “good taste” code. This snippet was an example of poor taste in order to provide some initial contrast.

    • DTrace for Linux 2016

      With the final major capability for BPF tracing (timed sampling) merging in Linux 4.9-rc1, the Linux kernel now has raw capabilities similar to those provided by DTrace, the advanced tracer from Solaris. As a long time DTrace user and expert, this is an exciting milestone! On Linux, you can now analyze the performance of applications and the kernel using production-safe low-overhead custom tracing, with latency histograms, frequency counts, and more.

    • The initial bus1 patch posting
    • Linux 4.8.5

      I’m announcing the release of the 4.8.5 kernel.

      All users of the 4.8 kernel series must upgrade.

      The updated 4.8.y git tree can be found at:
      git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.8.y
      and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:

      http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st…

    • Linux 4.4.28
    • BFQ I/O Scheduler Patches Revised, Aiming To Be Extra Scheduler In The Kernel

      FQ developers had hoped to replace CFQ in the mainline Linux kernel with Budget Fair Queueing for a variety of reasons but it hadn’t ended up making it mainline. Now the developers are hoping to introduce BFQ back to mainline as an extra available scheduler.

      Paolo Valente on Wednesday published the latest patches dubbed “BFQ-v0″ for adding it as an extra scheduler. He began by saying, “this new patch series turns back to the initial approach, i.e., it adds BFQ as an extra scheduler, instead of replacing CFQ with BFQ. This patch series also contains all the improvements and bug fixes recommended by Tejun, plus new features of BFQ-v8r5…On average CPUs, the current version of BFQ can handle devices performing at most ~30K IOPS; at most ~50 KIOPS on faster CPUs. These are about the same limits as CFQ. There may be room for noticeable improvements regarding these limits, but, given the overall limitations of blk itself, I thought it was not the case to further delay this new submission.”

    • Graphics Stack

    • Benchmarks

      • Power Consumption & Efficiency Of The Linux Kernel For The Last Three Years

        Earlier this week I published Linux 3.9 through Linux 4.9 kernel benchmarks looking at the raw performance of various subsystems when testing each of the major kernel releases as far back as this Core i7 Haswell system was supported. From that same system, today is a look at testing the kernels going back to Linux 3.11 when Haswell graphics support was first in good shape for this Core i7 4790K box while looking at the raw power consumption and performance-per-Watt for these 19 major kernel releases.

      • The Idle Power Use Of The Past 19 Linux Kernel Releases

        This morning I published the Power Consumption and Efficiency Of The Linux Kernel For The Last Three Years article containing power consumption data for an Intel Haswell system going back to the Linux 3.11 kernel through Linux 4.9 Git. Those were some interesting power consumption numbers under load while here are the idle numbers.

        The idle tests were still running this morning so I opted to post them later since they’re interested in their own right. The same i7-4790K system was used for benchmarking all of these kernels from Linux 3.11 to Linux 4.9 (25 October Git). No other changes were made during the testing process. Each kernel was freshly booted to the Unity desktop and then launched the idle power consumption test for a period of three minutes while monitoring the AC power draw as reported by the WattsUp Power meter. Automating this with the Phoronix Test Suite: MONITOR=sys.power phoronix-test-suite benchmark idle.

      • Phoronix Test Suite 6.8 Milestone 1 Released

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • 6 Best Linux Desktop Environments [Part - 2]

      Linux has been developing at a good pace through this last years and with development comes better support for different hardware regarding support for proprietary drivers for video cards, better file systems, more choices in what operating system to use and one of the things that has it importance is distros graphical environment.

    • More Details On Enlightenment’s Ecore_Drm2 Atomic Modesetting

      Back in September the Enlightenment project’s EFL library added atomic mode-setting and nuclear page-flipping support to provide a “perfect rendering” and a “buttery smooth” experience. Earlier this month was then an update on the Ecore_Drm2 state while coming out this week is a Samsung OSG blog post explaining more about the atomic mode-setting details.

    • Ecore_Drm2: How to Use Atomic Modesetting

      In a previous article, I briefly discussed how the Ecore_Drm2 library came into being. This article will expand on that article and provide a brief introduction to the Atomic Modesetting and Nuclear Pageflip features inside the new Ecore_Drm2 library.

    • Papirus Icon Theme Scores Big October Update

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Qt Creator 4.2 Beta released

        Qt SCXML is a new module in Qt that allows you to create state machines from State Chart XML and embed them into Qt C++ and Qt Quick applications (Overview). It was released as Technical Preview in Qt 5.7 and will be released fully supported with Qt 5.8.

        Qt Creator 4.2 now supplements the module by offering a graphical editor for SCXML (experimental). It features editing states and sub-states, transitions, events, and all kinds of properties. The editor is experimental and the plugin is not loaded by default. Turn it on in Help > About Plugins (Qt Creator > About Plugins on macOS) to try it.

      • Qt Creator 4.2 Beta Released

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GObject and SVG

        GSVG is a project to provide a GObject API, using Vala. It has almost all, with some complementary, interfaces from W3C SVG 1.1 specification.

        GSVG is LGPL library. It will use GXml as XML engine. SVG 1.1 DOM interfaces relays on W3C DOM, then using GXml is a natural choice.

        SVG is XML and its DOM interfaces, requires to use Object’s properties and be able to add child DOM Elements; then, we need a new set of classes.

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

      • Chapeau Is Exactly What the Linux Desktop Needs

        That is where Chapeau comes in. Chapeau is a cutting-edge Linux distribution, built from Fedora Workstation, using the GNOME desktop environment, and intended to be an incredibly intuitive and easy to use, out-of-the box experience.

        Trust me when I say Chapeau is exactly that.

        Part of the Chapeau marketing states that it is “Fedora without the work.” I could not have said it better. With Chapeau, you get a desktop distribution in which everything works—in every way—out of the box.

    • New Releases

      • Maui 2 “Blue Tang” released

        The Maui team is happy to announce the release of Maui 2 – 64bit version.

        This is our second version of Maui which comes with plenty new features and fixes based on Plasma 5.8.2, KF 5.27 and Qt 5.7.0.
        We also provide the latest LTS Linux Kernel 4.4 together with an updated Ubuntu 16.04 LTS base system.
        Firefox was updated to version 49 and Thunderbird to version 45.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • New KNOPPIX Release, LibreOffice 5.1.6, Rosa Down

        In Linux news today KNOPPIX 7.7.1 was released to the public based on Debian with GNOME 3.22, KDE 5.7.2, and “Everything 3D.” The Rosa project is experiencing network issues and folks may experience problems trying to connect to their services the next few days. LibreOffice 5.1.6 was announced today by The Document Foundation, the sixth update to the Still branch for stable users, and a new vulnerability was disclosed in GNU Tar.

      • Network shutdown

        From our part we will try our best to make the migrating process as smooth and seamless as possible for our partners.
        Note that the most possible period for unavailability of our resources is this weekend, but there is some probability it may also occur on Friday 10/28/16.
        In the first place, this process is aimed to improve the quality of our services, so please be patient and cooperative.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the Week 2016/43

        The magic number this week is 6: that’s how many snapshots have been published since the last weekly review (1020, 1022, 1023, 1024, 1025 and 1026). Some of them were a bit larger than average (1026 – a big rebuild due to bash 4.4).

      • Identify constraint problems

        Until now it was not possible to easily identify if the constraints are the reaseon for your job to hang in state scheduled and not switching to building. That caused a lot of confusion for it was not clear what the problem is and if the state would change.

    • Red Hat Family

      • ESDS Teams Up With Red Hat On Managed Cloud Hosting Services

        ESDS Software Solution has announced that it has joined hands with Red Hat to bring together the benefits of cloud solutions to legacy applications and enterprise databases. Customers can now avail managed data and cloud hosting services on ESDS eNlight Cloud platform that allows vertical auto scaling of virtual machines. ESDS can now offer needed agility to enterprises that may not otherwise reap the benefits of cloud, given the architecture of their systems.

        eNlight Cloud is a state-of-the-art cloud hosting solution with a built-in ability to automatically scale CPU and RAM on-the fly. Customers can now access the benefits of automatic load sensing and scaling, pay-per-consumption metered billing, root access to enterprise databases and managed OS, database and network services by using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on patented eNlight Cloud. This solution is targeted at customers across several verticals including aviation, banking, manufacturing, oil & gas, shipping and telecommunications.

      • Swisscom, UKCloud Adopt Red Hat OpenStack Platform

        Red Hat announced today that both Swisscom and UKCloud will be leveraging its OpenStack platform as the companies transition toward cloud computing. Swisscom will use the platform to develop its own cloud platform, and UKCloud will provide its customers with the ability to deliver digital services directly to UK citizens.

      • Red Hat named as visionary in Gartner’s 2016 Magic Quadrant

        Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, on Thursday announced that Gartner, Inc. has positioned Red Hat in the “Visionaries” quadrant of Gartner’s October 2016 Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage for Red Hat Ceph Storage and Red Hat Gluster Storage.

      • CentOS 6 Linux Servers Receive Important Kernel Security Patch, Update Now

        We reported a couple of days ago that Johnny Hughes from the CentOS Linux team published an important kernel security advisory for users of the CentOS 7 operating system.

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Bodhi 2.3.0 released

          Bodhi 2.3.0 is a feature and bug fix release.

        • Fedora at Ohio Linuxfest 2016

          We arrived at the our hotel around 1PM on Friday. After checking in we headed over to find the new site in the Hyatt Regency Hotel. The first things we noticed was the Columbus Convention Center is doing a major renovation and one of those renovations was they removed the escalators from the food court to the second floor. At first we thought this may be a issue to move the event stuff in but there was an elevator close by. Also no signage for OLF in the Food Court area. After getting off the elevator on the second floor there was a sign pointing around the corner to the Ohio Linuxfest registration table. This year Ohio Linuxfest charged $10 for general attendees (free to students with student ID). We checked in and out our badges (yes insert favorite Blazing Saddles joke here). We walked down to the Vendor Expo hall which this year had a grand total of 28 exhibitors (see website for vendor lists). While the Expo was setup ready for Vendors to move in but the Vendor Expo was not open to the public on Friday.

        • The Bugs So Far Potentially Blocking The Fedora 25 Release

          Adam Williamson of the Fedora QA team has sent out a list of the bugs currently outstanding that could block the Fedora 25 release from happening on its current schedule should they not be fixed in time.

        • Updated Fedora 24 ISO Respins Now Available with Dirty COW-Patched Linux Kernel

          It looks like a new set of updated Live ISO images for the Fedora 24 GNU/Linux operating system were published by Ben Williams, founder of the Fedora Unity Project and a Fedora Ambassador.

          Dubbed F24-20161023, the updated Live ISOs a few days ago and include up-to-date components from the official Fedora 24 Linux software repositories, with which was fully syncronized as of October 23, 2016. Of course, this means that they also include the latest Linux kernel update fully patched against the “Dirty COW” bug.

        • PHP version 5.6.28RC1 and 7.0.13RC1
        • Flock Stories 2016, Episode 1: Redon Skikuli

          Flock Stories by Chris WardIf you were wondering where Flock 2018 might be, today’s guest Redon Skikuli might just have your answer! Redon is not just a Fedora community contributor, he’s a Fedora community creator. I ask Redon what he’s up to these days and why he thinks we should also consider joining future Flocks.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Security-minded µQseven COM taps Allwinner A64

      Theobroma’s µQseven form factor “A64-µQ7”COM runs Linux 4.x on a quad-core -A53 Allwinner A64, and adds a security module.

      Austria-based Theobroma has released its second Allwinner-based computer-on-module using the half-size, 70 x 40mm µQseven form-factor. The A64-µQ7 follows the A31 µQ7, based on the quad-core, Cortex-A7 Allwinner A31. This time around the company has opted for the 64-bit, quad-core Cortex-A53 Allwinner A64.

    • Latest 96Boards SBC ships with GbE/PCIe add-on

      Fujitsu’s 96Boards CE compatible “F-Cue” SBC runs Linux on a quad-core Cortex-A15/A7 Socionext MB86S71 SoC, and offers a PCIe/GbE expansion board.

      The Fujitsu Electronics F-Cue is the latest Linux-driven 96Boards CE form factor SBC, following others like the uCRobotics Bubblegum-96 and Qualcomm DragonBoard 410c. The open-spec board uses the same 85 x 54mm CE spec, featuring standard 40- and 60-pin mezzanine expansion connectors. The board is pricier than most 96Boards entries, selling for $286, plus another for $48 an optional PCIe/GbE expansion board.

    • Rugged Qseven module runs Linux on Apollo Lake

      Seco unveiled a “Q7-B03” Qseven COM with Intel’s new Atom E3900 “Apollo Lake” SoC and optional onboard SATA flash and -40 to 85°C support.

    • 96Boards SBC adds “Giga” expansion and optional GbE card
    • Rugged Bay Trail boardset offers dual GbE and dual mini-PCIe

      The device supports Linux, Windows, Windows Embedded, and VxWorks, and offers five-year availability.

    • Tiny, open spec SBC offers wireless and 8GB eMMC

      FriendlyElec’s $45, 75 x 40mm “NanoPi S2” SBC runs Debian or Android on a quad-core A9 SoC, and offers RPi expansion, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 8GB eMMC.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Video: Introducing Samsung ARTIK Cloud with Samsung Gear S2

          Samsung Electronics have previously announced SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud™, which is an open data exchange platform designed to connect devices and applications. One of the goals of the SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud is to provide developers the tools they need to securely connect to Internet of Things (IoT) devices, collect data and react to it accordingly.

          Companies can benefit from using open APIs and tools in order to accelerate their “time to market” and ultimately start monetizing their Investment. SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud has a tiered pricing model, but the great thing is that you can actually start using it for FREE.

        • Game: Group Play Drag Racing in Tizen Store for Samsung Z1, Z2 and Z3

          Remember the World Cricket Championship 2 game? The most rated cricket game in the Tizen Store by Nextwave Multimedia Pvt. Ltd. Today they have added a new game named “Group Play Drag Racing“. It’s a Racing game against 6 racers, and you have to use your gears to the best of your ability in order to be fast fast fast !

      • Android

        • NVIDIA rolling out Shield Android TV upgrade 3.3 with improved audio, updated Vulkan API, and more
        • Software Upgrade 3.3 Available For NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV
        • PlayStation Vue launches on Android TV
        • Google Assistant channel launches on IFTTT
        • Google Allo Update 2.0 Brings Android 7.0 Nougat Features To The Table: Split-Screen, Quick Reply Support
        • Android 7.0 Nougat OTA download for OnePlus 3, OnePlus 2, OnePlus X happening this December
        • In Tech News: Apple iPhone Quarterly Results Signal Yet Another Year of 15% Flat Market Share

          If you look at the above picture, you really need to come to grips, that there is not, and will never be, a global take-over of the smartphone space by Apple’s iPhone. It has a VERY steady slice of the market. A healthy, profitable and loyal slice, but it is not growing nor is it shrinking. Apple finds one in seven smartphone owners eager to own their devices, and six in seven smartphone buyers will not buy an iPhone, either they don’t want it, or can’t afford it. Deal with this reality. 15%. That is not the world

        • How I Use Android: EvolveSMS and Talon developer Luke Klinker

          Luke Klinker knows his way around app development.

          Klinker started building his Android app empire when he was a student at the University of Iowa. He embraced Google’s Material Design standard and worked with his brother to create clean and intuitive apps that were packed with features and yet easy to use.

        • LG V20 Review: For spec-hungry Android enthusiasts, it’s the best Android phablet you can buy [Video]

          2016 has been a tough year for the Android market. In previous years we couldn’t count on one hand the number of awesome devices, but this year there have only been a few to choose from. The Galaxy S7, specifically the Edge has stood out as a clear winner, despite the praise given to competing devices like the HTC 10. On the other hand, no one really cared about LG this year. The G5 was a flop by every definition.

          Now in late 2016, there still isn’t much to pick from. The Galaxy Note 7 was close to perfection, and then it literally exploded in Samsung’s face. Google’s Pixel aims to fill the void, and redefine what an Android smartphone can and should be. However, if you’re not looking to get a Pixel, the LG V20 is 100% what you should be looking at, especially if you’re aiming for a big phone. Let’s take a closer look.

        • Android 7.0 Nougat: 15 hidden tips and tricks

          WE’VE RAIDED THE release notes in pieces past, but this time around (and with Google’s Pixel XL in tow) we’re running through some of the more useful additions to have found their way into the latest Android build.

          And for those of you who’ve skipped to the end, cats and hamburgers both have their uses…

        • Why Apple-to-Android upgrade comparisons are utterly meaningless

          Android upgrades are a contentious topic. Bring ‘em up in any way, and you’re bound to see some riled up people.

          I should know: I’ve observed and analyzed Android upgrades for years now — all the way back to the now-ancient-seeming Android 2.2 Froyo era, when widespread rollouts for the platform were still an untested concept. And in all of that time, one thing has stayed pretty much the same: By and large, Android manufacturers suck at delivering timely and reliable OS updates.

          But hang on: Not everything about the Android upgrade situation has remained constant over these past several years. In fact, one very significant area has evolved considerably — and it’s an area that’s almost always overlooked as part of the Android upgrade discussion, particularly when iOS comparisons come into the picture.

          As we think about Google’s new Pixel phone and its unique position as the sole current handset guaranteed to get quick and regular Android updates, it’s important to step back and put the situation in perspective — because there really is much more to it than what we see on the surface. And while iPhone-to-Android upgrade comparisons are an inevitable side effect of the discussion (and one I’ve already heard brought up plenty in the context of the Pixel, especially when it comes to its short-seeming two-year window for support), the truth is that upgrades on iOS and Android are drastically different beasts.

        • BlackBerry reveals its LAST ever Android smartphone

          Marking BlackBerry’s third foray into Android devices, the DTEK60 has been designed to take on the likes of Samsung and HTC with a polished look and powerful hardware.

          The device features a 5.5-inch QuadHD display with a resolution of 2,560×1,440-pixels and a pixel density of 538ppi, which BlackBerry says can display up to 16 million colours.

          Inside, there’s a speedy quad-core Snapdragon 820 processor from Qualcomm, backed up by 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, which can be boosted up to 2TB via a microSD card.

        • Latest Strategy Analytics data shows Chinese Android manufacturers eating at Apple’s marketshare

          Apple just reported its latest earnings yesterday evening, and now Strategy Analytics is out with its latest report concerning the smartphone industry. The latest data shows the entire smartphone industry saw shipments rise 6 percent year over year to hit 375 million worldwide during Q3 2016.

          Shipment rose from 345.2 million units in Q3 2015 to 375.4 million in Q3 2016, which is the industry’s fastest growth rate for a year. Strategy Analytics attributes much of this growth to new product launches from Apple.

          Individually for Apple, though, the numbers weren’t as bright. The company saw its shipments fall from 48 million to 45.5 million, just as it reported during its earnings call. This fall pushed Apple’s marketshare from 13.6 percent to 12.1 percent, though Apple is holding strong to its #2 spot.

        • Android, Samsung Improve in Third Quarter

          Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) released analysis of the results of its research on mobile phone operating systems and brands for the calendar quarter that ended September 30, 2016. This analysis features findings about market share trends in mobile phone operating systems and brands in the US from July-September 2016.

          CIRP research shows that the two major mobile operating systems, Google Android and Apple iOS, controlled about 97% of US customer mobile phone activations in the third quarter (Chart 1). In the September 2016 quarter, Android accounted for 71% of US activations, the same share as the year-ago September 2015 quarter, and up from 63% in the June 2016 quarter. iOS accounted for 26% of activations, about the same as its 27% share in the year-ago September 2015 quarter, but down from its 32% share in the June 2016 quarter.

        • This Android keyboard trick fixes bad autocorrect suggestions
        • 11 things Android phone makers should copy from the Pixe
        • Review: 7 PDF editing tools for iOS and Android
        • Qualcomm acquires NXP Semiconductors for $47 billion
        • Moto M with metal body and Snapdragon 625 leaks

Free Software/Open Source

  • Pitt, partners create open source software for cancer genome data

    Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, UPMC and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center have created software to help investigators more easily navigate genomic cancer data.

    The free, open-source software, profiled Thursday in the journal PLOS ONE, processes data generated by The Cancer Genome Atlas project. Funding for the new software was provided by the Institute of Precision Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.

  • Starting a Career as an Open Source Developer

    “Disney, John Deere and Walmart. Any idea what these three companies have in common?”

    The question was asked on Wednesday by Brandon Keepers, GitHub’s head of open source. He was about three minutes into a session he was conducting called “Contributing to Your Career” at the All Things Open conference.

    “All three of these companies are actually software companies,” he answered after taking a moment to tease the audience. “They do other things. They build tractors, protect trademarks and build amusement parks, and sell groceraies and things that you need everyday. But they’ve also become software companies and they’ve become really active in open source — and they’re not alone.”

  • A look at how retail giant Walmart is becoming open source first

    It’s rare that we speak to large, global enterprises that are redesigning their technology stack and culture around an open source first policy. More often than not companies stick to their legacy vendors of choice, or they shift to ‘reliable’ cloud/digital vendors where similar buying rules apply.

    However, that’s exactly what Walmart is doing. Since acquiring performance lifecycle management start-up OneOps four years ago, in order to implement a DevOps approach to its e-commerce environment, the retailer is also prioritising open source over everything else – with it having made a big investment in OpenStack for its infrastructure.

  • Open source no longer scares the enterprise

    Open source breaks the rules on corporate procurement, but developers never play by the rules and now open source has sneaked in through the back door

    A study by Vanson Bourne for Rackspace reports that businesses are making big savings by using open source.

    In the survey of 300 organisations, three out of five respondents cited cost savings as the top benefit, reducing average cost per project by £30,146.

  • Defining MANO: Open Source vs. Standards

    As service providers are working to deploy NFV-based services, they are finding that management and orchestration (MANO) is a pain point. One of the big questions about MANO is how we go from a high-level architecture diagram to interoperable implementations. Do we take the traditional telco path and work through standards bodies? Or do we take a cloud-centric path and focus on open source development projects?

  • Eclipse Kapua IoT Project Gets Code from Eurotech and Red Hat

    The nascent Eclipse Kapua project got a big boost this week from its chief sponsors, open source solutions provider Red Hat and M2M/IoT platform provider Eurotech. The two companies announced their first official code contributions to the recently approved project, through which they are developing a modular, cloud-based platform for managing IoT gateways and smart edge devices. Red Hat and Eurotech collaborated to propose the project last June.

  • APIStrat Boston to highlight link between APIs and open source projects

    This year’s API Strategy and Practice (known as APIStrat)—to be held in Boston on November 2-4—has a strong open source component running throughout the event, and with little wonder. Successful API strategies more often than not either contribute new open source projects, or draw on the rich source of tools already built by the open source community.

    The API mindset has always lent itself to an open source ethos. APIs are all about opening up internal assets, data, and systems in order to connect and collaborate with a wider ecosystem of partners and end users. Amongst leadership businesses that have a strong API strategy, seeing so many contribute and use open source projects is not surprising, and this is reflected throughout this year’s APIStrat program. After all, two of the key specifications formats that are used across the industry to describe APIs—the Open API Initiative and RAML—are both open source projects. Projects like Mashape’s Kong and Tyk’s API Gateway are both open source and gaining greater recognition and uptake.

  • Phil Shapiro: Open Source and Social Justice Advocate

    If you visit the public library in Tacoma Park, Maryland, you might run into Phil Shapiro, who is in charge of their computer lab. Or if you visit Foss Force (you’ve heard of that website, right?) you’ll see his byline here, here, here, and many other places.

    According to my thesaurus, “Phil Shapiro” is a synonym for “prolific.” And then there’s Twitter, where Phil holds forth on many topics, often many times daily.

    For a change, this video is a story that’s not by Phil, but about Phil. How did he get into Linux? How well is Linux accepted by library patrons? How do the Open Source and Social Justice movements complement each other, and how they they work together better? All good questions for Phil, so they’re questions we asked him. And his answers are enlightening — but also light-hearted, because Phil is a light-hearted guy.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Our Role in Protecting the Internet — With Your Help

        Protecting the security of the Internet requires everyone. We talked about this theme in a recent post, and in this post we’ll expand on the role Mozilla plays, and how our work supports and relies on the work of the other participants in the Web.

      • Mozilla Hosts Seventh Annual MozFest in London this weekend

        Now in its seventh year, MozFest is the world’s go-to event for the free and open Internet movement. Part meeting place for like-minded individuals keen to share ideas; part playground for Web enthusiasts, hobbyist netizens and seasoned open source technonauts alike, part hack-a-thon; part living breathing creative brainstorm; part speaker-series; MozFest is a buzzy hive of activity. It attracts thousands of visitors each year (1,800 in 2015) from as many as 50 countries around the world, making it the biggest unconference of its kind.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice 5.1.6 Office Suite Released for Enterprise Deployments with 68 Fixes

      Today, October 27, 2016, we’ve been informed by The Document Foundation about the general availability of the sixth maintenance update to the LibreOffice 5.1 open-source and cross-platform office suite.

      You’re reading that right, LibreOffice 5.1 got a new update not the current stable LibreOffice 5.2 branch, as The Document Foundation is known to maintain at least to versions of its popular office suite, one that is very well tested and can be used for enterprise deployments and another one that offers the latest technologies.

    • LibreOffice 5.1.6 available for download

      The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 5.1.6, the sixth minor release of the LibreOffice 5.1 family launched in January 2016, targeted at individual users and enterprise deployments. Users of previous LibreOffice releases should start planning the update to the new version.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • FSF announces change in general counsel

      On Thursday, October 27, 2016, Eben Moglen stepped down as general counsel to the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Moglen, who in addition to being a professor of law and legal history at Columbia University, is the founder, president, and executive director of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), and a former FSF board member, has generously served as the FSF’s pro bono general counsel for the last 23 years.

    • Licensing resource series: How to choose a license for your own work

      We provide plenty of resources when it comes to picking a license. From our list of licenses to essays on copyleft, if you are looking to figure out what license is right for you there is plenty of information to rely upon. But this month’s resource helps to pull that information together in one place to make selecting a license simple.

      Our guide, “How to choose a license for your work” is one stop browsing for answering many of the questions you may have when it comes to finding the right license. It provides recommendations based on the state of the work, but also based on the type of work that it is. While the Affero GNU General Public License version 3 works great for server software, documentation would probably be better served with a license directed at such, like the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.3. Smaller works can often get away without a strong copyleft, but still need to address patents, and so Apache License version 2.0 might be appropriate. The guide explains the reasoning behind the different recommendation for these and more. It also links to all those other resources mentioned above in case you need to dive in deeper when picking out a license.

    • Friday ‘Frankenstein’ Directory IRC meetup: October 28th starting at 1pm EDT/17:00 UTC
    • Free Software Directory meeting recap for October 21st, 2016

  • Public Services/Government

  • Licensing/Legal

    • Conservancy’s First GPL Enforcement Feedback Session

      As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I had the privilege of attending Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELC EU) and the OpenWrt Summit in Berlin, Germany earlier this month. I gave a talk (for which the video is available below) at the OpenWrt Summit. I also had the opportunity to host the first of many conference sessions seeking feedback and input from the Linux developer community about Conservancy’s GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers.

      ELC EU has no “BoF Board” where you can post informal sessions. So, we scheduled the session by word of mouth over a lunch hour. We nevertheless got an good turnout (given that our session’s main competition was eating food :) of about 15 people.

      Most notably and excitingly, Harald Welte, well-known Netfilter developer and leader of gpl-violations.org, was able to attend. Harald talked about his work with gpl-violations.org enforcing his own copyrights in Linux, and explained why this was important work for users of the violating devices. He also pointed out that some of the companies that were sued during his most active period of gpl-violations.org are now regular upstream contributors.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Chemistry project raises up the next generation of researchers

      In 2007 I took part in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) developing the Avogadro application. As we were developing Avogadro, we founded The Open Chemistry project as an umbrella project to develop related tools for chemistry and materials science. Our goal is to bring high quality open source tools to research communities working in these areas, and to develop other tools to complement the Avogadro molecular editor.

      This year we were very pleased to be selected as a mentoring organization for GSoC; a few of our mentors are Geoff Hutchison, Adam Tenderholt, David Koes, and Karol Langner, who are all long-time contributors in related projects. And, we were lucky to get three slots for student projects. To get started, we lined up a number of mentors from related communities, and developed an ideas page.

  • Programming/Development

    • Getting Groovy with data

      Groovy is an almost perfect complement to Java, providing a compact, highly expressive and compatible scripting environment for my use. Of course, Groovy isn’t totally perfect; as with any programming language, its design is based on a series of trade-offs that need to be understood in order to produce quality results. But for me, Groovy’s advantages far outweigh its disadvantages, making it an indispensable part of my data analysis toolkit. In a series of articles, I’ll explain how and why.

Leftovers

  • Spreadsheets have ruled Earth for too long. Business must embrace the cloud [iophk: “the pie chart has already done untold damage, how much more when coupled with clown computing?”]

    The one certainty in business software and services is that there will always be more acronyms. At the moment, though, there’s more to the sector than just another jargon explosion: we’re moving towards a new way of looking at IT, one that applies best-practice business processes to any company—however small it may be, and however fast it may grow.

    This sounds good, but wading through websites full of perky lists of generic benefits can leave many IT managers still wondering exactly what they’re being sold.

  • Finland ranks in top 3 travel destinations for 2017

    In its annual ranking, independent-travel publisher Lonely Planet names Canada, Colombia and Finland as prime destinations for 2017.

  • 13 IT leaders confess their scary stories and deep, dark fears

    Today’s IT leaders are facing a world of unknowns and underlying fears on a daily basis – from the ransomware that could take down their organizations, to the emergence of new digital disruptors that could render their business obsolete, to the absence of quality IT talent they need to stay ahead of these and other threats. Although scary, it is comforting to know that you are not alone.

    We asked 13 IT leaders to share their stories of unexpected or frightening events in their career, or the threats on the horizon making them nervous for the future of IT. Read on for their tales from the IT crypt.

  • Science

    • Google’s neural networks invent their own encryption

      Computers are keeping secrets. A team from Google Brain, Google’s deep learning project, has shown that machines can learn how to protect their messages from prying eyes.

      Researchers Martín Abadi and David Andersen demonstrate that neural networks, or “neural nets” – computing systems that are loosely based on artificial neurons – can work out how to use a simple encryption technique.

      In their experiment, computers were able to make their own form of encryption using machine learning, without being taught specific cryptographic algorithms. The encryption was very basic, especially compared to our current human-designed systems. Even so, it is still an interesting step for neural nets, which the authors state “are generally not meant to be great at cryptography”.

  • Hardware

    • 2001: An Apple Odyssey

      A lot about Apple has changed since 2001, but one thing that hasn’t are the haters.

      Exactly 15 years ago this week, Apple released the iPod, a device that was met with a famously harsh one-line review from Slashdot founder Rob Malda: “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.”

      If you’re an Apple fan, you know that quote inside and out, because it was a great example of the haters being wrong and a nice quote to pull out of your hat.

    • The question about ‘grand strategy’ that made Tim Cook unhappy on Apple’s earning call was based on a Harvard professor’s theory that makes uncomfortable reading for Apple

      Last night, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a terse, unhappy answer to this question from UBS analyst Steven Milunovich: “Does Apple today have a grand strategy for what you want to do?”

      Milunovich asked the question two different ways, and Cook gave only non-answers, one of which was “as usual, we’re not going to talk about what’s ahead.”

      There is a reason Milunovich asked that question. It’s not merely about Cook’s tradition of not giving clues about what Apple will do next. Rather, Milunovich’s question was based on a theory by Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen. The theory makes uncomfortable reading for observers of Apple, and perhaps for insiders too.

  • Security

    • Thursday’s security updates
    • Mirai will be dwarfed by future Android botnet DDoS attacks, Lookout warns

      THE MIRAI BOTNET will seem like nothing compared to the havoc that is caused when hackers turn their attention to hijacking Android smartphones, Lookout’s security research chief has warned.

      Speaking to the INQUIRER, Mike Murray said it would be easy for cyber crooks to take over millions of smartphones, noting how often the Android requires patching.

    • Deal Seeks to Limit Open-Source Bugs

      Seeking to spot potential security vulnerabilities in systems that increasingly rely on open source software, software license optimization vendor Flexera Software has acquired a specialist in identifying potentially vulnerable software components.

      Flexera, Itasca, Ill., said Thursday (Oct. 27) it is acquiring San Francisco-based Palamida Inc. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

    • Senator Wants to Classify Insecure Internet of Things Devices As ‘Harmful’

      A massive attack carried out with a zombie army of hacked internet-connected devices caused intermittent outages on Friday, preventing tens of thousands of people from accessing popular sites such as Twitter, Reddit, and Netflix.

      For many security experts, an attack like that one, which leveraged thousands of easy-to-hack Internet of Things such as DVRs and surveillance cameras—weaponized thanks to a mediocre but effective malware known as Mirai—is just a sign of things to come.

      That’s why Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) wants the US government to do something about it.

    • Senator Prods Federal Agencies on IoT Mess

      The co-founder of the newly launched Senate Cybersecurity Caucus is pushing federal agencies for possible solutions and responses to the security threat from insecure “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices, such as the network of hacked security cameras and digital video recorders that were reportedly used to help bring about last Friday’s major Internet outages.

      In letters to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Virginia Senator Mark Warner (D) called the proliferation of insecure IoT devices a threat to resiliency of the Internet.

    • European Parliament increases budget for EU-Fossa

      On Wednesday, the European Parliament agreed to a follow-up to the European Commission’s ‘EU Free and Open Source Software Auditing’ project (EU-Fossa). The plan for the next phase is included in the EU 2017 budget that was agreed upon by the European Parliament.

    • European Parliament votes to extend Free Software security audits

      Remember how I raised €1 million to demonstrate security and freedom aren’t opposites? Well here’s what happened next and how we are going to move forward with this.

      In 2014, two major security vulnerabilities, Heartbleed and Shellshock, were discovered. Both concerned Free Software projects that are widely used throughout the Internet, on computers, tablets, and smartphones alike. My colleague Max Andersson from the Swedish Greens and I proposed a so-called “pilot project”, the Free and Open Source Software Audit (FOSSA).

    • Princeton Upskills U on Open Source Security

      During Wednesday’s Upskill U course, lecturer Gary Sockrider, principal security technologist for Arbor Networks , explained the history of DDoS attacks, case studies of recent attacks, and the business impact of these security threats. DDoS attacks not only raise operational expenses, but can also negatively affect an organization’s brand, and result in loss of revenue and customers. (Listen to Security: Tackling DDoS.)

      “Having visibility is key, you can’t stop something you can’t see. Having good visibility across your own network is vital in finding and stopping these attacks,” said Sockrider. “You can leverage common tools and technology that are already available on the network equipment you own today such as flow technologies, looking at SIP logs … Obviously you’ll want to get to some specific intelligent DDoS mitigation in the end.”

    • GNU Tar “Pointy Feather” Vulnerability Disclosed (CVE-2016-6321)

      Last week was the disclosure of the Linux kernel’s Dirty COW vulnerability while the latest high-profile open-source project going public with a new security CVE is GNU’s Tar. Tar CVE-2016-6321 is also called POINTYFEATHER according to the security researchers.

      The GNU Pointy Feather vulnerability comes down to a pathname bypass on the Tar extraction process. Regardless of the path-name(s) specified on the command-line, the attack allows for file and directory overwrite attacks using specially crafted tar archives.

    • Let’s Encrypt and The Ford Foundation Aim To Create a More Inclusive Web

      Let’s Encrypt was awarded a grant from The Ford Foundation as part of its efforts to financially support its growing operations. This is the first grant that has been awarded to the young nonprofit, a Linux Foundation project which provides free, automated and open SSL certificates to more than 13 million fully-qualified domain names (FQDNs).

      The grant will help Let’s Encrypt make several improvements, including increased capacity to issue and manage certificates. It also covers costs of work recently done to add support for Internationalized Domain Name certificates.

      “The people and organizations that Ford Foundation serves often find themselves on the short end of the stick when fighting for change using systems we take for granted, like the Internet,” Michael Brennan, Internet Freedom Program Officer at Ford Foundation, said. “Initiatives like Let’s Encrypt help ensure that all people have the opportunity to leverage the Internet as a force for change.”

    • How security flaws work: SQL injection

      Thirty-one-year-old Laurie Love is currently staring down the possibility of 99 years in prison. After being extradited to the US recently, he stands accused of attacking systems belonging to the US government. The attack was allegedly part of the #OpLastResort hack in 2013, which targeted the US Army, the US Federal Reserve, the FBI, NASA, and the Missile Defense Agency in retaliation over the tragic suicide of Aaron Swartz as the hacktivist infamously awaited trial.

    • How To Build A Strong Security Awareness Program

      At the Security Awareness Summit this August in San Francisco, a video clip was shown that highlights the need to develop holistic security awareness. The segment showed an employee being interviewed as a subject matter expert in his office cubicle. Unfortunately, all his usernames and passwords were on sticky notes behind him, facing the camera and audience for all to see.

      I bring this story up not to pick on this poor chap but to highlight the fact that security awareness is about human behavior, first and foremost. Understand that point and you are well on your way to building a more secure culture and organization.

      My work as director of the Security Awareness Training program at the SANS Institute affords me a view across hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of employees trying to build a more secure workforce and society. As we near the end of this year’s National Cyber Security Awareness Month, here are two tips to incorporate robust security awareness training into your organization and daily work.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Britain, U.S. sending planes, troops to deter Russia in the east

      Britain said on Wednesday it will send fighter jets to Romania next year and the United States promised troops, tanks and artillery to Poland in NATO’s biggest military build-up on Russia’s borders since the Cold War.

      Germany, Canada and other NATO allies also pledged forces at a defense ministers meeting in Brussels on the same day two Russian warships armed with cruise missiles entered the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Denmark, underscoring East-West tensions.

      In Madrid, the foreign ministry said Russia had withdrawn a request to refuel three warships in Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta after NATO allies said they could be used to target civilians in Syria.

      The ships were part of an eight-ship carrier battle group – including Russia’s sole aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov – that is expected to join around 10 other Russian vessels already off the Syrian coast, diplomats said.

    • Yazidi women who escaped from Isis win EU human rights prize

      Two Yazidi women who survived sexual enslavement by Islamic State before escaping and becoming “inspirational” advocates for their community in Iraq have won the EU’s prestigious Sakharov human rights prize.

      Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar were abducted with other Yazidi women in August 2014 when their home village of Kocho in Sinjar, northern Iraq, was attacked by Isis jihadis. It was one of the darkest episodes Iraq has suffered at the hands of the terrorist group.

      The annual Sakharov prize for freedom of thought, established in 1988, is named after the Soviet physicist and outspoken dissident Andrei Sakharov and is awarded to “individuals who have made an exceptional contribution to the fight for human rights across the globe”. It has previously been awarded to the likes of Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela.

      The EU described Murad and Aji Bashar as “public advocates for the Yazidi community in Iraq, a religious minority that has been the subject of a genocidal campaign by IS militants”.

    • Assyrian Woman: ISIS Murdered My Son Because He Refused to Convert

      An Assyrian Christian woman has shared how members of the Islamic State terrorist group brutally murdered her son because he refused to deny his faith in Jesus Christ.

      During an interview with the Southern California-based human rights group Roads of Success, Syrian mother Alice Assaf recalled how ISIS overtook her hometown, the Damascus suburb of Adra al-Ummaliya, in 2014, and immediately began killing Christians.

      “Members of 200 different families were killed right before our eyes,” Assaf said, according to an English translation provided by Roads of Success in a YouTube video. “They shot them. We witnessed the shooting of so many. So I told my children [and thought] it was better for us to die in our own home so that our other family members would know our fate. When we got home, one person said to me, … ‘ISIS is killing Christians.’”

      Assaf shared how militants killed indiscriminately, massacring at least six men and about 250 children – all under four years old – at a nearby bakery.

    • ‘The day I killed my rapist’

      A young Tunisian woman was photographed naked by a friend of her father’s. He then used the images to silence her – until one day she snapped and took a bloody revenge.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • The strange tale of a dating site’s attacks on WikiLeaks founder Assange

      For an online dating site, toddandclare.com seems really good at cloak-and-dagger stuff. Disconnected phones. Mystery websites. Actions that ricochet around the globe.

      But the attention grabber is the Houston-based company’s target: Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, whose steady dumps of leaked emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign have given supporters of Donald Trump the only cheering news of the last few weeks.

      In some ways, toddandclare.com’s campaign against Assange is as revelatory as the leaked emails themselves, illustrating the powerful, sometimes unseen, forces that oppose WikiLeaks.

      Whoever is behind the dating site has marshaled significant resources to target Assange, enough to gain entry into a United Nations body, operate in countries in Europe, North America and the Caribbean, conduct surveillance on Assange’s lawyer in London, obtain the fax number of Canada’s prime minister and seek to prod a police inquiry in the Bahamas.

      And they’ve done it at a time when WikiLeaks has become a routine target of Democratic politicians who portray Assange as a stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his reported efforts to disrupt the U.S. election.

      One part of toddandclare’s two-pronged campaign put a megaphone to unproven charges that Assange made contact with a young Canadian girl in the Bahamas through the internet with the intention of molesting her. The second part sought to entangle him in a plan to receive $1 million from the Russian government.

    • Hillary, Wikileaks, Russia – theater of absurd goes viral

      Can people STOP referring to Wikileaks as a news organization. They are a foreign agent, supported by Russia, publishing stolen data,” tweeted Michael McFall, who is considered among the most controversial former US ambassador in Russia. During his tenure in Moscow, McFall was surrounded by controversies and continues to air bombastic tweets.

      On the other hand, Wikileaks, which was launched 10 years ago, has turned out to be a unique phenomenon. It is redefining modern media by attempting to expose even media outlets, tabloids, and successful channels alongside their big bosses. The website has been publishing leaked documents to bring truth out in the open.

      The sad state of affairs of our times is that truth has to find its way to the public through questionable ways and instruments. In case of Wikileaks, most of their documents are accessed either via hacking or are supplied by whistleblowers.

      All these years Wikileaks has been revealing a lot of classified information on numerous subjects related to foreign and domestic policies of countries. Wikileaks publisher and journalists have won many awards. In 2015, it was nominated for the UN Mandela Prize and was nominated for six years in a row, from 2010 to 2015, for the Nobel Peace Prize.

    • Aide Said He Was Running ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’ in New WikiLeaks Dump

      A 12-page memo written by a former aide to President Bill Clinton illustrates how he and other advisers raised millions of dollars for the Clinton Foundation and the Clintons after they left the White House, according to a new batch of emails released by WikiLeaks.

      The purported memo from Doug Band details how he and his team locked in lucrative speaking deals for Bill Clinton and how Band leveraged his work at his global consulting firm, Teneo Strategies, to persuade clients to contribute to the Clinton Foundation. Band described his work as running “Bill Clinton Inc.”

      “We also have solicited and obtained, as appropriate, in-kind services for the president and his family – for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like,” Band allegedly said in the document.

    • The strange tale of a dating site’s attacks on WikiLeaks founder Assange

      For an online dating site, toddandclare.com seems really good at cloak-and-dagger stuff. Disconnected phones. Mystery websites. Actions that ricochet around the globe.

      But the attention grabber is the Houston-based company’s target: Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, whose steady dumps of leaked emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign have given supporters of Donald Trump the only cheering news of the last few weeks.

      In some ways, toddandclare.com’s campaign against Assange is as revelatory as the leaked emails themselves, illustrating the powerful, sometimes unseen, forces that oppose WikiLeaks.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • World wildlife ‘falls by 58% in 40 years’

      The Living Planet assessment, by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and WWF, suggests that if the trend continues that decline could reach two-thirds among vertebrates by 2020.

      The figures suggest that animals living in lakes, rivers and wetlands are suffering the biggest losses.

      Human activity, including habitat loss, wildlife trade, pollution and climate change contributed to the declines.

      Dr Mike Barrett. head of science and policy at WWF, said: “It’s pretty clear under ‘business as usual’ we will see continued declines in these wildlife populations. But I think now we’ve reached a point where there isn’t really any excuse to let this carry on.

    • World facing biggest mass extinction since dinosaurs – with two thirds of animals wiped out in 50 years

      The world is facing the biggest extinction since the dinosaurs, with seven in 10 mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles wiped out in just 50 years, a new report warns.

      The latest Living Planet report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) estimates that by 2020 populations of vertebrates will have fallen by 67 per cent since 1970.

      Extinction rates are now running at 100 times their natural level because of deforestation, hunting, pollution, overfishing and climate change.

    • World on track to lose two-thirds of wild animals by 2020, major report warns

      The number of wild animals living on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, according to a new report, part of a mass extinction that is destroying the natural world upon which humanity depends.

      The analysis, the most comprehensive to date, indicates that animal populations plummeted by 58% between 1970 and 2012, with losses on track to reach 67% by 2020. Researchers from WWF and the Zoological Society of London compiled the report from scientific data and found that the destruction of wild habitats, hunting and pollution were to blame.

      The creatures being lost range from mountains to forests to rivers and the seas and include well-known endangered species such as elephants and gorillas and lesser known creatures such as vultures and salamanders.

    • Hectare by hectare, an indigenous man reforested a jungle in Indonesia’s burned-out heartland

      The road from this inland provincial capital in southern Borneo to the delta city of Banjarmasin is littered with degraded forests and peat swamps, hallmarks of a region at the epicenter of last year’s nationwide fire and haze crisis.

      Amid this arid landscape, however, lies an oasis: the peat forest of Jumpun Pambelom, whose name means “life source” in the local Dayak Ngaju language.

      The jungle here is largely the work of a Ngaju man named Januminro. Since 1998, when Indonesia experienced one of the worst episodes of uncontrolled burning in recorded history, the 54-year-old has bought up and reforested degraded land in the area — a hectare here, a few there.

      Today Jumpun Pambelom spans 18 hectares (44 acres) and bustles with with plant and animal life, from rare ulin trees (Eusideroxylon) and towering ramins (Gonystylus) to endangered Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) and sun bears (Helarctos malayanus), not to mention plenty of swamp fish and game.

    • Two-Thirds of Wild Animal Populations Could Be in Decline by 2020

      Around the world, more than two-thirds of wildlife populations could be in decline by the year 2020 because of human activity on the planet, says a new report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London, a conservation charity.

      The Living Planet Report, which the WWF puts out every two years, says that populations of vertebrates (including mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles) dropped by 58 percent between 1970 and 2012. Of course, quantifying biodiversity loss around the planet is no easy task, and there are long-raging debates about how much species loss spells disaster. The picture will get even worse if we don’t take steps now, the WWF says.

      “Within one generation, we’ve seen drastic declines in global wildlife populations,” James Snider, vice-president of science, research and innovation at WWF-Canada, told me. “One of the more troubling facts is that it seems, based on reporting [every two years], that the decline is worsening.” The 2014 report showed a 52 percent decline over the same period, he noted. “Based on that, we expect that by 2020, If no significant action is taken, it could be as much as two-thirds of populations that have declined since the 1970s.”

    • What the elk is that? Animal in SC for 1st time in centuries

      A wild elk has been spotted roaming the woodlands of South Carolina for the first time in more than 200 years.

      News outlets report that wildlife biologists are warning Upstate residents and tourists to stay away from a young bull elk that was seen in several places in Pickens County over the weekend.

      In response to social media posts showing people feeding the animal, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission biologist Justin McVey warned the public that the animal can cause serious injuries.

    • Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere Has Passed a Worrying Threshold

      The World Meteorological Organization’s greenhouse-gas bulletin shows that 2015 was the first year in which levels of carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million on average across the globe. Part of what pushed the planet over this threshold was El Niño, which, according to the WMO, “reduced the capacity of ‘sinks’ like forests, vegetation and the oceans to absorb CO2.”

      But even when those sinks regain their ability to absorb carbon dioxide, warns the WMO secretary-general, Petteri Taalas, emissions will still need to be cut. “The El Niño event has disappeared. Climate change has not,” he explained. “Without tackling CO2 emissions, we cannot tackle climate change and keep temperature increases to below 2 °C above the preindustrial era.”

    • Officials say no drinking water impacted by Sunoco pipeline rupture

      The state Department of Environmental Protection and the EPA continue to sample water downstream from a gasoline pipeline break in Lycoming County, and say so far no levels of petroleum have been detected that would risk public health. Terry Maenza, a spokesman for American Water, which serves about 12,000 customers in the area near the accident says their sampling has also found no traces of the contaminant. American Water had shut down its intake valves and asked customers to conserve water on Friday after an estimated 55,000 gallons of gasoline spilled into a tributary of the Loyalsock Creek. The Loyalsock runs into the Susquehanna River. Officials speculate that the flood waters that likely caused the pipeline rupture were so heavy, that the leaked fuel was quickly diluted as it flowed downstream.

      “Everything is back to normal,” said Maenza. He says the company lifted it’s conservation request and resumed operations on Sunday.

      The flood waters have receded and Sunoco has removed the broken section of pipe, which was about 10 feet downstream from a bridge washed out by heavy rains. Sunoco officials say the bridge washed into the exposed pipe, which had been buried 5 feet below the creek.

      “Given the position of the pipe and the location of the bridge before and after the event, it’s clear that the bridge was responsible for the damage to the pipe,” said David R. Chalson, Sunoco Logistics senior vice-president for operations.

    • Clinton campaign declines to support Dakota pipeline protesters

      Hillary Clinton’s silence on the Dakota Access Pipeline has not gone unnoticed.

      On Thursday morning, young water protectors from Oceti Sakowin, the Seven Council Fires, and the Standing Rock Sioux Nation traveled to the Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, demanding that she speak out against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).

      The Hillary Clinton campaign has thus far remained silent about the 1,172-mile pipeline, which would cross both the Missouri River and the Ogallala Aquifer, threatening sacred indigenous land and water supplies. The group also called for solidarity actions at Clinton campaign offices across the country.

  • Finance

    • Twitter Failing? 5 Signs The Company Is In Trouble

      Twitter Inc. announced its quarterly results Thursday, which showed the company’s growth has slowed for the second consecutive quarter. The social network company has struggled to maintain a positive outlook as it faces competition from apps such as Instagram and Snapchat.

    • Twitter slashes jobs, Vine as it seeks profits

      Twitter appeased Wall Street by restructuring to chart a course to profitability and by showing early signs its business is perking up.

      User growth and revenue climbed more than analysts expected as the struggling social media company announced 350 job cuts, or about 9% of its workforce. It also said it would shutter mobile video app Vine.

      “The current quarter results were ahead of expectations and user figures provided some promising elements as well,” said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser, who is maintaining his price target of $26 and a buy recommendation on the stock.

      The effort to right the company comes as potential buyers such as Google, Salesforce and Walt Disney declined to pursue an acquisition. The lack of interest has cranked up pressure on Twitter’s embattled management.

      Jack Dorsey, the Twitter chief executive who returned to the helm last year to reinvigorate growth, declined to comment on the takeover discussions, saying only that Twitter’s board is committed to “maximizing long-term shareholder value.”

    • Twitter to Cut 9% of Workforce as Q3 Earnings Top Expectations

      Twitter will lay off 9% of its employees as the company struggles to achieve profitability, while the social-media company’s third-quarter 2016 revenue and earnings exceeded Wall Street expectations.

      Twitter said the job cuts will focus primarily on reorganizing its sales, partnerships and marketing operations. The company had 3,910 employees as of the end of September, meaning Twitter is pink-slipping about 350 staffers.

      The layoffs come as Twitter showed some slight improvement in financial performance for Q3. The company posted quarterly revenue of $616 million, up 8% year-over-year, and adjusted net income of $92 million, or 13 cents per share. Wall Street expected Twitter to post revenue of $606 million and adjusted EPS of 9 cents. Factoring in stock-based compensation and other items, Twitter’s net loss in the quarter was $103 million, an improvement from a net loss of $132 million in the year-earlier period.

    • [Old] CETA: The Canadian TTIP nobody noticed until it was (almost) too late

      Since Ars wrote about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) last year, it has gradually moved up the UK’s political agenda, culminating in the recent pledge by Jeremy Corbyn to scrap it if he is elected as prime minister before it is completed, and to fight it if he is not. But while many people are increasingly worried about what might happen with TTIP, there’s another trade agreement, one which has already been signed, which is about to bring in many of the same controversial measures almost unnoticed.

    • Here’s Why Amazon Stock Just Collapsed

      Shares fell over 6% in after-market trading Thursday

      Amazon.com Inc reported a lower-than-expected quarterly profit on Thursday as expenses rose and the company provided a disappointing fourth-quarter revenue forecast.

      Amazon, whose shares were down 6.8 percent in after-hours trading, said its net income rose to $252 million, or 52 cents per share, from $79 million, or 17 cents per share, a year earlier. It was company’s sixth straight profitable quarter.

    • ‘We’re Not Helping Our Kids by Keeping the Deficit Down’ – CounterSpin interview with Dean Baker on the debt boogeyman

      The announcement that one agenda item for the final presidential debate would be “debt and entitlements” was not surprising. “Debt and entitlements,” linked together that way, are always on corporate media’s agenda, but though the terms are tossed around a lot, they’re rarely unpacked or explained. In place of facts, we get fear. The Chicago Tribune said if they could inject one debate question, it would be: “Secretary Clinton, Mr. Trump, you have children. Why aren’t you scared?”

      Well, Americans face many serious challenges. Are runaway national “debt and entitlements” one of them? We’re joined now by Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, where you’ll find his blog, Beat the Press, and he’s the author of, most recently, Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Dean Baker.

    • UN rights expert urges States not to sign the ‘flawed’ CETA treaty and put it to referendum

      The trade deal set to be signed by the European Union and Canada is a corporate-driven, fundamentally flawed treaty which should not be signed or ratified without a referendum in each country concerned, a United Nations human rights expert says.

      Alfred de Zayas, the UN Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, deplored the pressures brought on the Belgian regional parliament of Wallonia, which initially said it would not approve the treaty but later said its concerns had been met. “A culture of bullying and intimidation becomes apparent when it comes to trade agreements that currently get priority over human rights,” the expert said.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Jill Stein: The Best Way to Boost the Economy Is by Saving the Planet

      I believe the U.S. economy needs a Green New Deal: an ambitious yet secure economic and environmental program that will revive the economy, turn the tide on climate change, and make wars for oil obsolete—allowing us to cut our bloated, dangerous military budget in half. Building on the concept of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Green New Deal calls on communities, government, and ordinary people on the scale of World War II to transition our energy system and economy to 100% clean, renewable energy by 2030.

      The author of the best-known series of studies on transitioning to 100% clean energy, Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson, asserts that it is technologically and economically feasible. Bill Nye and others note that we have the technology to make this transition possible—and the science shows that we must. The only missing ingredient is political will.

    • Be A Realist – Vote Jill Stein

      It cracks me up whenever I see pawns of the Democratic Party like Robert Reich try to argue that supporting Hillary Clinton is the “realistic and practical” way to forward the progressive agenda. It always makes me wonder what reality they’re referring to when they call such creative fabrications “realistic.” Does Mr. Reich hail from Narnia, perhaps? Some magical gumdrop fantasy land where everyone walks backward and M. Night Shyamalan’s movies keep getting better and better?

    • ‘Ethical deficit’: New concerns over foundation

      Hillary Clinton’s top aides worried about foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation ahead of 2016, according to a NYT report based on a new Wikileaks release.

    • Memo shows Bill Clinton’s wealth was tied to Clinton Foundation

      In a 2011 memo, an aide to Bill Clinton laid out the messy relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the former president’s personal interests, detailing how some foundation donors also paid Clinton to speak and provide consulting services.

      The memo was released on Wednesday as part of a Wikileaks dump of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta’s hacked emails.

      Doug Band, a long-time aide to Bill Clinton, wrote the 2011 memo as part of an internal audit at the Clinton Foundation. In trying to explain his role in the Foundation, Band also brought up a series of instances he and his consulting company, Teneo Holdings, helped Bill Clinton secure for-profit contracts.

      The memo, which was being circulated to some in Clinton’s inner circle including Podesta, reinforces Republican criticisms of the blurred lines between the foundation and professional interests of the Clintons and their associates.

      “Independent of our fundraising and decision-making activities on behalf of the Foundation, we have dedicated ourselves to helping the President secure and engage in for-profit activities — including speeches, books, and advisory service engagements,” Band wrote. “In that context, we have in effect served as agents, lawyers, managers and implementers to secure speaking, business and advisory service deals. In support of the President’s for-profit activity, we also have solicited and obtained, as appropriate, in-kind services for the President and his family — for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.”

      At one point, Band even referred to the former president’s money-making enterprises as “Bill Clinton, Inc.”

      Band said and Justin Cooper, another long-time aide, weren’t separately compensated for helping Bill Clinton profit.

    • Wikileaks: Damaging analysis of Sanders’s single payer plan was likely a coordinated Clinton hit

      A search through Wikileaks’s database reveals that a week before a damaging, highly critical analysis of Bernie Sanders’s single payer healthcare plan was released by healthcare expert Kenneth Thorpe, with no disclosure of any affiliation with any campaign, the Clinton campaign was floating Thorpe’s name out as a vehicle to attack the Senator’s Medicare-for-all plan.

      Thorpe’s analysis was reported by Vox on January 28th, in an article titled “Study: Bernie Sanders’s single-payer plan is almost twice as expensive as he says.” A flurry of articles and editorials touting the study followed — for example, Paul Krugman’s January 28th editorial “Single Payer Trouble,” or the New York Time’s report “Left-Leaning Economists Question Cost of Bernie Sanders’s Plans.” These articles all fed the notion that Sanders was a pie-in-the-sky, puppies and rainbow dreamer, with no real grasp on reality.

      Others, however, such as single payer advocates David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, (“On Kenneth Thorpe’s Analysis of Senator Sanders’s Single-Payer Reform Plan”), claimed convincingly that Thorpe’s analysis rested on highly questionable, or flatly incorrect, assumptions and that it also contradicted previous studies that Thorpe himself had done. Sanders’s campaign, meanwhile, called the analysis “a total hatchet job.”

      As it turns out, a week before Thorpe’s analysis was released, in a January 19th thread discussing the merits of attacking Sanders on healthcare, Jake Sullivan, a top Clinton advisor, floated the idea of using Thorpe to attack Sanders on healthcare…

    • Eric Garner’s Daughter Slams Clinton Campaign Over Emails Confusing Police Brutality And Gun Violence

      Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, a black man who was killed by a NYPD officer in 2014, is slamming Hillary Clinton’s campaign over leaked emails from the server of John Podesta, the campaign’s chairman.

      “I know we have Erica Garner issues but we don’t want to mention Eric at all? I can see her coming after us for leaving him out of the piece,” wrote Nick Merrill, a spokesman for the campaign, in the email leaked from Podesta’s private server and posted on WikiLeaks.

      The email correspondence was a discussion about whether the death of Garner’s father should be used in a Clinton opinion piece for New York Daily News on gun violence.

      “It was obvious that the two white men that were on the email chain didn’t even know that my dad wasn’t shot,” Garner told The Huffington Post via Twitter direct message. “It was clear that he was just a dead body for them to manipulate for their use. White liberals have been trying to cram racism into the box of gun violence for a while now.”

    • Erica Garner Slams Clinton Campaign, Staffers for ‘Exploiting’ Father’s Death in Wikileaks Emails
    • Why would you want to “use” my dad?’: Eric Garner’s daughter slams Clinton campaign over WikiLeaks emails

      Erica Garner, whose father died in a chokehold by a New York City police officer in 2014, scolded the Clinton campaign in a series of tweets Thursday over hacked internal emails published by WikiLeaks that mentioned her and her father.

      The emails, exchanged between several Clinton staffers, had discussed a draft of a Clinton op-ed on gun violence that was eventually published in the New York Daily News in late March.

    • Neo-McCarthyism masks the US’s real problems

      AMID a tense stand-off in the Middle East between Russia and the United States, it is not surprising that tensions are rising by the day. Rhetoric coming out of the White House and the Kremlin is increasingly antagonistic, which has had damaging implications for the battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

      This election can be characterised by the blatant red scare tactics by Clinton and the Democrats, largely aimed at insinuating that Trump, WikiLeaks, and even Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein are de-facto Kremlin agents.

      It feels like we are in the 1960 election rather than 2016.

      The neo-McCarthyism adopted by the Clinton campaign to deflect any reasonable criticisms one may have of her flawed candidacy is unnecessary and paranoid.

      Not only this, but it draws attention away from the real issues and problems that the US faces as a nation — many of which Clinton and fellow centrists have been the root cause of.

    • Hacker-founded Pirate Party could win Iceland election

      Iceland’s radical Pirate Party, run by a former WikiLeaks worker who wants to be a political “Robin Hood,” could lead the Nordic nation’s next government after Saturday’s election.

      The Pirate Party, started four years ago, is part of a wave of populist groups gaining ground in Europe, from Austria to Italy, amid discontent with political scandals and a stalled economic recovery. Iceland’s economy collapsed after the 2008 financial crisis, and in April the prime minister resigned after being named in the Panama Papers scandal.

      “We stand for enacting changes that have to do with reforming the systems, rather than changing minor things that might easily be changed back,” said Birgitta Jónsdóttir, 49, the party’s leader and self-described “poetician.” “We do not define ourselves as left or right but rather as a party that focuses on the systems. In other words, we consider ourselves hackers.”

      Formed in 2012 to lobby for Internet copyright reform, the Pirate Party has broadened its platform to include advocating for direct democracy, total government transparency, decriminalizing drugs and even offering asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

    • Iceland’s ‘Pirate’ Jonsdottir: an accidental politician

      The public face of the Icelandic Pirate Party, Birgitta Jonsdottir is a hacker, cyberspace anarchist, poet — and a rather reluctant politician.

      However, she could find herself strutting the corridors of power if the Pirate Party emerges as expected as the strongest group in Saturday’s election in the North Atlantic island nation.

    • The Truth About Donald Trump’s Hair
    • The Greens are a movement party

      The Greens have elected hundreds of people to office at the local level, and Greens win about 34 percent of the time that we run in local elections. So please do not allow Pacifica to repeat a myth that the corporate media creates.

    • National Geographic Rebrands, Drops ‘Channel’ From Its Name

      NatGeo is finally dropping “Channel” from its name. A year after bringing all the other National Geographic entities — the magazine, the National Geographic Society — under the 20th Century Fox corporate umbrella, National Geographic Partners is going to start acting like one big adventurous family, and it’s giving itself a new tagline to boot: “Further.”

      “[‘Channel’] suggests this linear television destinations and increasingly that’s not the way people are consuming us,” explained National Geographic Global Networks CEO Courtney Monroe. “We are one, and we are working more closely together.” Monroe put forth the upcoming NatGeo series “Mars”, premiering Nov. 14, as an example: Yes, it’s a big event series, a hybrid of documentary-style interviews interwoven with a fictional narrative about the mission to colonize the Red Planet. But, she pointed out, it’s also the cover story of the November issue of the National Geographic magazine, as well as the topic of two books — one for kids, and one for adults.

    • WikiLeaks drops another tranche of #PodestaEmails from Clinton campaign chair

      There will be a total of 50,000 emails released in the lead up to November 8, according to WikiLeaks. So far, 35,594 have been published.

    • WikiLeaks Releases 21st Batch of Clinton Campaign Chair Podesta’s Emails

      WikiLeaks uploaded on Friday the 21st batch of emails of the US Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.

    • Clinton’s camp feared Joe Biden run, worked hard to kill it

      Biden would have sailed away from Trump much earlier and faster than Hillary Clinton did. But beyond the easy victory she’s likely to win anyway all told, he doesn’t have much to recommend him over her, and lacks many of her — yes, I know! — her scruples.

    • Why 5% for the Green Party is a win for America

      In 1854, a few thousand people gathered in Jackson, Michigan to launch an independent challenge to a national political system dominated by two parties. “Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements,” a party leader later recalled, “we gathered from the four winds…[with] every external circumstance against us.” This challenge was fueled by the radical abolitionist movement that united white workers and formerly enslaved Africans against the criminal institution of slavery, as a response to the political crisis caused by the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

      In just two years, this insurgent third party — created by movement activists — had gained ground across the Northern states, challenging the Whig Party. In short order this insurgent “third party” had become a major opposition party. By 1858 they had won an influential foothold in Congress, and by 1860, that party leader — Abraham Lincoln — was elected President of the United States.

      It’s painfully obvious that the Republican Party has strayed dramatically from its early radical roots in abolitionism, equality, and peace. But it’s also quite fitting that, in 2016, as that party is declining into dangerous reactionary know-nothingism, the opening for a new party rooted in radical equality, environmental justice, and peace to rise up is bigger than ever. Amid the raging flames of austerity, endless war, impending climate change, and the most polarized election in modern memory, a record 57 percent of Americans are yearning for another choice, and for an independent political party that will truly represent their interests, according to a recent Gallup poll.

      [...]

      Our grassroots, people-powered campaign has achieved incredible gains in this election cycle, despite having had a fraction of the media coverage and an even smaller fraction of the vast resources of the two major parties. With the material benefits that come with 5 percent of the popular vote, we will have unprecedented resources to continue building this movement for progressive change, shoring up power from below, and paving the way for a new, sorely needed politics of integrity and transformation.

    • The Best Ballot Plan Now? ‘Strategic’ Voting for the Stein-Baraka Green Party Ticket

      Donald Trump is campaigning to win 40 percent of the vote for president—and he’s close, with recent polls showing him in the high 30s. But his final performance will not help.

      Trump is focusing on topics that will prevent him from broadening his base, such as the women he accuses of lying about his alleged sexual assaults, and what he calls the rigged election. He is fighting with other Republicans, like Paul Ryan, and with Republican state leaders, most notably in Ohio. His refusal to say he will accept the outcome of the election is creating more conflict with Republicans and raising doubts with voters.

      Outlets predicting the results of the election say Clinton will be the next president, with astoundingly lopsided odds. The Huffington Post gives Trump only a 3.1 percent chance of winning and puts Clinton’s likelihood at 96.8 percent. The New York Times gives Clinton a 93 percent chance.

    • Podesta relative earned six-figure fees lobbying Clinton’s State Dept. during his tenure there
    • Eric Garner’s daughter blasts Clinton campaign after WikiLeaks emails

      The daughter of a New York City man who died after he was put in a police chokehold blasted Hillary Clinton’s campaign Thursday when WikiLeaks revealed email conversations about using her father’s death to protest gun violence.

      “I’m troubled by the revelation that you and this campaign actually discussed ‘using’ Eric Garner … Why would you want to ‘use’ my dad,” tweeted Erica Garner, who endorsed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.

    • Goodlatte Statement on the FBI’s Decision to Reopen the Clinton Investigation
    • WikiLeaks Dumps Mean Hillary’s Presidency Would Be Tainted from Day One
    • How Neera Tanden Works

      Emails released by WikiLeaks reveal the maneuverings of a liberal think-tank president and member of Hillary Clinton’s inner circle.

    • Hillary headache: Even Chelsea ripped ‘hustling’ at lucrative family foundation

      Did the Clinton Foundation, for all its good works, serve as a giant slush fund?

      That question has surged to the forefront of the campaign in the wake of another Wikileaks dump, and one of the biggest accusers turns out to be Chelsea Clinton.

      The Chelsea criticism is a bombshell, one that exploded with enough force that it propelled the lead story in both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and an above-the-fold piece in the Washington Post.

    • State Dept Told ‘Friendly’ AP Reporters About Missing Hillary Emails Before Congress

      Department of State officials told Hillary Clinton campaign staffers they would leak a story about missing Benghazi investigation emails to a “friendly” Associated Press reporter before Congress “has a chance to realize what they have.”

      “Just spoke to State a little more about this,” Clinton’s travelling press secretary Nick Merrill wrote to campaign staffers on June 24, 2015, regarding emails sent between the former secretary of state and her longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal.

      The Department of State told Merrill they would be tipping off AP reporters that at least 15 emails between Clinton and Blumenthal were missing from 55,000 pages of emails handed over to a House committee investigating the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

    • If Clinton Campaign Believes WikiLeaks Emails Are Forged, Why Don’t They Prove It?

      Top Democrats have repeatedly waved off substantial questions arising from their hacked emails by falsely implying that some of them are forgeries created by Russian hackers.

      The problem with that is that no one has found a single case of anything forged among the information released from hacks of either Clinton campaign or Democratic Party officials.

      The strategy dates all the way back to a conference call with Democratic lawmakers in August. Politico reported that a number of Democratic strategists suggested that Russian hackers — who have been blamed by U.S. intelligence agencies for supplying the emails to Wikileaks and other web sites — could sprinkle false data among the real information.

      Since then, despite the complete lack of evidence to support such a claim, it’s become a common dodge among leading Democrats and the Clinton campaign when asked questions about the substance of the emails.

    • WikiLeaks shows Clinton hid email scandal from her own staff

      Hillary Clinton’s closest aides hid the private email scandal from her campaign team in the months before the official launch of her presidential campaign, emails made public by WikiLeaks show.

      Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chair, and Neera Tanden, co-chair of Clinton’s transition team, each expressed shock at the revelations about her private server as they emerged in early March 2015.

      Although Clinton’s team had performed research on her in 2014 as staff prepared for her campaign, Clinton’s inner circle apparently steered Mook and others away from the issue until it was too late.

      When Podesta asked Mook if he had “any idea of the depth of this story,” Mook answered simply, “Nope.”

    • Is there a deeper network behind the ‘Catholic Spring’?

      Washington D.C., Oct 27, 2016 / 12:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A reputed “Catholic Spring” is in the news after hacked emails from John Podesta, now Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, indicated plans for an effort to sow revolution within the Church.

      But grants to the think tank Podesta founded also suggest links to other efforts targeting religion. The Center for American Progress appears to be part of an influence network that advocates restrictions on religious freedom while promoting dissent within Christianity on sexual morality, especially LGBT issues.

      Podesta co-founded the Center for American Progress in 2003 after serving as White House Chief of Staff in President Bill Clinton’s final term. He served as the center’s CEO until 2011. He became a special adviser to President Barack Obama in 2013, and joined the Hillary Clinton campaign in early 2015.

    • Propaganda Alert! Misleading Article About Jill Stein in the Daily Beast

      A particularly misleading article, titled “Jill Stein’s Ideology Says One Thing — Her Investment Portfolio Says Another,” is being peddled by the Daily Beast, which accuses the Green Party’s presidential candidate, Jill Stein, of being a hypocrite for investing in certain mutual funds which hold assets with energy, tobacco, & pharmaceutical companies. The accusation is, like much of what the Clinton-controlled Daily Beast spews from it’s slimy propaganda-machines, a poorly-constructed pile of journalistic garbage.

      I shall provide a link to the article at the bottom of this page but I’d like to discourage my readers from clicking it because I hate the thought that these jerks will get any amount of ad-money from web-traffic out of my site. I’d also like to note that the Daily Beast is owned by IAC, a media corporation whose board of directors includes — [drumroll, please…] Chealsea Clinton! So — please click sparingly!

    • New Emails in Clinton Case Came From Anthony Weiner’s Electronic Devices

      Federal law enforcement officials said Friday that the new emails uncovered in the closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server were discovered after the F.B.I. seized electronic devices belonging to Huma Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton, and her husband, Anthony D. Weiner.

      The F.B.I. is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The bureau told Congress on Friday that it had uncovered new emails related to the Clinton case — one federal official said they numbered in the thousands — potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the presidential campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the election.

      In a letter to Congress, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said that emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, and that they “appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”

      Mr. Comey said the F.B.I. was taking steps to “determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” He said he did not know how long it would take to review the emails, or whether the new information was significant.

    • October surprise: FBI reviewing new emails in Clinton server case

      The FBI on Friday said it is assessing new emails “pertinent” to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, a stunning and unexpected move that comes more than a week before the presidential election.

      In a letter sent to lawmakers on Friday, FBI Director James Comey said the bureau has learned of the existence of more emails “that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.” The messages were found “in connection with an unrelated case,” Comey wrote without further explanation.

      Law enforcement officials told The New York Times that the emails were uncovered after the FBI seized devices belonging to longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband, Anthony Weiner, who is under investigation for allegedly sending sexually explicit messages to an underage girl.

      After being briefed by his team, Comey “agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps” to determine whether the emails “contain classified information, as well as to asses their importance to our investigation.”

      Comey said he could not predict how long it would take the bureau to assess whether the new emails are “significant,” meaning the investigation could hang over Clinton’s head through the election.

    • Advocating a ‘Split Ticket,’ WaPo Columnist Parts Ways With Reality

      I’m glad, truly I am, that Samuelson (7/9/97) is no longer writing in regards to climate change, “It’s politically incorrect to question whether this is a serious problem that serious people ought to take seriously.” But if he’s not in denial about climate change, he’s in denial about denialism: Ryan says “I don’t know” whether humans are warming the Earth’s climate, “and I don’t think science does either.” He does know whether the federal government can do anything about climate change, though: “I would argue the federal government, with all its tax and regulatory schemes, can’t.”

      As for McConnell, he says that “for everybody who thinks [the planet is] warming, I can find somebody who thinks it isn’t.” His own position? “I’m not a scientist, I am interested in protecting Kentucky’s economy, I’m interested in having low-cost electricity.”

      These are the people that Samuelson suggests will do something about the climate catastrophe if you make sure they don’t lose control of Congress.

      Finally, a historical note: Setting up his argument, Samuelson notes, “At its peak in 1972, ticket splitters represented 30 percent of voters.” Hmm—why do you suppose that 1972 was the peak of ticket-splitting? While the parties on the presidential level had definitively switched sides on civil rights by 1972, with Democrat George McGovern an ardent advocate and Republican Richard Nixon pursuing his “Southern strategy,” congressional representatives throughout the South were still overwhelmingly Democratic—mostly the same people who had been fighting civil rights for years.

    • Why It All Matters for Hillary

      The arguments of “everybody does it” and “well, it wasn’t illegal” in regards to the email server, the Clinton Foundation, pay-for-play, donor access, dirty tricks against Sanders, the many well-timed coincidences of Trump revelations, and more, are strawman logic.

      Leaving aside the idea that people usually say “everybody does it” and “well, it wasn’t illegal” only when their own candidate gets caught doing something, what was done matters.

    • Anthony Weiner Investigation Leads FBI Back To Clinton Email Server Case

      Newly discovered emails being examined by the FBI in relation to Hillary Clinton’s email server came to light in the course of an unrelated criminal investigation of Anthony Weiner, a source familiar with the matter tells NPR’s Carrie Johnson.

      Weiner is the estranged husband of close Clinton aide Huma Abedin; he has been under scrutiny for sending illicit text messages to an underage girl.

      Earlier Friday FBI Director James Comey notified members of Congress that the FBI had reopened its investigation into the handling of classified information in connection with the Democratic presidential candidate’s use of a private email server while secretary of state.

      In a letter to the leaders of congressional oversight committees, Comey wrote: “In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”

    • Clinton Campaign Worried About Bill Cosby Clinton Foundation Ties

      Hillary Clinton’s campaign worried that she would face scrutiny over the thousands of dollars the Clinton Foundation accepted from accused rapist Bill Cosby, a newly leaked memo reveals.

      The memo, dated July 16, 2015, also reveals that Hillary was instructed to give a non-answer if pressed over whether the foundation would return Cosby’s donations.

    • Limbaugh: FBI wants focus off WikiLeaks

      Rush Limbaugh says the FBI is starting a new review of Hillary Clinton’s emails to distract voters from WikiLeaks’s revelations about her.

      “[FBI Director James] Comey is just doing this to take everybody’s attention off of the WikiLeaks email dump,” Limbaugh said on his radio broadcast Friday.

      “The cynical view is that Comey is still carrying water for Clinton and is trying to get everybody to stop paying attention on the WikiLeaks dump because it’s starting to have an impact,” he continued.

      “So you announce you’re opening the inquiry, get everybody all hot and bothered and focused on it, and after three or four or five days, you announce it’s a false alarm, nothing to see her, investigation now officially over, and meanwhile, in that five day period, everybody’s forgotten about WikiLeaks.”

      Limbaugh said WikiLeaks emails are exposing the Democratic presidential nominee’s secrets and damaging her White House bid.

    • ‘Bill Clinton, Inc.’ Memo Reveals Tangled Business, Charitable Ties

      A 2011 memo made public Wednesday by Wikileaks revealed new details of how former President Bill Clinton made tens of millions of dollars for himself and his wife, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, through an opaque, ethically messy amalgam of philanthropic, business and personal activities.

      The memo was written by Bill Clinton’s longtime aide, Doug Band, and is among tens of thousands of emails apparently stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief, John Podesta, in what U.S. officials believe is part of a massive Russian-backed attempt to disrupt the U.S. election.

      The Band memo came in response to an investigation undertaken by a law firm, Simpson Thatcher, into the activities of the Clinton Foundation at the behest of its board. The board was concerned that some of the activities undertaken by Band and others on behalf of the President could threaten the Foundation’s IRS status as a charity, according to Band’s memo. Chelsea Clinton had also reported concerns to Podesta and other Clinton advisors that Band and his recently-launched consulting firm, Teneo, were using her father’s name without his knowledge to contact British lawmakers for clients, including Dow Chemical.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Comedy writer has exactly the right response to his kid’s Fahrenheit 451 permission slip

      Daily Show writer Daniel Radosh’s son came home from school with a permission slip that he’d have to sign before the kid could read Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, which is widely believed to be an anti-censorship book (Bradbury himself insisted that this was wrong, and that the book was actually about the evils of television).

      Fahrenheit 451 has been the frequent subject of parental challenges on the flimsiest of grounds, as when fundamentalist Christian Alton Verne, of Conroe, Texas, demanded to have the book removed from the curriculum because the characters occasionally blaspheme and say “damn” (“If they can’t find a book that uses clean words, they shouldn’t have a book at all”).

      Radosh responded to the permission slip — which mentioned these parental challenges — with a wry note congratulating the teacher for using permission slips to convey the awfulness of heavy-handed attempts to control peoples’ access to information.

    • Copyright conundrum: Tweeting this may cost you

      Be careful if you tweet this story: It might cost you.

      The European Commission created a legal minefield for billions of internet users with a well-intentioned but poorly worded proposed law to help struggling publishers guard against digital attrition by Google and other news aggregators.

      As people read the fine print in plans released last month to strengthen publishers’ rights over their articles, they discovered the Commission may have accidentally exposed tweeters, facebookers and even LinkedIn users to the whims of the world’s most powerful media organizations.

      Under the Commission’s proposal, copyright lawyers could chase down citizens for sharing sentences or snippets of articles on social media.

      “Users would be breaking the law if they use snippets of articles whether it is enforced or not,” said Julia Reda, a Member of the European Parliament. The law is intended to help traditional publishers survive the digital age but, she said, “it applies to everyone, and if we pass this legislation, it will be in the hands of the publishers to decide whether they want to enforce it.”

    • Clinton Campaign Scrambled To Kill NYT Report She Flipped On Gay Marriage, WikiLeaks Shows

      Members of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign sought to discredit reports over her shifting stance on same sex marriage, the latest batch of WikiLeaks emails show.

      On April 15, 2015, press secretary Nick Merrill started an email chain with policy spokesman Jesse Lehrich over a New York Times article written by Alan Rappeport titled, “Shifting Position, Clinton Says Gay Marriage Should Be A Constitutional Right.”

    • Milo speech at U-Md. canceled because security fee was too high; supporters call it censorship

      A scheduled speech by conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of Maryland was canceled because a student group was unable to raise enough money to cover fees the university required shortly before the event, including more than $2,000 for security.

      The costs led to complaints from students and others that the university was silencing a potentially contentious speech rather than encouraging free and open debate. But a spokeswoman for the school countered that the security fee included the speaker’s request to have officers present, and that university officials had worked to help the students.

    • Colleges Cancel Milo Yiannopoulos Appearances
    • Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos’ U. of Md. appearance canceled due to security costs

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Privacy Shield legal spat puts EU-US data flows at risk again

      Europe’s Privacy Shield faces a legal challenge from an Irish civil liberties group.

      Digital Rights Ireland (DRI) has brought a complaint against the Safe Harbour successor that governs the transfer of personal data between the European Union and the US.

    • AT&T is (allegedly) making millions of dollars selling your data to cops
    • Big data grab: Now they want your car’s telemetry

      This isn’t simply a market for one Uber to dominate, suggests McKinsey in its new report, “Monetizing Car Data.” As the report authors conclude, the opportunity to monetize car data could be worth $450 billion to $750 billion within the next 13 years.

    • We’re seeing yet another election cycle where privacy is of no concern to candidates

      Yet another election campaign is passing without privacy and other fundamental rights being discussed. While candidates certainly have different stances, judging on public discourse, they’re not what makes or breaks the election. The conclusion remains that in absence of political importance, technical measures are necessary to maintain privacy at the individual level.

      When I founded the Swedish Pirate Party in 2006, which would go on to win seats in the European Parliament, it was on a key insight: nothing political happens unless it’s positive for a politician’s career. This can either take the form of looking good in media, when they take a rare initiative of their own, or of not being fired, when their job is under threat from challengers.

    • Search Risk – How Google Almost Killed ProtonMail

      In the past two months, many of you have reached out to us to ask about the mysterious tweets we sent to Google in August. At ProtonMail, transparency is a core value, and we try to be as transparent with our community as possible. As many people have continued to point out to us, we need to be more transparent here to avoid continued confusion and speculation. Thus, we are telling the full story today to clarify what happened.

    • Why did ProtonMail vanish from Google search results for months?

      If you’re the maker of a popular, zero access encrypted webmail product and suddenly discover your product is no longer featuring in Google search results for queries such as “secure email” and “encrypted email,” what do you conclude?

      That something is amiss, for sure.

      But the rather more pertinent question is whether your product’s disappearance is accidental or intentional — given that Google also offers a popular webmail product, Gmail, albeit one that does not offer zero access because users “pay” the company with their personal data, which feeds into Alphabet’s user profiling and ad targeting engines.

      So, in other words, Google is not an entirely disinterested bystander when it comes to a rival email product’s success.

    • Encryption no bar to giving govt data, Apple told Democrats

      A senior Apple official reassured the chairman of the Clinton presidential campaign that the tech giant would co-operate with the US government when it came to handing over “meta-data or any of a number of other very useful categories of data”, as “strong encryption does not eliminate Apple’s ability to give law enforcement” such data.

      Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice-president for environment, policy and social initiatives, sent an email to John Podesta on 20 December 2015, thanking him for “the principled and nuanced stance the Secretary took last night on encryption and the tech sector. Leadership at Apple certainly noticed and I am sure that is true throughout the Valley”.

      Her comments about handing over data to the government are in marked contrast to the strong pro-customer statement on encryption made by Apple chief executive Tim Cook earlier this year when the FBI demanded that Apple hand over data on an Apple iPhone 5C belonging to one of the two people who participated in a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California.

    • AT&T actually sells leads to DEA and local law enforcement using Project Hemisphere

      AT&T has been running a for-profit mass surveillance program, called Project Hemisphere, since 2007. Everybody already knows about AT&T cooperation with NSA mass surveillance metadata database… This is a separate program that allows law enforcement to access all of AT&T’s data at will, even though the information is never handled by law enforcement, which apparently makes it legal. The Project Hemisphere mass surveillance program was created by AT&T and specifically marketed to law enforcement as an easy-to-use system

      If you’re wondering what information that AT&T could possibly have on you if you’ve never been an AT&T customer, AT&T has compiled all the relevant phone metadata that passed through their hardware that they possibly could since the 1980s. AT&T has a metadata record of everything from Skype calls to text messages to phone calls on LTE, not just the ones that were made to or from AT&T networks; either, but all of them that ever touched an AT&T owned switch. If you’re wondering what percentage of American switches are owned by AT&T, the answer is over 75%.

    • AT&T reportedly spies on its customers for government cash

      AT&T controls a big chunk of America’s cellular infrastructure, and it turns out that it’s been using that power for super-creepy purposes. The Daily Beast is reporting that the telco has essentially turned itself into a spy-for-hire in the pay of the government. According to the piece, the company’s Project Hemisphere is providing warrantless surveillance, thanks to some legal gray areas, that score it millions of dollars from taxpayers.

      The existence of Project Hemisphere has been known since the New York Times reported on it way back in 2013. Back then, it was presented as a minor tool that was only employed in a handful of states for specialized anti-drug operations. If these new revelations are accurate, then Hemisphere’s being used for a wide variety of crimes all across the country ranging from murder all the way through to Medicaid fraud. AT&T’s information is good enough that it can tell investigators where someone was when they made a call, who they were speaking to and, as we know from the EFF, it’s easy to divine intention just from those two pieces of information.

    • Beijing threatens legal action over webcam claims

      The Chinese Ministry of Justice has threatened legal action against “organisations and individuals” making “false claims” about the security of Chinese-made devices.

      It follows a product recall from the Chinese electronics firm Hangzhou after its web cameras were used in a massive web attack last week.

      The attack knocked out sites such as Reddit, Twitter, Paypal and Spotify.

      The Chinese government blamed customers for not changing their passwords.

      Its legal warning was added to an online statement from the company Xiongmai, in which the firm said that it would recall products, mainly webcams, following the attack but denied that its devices made up the majority of the botnet used to launch it.

      The firm later told Reuters that the recall would effect “less than 10,000″ devices.

      It also noted that users not changing their default passwords were contributing to weak security.

      This was reiterated by the Ministry of Justice which said Xiongmai’s products “cannot be manipulated by criminals”, again blaming users who “do not change the initial password”.

    • AI-powered body scanners could soon be inspecting you in public places

      A startup bankrolled by Bill Gates is about to conduct the first public trials of high-speed body scanners powered by artificial intelligence (AI), the Guardian can reveal.

      According to documents filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Boston-based Evolv Technology is planning to test its system at Union Station in Washington DC, in Los Angeles’s Union Station metro and at Denver international airport.

      Evolv uses the same millimetre-wave radio frequencies as the controversial, and painfully slow, body scanners now found at many airport security checkpoints. However, the new device can complete its scan in a fraction of second, using computer vision and machine learning to spot guns and bombs.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Fury over Bosnian town built by Middle East investors which has Arabic as its ‘official’ language – and locals can only enter if they work as servants

      Angry locals are protesting about a Bosnian town built by Middle Eastern investors which has Arabic as its ‘official’ language – and where locals can only enter if they work as servants.

      The 160 homes have been constructed in a luxury enclave near Tarcin, five miles west of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo.

      But furious locals say that their only way of accessing the area is through being hired as servants or cleaners – and claim most of the homes contain the wives of wealthy businessmen.

    • Sex Before Marriage: Indonesia Proposed Islamic Law Would Put Sexually Active People In Prison

      Anyone engaging in sex outside of marriage in the world’s third-largest democracy could soon face up to five years in prison. Indonesia’s highest court is deliberating whether to broaden existing law to make all casual sex illegal in the latest bid by conservative Islamists in the country to revise a relatively secular legal code.

      A decision by the Constitutional Court is expected in December or early next year, with indications that the court is leaning toward enacting the tougher legislation. While adultery is currently punishable by up to nine months in prison, if the new law goes through it would make gay sexual relations illegal in Indonesia for the first time. It has already received backlash from human rights organizations.

    • Jaipur: After losing bet, man forces ex-wife to sleep with friend

      A 42-year-old mother-of-two from Jaipur filed a rape complaint after her former husband tricked her into sleeping with his friend. She claimed that her ex-husband drugged her and took her to his friend’s house after losing a bet.

      The man, however, claims it was all for Nikah Halala, a Sharia law that requires the divorced woman to marry and consummate with another man before she can remarry her former husband.

      A Hindustan Times report says he has a fake nikahnama with the stamp of the Jaipur city qazi, which states his ex-wife and the friend were married.

    • The Mayor of London’s “My Side”

      Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, addressed the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA) on September 15. Although his topic was “The Breakdown of Social Integration – The Challenge of Our Age,” some crucial components of that challenge were notably absent from his presentation.

      Even though Mayor Khan said he believes that, “London is the powerhouse” for his country and is “proud that London was the only region in England to vote to remain in the European Union” (some boroughs voted 80% “Remain”), when it came to the United Kingdom as a whole, he said that “my side” lost the referendum.

      That strikes one as an odd way for the mayor of any city to talk. Isn’t he the Mayor of all of London? Aren’t the Londoners who voted for Brexit included on his “side”?

    • Email To Podesta: Germany Imported Its Own Immigrant Crime Wave

      Nobody tells it like it is like they do when they don’t know the world will be tweeting their emails. Here’s a Wikileaked February 2016 email to Hillary Clinton presidential campaign chairman John Podesta.

    • 36-year-old Pennsylvania man gets 18 months for phishing nude celebrity pics

      A 36-year-old Ryan Collins from Pennsylvania was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to hacking the Apple and Google accounts of more than 100 celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence, Aubrey Plaza, Rihanna, and Avril Lavigne. Collins stole personal information, including nude photos, from the celebrities.

      The photos were famously posted on 4Chan and Reddit in 2014. Collins pleaded guilty to hacking the celebrities’ accounts in May, but he did not plead guilty to posting the images on the Internet. “Investigators have not uncovered any evidence linking Collins to the actual leaks or that Collins shared or uploaded the information he obtained,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) noted.

      According to The Guardian, Collins ran a phishing scheme from November 2012 to September 2014, sending celebrities e-mails that appeared to be from Apple and Google, requesting their user names and passwords.

    • Dakota Access Pipeline protesters arrested and pepper sprayed

      Authorities began arresting people at a Dakota Access Pipeline protest site in Morton County, North Dakota today, according to the Associated Press and the Guardian. Protesters report being pepper sprayed by authorities on a live stream hosted by Cempoalli Twenny on his Facebook page. There have also been reports that authorities are using beanbag guns. Protesters could be heard calling for a medic in the live stream.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • The City That Was Saved by the Internet

      The “Chattanooga Choo Choo” sign over the old terminal station is purely decorative, a throwback. Since the Southern Railroad left town in the early 1970s, the southeastern Tennessee city has been looking for an identity that has nothing to do with a bygone big band song or an abandoned train. It’s finally found one in another huge infrastructure project: The Gig.

      The first thing you see at the Chattanooga airport is a giant sign that says “Welcome to Gig City.” There are advertisements and flyers and billboards for the Gig in the city’s public parks. The city’s largest building is dedicated to the Gig. Years before Google Fiber, Chattanooga was the first city in the United States to have a citywide gigabit-per-second fiber internet network. And the city’s government built it itself.

      At a time when small cities, towns, and rural areas are seeing an exodus of young people to large cities and a precipitous decline in solidly middle class jobs, the Gig has helped Chattanooga thrive and create a new identity for itself.

    • This Guy Has the Fastest Home Internet in the United States

      For reference, the Federal Communications Commission officially classifies “broadband” as 25 Mbps. His connection is 400 times faster than that.

  • DRM

    • Apple’s new MacBook Pro kills off most of the ports you probably need

      Apple just introduced a shiny, super thin new MacBook Pro. But for what was birthed, a lot of widely-held standards had to die.

      Today, Apple removed the MagSafe 2 charging port type, they stripped away the HDMI port, they ripped out the SD card slot, they shuttered the Thunderbolt 2 ports (which you probably used like three times) and they most notably killed the standard USB port. All these ports, which power data transfer and charging for most everything you likely use, have been replaced by four Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports. Surprisingly the folks at Apple saw it fit to give the headphone jack a stay of execution on the new model.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • “MPAA and RIAA’s Anti-Piracy Plans Harm The Internet”

        The Internet Infrastructure Coalition is urging the U.S. Government not to blindly follow the RIAA and MPAA’s input regarding online piracy threats. The group, which represents tech firms including Google, Amazon and Verisign, warns that the future of the Internet is at stake.

      • Repeat Infringers Can Be Mere Downloaders, Court Rules

        A 10-year-old copyright case has prompted an interesting opinion from a US appeals court. In determining the nature of a “repeat infringer” (which service providers must terminate to retain safe harbor), the court found these could be people who simply download infringing content for personal use.

      • When the FCC asked about unlocking set-top boxes, the Copyright Office ran to the MPAA

        It’s been more than 20 years since Congress told the FCC that it should do something about the cable and satellite companies’ monopolies over set-top boxes (American households spend more than $200/year to rent these cheap, power-hungry, insecure, badly designed, trailing edge, feature-starved boxes), but it wasn’t until this year that the FCC announced its Unlock the Box order and asked for comments.

        The US Copyright Office is a branch of the US government, and its job is to help regulate the entertainment industry. That industry is one of the principle advocates for keeping the set-top box dumpster fire burning without any changes, because the lack of competition lets them call the shots with the cable/satellite companies (some entertainment companies are also major satellite/cable companies — Comcast/Universal, Time-Warner Cable, etc).

        But newly released internal documents from the Copyright Office reveal that literally the first thing it did when it learned that the FCC was seeking comments on unlocking set-top boxes was to call on the MPAA and its member companies — and shortly thereafter, it released a highly controversial comment stating that movie companies should have the right to dictate the features of these devices and exercise a veto over the them.

10.27.16

Links 27/10/2016: Major Changes in Unity 8, Nextcloud Targets Phones

Posted in News Roundup at 1:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Linux and the Imaginary New User

      Linux has always had a reputation for being difficult to use. Consequently, when developers began improving users interfaces, they concentrated on what they imagined that new users needed. They rarely had the actual opportunity to observe new users, but the new user they imagined became a standard figure among developers, often surviving to this day.

      Yet after observing this habit for over a decade, I wonder more than ever if the imaginary new user still exists, or ever existed at all. I suspect, too, that the emphasis on this figure has been a detriment to other types of users.

    • Awwh, This Linux Wallpaper Is Adorable

      I pimped some Fedora community wallpapers yesterday, there was that (rather gorgeous) Ubuntu Timeline wallpaper a few weeks back, and the steam from hype-train that brought the “new” Ubuntu default wallpaper still lingers in the air a bit.

      So — honestly — I wanted so bad not to write about yet another wallpaper.

  • Server

    • The Point Of Docker Is More Than Containers

      Spending time with Docker during Cloud Field Day about a month ago opened my eyes to the larger ecosystem that Docker is building, and that others are building around it. There is so much more to Docker than just the idea of immutable containers.

      For a start, Docker made using containers easy. That’s no small feat for a tricky piece of technical infrastructure. Making it easy, and specifically easy for developers, to use removed a lot of friction that was no small contributor to the pain of other, earlier methods. It gave developers are really simple way to create a fully functional development environment, isolated from all other dependencies, with which to work.

    • What are the Top NFV Risks for Carriers?

      What are the risks of network functions virtualization (NFV)? As with any emerging technology, moving fast or picking the wrong components can do more harm than good. Let’s spend some time breaking down the NFV risks in building a virtual network.

      I have spent the few months gathering feedback from various service providers to get their view on whether NFV and its cousin software-defined networking (SDN) are ready for prime time. Even though many service providers expressed optimism that NFV technology is moving toward maturity, there are definitely cautionary tales on what to look out for.

      This article serves as an introduction to the challenges of NFV component selection – later articles will refer in more detail to the challenges in selecting NFV hardware and software components such as OpenStack and Open vSwitch.

    • “DevOps is a management problem”

      Improving your own organization’s performance – from where they are now to performance levels equal to the industry leaders – seems like a very long and difficult road. What is missing in most organizations? We talked to Damon Edwards, co-founder and managing partner of DTO Solutions and DevOpsCon speaker, about the challenges that accompany DevOps and how a repeatable system that empowers teams to find and fix their own problems looks like.

    • Manage disk image files wisely in the face of DevOps sprawl

      A disk image is simply a file, but that seemingly innocuous file contains a complete structure that represents applications, storage volumes and even entire disk drives.

    • TNS Guide to Serverless Technologies: The Best Frameworks, Platforms and Tools

      Even if you don’t need the servers themselves, serverless technologies could still require plenty of supporting software. Frameworks are needed to codify best practices, so that everyone is not out to reinvent the wheel, especially when it comes to interfacing with various languages such as Go, JavaScript and Python. And platforms are needed to help people avoid spending too much time on configuring the underlying infrastructure, perhaps by handing the work off to a service provider.

      Just in time for the Serverless conference in London, this post highlights some of the most widely used frameworks and platforms, as well as other supporting tools, that make successful serverless-based workloads happen.

  • Kernel Space

    • BUS1 Kernel Message Bus Posted For Review

      David Herrmann has posted the initial patches for review of the BUS1 kernel message bus, the successor to KDBUS as an in-kernel IPC mechanism.

      Herrmann announced, “This proposal introduces bus1.ko, a kernel messaging bus. This is not a request for inclusion, yet. It is rather an initial draft and a Request For Comments. While bus1 emerged out of the kdbus project, bus1 was started from scratch and the concepts have little in common. In a nutshell, bus1 provides a capability-based IPC system, similar in nature to Android Binder, Cap’n Proto, and seL4. The module is completely generic and does neither require nor mandate a user-space counter-part.”

    • Linux 4.9 Is Going To Be The “Biggest Ever” Linux Release

      The next Linux kernel release, i.e., Linux 4.9, could be the biggest ever Linux release in terms of the commits. Linus Torvalds shared this news in the release announcement of Linux 4.9-rc2. He also hinted at the possibility of turning 4.9 into an LTS release. The final build of the kernel is expected to arrive in December.

    • Why Is The Penguin Tux Official Mascot of Linux? Because Torvalds Had Penguinitis!

      The official mascot of the Linux kernel developed by Linus Torvalds is a penguin named Tux. You might have thought about the probable reasons why a penguin has been used as the face of the Linux kernel. Some people believe that Torvalds was bitten by a penguin that’s why he chose one to represent his kernel.

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Dual-GPU integration in GNOME

        Thanks to the work of Hans de Goede and many others, dual-GPU (aka NVidia Optimus or AMD Hybrid Graphics) support works better than ever in Fedora 25.

        On my side, I picked up some work I originally did for Fedora 24, but ended up being blocked by hardware support. This brings better integration into GNOME.

      • ‘GNOME To Do’ App Picks Up New Features

        GNOME To Do is one of those apps you’ve probably heard of, but do not use. And with a bunch of rivals task managers and to-do list apps available on Linux — from Simplenote to Remember the Milk — and online, the little app that might has its work cutout.

  • Distributions

    • Benefits Of Using Lightweight Linux Distributions

      There are quite a few lightweight linux distributions around but why should you care especially when most of our PCs that are on the market boast some very fast multi-core processors, large volumes of RAM and very fast Solid State Drives. Sure they can bring new life to old machines but there are many other reasons why they could be awesome for you.Let me give you a few reasons you would so much benefit from going with a Lightweight Linux distribution.

    • New Releases

      • TheSSS 20.0 Server-Oriented Linux Distro Ships with Linux Kernel 4.4.17, PHP 5.6

        4MLinux developer Zbigniew Konojacki informs Softpedia today, October 26, 2016, about the release and immediate availability of version 20.0 of his server-oriented TheSSS (The Smallest Server Suite) GNU/Linux distribution.

      • Quirky 8.1 Linux Is Built with Ubuntu 16.04 Binary DEBs, Supports Raspberry Pi 3

        Puppy Linux developer Barry Kauler was happy to announce the general availability of his Quirky 8.1 “Xerus” GNU/Linux distribution built with binary DEB packages from the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system.

        Quirky 8.1 “Xerus” is here to replace the old “April” series, and while it is indeed built using the binary DEBs of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, it stays true to being a distro from the Puppy Linux family and not an Ubuntu clone. However, it lets users install packages from the official Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) software repositories, a feature that was not available in the Quirky “April” releases.

      • Alpine Linux 3.4.5 released

        The Alpine Linux project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 3.4.5 of its Alpine Linux operating system.

        This is a bugfix release of the v3.4 musl based branch, based on linux-4.4.27 kernels and it contains important security fixes for the kernel and for musl libc.

      • Alpine Linux 3.4.5 Released with Linux Kernel 4.4.27 LTS, Latest Security Fixes

        A new maintenance update of the server-oriented Alpine Linux 3.4 operating system has been released, bringing a new Linux kernel version from the long-term supported 4.4 series and the latest security patches.

        According to the release notes, Alpine Linux 3.4.5 is now available as the most up-to-date version of the GNU/Linux distribution based on musl libc and BusyBox, it’s powered by the Linux 4.4.27 LTS kernel, which was fully patched against the “Dirty COW” vulnerability, and includes numerous updated components and applications.

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • Gentoo Family

      • Gentoo Miniconf 2016

        As I noted when I resurrected the blog, part of the reason why I managed to come back to “active duty” within Gentoo Linux is because Robin and Amy helped me set up my laptop and my staging servers for singing commits with GnuPG remotely.

        And that happened because this year I finally managed to go to the Gentoo MiniConf hosted as part of LinuxDays in Prague, Czech Republic.

    • Arch Family

      • ArchBang – Best Arch based distro for old or low-end hardware with high performance and low resource utilization

        Arch Linux is very unique, compare with other Linux distributions because it doesn’t comes with live ISO & Desktop Environment. Arch gives you the full freedom to customize the installation as you wish, When you boot up, you’ll be end up with a terminal and most of the people panic here because they don’t want to build from scratch.

        There are many, Actively developed Arch derived Linux distributions are available with pre-installed Desktop environment. I would advise you to go with any one distribution as you wish.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Why does software development take so long?
      • Debian’s New Look, Red Hat Giveaways, Ubuntu Advantage

        The newest eye candy to grace the default desktops of Debian 9 users is very tasteful and beautiful. The color palate is easy on the eyes while providing warmth and a professional aura. This year’s winner is a remarkably wonderful job by returning designer Juliette Belin, who just happened to have designed last version’s theme. 3,479 folks voted and Laura Arjona explained the vote gathering and counting methodology. I started getting a headache trying to understand that, so suffice to say the prettiest won. The other submissions are being combined into one package for easy installation.

      • Derivatives

        • DebEX Distro Now Lets You Create an Installable Debian 9 Live DVD with Refracta

          After informing us of the release of Exton|OS Light Build 161021, today, October 26, 2016, GNU/Linux developer Arne Exton sent an email to announce the availability of DebEX Barebone Build 161025.

          The latest version of the DebEX Barebone GNU/Linux distribution, build 161025, is here, based on the soon-to-be-released Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” (Debian Testing) operating system and kernel 4.8.0-21-exton, a specially crafted Linux kernel package based on the latest stable Linux 4.8 kernel.

        • KNOPPIX 7.7.1 Public Release

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 17.04 Daily Builds Are Now Available to Download

            Ubuntu 17.04 Daily Builds Are Now Available to Download http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/10/ubuntu-17-04-daily-iso

          • Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) Daily Build ISO Images Are Now Available for Download

            Now that the upcoming Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) operating system is officially open for development, the first daily build ISO images have published in the usual places for early adopters and public testers.

          • Infographic: Ubuntu Advantage explained

            Ubuntu Advantage is the commercial support package from Canonical. It includes Landscape, the Ubuntu systems management tool, and the Canonical Livepatch Service, which enables you to apply kernel fixes without restarting your Ubuntu 16.04 LTS systems.

            Ubuntu Advantage gives the world’s largest enterprises the assurance they need to run mission-critical workloads such as enterprise databases, virtual/cloud hosts or infrastructural services on Ubuntu.

            The infographic below gives an overview of Ubuntu Advantage, it explains the business benefits, why Ubuntu is #1 in the cloud for many organisations and includes a selection of Ubuntu Advantage customers.

          • New Video Shows Changes Headed to Unity 8

            A new YouTube video claims to show an ‘quick overview of what’s to come to Unity 8’ in a future update.

            Uploaded by Kugi Javacookies (not sure if that’s his real name), the clip is described as offering a “quick overview of what’s to come soon to Unity 8. Since the silo has now been signed-off by QA, so it will probably land really soon.”

            Kugi adds that he finds it “awesome to actually follow projects even up to the small details. Codes in launchpad, actual projects in bileto and queued silos for QA testing in Trello. Really cool! :D”.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • New Cortex-M chips add ARMv8 and TrustZone

      ARM launched its first Cortex-M MCUs with ARMv8-M and TrustZone security: the tiny, low-power Cortex-M23 and faster Cortex-M33.

      At the ARM TechCon show in Santa Clara, ARM unveiled two new Cortex-M microprocessors that will likely emerge as major Internet of Things workhorses over the coming decade, supplanting most existing Cortex-M designs. The Cortex-M23 and Cortex-M33 are also the first Cortex-M processors with ARMv8-M technology, enabling ARM TrustZone security, among other benefits. The TrustZone support is enabled via a new IoT-oriented CoreLink SIE-200 network-on-chip, which adds IP blocks on top of the AMBA 5 AHB5 interface. ARM also announced a TrustZone CryptoCell-312 technology for creating secure SoCs based on ARMv8-M.

    • Open Source Operating Systems for IoT

      Over the past decade, the majority of new open source OS projects have shifted from the mobile market to the Internet of Things. In this fifth article in our IoT series, we look at the many new open source operating systems that target IoT. Our previous posts have examined open source IoT frameworks, as well as Linux- and open source development hardware for IoT and consumer smart home devices. But it all starts with the OS.

      In addition to exploring new IoT-focused embedded Linux-based distributions, I’ve included a few older lightweight distributions like OpenWrt that have seen renewed uptake in the segment. While the Linux distros are aimed primarily at gateways and hubs, there has been equivalent growth in non-Linux, open source OSes for IoT that can run on microcontroller units (MCUs), and are typically aimed at IoT edge devices.

    • Congatec’s first Apollo Lake COMs include SMARC 2.0 model

      Congatec announced three Linux-friendly COMs based on Intel’s new Atom E3900 SoC: a Qseven, a COM Express Compact, and one of the first SMARC 2.0 modules.

      Congatec is one of the first vendors to announce a major product lineup based on Intel’s newly announced, 14nm-fabricated Atom E3900 “Apollo Lake” SoCs. In addition to the Qseven form-factor Conga-QA5 and the COM Express Compact Type 6 CongaTCA5 modules, the company unveiled the Conga-SA5, which is billed as Congatec’s first SMARC 2.0 module. In fact, the Conga-SA5 appears to be the company’s first SMARC COM ever, and one of the first SMARC 2.0 models to be fully announced. (See more on SMARC 2.0 below.)

    • Intel launches 14nm Atom E3900 and spins an automotive version

      The Linux-ready Atom E3900 series, which was formally announced at the IoT Solutions World Congress in Barcelona on the same day as the start of ARM TechCon in Silicon Valley, has already started rolling out to some 30 OEM customers, some of which have already announced products (see below). The first Apollo Lake based products will ship 2Q 2017, says Intel.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • Chain Releases Open Source Blockchain Solution for Banks

    Chain, a San Francisco-based Blockchain startup, launched the Chain Core Developer Edition, which is a distributed ledger infrastructure built for banks and financial institutions to utilize the Blockchain technology in mainstream finance.

    Similar to most cryptocurrency networks like Bitcoin, developers and users are allowed to run their applications and platforms on the Chain Core testnet, a test network sustained and supported by leading institutions including Microsoft and the Initiative for Cryptocurrency and Contracts (IC3), which is operated by Cornell University, UC Berkeley and University of Illinois.

  • Netflix Upgrades its Powerful “Chaos Monkey” Open Cloud Utility

    Few organizations have the cloud expertise that Netflix has, and it may come as a surprise to some people to learn that Netflix regularly open sources key, tested and hardened cloud tools that it has used for years. We’ve reported on Netflix open sourcing a series of interesting “Monkey” cloud tools as part of its “simian army,” which it has deployed as a series satellite utilities orbiting its central cloud platform.

    Netflix previously released Chaos Monkey, a utility that improves the resiliency of Software as a Service by randomly choosing to turn off servers and containers at optimized tims. Now, Netflix has announced the upgrade of Chaos Monkey, and it’s worth checking in on this tool.

  • Coreboot Lands More RISC-V / lowRISC Code

    As some early post-Coreboot 4.5 changes are some work to benefit fans of the RISC-V ISA.

  • Nextcloud Advances with Mobile Moves

    The extremely popular ownCloud open source file-sharing and storage platform for building private clouds has been much in the news lately. CTO and founder of ownCloud Frank Karlitschek resigned from the company a few months ago. His open letter announcing the move pointed to possible friction created as ownCloud moved forward as a commercial entity as opposed to a solely community focused, open source project.

    Karlitschek had a plan, though. He is now out with a fork of ownCloud called Nextcloud, and we’ve reported on strong signs that this cloud platform has a bright future. In recent months, the company has continued to advance Nextcloud. Along with Canonical and Western Digital, the partners have launched an Ubuntu Core Linux-based cloud storage and Internet of Things device called Nextcloud Box, which we covered here. Now, Nextcloud has moved forward with some updates to its mobile strategy. Here are details.

  • Enterprise Open Source Programs Flourish — In Tech and Elsewhere

    If you cycled the clock back about 15 years and surveyed the prevailing beliefs about open source technology at the time, you would find nowhere near the volume of welcome for it that we see today. As a classic example, The Register reported all the way back in 2001 that former CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer made the following famous statement in a Chicago Sun-Times interview: “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.”

  • 5 More Reasons to Love Kubernetes

    In part one of this series, I covered my top five reasons to love Kubernetes, the open source container orchestration platform created by Google. Kubernetes was donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation in July of 2015, where it is now under development by dozens of companies including Canonical, CoreOS, Red Hat, and more.

    My first five reasons were primarily about the project’s heritage, ease of use, and ramp-up. The next five get more technical. As I mentioned in part one, choosing a distributed system to perform tasks in a datacenter is much more complex than looking at a spreadsheet of features or performance. And, you should make your decision based on your own needs and team dynamics. However, this top 10 list will give you my perspective, as someone who has been using, testing, and developing systems for a while now.

  • Bankers plan to give Corda blockchain code to Hyperledger project
  • Are European Banks Falling Behind in Blockchain Development?
  • Hyperledger adds 10 new members to support open source distributed ledger framework

    The Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger project has announced that 10 new members have joined the project in order to help create an open standard for distributed ledgers for a new generation of transactional applications.

  • The Blockchain Created By Ethereum’s Fork is Forking Now

    A blockchain that was born out of the rejection of a contentious technical change is on the cusp of making a decision some argue contradicts its core values.

    That’s the situation the developers behind ethereum classic face ahead of a hard fork expected to be enacted on its blockchain on 25th October (should network participants approve the upgrade). Originally formed in reaction to a decision by the ethereum community to edit its “immutable” ledger, the fork caused an ideological schism among its enthusiasts.

    Alarmed by the action (or seeing a chance to profit by continuing the original network), miners and speculators began running its blockchain, which developers named “ethereum classic”. Other investors then bought into the vision, and today, there are currently 85m classic ethers (ETC) worth $87m.

  • Events

    • Science Hack Day India 2016

      Few months back Praveen called to tell me about the new event he is organizing along with FOSSASIA, Science Hack Day, India. I never even registered for the event as Praveen told me that he just added mine + Anwesha’s name there. Sadly as Py was sick for the last few weeks, Anwesha could not join us in the event. On 20th Hong Phuc came down to Pune, in the evening we had the PyLadies meetup in the Red Hat office.

    • Science Hack Day, Belgaum

      It started quite early with Kushal telling me that Praveen Patil was organizing a Science Hack Day with Hong Phuc’s help and that it might be an interesting place to come to. He mentioned that there were many interesting people coming in and that Nisha and I would have a good time. I wasn’t very keen though because of my usual reluctance to get out and meet people. This was especially an issue for me with Cauldron and Connect happening back to back in September, draining most of my ‘extrovert energy’. So we were definitely not going.

    • FOSDEM 2017 Real-Time Communications Call for Participation

      FOSDEM is one of the world’s premier meetings of free software developers, with over five thousand people attending each year. FOSDEM 2017 takes place 4-5 February 2017 in Brussels, Belgium.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • From OpenStack Summit, Red Hat Reports That the Deployment Era is Here

      As noted here yesterday, OpenStack is here to stay in enterprises. A new study by 451 Research analysts shows that about 72 percent of OpenStack-based clouds are between 1,000 and 10,000 cores and three fourths choose OpenStack to increase operational efficiency and app deployment speed.

      Meanwhile, in conjunction with OpenStack Summit in Barcelona, Red Hat is out with very notable results from its polling of its OpenStack user base. Its study found that production deployments increased hugely in the last year, according to a survey of 150 information technology decision makers and professionals carried out by Red Hat.

    • You can run the same programs on 16 different OpenStack clouds

      Cloud companies like to talk about about how you can avoid vendor lock-in. And OpenStack just showed how to make it happen.

      Sixteen different vendors did a live demo at OpenStack Summit showing that you could run the same software stack on 16 separate OpenStack platforms.

    • ​Where OpenStack cloud is today and where it’s going tomorrow

      The future looks bright for OpenStack — according to 451 Research, OpenStack is growing rapidly to become a $5-billion-a-year cloud business. But obstacles still remain.

    • ​Mirantis OpenStack: The good news and the bad news

      Mirantis recently signed a major deal with NTT, but the company is also laying off some of its employees.

    • The World Runs on OpenStack

      The OpenStack Summit keynotes got underway the morning of October 25, with Mark Collier, Chief Operating Officer of the OpenStack Foundation, declaring that the world runs on OpenStack.

    • Study: OpenStack is Marching Forward in Enterprises

      How fast is the OpenStack global cloud services market growing? Research and Markets analysts came out with a new report recently that forecasts the global OpenStack cloud market to grow at a CAGR of 30.49% during the period 2016-2020. Many enterprises now have large scale OpenStack deployments, and in conjunction with this week’s OpenStack Summit in Barcelona, new study results are shedding light on exactly how entrenched this open cloud platform is in enteprises.

      The bottom line is: OpenStack is here to stay in enterprises.

      OpenStack deployments are getting bigger. Users are diversifying across industries. Enterprises report using the open source cloud software to support workloads that are critical to their businesses. These are among the findings in a recent study by 451 Research regarding OpenStack adoption among enterprise private cloud users. About 72 percent of OpenStack-based clouds are between 1,000 and 10,000 cores and three fourths choose OpenStack to increase operational efficiency and app deployment speed. The study was commissioned by the OpenStack Foundation.

      Here are some of the companies discussing their OpenStack deployments in Barcelona: Banco Santander, BBVA, CERN, China Mobile, Comcast, Constant Contact, Crowdstar, Deutsche Telekom, Folksam, Sky UK, Snapdeal, Swisscom, Telefonica, Verizon, Volkswagen, and Walmart. You can find some of the specific deployment stories from the companies at the OpenStack User Stories page.

    • OpenStack Adoption and Revenues on the Rise

      One thing you can count on at the semiannual OpenStack Summits are new studies and reports about OpenStack. And that’s the case at the OpenStack Summit going on in Barcelona, Spain, now through Oct. 28. A number of studies are being discussed at the event, including the October 2016 OpenStack User Survey and new analysis on the state of OpenStack from analyst firm 451 Group. According to the 451 Group, the OpenStack software market will generate $1.8 billion in revenue in 2016 and grow to $5.7 billion by 2020. The firm is forecasting that the five-year compound annual growth rate for OpenStack from 2015 through 2020 will be 35 percent. The semiannual OpenStack User Survey is also a topic of discussion at the OpenStack Summit, providing insight into the state of OpenStack deployment. Among the high-level findings is that 71 percent of OpenStack clouds are now in production and fully operational, up from 59 percent in 2015. Also of note is how well-regarded the Kubernetes orchestration system has become, outpacing CloudFoundry in terms of user interest. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the highlights of the latest OpenStack research studies.

    • ​HPE backs off from OpenStack development

      HPE still supports OpenStack in its Helion cloud program, but it’s cutting way back on how much it’s spending on helping create OpenStack.

    • Is OpenStack Cloud Interoperability a Myth?

      Boris Renski, co-founder of Mirantis, argues that interoperability doesn’t start at the infrastructure layer. It starts with applications, he said.
      BARCELONA—A keynote highlight on Oct. 26 at the OpenStack Summit here was a live, onstage demonstration with 16 OpenStack vendors, all showing a degree of interoperability. The demonstration was part of an interoperability challenge, though, according to Boris Renski, co-founder of Mirantis and member of the OpenStack board of directors, the infrastructure layer is not necessarily the right place to emphasize interoperability.

    • Communications Leaders Choose Red Hat OpenStack Platform for Powering Cloud Deployments to Deliver New Services
    • Red Hat: OpenStack moving beyond the proof-of-concept phase

      Red Hat’s annual poll found that 43 percent of respondents have deployed the cloud platform in production, compared to just 16 percent one year ago. The company reckons the increase reflects efforts by the community to address complexity and deployment issues that were previously known to have been a major roadblock to adoption.

      The study also noted that the steep learning curve for deploying OpenStack is being addressed as a growing number of engineers become certified to operate the platform. In addition, Red Hat cited cloud native application development as another driving force in enterprise adoption of OpenStack.

    • OpenStack Summit Emphasizes Security, Interoperability

      From security to interoperabilty to use cases and everything in-between, this week’s OpenStack Summit from Oct. 25 to 28 in Barcelona, is set to illuminate the cloud. This year’s event, which brings together vendors, operators and developers of the open-source cloud platform, will offer more sessions than ever before on securing OpenStack clouds.

      The Barcelona Summit follows the release of the OpenStack Newton milestone, which debuted on Oct. 6. While discussions about the most recent release are always part of every OpenStack Summit, so too are case-studies from operators of OpenStack clouds.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • FSF Blogs: Who in the world is changing it through free software? Nominate them today!

      Nominations for the 19th annual Free Software Awards opened at LibrePlanet 2016, right after the most recent Free Software Awards were presented — and we need you to nominate more projects by November 6th, 2016 at 23:59 UTC. For details see instructions below.

      If you know a free software contributor or project that deserves celebration, don’t hesitate to nominate them! This is your opportunity to publicly recognize people and projects that have inspired you. Your nominations will be reviewed by our awards committee and the winners will be announced at LibrePlanet 2017.

    • denemo @ Savannah: Version 2.0.14 is imminent, please test
    • Development of a New MetaHTML

      MetaHTML is being ported to modern GNU/Linux systems by a small team of eager contributors. We are happy to announce the new developments in the world of GNU MetaHTML.

    • guile-curl v0.4 released

      I am pleased to announce an small update of guile-curl, which is a library for fetching files by URL from the internet in the GNU Guile dialect of the Scheme programming language. It supports many protocols, such as https, ftp, tftp, and, most importantly, gopher.

  • Public Services/Government

    • While Other Cities Go Linux, Toronto Bets Big on Microsoft Software [Ed: Toronto joins the Dark Forces]

      The partnership between Microsoft and the city of Toronto certainly comes at the right time, as other authorities across the world already announced decisions to give up on Windows and Office and replace them with open-source alternatives.

      Munich is the city that started the entire trend, but it wasn’t at all a smooth transition. Some of the local officials proposed a return to Microsoft software, claiming that training and assistance actually impacted productivity and explaining that in the end it all pays off to use Microsoft software because of the familiarity that users experience, which translates to a substantial productivity boost.

      And yet, the transition off Microsoft products is happening and more authorities are willing to do it, not necessarily because of the costs, but also due to security concerns, as is the case of Russia.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Data

      • Using Open Source for Data

        Bryan Liles, from DigitalOcean, explains about many useful open source big data tools in this eight minute video. I learned about Apache Mesos, Apache Presto, Google Kubernetes and more.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Open-Source Toolkit Lets Communities Build Their Own Street Furniture

        Despite the vast amount of customization options technology has allotted us, it can still be difficult to create projects that are community-centric. For example, though 3D printing can help us personalize our own jewelry, it has limited use for outfitting parks with trash cans or equipping bus stops with comfortable seating. Still, hyper-customizable tech has taught us the convenience of managing our own products, eliminating the bureaucratic complications of mass produced, production-line assembly.

        Leveraging this ideology to better the community, the Better Block Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to building local communities, has developed an open-source toolkit for creating a variety of fixtures for communities. The platform, called Wikiblock, allows designs ranging from benches to beer garden fences to be downloaded and taken to a maker space where a computer-aided machine can print the design from plywood. Similar to Ikea’s simplistic, DIY approach, the printed wood can be assembled by hand, without glue or nails.

      • How to make a lighted, porch bag for Halloween

        While I typically go all out for Halloween decorations every year, I’ll admit I’m feeling tired this year. I still wanted to delight the neighborhood kids with simple details, so I decided to make lighted bags for my front porch railing this year.

        If you are someone who has a paper cutting machine like the Silhouette, this project will likely be a lot easier. Simply import the SVG file, resize for whatever size box you want, cut out, and assemble. However, for those of you who don’t have one, I’ve included instructions on how to make this project without any machine at all.

        The box was created with the help of artists who share their art at OpenClipArt. I also used Inkscape to create the SVG file. If you don’t like bats, you could modify the SVG file to include other types of clipart in the center of the bag.

Leftovers

  • Science

  • Hardware

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Antimicrobial Resistance Should Not Overshadow Broader Issue Of Access To Medicines, Some Say

      While the issue of antimicrobial resistance has arrived in high-level discussions, and there is a consensus that the problem must be tackled one way or another to avoid slipping back into a pre-antibiotic era, some voices are highlighting the need to remember that other health issues remain unmet, and access to medicines is still an acute problem.

      On 25 October, the World Health Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization and the World Trade Organization organised a joint technical symposium on antimicrobial resistance. The symposium sought to achieve a better understanding of the global challenge of antibiotic resistance and examine possible ways forward.

      Most speakers invited to the event presented possible solutions to boost research and development for new antibiotics and the need to restrict the use of existing antibiotics to prevent the building up of microbe resistance. However, some speakers insisted on the fact that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is only a part of the issue of access to medicines.

    • Between Quick Wins And Long Roads Ahead On Antimicrobial Resistance

      Raising awareness, creating effective stewardship, national action plans on antimicrobial resistance, building trust and getting onto the agenda of the G20 are critical to fostering access and appropriate use of antibiotics, according to speakers at yesterday’s joint technical symposium on antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

      The annual trilateral cooperation event between the World Health Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization and World Trade Organization was held on 25 October. The first panel of the symposium discussed the balance between fostering access to antibiotics whilst ensuring their appropriate use.

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Why Clinton’s plans for no-fly zones in Syria could provoke US-Russia conflict

      The former strategists spoke to the Guardian as Clinton’s Republican rival Donald Trump warned that Clinton’s proposal to establish “safe zones” to protect beleaguered Syrian civilians would “lead to world war three”.

      The proposal of no-fly zones has been fiercely debated in Washington for the past five years, but has never attracted significant enthusiasm from the military because of the risk to pilots from Syrian air defenses and the presence of Russian warplanes.

      Many in US national security circles consider the risk of an aerial confrontation with the Russians to be severe.

      “I wouldn’t put it past them to shoot down an American aircraft,” said James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, on Tuesday in response to a question from the Guardian at the Council on Foreign Relations.

    • Why Is the Foreign Policy Establishment Spoiling for More War? Look at Their Donors.
    • UK deploys hundreds of troops and aircraft to eastern Europe

      The UK is deploying hundreds of troops, as well as aircraft and armour to eastern Europe as part of the biggest build-up of Nato forces in the region since the cold war. The deployment is taking place during growing tensions over a series of high-profile Russian military manoeuvres.

      RAF Typhoon aircraft from RAF Coningsby will be sent to Romania for up to four months, while 800 personnel will be sent with armoured support to Estonia, 150 more than previously planned, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said. France and Denmark will also commit more troops, the British government said.

    • Looking Ahead: Clinton’s Plans for Syria

      Hillary Clinton has a plan for defeating Islamic State in Syria. Donald Trump has one, too. With the conflict in Syria spreading beyond its borders, it’s essential to understand the new president’s strategies – and how they may need to be adjusted over the next four years.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • WikiLeaks ‘sowing the seeds of its own destruction’ says former NSA chief [Ed: repeats the “Russia” smear]

      A former deputy director of the US National Security Agency (NSA), John C Inglis, believes that WikiLeaks – the whistleblowing platform led by Julian Assange – has become “internally confused” in recent years and that “natural forces” may soon wipe it out.

      “WikiLeaks might be in fact be sowing the seeds of its own destruction,” Inglis told IBTimes UK in an exclusive interview on 25 October, indicating the organisation has overstepped a boundary by leaking material which has the potential to influence the upcoming US presidential election.

    • Former NSA deputy director opens up about Snowden, Trump and mass surveillance

      To the former deputy head, Snowden is not a whistleblower and may indeed be an unwitting pawn of the Kremlin. Sitting calmly in the British Museum, London, Inglis exclusively told IBTimes UK how the agency was “stunned” by the leak now commonly known as the ‘NSA files’.

    • Roundtable: Former Deputy Director of NSA Talks Insider Threats

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • ‘Reads like you’re punting’: Why Clinton chopped a Keystone XL reference from her book

      A reference to the Keystone XL pipeline was chopped from Hillary Clinton’s memoir due to political considerations, according to the latest batch of stolen emails posted Thursday on Wikileaks.

      While writing the book Hard Choices, Clinton initially included a reference to the pipeline at the urging of her daughter, Chelsea, according to a 2014 email purportedly sent to her current campaign chair John Podesta.

      “She decided to write about Keystone because her daughter suggested that it would be a glaring omission and look like an even worse dodge if she left it out,” said the note from Clinton speechwriter Dan Schwerin.

      The note said the passage was crafted with some help from Podesta, then edited by Bill and Hillary Clinton. The ill-fated phrases referred to Keystone XL as a tough choice amid the transition to a clean-energy economy. They concluded with Clinton refraining to take sides, out of respect for her successor John Kerry, who led the project review as Secretary of State.

      Her book editor apparently wanted the section dropped — because it read like a political dodge.

  • Finance

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Worldwide Solidarity with a Green Party POTUS

      ES, “that Sea Shepard Captain, Paul Watson.” YES, “that Woodstock.” Sea Shepard Captain Paul Watson cast his vote the other day, and shared his experience about his experience as an early voter.

    • The Radical, Grassroots-Led Pirate Party Just Might Win Iceland’s Elections

      Though she’s grown out the blue-dyed coiffure, Birgitta Jónsdóttir still brightens up the anodyne halls of the Althing, Iceland’s parliament in Reykjavík, the country’s capital. In stockinged feet, a white-cotton hippie skirt, and a dark-blue embroidered waistcoat, the 49-year-old Jónsdóttir refuses to fit the classic mold of politician, even though she’s occupied a parliamentary seat for seven years, since 2012 as the front person of the Pirate Party. Jónsdóttir, the former WikiLeaks spokesperson and a published lyricist, calls herself a “poetician,” since verse is her true calling, she says, not the daily grind of politics. Yet if Iceland’s national elections were held today and not on October 29, the Pirates could head up a new government on this rugged island of 330,000 souls—possibly with Jónsdóttir as prime minister.

      Iceland’s political status quo—a Nordic-style parliamentary democracy, dominated for decades by pro-NATO conservatives—was shattered when the country went bust in the 2008 financial crisis, pitching Iceland into its deepest crisis since full independence and the republic were declared in 1944. This year, Iceland was rocked again when the Panama Papers leak exposed corruption among top politicos, including the prime minister, who resigned under fire. “People here are angry and frustrated,” says Karl Blöndal, deputy editor of the center-right Morgunbladid. “In the minds of many voters, the Pirates are the only untainted party, and with them Birgitta carries authority. She’s been the face of the opposition since the crash.”

      Although the Pirates began surging in polls more than a year ago, peaking at 43 percent in April, Jónsdóttir has been coy about whether she’d take the country’s highest post if elections go in the party’s favor and supporters insist on her as prime minister. (Iceland’s Pirates have slipped considerably in surveys since early this year; currently, they’re neck and neck with the ruling Independence Party.) The object of her desire, she says, is the Althing’s presidency, an office from which she could reinvest power in the legislature—one means of bringing politics nearer to the people, a cause close to Pirate hearts.

    • The Pentagon’s ‘Terminator Conundrum’: Robots That Could Kill on Their Own

      No humans were remotely piloting the drone, which was nothing more than a machine that could be bought on Amazon. But armed with advanced artificial intelligence software, it had been transformed into a robot that could find and identify the half-dozen men carrying replicas of AK-47s around the village and pretending to be insurgents.

      As the drone descended slightly, a purple rectangle flickered on a video feed that was being relayed to engineers monitoring the test. The drone had locked onto a man obscured in the shadows, a display of hunting prowess that offered an eerie preview of how the Pentagon plans to transform warfare.

      Almost unnoticed outside defense circles, the Pentagon has put artificial intelligence at the center of its strategy to maintain the United States’ position as the world’s dominant military power. It is spending billions of dollars to develop what it calls autonomous and semiautonomous weapons and to build an arsenal stocked with the kind of weaponry that until now has existed only in Hollywood movies and science fiction, raising alarm among scientists and activists concerned by the implications of a robot arms race.

    • The Clinton Campaign Should Stop Denying That The Wikileaks Emails Are Valid; They Are And They’re Real

      Being interviewed by Megyn Kelly, here’s how Brazile tries to claim that the emails are not real, but basically comes out with a word salad of nothing, rather than simply admitting that the email is legit.

    • Jill Stein: The Best Way to Boost the Economy Is by Saving the Planet

      Our nation—and our world—face a perfect storm of economic and environmental crises that threaten not only the global economy, but life on Earth as we know it. The dire, existential threats of climate change, wars for oil, and a stagnating, crisis-ridden economic system require bold and visionary solutions. In this election, we are deciding not just what kind of a world we want, but whether we will have a world at all.

      There is a growing concern in advanced economies that governments are running out of options to stabilize a precarious and volatile global economic system. Since the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, the Fed’s large-scale bond purchases, called quantitative easing, have helped push interest rates close to 0% and have done more to serve Wall Streets’ interests by way of propping up the stock market than by boosting the overall economy for average Americans.

      These have proven to be temporary fixes, providing a semblance of “recovery” without addressing the underlying problems in the real economy: stagnating demand, lack of productive investment, staggering inequality and concentration of wealth—not to mention the climbing cost of climate-related disasters, like floods and wildfires, which have cost $26.9 billion dollars in 2016 alone. As recent warning signs in the U.S. market have shown, we are hardly out of the woods when it comes to preventing another big crash. Keeping interest rates super low has only produced the illusion of a healthy economy. Without sound fiscal policies targeted to help ordinary Americans, economic growth will stagnate.

    • Chris Hedges vs. Eddie Glaude: Should Progressives Vote for Hillary Clinton or Jill Stein?

      Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and Eddie Glaude, chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, debate the issue of strategic voting and the role of third-party candidates.

    • WikiLeaks memo exposes ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’

      He dubbed those for-profit pursuits “Bill Clinton, Inc.” The resulting deals often involved a mix of foundation donations, paid speeches and consulting contracts for Bill Clinton, lumping charitable and personal financial work together in ways that may have crossed ethical boundaries.

      Bill and Hillary Clinton have both defended the work of the Clinton Foundation as completely independent of their family’s finances or political ambitions. Critics have frequently accused the Clintons of using their foundation to enrich themselves and grow their political clout in anticipation of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.

      However, the Band memo makes clear the inextricable ties between Bill Clinton’s personal profits and his eponymous charity. What’s more, it reveals the fact that Teneo’s operation, at least in the early months of its existence, was heavily dependent on the Clinton name and foundation to build relationships with its clients.

      One example found in the memo involves GEMS Education, a for-profit education corporation that has been linked to the teaching of Sharia Law. The group paid Bill Clinton nearly $6.2 million between 2011-15, when the former president ended his contract with the firm ahead of Hillary Clinton’s campaign launch.

    • WikiLeaks: Clinton Team Leaked Creepshot of Bernie Sanders in His Swimming Suit

      The Clinton campaign buzzed over a picture of Bernie Sanders in his swimming suit, at the same time they were pushing stories about the Vermont Senator attending a fundraiser for Democrats with wealthy supporters.

      Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, Tina Flournoy, emailed the attached photo of Sanders relaxing by the pool at the DSCC retreat to Brian Fallon, Clinton’s national press secretary.

    • Memo reveals interplay between Clinton Foundation, personal business

      An internal memo released Wednesday by WikiLeaks reveals new details about the interplay between the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton family’s personal business interests.

      The 12-page document is penned by Doug Band, a longtime Clinton confidant who had been the Clinton Foundation’s primary fundraiser for a decade.

      Band wrote the memo as a principal for Teneo, a private consulting firm that raised tens of millions of dollars for the Clinton Foundation while also acting as a personal in-house agency for Bill Clinton.

      In the memo, Band describes his “unorthodox” role in raising money for the nonprofit foundation while simultaneously securing for-profit opportunities for the former president.

      The document argues that Band’s dual lines of work were “independent” of one another. The memo came after criticism from Chelsea Clinton — revealed in a separate email published by WikiLeaks — over Band’s role within the family’s network of interests.

      The memo states that as of November 2011, Teneo had raised tens of millions for the foundation and produced between $30 million and $66 million in revenue for Bill Clinton through various “business arrangements,” including paid speeches.

    • Aide: He arranged for $50M in payments for Bill Clinton

      A close aide to Bill Clinton said he arranged for $50 million in payments for the former president, part of a complicated mingling of lucrative business deals and charity work of the Clinton Foundation mapped out in a memo released by WikiLeaks on Wednesday.

      The report was written by Doug Band, who has transitioned from his job as a Clinton aide to a partner in Teneo Consulting, a company whose client roster now includes some of the biggest companies in the world. Along the way, Band wrote, he also pushed his clients and contacts to donate millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, and to help win business deals for Bill Clinton.

    • WikiLeaks does good work. It’s not Assange who’s gone off the deep end, it’s us

      What, the world’s most ardent defenders of freedom want to know, has happened to Julian Assange? Just a few years ago, he was such an earnest fellow, who spoke all truth to power. Well-known liberals gave him airtime, centrist trade organisations gave him membership and middle-brow humourists gave him plaudits and harbour. Now, all that the honourable can offer him is their disgust. He’s a Russian collaborator, a spiteful traitor, a pussy-grabbing narcissist whose leaks on Clinton place him in precisely the same deplorable basket that emits the stink of Trump.

    • Hacked memo offers an angry glimpse inside ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’

      As a longtime Bill Clinton adviser came under fire several years ago for alleged conflicts of interest involving a private consulting firm and the Clinton Foundation, he mounted an audacious defense: Bill Clinton’s doing it, too.

      The unusual and brash rejoinder from veteran Clinton aide and Teneo Consulting co-founder Doug Band is scattered across the thousands of hacked emails published by WikiLeaks, but a memo released Wednesday provides the most detailed look to date at the intertwined worlds of nonprofit, for-profit, official and political activities involving Clinton and many of his top aides.

    • The Green Party in the U.S. is a “Movement Party”
    • ‘There’s no good answer’: Podesta leaks show Clinton campaign stumped by email server debacle

      With the whistleblowing site promising the release of around 50,000 emails from Podesta, Wednesday’s dump brings to 33,042, the number of messages published by WikiLeaks so far.

    • WIKILEAKS: Clinton Camp Asked For Money From Donor With Russian Oil Ties

      Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign pitched a small group of wealthy liberals worried about global warming to become “climate policy donors,” according to a leaked email chain.

      One of those donors, however, has taken money from a Bermuda-based law firm with extensive ties to Russia. The email chain was one of thousands published online by WikiLeaks from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s hacked Gmail account.

    • Clinton campaign chair John Podesta gave his email login info to hackers after clicking on phishing link

      How did alleged hackers get access to the email account of John Podesta, the chair of the Hillary Clinton campaign? Apparently he just gave them his password.

      This is according to a leading cybersecurity firm, which says Podesta fell for a simple phishing scam frequently used in spam mail.

      A researcher at the company SecureWorks told Motherboard that Podesta was sent an email on March 19 that appeared to have come from Google. In the email was a link using Bitly, a URL shortening service. Podesta clicked on this link, which took him to a fake Google page, where he then typed in his login information.

      According to the cybersecurity firm, this is how the email account of former secretary of state Colin Powell was also hacked.

      The alleged hackers appear to later have sent Podesta’s emails to the whistleblowing journalism organization WikiLeaks, which has published them this month in installments. WikiLeaks says it has 50,000 messages to and from Podesta, and has published roughly 2,000 per day.

    • WikiLeaks: Clinton’s Campaign Chairman Lost His Cell Phone Getting Out Of Cab, Leaked Podesta Email Shows

      John Podesta lost his cell phone getting out of a cab, the latest dump of WikiLeaks‘ “The Podesta Emails” indicates. Podesta, the chairman for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, appears to have sent an email to Eryn Sepp on July 19, 2015, in which he asks for help finding his lost phone.

      “[I] lost my phone this am. It must have fallen off my belt getting in or out of the cab. I used Diamond and had a 4:45 pick up at Brandywine. Can you call Diamond Cab and see if the cab driver found it. They should be able to figure it out given the pickup. The receipt says #Diamond 444 C502,” Podesta appears to have written, according to the allegedly leaked email in WikiLeaks’ Podesta files.

      Readers have speculated that this incident might have been the way whoever delivered the Podesta files to WikiLeaks was able to access Podesta’s emails.

    • ‘Take the Money!!’ and other highlights from the Podesta email leak

      Throughout the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton’s campaign presented her as a crusading reformer who would take on powerful corporate interests and curb the role of big money in American politics.

      But the recent WikiLeaks dump of campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails offers revealing snapshots that tell a somewhat different story. Top aides plot to “scare our people into giving bigger sums.” They debate whether to take cash from registered foreign agents: “Take the money!!” one senior campaign official advises. A top corporate lobbyist, pressed to “hit up” his clients for Clinton campaign coffers, asks for high-level help to advance one of those client’s interests. And there are new details about the overseas cash that rolled into the Clinton Foundation — including a $12 million commitment from the king of Morocco that Hillary Clinton personally helped facilitate.

      The emails also disclose just how nervous top Clinton advisers were that Vice President Joe Biden might get into the race (Podesta himself was convinced he was getting in.) And they fretted about their own candidate’s limitations. “Almost no one knows better [than] me that her instincts can be terrible,” wrote one longtime Clinton aide.

    • Why Bernie Was Right

      Wikileaks’ latest document dump vindicates Bernie Sanders’ critique of Hillary Clinton and the Washington establishment.

    • The FBI’s Clinton Probe Gets Curiouser

      Hillary Clinton may win the election in two weeks, but the manner of her victory will bedevil her in the White House. Specifically, evidence keeps turning up suggesting that the FBI probe into her emails was influenced by political favoritism and double standards.

    • Pirates Could Rule Iceland After Upcoming Legislative Elections

      The Pirate Party promises to clean up corruption, grant asylum to Edward Snowden and accept the bitcoin virtual currency.

      Riding a wave of anger over perceived corruption among Iceland’s political elite, the Pirate Party is doing well in the polls ahead of Saturday’s general election.

    • WikiLeaks shows Clinton hid email scandal from her own staff

      Hillary Clinton’s closest aides hid the private email scandal from her campaign team in the months before the official launch of her presidential campaign, emails made public by WikiLeaks show.

      Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chair, and Neera Tanden, co-chair of Clinton’s transition team, each expressed shock at the revelations about her private server as they emerged in early March 2015.

      Although Clinton’s team had performed research on her in 2014 as staff prepared for her campaign, Clinton’s inner circle apparently steered Mook and others away from the issue until it was too late.

      When Podesta asked Mook if he had “any idea of the depth of this story,” Mook answered simply, “Nope.”

    • 2016 The Choice: Washington Post reporter on a WikiLeaks hacked memo and ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’

      On Thursday, Oct. 27, 2016, Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric speaks with Washington Post political investigations reporter Rosalind Helderman about her article detailing a hacked memo released by WikiLeaks that appears to implicate former President Bill Clinton in a pay to play scenario.

      Yahoo News Now Special Edition: “2016 The Choice” — Every weekday until the election, we’ll be coming to you live from the Yahoo Studios in New York City, bringing the latest information and analysis of the day’s most compelling storylines in the race for the White House.

    • Erica Garner blasts Clinton campaign over discussions staffers had about her father’s death in WikiLeaks emails

      Erica Garner, the daughter of police chokehold victim Eric Garner, ripped the Hillary Clinton campaign in a series of tweets Thursday after new campaign emails released by WikiLeaks showed how the Democratic nominee’s staffers discussed the death of her father.

      “I’m troubled by the revelation that you and this campaign actually discussed ‘using’ Eric Garner … Why would you want to ‘use my dad?” Garner tweeted along with a link to emails released by WikiLeaks. “These people will co opt anything to push their agenda. Police violence is not the same as gun violence.

    • WikiLeaks: Team Hillary Feared Clinton-Cosby Comparisons

      Political operative Ron Klain in January sent an “urgent” email to Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff warning of possible questions she might face, including how her husband’s sexual indiscretions might compare to disgraced comedian Bill Cosby.

      Klain’s insights became public Thursday thanks to the latest dump by WikiLeaks of campaign Chairman John Podesta’s hacked emails.

      Klain, who served as chief of staff to Vice Presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden, wrote that the campaign needed to set aside time to discuss the political questions, which now seem to be really owning the coverage.”

      Klain had several under the heading “WJC Issues.”

      One was particularly harsh: “How is what Bill Clinton did different from what Bill Cosby did?”

    • Wikileaks Reveals How Bill Clinton Profited From the Clinton Foundation

      A new cache of hacked e-mails, released Wednesday by WikiLeaks, is shedding new light on how Bill Clinton made millions of dollars while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, and raising questions about whether there may have been conflicts of interest between foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and the former president’s personal business.

      In one 2011 memo written by Doug Band, a longtime aide to Bill Clinton, Band explains how he worked for years to raise $46 million for the Foundation through the Clinton Global Initiative, while also leveraging his relationships with corporate sponsors to secure lucrative speaking arrangements and consulting gigs for the former president. Band, who wrote the 12-page memo in response to an internal audit being conducted by lawyers for the Clinton Foundation, described the money-making endeavor as “Bill Clinton, Inc.”

      Those for-profit activities largely involved “speeches, books, and advisory service engagements” in which Band and his private consulting firm, Teneo, acted as “agents, lawyers, managers, and implementers.” Teneo also negotiated “in-kind services for the President and his family—for personal travel, hospitality, vacation, and the like.” By 2011, Bill Clinton had secured over $50 million in compensation and received an additional $66 million in future contracts, according to the memo. Among the deals were a number of paid speeches to corporations including banks like UBS and Barclays, and an $18 million arrangement to serve as “honorary chancellor” for Laureate International Universities, a for-profit college. Some foundation donors were also clients of Teneo, although there is no evidence of any quid pro quo.

    • WikiLeaks-released memo outlines Bill Clinton’s lucrative speeches

      In the memo, Band details how he set up for-profit deals for the former president, both involving money and “as appropriate, in-kind services for the President and his family — for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.”

      Band’s memo covers 2001 to 2011, during which time “President Clinton’s business arrangements have yielded more than $30 million for him personally with $66 million to be paid out over the next nine years, should he choose to continue with the current engagements.”

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Musical Space: Censorship

      As you can imagine, the Nazis and the Soviet Union clamped down hard on music. Not only were many pieces permanently taken from society, but their composers as well. Modern Russia has also done its share; witness the imprisonment of the feminist Russian protest-punk band Pussy Riot in 2012.

    • Internet Celebrity ‘Bardock Obama’ Talks Censorship, ‘Dragon Ball Super’ In Interview [Exclusive]

      Censorship isn’t fun. Sure, some things need to be censored, but the politically correct world that we live in now has caused many people to fear expressing their opinions, even if it’s something harmless or backed by facts. You have a political view? Well, maybe you should hold it back because others may disagree. You don’t like a certain athlete’s protest of the national anthem? Delete that Instagram post because you’re going to get death threats. Fear has consumed us like a fire in a time of needing to please everyone, and it’s causing both panic and frustration among social media users.

    • With Interest In Profile Defenders’ Questionable Lawsuits Rising, The Lawsuits Start Falling

      Earlier this year, we were among the first to write about the highly questionable practice of “reputation management” companies filing clearly bogus lawsuits against unknown defendants, only to magically have those “defendants” show up a day or two later with an agreement that they had posted defamatory content. The goal of these lawsuits was obvious: get a court order. That’s because many platform websites, including Google, won’t take down or delink content based on a claim of defamation, but will do so if there’s a court order. Of course, filing a real lawsuit has all sorts of problems, including money and actually needing to have a real case. These reputation management lawsuits got around all of that by basically faking defendants, having them “agree” to a settlement admitting to defamation, and getting a court order saying that the content is defamatory. Neat and clean. And total abuse of legal process.

      Last month, Public Citizen’s Paul Levy (who has helped defend Techdirt against some legal bullies) picked up on this thread and found evidence of more bogus lawsuits. A few weeks ago, he and famed law professor Eugene Volokh teamed up to reveal more details on a series of such lawsuits, which all seemed to be connected back to a guy named Richart Ruddie and an operation that goes by a bunch of names, but mainly Profile Defenders. It appears that Ruddie/Profile Defenders is not the only one filing these kinds of lawsuits, but he’s been prolific. So far, Ruddie’s only response is a bizarre press release touting his “anti-cyberbullying skills.”

    • Pissed Consumer Sues Reputation Management Firms Over Their Bogus Lawsuit/Fake Defendant/Takedown Scams

      In the last few weeks, we’ve written a few posts about Richart Ruddie’s company, Profile Defenders, which appears to be “improving reputations” online by filing bogus defamation lawsuits, finding a bogus made-up “defendant” to “admit” to posting defamatory information, reaching a “settlement” and getting a court order. The whole scheme is about getting that court order, which is then sent on to Google and others (mainly Google). The whole point: if Google sees a court order saying that some content is defamatory, it will de-index that page. That the whole process to get that court order is a total sham is basically ignored. That may be changing. We were just noting that some of Profile Defenders’ cases are in trouble, and at least one has had the court order vacated.

    • Facebook’s Arbitrary Offensiveness Police Take Down Informational Video About Breast Cancer Screening

      Stories of Facebook’s attempt at puritanical patrols of its site are legion at this point. The site has demonstrated it cannot filter out parody, artwork, simple speech in the form of outrage, iconic historical photos, or sculpture from its prude-patrol censorship. As a private company, Facebook is of course allowed to follow its own whim when it comes to what is allowed on its site, but as an important tool in this era for communication and speech, the company is also a legitimate target for derision when it FUBARs this as badly as it does so often.

      So queue up the face-palming once more, as Facebook has decided to remove a video posted by a Swedish cancer charity informing women how to check for breast cancer, because the video included animated breasts, and breasts are icky icky.

    • Amazon slammed for censoring female erotica writer Anais Nin

      THERE’S a new book out by 20th century erotica pioneer Anais Nin — but you won’t find it if you search on Amazon.

      The world’s largest bookseller has black-listed erotica collection Auletris, the latest posthumous Nin work, after its publisher refused to edit the text to remove its more salacious details.

      But Nin’s literary cult following has slammed the retailer for “hypocrisy”, arguing that its censorship policy is haphazard and nonsensical.

      Long before the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon brought erotic fiction to the mainstream, French bohemian Anais Nin penned the writings that would see her hailed by critics as among the best authors of female erotica.

      Delta of Venus and Little Birds, erotica collections published in the late 1970s after Nin’s death,can both be searched and bought on Amazon.

    • Putting a muzzle on the right to disagree
    • Read This Dad’s Perfect Response To An Ironic School Permission Slip
    • This Kid Needed A Permission Slip To Read ‘Fahrenheit 451′, & Dad’s Response Was Perfect
    • Daily Show Writer’s Reaction Letter On Censorship Goes Viral
    • 8th Grader Has to Have a Permission Slip Signed to Read ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ Dad Responds Epically

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Alibaba’s Boss Says Chinese Government Should Use Big Data Techniques On Its ‘Citizen Scores’ Surveillance Store

      He gave a concrete example of how big data techniques could be used in this context (original in Chinese). He said that there was nothing suspicious about somebody buying a pressure cooker or a clock, nor anything suspicious about someone buying ball bearings. But if somebody buys all of them together, you have a suspicious pattern. His suggestion that data mining techniques applied to everyday purchases might help the authorities to spot these patterns and to stop criminals before they act — a familiar enough idea — indicates that he is thinking of China’s plans to track every transaction from every shop as part of its “citizen scores” project.

      Once that data is gathered, it would indeed be possible to start applying big data techniques as a matter of course in order to spot correlations — something already being used on Internet data by the NSA and GCHQ. But Ma’s suggestion is to go even further, and to analyze every digital breadcrumb people drop for possible significance when combined with more data points, whether their own or of others.

    • Google’s Quiet, Confusing Privacy Policy Change Is Why We Need More Transparency & Control

      Last week, I wrote about how privacy is about tradeoffs, and despite what some people claim, there’s no such thing as “absolute privacy,” nor would you actually want something approximating what people think they mean by it. The real issue is the tradeoff. People are quite willing to trade certain information in exchange for value. But, the trade has to be clear and worth it. That’s where the real problems come in. When we don’t know what’s happening with our data, or it’s used in a sneaky way, that’s when people feel abused. Give people a clear understanding of what they’re giving and what they’re getting and you eliminate most of the problem. Then give end users greater control over all of this and you eliminate even more of the problem.

      This was our thinking in designing a Privacy Bill of Rights for companies to abide by in designing their services (along with EFF and Namecheap).

      It appears that Google would fail to meet the standards of that bill of rights. Last week, ProPublica wrote about how Google quietly changed the privacy policy related to how it connects DoubleClick advertising to other data that it has about you, allowing the company to actually link your name and other identifying information to you as you surf around the web. And, on top of that, it apparently includes tying what you type in Gmail to the ads you might see.

    • Pardoning Edward Snowden

      New attention is being paid to American exile Edward Snowden these days with the release of a movie by filmmaker and screenwriter Oliver Stone. Titled “Snowden,” it looks into what drove the National Security Agency (NSA) contract worker to take top secret documents from his workplace.

      More attention to Snowden is also being generated with the calls by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union for President Barack Obama to pardon him.

    • Former NSA contractor again asks to be released from jail after alleged document theft

      A former National Security Agency contractor charged with stealing government property and taking classified information appealed to be released from prison in a motion Tuesday as he awaits trial.

      Harold T. Martin III, 51, of Glen Burnie, was charged in August with stealing 50 terabytes of information over two decades. Martin’s lawyers have not denied the theft but have characterized him as a hoarder who started taking documents home to help him get better at his job.

      On Friday, Martin’s lawyers tried to convince a judge to release him, but Magistrate Judge A. David Copperthite ruled he was a flight risk and had to remain in jail.

    • “He’s not Edward Snowden,” lawyers for accused NSA contractor tell judge

      Defense attorneys representing Harold Martin, the former National Security Agency contractor accused of stealing a vast quantity of classified materials, have asked a more senior judge to review the decision that kept their client in federal custody.

      On Tuesday, Martin’s federal public defenders filed a “motion to review detention order,” asking US District Judge Richard D. Bennett to overrule his more junior colleague’s decision last Friday to keep Martin behind bars.

      In August, when Martin was arrested, investigators seized 50 terabytes’ worth of data and many other printed and classified documents from Martin’s home in suburban Maryland. If all of this data was indeed classified, it would be the largest such heist from the NSA, far larger than what former contractor Edward Snowden took.

      During last week’s hearing, James Wyda, one of Martin’s lawyers, told US Magistrate Judge A. David Copperthite that his client “is not Edward Snowden. He’s not someone who, due to political ideas or philosophical ideas or moral principles, thinks he knows better than everybody else.”

    • Yahoo Asks James Clapper To Please Let It Talk About The Email Scanning It Did For The Government

      “Does not exist” is not nearly the same thing as “did not exist.” This means Yahoo is no longer scanning emails in this fashion, not that it never performed this scanning.

      The letter does make a good point about transparency. Currently, Yahoo is unable to defend itself against any allegations because it is likely under a gag order. Yahoo would like Clapper’s office to share in the public pain, especially since it had a problem sharing in the communications gathered on its behalf by the email provider.

      Public embarrassment or not, Clapper’s office is probably not rushing through a declassification review of this Section 702 FISA order. It could still be months or years before the government produces this document and/or allows Yahoo to speak openly about its email scanning program.

      Perhaps recognizing that a displeased letter to the ODNI doesn’t create much leverage, the company appears to be making this a global issue, rather than simply a domestic one. Marcy Wheeler points out that the letter mentions Yahoo’s global reach and users several times and namechecks the EU’s Privacy Shield agreement. This may be the key that loosens the Intelligence Community’s Glomarred lips.

    • ACLU Sues Government Over Unreleased FISA Court Opinions

      The US government is still holding onto its opacity ideals while publicly touting transparency directives. The FISA court — which presides over the NSA’s surveillance programs — has normally been completely shrouded in darkness. Things changed in 2013 after Ed Snowden began leaking documents.

      Forced into a conversation about domestic surveillance, the administration responded with more transparency promises and the signing of the USA Freedom Act into law. The new law curtailed the collection of domestic business records (phone metadata and other third-party records) and required the court to make its opinions public following declassification reviews.

      All well and good, but the government has apparently decided the new law only requires transparency going forward. FISA opinions dating back to 2001 still remain locked up, despite transparency promises and reform efforts.

    • Kuwait Backtracks On Mandatory DNA Database Of All Citizens And Visitors

      A few weeks ago, we reported on a move by some public-spirited lawyers in Kuwait to challenge an extraordinary new law that would require everyone in the country — citizens and visitors like — to provide their DNA for a huge new database. It seemed like a quixotic move, since the Kuwaiti authorities were unlikely to be intimidated by a bunch of lawyers.

    • Cyber after Snowden

      The damage, scar tissue, and cleanup process in a post-Snowden world

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Netflix CEO Wary That AT&T’s Latest Merger Could Hurt Streaming Competitors

      Streaming video competitors are justifiably nervous about AT&T’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. Consumer advocates have been raising alarm bells since the deal was announced, warning that AT&T could make it more difficult than ever for streaming providers to gain access to the content they’ll need to compete with AT&T’s upcoming DirecTV Now streaming service. They’re also concerned that AT&T will continue to use zero rating to give its own content a distinct advantage, while penalizing streaming competitors like Netflix and Amazon.

    • Google Fiber Announces Layoffs & Deployment Pause, Will Likely Pivot To Wireless

      Back in August a report emerged claiming that Google Fiber executives were having some second thoughts about this whole “building a nationwide fiber network from the ground up” thing. More specifically, the report suggested that some executives were disappointed with the slow pace of digging fiber trenches, and were becoming bullish on the idea of using next-gen wireless to supplement fiber after acquiring fixed wireless provider Webpass. As such, the report said the company was pondering some staff reductions, some executive changes, and a bit of a pivot.

      Fast forward to this week when Access CEO Craig Barrett posted a cheery but ambiguous blog post not only formally announcing most of these changes, but his own resignation as CEO. According to Barrett, Google will continue to serve and expand Google Fiber’s existing markets (Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte, Kansas City, Nashville, Provo, Salt Lake City, and The Triangle in North Carolina), and will also build out previously-announced but not yet started efforts in Huntsville, Alabama; San Antonio, Texas; Louisville, Kentucky; and Irvine, California.

    • Alphabet Cutting Jobs in Google Fiber Retrenchment

      Google in the past two years put in place plans to expand its Fiber fast internet service to more than 20 cities. Inside the company, executives harbored bigger ambitions: to deliver service nationwide and upend the traditional broadband industry.

      Google parent Alphabet Inc. reset the project on a more humble footing on Tuesday. Craig Barratt, head of the Access unit that includes Google Fiber, is leaving, and about 9 percent of staff is being let go, according to a person familiar with the situation. The business has about 1,500 employees, meaning there will be more than 130 job losses.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • As The Cubs Head To The World Series, The Team Is Also Raging Against Single-Word Trademarks

        On the bright side, I suppose, if the plan by the Cubs was to undertake an overly aggressive stance on trademark protection every round of the playoffs, there’s only one round left, so this should be it. We had just been discussing that as the team entered the League Series to attempt to make the World Series, it had filed a lawsuit against the many street vendors that line the path to Wrigley Field for selling counterfeit merchandise. This suit, while perfectly within the rights of the team, bucked a decades-long trend of allowing those sales. It was part of the tradition of going to a game, walking by these vendors and seeing their kooky designs. Another tradition for the team is raising a blue “W” flag whenever they win. That “W” was part of trademark opposition by the Cubs and MLB when a business unrelated to the professional sports market dared to use the single letter in a logo for its financial services product.

        And now it seems that, on the eve of the World Series, the Cubs are going after more than one kind of W still, as well as the letter C.

      • Car-Freshener Wields Little Trees Trademark To Bankrupt Non Profit That Helped Ex-Cons And Recovering Addicts

        Back in August, Mike wrote about a trademark case between Car-Freshner Corp., the company that makes those ubiquitous tree-shaped air-fresheners, and Sun Cedar, a tiny non-profit that made real-wood fresheners while employing at-risk folk in the form of the homeless, ex-cons and recovering addicts. It was a strange case for any number of reasons, including the dissimilar appearance between the product of the two companies, the wide delta of size of the two companies, and the very nature of the work Sun Cedar was attempting to do as a social good. Sadly but unsurprisingly, Car-Freshner trotted out the excuse that it had to sue this small non-profit or risk losing its trademarks.

        And now it seems like, rather than working out some other kind of arrangement that would have allowed Sun Cedar’s good work to continue, the trademark dispute has resulted in the end of the non-profit entirely, at least in its current iteration. Even with an attorney agreeing to represent the non-profit for free, the costs of taking on the suit in far-off NYC simply killed the whole operation.

      • Trademark Suit Dashes Hopes Of Lawrence Company That Hired The Homeless

        The company that filed the suit, Car-Freshner Corp. of Watertown, New York, is known for its aggressive defense of its trademark. It once sued a greeting card company for using a scratch-and-sniff air freshener shaped like a tree.

        Mediation efforts between Sun Cedar and Car-Freshner were unsuccessful and last month Sun Cedar filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Its shop, a converted garage, now sits idle. The equipment Adams purchased will be sold to pay off Sun Cedar’s debts.

    • Copyrights

      • The Reason The Copyright Office Misrepresented Copyright Law To The FCC: Hollywood Told It To

        There was some oddity over the summer, when the Copyright Office flat out misrepresented copyright law to Congress and the FCC with regard to the impact on copyright of the FCC’s (now dead) proposal to create competition among set top box providers. As we’ve explained over and over again, there were no copyright implications with the FCC’s proposal. All it said was that if an authorized user wanted to access authorized content via a third party device, that authorized user should be able to do so. And yet, the Copyright Office, incorrectly, seemed to make up an entirely new exclusivity in copyright law (one that would outlaw DVRs) that basically said not only could a content provider license content to a cable TV provider, but it could also limit the devices on which end users could view that content.

        Simply put: that’s wrong. That’s not how copyright law works, and we’ve known that since the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Betamax case decades ago.

        But why would the Copyright Office so misrepresent copyright law? That was the perplexing part. Even with a bunch of copyright professors explaining how wrong the Copyright Office was, the Office still went ahead with its letter. Of course, as with so many policy issues, it really seemed like the Copyright Office was just acting like a lobbying arm of Hollywood.

      • Linking to unlicensed content: Swedish court applies GS Media

        In 2012 the claimant (Rebecka Jonsson) filmed a bungee jumping session gone wrong in Africa.

        Someone (not Ms Jonsson) uploaded the video on YouTube. On 9 January 2012 the YouTube video was embedded on the L’Avenir website run by the defendant, in the context of an article describing the incident.

        The claimant had neither authorised the publication of the video on YouTube, nor its embedding in the L’Avenir article.

        In her action before the Attunda District Court, Ms Jonsson claimed that L’Avenir had infringed copyright in her video by both embedding it on its website and publishing a frozen still of the video. She sought damages for EUR 1931 against the defendant, as well as award of litigation costs.

        The Swedish court stated at the outset that the video is protected by Swedish copyright law, and noted how the circumstance for which the claimant’s video was (and still is) available on YouTube does not mean that no copyright infringement has occurred. This is because the claimant had not authorised the publication of the video on YouTube, nor – apparently – anywhere else on the internet.

      • Shameful: Perfectly Reasonable Academic Book On Gene Kelly Killed By Bogus Copyright Claims

        Remember when a copyright maximalist think tank guy insisted that copyright would never, ever be used for censorship? Well, about that…

        Earlier this year, we wrote about a crazy lawsuit filed by Gene Kelly’s widow, after finding out that a college professor named Kelli Marshall was working on a book collecting interviews with Gene Kelly. Marshall and her publisher reached out to a number of people associated with those interviews to clear any legitimate copyright claims (interview collection books are pretty common, and the copyright issue rarely gets in the way). Kelly’s widow, Patricia Ward Kelly, claimed that she held the copyright on all of Gene Kelly’s interviews, and sued Marshall for infringement. This was crazy for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact that the person being interviewed very rarely holds a copyright in the words they said (and Kelly’s widow made a mad dash to the copyright office to try to register these interviews right before suing). There’s also the whole fair use thing.

10.26.16

Links 26/10/2016: “softWaves” in Debian 9, Rust in GNOME

Posted in News Roundup at 6:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop/Microsoft

    • Update: Convictions Upheld, Sentences Extended In Romanian Microsoft Bribery Trial

      According to the blog post, the trial ended on October 3rd, and investigators found that more than 100 people, including former ministers, the mayor of Bucharest, and various businessmen were involved in this latest corruption scandal involving Microsoft. More than 20 million euros were paid by Microsoft there as bribes.

      [...]

      These bribery convictions are just the tip of the iceberg. Multiple news outlets are reporting on investigations of bribery in other countries as well as separate investigations by the US Department of Justice and the US Securities And Exchange Commission.

    • A History Of Everyday Linux User’s 350 Blog Posts

      This article is something of a landmark as it is the 350th post on Everyday Linux User.

      I took last week off to celebrate. Well actually I went away with the family down to England for a few days and didn’t take a computer with me. I did take in Alnwick Castle however which is the location for Hogwarts from the Harry Potter films.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

    • Rblpapi 0.3.5

      A new release of Rblpapi is now on CRAN. Rblpapi provides a direct interface between R and the Bloomberg Terminal via the C++ API provided by Bloomberg Labs (but note that a valid Bloomberg license and installation is required).

    • Flatpak 0.6.13

      These used to take an application id and an optional branch name as two arguments. This meant you could not specify multiple apps to install in a single command. So, instead of having the branch as a separate argument we now support partial references. If you only specify an id we try to match the rest as best we can depending on what is installed/available, but if this matches multiple things you have to specify more details.

    • New features on Hosted Weblate

      Today, new version has been deployed on Hosted Weblate. It brings many long requested features and enhancements.

    • A Wild Desktop Reddit App for Linux Appears

      Reddit is …Well it’s Reddit: there’s little else like it on the internet.

      Thos of us who use Reddit probably do so a tab, in a browser, because that’s how the site works best.

      Many desktop Reddit apps exist, but few translate the unique experience of using the service to the desktop in a way that really works.

    • darktable 2.0.7 Open-Source Image Editor Supports New Canon EOS 80D RAW Formats

      The powerful, open-source, and cross-platform darktable RAW image editor has just been updated today, October 25, 2016, to version 2.0.7, a major release that adds numerous new features and improvements.

    • Proprietary

      • Opera 41 Browser Brings Performance Improvements

        For those still using the Opera web-browser, Opera 41 is now available as the latest stable release and seems primarily focused on performance improvements.

      • Faster and better browsing – Welcome Opera 41

        We all know the feeling. You want to check out your favorite website, but when you open your laptop or turn on your computer, you realize the browser is closed. You click on the browser icon and then have to wait while the browser opens all your previously opened sites…

        We have a solution for you that makes your browsing faster: Opera 41 includes a new, smarter startup sequence that cuts away almost all the wait time, no matter how many tabs you open on startup.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • ‘Deus Ex: Mankind Divided’ Coming To Linux In November, Mac Port On Hold

        Feral Interactive has confirmed that Eidos Montreal’s cyberpunk action role playing game “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided” will be making its way to Linux next week.

      • PlayStation 4 hacked again? Linux shown running on 4.01 firmware

        Hackers attending the GeekPwn conference in Shanghai have revealed a new exploit for PlayStation 4 running on the 4.01 firmware. In a live demo you can see below, once again the Webkit browser is utilised in order to inject the exploit, which – after a conspicuous cut in the edit – jumps to a command line prompt, after which Linux is booted. NES emulation hilarity courtesy of Super Mario Bros duly follows.

        Assuming the hack is authentic – and showcasing it at GeekPwn makes the odds here likely – it’s the first time we’ve seen the PlayStation 4′s system software security compromised since previous holes in the older 1.76 firmware came to light, utilised by noted hacker group fail0verflow in the first PS4 Linux demo, shown in January this year.

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • New features in GNOME To Do

        Some of you might have noticed that GNOME To Do wasn’t released with GNOME 3.22. There is a reason for that: I didn’t have enough time to add new features, or fix any bugs. But that changed, and in fact big things happened.

      • CUDA 8, cuDNN, Nvidia drivers and GNOME Software metadata

        The Nvidia driver repository has been updated with AppStream metadata. From Fedora 25 onward, you will be able to search for Nvidia, CUDA, GeForce or Quadro to make the driver, control panel and other programs appear in the Gnome Software window.

        As far as I know, this should be enabled by default on Fedora 25.

      • Builder Rust

        With Federico’s wonderful post on Rust’ifying librsvg I guess it makes sense to share what I’ve been doing the last couple of days.

        I’ve been keeping my eye on Rust for quite a while. However, I’ve been so heads down with Builder the last two years that I haven’t really gotten to write any or help on integration into our platform. Rust appears to take a very pragmatic stance on integration with systems code (which is primarily C). The C calling convention is not going anywhere, so at some point, you will be integrating with some part of a system that is “C-like”. Allowing us to piecemeal upgrade the “Safety” of our systems is much smarter than rewrite-the-universe. This pragmatism is likely due to the realities of Rust’s birth at Mozilla. It’s a huge code-base, and incrementally modernizing it is the only reality that is approachable.

      • Librsvg gets Rusty

        I’ve been wanting to learn Rust for some time. It has frustrated me for a number of years that it is quite possible to write GNOME applications in high-level languages, but for the libraries that everything else uses (“the GNOME platform”), we are pretty much stuck with C. Vala is a very nice effort, but to me it never seemed to catch much momentum outside of GNOME.

        After reading this presentation called “Rust out your C”, I got excited. It *is* possible to port C code to Rust, small bits at a time! You rewrite some functions in Rust, make them linkable to the C code, and keep calling them from C as usual. The contortions you need to do to make C types accessible from Rust are no worse than for any other language.

      • GNOME’s Epiphany 3.24 Web Browser to Use Firefox Sync Service, HTTPS Everywhere

        The GNOME developers are preparing to release the first development version of the upcoming GNOME 3.24 desktop environment, versioned 3.23.1, and we can’t help but notice that some of the core apps were updated recently.

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

      • Zorin OS 12 Beta – Flat white, no sugar

        I did not do any other testing, no extensive tweaking, no customization. I felt no need or desire to do so. Now, do remember Zorin OS 12 is still in beta, so we can excuse some of the problems we see here. But others are purely Ubuntu, and have been ported over from the parent distro without any discrimination or any improvements and fixes introduced in the last six months. The big offenders include: multimedia and smartphone support, poor software management, and then the somewhat heavy utilization and slow performance.

        Zorin is quite pretty but weary on the eyes, it tries perhaps too hard to be more than it is, and overall, the value it brings is negatively offset by the myriad papercuts of its design and the implementation of its unique style, plus the failings of the Ubuntu family. It’s an okay choice, if you will, but there’s nothing too special about it anymore. It’s not as fun as it used to be. Gone is the character, gone is the glamor. This aligns well with the overall despair in the Linux desktop world. Maybe the official release will be better, but I doubt it. Why would suddenly one distro excel where 50 others of the same crop had failed with the exact same problems? Final grade, 5/10. Test if you like the looks, other than that, there’s no incentive in really using Zorin. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

    • New Releases

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • Suse: Question. What do you call second-place in ARM enterprise server linux? Answer: Red Hat

        ARM TechCon Suse is claiming victory over Red Hat by announcing – and these caveats are all crucial – “the first commercial enterprise Linux distribution optimized for ARM AArch64 architecture servers.”

        In plainer English, Suse has developed an enterprise-grade Linux distribution that runs on 64-bit ARM servers (should you happen to ever find one). Suse claims this software is a world first because it is a finished commercial product, thus beating Red Hat to the punch: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server for ARM is still only available as a beta-like development preview.

      • SUSE Preps Linux for ARM Servers

        The move toward ARM-based servers took another step forward this week as SUSE announced plans for server and storage versions of Linux supporting 64-bit ARM SoCs. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Enterprise Storage will be available before the end of the year.

        Intel currently dominates the server sector, one of its most profitable markets, with its x86 Xeon processors.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • “softWaves” will be the default theme for Debian 9

        After the Debian Desktop Team made the call for proposing themes, a total of twelve choices have been submitted, and any Debian contributor has received the opportunity to vote on them in a survey. We received 3,479 responses ranking the different choices, and softWaves has been the winner among them.

      • This Is the Final Artwork of the Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” Operating System

        Today, October 25, 2016, Debian Project’s Laura Arjona Reina and Niels Thykier proudly announced Juliette Taka Belin as the official artwork winner for the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” operating system.

      • Rankings, Condorcet and free software: Calculating the results for the Stretch Artwork Survey

        We had 12 candidates for the Debian Stretch Artwork and a survey was set up for allowing people to vote which one they prefer.

        The survey was run in my LimeSurvey instance, surveys.larjona.net. LimeSurvey its a nice free software with a lot of features. It provides a “Ranking” question type, and it was very easy for allowing people to “vote” in the Debian style (Debian uses the Condorcet method in its elections).

        However, although LimeSurvey offers statistics and even graphics to show the results of many type of questions, its output for the Ranking type is not useful, so I had to export the data and use another tool to find the winner.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Reviews: Quirky Zorin and Boring Ubuntu

            Perhaps not so coincidentally, Joshua Allen Holm reached nearly the same conclusion today with Ubuntu 16.10. He began, “At first glance, little has changed in Ubuntu 16.10. It looks almost exactly like every other recent release of Ubuntu.” He spent most of his article looking at Unity 8, which is still just a preview, and said it does show promise with its early “polish.” Holm concluded there was little reason to recommend an upgrade unless you need a fix provided or wish the newer software. In addition, Chin Wong recently upgraded and came to nearly the same exact conclusions.

          • Canonical explains Ubuntu Advantage benefits — could your business switch to Linux?

            Linux-based desktop operating systems are better than Windows because they are free, right? Whoa there, folks. Neither are necessarily better or worse — it really depends on your needs. Cost-free operating systems, such as Ubuntu and Fedora, are definitely great for home consumers looking to breathe new life into old machines. With that said, the benefits of Linux extend beyond money and cost-savings.

            Linux being free is sort of misleading when it comes to business use too. While a small business with a few employees can get by with free support, larger companies would be crazy to go it entirely alone — paid support is a necessity for success. Today, Canonical releases a well-designed infographic that explains the benefits of its paid support, called ‘Ubuntu Advantage’.

            “Ubuntu Advantage is the commercial support package from Canonical. It includes Landscape, the Ubuntu systems management tool, and the Canonical Livepatch Service, which enables you to apply kernel fixes without restarting your Ubuntu 16.04 LTS systems”, says Canonical.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Nantes: Open source cuts off recurring charges

    Switching to open source means the end of the periodic recurring charges from proprietary software vendors, says Eric Ficheux, change management specialist at Nantes Métropole, France’s 6th largest city. “The total cost of ownership of LibreOffice is far lower than of its proprietary predecessor”, he says.

  • Keeping up the fight for free software

    Here’s John Sullivan’s vision for a more just world: You pop into your favorite electronics retailer and encounter a panoply of new gadgets, each one more alluring and astounding than the last—and each one guaranteed to respect your freedom. Your freedom to inspect its software. Your freedom to modify that software. Your freedom to have that software collect only the data you wish.

  • How Walmart Is Embracing the Open-Source OpenStack Model

    Walmart wasn’t always an open-source advocate, but now it’s one of the biggest consumers of open-source technology and is actively building a culture that fosters open-source development.
    BARCELONA, Spain—Walmart, the world largest retailer and one the largest employers, aims to give back to the OpenStack community. In a session at the OpenStack Summit here, Andrew Mitry, lead architect for Walmart’s OpenStack effort, and Megan Rossetti, part of the OpenStack Operations team at Walmart, detailed how the open-source model is working for the retail giant.

  • PUFIN Open Source Blockchain Tech May Be Marketplace Lending Answer
  • Chain Releases Open-Source Version of Chain Core Technology Powering Visa’s New B2B Connect

    On October 21, 2016, Visa announced a new partnership with blockchain enterprise company Chain that will develop “a simple, fast and secure way to process B2B payments globally.” Dubbed Visa B2B Connect, the system will offer participating pilot financial institutions a consistent process for managing settlement through Visa’s standard practices.

    “The time has never been better for the global business community to take advantage of new payment technologies and improve some of the most fundamental processes needed to run their businesses,” said McCarthy. “We are developing our new solution to give our financial institution partners an efficient, transparent way for payments to be made across the world.”

  • Chain Launches Open Source Developer Platform

    Chain, a provider of blockchain technology solutions, today released Chain Core Developer Edition, a free and open source version of its distributed ledger platform that enables organizations to issue and transfer assets on permissioned blockchain networks.

    For the first time, developers can download and install Chain Core to start or join a blockchain network, build financial applications, and access in-depth technical documentation and tutorials. Users have the option to run their prototypes on a test network, or “testnet,” operated by Chain, Microsoft, and the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3), a collaboration of Cornell University, Cornell Tech, UC Berkeley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Technion.

  • Open Source ERP Options For Small and Medium Businesses

    Open source ERP (enterprise resource planning) holds a small portion of the overall ERP market, which is mainly ruled by few commercial products provided by well-known enterprise software vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Sage.

  • Steering Kubernetes Through Uncharted Territory

    Taylor Thomas is a Cloud Software Engineer for the Software Defined Infrastructure team at Intel working on Kubernetes, CI/CD, and the Snap open telemetry framework. The team also uses Kubernetes to run a large part of their services, and Thomas will describe this work in his upcoming talk “Off the Beaten Path: An Explorer’s Guide to Kubernetes ” at KubeCon. In this article, however, he provides a preview of some challenges that the team has encountered.

  • Events

    • Software Freedom Kosova 2016

      Software Freedom Kosova (SFK) 2016 took place in Prishtina from October 21-23, 2016. We were able to push a special Fedora badge for SFK to be awarded to SFK attendees who vist the Fedora booth. The badge was awarded 14 times out of which 12 were existing contributors while 2 new contributors were onboarded at the event ! Yaay – we look forward to seeing you in the community nafieshehu and marianab.

    • OpenStack Summit Barcelona

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • US ‘could legalise cannabis across country’ in wake of California decriminalisation vote

      The decriminalisation of recreational cannabis use in California could be a milestone towards ending the drug’s prohibition nationally, it has been suggested.

      Alongside the presidential election, California will vote over whether to make recreational marijuana use legal on 8 November.

      If approved, as polls suggest it will be, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA) will allow adults aged over 21 to possess up to an ounce of marijuana and cultivate up to six plants for personal use, the National Organisation of the Reform of Marijuana Laws explains.

      Legalisation of recreational cannabis has already taken place in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, but experts believe decriminalisation in California could present a strong challenge to the federal government’s cannabis ban.

  • Security

    • Tuesday’s security updates
    • We Got Phished

      She logged into her account but couldn’t find the document and, with other more urgent emails to deal with, she quickly moved on and put this brief event out of mind.

      This staff member will henceforth be known as PZ, or “patient zero.”

      The login page wasn’t really a login page. It was a decoy webpage, designed to look legitimate in order to trick unsuspecting recipients into typing in their private login credentials. Having fallen for the ruse, PZ had effectively handed over her email username and password to an unknown party outside the Exploratorium.

      This type of attack is known as “phishing.” Much like putting a lure into a lake and waiting to see what bites, a phishing attack puts out phony prompts, such as a fake login page, hoping that unwitting recipients can be manipulated into giving up personal information.

    • DDoS attacks against Dyn the work of ‘script kiddies’

      Last week’s distributed denial of service attack in the US against domain name services provider Dynamic Network Services are more likely to have been the work of “script kiddies”, and not state actors.

      Security researchers at threat intelligence firm Flashpoint dismissed reports that linked the attack to WikiLeaks, the Russian government or the New World Hackers group.

      Instead, Flashpoint said, it was “moderately confident” that the Hackforums community was behind the attack which led to well-known sites like Twitter, Spotify, Netflix and Paypal being inaccessible on 21 October (US time).

    • How one rent-a-botnet army of cameras, DVRs caused Internet chaos

      Welcome to the Internet of Evil Things. The attack that disrupted much of the Internet on October 21 is still being teased apart by investigators, but evidence thus far points to multiple “botnets” of Internet-connected gadgets being responsible for blocking access to the Domain Name Service (DNS) infrastructure at DNS provider Dyn. Most of these botnets—coordinated armies of compromised devices that sent malicious network traffic to their targets—were controlled by Mirai, a self-spreading malware for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

      in a blog post on the attack, Dyn reported “tens of millions” of devices were involved in the attack

      But other systems not matching the signature of Mirai were also involved in the coordinated attack on Dyn. “We believe that there might be one or more additional botnets involved in these attacks,” Dale Drew, CSO of Level 3 Communications, told Ars. “This could mean that they are ‘renting’ several different botnets to launch an attack against a specific victim, in which multiple other sites have been impacted.”

      The motive may have been blackmail, since the attacker sought a payout by Dyn to stop. But Drew warned that the huge disruption caused by the attack “could result in large copycat attacks, and [a] higher [number of] victim payouts [so] as to not be impacted in the same way. It could also be a signal that the bad guy is using multiple botnets in order to better avoid detection since they are not orchestrating the attack from a single botnet source.”

    • ARM builds up security in the tiniest Internet of Things chips

      IoT is making devices smaller, smarter, and – we hope – safer. It’s not easy to make all those things happen at once, but chips that can help are starting to emerge.

      On Tuesday at ARM TechCon in Silicon Valley, ARM will introduce processors that are just a fraction of a millimeter across and incorporate the company’s TrustZone technology. TrustZone is hardware-based security built into SoC (system on chip) processors to establish a root of trust.

      It’s designed to prevent devices from being hacked and taken over by intruders, a danger that’s been in the news since the discovery of the Mirai botnet, which recently took over thousands of IP cameras to mount denial-of-service attacks.

    • Antique Kernel Flaw Opens Door to New Dirty Cow Exploit

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Russia Reveals ‘Satan 2′ Nuclear Missile Capable of Destroying Texas in One Blow

      Russia is flexing its military muscle as tensions with the US simmer in the wake of a heated third presidential debate, where Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton called Republican candidate Donald Trump a “puppet” for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now, Russia has declassified the first image of its new thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missile.

      The RS-28 Sarmat missile—better known as the Satan 2 nuclear missile—has finally been revealed after years of being hyped by the Russian government. According to a Russian publication aligned with the Kremlin called Sputnik, the super-nuke has a payload capable of destroying an area “the size of Texas.”

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Murder of Brazil official marks new low in war on Amazon environmentalists

      Before he could get out of his car, two men on a motorcycle pulled up and the passenger shot seven bullets into the 54-year-old, who was still sitting in the driver’s seat.

      The killer got off the bike, opened the car door and shot him twice more. Araújo slumped on to his wife, who was seated beside him. Neither she, nor his two stepchildren, were injured. No attempt was made to steal anything.

      The killing, on Thursday 13 October, had all the hallmarks of the sort of assassination that is common in the lawless Pará state, in the eastern Amazon, where illegal logging, clandestine mining and modern slavery are rife.

      More than 150 environmental activists have been killed in Brazil since 2012, with studies showing the country accounts for half the global toll of such murders.

    • Scientists Warn the Collapse of This Glacier Could Be Globally Catastrophic

      The hulking West Antarctic ice sheet has been worrying scientists for decades. Global warming, as we already know, is causing very massive glaciers to melt a very rapid pace. But if this ice sheet goes, as some climate models have formidably simulated, sea levels could rise by as much as 12 feet. That’s enough to flood 28,800 square miles of coastal land in the United States alone.

      For many experts, the question isn’t if this is going to happen, but when.

      Since the 1950s, West Antarctica’s glaciers have been called “unstable,” “unstoppable,” and the region’s “weak underbelly” by researchers who recognized their unique vulnerabilities and immense potential for catastrophe.

      In particular, the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers near the Amundsen Sea are of utmost concern because they possess the ability to destabilize the entire ice sheet, setting off a careening chain of events. According to Washington Post, while both glaciers are capable of causing up to two feet of sea level rise, each depositing nearly “45 billion tons of ice into the ocean annually,” their structural integrity makes them especially dangerous.

  • Finance

    • Not just bigots and boors oppose trade deals: McQuaig

      The decision of British voters to leave Europe has been treated as evidence that they’re intolerant xenophobes keen to seal themselves off from the world. That Donald Trump is on their side only helps make the case that they represent a boorish throwback, a desire to make the English-speaking world great again by turning it into a giant gated community surrounded by sky-high walls.

      Having such a collection of bigots and boors opposing “globalization” may turn out to be a boon for those promoting globalization — that is, the laws that govern the global economy.

      This is unfortunate, since these laws — and the international trade deals that enforce them — have delivered benefits almost exclusively to those at the top in recent years, and should be thoroughly overhauled.

      But with Neanderthal wall-builders lurking in the background, it may be easier for the Trudeau government to convince Canadians to accept these badly flawed and increasingly unpopular trade deals as part of living in an open, modern world.

      U.S. President Barack Obama helped make this case in his address to Parliament last week, urging us to resist “sealing ourselves off from the world,” as he derided opposition to foreigners and opposition to international trade deals with the same broad brush.

      But whoa, Nelly! Let’s not lump Trump’s scurrilous Muslim ban in with legitimate resistance to trade deals such as NAFTA, as well as the highly contentious new Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the sweeping 12-nation trade deal Obama is keenly promoting.

    • Twitter Planning Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

      Twitter Inc., having failed to sell itself, is planning to fire about 8 percent of its workforce as the struggling social-media company prepares to go it alone for the time being.

      Twitter may eliminate about 300 people, the same percentage it did last year when co-founder Jack Dorsey took over as chief executive officer, according to people familiar with the matter. Planning for the cuts is still fluid and the number could change, they added. The people asked not to be identified talking about private company plans.

      An announcement about the job reductions may come before Twitter releases third-quarter earnings on Thursday, one of the people said. A Twitter representative declined to comment.

    • Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s trickle-down economics experiment is so bad the state stopped reporting on it

      Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, the Republican responsible for the state’s business-friendly tax policies, is now trying to erase any evidence of just how wildly unsuccessful his Reaganomics experiment has proved.

      Last month the state’s Council of Economic Advisors, which Brownback created in 2011 and still chairs, quietly discontinued quarterly reports originally intended to showcase the state’s rapid economic growth. (During Brownback’s re-election campaign in 2014, the reports were scrubbed from the internet and subsequently available only upon request.)

      The council issued what ended up being its last report in May.

      Brownback “specifically asked the council to hold him accountable through rigorous performance metrics,” Heidi Holliday, executive director of the Kansas Center for Economic Growth, told The Topeka Capital-Journal. “Five years later, the metrics clearly show his tax experiment has failed while business leaders and local chambers of commerce across the state openly ask him to change course.”

      Holliday’s Kansas Center for Economic Growth noted the reports’ discontinuation and in April, the nonprofit issued its own economic proposal outlining the proven economic benefits of investing in public kindergarten-through-grade 12 education.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • A Good Year to Go Green (Party)

      The video of Donald Trump crowing that his celebrity status entitles him to assault women slightly eclipsed Hillary Clinton’s leaked speeches. But we still learned that Clinton holds “public and private positions,” that her populist promises regarding free trade, preserving Social Security, and checking the power of Wall Street probably won’t survive Inauguration Day.

      Millions of voters have figured out that the two major parties don’t represent them. They’re right. It’s not a two-party system, it’s a two-party racket.

      They’re frustrated with a choice that, we’re told, is limited to two nominees with deep disapproval ratings. Voter dissatisfaction is reflected in polls that show broad support for a choice of more than two on the ballot.

      Despite such sentiments, Democrats are scolding Green Party candidates: “This isn’t your year. We must defeat Trump.”

      Meanwhile, we’re seeing indications that Clinton is heading towards a solid win, as the Trump campaign sinks deeper into disgrace.

      2016 might turn out to be the safest year ever to vote Green, right? No, say Democrats.

      Dems will never admit it’s a good time to go Green. They want a field permanently limited to two parties of war and Wall Street.

      To understand what we’ve lost under the two-party racket, compare the cringeworthy Clinton-Trump debates with Green nominee Jill Stein’s rebuttals.

    • After DNC chair suggests WikiLeaks emails were ‘doctored,’ technology blog calls her bluff

      Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile said last week that a number of her WikiLeaks emails were “doctored,” implying that she either didn’t send them or the messages she did send were altered. But a technology blog is now calling her bluff.

      “I have seen so many doctored emails. I have seen things that come from me at two in the morning that I don’t even send,” Brazile told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly following Wednesday’s third and final presidential debate in Las Vegas. Brazile had been asked specifically about one email that indicated Hillary Clinton may have received a Democratic primary debate question ahead of the event, which aired on CNN in March.

    • I’m voting for Jill Stein. It’s a moral choice. It reflects who I am as a person.

      I was 19 when Eric Garner was choked to death by the police. Seeing that video of his death over and over again as it spread across Facebook felt like waking up to reality. Within days, I joined my first political protest: a “die-in” in my college’s student center, symbolizing our stand against police brutality.

      I’m now 21 years old, in the midst of my senior year at Simpson College in Iowa, and this will be my first time voting in a presidential election. Systemic racism is the most important issue to me, and my views on that topic and many others are far to the left of both Trump and Clinton. That’s why I’m choosing to vote for Jill Stein in my home battleground state of Iowa.

      I face a lot of stigma for my choice to vote third party. People tell me I’m wasting my vote, or that I’m just trying to be different. But they are completely missing the point of why I’m choosing to do this. To me, my vote represents a moral choice. It reflects who I am as a person.

      [...]

      I am a Marxist, a radical feminist, and the child of a Laotian immigrant, so it’s obvious why Trump doesn’t speak to me. His hateful and bigoted language, such as the recent recordings where he discussed sexually assaulting women, is appalling. I’m particularly disturbed by his law-and-order rhetoric. I read that he claimed police are the most discriminated-against group in America right now. I’m truly flabbergasted at that statement.

    • Clinton ally speculates why Clinton used private server
    • Iceland’s Pirate Party prepares for power as polls suggest election triumph

      The party that could be on the cusp of winning Iceland’s national elections on Saturday didn’t exist four years ago.

      Its members are a collection of anarchists, hackers, libertarians and web geeks. It sets policy through online polls – and thinks the government should do the same. It wants to make Iceland “a Switzerland of bits,” free of digital snooping. It has offered Edward Snowden a new place to call home.

      And then there’s the name: in this land of Vikings, the Pirate Party may soon be king.

      The rise of the Pirates – from radical fringe to focal point of Icelandic politics – has astonished even the party’s founder, a poet, web programmer and former WikiLeaks activist.

    • Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

      The party that could be on the cusp of winning Iceland’s national elections on Saturday didn’t exist four years ago.

      Its members are a collection of anarchists, hackers, libertarians and Web geeks. It sets policy through online polls — and thinks the government should do the same. It wants to make Iceland “a Switzerland of bits,” free of digital snooping. It has offered Edward Snowden a new place to call home.

      And then there’s the name: In this land of Vikings, the Pirate Party may soon be king.

    • Nearly All Of Silicon Valley’s Political Dollars Are Going To Hillary Clinton

      Aditya Agarwal, the newly promoted chief technology officer of Dropbox, the cloud storage company, will vote in his first U.S. election on Nov. 8. Though he’s worked for U.S. tech companies for years, it hasn’t been easy to stay abreast of the paperwork he needed to get visas and become a citizen.

      “Over the course of being in the United States for the last 16 years, I have had an F-1 [student] visa, an OPT, a CPT,” he said. “I’ve had, like, four H-1Bs [a visa used for high-skilled workers, often in the technology industry]. I’ve had, like, a green-card process that took like five or six years. I’ve gone through the citizenship process.”

      The process is “deeply personal for me,” he said, speaking as a newly minted American citizen about to cast a ballot, “so I’m really excited about it.”

    • WikiLeaks reveals fears and frustrations inside Clinton world

      “Speaking of transparency, our friends Kendall, Cheryl and Phillipe sure weren’t forthcoming on the facts here,” John Podesta complained in the March 2015 note, referring to Clinton’s personal lawyer, David Kendall, as well as former State Department staffers Cheryl Mills and Philippe Reines.

      “Why didn’t they get this stuff out like 18 months ago? So crazy,” replied Neera Tanden, a longtime Podesta friend who also has worked for Clinton. Then, answering her own question, Tanden wrote again: “I guess I know the answer. They wanted to get away with it.”

      The exchange, found in hacked emails from Podesta’s account and released Tuesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, provides a striking window into how the revelation of Clinton’s email setup roiled her nascent campaign team in the weeks before its official April 2015 kickoff.

    • Facebook Heavily Biased Toward Hillary Clinton? WikiLeaks Latest Reveal Shows Possible Direct Correlation

      As we quickly approach the November 8th elections, email leaks from the Clinton camp continue to loom over the presidential candidate. The latest data dump from WikiLeaks shines a light on emails between Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

      In one email exchange, dated June 6th, 2015, Sandberg expresses her desire for Clinton to become president, writing to Podesta, “And I still want HRC to win badly. I am still here to help as I can.” While that was a private exchange, Sandberg also made her zest for seeing Clinton as the 45th President of the United States publicly known in a Facebook post on July 28th of this year.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Smith College Opens A Tattletale Phone Line So Students Can Snitch On Campus Speech Criminals

      “Stop it! Don’t! I’m telling!” is, understandably, a part of some kids’ lives — when they’re 8. At 18, you’d think that proto-adult debating thingie would kick in.

      Well, it used to.

      But now, Smith College has eliminated the need to, you know, talk things out — tell somebody when they’re being kind of a dickbag — with a 24/7 speech crime hotline.

    • Chickenshit American Bar Association Scared Out Of Publishing Report Calling Trump A Libel Bully

      We’ve talked a lot about Donald Trump and his ridiculous views on defamation and the First Amendment — including his penchant for threatening defamation lawsuits against basically everyone who says something he dislikes. He rarely follows through, though he certainly does sue sometimes.

      In fact, someone has set up Trump-clock.com which lists out every known legal threat against the press or critics since his Presidential campaign began (ignoring the long list that predates the campaign). It also has a clock showing how long it’s been since Trump’s last threat.

      So it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that a group of media lawyers at the American Bar Association commissioned a report on Trump’s litigation history, and the report (correctly) concluded that Donald Trump is a “libel bully” making a bunch of bogus threats and with a history of filing bogus defamation lawsuits in court (something he’s outright bragged about). This shouldn’t be controversial. Trump is, clearly, a libel bully, and even he has more or less admitted that with his comments on why he sued author Tim O’Brien.

      But, apparently, the American Bar Association was too chickenshit and refused to publish the report, out of a fear that (wait for it…) Trump would sue them.

    • Is banning gambling ads censorship? You bet

      For those of a certain age, like me, you only need to mention the words ‘shake’ and ‘vac’ in the same breath before one of advertising’s greatest earworms plays on loop in your brain: ‘Do the Shake n’ Vac and put the freshness back, do the Shake n’ Vac and put the freshness back…’, all accompanied by the mental image of a woman in a long skirt dancing about with a vacuum cleaner. The advert played for years, and even people too young to remember it have doubtless picked up the tune through some form of cultural osmosis. And yet, I have never bought Shake n’ Vac. Why would I want to scatter powder imbued with some artificial fragrance on to my carpet and then hoover it up? It sounds like a terrible idea.

      [...]

      Only a small minority of people in the UK have a problem with gambling to the extent that it threatens their finances or becomes a mental-health problem. And the problem isn’t even growing. As Christopher Snowdon pointed out recently: ‘There are fewer people gambling and no change in the rate of problem gambling. The rise of online gambling, the introduction of fixed-odds betting terminals and a dramatic increase in gambling advertising has had no effect on rates of problem gambling.’

      So what could possibly justify yet more draconian measures against gambling? Companies should be free to advertise their products unless there is a seriously good reason not to – and no such problem has been demonstrated. Most of those who gamble do so at a level that amounts to harmless entertainment. Given the pitifully low levels of excitement in England football matches recently, anything that can add a bit of spice to proceedings is to be welcomed. But most of us recognise that, in the long run, gambling is a mug’s game: the house (almost) always wins.

    • Why shouldn’t Louis Smith take the piss out of Islam?

      Topknotted pommel-horse enthusiast Louis Smith has irked the Twitterati and the governing body of British gymnastics. No, not with his atrocious haircut; the Rio 2016 silver medallist filmed himself and fellow gymnast Luke Carson ‘mocking Islam’ at a friend’s wedding. The video was subsequently obtained by the Sun and now the internet has gone wild, calling for Louis to be stripped of his MBE.

      In the footage, a clearly inebriated Smith can be seen filming himself and his even more whammed mate yelling ‘Allahu Akbar’ while performing a mock Islamic prayer. He then makes some reference to 60 virgins – it’s actually 72 maids that jihadi maniacs are promised when they get to Jannah, but that’s beside the point. Moments later in the video, a female wedding guest admonishes the pair, telling them they’re taking the piss.

      Well, obviously they are! And when did taking the piss become a crime? In a free society people should be allowed to ridicule ideas; in fact, that is arguably the most important aspect of a free society. Dictators fear the sound of laughter because it means someone somewhere is going off script.

    • Kid needs permission slip to read ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ his dad’s response is brilliant

      But those objections miss the point of the novel—they could only be more ironic if parents were calling for copies of Bradbury’s book to be destroyed. And Radosh is practically an irony-spotter by profession, so this wasn’t lost on him. He signed the slip and attached his own note, praising Milo’s teacher for immersing the kids so thoroughly in the world of Fahrenheit 451.

    • Dad Has Perfect Burn for Book Club Permission Slip

      Rain on your wedding day? Not really ironic. Not being allowed to read a dystopian novel about book censorship without getting the green light from your parents? Maybe a little ironic. That’s the situation Milo Radosh found himself in when he had to get a permission slip signed so he’d be allowed to read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 for a school book club, the Daily Dot reports. And his dad, Daily Show writer Daniel Radosh, met this rubber-stamp request with a most appropriate online burn. “tfw your kid’s school makes you sign a permission slip so he can read Fahrenheit 451,” the elder Radosh lamented Monday on Twitter, including emoji depicting a stack of tomes and fire.

    • Dad’s reply to authoritarian permission slip request goes viral
    • A permission slip to read ‘Fahrenheit 451′? This dad can’t resist the irony

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • New Docs Detail How AT&T Planned To Profit Massively By Helping Law Enforcement Spy On The Public

      Back in 2013 the New York Times profiled just the latest in AT&T-related surveillance scandals, revealing the existence of “Project Hemisphere.” The original report detailed how Project Hemisphere is a joint program between AT&T and the DEA that provides a variety of federal and state law enforcement agencies with nearly real-time access to logs and location data on nearly every single call that touches the AT&T network. Unlike AT&T’s NSA-related scandals, in many ways this system is much larger than anything covered previously. It’s also much older, with the project having roots as far back as 1987.

      Making the revelations even more notable was the fact that the report indicated that AT&T had employees embedded with the DEA to help expedite access to this data. This difficulty in trying to determine where the government begins and AT&T ends isn’t new; AT&T has long helped the FBI tap dance around privacy and surveillance law, often having its own employees actively working as government intelligence analysts.

    • Edward Snowden is a saint, not a sinner [Ed: By Jimmy Wales]

      Wikipedia is founded on a bedrock principle of neutrality, seeking to describe all relevant sides without taking a political stance. As an individual, I, too, try to stay out of most political debates — except where they directly impact my personal passion for the free flow of information. This is one of those times.

      When I founded Wikipedia in 2001, the Internet was a place where ordinary people could freely create and share with one another. Wikipedia emerged from that egalitarian spirit, as a community committed to the free exchange of knowledge. Our mission was and continues to be to collect the sum total of all human knowledge and make it available to everybody in their own language.

      [...]

      Some of the world’s biggest tech companies have stood up against government attempts to enlist them in surveillance operations. Nowhere was that more clearly on display than earlier this year, when Apple refused FBI demands that it insert malware into an iPhone, which would have weakened its technology for everyone.
      But what may be even more important than legal reforms and technical changes is the public debate Snowden instigated. His disclosures brought about a change in consciousness, reinstating privacy as a central value, and newly incentivizing the protection of information activists and dissidents abroad. Young people in the United States are more judicious in what they publicly share online. Activist groups like Black Lives Matter are taking pains to protect their communications. And the United Nations has recognized that encryption is vital to the protection of global human rights.

    • Spies for Hire

      pIn July, Simone Margaritelli, an Italian security researcher, boarded a Boeing 777 in Rome headed for Dubai, a city now billing itself as a tech startup hub.

      He had a big job interview with a new, well-funded cybersecurity company called DarkMatter, whose self-described mission is to “safeguard the most complex organizations,” from government to the private sector, by preventing and fighting malicious cyberattacks and providing secure methods of communication — defensive cybersecurity, rather than offensive, which involves breaking into online systems and devices for espionage or destruction.

      A friend of a friend had recommended Margaritelli, who was invited to spend five days in the United Arab Emirates at the company’s expense to learn more about the job. When he arrived in Dubai, the City of Gold, he found a full schedule of outings and a deluxe suite at the Jannah Marina Bay Suites hotel.

      [...]

      Margaritelli declined to pursue the job offer. After his post, titled “How the United Arab Emirates Intelligence Tried to Hire Me to Spy on Its People,” began circulating, DarkMatter issued a single terse Twitter reply. The company said it preferred “talking reality & not fantasy.”

      “No one from DarkMatter or its subsidiaries have ever interviewed Mr. Margaritelli,” Kevin Healy, director of communications for DarkMatter, wrote in an email to The Intercept. The man Margaritelli says interviewed him, Healy continued, was only an advisory consultant to DarkMatter — and that relationship has since ended (though several sources say he was employed by the company and had a DarkMatter email address).

      “While we respect an author’s right to express a personal opinion, we do not view the content in question as credible, and therefore have no further comment,” Healy wrote.

      DarkMatter denied outright Margaritelli’s assertions that it was recruiting hackers to research offensive security techniques. “Neither DarkMatter – nor any subsidiary, subset, research wing, or advisory department—engage in the activities described,” Healy wrote. “We conduct rigorous testing on all our products to ensure they do not include any vulnerabilities.”

    • Yahoo scanning order unlikely to be made public: sources

      Obama administration officials briefed key congressional staffers last week about a secret court order to Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) that prompted it to search all users’ incoming emails for a still undisclosed digital signature, but they remain reluctant to discuss the unusual case with a broader audience.

      Executive branch officials spoke to staff for members of the Senate and House of Representatives committees overseeing intelligence operations and the judiciary, according to people briefed on the events, which followed Reuters’ disclosure of the massive search.[nL2N1C601L]

      But attempts by other members of Congress and civil society groups to learn more about the Yahoo order are unlikely to meet with success anytime soon, because its details remain a sensitive national security matter, U.S. officials told Reuters. Release of any declassified version of the order is unlikely in the foreseeable future, the officials said.

      The decision to keep details of the order secret comes amid mounting pressure on the U.S. government to be more transparent about its data-collection activities ahead of a congressional deadline next year to reauthorize some foreign intelligence authorities.

    • AT&T Is Spying on Americans for Profit, New Documents Reveal

      On Nov. 11, 2013, Victorville, California, sheriff’s deputies and a coroner responded to a motorcyclist’s report of human remains outside of town.

      They identified the partially bleached skull of a child, and later discovered the remains of the McStay family who had been missing for the past three years. Joseph, 40, his wife Summer, 43, Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3, had been bludgeoned to death and buried in shallow graves in the desert.

      Investigators long suspected Charles Merritt in the family’s disappearance, interviewing him days after they went missing. Merritt was McStay’s business partner and the last person known to see him alive. Merritt had also borrowed $30,000 from McStay to cover a gambling debt, a mutual business partner told police. None of it was enough to make an arrest.

      Even after the gravesite was discovered and McStay’s DNA was found inside Merritt’s vehicle, police were far from pinning the quadruple homicide on him.

      Until they turned to Project Hemisphere.

      Hemisphere is a secretive program run by AT&T that searches trillions of call records and analyzes cellular data to determine where a target is located, with whom he speaks, and potentially why.

      “Merritt was in a position to access the cellular telephone tower northeast of the McStay family gravesite on February 6th, 2010, two days after the family disappeared,” an affidavit for his girlfriend’s call records reports Hemisphere finding (PDF). Merritt was arrested almost a year to the date after the McStay family’s remains were discovered, and is awaiting trial for the murders.

    • Military Warns Chinese Computer Gear Poses Cyber Spy Threat

      The Pentagon’s Joint Staff recently warned against using equipment made by China’s Lenovo computer manufacturer amid concerns about cyber spying against Pentagon networks, according to defense officials.

      A recent internal report produced by the J-2 intelligence directorate stated that cyber security officials are concerned that Lenovo computers and handheld devices could introduce compromised hardware into the Defense Department supply chain, posing cyber espionage risks, said officials familiar with the report. The “supply chain” is how the Pentagon refers to its global network of suppliers that provide key components for weapons and other military systems.

    • Documents show AT&T secretly sells customer data to law enforcement

      It accesses the trove of telephone metadata available to AT&T, who control a large proportion of America’s landline and cellphone infrastructure. Unlike other providers, who delete their stored metadata after a certain time, AT&T keeps information like call time, duration, and even location data on file for years, with records dating back to 2008.

      But according to internal company documents revealed Monday by the Daily Beast, Hemisphere is being sold to local police departments and used to investigate everything from murder to Medicaid fraud, costing US taxpayers millions of dollars every year even while riding roughshod over privacy concerns.

      Access to Hemisphere costs local police between $100,000 and more than $1m a year, the documents reveal, and its use requires just an administrative subpoena – a much lower judicial bar than a search warrant because it does not need to be issued by a judge.

      Until Monday, Hemisphere’s use was kept secret from the public – and even from judges, defense attorneys and lawmakers – by an agreement between law enforcement and AT&T which means police must not risk disclosing its use in public or even in court.

    • Washington Post Reports Huge Surge in Secret Electronic Surveillance Requests

      The Washington Post’s data looked at two federal courts—one in Northern Virginia and one for the District of Columbia. According to the Post’s report, these two courts are some of the most active in the country and are the only ones to disclose any surveillance information.

      [...]

      The data release comes at a time of increased anxiety over secret government internet surveillance. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Yahoo Inc. had built a software to scan users’ incoming emails for information provided by U.S. intelligence officials. Facing backlash, the general counsel of Yahoo sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Oct. 19 requesting more transparency into the details of the FBI’s investigation.

    • Ex-Deputy Director of NSA discredits ‘story’ spun by Snowden [Ed: Some suits at the NSA don’t understand that movies are not meant to be accurate accounts of true stories]

      There is a scene in the Snowden movie where the Deputy Director of the NSA, played by Patrick Joseph Byrnes, sends Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Snowden on a mission to Hawaii. The man portrayed by Patrick Joseph Byrnes is Chris Inglis, the now ex-Deputy Director of the NSA who disputes ever meeting Edward Snowden and questions whether the Oliver Stone biopic is more fabrication than dramatisation.

    • UK’s Mass Surveillance Connection to New-Zealand

      Almost everybody knows about the massive surveillance program carried out by UK’s GCHQ. It’s an open secret now. It continued with zero accountability in the years before Edward Snowden’s leaks. Until today it was not known that who or which companies were helping UK’s GCHQ to upgrade and expand its spying campaign. Newly obtained documents by The Intercept and Television New Zealand shows that GCHQ purchased large amounts of “data acquisition” systems and “probes” from Endace which is a New-Zealand company that specializes in network data recording. UK’s GCHQ wanted to improve its monitoring of high-speed internet cables from 87 10Gbps lines in 2009 to 800 by 2013 and this New-Zealand company helped attain this goal.

    • Mass Government Surveillance Worldwide Made Possible By NZ Company Endace

      We already knew from the Snowden leaks in 2013 that governments around the world had been spying on their citizens through the use of various technologies. We now know that at least one spy agency, GCHQ in the UK, enlisted the help of New Zealand network monitoring vendor Endace. Here’s what we know.

      The company helped the GCHQ develop interception technology that allowed the agency to capture vast amounts of data at speeds of up to 100Gbps from trans-continental undersea cables that carried internet traffic. Endace had reportedly used New Zealand taxpayer money to help fund the development of this technology.

      Endace is known for its network monitoring offerings and it recently began getting into the Internet-of-things (IoT) business by partnering with Cisco. On the surface, it’s just a vendor dealing with technology to help businesses secure their networks by offering them visibility. Behind the scenes, Endace has been dabbling in the lucrative global spy trade for the past decade, according to leaked documents obtained by The Intercept.

    • New Zealand surveillance company helps enable worldwide mass surveillance

      New Zealand-based surveillance company Endace has created the Medusa system, a program that enables the collection of vast amounts of data possible at record speed. The company is an integral partner in assisting any government from around the world to harvest information about their citizens.

      With its motto ”Power to see all,” the company is alleged to have sold its surveillance technology to countries like India, Spain, Canada, Australia, Israel and the United States. The company enables partners to intercept and monitor 100 percent of the traffic on networks, and it’s alleged that one of their biggest customers in recent years is the British agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

      Endace is known for its network monitoring offerings and it recently began getting into the Internet-of-things (IoT) business by partnering with Cisco. On paper, it’s just a vendor dealing with technology to help businesses secure their networks by offering them visibility. Behind the scenes, Endace has been dabbling in the lucrative global spy trade for the past decade, according to leaked documents obtained by The Intercept .

    • Report: New Zealand company selling surveillance tech to global spies

      A company headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand has played an integral role in global mass surveillance, according to a new report.

      Based on documents and emails leaked to The Intercept, Endace has quietly been selling its technology to government agencies, allowing them to gather vast quantities of “private emails, online chats, social media conversations, and internet browsing histories.”

      Founded in 2001, the company claims to deliver “the world’s best network monitoring and recording systems,” producing technology that can help clients intercept and monitor online traffic. It boasts “100 percent accurate capture and storage of network traffic.”

    • Endace: This Unknown Company Powers Massive Surveillance Around The World

      The government security agencies try to intercept information about people on the internet. The agency takes the help of companies which provide network recording products to suck information from the internet. According to leaked documents, GCHQ took the help of Endace to create mass surveillance systems.

    • GCHQ hired New Zealand firm for mass hack capabilities – Snowden leak

      Documents obtained by the Intercept show UK spies got the NZ-based firm Endace to create data capture technology that scooped up information.

    • Tax-funded NZ company sold mass surveillance tech to torturers and GCHQ

      A whistleblower has provided The Intercept with leaked documents about Endace, an obscure New Zealand company based in Auckland, revealing that the company — which received millions in government funding — developed the mass surveillance equipment used by the UK spy agency to engage in illegal mass surveillance on fiber-optic lines that traverse the UK, and that Endace’s customer list also includes a who’s-who of telcoms companies, spy agencies, and the Moroccan secret police, who make a practice of spying on people, then kidnapping and torturing them.

    • UK Intelligence agency GCHQ paid New Zealand firm Endace to tap key internet lines

      According to the 2013 Snowden documents, UK intelligence agency GCHQ took the help of commercial partners to tap into undersea cables that carry Internet traffic, enabling them to secretly gather vast amounts of digital communications data under a surveillance program code-named Tempora.

    • UK spies paid a New Zealand firm to help tap key internet lines
    • UK Intelligence Agency GCHQ Harvested Data From Undersea Internet Cables
    • Leaked Documents Show New Zealand Company’s Connection To GCHQ’s Internet Dragnet

      Other info in the documents shows Endace and GCHQ were (are?) aiming for deployment of 300-500 of these systems, allowing the agency to pull in a large percentage of the traffic traveling through tapped underseas cables. There are also hints that suggest some data is more useful to the GCHQ than others, with WhatsApp, Facebook, Gmail, and Hotmail being specifically named. Also of importance to GCHQ: the ability to track targets by MAC address.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Beta Wayback Machine – Now with Site Search!

      For the last 15 years, users of the Wayback Machine have browsed past versions of websites by entering in URLs into the main search box and clicking on Browse History. With the generous support of The Laura and John Arnold Foundation, we’re adding an exciting new feature to this search box: keyword search!

    • The Top 15 Internet Freedom Influencers to Follow

      Want to know who’s leading the fight to protect your internet rights? Then don’t miss our round up of the Top 15 Internet Freedom Influencers!

      Our right to Internet freedom is constantly being challenged by governmental suppression of accessibility and organized infringement on our ability to openly express and share ideas. Luckily forward-thinking human rights and internet freedom activists are boldly fighting to maintain our freedoms online.

      Here’s our selection of the Top 15 Internet Freedom Influencers taking the lead. Follow these organizations and individuals to stay up-to-date on what they’re doing to secure your rights!

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload 2/BitCache Reaches Funding Target. Now What?

        While fighting the U.S. in a New Zealand courtroom, Kim has seen fit to launch a funding campaign for his newest project, MegaUpload 2 (MU2) and BitCache, on BnkToTheFuture.

        Over the weekend, Kim’s project was funded successfully. Kim spoke with CoinTelegraph about what comes next.

      • Megaupload 2.0 Will Outsource File-Hosting and Prevent Takedown Abuse

        The third incarnation of the popular Megaupload service just completed its first investment round, crowdfunding over a million dollars. With Kim Dotcom as the chief evangelist, the service hopes to revolutionize the file-sharing space next year. Interestingly, Megaupload 2.0 plans to outsource most of the storage to third-party providers and will manually review all takedown requests

      • Shake Up At The Copyright Office A Possible Preview To Fight Over Copyright Reform

        There are all sorts of rumors flying about this. Pallante has, apparently, been advocating strongly for moving the Copyright Office out of the Library of Congress, and either making it an independent agency or linking it up with the Patent & Trademark Office under the Commerce Department. That would be a big mistake, frankly, because copyright is not supposed to be about “commerce” and “industry” but about benefiting the public. That’s why it makes sense to leave it as part of the Library of Congress.

      • US acting register of copyrights announced as Pallante given new role

        Maria Pallante has been appointed senior adviser for digital strategy by the Librarian of Congress after serving as register of copyright since 2011, with Karyn Temple Claggett appointed acting register of copyrights

10.25.16

Links 25/10/2016: Rackspace’s Praise of FOSS, Chain Chooses the GPL(v3)

Posted in News Roundup at 7:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

    • Krita 3.1 Digital Painting App Now in Development, Promises Cool New Features

      The Krita development team announced this past weekend that a second Beta pre-release version of the upcoming Krita 3.1 point release is now available for public testing.

      The current stable release of the Krita 3.x branch is version 3.0.1, and the Krita 3.0.2 maintenance update was planned for this fall, but it looks like it gained so many cool new features and improvements that the development team decided to bump the version number to 3.1.

    • Using Twitter From the Command Line Is Actually Really Fun

      The command line remains so incredibly popular because it’s so incredibly versatile. You can do a lot in a terminal.

    • FFmpeg 3.1.5 “Laplace” Multimedia Framework Released for GNU/Linux Distributions

      The fifth maintenance update to the latest stable FFmpeg 3.1 “Laplace” open-source multimedia framework was announced the other day for GNU/Linux systems, bringing more bug fixes and improvements.

      FFmpeg 3.1.5 was released on October 22, and it’s now considered the latest stable and most FFmpeg release from the 3.1 release branch, dubbed “Laplace,” which was officially released at the end of June 2016 and currently used in almost all GNU/Linux distributions.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GTK+ 3.22.2 Deprecates APIs That Will Be Removed in GTK+ 4, Improves Win32 Theme

        Today, October 24, 2016, the GTK+ development team released the second stable maintenance update to the GTK+ 3.22 GUI (Graphical User Interface) toolkit for GNOME-based desktop environments.

        GTK+ 3.22.2 comes just two weeks after the release of GNOME 3.22.1 and in time for the upcoming GNOME 3.22.2 milestone, which will also be the last one pushed for the GNOME 3.22 series. GTK+ 3.22.2 is mostly a bugfix release, but also adds various improvements to the win32 theme and deprecates APIs (Application Programming Interface) that’ll be removed in the next major branch, GTK+ 4.

  • Distributions

    • Gentoo Family

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Upgrading to Yakkety

            I UPGRADED the operating system on my MacBook Air last week and I figured I ought to do the same on my Linux desktop.

            Moving from Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) to 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) on my desktop PC was nowhere as quick and easy as it was to upgrade from OS X 10.11 to macOS 10.12, but the process was nonetheless pretty straightforward and relatively trouble-free.

            While it took less than an hour to perform the upgrade on my Mac, it took several hours to download and install the latest version of Ubuntu.

            Much has already been written about how Unity 8, the new converged interface being developed for mobile and desktop devices, again failed to make it to the latest version of Ubuntu—although a rough preview of it is built into Yakkety (just log out and choose Unity 8 in the log-in screen).

            On the surface, Ubuntu 16.10 doesn’t look very different than previous releases, and its built-in Unity 7.5 interface features just minor improvements and a few bug fixes.

            To find out what’s new about Ubuntu 16.10, you have to look inside.

          • Ubuntu 17.04 “Zesty Zapus” Is Open for Development, GCC Linaro Used for ARM Port
          • Canonical Pushes First Live Kernel Patch to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Users, Update Now
          • Ubuntu 16.10 Review

            The list of major new features in Ubuntu 16.10 is impressive and interesting, but only if you are using the server product. Very little has changed on the desktop side of things other than the included packages being slightly newer. In fact, other than touting the number of applications available as Snaps, the only desktop-focused feature in the release announcement is a developer preview of Unity 8 desktop.

            To see what the desktop version of Ubuntu 16.10 has to offer compared to the previous 16.04 LTS release, I downloaded the 1.48GB ISO and gave it a try. Below, I take a look at what is new and different. I also take a look at the Unity 8 developer preview.

          • Why is Ubuntu’s Unity 8 development taking so long?

            Canonical has included a preview version of the Unity 8 desktop in Ubuntu 16.10. But that has not stopped some Linux users from wondering why Unity 8 still hasn’t been finished.

            The topic came up in a recent post on the Linux subreddit, and folks there shared their thoughts about why Unity 8 still hasn’t been released in final form.

          • Ubuntu Snappy Core 16 Up to Release Candidate State, Raspberry Pi 3 Image Is Out

            This past weekend, Ubuntu Snappy developer Michael Vogt announced the availability of the Release Candidate (RC) development milestone of the upcoming Ubuntu Snappy Core 16 operating system.

          • Tool That Lets You Install Ubuntu Touch on Your Mobile Device Now Supports Maru

            It’s been a little over a week since we told you all about Marius Quabeck’s awesome new tool that lets you easily install the Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system on your device, and it looks like the developer was quite busy adding new functionality.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Black Lab Enterprise Linux 8 Service Pack 1 Supports Rebootless Kernel Installs

              Softpedia was informed by the Black Lab Linux development team about the immediate availability of the first Service Pack (SP) of the Black Lab Enterprise Linux 8 OS.

              Based on the long-term supported Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, Black Lab Enterprise Linux 8 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is now powered by Linux kernel 4.4.0-45.66, the same version used upstream, which is patched against the nasty “Dirty COW” bug that could have allowed a local attacker to gain administrative privileges.

              Now that Canonical is offering kernel live patch services for its Ubuntu 16.04 LTS release, Black Lab Linux developers also implemented the well-known Kspice tool for offering users rebootless kernel installs. Additionally, Black Lab Enterprise Linux 8 SP1 adds full UEFI support and the ability to install Snap packages.

              “Service Pack 1 is jam packed full of innovations and features,” reads the announcement. “Black Lab Enterprise Linux is the fastest growing Enterprise desktop Linux offering on the market today. Black Lab Enterprise Linux 8.0 SP1 is a hybrid operating system meaning you can deploy local applications that you need as well as the cloud-based applications that you want.”

  • Devices/Embedded

    • ARM/FPGA module runs Linux on Arria 10 SoC

      iWave’s rugged, Linux-friendly, 95 x 75mm “Arria 10 SoC Module” expands upon the dual-core, ARM/FPGA SoC from Altera with DDR4 and 24 transceivers.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • No One Is Buying Smartwatches Anymore

          Remember how smartwatches were supposed to be the next big thing? About that…

          The market intelligence firm IDC reported on Monday that smartwatch shipments are down 51.6 percent year-over-year for the third quarter of 2016. This is bad news for all smartwatch vendors (except maybe Garmin), but it’s especially bad for Apple, which saw shipments drop 71.6 percent, according to the IDC report

          Apple is still the overall smartwatch market leader, with an estimated 41.3-percent of the market, but IDC estimates it shipped only 1.1 million Apple Watches in Q3 2016, compared with 3.9 million in 2015. To a degree, that’s to be expected, since the new Apple Watch Series 2 came out at the tail-end of the quarter. But the news is still a blow, when you consider how huge the Apple Watch hype was just 18 months ago.

        • 10 must-have Android apps for Halloween

Free Software/Open Source

  • 3 open source time management tools

    For many people, one of the reasons they cite for using a Linux-based operating system is productivity. If you’re a power user who has tweaked your system just to your liking, and particularly if you adept at the command line, chances are you’ve realized significant gains in productivity.

    But do you have to be an extreme power user to make use of open source software’s ability to boost your productivity? Absolutely not!

  • The Rackspace State of Open Source

    As the OpenStack Summit in Barcelona kicks off, Rackspace has released a report entitled ‘The State of Open Source’. With every conference seemingly extolling the virtues of open source software, this report is timely. It manages to differentiate between enterprise open source and the wider open source software market.

  • Why digital transformation needs open source

    As if there wasn’t already ample reason for businesses to switch to open source, Forrester analysts Paul Miller and Lauren E Nelson released a report in April 2016, entitled Open Source Powers Enterprise Digital Transformation — CIOs Need To Embrace Open Source Software To Drive Change, which further drives the point.

  • Despite Security Fears, Open Source Is Fuelling Innovation and Cost Savings in UK Businesses
  • Security concerns fail to hold back UK open source success

    However, despite its increasingly common use, many (54%) still perceive external security threats to be a big barrier to adoption, that’s according to a report published by Rackspace.

    The State of Open Source study, which was conducted among IT decision makers in UK businesses with over 1,000 employees and revenues over £500m, and looks at the ways open source is being used, its benefits, but also what is holding back adoption and business concerns.

    According to the report open source has come of age with 85% using open source technology to migrate a closed source project to open source.

    Open source also isn’t just a tool for small businesses; the vast majority (90%) of large businesses are now deploying open source-based enterprise applications, with 25% being completely open source.

    The reason for the growing adoption is because of the money and time savings. Rackspace found that for each project that had been migrated to open source technology, six out of ten organisations saved on average £30,146 and reduced project lifecycle by six months.

    Greater innovation was reported by many (49%), and 46% were driven to open source because of the competitive opportunities. Additionally, just under half (45%) said that it enabled them to get products and services to market faster.

    John Engates, Chief Technology Officer at Rackspace, said: “While open source technologies have been around for many years, it is great to see that enterprise businesses are finally dipping their toes in and seeing the tangible benefits.

  • Visa’s Blockchain Bet Opens Up to Developers

    Banks and financial firms have been tinkering for the past few years with the code that powers cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, with the intention of potentially overhauling their moldering infrastructure. Now they’re preparing to release their code into the wild.

    Chain, a two-year-old startup based in San Francisco, has decided to make its platform available to the public. The company is releasing an open source version of its Chain Core software to developers, any of who as of Monday can find the source code for its proprietary blockchain, or distributed ledger, on its webpage on Github, a code-sharing website.

  • As blockchain tech takes off, Visa preps a new pilot
  • Visa intros international B2B payment service built on blockchain technology
  • Chain opens up systems to ambitious blockchain developers
  • Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) Introduces International B2B Payment Solution Built on Chain’s Blockchain Technology
  • In Milestone Release, Chain Open-Sources its Blockchain Tech
  • Visa Introduces Blockchain-based Solution for Payment Services
  • Visa’s Massive Bet On B2B Blockchain Payments
  • Chain unchains open source blockchain platform
  • Blockchain hype takes hit as Chain releases code for anyone to use

    Software developers, engineers, traders and executives can now build and test any type of application they think will help improve efficiency in their business, said Adam Ludwin, Chain’s chief executive officer. Michael Nagle.

  • Chain Releases Open-Source Version of Distributed-Ledger Platform

    Chain, a fintech company focused on blockchain solutions, released Chain Core Developer Edition, an open-source version of Chain Core, its distributed-ledger platform.

  • R3 Corda Platform Is Open Sourced to the HyperLedger Effort
  • R3 blockchain code goes open source
  • R3 to Contribute Corda Code to Hyperledger Project

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • An introduction to Mozilla’s Secure Open Source Fund

        Thanks Mark. Mozilla is a unique institution—it’s both a nonprofit mission-driven organization and a technology industry corporation. We build open source software (most notably the Firefox Web browser) and we are champions for the open Internet in technical and political fora. We’ve been a global leader on well-known policy issues like privacy and net neutrality, and we’re also very active on most of today’s big topics including copyright reform, encryption, and software vulnerabilities.

  • Programming/Development

    • What’s wrong with Git? A conceptual design analysis

      We finished up last week talking about the how to find good concepts / abstractions in a software design and what good modularization looks like. Today’s paper jumps 40+ years to look at some of those issues in a modern context and a tool that many readers of this blog will be very familiar with: Git. With many thanks to Glyn Normington for the recommendation.

      [...]

      The results of the reworking are made available in a tool called gitless, which I’ve installed on my system to try out for a few days. (Note: if you use oh-my-zsh with the git plugin then this defines an alias for gl which you’ll need to unalias). As of this paper (2013), Gitless was only just beginning as a project, but it continues to this day and tomorrow we’ll look at the 2016 paper that brings the story up to date.

      The kinds of concepts the authors are interested in are those which are essential to the design, to an understanding of the workings of the system, and hence will be apparent in the external interface of the system, as well as in the implementation.

Leftovers

  • ‘Nobody calls it Czechia’: Czech Republic’s new name fails to catch on

    With its imposing statue of the Czech patron saint and wide avenues leading toward historic Prague, Wenceslas Square should be the ideal place for defining a country’s national identity – or at least its name.

    So when the authorities decided to tamper with Czech Republic’s official branding they may have done well to road test the idea here, where national aspirations have often been asserted, and occasionally crushed, in dramatic fashion.

    Yet, six months after the shorter and supposedly punchier name of Czechia was officially adopted by the country’s leaders, citizens of the central European country of 10 million people seem in little doubt over what it should be called.

  • IT departments are the first line of defence for businesses

    “With hackers on the loose we need to secure our online defences” (Editorial, 22 October). Whilst I applaud and wholeheartedly support your point on why we must all secure our devices and agree with you that the hubris from entities in handling these issues has a large part to play, I must correct you on the picture you paint about IT departments.

    They don’t all shrug and they don’t all just say “switch it off and on again”. They are currently a lone voice in many organisations on this topic, often discounted as being alarmist (usually because the fix requires investment and no one really likes to invest in compliance type activity).

    The perception that digital is cool but technologists are boring is one of the most dangerous cultural vulnerabilities we have in many organisations. The rift between the two needs mending and the need for speed to market needs to be balanced by ensuring we are selling goods that are delivered wisely and safely.

  • MYOB demands users upgrade Microsoft software

    In a notice that has been described as unconscionable, Australian accounting software provider MYOB has sent out a notice to its users, asking them to upgrade their Microsoft Windows 7 operating systems and SQL Server database software before the end of the year.

    The company provides tax, accounting and other services to small and medium-sized businesses.

    Windows 7 has extended support from Microsoft until 14 January 2020.

    In a notice sent to users, which is also on its website, MYOB said:

    “Microsoft is making changes to the technologies that are covered under mainstream support. This will impact our ability to provide support if you are using MYOB software on those technologies.

  • Science

    • Seventy Years Ago, Humans Saw Earth from Space for the First Time

      The view of Earth from outer space has utterly transformed perspectives on our civilization, our planet, and our relationship to the universe beyond our skies. This Monday marks the 70th anniversary of the day we first saw the planet from this extraordinary, quasi-alien vantagepoint; a pivotal event that occurred on October 24, 1946, at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

      Snapped from an altitude of 65 miles by a Devry 35-millimeter motion picture camera, the black-and-white image captures the Earth’s curvature and the sweep of cloud cover over the American Southwest.

      The camera was mounted on a V-2 rocket, a Nazi-developed series of long-range ballistic missiles that Hitler had deployed against Allied targets in London, Antwerp, and Liège during World War II, resulting in the deaths of thousands of civilians.

      In the final months of the war, American forces accepted the surrender of key German rocket scientists, including Wernher von Braun, who later became the architect of the Saturn V Apollo Program rockets. These spaceflight experts immigrated to the United States in secret under Operation Paperclip, and they brought dozens of their V-2 rockets with them to help kickstart the American space program.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Horrific flesh-eating bacteria that killed man in four days expected to rise

      “It’s like something out of a horror movie,” Marcia Funk told the Daily Times of Salisbury, Maryland last week. In September, Funk watched helplessly as her husband of 46 years succumbed to an infection of flesh-eating bacteria in a mere four days.

      Michael Funk, her husband, became infected on September 11 while cleaning crab traps in the Assawoman Bay outside their Ocean City, Maryland condominium. The deadly bacteria, Vibrio vulnificus, had slipped into a small cut on his leg as he waded into the bay’s still, warm, and brackish waters—ideal breeding grounds for the bacteria. Within hours, Funk fell ill and went to a nearby hospital where a surgeon removed infected, rotting skin from his leg. But with the flesh-eating bacteria circulating in his bloodstream, his condition quickly worsened. He was flown to a trauma hospital in Baltimore where surgeons amputated his leg. Still, the lesions spread and, on September 15, he died.

      Funk’s case is among the more severe examples of V. vulnificus infections—but it still could have been worse. In July, scientists reported that a 59-year-old man showed up at a hospital with a painful ankle lesion that expanded before their eyes (see photo above). His V. vulnificus infection, caught from warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, turned deadly even faster. Within hours, his whole body was covered in lesions. A little more than 48 hours later, he was dead.

    • New study looks at the health effects of Wi-Fi

      The answer to this question is, unfortunately, ‘we don’t know’…yet. This is because most studies on people need to be longitudinal. Studying the long-term effect of radiation can only be achieved after significant time has elapsed. It should be pointed out that the general scientific consensus is that Wi-Fi is safe. Although Wi-Fi has been anecdotally linked to electromagnetic hypersensitivity, no study has proven this.
      In addition, most governments have studies on-going looking at the thermal (and sometimes non-thermal) effects of electric magnetic fields.
      Trying a different data gathering approach to those set-up by most government backed laboratories, a research group have used bacteria to assess what might be happening in the context of the modern, urbanized environment. Wherever people go there is exposure to a similar range of unlicensed radio signals from baby alarms, radio-controlled cars, cordless (DECT) phones, Bluetooth headsets, security alarms and many other things. Wi-Fi (wireless local area network) at 2.45GHz falls in the microwave band along with baby monitors and mobile phones, although the radiation level is 100,000 times less than a microwave oven.
      With the new research, scientists from the Swansea University led National Research Network (NRN) in Advanced Engineering and Materials have looked at the effects occurring at the molecular level in relation to Wi-Fi.
      In a research brief, the person leading up the review, Dr. Catrin F Williams explains: “We are adopting a ‘bottom-up’ approach. In the first instance, we want to understand what interactions are occurring at the sub-cellular or molecular level.”

  • Security

    • The internet apocalypse map hides the major vulnerability that created it

      During Friday’s massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on DNS service provider Dyn, one might be forgiven for mistaking the maps of network outages for images of some post-apocalyptic nuclear fallout. Screenshots from sites like downdetector.com showed menacingly red, fuzzy heat maps of, well, effectively just population centers of the United States experiencing serious difficulty accessing Twitter, Github, Etsy, or any of Dyn’s other high-profile clients. Aside from offering little detail and making a DDoS literally into a glowing red menace, they also obscured the reality of just how centralized a lot of internet infrastructure really is. DNS is ground zero for the uneasy tension of the internet’s presumed decentralized resilience and the reality that as of now, translating IP addresses into domain names requires some kind of centralized, hierarchical platform, and that’s probably not going to radically change anytime soon.

      Other maps provided by various business to business network infrastructure companies weren’t much more helpful. These maps seem to exist mostly to signal that the companies in question have lots of cool data and that it can be made into a flashy map — which might impress potential customers, but that doesn’t offer a ton of insights for the layperson. For example, threat intelligence company Norse’s map appears to be mostly a homage to the Matthew Broderick movie War Games: a constant barrage of DDoS attacks beaming like space invader rockets across a world map. Akamai has an impressive 3D visualization that renders traffic as points beaming into the atmosphere. And website monitoring service Pingdom offers a dot map at such a far-out zoom level that it’s essentially useless for seeking out more meaningful patterns than “outages happen in population centers, also there are a lot of outages.”

    • CoreOS Patched Against the “Dirty COW” Linux Kernel Vulnerability, Update Now
    • World’s first hack-proof router launched

      Turris Omnia router, tagged the world’s first hack-proof router, was launched yesterday at the CES Unveiled Show in Prague, Czech Republic.

      As an essential part of any home internet network, routers are rather poorly secured and protected against cyber attack. More often than not, the only security feature is the default password. With easily required internet knowledge and some skills, these routers can be hacked, providing unauthorized access to a complete internet network. From there on, anything is possible.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • How Sweden is trying to smooth relations with Saudis

      Löfven met representatives of the royal family – King Salman bin Abdul Aziz, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayif and Vice Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman – on Sunday.

      “We have brought up issues such as women’s rights, the death penalty, even corporal punishment. We’re doing it in the way that we believe will have the greatest effect,” Löfven told Swedish media after the meeting.

      The absolute monarchy Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Stockholm in March 2015 after what it called “flagrant interference in internal affairs” by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström.

      The foreign minister had criticized the kingdom’s treatment of blogger Raef Badawi, who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and ten years in prison for insulting Islam. “One must protest against what are nearly medieval methods” of punishment, Wallström said.

    • Sweden and Saudi Arabia — a Treacherous Romance

      Today, on October 23, a Swedish delegation consisting of key government officials, led by PM Stefan Löfvén will meet their Saudi counterparts. The delegation also includes Marcus Wallenberg and Maria Rankka, chair and vice chair of «Saudi-Swedish joint Business Council». More importantly, Marcus Wallenberg is chairman of the board of SAAB, Sweden’s most important arms manufacturer and exporter. In essence, Sweden’s top political leadership and among the most important representatives of the arms export lobby of Sweden will meet the most heinous war criminals of our time to discuss issues of common interest, such as Sweden’s role as new member of the UN Security Council, as well as (arms) business opportunities.

      To understand the current situation, a recap of the main events in the Saudi/Swedish entanglement is necessary. It dates back to at least 2005 when Sweden and Saudi Arabia concluded an agreement of «extended» defence cooperation, including the secret building of an advanced missile factory in Saudi Arabia with the assistance of Swedish expertise. The agreement was so sensitive that it was kept as a state secret, and an obscure front company was set up to hide the affair, which was nevertheless leaked to the public in 2012. The ensuing scandal killed the weapon’s factory project and lead to the resignation of the Swedish minister of defence. However, the abundant arms export from Sweden to Saudi Arabia remained «business as usual», as well as the extended defence agreement. This concludes phase one of the scandal, in Sweden denoted as the «Saudi Affair».

    • At least 58 killed as Pakistan militants storm police training centre in Quetta

      At least 58 people were killed when militants attacked a police training college near Pakistan’s south-western city of Quetta late on Monday, officials said.

      More than 100 people were also injured as commandos conducted a five-hour operation to rescue cadets who being held hostage inside the complex.

      Major General Sher Afgan, Inspector General of the Frontier Corps (FC), said after the operation had ended that six terrorists carried out the attack, three of whom were wearing suicide vests.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Climate change could spark the world’s next financial crisis, former Bank of England executive warns

      ‘You don’t need to believe in climate change, you don’t need to believe that it is man-made. You just need to believe that governments are going to do stuff and that is going to affect your business. And then it is a material risk’

    • CO2 levels mark ‘new era’ in the world’s changing climate

      Levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have surged past an important threshold and may not dip below it for “many generations”.

      The 400 parts per million benchmark was broken globally for the first time in recorded history in 2015.

      But according to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), 2016 will likely be the first full year to exceed the mark.

      The high levels can be partly attributed to a strong El Niño event.

    • Testing the climate-drought-conflict connection

      Academics do not agree on the relationship between climate change and armed conflicts. Weather events driven by climate change, like droughts and extreme precipitation, might be societally destabilizing. But attempts to determine whether this connection is happening in the real world have produced ambiguous and sometimes contradictory results.

      A new study published in PNAS looks at up-to-date conflict data from 1989-2014 in Asia and Africa, examining the relationship between these events and droughts. The study finds that droughts affect the level of conflict, but only in poor societies that are dependent on agriculture.

      Drought can incite conflict because it can cause food scarcity, but is that actually happening today? To probe this relationship, the authors used geo-referenced data on armed conflict events between ethnic groups. The procedure used to link the ethnic groups to conflict behavior included consideration of how localized drought affected groups’ behavior regardless of the physical location of the fighting relative to the drought. In other words, if the group suffered a drought but ended up fighting in a region that received sufficient rain, that still counted. For this analysis, “ethnic group” was defined as discrete groups of humans with a shared culture and language living in the same geographic space.

  • Finance

    • Microsoft Hikes U.K. Prices of Enterprise Products Amid Brexit

      Microsoft Corp. will increase the price of its enterprise software and cloud offerings in the U.K. by as much as 22 percent to adjust to the falling pound in the aftermath of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

      From Jan. 1, prices of on-premises enterprise software will be hiked 13 percent, while those of cloud services will increase 22 percent, all to realign with euro-based contracts, the company said in a blog post. Consumer software or cloud products won’t be affected, Microsoft said.

      The slump of the pound since the Brexit vote has translated into a series of price hikes for consumers in the U.K. In the technology space, British consumers found out last month they’d pay as much as 16 percent more for the latest iPhone models compared to previous versions, a bigger inflation than for buyers in the U.S. or Germany.

    • Brexit: Microsoft jacks up prices, SAP sees UK growth, and Adobe doesn’t blink

      The precipitous drop in the value of the pound caused by Brexit has led to rocketing prices for Microsoft’s cloud and on-premise business services in the UK.

      From the start of next year, Microsoft’s enterprise software will be 13 percent more expensive, while enterprise cloud services will be hiked by 22 percent, the company has warned.

    • Corporate Sovereignty Helps To Bring EU-Canada Trade Deal To Brink Of Collapse

      The trade deal between the EU and Canada, known as CETA — the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement — is remarkable for the fact that it has still not been signed and ratified, even though its completion was “celebrated” over two years ago. That’s partly because of growing resistance to the inclusion of a corporate sovereignty chapter — also known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). In an attempt to head that off, the European Commission persuaded Canada to swap out vanilla ISDS for a new, “improved” version called the Investor Court System (ICS). As Techdirt noted before, this is really just putting lipstick on the pig, and doesn’t change the fact that companies are being given unique privileges to sue a country for alleged harm to their investments using special tribunals, as well as in national courts.

      CETA has faced other problems, notably from Bulgaria, Romania and Belgium. The first two said they wouldn’t sign because of Canada’s refusal to lift visa requirements for their citizens. That blackmail seems to have paid off. The Sofia Globe reports that Canada has agreed to remove the visa requirements from December 2017, and Bulgaria and Romania now say that they will sign CETA.

    • Belgium given EU ultimatum to secure Canada trade deal, but Wallonia defiant

      The European Union has given Belgium’s federal government until late on Monday to secure backing for an EU-Canada trade deal from the region of Wallonia or a planned summit to sign the pact will be cancelled.

      European Council president Donald Tusk, who chairs the collective body of the EU’s 28 national leaders, will speak to Belgian prime minister Charles Michel by late on Monday, an EU source told Reuters, so that Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau can decide whether to fly to Brussels for the signing on Thursday.

      If Michel cannot assure Tusk that Belgium will be able to let the EU sign the Ceta agreement, then Thursday’s EU-Canada summit will be postponed.

    • The truth about trade

      To keep a scorecard on TPP, TTIP, and other related trade policy measures, it’s important to keep track of four components of international economics. The first is trade in goods and services, when the US exports or imports merchandise (like coffee) or services (like shipping). The second is the movement of foreign capital, such as when General Motors opens a subsidiary to manufacture parts in Mexico. The third is offshoring of jobs, such as when Apple contracts with the Taiwanese company Foxconn to assemble iPhones in China. And the fourth are global regulatory policies such as the terms of patents and copyrights. Modern trade agreements are not just about trade; they include all four parts of the international economic system.

    • Trans-Pacific Partnership makes Australia vulnerable to court challenges, report claims

      Australia could face a growing number of expensive legal claims from foreign corporations if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) comes into force, a new report has warned.

      Dr Kyla Tienhaara, from the Australian National University, said Australia ought to learn from Canada’s experience after it signed the North America Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), which came into force in 1994 and led to dozens of legal cases against Canada by US corporations.

      She said the frequency of trade-based legal cases against Canada had increased significantly since 2006, in line with the global trend of such disputes, and warned a similar thing might happen to Australia under the TPP, because it has an investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) provision similar to Nafta’s.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • [Old] ‘FOBs’: How Hillary’s State Dept. Gave Special Attention to ‘Friends of Bill’ After Haiti Quake

      In a series of candid email exchanges with top Clinton Foundation officials during the hours after the massive 2010 Haiti earthquake, a senior aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly gave special attention to those identified by the abbreviations “FOB” (friends of Bill Clinton) or “WJC VIPs” (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs).

      “Need you to flag when people are friends of WJC,” wrote Caitlin Klevorick, then a senior State Department official who was juggling incoming offers of assistance being funneled to the State Department by the Clinton Foundation. “Most I can probably ID but not all.”

    • State IT official repeatedly takes Fifth Amendment in Clinton email lawsuit

      A retired State Department information technology official asserted his Fifth Amendment rights more than 90 times during a deposition Monday in a civil lawsuit related to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, according to the conservative group that brought the litigation.

      In August, a federal judge ordered John Bentel — former director of the Information Resources Management staff in Secretary of State Clinton’s office — to submit to a sworn deposition in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch.

    • Reddit Exposes Hillary Clinton Staff Trying To Frame Assange As ‘Pedo’

      A Reddit investigation has directly linked a pro-Democrat Super PAC and a tech company with employees with close ties to Hillary Clinton with a smear campaign plot to falsely accuse Julian Assange of pedophilia.

      The investigation was sparked after WikiLeaks released a series of tweets on Wednesday outlining an elaborate plot by a dating website currently attempting to frame and smear Assange.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Facebook Needs to Fix Its Censorship Double Standards

      Facebook has finally accepted that its algorithms that decide whether or not a post is “acceptable” may not be that good, and has announced that over the next few weeks it will start allowing more items that people find newsworthy and significant onto Facebook, even if they violate its community standards.

      The about turn comes as the social network has in recent months come under fire for deleting posts such as the iconic Vietnam War image of anapalm-burnt Kim Phúc and a Le Monde news feature that showed an image of a cancer victim’s mammogram.

      It’s understandable that dealing with the subjective nature of historically and culturally significant images or news stories is a complex task, but it’s so far been clear that the task should not be left to computer algorithms at their current stage of intelligence. Facebook also has to deal with differing cultural norms and laws in countries around the world—another problem that is not yet best left to algorithms. On top of this, as I explained in September, Facebook must not overstep its role of a news aggregator to become a gatekeeper.

    • PINAC Director Sues Miami Beach Mayor Over Refusal To Release Social Media Blocklists

      Executive director of Photography is Not a Crime (PINAC) Grant Stern is taking Miami Beach mayor Philip Levine to court over public records request denials. As Fusion’s Ethan Chiel reports, the mayor has been busy blocking critics on both Twitter and Facebook, and Stern aims to find out just how many constituents the mayor is tuning out.

    • YouTube vs. Conservative Speech
    • THE 1ST AMENDMENT
    • Petition of 65000 Demand YouTube Remove Video Restrictions on PragerU’s Videos
    • Google/YouTube Censorship Alive and Well in Prager U Case

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • China wants to give all of its citizens a score – and their rating could affect every area of their lives

      Imagine a world where an authoritarian government monitors everything you do, amasses huge amounts of data on almost every interaction you make, and awards you a single score that measures how “trustworthy” you are.

      In this world, anything from defaulting on a loan to criticising the ruling party, from running a red light to failing to care for your parents properly, could cause you to lose points. And in this world, your score becomes the ultimate truth of who you are – determining whether you can borrow money, get your children into the best schools or travel abroad; whether you get a room in a fancy hotel, a seat in a top restaurant – or even just get a date.

      This is not the dystopian superstate of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, in which all-knowing police stop crime before it happens. But it could be China by 2020. It is the scenario contained in China’s ambitious plans to develop a far-reaching social credit system, a plan that the Communist Party hopes will build a culture of “sincerity” and a “harmonious socialist society” where “keeping trust is glorious.”

    • From Personality To Property: Data Protection Needs Competition, Consumer Protection Law, Conference Says

      for the public sector, will go some way to protect users’ autonomy in deciding over his personal data. Provisions on data portability and transparency, coupled with considerable sanctions in case of violations, all would try to hand back some control to the users, Manon Ootvees. from the Institute for Information Law of the University of Amsterdam, said before 40 international young researchers from fields as diversified as IP, competition and antitrust law, economy and consumer protection.

      Still data protection could not do it alone. “It might not work in the context of big data, or at least be less strong than we expect,” Ootvees said. Will people exercise the rights, will they be lured by the benefits platforms offer and how difficult will it be to proove, for example, that their personally identifiable data, spilled in aggregated versions to third party providers all over and used to construct profiles again for personalised adds or personalized pricing? “I see a lot of scepticism here,” said Ootvees.

    • Alibaba’s Jack Ma Urges China to Use Data to Combat Crime

      Chinese billionaire Jack Ma proposed that the nation’s top security bureau use big data to prevent crime, endorsing the country’s nascent effort to build unparalleled online surveillance of its billion-plus people.

    • PayPal payments and notifications are coming to Facebook Messenger [Ed: Facebook Messenger is malware on people’s phones (spying every few seconds), will soon spy on payments too]

      PayPal has been pushing to expand its reach into the consumer realm, having struck partnerships with MasterCard, Visa, Vodafone, and Alibaba, among other companies in the past few months alone. With Facebook Messenger on board, this opens PayPal up to a potential one billion users.

      Facebook first unveiled plans to expand Messenger beyond a messaging app and into a platform last year, letting retailers connect with customers on one of the world’s most popular messaging services. Retailers including Everlane and Zulily were among the first partners announced, while big-name brands such as KLM have since signed up to embrace Messenger as a platform.

    • U.S. courts: Electronic surveillance up 500 percent in D.C.-area since 2011, almost all sealed cases

      Secret law enforcement requests to conduct electronic surveillance in domestic criminal cases have surged in federal courts for Northern Virginia and the District, but only one in a thousand of the applications ever becomes public, newly released data show.

      The bare-bones release by the courts leaves unanswered how long, in what ways and for what crimes federal investigators tracked individuals’ data and whether long-running investigations result in charges.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Douglas Murray: “First They Came for Asia Bibi”

      The same week that (Humza) Yousaf was extolling the idea that Britain is a proto-Nazi state and Pakistan a potential safe-haven, the Pakistani authorities saw the latest round of the interminable and unforgivable saga of Asia Bibi. This is the woman who has been on death-row in Pakistan for no crime other than the crime of being a Christian. Bibi has been awaiting execution for five years, purely because a neighbour claimed that Bibi had insulted Mohammed during an argument.

      …While the Conservative party in Westminster is portrayed by these supposed defenders of human rights as some kind of Nazi offshoot, life is, in fact, unequalled in Britain for being good for people of any faith or background. It would be hard to find a society anywhere that has been more tolerant of mass immigration or tried to make life good for the immigrants who arrive, whatever background they are from. Pakistan, on the other hand, is a country which could hardly have a worse record on all of these matters. It is a country where racism and ethnic and religious hatred are rife. People of the “wrong” background, caste, or ethnicity experience infinitely more racism in Pakistan than in any country in Europe. Even people who are the “wrong” type of Muslim, such as Ahmadiyya Muslims, are the subject of constant and routine persecution and bigotry. The persecution of Ahmadiyya Muslims is so rife in Pakistan that this July, it even spilled out onto the streets of Glasgow in the murder of an Ahmadiyyan shopkeeper, Asad Shah.

    • Pakistani policeman slaps female journalist and assaults cameraman in public (VIDEO)

      A shocking video has emerged of a policeman violently slapping a female journalist during a scuffle at a government office in Karachi.

      The officer from the Frontier Constabulary was seen arguing with Saima Kanwal from channel K-21 as she was doing a live program.

      The journalist was doing a report on the issues people face at Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) when she got into a rift with the guard after he grabbed hold of the camera man.

    • Leaked Audio: Austin Police Chief Threatens to Fire Commanders who don’t keep Officers from Abusing Citizens

      “If your heart isn’t in this job, either step down or step out,” Austin Police Chief Hubert “Art” Acevedo said to his top brass during a private meeting on August 10 where he expressed his anger over the way his cops treat minorities, urging his commanders to push new community-friendly styles of policing to their officers – or lose their jobs.

      The recording from the meeting, leaked this week by an unknown commander, reveals tension between Acevedo and a number of his 18 commanders and their subordinates as he apparently attempts to cross the thin blue line for the first time during his 9-year tenure as the Austin Police Chief.

      Acevedo can be heard in the recording calling some of his commanders out for not supporting his decision to take disciplinary action against one of his cops for shooting an unarmed black kid, which is something he hasn’t done much since landing the job as chief in 2007.

      It’s not clear which specific officers Acevedo is referring to, but he indicates details may be forthcoming.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • AT&T’s Time Warner Deal Is For Shareholders, Not You

      This weekend brought about the biggest media merger of the year: AT&T will buy Time Warner for $85.4 billion. So Batman, Tony Soprano and CNN may end up under the ownership of the largest pay-TV operator in the country.

      The news is notable for many reasons, starting with the hefty price tag. AT&T will pay a 35% premium above Time Warner’s value before reports of the merger surfaced last week. But the deal could also affect consumers who subscribe to DirecTV, surf online via AT&T’s U-verse or pay for content from Warner Brothers’ media empire.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Shadow Warrior 2 Developers: We’d Rather Spend Our Time Making A Great Game Than Worrying About Piracy

        With the time we spend discussing the scourge of DRM that has invaded the video game industry for some time, it can at times be easy to lose sight of those in the industry who understand just how pointless the whole enterprise is. There are indeed those who understand that DRM has only a minimal impact on piracy numbers, yet stands to have a profound impact on legitimate customers, making the whole thing not only pointless, but actively detrimental to the gaming business. Studios like CD Projekt Red, makers of the Witcher series, and Lab Zero Games, makers of the SkullGirls franchise, have come to the realization that focusing on DRM rather than focusing on making great games and connecting with their fans doesn’t make any sense.

        And now we can add Polish game studio Flying Wild Hog to the list of developers that get it. The makers of the recently released Shadow Warrior 2 game have indicated that it basically has zero time for DRM for its new game because it’s entirely too busy making great games and engaging with its fans. On the Steam forum, one gamer noticed that SW2 did not come with any embedded DRM, such as Denudo, and asked the studio why it wasn’t worried about piracy.

      • Police Confiscate Hundreds of Computers Over Movie Piracy Allegations

        Copyright trolling is usually handled in the civil courts but over in Poland, things are getting out of control. Police have reportedly visited hundreds of homes and seized hundreds of computers, each alleged to have shared a movie without permission. There are fears that up to 40,000 people could eventually be affected.

        During the summer, Poland became entangled in what is likely to be one of the world’s most important copyright battles. Alleged KickassTorrents founder Artem Vaulin was arrested in the country, where he continues to fight extradition to the United States.

10.24.16

Links 24/10/2016: Linux 4.9 RC2

Posted in News Roundup at 8:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Distributing encryption software may break the law

    Developers, distributors, and users of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) often face a host of legal issues which they need to keep in mind. Although areas of law such as copyright, trademark, and patents are frequently discussed, these are not the only legal concerns for FOSS. One area that often escapes notice is export controls. It may come as a surprise that sharing software that performs or uses cryptographic functions on a public website could be a violation of U.S. export control law.

    Export controls is a term for the various legal rules which together have the effect of placing restrictions, conditions, or even wholesale prohibitions on certain types of export as a means to promote national security interests and foreign policy objectives. Export control has a long history in the United States that goes back to the Revolutionary War with an embargo of trade with Great Britain by the First Continental Congress. The modern United States export control regime includes the Department of State’s regulations covering export of munitions, the Treasury Department’s enforcement of United States’ foreign embargoes and sanctions regimes, and the Department of Commerce’s regulations applying to exports of “dual-use” items, i.e. items which have civil applications as well as terrorism, military, or weapons of mass destruction-related applications.

  • GitHub open-sources tool to track and preview Puppet changes

    If tweaks to your Puppet setups are causing breakage across your deployments, GitHub’s Octocatalog-diff ensures that new Puppet settings don’t wreck old ones

  • Puppet Unveils New Docker Build and Phased Deployments

    Puppet released a number of announcements today including the availability of Puppet Docker Image Build and a new version of Puppet Enterprise, which features phased deployments and situational awareness.

    In April, Puppet began helping people deploy and manage things like Docker, Kubernetes, Mesosphere, and CoreOS. Now the shift is helping people manage the services that are running on top of those environments.

  • 9 reasons not to install Nagios in your company
  • Top 5 Reasons to Love Kubernetes

    At LinuxCon Europe in Berlin I gave a talk about Kubernetes titled “Why I love Kubernetes? Top 10 reasons.” The response was great, and several folks asked me to write a blog about it. So here it is, with the first five reasons in this article and the others to follow. As a quick introduction, Kubernetes is “an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling and management of containerized applications” often referred to as a container orchestrator.

  • Website-blocking attack used open-source software

    Mirai gained notoriety after the Krebs attack because of the bandwidth it was able to generate — a record at well over 600 gigabits a second, enough to send the English text of Wikipedia three times in two seconds. Two weeks later, the source code for Mirai was posted online for free.

  • Alibaba’s Blockchain Email Repository Gains Technology from Chinese Open Source Startup

    Onchain, an open-source blockchain based in Shanghai, will provide technology for Alibaba’s first blockchain supported email evidence repository.

    Onchain allows fast re-constructions for public, permissioned (consortium) or private blockchains and will eventually enable interoperability among these modes. Its consortium chain product, the Law Chain, will provide technology for Ali Cloud, Alibaba’s computing branch.

    Ali Cloud has integrated Onchain’s Antshares blockchain technology to provide an enterprise-grade email repository. Onchain provides the bottom-layer framework for Ali Cloud, including its open-source blockchain capabilities, to enable any company to customize its own enterprise-level blockchain.

  • Events

    • CloudNativeCon Unites Leaders in Open Source, Container and Cloud Native Tech

      Today’s cloud native ecosystem is growing at an incredibly rapid pace – as new technologies are continuously introduced and current applications are ever-evolving.

      Taking the lead in bringing together the industry’s top developers, end users, and vendors, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) hosts critical components of the cloud native software stacks including Kubernetes, Prometheus, and OpenTracing and serves as a neutral home for collaboration.

      To help spread cloud native practices and technology across the world, CNCF is hosting CloudNativeCon to bring together leading contributors in cloud native applications and computing, containers, microservices, central orchestration processing, and more November 8-9 in Seattle.

    • Spark on Kubernetes at Spark Summit EU

      I’ll be speaking about Spark on Kubernetes at Spark Summit EU this week. The main thesis of my talk is that the old way of running Spark in a dedicated cluster that is shared between applications makes sense when analytics is a separate workload. However, analytics is no longer a separate workload — instead, analytics is now an essential part of long-running data-driven applications. This realization motivated my team to switch from a shared Spark cluster to multiple logical clusters that are co-scheduled with the applications that depend on them.

    • Meet Opensource.com writers, moderators, and interviewees at All Things Open

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Netflix on Firefox for Linux

        If you’re a Firefox user and you’re a little fed up with going to Google Chrome every time in order to watch Netflix on your Linux machine, the good news is since Firefox 49 landed, HTML5 DRM (through the Google Widevine CDM (Content Decryption Manager) plugin) is now supported. Services that use DRM for HTML5 media should now just work, such as Amazon Prime Video. Unfortunately, the Netflix crew haven’t ‘flicked a switch’ yet behind the scenes for Firefox on Linux, meaning if you run Netflix in the Mozilla browser at the moment, you’ll likely just come across the old Silverlight error page. But there is a workaround.

        For some reason, Netflix still expects Silverlight when it detects the user is running Firefox, despite the fact that the latest Firefox builds for Linux now support the HTML5 DRM plugin.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • AtScale Delivers Findings on BI-Plus-Hadoop

      Business intelligence is the dominant use-case for IT organizations implementing Hadoop, according to a report from the folks at AtScale. The benchmark study also shows which tools in the Haddop ecosystem are best for particular types of BI queries.

      As we’ve reported before, tools that demystify and function as useful front-ends and connectors for the open source Hadoop project are much in demand. AtScale, billed as “the first company to allow business users to do business intelligence on Hadoop,” focused its study on the strengths and weaknesses of the industry’s most popular analytical engines for Hadoop – Impala, SparkSQL, Hive and Presto.

    • Study Says OpenStack at Scale Can Produce Surprising Savings

      Revenues from OpenStack-based businesses are poised to grow by 35 percent a year to more than $5 billion by 2020, according to analysts at 451 Research. In its latest Cloud Price Index, 451 Research analyzes the costs associated with using various cloud options to determine when it becomes better value to use a self-managed private cloud instead of public or managed cloud services.

      The idea is to createa complex pricing model that takes into consideration the major factors impacting total cost of ownership (TCO), including salaries and workload requirements.The 451 study found that because of the prevalence of suitably qualified administrators, commercial private cloud offerings such as VMware and Microsoft currently offer a lower TCO when labor efficiency is below 400 virtual machines managed per engineer. But where labor efficiency is greater than this, OpenStack becomes more financially attractive. In fact, past this tipping point, all private cloud options are cheaper than both public cloud and managed private cloud options.

    • How OpenStack mentoring breaks down cultural barriers

      Victoria Martinez de la Cruz is no stranger to OpenStack’s mentorship opportunities. It’s how she got her own start in OpenStack, and now a few years later is helping to coordinate many of these opportunities herself. She is speaking on a panel on mentoring and internships later this week at OpenStack Summit in Barcelona, Spain. In this interview, we catch up with Victoria to learn more about the details of what it’s like to be a part of an open source internship, as well as some helpful advice for people on both sides of the mentoring process.

  • Databases

    • IBM Power Systems solution for EnterpriseDB Postgres Advanced Server

      The primary focus of this article is on the use, configuration, and optimization of PostgreSQL and EnterpriseDB Postgres Advanced Server running on the IBM® Power Systems™ servers featuring the new IBM POWER8® processor technology.

      Note: The Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.2 operating system was used. The scope of this article is to provide information on how to build and set up of PostgreSQL database from open source and also install and configure EnterpriseDB Postgres Advanced Server on an IBM Power® server for better use. EnterpriseDB Postgres Advanced Server on IBM Power Systems running Linux® is based on the open source database, PostgreSQL, and is capable of handling a wide variety of high-transaction and heavy-reporting workloads.

  • Valgrind

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • What is the GRUB2 boot loader?

      There are various things that make up an operating system. In any operating system, one of the most critical parts is powering on the machine. During this process, the computer will execute a small program in read-only memory (ROM) to begin initiating the startup process. This small program is known by many names, but most often called a boot loader. In almost every Linux distribution, including Fedora, GRUB2 (or GRand Unified Bootloader 2) is the default boot loader. Even though it is a critical piece of the operating system, many people aren’t aware of the boot loader, all that goes into it, or how it can be customized.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Study: Administrations unaware of IT vendor lock-in

      Public policy makers in Sweden have limited insight on how IT project can lead to IT vendor lock-in, a study conducted for the Swedish Competition Authority shows. “An overwhelming majority of the IT projects conducted by schools and public sector organisations refer to specific software without considering lock-in and different possible negative consequences”, the authors conclude.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Access/Content

      • How open access content helps fuel growth in Indian-language Wikipedias

        Mobile Internet connectivity is growing rapidly in rural India, and because most Internet users are more comfortable in their native languages, websites producing content in Indian languages are going to drive this growth. In a country like India in which only a handful of journals are available in Indian languages, open access to research and educational resources is hugely important for populating content for the various Indian language Wikipedias.

  • Programming/Development

    • Where to find the world’s best programmers

      One source of data about programmers’ skills is HackerRank, a company that poses programming challenges to a community of more than a million coders and also offers recruitment services to businesses. Using information about how successful coders from different countries are at solving problems across a wide range of domains (such as “algorithms” or “data structures” or specific languages such as C++ or Java), HackerRank’s data suggests that, overall, the best developers come from China, followed closely by Russia. Alarmingly, and perhaps unexpectedly, the United States comes in at 28th place.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Iraq parliament bans alcohol in surprise vote

      Iraq’s parliament has voted to ban the sale, import and production of alcohol in a surprise move. Proponents of the ban argue the ban is justified by the constitution, which prohibits any law contradicting Islam.

      Opponents say it violates the same constitution which guarantees the traditions of religious minorities such as Christians and have vowed to appeal against the decision.

      Those violating the law will be fined between 10 million and 25 million dinars (roughly £7,000 to £17,500).

    • Court of Appeal on Pregabalin – Pfizer still in pain, but Swiss claims re-interpreted again [Ed: Poor Pfizer "still in pain" because it cannot globally defend a monopoly that harms the poor and ill using patents]

      While this moggy was struggling to get back from Indonesia, the Court of Appeal handed down its decision in the pregabalin appeal Warner-Lambert Company LLC v Generics (UK) Ltd (t/a Mylan) & Ors [2016] EWCA Civ 1006 (13 October 2016), and finally the IPKat has managed to blog about it (the lateness by no means reflecting on the importance of the judgment).

      It is very much a judgment of three halves.

      In the first part of the judgment (up to [135]), which substantively disposes of the case, Lord Justice Floyd (with whom Lord Justic Kitchin and Lord Justice Patten agreed) upheld the decision of Mr Justice Arnold on the validity of the patent. Arnold J had considered that the claims of the patent that were alleged to be infringed were insufficient, and in particular claim 3 directed towards use of pregabalin for neuropathic pain, because the patent did not render it plausible that pregabalin would be effective at treating central neuropathic pain, only peripheral neuropathic pain. Floyd LJ agreed with Arnold J’s construction of the claims, and rejected the challenge to the finding that claim 3 was not plausible across its breadth.

  • Security

    • How your DVR was hijacked to help epic cyberattack

      Technology experts warned for years that the millions of Internet-connected “smart” devices we use every day are weak, easily hijacked and could be turned against us.

      The massive siege on Dyn, a New Hampshire-based company that monitors and routes Internet traffic, shows those ominous predictions are now a reality.

      An unknown attacker intermittently knocked many popular websites offline for hours Friday, from Amazon to Twitter and Netflix to Etsy. How the breach occurred is a cautionary tale of the how the rush to make humdrum devices “smart” while sometimes leaving out crucial security can have major consequences.

    • Find Out If One of Your Devices Helped Break the Internet

      Security experts have been warning for years that the growing number of unsecured Internet of Things devices would bring a wave of unprecedented and catastrophic cyber attacks. Just last month, a hacker publicly released malware code used in a record-breaking attack that hijacked 1.5 million internet-connected security cameras, refrigerators, and other so-called “smart” devices that were using default usernames and passwords.

      On Friday, the shit finally hit the fan.

    • Once more, with passion: Fingerprints suck as passwords

      Fingerprints aren’t authentication.

      Fingerprints are identity. They are usernames.

      Fingerprints are something public, which is why it should really bother nobody with a sense of security that the FBI used them to unlock seized phones. You’re literally leaving your fingerprints on every object you touch. That makes for an abysmally awful authentication token.

    • Strengthen cyber-security with Linux

      Using open source software is a viable and proven method of combatting cyber-crime

      It’s encouraging to read that the government understands the seriousness of the loss of $81 million dollars via the hacking of Bangladesh Bank, and that a cyber-security agency is going to be formed to prevent further disasters. Currently, information security in each government department is up to the internal IT staff of that department.

    • Canonical announces live kernel patching for Ubuntu

      Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution, has announced that it will provide a live kernel patching services for version 16.04 which was released in April.

    • Everything you know about security is wrong

      If I asked everyone to tell me what security is, what do you do about it, and why you do it. I wouldn’t get two answers that were the same. I probably wouldn’t even get two that are similar. Why is this? After recording Episode 9 of the Open Source Security Podcast I co-host, I started thinking about measuring a lot. It came up in the podcast in the context of bug bounties, which get exactly what they measure. But do they measure the right things? I don’t know the answer, nor does it really matter. It’s just important to keep this in mind as in any system, you will get exactly what you measure.

      [...]

      If you have 2000 employees, 200 systems, 4 million lines of code, and 2 security people, that’s clearly a disaster waiting to happen. If you have 20, there may be hope. I have no idea what the proper ratios should be, if you’re willing to share ratios with me I’d love to start collecting data. As I said, I don’t have scientific proof behind this, it’s just something I suspect is true.

    • Home Automation: Coping with Insecurity in the IoT

      Reading Matthew Garret’s exposés of home automation IoT devices makes most engineers think “hell no!” or “over my dead body!”. However, there’s also the siren lure that the ability to program your home, or update its settings from anywhere in the world is phenomenally useful: for instance, the outside lights in my house used to depend on two timers (located about 50m from each other). They were old, loud (to the point the neighbours used to wonder what the buzzing was when they visited) and almost always wrongly set for turning the lights on at sunset. The final precipitating factor for me was the need to replace our thermostat, whose thermistor got so eccentric it started cooling in winter; so away went all the timers and their loud noises and in came a z-wave based home automation system, and the guilty pleasure of having an IoT based home automation system. Now the lights precisely and quietly turn on at sunset and off at 23:00 (adjusting themselves for daylight savings); the thermostat is accessible from my phone, meaning I can adjust it from wherever I happen to be (including Hong Kong airport when I realised I’d forgotten to set it to energy saving mode before we went on holiday). Finally, there’s waking up at 3am to realise your wife has fallen asleep over her book again and being able to turn off her reading light from your alarm clock without having to get out of bed … Automation bliss!

    • Security advisories for Monday
    • Reproducible Builds: week 78 in Stretch cycle
    • Murphy’s Law: The security version

      Since the first of the month, I’ve heard colleagues and others report each of the 10 security variants to Murphy’s Law listed below. Murphy is not only alive but has been reincarnated.

    • Easy-to-exploit rooting flaw puts Linux computers at risk [Ed: The latest CVE is very scary. It’s scary because it has a scary name, a logo, and even a dedicated Web site. Barely anything happened. Should we start assessing the severity of bugs by the investment that goes into their marketing, e.g. site, logo, and scary branding?]
    • Linux has had a huge bug for nine years
    • Linux Bug Could Cause Linux Users to be Hacked in Seconds
    • ‘Dirty Cow’ Linux Vulnerability
    • Linux & Open Source News Of The Week — “Dirty COW” In Linux, JS Foundation, Fedora on RPi And More
    • ‘Dirty COW’ flaw lets hackers gain control of Linux systems every single time
    • Linux Exploit in the Wild; Gives Any User Root Access in Less Than Five Seconds
    • An 11-year old bug is threatening the whole Linux ecosystem. Update now!
    • Linux exploit gives any user full access in five seconds [Ed: Another case of attractive headlines that mislead (need local access, locally exploitable only)]
    • Red Hat Virtualization and Security

      The usage of open source technologies has grown significantly in the public sector. In fact, according to a published memo, open source technologies allow the Department of Defense to “develop and update its software-based capabilities faster than ever, to anticipate new threats and respond to continuously changing requirements”. Cybersecurity threats are on the rise and organizations need to ensure that the software they use in their environments is safe. IT teams need the ability to quickly identify and mitigate breaches. They also need to deploy preventative measures and ensure that all stakeholders are protected.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Report: Middle East now Finland’s biggest arms export market

      The Middle East has become Finland’s most important market for arms exports. According to a new report by the think tank SaferGlobe Finland, local arms manufacturers sold some 99 million euros of mainly armoured vehicles and mortars in 2015, the bulk of it to countries outside the European Union.

    • ‘Civilization VI’ Found Religion, So I Responded With Genocide

      My glorious Roman Empire ignored religion for too long and it almost destroyed me. While I built roads, raised armies and sought trade deals with nearby city-states and rivals, my neighbor Spain kept to itself, built churches and spread the good word of Protestantism. Which was fine. As the Roman Emperor Trajan, I’d established a religion based on the worship of the mighty turtle and then forgotten about my people’s spiritual needs as I concentrated on getting tanks before my rivals.

      “Foolish Spain,” I thought. “This is a Civilization game. Glory and riches goes to the ruler who builds a spaceport or conquers their rivals. There’s no easy path to victory through the gods.” Then, almost too late, I checked the scorecard and realized Spain was about to declare victory … a religious victory.

      Civilization 6 is very different and much better than its predecessors.

    • Victory over Isis will stream live on Facebook. But defeat won’t

      Some 34 years ago, almost by accident, Britain’s ministry of defence solved the pesky problem that had laid the Pentagon low in Vietnam. What do you do about journalists running wild in your warzone? You put them on a long, slow boat to the other side of the world. You – ahem! – take control.

      And so, from Grenada to Panama to Iraq War One, journalists were locked in little boxes as far from the action as possible before (Iraq Two) being cautiously “embedded” with units they depended on to keep them safe. No freelance trips here. No unwanted questions asked. Control was still the theme of each and every fighting day.

      So what are we to make of Mosul, as Kurds and Iraqis advance on the city via 24/7 streaming on Facebook Live from Al-Jazeera, Channel 4 News and a Kurdish agency? Do we want an emoji on every blast of destruction? “Like”, “like”, “like” the carnage … Is this some sort of macabre computer game?

      You’d expect tabloid foes of Channel 4 News to have a predictable view on that – and they do. The Sun is apocalyptic as usual. But there’s a deeper, continuing theme here. As David Patrikarakos, a specialist on the use of social media in war, blogs for CNN, this battle is about more than just a military defeat of Isis: it’s also about “winning the hearts and minds of the local population” – “it becomes not just a military war, but also a narrative war, in which the latter is arguably more important”.

    • Malta plane crash: All five people on board killed as light aircraft goes down at airport in ‘take-off accident’

      A plane has crashed in Malta, killing all five people on board in the country’s worst peacetime air disaster.

      The light aircraft went down during take-off from Malta International Airport at around 7.20am local time (6.20am BST) on Monday morning.

      A witness told the Times of Malta newspaper the propeller plane suddenly tipped to its right side and “went straight down to the ground”.

    • Appeals Court Says Government Doesn’t Have To Disclose Contents Of Its Secret Terrorist Organization List

      An attempt to force the government to reveal its secret list of terrorist groups has been shot down by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals [PDF]. The Heartland Alliance Immigrant Justice Center’s FOIA request for “Tier III” terrorist groups can remain unfulfilled. [h/t Brad Heath]

      Without giving too much away (and neither the court nor the government does), “Tier III” is apparently more nebulous and fluid than tiers I and II.

    • Philippines’ Duterte ends US ties, embraces China

      During his recent visit to China, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte declared “it’s time to say goodbye” to the United States. The Philippine leader and Chinese President Xi Jinping are getting closer, while Washington now is ignored.

      Duterte spoke to the press in Beijing on Wednesday and his conference coincided with talks of unprecedented agreements, mainly granting the Philippines the use of Scarborough Shoal territories.

      Duterte declared in allusion to Washington, “Your stay in my country was for your own benefit. So time to say goodbye, my friend.”

      “No more American interference. No more American exercises. What for,” Duterte told the Filipino expat community in Beijing.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • WikiLeaks, political hacks and the US election

      Is Julian Assange playing a political role, meddling with US electoral affairs, or is WikiLeaks a neutral mouthpiece?

      [...]

      Some say the revelations are valuable information for voters. Others have accused Russia of being behind the hack and argue WikiLeaks is aiding foreign interference in the elections. Julian Assange’s haven, Ecuador, has recently pulled the plug on his internet usage, claiming that interference with other countries’ electoral processes is against their policies.

      Putting aside the agendas of all the players involved, one institution comes out undeniably sullied by the publication of the emails: the US news media. While some of the emails released presented typical behaviours, with the Clinton campaign reaching out to particular publications with stories, others are more problematic.

    • Greenpeace, others sought US intervention after action by India: Wikileaks

      Environmental groups such as Greenpeace and other international NGOs working in India had sought US government intervention after their funding came under increased scrutiny of the Modi government, according to emails released by the Wikileaks.

      The emails, hacked from the email account of John Podesta, who is the chairman of the Clinton Campaign, also indicates the global funding links of these NGOs, including those environmental groups opposing a massive mining project in Australia being undertaken by the Adani Group.

    • How To Help Defend WikiLeaks

      As I said at the start, this is just one example of media spreading lies about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. It happens every day, all round the world. WikiLeaks represents a serious threat to the status quo, exposing the corruption of politicians and corporations. They are constantly targeted by journalists who choose to act as stenographers and gate-keepers of power. While these so-called journalists survive in their jobs at the mercy of the boardroom, WikiLeaks is 100% funded by people like you and me. Please help keep them strong.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • A Hotter World Is Poorer and More Violent

      What will a planet plagued by escalating climate change look like? No one really knows. But speaking at EmTech MIT 2016, Solomon Hsiang, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, presented results based on his recent analysis of economic and climate data that begin to more clearly define what the world might look like as it gets hotter.

    • Feeling Paleolithic? We’re On The Way Back In Time.

      Further south, about 40% of USAians apparently support Trump and his denial of global warming so I expect it will take another generation suffering even larger effects before real action is taken.

  • Finance

    • Tens of Thousands Protest TTIP, CETA Across Europe

      An estimated 8,000 people hit the streets in Paris, chanting against police brutality, labor reform, deportations and airport construction in Nantes that will displace dozens of farmers. The converged on the site of Nuit Debout protests, an occupation that lasted months against pro-business labor reforms and drew direct parallels with Occupy Wall Street and the Indignados.

      Tens of thousands also rallied across Spain, Belgium, Germany and other countries that will be affected by the deals.

    • Canada’s two Trump towers facing troubles

      In Vancouver, the developer of a new Trump Tower has been under pressure for months to drop the Republican presidential candidate’s name from the project. Meanwhile, the Trump Tower in Toronto is the subject of a lawsuit after facing years of controversy.

      Donald Trump’s controversial run for US president is having an impact on his businesses in Canada and knock-on effects for those who have partnered with his brand.

      The opening date for the Vancouver hotel has been delayed until 2017, well after November’s US election. A contest offering a chance to meet with the Trump family for the grand opening caused a stir.

      Across the country, the Toronto building, which opened in 2012, has been the target of a lawsuit by small investors who claim they were misled into buying into the project. Its developer, Talon Development Inc, has tried to remove the Trump name from the troubled hotel and condominium complex.

      The story is similar in other countries.

    • Bulgarian expert: CETA to lead to loss of jobs, domination of big business, and countries like Bulgaria to be most affected

      “The EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is in fact a political agreement that will decrease the value of European democracy.”

      This is what economist Professor Boyan Durankev said speaking for Radio FOCUS.

      In his words, there are too serious concerns that the agreement will lead to loss of jobs, lower standards in the ecology, domination of the big business, while the countries like Bulgaria will be most affected.

    • Wallonia’s red card for CETA is a chance for the EU to be a beacon to the world

      We are at a crossroads for international trade policy. The failure of TTIP and CETA would pave the way for a fairer and more democratic world, argues Paul de Clerck.

      Paul de Clerck is the economic justice programme coordinator for Friends of the Earth Europe.

      The European Union, the world’s biggest trading bloc, is, for the second time in a matter of months, on the verge of seeing one of its mega trade deals fall into disarray.

      If the objections of several regions in Belgium are upheld, the signing of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada planned for next week will most likely be cancelled. This follows the near collapse of TTIP, the EU’s proposed agreement with the US. Rather than despairing at the state of the EU, we should see how these developments provide a unique opportunity for the EU to take the lead in shaping new trade regimes for the future that are beneficial for people and the environment.

      The opposition to CETA and TTIP has been unprecedented in the history of the EU. Concerns have been expressed by millions of people across the continent, including lawyers, academics, political parties, local authorities and virtually all sectors of civil society. Many governments have also expressed reservations on CETA. Only the Walloons, however, had the guts to show it the red card.

    • Trade Deals and the Paris Climate Agreement

      The Paris Climate Agreement is now a reality. More than 55 countries representing over 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions have ratified the pact, which means the historic agreement is set to enter into force faster than was ever anticipated. As we celebrate this landmark and get ready to grapple with the next steps of how to implement it—a key topic of discussion at COP 22, the upcoming international climate conference in Marrakesh, Morocco—the U.S. Congress may soon vote on the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with 11 other countries, and the administration continues to negotiate the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the European Union.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Clinton’s WikiLeaks strategy: Doubt, delay, distract

      The emails are full of potential damage for Hillary Clinton. She weighed the political implications of policies. She is close to Wall Street. Her aides gathered information to discredit a woman who’d accused her husband of rape.

      So how has she so far remained largely unscathed by the unprecedented release of hacked emails? It’s one part a deliberate strategy of casting doubt on the authenticity and distracting from the content of the emails, one part fatigue by Americans who already have seen tens of thousands of Clinton’s emails and one part a whole lot of luck.

      With Clinton leading in both national polls and battleground-state surveys, the Democrat is in some ways trying to run out the clock on the election.

      The WikiLeaks emails do threaten to reinforce voter doubts about Clinton’s honesty. But her strategy – refuse to confirm the authenticity of the emails, blame Russia for the hack and say little else – has so far successfully defused the impact by avoiding any talk that would keep voters looking at the content of the messages. Her undisciplined opponent has taken care of the rest.

      “When you start explaining, you’re in trouble,” said G. Terry Madonna, the director of the Franklin & Marshall College poll in Pennsylvania. “They are handling it the best way they can. It’s about as an effective argument you can make.”

    • Donna Brazile Complains She’s Being ‘Persecuted’ Over Leak To Clinton Campaign [VIDEO]

      Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile complained during an interview on Wednesday that she is being “persecuted” by being asked questions about leaking a town hall question to the Clinton campaign.

      And during the interview, conducted on Fox News after the presidential debate, Brazile said that her interviewer, Megyn Kelly, was “like a thief” because her questions cited emails that were stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and released by Wikileaks.

      Kelly grilled Brazile, who was a CNN and ABC News contributor prior to taking over the DNC in July, about an email revealed by Wikileaks showing her providing a tip about a March 13 town hall question to the Clinton campaign.

    • Green Party’s Baraka: Obama has been ‘moral disaster’

      Voters who want to fight against racial profiling, human rights violations, war and the two-party system should cast their ballots for the Green Party, vice presidential nominee Ajamu Baraka said Tuesday.

      Baraka, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s running mate and a self-described socialist from Atlanta, spoke to about 55 people at Wayne State University in a campaign stop. A Glengariff Group poll released last week to The Detroit News and WDIV showed the Green Party ticket receiving 4.6 percent of support from 600 likely Michigan voters, trailing Democrat Hillary Clinton, Republican Donald Trump and Libertarian Gary Johnson.

      A Stein-Baraka presidency, he said, would be focused on using executive powers to create an “emergency jobs bill” to address inner cities and rural areas, notify the “right-wing” government in Israel “that we’re no longer going to allow for them to have unfettered freedom to expand settlements and undermine the rights to Palestinians” and reverse the attempt at regime change in Syria.

    • Your Vote For Jill Stein Is Not A Wasted Vote

      When Jill Stein ran as the Green Party’s presidential nominee in 2012, media attention to her candidacy was rare. Now, with two of the most unpopular presidential candidates in history, she has received widespread attention. There seems to be record interest in third party campaigns, including Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson.

      The Nation published a debate between Socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant and Nation contributor Joshua Holland.

      The editors gave Sawant’s column the negative headline—”Don’t Waste Your Vote On the Corporate Agenda—Vote for Jill Stein and the Greens”—but column does not hinge on loathing Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Rather, it makes a positive case for supporting Stein by primarily arguing the need for progressives to build an alternative to the two pro-capitalist political parties in America. It has a long-term focus on bringing about radical change.

    • Clinton Ally Aided Campaign of FBI Official’s Wife

      The political organization of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, an influential Democrat with longstanding ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, gave nearly $500,000 to the election campaign of the wife of an official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who later helped oversee the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email use.

    • And the winner is … crony capitalism: Choosing between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is no choice at all

      It is as Bernie Sanders has foreseen it, you might say.

      With its publication of thousands of less-than-flattering emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta over the past two weeks, Wikileaks has done much to undermine Hillary Clinton in her ongoing effort to appeal to millennials who see Washington as a corrupt town where big business and big government are deeply intertwined.

      Excerpts from various six-figure speeches that Clinton made in 2013 and 2014 reveal a politician who is not only quite friendly with Wall Street in private, but somewhat resentful of the American public for constantly attacking and scapegoating big banks for the financial crisis.

      “The people who know the industry better than anybody are the people who work in the industry,” said Clinton in one speech. Reform, she continued, “really has to come from the industry itself.” In another speech, Clinton stated that you have to have “both a public and a private position,” which has cast further doubt on her trustworthiness among young voters.

    • WikiLeaks reveals Clinton considered a Texas Republican for the Supreme Court

      Hours after conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia passed away, the Clinton campaign floated a Texan as a possible replacement.

      Wallace Jefferson, a former chief justice on the Texas Supreme Court, was the subject of an email titled “Scalia replacement” written by the president of a George Soros-backed grant-making organization.

      “Remember our discussion of Wallace Jefferson, Chief Justice in Texas?” said Open Society Foundations president Chris Stone in the email.

      “Yup,” replied Clinton campaign chief John Podesta.

      The hacked email was one of thousands released by WikiLeaks in recent weeks and the authenticity of the email could not be independently confirmed. The Clinton campaign declined to confirm the authenticity of the email mentioning Jefferson.

    • TYT’s Jimmy Dore: Democrats Are Restarting The Cold War To Hide From WikiLeaks

      Jimmy Dore, host of ‘Aggressive Progressives’ on ‘The Young Turks’ network, says he is disappointed to see the Democratic Party using Russia as a scapegoat for the information revealed by WikiLeaks.

      “This is a complete distraction,” he said about the DNC’s pivot to blaming Russia for WikiLeaks. “I hate that it is the Democrats now. We now have two parties of war. And now the Democrats are saber-rattling and building up a boogie-man in Putin, instead of what they should be doing, saying we both have a common enemy: ISIS. Let’s join hands and work to defeat them. That’s not what they’re doing because it makes more political sense for the Democrats to ratchet it up, to ratchet up the Cold War, which is what they’re doing now.”

      “By the way, when the [Berlin] Wall went down, Reagan assured them that we would not expand NATO, and we’re expanding NATO,” he said. “So we are the ones right now, we are the expanders… This McCarthyism that they’re trying to smear Trump with. There’s so much, you don’t have to smear that guy. But Trump has said he wanted to work with Putin to fight ISIS, while Hillary Clinton has called for a no-fly zone in Syria, which means dead people on the ground, and boots on the ground. And who are we going to shoot down? ISIS doesn’t have any planes. That means a war with Russia. This is beating the drums for war, in fact.”

      “I’m bothered by this more than anything: A lot of people are saying that we’re closer to nuclear war now than we ever were during the Cold War,” Dore said.

    • The media — and many Democrats — need to stop attacking Jill Stein unfairly

      There is both a principled and strategic component to voting choices in presidential elections. In principle, citizens should cast their votes for whichever candidate’s views align most with their own. Strategic voting, on the other hand, includes a voter’s assessment of the probability that various voting choices will lead to desired outcomes.

      These components are related to some degree; voters are more likely to agree about which candidate to vote for if they agree in principle on which candidate is best. Yet principled and strategic voting are not the same. One might believe a third-party candidate to be optimal, for example, but still vote for a major party candidate because of the higher probability that the major party candidate will win the election.

      This decision can be a self-fulfilling prophecy —third-party candidates would be more electable if their supporters decided to vote for them — but it can also be rational, depending on how one evaluates the differences between major party candidates and the downside risk to voting for a bad nominee.

    • Wasserman Schultz Tells Sanders Protesters Dems Are ‘Completely United’

      Disgraced former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has mostly attempted to avoid the spotlight after her resignation in the wake of emails released by WikiLeaks.

      Throughout the primaries, Wasserman Schultz was viewed unfavorably by Bernie Sanders supporters for overtly favoring Hillary Clinton, despite the DNC charter stipulating her and fellow DNC staff remain neutral to ensure a fair and balanced primary election. When indefensible evidence exposed the pro-Clinton environment at the DNC that Wasserman Schultz created, she and several other top DNC leaders were forced to resign—but there were almost no repercussions or changes made as a result of these resignations.

      Instead, Clinton immediately hired Wasserman Schultz as honorary chair of the Clinton campaign’s 50-state program, while President Obama, VP Joe Biden, and other establishment Democrats made unprecedented appearances to help Wasserman Schultz survive her re-election bid to Congress. Another Clinton surrogate, Donna Brazile, was appointed interim DNC chair to take Wasserman Schultz’s place.

      [...]

      However, Sanders supporters refuse to forget Wasserman Schultz’s role in rigging the primaries, and made sure to demonstrate that they wouldn’t let her off the hook as easily as the Democratic Party had.

      Around 20 Sanders protesters showed up with signs outside the event in contrast to the 50 or 60 Clinton supporters attending the inside. A few minutes into Wasserman Schultz’s speech, the protesters interrupted her, at which point the regional organizing director for the Florida Democratic Party and former field organizer for Clinton campaign, Omar Rashid, ran up to one of the two protesters and began yelling “Hillary” while fist pumping in their face face. Other Clinton supporters joined in the “Hillary” chant. While there are several constructive ways to de-escalate an interruption by protesters, this certainly wasn’t one of them.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • NSA Says Federal Cyber Strategy Needs More NSA More Often, And On The Information Sharing Ground Floor

      The NSA doesn’t like the fact that it didn’t get a big enough slice of the tax-dollar-grabbing cyber pie. After much discussion about which agencies would oversee what aspects of the US government’s cyberwar defense systems, the NSA — despite all of its computing power and hoarded exploits — ended up with the unenviable task of protecting the home turf rather than engaging in more offensive maneuvers.

    • Taxpayer-funded grants to NZ tech firm used to build surveillance equipment for UK government

      Taxpayer-funded grants to a private New Zealand tech firm were used to build mass surveillance equipment for Britain’s largest intelligence agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

    • ‘Germany kowtowing to NSA & US to amplify spying capabilities across Europe’

      Annie Machon is a former intelligence officer for MI5, the UK Security Service, who resigned in the late 1990s to blow the whistle on the spies’ incompetence and crimes with her ex-partner, David Shayler.

    • German spy law infringing privacy rights: Expert

      The German parliament has approved a controversial legislation to tighten the oversight of the BND spy agency amid criticism that the law violates the privacy rights of people.

    • UK spy agency GCHQ paid NZ firm Endace to power Internet fiber-optic taps

      The 2013 Snowden documents revealed UK intelligence agency GCHQ to be tapping into the undersea cables that carry Internet traffic, covertly gathering vast amounts of digital comms data under a surveillance program code-named Tempora — apparently with the help of commercial partners.

      Now leaked documents obtained by The Intercept confirm GCHQ paid New Zealand-based Endace to create data capture systems to enable it to tap high speed Internet traffic.

    • The Little-Known Company That Enables Worldwide Mass Surveillance

      It was a powerful piece of technology created for an important customer. The Medusa system, named after the mythical Greek monster with snakes instead of hair, had one main purpose: to vacuum up vast quantities of internet data at an astonishing speed.

      The technology was designed by Endace, a little-known New Zealand company. And the important customer was the British electronic eavesdropping agency, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.

      Dozens of internal documents and emails from Endace, obtained by The Intercept and reported in cooperation with Television New Zealand, reveal the firm’s key role helping governments across the world harvest vast amounts of information on people’s private emails, online chats, social media conversations, and internet browsing histories.

      The leaked files, which were provided by a source through SecureDrop, show that Endace listed a Moroccan security agency implicated in torture as one of its customers. They also indicate that the company sold its surveillance gear to more than half a dozen other government agencies, including in the United States, Israel, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Spain, and India.

    • China’s plan to organize its society relies on ‘big data’ to rate everyone

      How China tamed the Internet |This is part of a series examining the impact of China’s Great Firewall, a mechanism of Internet censorship and surveillance that affects nearly 700 million users.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Pardon the American Taliban

      In the mid-1960s a young American teacher in a small central African country became involved with a group of political rebels — former government ministers mostly — who had been active in the struggle for independence. They had fallen out with the authoritarian prime minister, objecting to his dictatorial style. The country was newly independent, hardly a year old. The men advocated democratic elections and feared that the prime minister would declare himself leader for life in a one-party state.

      Fluent in the local language, obscure because he was a teacher in a bush school, and easily able to travel in and out of the country on his United States passport, the American performed various favors for the rebels, small rescues for their families, money transfers, and in one effort drove a car over 2,000 miles on back roads to Uganda to deliver the vehicle to one of the dissidents in exile. On that visit he was asked to bring a message back to the country. He did so, without understanding its implications. It was a cryptic order to activate a plot to assassinate the intransigent prime minister.

    • Shailene Woodley: The Truth About My Arrest

      I was arrested on Oct. 10, on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a holiday where America is meant to celebrate the indigenous people of North America.

      I was in North Dakota, standing in solidarity, side-by-side with a group of over 200 water protectors, people who are fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline.

      People who carry a rainbow of colors on their skin. People who gathered together because they realize that if we don’t begin taking genuine steps to protect our precious resources—our soil, our water, our essential elements—we will not have a healthy or thriving planet to pass on to future generations.

    • Actor Shailene Woodley on Her Arrest, Strip Search and Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance

      At least 27 people, including Hollywood actress Shailene Woodley, were arrested during the Standoff at Standing Rock on October 10, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, while attempting to blockade the Dakota Access pipeline construction at two separate worksites. Footage of Woodley’s arrest was streamed live to roughly 40,000 viewers on her Facebook page. She was later strip-searched in jail. She says her dedication to protest with indigenous people who are at the forefront of the fight remains strong: “Every time we allow another pipeline … we are endorsing the fossil fuel industry and only prolonging the time it is going to take to switch to renewable energy.” Woodley recently starred in the new Edward Snowden film, “Snowden.” She has appeared in the TV series “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” and has also starred in films including “The Divergent Series” and “The Fault in Our Stars.” She received a Golden Globe nomination for her role as Alex King in “The Descendants.”

    • RIP Gavin MacFadyen, 1940-2016

      Courage founding Trustee and Centre for Investigative Journalism founder and director Gavin MacFadyen has passed away at the age of 76, after a few months of illness.

      Gavin devoted his life to independent, investigative journalism, exposing truths, challenging power and championing truthtellers at every turn. Gavin championed the rights and principles of the persecuted, even when it was controversial to do so. He supported WikiLeaks when it was targeted by US prosecutors and he cofounded Courage, to assist those most in danger for shining a light on the powerful.

    • 105 British MPs call on Obama to stop Lauri Love’s extradition

      A cross-party coalition of 105 backbench Members of Parliament have signed a letter asking US President Barack Obama to withdraw the extradition requests for British activist Lauri Love before he leaves office.

      The letter, whose initial signatories were David Burrowes MP, Barry Sheerman MP and Alistair Carmichael MP, has been signed by more than a fifth of the Parliamentarians able to do so. By convention, government ministers and their opposition shadows do not sign letters of this type, although Culture Minister Matt Hancock MP – the Love family’s local constituency MP – has also added his name to the appeal.

      The 105 signatories demonstrate strong opposition to Lauri Love’s extradition across the political spectrum. The letter has been signed by 39 Conservative MPs, 39 MPs from Labour, 22 MPs from the Scottish National Party, three Liberal Democrat MPs, Mark Durkin MP from the SDLP and Green MP Caroline Lucas.

    • UN Meeting Looks At Legally Binding Instrument On Corporations And Human Rights

      A gathering at the United Nations in Geneva this week is hearing a litany of views on a prospective legally binding international instrument to regulate within human rights law the activities of transnational corporations and other businesses. The meeting is being webcast live.

    • Judge Orders FBI To Turn Over Information On How Many People Around The World It Snagged With Its Playpen NIT

      This might be big, depending on how much of this information is passed on to the general public, rather than delivered ex parte or under seal. Joseph Cox of Vice/Motherboard was the first to snag this ruling [PDF] by a Washington district court judge ordering the FBI to turn over tons of info about the NIT it deployed in the Playpen child porn investigation.

      As we’re already aware, the NIT was deployed by the FBI in Virginia but obtained identifying information about Tor-cloaked site visitors not just all over this country, but all over the world. The motion to compel discovery asked for several details about the NIT and its deployment and most of them have been granted.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • AT&T Doubles Down on the Ampersand [Ed: zero-rating. Shame on AT&T.]

      But even beyond this ad campaign, AT&T is talking up the value of getting this and that, and on the consumer side this has its most concrete instantiation in what AT&T has done with DirecTV since the merger. This isn’t just about traditional bundling and the discounts that come with it, but about additional benefits you get when you bundle. The two main examples are the availability of unlimited data to those who bundle AT&T and DirecTV, and the zero-rating of data for DirecTV content on AT&T wireless networks. Yes, AT&T argues, you can watch DirecTV content on any device on any network, but when you watch it on the AT&T network it’s free. The specific slogan here was “All your channels on all your devices, data free when you have AT&T”.

    • AT&T’s $85 Billion Time Warner Buy Could Be An Anti-Consumer Shit Show Of Monumental Proportions

      As fixed and wireless broadband growth crawls to a halt and cord cutting begins to hammer TV numbers, incumbent telecom giants have been trying to pivot into the media and advertising game with mixed results. Verizon so far has shelled out billions to acquire aging 90s internet brands Yahoo and AOL, believing this can somehow transform the stodgy duopolist into a sexy, sleeker Facebook and Google competitor. So far these efforts to woo Millennials have been arguably underwhelming and occassionally comical, highlighting how innovation and disruption is somewhat foreign to these companies’ DNA.

      AT&T has decided to follow a similar tack, over the weekend announcing a mammoth $85 billion deal to acquire Time Warner (not to be confused with Time Warner Cable) and its media properties (CNN, HBO). AT&T was quick to proclaim that the deal would be a “perfect match of two companies with complementary strengths,” who can bring a “fresh approach to how the media and communications industry works for customers, content creators, distributors and advertisers.” The deal comes not too long after AT&T decided to spend $79 billion to acquire DirecTV, adding notable debt for the already giant company.

    • VIDEOS: AT&T to acquire Time Warner for US$85 billion in major media/comms shakeup

      Remember when AT&T was broken up in the US? Whether you do, or don’t, AT&T is on the verge of becoming the most powerful telco and media organisation in the world.

      It’s the stuff of Telstra’s dreams: a telco servicing a population of more than 300 million, with enough clout and earnings to support a US$85 billion buyout of Time Warner – and that’s after spending US$49 billion to buy DirecTV.

      Talk about relegating dumb pipes to the dustbin of history, AT&T wants to own the content, create it, serve it, charge for it and everything in between and beyond.

      Telstra’s half share of Foxtel looks like a tiny molehill against AT&T’s Everest-size mountain in comparison.

    • Dumb & Dumber Claims About Last Week’s Internet Attack (SOPA?!? Really?)

      As you know, last week, large chunks of the internet spent hours writhing on the ground and totally inaccessible thanks to a giant DDoS attack that appears to have been launched via a botnet involving insecure DVR hardware (which can’t be patched — but that’s another post for later). Of course, whenever this kind of thing happens, you know that some people on the politics side of things are going to come up with dumb responses, but there were some real whoppers on Friday. I’m going to focus on just two, because I honestly can’t decide which one of these is dumber. I’ll discuss each of them, and then you guys can vote and let us know: which of these is dumber.

      First up, we’ve got Marsha Blackburn, who is not just a member of Congress, but (incredibly) on the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, which is often considered to the subcommittee that handles internet related issues. We’ve written about her quite a few times before, highlighting her efforts to block broadband competition and gut net neutrality. She’s also argued that fair use is just a buzzword and we need stronger copyright laws. Not surprisingly, she was one of the most vocal supporters of SOPA who only finally agreed to dump the bill days after the giant online protest.

      And apparently she’s still upset about all that.

      On Friday she went on CNN to discuss a variety of things, and the first question from Wolf Blitzer was about the DDoS attacks, and her answer is the sort of nonsense word salad that is becoming all too common in politics these days, but where she appears to suggest that if we’d passed SOPA this kind of attack wouldn’t have happened. She’s not just wrong, she’s incredibly clueless.

    • Chinese Company Recalls Cameras, DVRs Used In Last Week’s Massive DDoS Attack

      For some time now, security researchers have been warning that our lackadaisical approach to Internet of Things security would soon be coming home to roost. Initially it was kind of funny to read how “smart” fridges, tea kettles and Barbie dolls did an arguably worse job than their dumb counterparts with a greater risk to privacy and security. But as we collectively realized that these devices not only created millions of new home and business attack vectors, but could also be used to wage historically-unprecedented DDoS attacks, things quickly became less amusing.

      Last week, the theoretical became very real with the massive attack on DNS provider DYN, which knocked a swath of companies and services off the internet for a large portion of Friday. In a piece discussing the attack over at Flashpoint, the security firm (which worked with Akamai to help DYN) notes that the DDoS was indeed thanks to compromised IoT devices, and the Mirai botnet malware recently released to make compromising and harnessing such devices easier than ever. But the group also notes that targeted devices included everything from cameras to…

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • IP Rights, Corporate Interests Threaten Small Farmers’ Right To Seeds, Biodiversity

      A new report by civil society groups defending the right to food and nutrition lays bare threats to seeds and biodiversity created by intellectual property rights, and calls for states to respect their human right obligations to protect small farmers’ right to seeds and food security.

    • Freedom To Utilize Genetic Resources? The Nagoya Protocol Two Years Later

      Two years ago this month, the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity (“Protocol”) entered into international force. To date, 87 countries have ratified or acceded to the agreement, and that number is expected to reach 100 by the end of this year. With its entry into force, the Protocol is ushering in a new international system to govern research, development and intellectual property rights surrounding a potentially vast array of products derived from non-human genetic resources. Those products include, among others, pharmaceuticals, products of synthetic biology and biotechnology, seeds, biocides, horticultural and microbiome products, nutritionals, supplements, cosmetics, perfumes, fragrances and industrial enzymes.

    • Copyrights

      • US Copyright Office: Pallante Moved To Digital Strategy Advisor; Search On For New Register

        The United States Copyright Office Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante has changed roles to become senior advisor for digital strategy. In her place, Karyn Temple Claggett will move up to serve as acting register of copyrights while a search is conducted for the next permanent register.

        The announcement, available here, was made on 21 October by the US Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden.

        A news report suggested Pallante was asked to step down and was locked out of the Library of Congress computer system on 21 October. At press time, details on that assertion were unconfirmed, but the official press release gives little indication of a problem.

      • iKeepSafe Inadvertently Gives Students a Valuable Lesson in Creators’ Rights

        In partnership with pro-copyright group Creative Future, iKeepSafe has launched a competition asking students to submit projects that promote the creation and ethical sharing of content. Whether kids will take the time to read the small print is debatable, but doing so will provide a valuable lesson in getting a fair price for creative works.

        Children and students of all kinds are some of the most valuable assets to society. After all, they’re literally the future of the planet. As a result, hundreds of groups around the world dedicate themselves to protecting their interests, from general welfare and healthcare to Internet safety.

      • US acting register of copyrights announced as Pallante takes new role

        Maria Pallante has been appointed senior adviser for digital strategy by the Librarian of Congress after serving as register of copyright since 2011, with Karyn Temple Claggett appointed acting register of copyrights

      • The new French law targeting “automated image referencing services”: does EU law allow it?

        As explained by Brad Spitz in a post published on the Kluwer Copyright Blog, “the new provisions will apply to ‘automated image search services’, which Article L.136-1 IPC defines as any online public communication service that reproduces and makes available to the public for purposes of indexing and SEO, plastic, graphic or photographic works, collected in an automated way from online public communication services (i.e. internet websites). In other words, these provisions target search engine services like Google Images.”

10.23.16

Links 23/10/2016: Alcatel’s New Android Smartphones, Another Honorary Doctorate for Stallman

Posted in News Roundup at 11:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The basics of open source quality assurance

    Open source depends on a sustainable community to develop code rapidly, debug code effectively, and build out new features. Because community involvement is voluntary, people’s skills, levels of involvement, and time commitments can vary. Given the variable nature of these factors, along with the fact that open source often relies on a philosophy of “release early, release often,” quality assurance can be become challenging.

  • An Open Source, Self-Hosted Heroku

    Running our own Heroku… It shouldn’t be that hard, right?

    We have a small set of servers we use to run our internal applications. Nothing too complex, just monitoring, our ELK stack, Jenkins, and a few internal services.

    Given our rather modest requirements it may seem obvious that our first attempt at deployment automation, Chef, was a bit overkill for our needs. Not only that, we also wanted our engineers to be able to easily deploy applications to our servers without having to set up a Chef recipe — like the role Heroku plays in many of our client projects. We could have decided to run our internal applications on Heroku as well, but their pricing model wasn’t compatible with our relatively small-scale requirements.

  • The role of Free Software in a world that doesn’t care

    The Free Software movement is about personal and social liberties. Giving the owner and user of a computer control over it. But most people don’t see the problem with a small number of multinational mega-corporations having control over everyone’s computers. They think: “Apple and Microsoft know what they’re doing, and they do a good job, so why would I need Free Software?”

    Accepting that most people reject the Free Software message, what can the Free Software movement contribute to the world?

  • 5 Best Open Source Mobile Test Automation Tools

    There is a wide range of devices and platforms one needs to account for when developing a mobile app. An automation app for Mobile Testing can save development and testing time. Here are 5 top open source automated mobile testing frameworks to use, including the likes of Appium, Robotium, and Selendroid.

  • Could open-source coding ‘save the world’?

    Open Source Day is one of the most popular events at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. This year, a day-long open-source hackathon was devoted to participants developing open-source projects for humanitarian causes.

    Neetu Jain, product manager at SoftLayer, an IBM Company, and Daniela Dorneanu, solution developer and product trainer at Appway, joined Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-host of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the Grace Hopper event to discuss the mission of Open Source Day and the goal of the hackathon for humanity.

  • Yahoo open sources NSFW neural network porn detector

    Embattled former darling of the search wars Yahoo has open sourced its neural network porn detector software.

    The firm has explained that it is in fact tremendously difficult to automatically identifying that an image is not suitable/safe for work (NSFW).

  • Events

    • An introduction to color spaces

      The Kernel Recipes conference is, unsurprisingly, focused on kernel-related topics, but one of the potentially most useful talks given there was only marginally about the kernel. Applications that deal with the acquisition or display of video data must be aware of color spaces, but few developers really understand what color spaces are or how they work. Media subsystem maintainer Hans Verkuil sought to improve this situation with an overview of the color-space abstraction.

    • A tale of two conferences

      The “small” criterion can be a bit of a problem since it, naturally, limits the number of people who can participate in this kind of event. The Linux Plumbers Conference (now just a few weeks away) is always trying to find the right balance between size and quality of the event, and there, too, tickets tend to sell out quickly. The nice thing about an event like Kernel Recipes, though, is that it ought to be reproducible in other parts of the world. We have a ready supply of good speakers and interesting things to talk about in our community, and it doesn’t take that many speakers to make an event like this work.

      In the end, it was a privilege to be able to attend both events. Your editor’s only regret was being unable to stay in Berlin for the Embedded Linux Conference Europe the following week. Conferences are an opportunity to get a sense for what is happening in our community and to renew one’s enthusiasm and energy; both LinuxCon and Kernel Recipes succeeded on all of those fronts. A diverse community needs a diverse range of events; happily, that is just what was in store in Europe during these weeks.

    • All Things Open Next Week – MCing, Talks, and More

      I was really impressed with All Things Open last year and have subsequently become friends with the principle organizer, Todd Lewis. I loved how the team put together a show with the right balance of community and corporation, great content, exhibition and more.

  • Web Browsers

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Seafile and Collabora make LibreOffice Online available for Seafile Pro

      Collabora Productivity, the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the Cloud, and Seafile, a leading open source file sharing vendor, announce the availability of Collabora Online in the newly released Seafile pro edition 6.0.

    • Office Binary Document RC4 CryptoAPI Encryption

      In LibreOffice we’ve long supported Microsoft Office’s “Office Binary Document RC4 Encryption” for decrypting xls, doc and ppt. But somewhere along the line the Microsoft Office encryption scheme was replaced by a new one, “Office Binary Document RC4 CryptoAPI Encryption”, which we didn’t support. This is what the error dialog of…

  • CMS

    • Open Source CMS Pros and Cons – a Developer’s Perspective

      The phrase “Open Source CMS” lingers in the minds and hearts of many developers. CMSes are today’s talk of the Internet, and you won’t miss the discussion in local schools and private offices either. I don’t remember for how long I have used Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS) to manage local and international websites. However, I have implemented CMS-based solutions long enough, and I can tell you from experience these tools did become the big digital craze for many professional reasons.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Programming/Development

    • Eclipse Foundation Collaboration Yields Open Source Technology for Computational Science

      The gap between the computational science and open source software communities just got smaller – thanks to a collaboration among national laboratories, universities and industry.

    • PyCon India 2016

      “This is awesome!”, this was my first reaction when I boarded my first flight to Delhi. I was having trouble in finding a proper accommodation Kushal, Sayan and Chandan helped me a lot in that part, I finally got honour of bunking with Sayan , Subho and Rtnpro which I will never forget. So, I landed and directly went to JNU convention center. I met the whole Red Hat intern gang . It was fun to meet them all. I had proposed Pagure for Dev Sprint and I pulled in Vivek to do the same.

      The dev sprint started and there was no sign of Vivek or Saptak, Saptak is FOSSASIA contributor and Vivek contributes to Pagure with me. Finally it was my turn to talk about Pagure on stage , it was beautiful the experience and the energy. We got a lot of young and new contributors and we tried to guide them and make them send at least one PR. One of them was lucky enough to actually make a PR and it got readily merged.

    • Hack This: An Overdue Python Primer

      In writing the most recent Hack This (“Scrape the Web with Beautiful Soup”) I again found myself trapped between the competing causes of blog-brevity and making sure everything is totally clear for non-programmers. It’s a tough spot! Recapping every little Python (the default language of Hack This) concept is tiring for everyone, but what’s the point in the first place if no one can follow what’s going on?

      This post is then intended then as a sort of in-between edition of Hack This, covering a handful of Python features that are going to recur in pretty much every programming tutorial that we do under the Hack This name. A nice thing about Python is that it makes many things much clearer than is possible in almost any other language.

    • Why I won’t be attending Systems We Love

      Here’s one way to put it: to me, Bryan Cantrill is the opposite of another person I admire in operating systems (whom I will leave unnamed). This person makes me feel excited and welcome and safe to talk about and explore operating systems. I’ve never seen them shame or insult or put down anyone. They enthusiastically and openly talk about learning new systems concepts, even when other people think they should already know them. By doing this, they show others that it’s safe to admit that they don’t know something, which is the first step to learning new things. They are helping create the kind of culture I want in systems programming – the kind of culture promoted by Papers We Love, which Bryan cites as the inspiration for Systems We Love.

      By contrast, when I’m talking to Bryan I feel afraid, cautious, and fearful. Over the years I worked with Bryan, I watched him shame and insult hundreds of people, in public and in private, over email and in person, in papers and talks. Bryan is no Linus Torvalds – Bryan’s insults are usually subtle, insinuating, and beautifully phrased, whereas Linus’ insults tend towards the crude and direct. Even as you are blushing in shame from what Bryan just said about you, you are also admiring his vocabulary, cadence, and command of classical allusion. When I talked to Bryan about any topic, I felt like I was engaging in combat with a much stronger foe who only wanted to win, not help me learn. I always had the nagging fear that I probably wouldn’t even know how cleverly he had insulted me until hours later. I’m sure other people had more positive experiences with Bryan, but my experience matches that of many others. In summary, Bryan is supporting the status quo of the existing culture of systems programming, which is a culture of combat, humiliation, and domination.

      [...]

      He gaily recounts the time he gave a highly critical keynote speech at USENIX, bashfully links to a video praising him at a Papers We Love event, elegantly puts down most of the existing operating systems research community, and does it all while using the words “ancillary,” “verve,” and “quadrennial.” Once you know the underlying structure – a layer cake of vituperation and braggadocio, frosted with eloquence – you can see the same pattern in most of his writing and talks.

Leftovers

  • Hardware

    • Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM’s IT guy

      Fletcher Previn could be one of the funniest IBM vice presidents the company employs.

      Before achieving what he jokes as his “true life-long ambition of middle management at IBM” he worked as an intern on the “Late Show with David Letterman” and did a stint for Conan O’Brian, too, he told attendees at the Jamf tech conference.

    • You guys, I got my Ono-Sendai working again!

      I’ve had this terminal sitting under my desk gathering dust for… close to two decades, I think. This is an Ann Arbor Ambassador 60, manufactured in 1982 or 1983. It is a terminal. You probably think that word means “a GUI window that runs a command line shell in it”. You think this thing must be a computer because it looks like what computers used to look like. But it is not a computer, it is a peripheral. This object consists of a keyboard, a serial port, and a CRT screen, and that’s about it. A screen, I must emphasize, that is capable of displaying only text, and that text can be in any two colors you like, as long as those colors are green and black.

      Look at the sustain on that phosphor. Just look at it! The video is a little long, but it’s moody.

      You plug the serial port on the back into the serial port of your mainframe, or into a modem, and boom, Thus We Go Forth Into Cyberspace.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Your groceries may be cheaper, but farmers and supermarkets feel the pain

      If you’re just a little irked that gasoline prices have edged up recently, maybe this will cheer you up: Groceries are a bargain.

      Average supermarket prices fell 2.2% in September from a year ago, the most since late 2009, and they’ve been down on an annual basis for 10 straight months, the longest such streak since 1959-60, Labor Department figures this week showed.

      But while that breakfast of eggs, toast and bacon may not be putting as big of a dent in your wallet, falling prices at the checkout are spreading hardship across the nation’s farm belt and hammering the earnings of grocery chains.

    • ‘If I could afford to leave, I would.’ In Flint, a water crisis with no end in sight.

      Even now, the people of Flint, Mich., cannot trust what flows from their taps.

      More than one year after government officials finally acknowledged that an entire city’s water system was contaminated by lead, many residents still rely on bottled water for drinking, cooking and bathing.

      Parents still worry about their kids. Promised aid has yet to arrive. In ways large and small, the crisis continues to shape daily life.

    • EPA Bows to Industry in Delay of Glyphosate Cancer Review

      However, the EPA Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) meetings were “postponed,” just four days before they were suppose to meet, after intense lobbying by the agrichemical industry, including Monsanto. The industry first fought to keep the meetings from being held at all, and argued that if they were held, several leading international experts should be excluded from participating, including “any person who has publicly expressed an opinion regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate.”

      As the meetings drew near, CropLife America, which represents the interests of Monsanto and other agribusinesses, specifically took issue with at least two scientists chosen for the panel, alleging the experts might be unfavorably biased against industry interests. On Oct. 12, the group sent a letter to the EPA calling for Dr. Kenneth Portier of the American Cancer Society to be more deeply scrutinized for any “pre-formed conclusions” about glyphosate. More notably, CropLife called for leading epidemiologist Dr. Peter Infante to be completely disqualified from panel participation.

      “EPA should replace Dr. Infante with an epidemiologist without such patent bias,” CropLife told the EPA. The chemical industry group said Infante was unlikely to give industry-sponsored research studies the credibility the industry believes they deserve. CropLife said Infante has testified in the past for plaintiffs in chemical exposure cases against Monsanto.

    • ‘Drug Dependence Hasn’t Been Stopped by 45 Years of the War on Drugs’

      Janine Jackson: “Police Arrest More People for Marijuana Use than for All Violent Crimes Combined” is the headline in the Washington Post. In the New York Times, it’s “Marijuana Arrests Outnumber Those for Violent Crimes, Study Finds.”

  • Security

    • Friday’s security updates
    • World’s first hack-proof Wi-Fi router with open source firmware is here

      Turris Omnia WiFi Router, the world’s first hack-proof router with open source firmware launched yesterday at the CES Unveiled Show in Prague, Czech Republic.

    • Open-source hack-proof router aims to close cyber security gap

      Routers are the gateway of every home internet network. Yet, while many computers run antivirus software, little has been done thus far to protect routers against cyber threats. A new device, described as the world’s first hack-proof router, was launched on Thursday at the CES Unveiled Show in Prague.

      The main strength of the Turris Omnia router, a spin-out of a cyber security research project by Czech Republic’s domain administrator NIC.cz, is the fact that it automatically updates and patches vulnerabilities as they become known.

    • Adding a phone number to your Google account can make it LESS secure.

      Recently, account takeovers, email hacking, and targeted phishing attacks have been all over the news. Hacks of various politicians, allegedly carried out by Russian hackers, have yielded troves of data. Despite the supposed involvement of state-sponsored agents, some hacks were not reliant on complex zero-day attacks, but involved social engineering unsuspecting victims. These kinds of attacks are increasingly likely to be used against regular people. This recently happened to a friend of mine:

      Two weeks ago, an ex-colleague (actually, my officemate at Google way back in 2002) — let’s call him Bob — had his Google account compromised while on vacation in Hawaii. With his primary email account compromised, the attacker could have:

    • “Dirty COW”, the most dangerous Linux Bug for the last 9 years

      Red Hat, the leading open source software developer firm, has revealed that Linux Kernel has been infected with a serious bug for the past 9 years. The bug has been dubbed as Dirty Cow. It is deemed dangerous because through this bug, an attacker can get write access to read-only memory.

    • Serious Dirty COW bug leaves millions of Linux users vulnerable to attack
    • Cyber attack: hackers ‘weaponised’ everyday devices with malware to mount assault

      The huge attack on global internet access, which blocked some of the world’s most popular websites, is believed to have been unleashed by hackers using common devices like webcams and digital recorders.

      Among the sites targeted on Friday were Twitter, Paypal and Spotify. All were customers of Dyn, an infrastructure company in New Hampshire in the US that acts as a switchboard for internet traffic.

      Outages were intermittent and varied by geography, but reportedly began in the eastern US before spreading to other parts of the country and Europe.

      Users complained they could not reach dozens of internet destinations, including Mashable, CNN, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Yelp and some businesses hosted by Amazon.

    • Homeland Security Is ‘Investigating All Potential Causes’ of Internet Disruptions

      Cyber attacks targeting a little known internet infrastructure company, Dyn, disrupted access to dozens of websites on Friday, preventing some users from accessing PayPal, Twitter and Spotify.

      It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the outages that began in the Eastern United States, and then spread to other parts of the country and Western Europe.

      The outages were intermittent, making it difficult to identify all the victims. But technology news site Gizmodo named some five dozen sites that were affected by the attack. They included CNN, HBO Now, Mashable, the New York Times, People.com, the Wall Street Journal and Yelp.

    • Blame the Internet of Things for Destroying the Internet Today

      A massive botnet of hacked Internet of Things devices has been implicated in the cyberattack that caused a significant internet outage on Friday.

      The botnet, which is powered by the malware known as Mirai, is in part responsible for the attack that intermittently knocked some popular websites offline, according to Level 3 Communications, one of the world’s largest internet backbone providers, and security firm Flashpoint.

      “We are seeing attacks coming from a number of different locations. We’re seeing attacks coming from an Internet of Things botnet that we identified called Mirai, also involved in this attack,” Dale Drew, chief security officer at Level 3 Communications, said on a livestream on Friday afternoon.

    • How to Understand Today’s Internet Outage in 4 Words

      A massive DDoS attack against a major DNS service likely using a botnet of IoT devices resulted in Internet issues across the eastern United States Friday, making it hard for many users to access their favorite sites.

      Phew. That’s a lot of acronyms.

    • IoT Can Never Be Fixed

      This title is a bit click baity, but it’s true, not for the reason you think. Keep reading to see why.

      If you’ve ever been involved in keeping a software product updated, I mean from the development side of things, you know it’s not a simple task. It’s nearly impossible really. The biggest problem is that even after you’ve tested it to death and gone out of your way to ensure the update is as small as possible, things break. Something always breaks.

      If you’re using a typical computer, when something breaks, you sit down in front of it, type away on the keyboard, and you fix the problem. More often than not you just roll back the update and things go back to the way they used to be.

    • Hacked Cameras, DVRs Powered Today’s Massive Internet Outage

      A massive and sustained Internet attack that has caused outages and network congestion today for a large number of Web sites was launched with the help of hacked “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices, such as CCTV video cameras and digital video recorders, new data suggests.

      Earlier today cyber criminals began training their attack cannons on Dyn, an Internet infrastructure company that provides critical technology services to some of the Internet’s top destinations. The attack began creating problems for Internet users reaching an array of sites, including Twitter, Amazon, Tumblr, Reddit, Spotify and Netflix.

    • How an army of vulnerable gadgets took down the web today

      At some point this morning, one of the US’s critical internet infrastructure players was hit with a staggering distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that has taken out huge swaths of the web. Sites like Twitter, Netflix, Spotify, Reddit, and many others — all clients of a domain registration service provider called Dyn — have suffered crippling interruptions and, in some cases, blanket outages.

      Details are now emerging about the nature of the attack. It appears the cause is what’s known as a Mirai-based IoT botnet, according to security journalist Brian Krebs, who cited cyber-threat intelligence firm Flashpoint. Dyn’s chief strategy officer Kyle Owen, who spoke with reporters this afternoon, later confirmed Flashpoint’s claim, revealing that traffic to its servers was clogged with malicious requests from tens of millions of IP addresses in what the company is calling a “very sophisticated and complex attack.”

    • Fixing the IoT isn’t going to be easy

      A large part of the internet became inaccessible today after a botnet made up of IP cameras and digital video recorders was used to DoS a major DNS provider. This highlighted a bunch of things including how maybe having all your DNS handled by a single provider is not the best of plans, but in the long run there’s no real amount of diversification that can fix this – malicious actors have control of a sufficiently large number of hosts that they could easily take out multiple providers simultaneously.

      To fix this properly we need to get rid of the compromised systems. The question is how. Many of these devices are sold by resellers who have no resources to handle any kind of recall. The manufacturer may not have any kind of legal presence in many of the countries where their products are sold. There’s no way anybody can compel a recall, and even if they could it probably wouldn’t help. If I’ve paid a contractor to install a security camera in my office, and if I get a notification that my camera is being used to take down Twitter, what do I do? Pay someone to come and take the camera down again, wait for a fixed one and pay to get that put up? That’s probably not going to happen. As long as the device carries on working, many users are going to ignore any voluntary request.

    • Indiscreet Logs: Persistent Diffie-Hellman Backdoors in TLS

      Software implementations of discrete logarithm based cryptosystems over finite fields typically make the assumption that any domain parameters they are presented with are trustworthy, i.e., the parameters implement cyclic groups where the discrete logarithm problem is assumed to be hard. An informal and widespread justification for this seemingly exists that says validating parameters at run time is too computationally expensive relative to the perceived risk of a server sabotaging the privacy of its own connection. In this paper we explore this trust assumption and examine situations where it may not always be justified.

      We conducted an investigation of discrete logarithm domain parameters in use across the Internet and discovered evidence of a multitude of potentially backdoored moduli of unknown order in TLS and STARTTLS spanning numerous countries, organizations, and protocols. Although our disclosures resulted in a number of organizations taking down suspicious parameters, we argue the potential for TLS backdoors is systematic and will persist until either until better parameter hygiene is taken up by the community, or finite field based cryptography is eliminated altogether.

    • Rigging the Election [Ed: too much Microsoft [1, 2]]

      When Dorothy discovers fraud in the land of Oz, she is told by the Wizard, “Don’t look behind the curtain.” But she does. In America, we demand truth and accountability in so many aspects of our daily lives, and yet somehow there’s little public outcry for transparency within voting, the sacred cornerstone of our democracy. For the most part, we sleep soundly under the blanket of assurances from government officials. FBI Director James Comey even attempted a spin of irony recently, noting that our “clunky” voting process actually makes wholesale rigging more difficult. However, Comey misses the bigger picture.

      [...]

      Hardly anyone uses the same computer from 12 years ago, yet large sections of the country currently vote on aging electronic systems which utilize proprietary software that cannot be publicly examined. Unverifiable technology remains deployed in 29 states – including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida – and other key battleground states, which may determine our next president. Races in these areas are not evidence based, and consequently, we cannot be certain ballots reflect voter intent. Bereft of such knowledge, how can we put faith in the legitimacy of our government?

    • How to Hack a Presidential Election
    • ‘Nice Internet You’ve Got There… You Wouldn’t Want Something To Happen To It…’

      Last month, we wrote about Bruce Schneier’s warning that certain unknown parties were carefully testing ways to take down the internet. They were doing carefully configured DDoS attacks, testing core internet infrastructure, focusing on key DNS servers. And, of course, we’ve also been talking about the rise of truly massive DDoS attacks, thanks to poorly secured Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and ancient, unpatched bugs.

    • Update Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Linux Kernel Without Rebooting With The Canonical Livepatch Service
    • Livepatch – Apply Critical Security Patches to Ubuntu Linux Kernel Without Rebooting
    • GitLab reinstates list of servers that have malware

      Willem de Groot published a list of web stores that contain malware. He first hosted this list on GitHub but it was deleted. Then he hosted it on GitLab where it was also deleted. The reason we gave him for the deletion was “GitLab views the exposure of the vulnerable systems as egregious and will not abide it.”. Willem wrote about his experience in a blog post.

    • Dirty COW — Critical Linux Kernel Flaw Being Exploited in the Wild
    • CVE-2016-5195 Found in Every Linux Version (for the Last 9 Years)
    • Explaining Dirty COW local root exploit – CVE-2016-5195
    • CVE Request: OpenSSH: Memory exhaustion issue found in OpenSSH
    • OpenSSL after Heartbleed

      Rich Salz and Tim Hudson started off their LinuxCon Europe 2016 talk by stating that April 3, 2014 shall forever be known as the “re-key the Internet date.” That, of course, was the day that the Heartbleed vulnerability in the OpenSSL library was disclosed. A lot has happened with OpenSSL since that day, to the point that, Salz said, this should be the last talk he gives that ever mentions that particular vulnerability. In the last two years, the project has recovered from Heartbleed and is now more vital than ever before.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Philippines not really severing ties with US, Duterte says

      Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has clarified his comments that seemed to call for a split from the United States, saying he was advocating a “separation of foreign policy” rather than “a severance of ties.”
      Addressing a press conference in Davao City after his return from a state visit to China, Duterte said:

      “It is not severance of ties. You say severance of ties, you cut the diplomatic relations. I cannot do that.
      “Why? It is in the best interest of my country that we maintain that relationship. Why? Because there are many Filipinos in the United States. Well, Americans of Filipino ancestry.
      “Why? Because the people of my country [are] not ready to accept. I said separation — what I was really saying was separation of a foreign policy.”

    • Jilted Muslim man killed a Dalit Hindu girl by acid attack in Nadia, West Bengal.

      It’s a tragic death of 17 year old Hindu schoolgirl, Mou Rajak on Tuesday in NRS Hospital in Kolkata after her eight day’s long struggle for life since she was admitted here for a critical care being a victim of acid attack. Her lungs were almost damaged as the acid thrown by a Muslim man Imran entered into lung through trachea.

    • Asia Bibi appeal adjourned — her death row ordeal drags on

      Release International urges Pakistan to take a stand against intimidation and release Asia Bibi, following the Supreme Court appeal setback. Release calls for courage to confront intolerance and repeal the blasphemy law. Pakistan’s Supreme Court has adjourned Asia Bibi’s appeal against her death sentence, following the decision of a leading judge to withdraw from the trial.

      Justice Muhammad Iqbal Hameed Ur Rehman stepped back from the case on the grounds that he had been a judge in the case of the Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer who was murdered for taking a stand against the blasphemy laws.

      “It seems strange to pull out on the day of the appeal,” says Paul Robinson, Chief Executive of Release International. “Surely any potential conflict would have been known in advance? What is clear is that it will take immense courage to withstand intimidation and release Asia Bibi — a fact underlined by the presence of so many riot police at the court.”

    • French police chief orders investigation after officers hold Paris protest

      The head of France’s national police force on Tuesday ordered an internal investigation after hundreds of police officers held an unauthorized protest in central Paris overnight.

      Angry police officers marched on the iconic Champs Elysées boulevard in the French capital after dark on Monday, complaining that they are understaffed and ill-equipped.

      The rebel police officers, who held the demonstration without permission or backing of their labour unions, accused Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve of grandstanding while failing to provide the resources they need to do their jobs.

    • Investigators find no evidence Muslim child was attacked on school bus

      The Wake County school system and the Cary Police Department say they haven’t found evidence that a 7-year-old Muslim student was assaulted by classmates on a school bus last week.

      Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani says his son Abdul Aziz was bullied and beaten by classmates at Weatherstone Elementary School in Cary while riding home on the bus last Friday because the first-grade student is Muslim.

      Usmani’s Facebook post, with the words “Welcome to the United States of America of Donald Trump” and a picture of Abdul Aziz’s left arm in a sling, has sparked worldwide social media and news media attention about Islamophobia.

      School and law enforcement officials say they’ve taken the allegations seriously and don’t tolerate bullying. But they say their investigations don’t confirm an assault even occurred.

    • Revealed: The UK is training Saudi pilots amid accusations of war crimes in Yemen

      The Saudi Air Force is being trained by the British Government amid accusations that it is carrying out atrocities in neighbouring Yemen, it has emerged.

      The Liberal Democrats – who uncovered the instruction being given, in both Saudi Arabia and the UK itself – described the revelation as “shameful”.

      Tom Brake, the party’s foreign affairs spokesman, called on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to end the training immediately and for much stricter controls on arms exports to the oil-rich kingdom.

    • Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses a decade after going to war

      Short of troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago, the California National Guard enticed thousands of soldiers with bonuses of $15,000 or more to reenlist and go to war.

      Now the Pentagon is demanding the money back.

      Nearly 10,000 soldiers, many of whom served multiple combat tours, have been ordered to repay large enlistment bonuses — and slapped with interest charges, wage garnishments and tax liens if they refuse — after audits revealed widespread overpayments by the California Guard at the height of the wars last decade.

      Investigations have determined that lack of oversight allowed for widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet enlistment targets.

    • Hillary Clinton’s Strategic Ambition In A Nutshell. “Regime Change” in Russia… Putin is an Obstacle

      It has become crystal clear.

      For the record, here it is.

      She has big ambitions, which she does not spell out for fear of frightening part of the electorate, but which are perfectly understood by her closest aides and biggest donors.

      She wants to achieve regime change in Russia.

      She enjoys the support of most of the State Department and much of the Pentagon, and Congress is ready to go.

      The method: a repeat of the 1979 Brezinski ploy, which consisted of luring Moscow into Afghanistan, in order to get the Russians bogged down in their “Vietnam”. As the Russians are a much more peace-loving people, largely because of what they suffered in two World Wars, the Russian involvement in Afghanistan was very unpopular and can be seen as a cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

      This led to the temporary reign of the drunken Boris Yeltsin who – as recounted in Strobe Talbott’s memoirs – was putty in the hands of Bill Clinton. Hillary would like to renew that sort of relationship. Putin is an obstacle.

    • Hillary’s War Crime

      Muammar Gaddafi was the most progressive political leader in the world. Gaddafi used Libya’s oil wealth for the benefit of the Libyan people. He lived in a tent, a nice tent, but not in a palace, and he did not have collections of European exotic cars or any of the other paraphernalia associated with the ruling families in Saudi Arabia and the oil emirates that are Washington’s Middle Eastern allies.

      In Libya, education, medical treatment, and electricity were free. Gasoline was practically free, selling for 14 US cents per litre. Women who gave birth were supported with cash grants and couples received cash grants upon marriage. Libya’s state bank provided loans without interest and provided free startup capital to farmers.

      [...]

      Washington organized mercenaries, termed them “rebels” as in Syria, and sicced them on Libya. When it became clear that Gaddafi’s forces would prevail, Washington tricked naive and gullible Russian and Chinese governments and secured a UN no-fly zone over Libya to be enforced by NATO. The express purpose of the no-fly zone was to prevent Gaddafi from attacking civilian targets, which he was not doing. The real reason was to prevent a sovereign state from using its own air space so that the Libyan Air Force could not support the troops on the ground. Once the gullible Russians and Chinese failed to veto the Security Council’s action, the US and NATO themselves violated the resolution by using Western air power to attack Gaddafi’s forces, thus throwing the conflict to the CIA-organized mercenaries. Gaddafi was captured and brutally murdered. Ever since, Libya, formerly a prosperous and successful society, has been in chaos, which is where the Obama regime wanted it.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • WikiLeaks urges supporters to ‘stop taking down the US internet’

      The site WikiLeaks asked its “supporters” on Friday to stop taking down the internet in the U.S. following a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that disrupted a number of major sites.

      “Mr. Assange is still alive and WikiLeaks is still publishing,” the site tweeted. “We ask supporters to stop taking down the US internet. You proved your point.”

    • Why Did WikiLeaks Tweet a Picture of Gavin MacFadyen?

      MacFadyen has a long history as a journalist who’s friendly to WikiLeaks. He was the director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London, an adviser to The Whistler, and focused much of his work on discussing and protecting whistleblowing activities. He even created the Julian Assange Defence Committee to raise funds to help pay for Assange’s legal expenses.

      WikiLeaks had been releasing a series of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. Just this past week, Julian Assange’s Internet connection was cut, leading to speculation as to whether Assange is even still at the embassy. These rumors and conspiracy theories, combined with other rumors about WikiLeaks’ Twitter account itself, led to a lot of questioning about why WikiLeaks tweeted MacFadyen’s photo without an explanation.

    • George W. Bush’s White House ‘lost’ 22 million emails

      For 18 months, Republican strategists, political pundits, reporters and Americans who follow them have been pursuing Hillary Clinton’s personal email habits, and no evidence of a crime has been found. But now they at least have the skills and interest to focus on a much larger and deeper email conspiracy, one involving war, lies, a private server run by the Republican Party and contempt of Congress citations—all of it still unsolved and unpunished.

    • FOI Coalition assesses state of FOI in the first 100 days of Duterte administration

      Prof. Solomon Lumba of the UP College of Law, who is working with the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism in conducting research on FOI, reported a brief analysis on the issue of exceptions. According to Atty. Lumba, one way to simplify the plethora of exceptions included in the initial exception inventories from the Department of Justice and the Office of the Solicitor General is to group them into conceptual categories, as was done in jurisdictions such as the US and Australia.

      Lastly, Atty. Eirene Jhone E. Aguila, co-convenor of R2KRN, delivered the Coalition’s Statement on the state of FOI in President Duterte’s first 100 days in office. The Coalition acknowledges the issuance of EO No. 2 as significant step towards guaranteeing the people’s right to know, but stresses the huge amount of work left to be done, particularly: completing the People’s FOI Manuals and implementing details of EO No. 2 for each agency, clarifying the issue of exceptions, and passing a long sought-for Freedom of Information law by the Congress.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Remember When We Thought Climate Change Would Matter This Election?

      This was supposed to be the election where climate change really mattered. Only, anyone watching the presidential debates wouldn’t have a clue that 1) 2016 has been history’s hottest year on record, and 2) our future leaders give any sort of crap about it.

      Climate change was mostly ignored during the last three debates, mentioned only in passing, and never discussed directly or at length. In fact, I’m fairly sure that Americans know more about Donald Trump’s sexual proclivities than his environmental policies (hint, hint: he doesn’t have any).

      But should we really feign surprise? Surely even the most hopeful of us didn’t expect global warming to compete with jobs, the border, or national security on the campaign trail. After all, this has been an election based on political identity, and when Americans can’t even agree on whether climate change is real, what’s incentivizing our candidates to fight for it?

      Just one question, posed during a town-hall by Ken Bone, a coal industry worker, shed any sort of light on the climate agendas of our two vastly different candidates. (And even then, Bone was criticized for not asking anything of real substance, as if energy policy, which lies at the heart of our climate change catastrophe, matters less than whether a candidate is a fan or not of science.)

    • 6 Sinking Cities to Visit Before It’s Too Late

      With the growing threats due to climate change – rising sea levels, devastating storms and tidal flooding – it’s no mystery why some of the world’s most iconic cities and natural wonders are at risk. And while there’s no clear-cut answer on the rate at which many cherished places the world over will be underwater, with the impending long-term effects of climate change – including the melting polar ice cap – we have a very narrow window before there will be dramatic repercussions, says Costas Christ, Chairman of the National Geographic World Legacy Awards and sustainable travel expert. “We have a window of 10 or 20 years at most before we set in motion the temperatures that we can’t turn back,” he says.

      Happily, the outlook isn’t all bleak. Our travel choices and actions make a difference, Christ says. “What can we do as travelers? We can choose those companies that are practicing and embracing sustainability,” he explains. By rewarding companies that are substituting plastics, generating less waste, offsetting their carbon footprint, using renewable energy and supporting national parks and fragile ecosystems, among other sustainable practices, we can advance conservation efforts, travel responsibly and have a positive long-term impact. With that in mind, here are six cities starting to submerge, and expert-endorsed tips for limiting your carbon footprint and aiding conservation efforts on your next trip.

  • Finance

    • Shop steward: Yle lay-offs “just the start”

      The Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) announced on Thursday that it plans to cut more than a third of current staff in its production unit. That will free up resources to spend more on outside acquisitions, which is a key goal of a parliamentary report published earlier this year. Employee representatives say that these lay-offs are only the beginning of an extended period of change for the company.

    • Ceta talks: EU hopes to unblock Canada trade deal

      The European Parliament president says he is optimistic that a free-trade deal between the EU and Canada can be signed soon despite last-minute obstacles.

      Objections by a Belgian region, which opposes the deal, “are for us Europeans to solve”, Martin Schulz said.

      He was speaking after meetings in Brussels with Canadian Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland and the head of Belgium’s Wallonia region.

      Ms Freeland said: “It’s time for Europe to finish doing its job.”

      After seven years of negotiations on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta), talks broke down on Friday.

    • Left Alliance pushes to criminalize underpayment of wages

      The Left Alliance political party has proposed that employers found guilty of paying a wage below the lowest acceptable level agreed upon in Finland’s collective wage agreements should be subject to criminal charges.

    • Ari Berman on Rigging Elections, Dean Baker on the Debt Bogeyman

      Also on the show: Explosive entitlement spending! Runaway national debt! These are familiar bogeymen for elite media, but how much there is there? Dean Baker will join us to unpack the oft-heard media phrase “debt and entitlements,” and explain what it really means to call for cutting them. He’s co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and writes the blog Beat the Press.

    • CETA: A way out of European self-dwarfism

      Anti-CETA campaigns and mass protests have put the EU-Canada deal under constant pressure. Daniel Caspary MEP asks: What are we going to do if the European Union buries its common trade policy?

      Daniel Caspary is a German MEP and is the EPP group’s coordinator on the Committee on International Trade (INTA) in the European Parliament and Parliamentary Secretary (Chief-Whip) of the German CDU/CSU Delegation.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • WikiLeaks: Clinton-Kaine Even Lied About Timing of Veep Pick

      A conversation between Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and political consultant Erick Mullen leaked by WikiLeaks suggests that Tim Kaine — and Hillary Clinton — lied to the American people about the Virginia senator’s selection as Clinton’s running mate.

      In the email, Mullen complains to Podesta that attorney Bob Glennon “won’t stop assuring Sens Brown and Heitkamp (at dinner now) that HRC has personally told Tim Kaine he’s the veep.” The email was sent on July 15, 2015 — over one full year before the campaign’s official announcement.

      Clinton announced Kaine’s selection on July 22, 2016. The Clinton campaign behaved as if it were still sifting through possible VP picks until practically that very day. “Just got off the phone with Hillary. I’m honored to be her running mate. Can’t wait to hit the trail tomorrow in Miami!” Kaine tweeted.

    • No comment: Clinton has ‘nothing to say’ about Wikileaks email revealing $12M quid-pro-quo with Morocco’s king that an aide said was a ‘mess’ of her own making

      A stone-faced Hillary Clinton refused to comment tonight on an email a top aide sent calling a Clinton Foundation quid pro qou a ‘mess’ of the former secretary of state’s own making.

      ‘I have nothing to say about Wikileaks, other than I think we should all be concerned about what the Russians are trying to do to our election and using Wikileaks very blatantly to try to influence the outcome of the election,’ Clinton said.

      The Democratic nominee was responding to a question posed by DailyMail.com during a question and answer session with reporters riding on her campaign plane.

    • Megyn Kelly hits Donna Brazile on feeding Clinton debate question

      Interim Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile accused Megyn Kelly of “persecution” Wednesday evening when the Fox News anchor asked Brazile about an email, published by WikiLeaks, that indicated Brazile provided Hillary Clinton’s campaign with a question in advance of a CNN town hall.

      “As a Christian woman, I understand persecution, but I will not sit here and be persecuted because your information is totally false,” Brazile said during an interview conducted shortly after the third presidential debate.

      “Since I play straight up and I’ll play straight up with you, I did not receive any questions from CNN,” she said. “First of all, what information are you providing to me that will allow me to see what you’re talking about?”

      Kelly cited an email made public by WikiLeaks last week that indicated Brazile had informed high-level Clinton campaign aides that she sometimes received “questions in advance” before relaying a question about the death penalty that closely matched a question later asked during the CNN town hall. Roland Martin, a TV One host who partnered with CNN for the event, sent CNN a question containing the same language the day after Brazile sent it to the Clinton campaign.

    • Blanket Corporate Media Corruption

      It is disconcerting to be praised by a website whose next article warns of a “plague of sodomites”. Sometimes truth-telling is a difficult act because truth is a simple matter of fact; who might seek to exploit that truth is a different question. I almost certainly have little in common with the anti-gay people who chose to commend me.

      It is however incumbent on those who know truth to reveal it to the best of their ability, particularly if it contradicts an untruth being put about widely. The lie that WikiLeaks is acting as an agent of the Russian state is one that needs to be countered. Wikileaks is much more important than a mere state propaganda organisation, and needs to be protected.

      Political lying is a sad fact of modern life, but some lies are more dangerous than others. Hillary Clinton’s lies that the Podesta and Democratic National Congress email leaks are hacks by the Russian state, should be countered because they are untrue, and because their intention is to distract attention from her own corrupt abuse of power and money. But even more so because they recklessly feed in to a Russophobia which is starting to exceed Cold War levels in terms of open public abuse.

      Clinton has made no secret of her view that Obama has not been forceful enough in his dealings in Syria, and within her immediate circle she has frequently referred to the Cuban missile crisis as the precedent for how she believes Russia must be faced down. It is her intention to restore US international prestige by such a confrontation with Putin in Syria early in her Presidency, and perhaps more to the point to restore the prestige of the office of POTUS and thus enhance her chances of getting her way with a probable Republican controlled senate and congress.

      [...]

      It is worth noting that Hillary’s claim that 17 US Intelligence Agencies agree that Russia was the source of the leaks is plainly untrue. All they have said is that the leaks “are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed attacks.” Under extreme White House pressure to state that the Russians did it, that extremely weak statement was the only thing that the US Intelligence chiefs could cobble together. It is very plainly an admission there is no evidence that Russia did it, but the appalling corporate media have reported it as though it “proves” Hillary’s accusation of Russia is true.

      Bill Binney is like myself a former recipient of the Sam Adams Award – the World’s foremost whistleblowing award. Bill was the senior NSA Director who actually oversaw the design of their current mass surveillance software, and Bill has been telling anybody who will listen exactly what I have been telling – that this material was not hacked from Russia. Bill believes – and nobody has better contacts or understanding of capability than Bill – that the material was leaked from within the US intelligence services.

    • Media’s Debate Agenda: Push Russia, ISIS, Taxes; Downplay Climate, Poverty, Campaign Finance

      Russia, ISIS and taxes overwhelmed all other topics during the four presidential and vice-presidential debates, totaling 429 mentions from both candidates and questioners.

      Russia (and Putin) alone came up in the four debates 178 times, more than national debt/entitlements, Social Security, the Supreme Court, race/racism, education, abortion, drugs, poverty, LGBTQ people, climate change, campaign finance/Citizens United and the environment combined, with the latter topics totaling 164 mentions.

      Clinton’s emails were mentioned less than half as often as Trump’s tax returns (30 vs. 80 mentions), but still more than topics such as Social Security, the Supreme Court and education.

      Domestic issues that were mentioned somewhat frequently were immigration, police brutality/race, and Obamacare. Immigration is obviously a hot button issue given Trump’s calls to forcefully cleanse 11 million largely Latino immigrants from the United States.

    • Most Americans want Hillary indicted for email scandal – poll

      Over half of American voters surveyed in a recent poll disagree with the FBI’s decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton over her emails scandal.

      A survey of 1,000 likely voters was conducted on October 18 and 19 by the polling company Rasmussen Reports. Voters were asked whether they agreed with the FBI’s decision not to file criminal charges against Hillary Clinton, despite acknowledging that she had been reckless and potentially exposed classified information to hostile countries. The results were released on Friday.

    • Rigged Elections Are An American Tradition

      It is an obvious fact that the oligarchic One Percent have anointed Hillary, despite her myriad problems to be President of the US. There are reports that her staff are already moving into their White House offices. This much confidence before the vote does suggest that the skids have been greased.

      The current cause celebre against Trump is his conditional statement that he might not accept the election results if they appear to have been rigged. The presstitutes immediately jumped on him for “discrediting American democracy” and for “breaking American tradition of accepting the people’s will.”

      What nonsense! Stolen elections are the American tradition. Elections are stolen at every level—state, local, and federal. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley’s theft of the Chicago and, thereby, Illinois vote for John F. Kennedy is legendary. The Republican US Supreme Court’s theft of the 2000 presidential election from Al Gore by preventing the Florida vote recount is another legendary example. The discrepancies between exit polls and the vote count of the secretly programmed electronic voting machines that have no paper trails are also legendary.

      So what’s the big deal about Trump’s suspicion of election rigging?

    • October 2016: The Month Political Journalism Died

      On Wednesday evening during the final presidential debate of the campaign, Hell did not freeze over. Moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News, where climate denial plays nothing but home games, passed on the final opportunity to ask Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton about climate change.

      This presidential campaign has been a catastrophe for American democracy and for American political journalism.

      Amid the relentlessly tawdry campaign news, most Americans haven’t even noticed the absence of virtually any high-level campaign discussion of environmental issues, let alone what many have called the biggest challenge of the 21st century.

      For now.

      But I invite you to think ahead to that “oh crap” moment that awaits us all, five, ten or 25 years from now, when America looks back to reckon with our self-imposed climate silence in the debates.

      Journalism—and the memes of our day—have failed us.

      I don’t mean to condemn all journalists, or even all political journalists. This campaign has seen Pulitzer-worthy investigative work, notably by old-media giants like the New York Times and Washington Post, on both major party candidates and their respective problems with veracity and transparency. But the horse-race coverage, driven by Twitter, bluster and clickbait, has predictably left important issues in the lurch.

    • Get Ready to Ignore Donald Trump Starting on November 9, or He’ll Never Go Away

      Donald Trump’s true gift is his uncanny ability to capture the attention of the news media.

      His declaration during Wednesday night’s third and final presidential debate that he may not accept defeat in three weeks captured global headlines, once again making him the lead story in the world, even as his chances of winning are essentially vanishing.

      But this is nothing new. There are countless other examples of successful attention-getting in Trump’s past, including his crusade against the Central Park Five in 2005, and the six weeks in 2011 where he monopolized TV news with his quest to find Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

      In fact, one way to look at Trump’s run for the presidency is as an attention-getting, brand-building exercise from start to finish. And in that context, this latest twist makes even more sense: It turns his otherwise sputtering campaign into a sort of dystopian season of “The Apprentice” where viewers watch for the cliffhanger: Will Trump bow out gracefully, or will he rally his supporters to declare his loss the result of a grand conspiracy?

      Not coincidentally, a half hour before the start of Wednesday’s debate, his campaign launched #TrumpTV, a livestream on his Facebook featuring Trump surrogates — leading to speculation that this served as a sort of a beta test for a rumored Trump-helmed television network. With that network, Trump could seek to monetize a panicked support base.

      On November 9, when Trump likely loses the presidential election in a big way, the news media will face a moment of truth: Will they continue to obsessively cover him and his post-election antics? Or will they ignore him?

      They should ignore him.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • NLG and ACLU Submit FOIA and Open Records Requests to Investigate Unconstitutional Surveillance of Water Protectors at Standing Rock

      Today, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), in conjunction with the ACLU of North Dakota, sent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and North Dakota Open Records Act requests to multiple state and federal agencies in response to the surveillance and arrests of the Native-led Water Protectors attempting to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). In an affront to First Amendment rights, Water Protectors and allies have been continuously surveilled by low-flying planes, helicopters, and drones, and have had local cell phone communications jammed and possibly recorded. Dozens of local and out-of-state law enforcement have been called in, maintaining a heavily militarized presence at the site in an effort to intimidate activists and chill dissent.

    • How Could NSA Contractor Harold Martin Have Been Taking Home Classified Info For 20 Years Without NSA Noticing?

      A few weeks back, we wrote about the arrest of Harold Martin, an NSA contractor working at Booz Allen, for apparently taking “highly classified information” from the NSA and storing it electronically and physically in his home. There were a lot of questions about whether or not Martin was connected to the Shadow Brokers release of NSA hacking tools, though as more info comes out, it sounds like perhaps Martin was just found because of an investigation into Shadow Brokers, but not because he was connected to them. Soon after the arrest was made public (after being kept sealed for a little over a month), reports came out suggesting that Martin was basically a digital hoarder, but not a leaker (or a whistleblower).

    • Geofeedia, In Damage Control Mode, Issues Bogus DMCA Over Brochure Posted By Reporter

      And it’s time for yet another story of copyright being used for out and out censorship. Remember Geofeedia? That’s the creepy company that was selling its services to law enforcement agencies and school districts promising to spy on social media feeds to let law enforcement/schools know when people are planning bad stuff. After a big ACLU investigative report, basically all the major social media companies cut ties with Geofeedia, claiming that it was violating their terms of service. I’d imagine that the various law enforcement agencies and school districts who paid tens of thousands of dollars for this data may be asking for their money back.

      So what does Geofeedia do? Well, for starters, it abuses the DMCA to try to take down information. The Daily Dot’s Dell Cameron had actually written about how the Denver police spent $30k on Geofeedia back in September, a few weeks before the ACLU report dropped (nice scoop and great timing). Cameron then followed up with a detailed story following the ACLU report as well, noting that there were still plenty of other Geofeedia competitors on the market. At the end of that post, Cameron included a brochure that Geofeedia had apparently sent to a police department last year. But you can’t see it now, because (yup) Geofeedia issued a DMCA takedown to Scribd, the company that was hosting it.

    • Victory for the Exegetes Amateurs! French Surveillance Censured by Constitutional Council

      The French Constitutional Council has censored this morning the article of the 2015 French Surveillance Law on radio wave surveillance. Following a Priority Preliminary ruling on the issue of constitutionality (QPC) tabled by the Exegetes Amateurs (FDN Federation, FDN and La Quadrature du Net and the Igwan.net NGO), this is a clear victory for advocates of privacy against disproportionate surveillance promoted by Manuel Valls’ government. La Quadrature du Net is glad with this decision which effects are to be applied immediately (although regretting the extended time given to the legislator to conform to this decision in the long term) and calls on all citizens concerned with civil rights to support the tireless judicial and technical work accomplished with our friends of FDN and the FDN Federation.

    • Google’s Allo Sends The Wrong Message About Encryption

      When Google announced its new Allo messaging app, we were initially pleased to see the company responding to long-standing consumer demand for user-friendly, secure messaging. Unfortunately, it now seems that Google’s response may cause more harm than good. While Allo does expose more users to end-to-end encrypted messaging, this potential benefit is outweighed by the cost of Allo’s mixed signals about what secure messaging is and how it works. This has significance for secure messaging app developers and users beyond Google or Allo: if we want to protect all users, we must make encryption our automatic, straightforward, easy-to-use status quo.

      The new messaging app from Google offers two modes: a default mode, and an end-to-end encrypted “incognito” mode. The default mode features two new enhancements: Google Assistant, an AI virtual assistant that responds to queries and searches (like “What restaurants are nearby?”), and Smart Reply, which analyzes how a user texts and generates likely responses to the messages they receive. The machine learning that drives these features resides on Google’s servers and needs access to chat content to “learn” over time and personalize services. So, while this less secure mode is encrypted in transit, it is not encrypted end-to-end, giving Google access to the content of messages as they pass unencrypted through Google servers.

      Allo’s separate “incognito” mode provides end-to-end encryption, using a darker background to distinguish it from the default mode. Messages sent in this mode are not readable on Google’s servers, and can be set to auto-delete from your phone after a certain period of time. The Assistant and Smart Reply features, which depend on Google having access to message content, don’t work in “incognito” mode.

    • Half of All American Adults Have Pictures in Police Facial Recognition Systems

      If you’re already worried about the growth of the surveillance state, a new study may give you pause. Researchers from Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology have found that half of Americans have photos in facial recognition networks used by law enforcement around the country—and many are likely unaware of it. The resulting report notes that the study is “the most comprehensive survey to date of law enforcement face recognition and the risks that it poses to privacy, civil liberties, and civil rights.”

      Study authors Alvaro Bedoya, Jonathan Frankle and Clare Garvie queried more than 100 police departments across the nation over the course of a year to come to their conclusions. They found that more than 117 million adults—overwhelmingly law-abiding citizens of these United States—have pictures in these systems. Amassing such a large number of photos of American adults is a result of interagency collaboration. In addition to mugshot photos taken following arrests, “26 states (and potentially as many as 30) allow law enforcement to run or request searches against their databases of driver’s license and ID photos.” They also write that big-city police departments—Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles among them—are looking into real-time recognition on live street surveillance cameras, which allow “police [to] continuously scan the faces of pedestrians walking by a street surveillance camera.”

    • Using search warrants to get into fingerprint-locked phones

      A peculiar legal workaround might give federal authorities the right to access an individual’s phone data.

      Investigators in Lancaster, Calif., were granted a search warrant last May with a scope that allowed them to force anyone inside the premises at the time of search to open up their phones via fingerprint recognition, Forbes reported Sunday.

      The government argued that this did not violate the citizens’ Fifth Amendment protection against self incrimination because no actual passcode was handed over to authorities. Forbes was able to confirm with the residents of the building that the warrant was served, but the residents did not give any more details about whether their phones were successfully accessed by the investigators.

      “I was frankly a bit shocked,” said Andrew Crocker, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), when he learned about the scope of search warrant. “As far as I know, this warrant application was unprecedented.”

    • Virtual lineup: Your face is already on file

      If local police showed up at your door requesting fingerprints and DNA samples, would you passively and unquestioningly comply? Or would you ask what crime you’re suspected of committing and demand probable cause for making the request or proof of a search warrant?

      The fact is, there’s a 50 percent chance your photo is already part of a biometric database. And law enforcement agencies across the country are using facial recognition software to regularly search this “virtual lineup” with little to no regulation or limits, according to an eye-opening 150-page report, “The Perpetual Line-Up: Unregulated Police Face Recognition in America,” published this week by the Georgetown Center on Privacy & Technology.

    • Supreme Court rules that IP address allocation is personal data, but to what use?

      The European Supreme Court rules that the subscriber identity behind an IP address is personal data, making such data protected by privacy laws. However, the court rules in a very narrow context of a web site operator, and says that the protection of personal data takes second place to a so-called “legitimate objective”. This may be an important verdict for future case law, but right now, it looks rather narrow.

      The European Court of Justice, the highest court in the EU, has ruled that the information about who was allocated a certain IP address at a certain time is personal data. This is a very important key word in European legislation, which means the data’s availability and use is protected by a mountain and a half of regulations and laws.

      The case was brought to the European Court of Justice by Patrick Breyer, a Pirate Party MP in the German State Parliament of Schleswig-Holstein, who is also a lawyer. Mr. Breyer was suing the Federal Government of Germany to prevent them from storing and recording his every visit to federal authorities’ websites.

    • Google is now tracking your private, personally identifiable information from all sources possible (ie; Gmail, Chrome, DoubleClick) by default

      Since this summer, new users are now being tracked to Google’s fullest potential unless they opt-out. Google has bought many tech companies over the last few decades. One such purpose, in 2007, of DoubleClick, prompted many concerns. Google, which had the promising slogan “Do no evil,” back then, promised that they would not combine Google’s already monolithic stack of user internet browsing history data with new acquisitions such as DoubleClick. DoubleClick is an extensive ad network that is used on half of the Internet’s top 1 million most popular sites. Now, Now that DoubleClick’s data is available to Google, Google can easily build a complete profile of you, the customer. This profile could include name, search history, and keywords used in email, all of which will expressly be used to target you for advertising or handed over to the government at the drop of a rubber stamp.

    • Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

      After we published this story, Google reached out to say that it doesn’t currently use Gmail keywords to target web ads. We’ve updated the story to reflect that.

      When Google bought the advertising network DoubleClick in 2007, Google founder Sergey Brin said that privacy would be the company’s “number one priority when we contemplate new kinds of advertising products.”

      And, for nearly a decade, Google did in fact keep DoubleClick’s massive database of web-browsing records separate by default from the names and other personally identifiable information Google has collected from Gmail and its other login accounts.

      But this summer, Google quietly erased that last privacy line in the sand – literally crossing out the lines in its privacy policy that promised to keep the two pots of data separate by default. In its place, Google substituted new language that says browsing habits “may be” combined with what the company learns from the use Gmail and other tools.

    • Argentine Soccer Club Wanted to Implant Microchips in Fans, Until They Revolted

      How do you solve a problem like blood-thirsty football hooligans? According to one Buenos Aires-based football club, just stick microchips in spectators’ arms and scan the bad apples away.

      Back in April, first division club CA Tigre proposed surgically implanting microchips—or “passion tickets,” as they called them—into fans’ bodies to expedite their access to the stadium and curb violence during games. The initiative was rejected after a brief trial period, CA Tigre informed Motherboard, and though the club wouldn’t say why, we expect public outrage had something to do with it.

      “Passion ticket allows fans to enter the stadium without anything else, just their passion for their team, and allows the club to maintain a trustworthy level of control over fans,” CA Tigre tweeted at the time to explain the initiative.

    • Internet Privacy: “You’re Only Anonymous On The Internet Because Nobody’s Tried Very Hard To Figure Out Who You Are”

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Imprisoned Saudi blogger faces more lashes: supporters

      Imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, whose public flogging in the kingdom last year generated a global outcry, now risks a new round of lashes, a co-founder of a Canadian foundation advocating his release said on Tuesday.

      Evelyne Abitbol, who founded the Raif Badawi Foundation with Badawi’s wife, said a “reliable source” in Saudi Arabia claims he faces a new flogging after being sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and 1,000 lashes in 2014 for breaking the kingdom’s technology laws and insulting Islam.

      Saudi embassy officials in Ottawa and Saudi government officials in Riyadh were not immediately available for comment.

    • Raif Badawi: Atheist Saudi blogger faces further round of lashes, supporters say

      Saudi blogger Raif Badawi is facing a new round of lashes, according to his supporters.

      A Canadian foundation campaigning for his release said a “reliable source” in Saudi Arabia told them he faces a renewed threat of flogging.

      The 32-year-old was handed 1,000 lashes and a ten-year jail term in 2014 for insulting Islam online.

    • ‘He didn’t know the boy didn’t want to be raped’ court throws out migrant child sex charge

      When the youngster went to the showers, Amir A. allegedly followed him, pushed him into a toilet cubicle, and violently sexually assaulted him.

      Following the attack, the accused rapist returned to the pool and was practising on the diving board when police arrived, after the 10-year-old raised the alarm with the lifeguard.

      The child suffered severe anal injuries which had to be treated at a local children’s hospital, and is still plagued by serious post-traumatic stress disorder.

      In a police interview, Amir A. confessed to the crime; telling officers the incident had been “a sexual emergency”, as his wife had remained in Iraq and he “had not had sex in four months”.

    • Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament

      I have just finished giving evidence to the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament on torture and extraordinary rendition. I am dashing off now and will give a fuller account later of what I said only. But I will just say that I was very happily surprised by how genuine the committee were, by the acuity of their questioning and by what was revealed of the general trend of their thinking. I perceived no hostility at all. I rather hope, and believe I have grounds to hope, that their eventual report will contain more of both truth and wisdom than is generally expected.

    • Homeland Security Must Stop Using Private Prisons for Immigration Detention. Here’s How to Do It.

      ACLU policy paper explains why detaining fewer immigrants must be part of the plan to stop using private prisons.

      This August, the Justice Department made history when it announced that the Bureau of Prisons would curtail — and eventually end — its use of private prisons. As the Justice Department noted, this change was made possible by criminal justice reforms that reduced its prison population. Now the ACLU is releasing a policy paper that calls on the Department of Homeland Security to follow suit by reducing its detention population and then ending its own use of private prisons.

      The paper, “Shutting Down the Profiteers: Why and How the Department of Homeland Security Should Stop Using Private Prisons,” provides a concrete plan for how ICE can and should phase out its reliance on private prisons. The number of immigrants in detention has skyrocketed in the past two decades, and without these unnecessary detentions, there would be no need for private prison beds. The paper describes the human toll of over-detention and privatization and lays out ICE’s dangerously close relationship with the private prison industry.

    • Police Want to 3D Print a Dead Man’s Fingers to Unlock His Phone

      I’ll unpack the Constitutional issues in a bit, but first, the technology. Michigan State University professor who holds six U.S. patents for fingerprint recognition technology was asked by police to help catch a murderer. The cops scans of the victim’s fingerprints and thought that unlocking his phone might provide clues as to who killed him.

    • Police arrest more people for marijuana use than for all violent crimes — combined

      On any given day in the United States, at least 137,000 people sit behind bars on simple drug-possession charges, according to a report released Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch.

      Nearly two-thirds of them are in local jails. The report says that most of these jailed inmates have not been convicted of any crime: They’re sitting in a cell, awaiting a day in court, an appearance that may be months or even years off, because they can’t afford to post bail.

      “It’s been 45 years since the war on drugs was declared, and it hasn’t been a success,” lead author Tess Borden of Human Rights Watch said in an interview. “Rates of drug use are not down. Drug dependency has not stopped. Every 25 seconds, we’re arresting someone for drug use.”

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Harris Faulkner Suit Against Hasbro Over A Toy Hamster Ends In Settlement, Hasbro To Discontinue The Toy

      While we cover a lot of silly intellectual property disputes here, none has the potential to upend our society into a circus of hilarious litigious stupidity as much as publicity rights do. This barely-arrived form of intellectual property has been the star of all kinds of legal insanity, with one needing only to note its use by such upstanding denizens of our reality as Lindsay Lohan and the brother of Pablo Escobar. But I have to admit I had reserved a special place in my humor-heart for Harris Faulkner, the Fox News anchor that sued toy-maker Hasbro for making a a hamster figurine that shared her name. Because the sharing of a name isn’t sufficient to arise to a publicity rights violation, the IRL-non-hamster-Faulkner had to claim that the ficticious-hamster-Faulkner also borrowed from her physical likeness, an argument which her legal team actually made. As a reminder, here are images of both.

    • Trademarks

      • No One Owns Invisible Disabilities

        The purpose of registered trademarks is to protect people. When you buy a bottle of Club-Mate, the trademark affords you some certainty that what you’re buying is the product you already know and love and not that of a sneaky impostor. But when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issues overly broad or generic trademarks, those trademarks do just the opposite: they can expose us to the risk of legal bullying. One recent round of bullying over a trademark on “invisible disabilities” has shown how a bad trademark can even be used to threaten people’s right to assemble and express themselves online.

        It started in late 2015 when a group called Invisible Disability Project (IDP) applied for a trademark on its name. A lawyer representing the Invisible Disabilities Association (IDA) sent IDP a letter threatening to sue it over the use of the term “invisible disability.” (IDA had received a trademark on the term in 2013). In July 2016, IDA used Facebook’s trademark report form to have IDP’s Facebook page—the main place where IDP’s members and supporters congregate—taken down. IDA even registered the domain names invisibledisabilityproject.com and .net and directed visitors to those sites to its own website.

    • Copyrights

      • Anti-Piracy Outfits Agree to Strengthen International Cooperation

        Government officials and representatives from anti-piracy outfits from the United States, Europe and Russia met up in Brussels this week. The roundtable, “Combating Internet Piracy: International Practice”, focused on the need for international cooperation and the strengthening of copyright legislation.

        With the Internet and therefore online piracy having developed into a truly global phenomenon, anti-piracy groups everywhere are expanding their reach.

        What was once a semi-isolated affair has become a multi-agency, cross-continent operation, with governments and rights holders alike striving to share information and pool resources.

      • The Bernie Sanders of Iceland is a Pirate, a poet and possibly the country’s next leader

        Birgitta Jónsdóttir is a poet, a Web developer and a former WikiLeaks activist. She’s also founder and leader of Iceland’s Pirate Party, which has been at or near the top of polls ahead of national elections Oct. 29.

        Washington Post London Bureau Chief Griff Witte sat down with Jónsdóttir for an interview at her office in Reykjavik on Oct. 19. The following are excerpts from their conversation.

      • Cisco Develops System To Automatically Cut-Off Pirate Video Streams

        Cisco says it has developed a system to disable live pirate streams . The network equipment company says its Streaming Piracy Prevention platform utilizes third-party forensic watermarking to shut down pirate streams in real-time, without any need to send takedown notices to hosts or receive cooperation from third parties.

      • Team Prenda Loses Big Again: Told To Pay Over $650k For Bogus Defamation Lawsuit

        Welp, it looks like another bad day for Team Prenda. The law firm that went around uploading its own porn films and then shaking down people on the internet has had a bad few years in terms of courts blasting them for abusing the court system and ordering them to pay up for all sorts of awful things. Every few weeks it seems like we read about another loss for John Steele and Paul Hansmeier (the third “partner” in this mess, Paul Duffy, passed away). The latest is not only a pretty big hit, it’s also a complete “own goal” by Team Prenda. This one wasn’t in one of their crappy shakedown lawsuits where a defendant hit back. No, this was in the case where Prenda tried to sue all of its critics for defamation in both Illinois and Florida. The Florida case, filed by John Steele, was quickly dismissed once Steele realized it broke all kinds of rules. But the Illinois cases moved forward. There was some bouncing around between state and federal court, before the case was dismissed and some sanctions were added.

      • Prenda lawyers’ careers are up in smoke, but sanctions keep coming

        After a few years suing Internet users over piracy claims, the lawyers behind the Prenda law copyright-trolling operation had made millions. But beginning in 2013, they were hit with repeated sanctions from federal judges. Now, their careers are in shambles—Paul Hansmeier had his law license suspended, John Steele is facing a bar complaint, and both may be facing an FBI investigation. (A third lawyer who was involved, Paul Duffy, passed away last year.)

        Even as their scheme collapses, they continue to be hit with sanctions. This week, Hansmeier and Steele got hit with a big one. US District Judge John Darrah oversaw litigation related to one of Prenda’s most audacious moves—their defamation lawsuit against their critics. They sued Steele’s former housekeeper, Alan Cooper, and his lawyer, Paul Godfread, for accusing Steele of identity theft. For good measure, they also sued anonymous blog commenters who called Prenda attorneys “brain-dead” and “assclowns.”

10.22.16

Links 22/10/2016: Deus Ex for GNU/Linux, Global DDoS (DNS)

Posted in News Roundup at 11:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Server

    • Puppet Rolls Out New Docker Image Builds

      Folks who are focused on container technology and virtual machines as they are implemented today might want to give a hat tip to some of the early technologies and platforms that arrived in the same arena. Among those, Puppet, which was built on the legacy of the venerable Cfengine system, was an early platform that helped automate lots of virtual machine implementations. We covered it in depth all the way back in 2008.

      Earlier this year, Puppet Labs rebranded as simply Puppet, and also named its first president and COO, Sanjay Mirchandani, who came to the company from VMware, where he was a senior vice-president. Now, at PuppetConf, the company has announced the availability of Puppet Docker Image Build, which “automates the container build process to help organizations as they define, build and deploy containers into production environments.” This new set of capabilities adds to existing Puppet functionality for installing and managing container infrastructure, including Docker, Kubernetes and Mesos, among others.

  • Kernel Space

    • Intel Has Been Working On MIPI SoundWire Support For Linux

      An Intel developer has published testing patches for providing a SoundWire bus driver within the Linux kernel, which implements the MIPI SoundWire 1.1 specification.

      For those unfamiliar with SoundWire as was I when coming across these patches, “The SoundWire protocol is a robust, scalable, low complexity, low power, low latency, two-pin (clock and data) multi-drop bus that allows for the transfer of multiple audio streams and embedded control/commands. SoundWire provides synchronization capabilities and supports both PCM and PDM, multichannel data, isochronous and asynchronous modes. SoundWire does borrow a number of concepts from existing interfaces such as HDAudio, AC97, SLIMbus, which already provide control/audio on the same wires, or legacy interfaces such as I2C/I2S, TDM, PDM.”

    • Linux Perf Gets New “C2C” Tool For False Sharing Detection

      The perf code for Linux 4.10 is set to receive a new “c2c” tool.

      The C2C tool within the perf subsystem is aimed to track down cacheline contention and has already been used by developers in tracking down false sharing of large applications, readers/writes to cachelines, and related information to assist NUMA shared-memory applications.

    • OpenTracing: Turning the Lights On for Microservices

      Those building microservices at scale understand the role and importance of distributed tracing: after all, it’s the most direct way to understand how and why complex systems misbehave. When we deployed Dapper at Google in 2005, it was like someone finally turned the lights on: everything from ordinary programming errors to broken caches to bad network hardware to unknown dependencies came into plain view.

    • Linux Foundation Spurs JavaScript Development

    • Graphics Stack

      • Radeon vs. Nouveau Open-Source Drivers On Mesa Git + Linux 4.9

        For your viewing pleasure this Friday are some open-source AMD vs. NVIDIA numbers when using the latest open-source code on each side. Linux 4.9-rc1 was used while Ubuntu 16.10 paired with the Padoka PPA led to Mesa Git as of earlier this week plus LLVM 4.0 SVN. As covered recently, there are no Nouveau driver changes for Linux 4.9 while we had hoped the boost patches would land. Thus the re-clocking is still quite poor for this open-source NVIDIA driver stack. For the Nouveau tests I manually re-clocked each graphics card to the highest performance state (0f) after first re-clocking the cards to the 0a performance state for helping some of the GPUs that otherwise fail with memory re-clocking at 0f, as Nouveau developers have expressed this is the preferred approach for testing.

      • NVIDIA 375.10 Linux Driver Released, Supports GTX 1050 Series
      • Nvidia 375.10 Beta Linux Graphics Driver Released with GeForce GTX 1050 Support

        On October 20, 2016, Nvidia published a new Beta graphics driver for the Linux platform, adding support for some new GPUs the company launched recently, as well as various improvements and bug fixes.

        The Nvidia 375.10 Beta is now available for early adopters, but we don’t recommend installing it just yet if you’re looking for a stable and reliable gaming experience, adding support for Nvidia’s recently announced Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 and GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics cards, as well as Nvidia Quadro P6000 and Nvidia Quadro P5000 GPUs.

        Another interesting change implemented in the new Beta video driver, which should hit the stable channels next month, is the addition of two new X11 configuration options, namely ForceCompositionPipeline and ForceFullCompositionPipeline, overriding the MetaMode tokens with the same names.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Open-Source Budgie Desktop Sees New Release

        The pet parakeet of the Linux world, Budgie has a new release available for download. in this post we lookout what’s new and tell you how you can get it.

      • Solus Linux Making Performance Gains With Its BLAS Configuration

        -
        Those making use of the promising Solus Linux distribution will soon find their BLAS-based workloads are faster.

        Solus developer Peter O’Connor tweeted this week that he’s found some issues with the BLAS linking on the distribution and he’s made fixes for Solus. He also mentioned that he uncovered these BLAS issues by using our Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software.

      • SalentOS “Luppìu” 1.0 released!

        With great pleasure the team announces the release of SalentOS “Luppìu” 1.0.

      • Slackel “Live kde” 4.14.21

        This release is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, while the 64-bit iso supports booting on UEFI systems.
        The 64-bit iso images support booting on UEFI systems.
        The 32-bit iso images support both i686 PAE SMP and i486, non-PAE capable systems.
        Iso images are isohybrid.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the Week 2016/42

        This was week 42 – The openSUSE LEAP week of the Year. It can’t be a co-incidence that the Release Candidate 1 was announced in Week 42, on the 2nd day (42.2 – European counting, we start our week on Monday, not on Sunday).

        But also in Tumbleweed things are not standing still: of course many of the things are well in line with what Leap received (like for example Plasma updates), but Tumbleweed rolls at a different pace ahead of the game.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Ubuntu MATE, Not Just a Whim

              I’ve stated for years how much I dislike Ubuntu’s Unity interface. Yes, it’s become more polished through the years, but it’s just not an interface that thinks the same way I do. That’s likely because I’m old and inflexible, but nevertheless, I’ve done everything I could to avoid using Unity, which usually means switching to Xubuntu. I actually really like Xubuntu, and the Xfce interface is close enough to the GNOME 2 look, that I hardly miss the way my laptop used to look before Unity.

              I wasn’t alone in my disdain for Ubuntu’s flagship desktop manager switch, and many folks either switched to Xubuntu or moved to another Debian/Ubuntu-based distro like Linux Mint. The MATE desktop started as a hack, in fact, because GNOME 3 and Unity were such drastic changes. I never really got into MATE, however, because I thought it was going to be nothing more than a hack and eventually would be unusable due to old GNOME 2 libraries phasing out and so forth.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Renesas spins 3rd Gen automotive starter kits, adds new M3 SoC

      Renesas has launched two Linux-ready R-Car starter kits optimized for AGL and GENIVI: an R-Car H3 based “Premier” and a “Pro” with a lower-end M3 SoC.

      Later this month, Renesas will begin selling two third-generation starter kits for its 64-bit ARM-based R-Car automotive SoCs. The kits are designed for ADAS, infotainment, reconfigurable digital clusters, and integrated digital cockpits.

      The two kits are optimized for open source Linux standards like Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) and GENIVI, but they also support QNX. Earlier R-Car automotive starter kits include last year’s R-Car H2 ADAS Starter Kit, based on its earlier H2 automotive SoC.

    • Yocto driven camera design taps octa-core Snapdragon

      Qualcomm and Thundercomm unveiled a Linux-supported, 4K camera reference design with an octa-core Snapdragon 625 and video analytics software.

      Qualcomm and hardware partner Thundercomm Technology announced an IP Connected Camera reference design called the Snapdragon 625 IP Camera built around its 14nm-fabricated, octa-core Cortex-A53 Snapdragon 625 system-on-chip. This is Qualcomm’s first Connected Camera design to support Linux instead of Android.

Free Software/Open Source

  • The Open Source Way

    “Open source”, in the world of IT, is program code that is meant for collaboration and open contribution. Intended to be modified and shared, because by design and spirit, it is meant for the public at large.

    It’s been said that “”open source” intimates a broader set of values—what we call “the open source way.” Open source projects, products, or initiatives embrace and celebrate principles of open exchange, collaborative participation, rapid prototyping, transparency, meritocracy, and community-oriented development.” So it is a natural conclusion that in this age of open and transparent government, that the government IT manager or technician would be one of the first to want to embrace this new role of collaborative team member within a larger community.

  • Another rift in the open source BPM market: @FlowableBPM forks from @Alfresco Activiti

    In early 2013, Camunda – at the time, a value-added Activiti consulting partner as well as a significant contributor to the open source project – created a fork from Activiti to form what is now the Camunda open source BPM platform as well as their commercial version based on the open source core.

  • Pydio, an Open Source File Sharing and Sync Solution, Out in New Version

    If you’ve followed us here at OStatic, you’ve probably seen our coverage of open source file sharing, cloud and synchronization tools. For example, we’ve covered ownCloud and Nextcloud extensively.

    Not so many people know about Pydio, though, which is out in a new version Pydio7. It’s an open source file sharing & sync solution that now has a host of new features and performance upgrades. It’s worth downloading and trying.

    Through a new partnership with Collabora Productivity (the LibreOffice Cloud provider), Pydio7 now combines file sharing, document editing and online collaboration. Users can now not only access documents online, but also co-author new content and work collaboratively.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Open-Source Innovations Driving Demand for Hadoop

      AtScale, provider of BI (Business Intelligence) on Hadoop, has released its study titled “The Business Intelligence Benchmark for SQL-on-Hadoop engines,” which is a performance test of BI workloads on Hadoop. The report also studies the strengths and weaknesses of Hive, Presto, Impala and Spark SQL, which are the most popular analytical engines for Hadoop.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • Lumina Desktop 1.1 Released

      The BSD-focused, Qt-powered Lumina Desktop Environment is out with its version 1.1 update.

      The developers behind the Lumina Desktop Environment consider it a “significant update” with both new and reworked utilities, infrastructure improvements, and other enhancements.

      Lumina 1.1 adds a pure Qt5 calculator, text editor improvements, the file manager has been completely overhauled, system application list management is much improved, and there is a range of other improvements.

  • Public Services/Government

    • EU-Fossa project submits results of code audits

      The European Commission’s ‘EU Free and Open Source Software Auditing’ project (EU-Fossa) has sent its code review results to the developers of Apache HTTP server target and KeePass. The audit results are not yet made public, however, no critical vulnerabilities were found.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • New SafariSeat wheelchairs made from bicycle parts help East Africans roam rough terrain
      • SafariSeat, an Open Source Wheelchair for Rural Offroading

        If you’re disabled in a poorly developed part of the world, even a great modern wheelchair may be next to useless. What’s needed is a more off-road design that’s made to be easy to manufacture and repair than something built for a city with sidewalks.

        SafariSeat is a newly designed open-source wheelchair that hopes to make a big impact for disabled people the world over. It uses push bars for power and has large front wheels and small rear ones to easily roll over large objects.

        In a novel move, the designers included a moving seat that shifts bit every time you push the bars to help prevent pressure sores on the butt.

      • Five 3D printing projects for Halloween

        With Halloween fast approaching I figured it was time to add some 3D printed decorations to the office. Below are some of my pictures for fun Halloween-themed prints. I tried to pick some models that demonstrate varied printing techniques.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • OOPS! Sometimes Even Linus Gets It Wrong!
    • Free tool protects PCs from master boot record attacks [Ed: UEFI has repeatedly been found to be both a detriment to security and enabler of Microsoft lock-in]

      Cisco’s Talos team has developed an open-source tool that can protect the master boot record of Windows computers from modification by ransomware and other malicious attacks.

      The tool, called MBRFilter, functions as a signed system driver and puts the disk’s sector 0 into a read-only state. It is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions and its source code has been published on GitHub.

      The master boot record (MBR) consists of executable code that’s stored in the first sector (sector 0) of a hard disk drive and launches the operating system’s boot loader. The MBR also contains information about the disk’s partitions and their file systems.

      Since the MBR code is executed before the OS itself, it can be abused by malware programs to increase their persistence and gain a head start before antivirus programs. Malware programs that infect the MBR to hide from antivirus programs have historically been known as bootkits — boot-level rootkits.

      Microsoft attempted to solve the bootkit problem by implementing cryptographic verification of the bootloader in Windows 8 and later. This feature is known as Secure Boot and is based on the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) — the modern BIOS.

    • DDOS Attack On Internet Infrastructure

      I hope somebody’s paying attention. There’s been another big DDOS attack, this time against the infrastructure of the Internet. It began at 7:10 a.m. EDT today against Dyn, a major DNS host, and was brought under control at 9:36 a.m. According to Gizmodo, which was the first to report the story, at least 40 sites were made unreachable to users on the US East Coast. Many of the sites affected are among the most trafficed on the web, and included CNN, Twitter, PayPal, Pinterest and Reddit to name a few. The developer community was also touched, as GitHub was also made unreachable.

      This event comes on the heels of a record breaking 620 Gbps DDOS attack about a month ago that brought down security expert Brian Krebs’ website, KrebsonSecurity. In that attack, Krebs determined the attack had been launched by botnets that primarily utilized compromised IoT devices, and was seen by some as ushering in a new era of Internet security woes.

    • This Is Why Half the Internet Shut Down Today [Update: It’s Getting Worse]

      Twitter, Spotify and Reddit, and a huge swath of other websites were down or screwed up this morning. This was happening as hackers unleashed a large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the servers of Dyn, a major DNS host. It’s probably safe to assume that the two situations are related.

    • Major DNS provider Dyn hit with DDoS attack

      Attacks against DNS provider Dyn continued into Friday afternoon. Shortly before noon, the company said it began “monitoring and mitigating a DDoS attack” against its Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure. The attack may also have impacted Managed DNS advanced service “with possible delays in monitoring.”

    • What We Know About Friday’s Massive East Coast Internet Outage

      Friday morning is prime time for some casual news reading, tweeting, and general Internet browsing, but you may have had some trouble accessing your usual sites and services this morning and throughout the day, from Spotify and Reddit to the New York Times and even good ol’ WIRED.com. For that, you can thank a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) that took down a big chunk of the Internet for most of the Eastern seaboard.

      This morning’s attack started around 7 am ET and was aimed at Dyn, an Internet infrastructure company headquartered in New Hampshire. That first bout was resolved after about two hours; a second attack began just before noon. Dyn reported a third wave of attacks a little after 4 pm ET. In all cases, traffic to Dyn’s Internet directory servers throughout the US—primarily on the East Coast but later on the opposite end of the country as well—was stopped by a flood of malicious requests from tens of millions of IP addresses disrupting the system. Late in the day, Dyn described the events as a “very sophisticated and complex attack.” Still ongoing, the situation is a definite reminder of the fragility of the web, and the power of the forces that aim to disrupt it.

    • Either IoT will be secure or the internet will be crippled forever

      First things first a disclaimer. I neither like nor trust the National Security Agency (NSA). I believe them to be mainly engaged in economic spying for the corporate American empire. Glenn Greenwald has clearly proven that in his book No Place to Hide. At the NSA, profit and power come first and I have no fucking clue as to how high they prioritize national security. Having said that, the NSA should hack the Internet of (insecure) Things (IoT) to death. I know Homeland Security and the FBI are investigating where the DDoS of doomsday proportions is coming from and the commentariat is already screaming RUSSIA! But it is really no secret what is enabling this clusterfuck. It’s the Mirai botnet. If you buy a “smart camera” from the Chinese company Hangzhou XiongMai Technologies and do not change the default password, it will be part of a botnet five minutes after you connect it to the internet. We were promised a future where we would have flying cars but we’re living in a future where camera’s, light-bulbs, doorbells and fridges can get you in serious trouble because your home appliances are breaking the law.

    • IoT at the Network Edge

      Fog computing, also known as fog networking, is a decentralized computing infrastructure. Computing resources and application services are distributed in logical, efficient places at any points along the connection from the data source (endpoint) to the cloud. The concept is to process data locally and then use the network for communicating with other resources for further processing and analysis. Data could be sent to a data center or a cloud service. A worthwhile reference published by Cisco is the white paper, “Fog Computing and the Internet of Things: Extend the Cloud to Where the Things Are.”

    • Canonical now offers live kernel patching for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS users

      Canonical has announced its ‘Livepatch Service’ which any user can enable on their current installations to eliminate the need for rebooting their machine after installing an update for the Linux kernel. With the release of Linux 4.0, users have been able to update their kernel packages without rebooting, however, Ubuntu will be the first distribution to offer this feature for free.

    • ​The Dirty Cow Linux bug: A silly name for a serious problem

      Dirty Cow is a silly name, but it’s a serious Linux kernel problem. According to the Red Hat bug report, “a race condition was found in the way the Linux kernel’s memory subsystem handled the copy-on-write (COW) breakage of private read-only memory mappings. An unprivileged local user could use this flaw to gain write access to otherwise read-only memory mappings and thus increase their privileges on the system.”

    • Ancient Privilege Escalation Bug Haunts Linux
    • October 21, 2016 Is Dirty COW a serious concern for Linux?
    • There is a Dirty Cow in Linux
    • Red Hat Discovers Dirty COW Archaic Linux Kernel Flaw Exploited In The Wild
    • Linux kernel bug being exploited in the wild
    • Update Linux now: Critical privilege escalation security flaw gives hackers full root access
    • Linux kernel bug: DirtyCOW “easyroot” hole and what you need to know
    • ‘Most serious’ Linux privilege-escalation bug ever discovered
    • New ‘Dirty Cow’ vulnerability threatens Linux systems
    • Serious Dirty Cow Linux Vulnerability Under Attack
    • Easy-to-exploit rooting flaw puts Linux PCs at risk
    • Linux just patched a vulnerability it’s had for 9 years
    • Dirty COW Linux vulnerability has existed for nine years
    • ‘Dirty Cow’ Linux Vulnerability Found
    • ‘Dirty Cow’ Linux Vulnerability Found After Nine Years
    • FakeFile Trojan Opens Backdoors on Linux Computers, Except openSUSE

      Malware authors are taking aim at Linux computers, more precisely desktops and not servers, with a new trojan named FakeFile, currently distributed in live attacks.

      Russian antivirus vendor Dr.Web discovered this new trojan in October. The company’s malware analysts say the trojan is spread in the form of an archived PDF, Microsoft Office, or OpenOffice file.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • [Older] US Air Force Carries Out Mock Nuclear Bomb Tests in Nevada Desert

      Two surveillance flight tests using mock B61-7 and B61-11 nuclear bombs were successfully carried out in the Nevada desert several weeks ago, according to a release last week.

      The mock bombs did not carry any nuclear devices but instead recorded information on how the bombs performed during the test runs. The tests were jointly conducted at Tonopah Test Range by the U.S. Air Force’s Global Strike Command and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

      Two B-2A Spirit stealth bombers dropped the mock bombs to “allow scientists and engineers from national laboratories to assess their performance” and they “contain no nuclear materials and are not capable of nuclear yield,” the NNSA said in a news release on Oct. 6.

    • Sweden’s unethical – and unlawful ­­– arms deals with ISIS-backing Saudis

      Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Löfven, and with him the Swedish arms-dealer magnate Jacob Wallenberg, are travelling to Saudi Arabia in official visit. The meetings with the Saudis, as announced by the Swedish Radio, shall aim to “increase the exchange” between the two countries. [1] At the same time, the Chairman of the Defence Committee in the Swedish Parliament, Mr Allan Widman, is now demanding that Sweden should send arms to US-backed Pershmerga, integrating the US & Saudi-led coalition in Iraq. [2]

      The above-mentioned issues are not only connected in its timing, but also produced against the backdrop of the US and Saudi’s instigated Syria war aimed to depose the legitimate government of Assad, and the confrontation pursued by NATO and its political front EU against Russia. Evidence put forward in the US, among other by Senator Richard Black, show that Saudi Arabia has been financing/arming ISIS jihadists. [3] The Senator revealed also that “Saudi Arabia and Turkey formed the Army of Conquer and coordinated ISIS and Al-Qaida”. Further, emails published by WikiLeaks’ Podesta series revealed that Hillary Clinton has been fully aware – already since 2014 – of the fact that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar were financing ISIS.[3] On the other hand, the US government has claimed the responsibility for financing, training and arming so-called “moderate rebels” – the “moderate terrorists” – which together with ISIS maintain a common war against the government of Syria.

    • Philippine President’s Most Searing Insults to World Leaders

      Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is known for saying things that are quite scandalous and many would consider unsayable. However, his outspoken style and crime-fighting record is making him quite popular with many Filipinos. Here are some of his most outrageous statements.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • A Quick Logic Lesson For Confused WikiLeaks Haters

      I know the following might be difficult to grasp for all you amateur internet logicians out there, but give it the ol’ college try anyhow. (I also know there’s a strand of Ironic Twitter commentary which immediately discounts the invocation of “Logic!” as somehow inherently foolhardy, and while I’ve often found such memes funny, logic is an important field of philosophy and everyone should study it. For serious.)

      Tonight, in his infinite wisdom, Sean Hannity tweeted out an approbation of WikiLeaks.

      [...]

      Drawing attention to Hannity’s change of heart on WikiLeaks — he unsurprisingly called Chelsea Manning treasonous back in 2010 when WikiLeaks published the Iraq/Afghanistan logs and the State Department cable trove — is just the heroes’ latest attempt to show that WikiLeaks is now Bad with a capital B, after having previously been Good with a capital G. Let’s work out how their logical theorem progresses.

      Sean Hannity is Bad
      Sean Hannity likes WikiLeaks
      WikiLeaks is therefore bad

      Wow, good stuff here — the type of staggeringly incisive philosophizing that would’ve made W. V. Quine envious. I guess we should briefly “unpack” why this logic is faulty, for the edification of very desperately confused people on the internet.

      Hannity might indeed be bad with a capital B, but his being Bad doesn’t ipso facto make anything he likes Bad. For instance, Hannity may well also like dogs. I’ll be damned if dogs are Bad because Bad Hannity likes them. Please do not sully our canine friends by dint of their association with Hannity.

      Let’s go to another extreme. Genocide is not bad because Hitler did it, genocide is bad because there are all sorts of reasons that can be marshaled to prove its badness: it’s bad to kill people on account of their inborn characteristics, etc. Hitler is also bad, but his being bad is not what inherently makes genocide bad.

    • Just How Wise Is It When Marco Rubio Promises To Swear Off Factual Information From Wikileaks?

      Amidst the reporting and fervor over the email hack of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, there has been something of a recent discussion that has begun over the ethics of circulating what is in that hacked cache. Some within the media itself have worried about about reporting either too much on the hacked emails, or even at all in some cases, with still others going for a more nuanced position of encouraging the reporting of information in the public interest while leaving all the personal stuff in the emails undisclosed to whatever degree is possible.

  • Finance

    • What’s scarier than Donald Trump? Hillary Clinton’s plans to gut Social Security

      As the sun sets on Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions, a likely Hillary Clinton victory means her intent to defund Social Security may come to fruition.

      The Democratic nominee recently came under fire in revealing articles by Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith and International Business Times’ David Sirota, for her potential plans to introduce mandatory retirement savings accounts set up to enrich Wall Street — rather than expanding Social Security.

    • CETA Talks Break Down: “It is Evident that the EU Is Incapable of Reaching an Agreement”

      International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland has walked out of talks aimed at addressing Belgian opposition to the Canada-EU Trade Agreement, stating:

      I have personally worked very hard, but it is now evident to me, evident to Canada, that the European Union is incapable of reaching an agreement – even with a country with European values such as Canada, even with a country as nice and as patient as Canada. Canada is disappointed and I personally am disappointed, but I think it’s impossible. We are returning home.

      Leaving aside the odd reference to how nice Canada is, this is remarkable language that lays bare the obvious frustration and disappointment for the government which prioritized the CETA agreement above all others. The prospect of the deal falling apart has been evident for months. I wrote in July that the agreement was in more trouble than the Canadian government would admit, noting that opposition from any national or regional government could kill CETA altogether. Canadian officials downplayed the risk, but it was obvious that CETA faced stiff opposition that would not be easy to overcome.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • WikiLeaks: Bill Clinton took home ‘expensive gifts’ from foundation donors

      Emails made public Thursday by WikiLeaks suggest Bill Clinton accepted “expensive gifts” from Clinton Global Initiative donors and kept them at his home.
      In a November 2011 email to John Podesta, currently Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, complaining of the conflicts of interest that plagued the Clinton Global Initiative, longtime confidante Doug Band mentioned that the former president had several undisclosed conflicts.

      “He is personally paid by 3 cgi sponsors [sic], gets many expensive gifts from them, some that are at home etc,” Band wrote.

      Band had recently left a position at the foundation to co-found a consulting firm called Teneo Strategies. In his email, he lamented that he had been forced to sign a disclosure form as a board member of the Clinton Global Initiative, while Bill Clinton had not.

    • Leaked Email Reveals Sady Doyle, Other Liberal Bloggers Coordinated with Clinton Campaign on Sanders Hits

      As WikiLeaks continues to leak emails from the Clinton campaign, new lights are shed on the tactics that the campaign has employed. In one such email, the Clinton campaign describes a call with several bloggers who discussed attacks that could be made against Clinton’s primary opponent Bernie Sanders related to racial and reproductive rights.

      [...]

      With Clinton’s lead in the polls solid, it’s unclear if these new leaks will do substantial damage, even if they don’t necessarily help her. After all, her opponent is degrading democracy itself by spurning the peaceful transition of presidential power.

    • WikiLeaks emails part curtain on a nearly elected Obama considering White House staff

      The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks on Thursday released a handful of Barack Obama’s emails from a period immediately before he was elected in 2008, including several that revealed names of people Obama was considering for senior roles and one that reflected care in avoiding a transition conflict with President George W. Bush.

      The emails span a period from Oct. 6, 2008, until Election Day that year, Nov. 4, and several include comments from “Barack,” who used the email address: bobama@ameritech.net.

    • No, Hillary, 17 U.S. Intelligence Agencies Did Not Say Russia Hacked Dem E-mails

      Hillary Clinton in last night’s presidential debate tried to avoid talking about the substance of the damaging WikiLeaks disclosures of DNC and Clinton campaign officials by claiming 17 U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Russia was responsible for this. After Clinton made this claim, she scolded Trump for challenging U.S. intelligence professionals who have taken an oath to help defend this country.

      What Clinton said was false and misleading. First of all, only two intelligence entities – the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – have weighed in on this issue, not 17 intelligence agencies. And what they said was ambiguous about Russian involvement.

    • WikiLeaks: Clinton Foundation Paid Women Less Than Men

      The Clinton Foundation in 2011 employed more women than men but paid them less, on average, according to a salary schedule included in an email released Friday by WikiLeaks.

      A foundation employee emailed the payroll schedule to board Chairman Bruce Lindsey and John Podesta, who currently chairs Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. It included then-Chief Operating Office and Chief of Staff Laura Graham’s salary recommendations for 2012 for rank-and-file employees.

    • Dublin school board member linked to WikiLeaks

      A local school board member, whose father is head of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, has been connected to allegations sprung from WikiLeaks.

      Megan Rouse, a Dublin school board member elected in 2014, was mentioned in the hacked email allegations that her father, John Podesta, at one time had stocks connected to a firm that had ties to Russia. Documents show that Podesta received 75,000 shares of Joule Unlimited Technologies. Podesta is Clinton’s campaign chair.

      The hacked Jan. 3, 2014 document shows that Podesta transferred more than 25,000 of these shares to Leonidio Holdings LLC, which had an address listed as Rouse’s Shannon Court home in Dublin. Rouse operates Megan Rouse Financial Planning from that same address.

    • What The WikiLeaks Emails Reveal About Branding Hillary

      Pundits all across America are poring over the Podesta emails, emails released by WikiLeaks that show the behind-the-scenes dealings of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. At the end of the day, those emails might end up containing more tasty risotto recipes than actual scandals.

      But for design lovers, there’s at least one bombshell: If not for a passionate email written by one of Coca-Cola’s chief marketing gurus, renowned design firm Pentagram could have lost Hillary Clinton as a client just two months before her logo debuted to the world.

      Reporting on leaked emails is justifiably contentious, as conversations that participants had every reason to believe were private are given scrutiny they were never meant to have. (Pentagram partner Michael Bierut, who oversaw designing the identity, declined to comment on the record when we reached out to him.) Still, we think this exchange—already, at this point, a matter of public record as part of the greater Podesta email leaks—is worth highlighting. Not just because it’s a rare glimpse behind the design process of a major political campaign, but because some of the arguments could be assigned reading in any branding class.

      The exchange in question involves Wendy Clark, a Coca-Cola marketing veteran who consulted on Hillary’s branding before becoming the North American president and CEO of the ad agency DDB Worldwide, and Joel Benenson, the chief strategist for the Clinton 2016 campaign.

    • Leaked email: Hillary Clinton told “radical environmentalists” to “get a life,” defended fracking and pipelines

      Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton condemned the “radical environmentalists” behind Bernie Sanders’ campaign, indicating they should “get a life,” according to a transcript of her comments at a September 2015 meeting with a construction union.

      Clinton also reaffirmed her support for fracking and pipelines and made it clear that her opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline was a calculated political move.

      The transcript was included in an email to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta released this week in a trove of documents by the whistleblowing journalism organization WikiLeaks.

      “You know from my perspective, this is just one of these issues,” Clinton said of the Keystone XL pipeline at the meeting. “It’s symbolic and it’s not going to go away.”

      “They’re all hanging on to it,” she continued. “So you know Bernie Sanders is getting lots of support from the most radical environmentalists because he’s out there every day bashing the Keystone pipeline.”

    • WikiLeaks Reveals DNC Elevated Trump to Help Clinton

      In June 2015, Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign.

      According to an email from Marissa Astor, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook’s assistant, to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, the campaign knew Trump was going to run, and pushed his legitimacy as a candidate. WikiLeaks’ release shows that it was seen as in Clinton’s best interest to run against Trump in the general election. The memo, sent to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) also reveals the DNC and Clinton campaign were strategizing on behalf of their candidate at the very beginning of the primaries. “We think our goals mirror those of the DNC,” stated the memo, attached to the email under the title “muddying the waters.”

      The memo named Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson as wanted candidates. “We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to them seriously,” the memo noted.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Freedom Of Expression Under Attack, Says UN Special Rapporteur

      Governments worldwide are engaging in censorship and punishing those who report or post opinions, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, says in a report on the widespread global assault on the freedom of expression to be presented to the UN General Assembly today.

    • Tripura: No magisterial-level interference in media censorship and news dissimination

      According to the video footage, Jhumu Sarkar, Barjala candidate fielded by the ruling party was seen fighting with females in drunken condition. The incident occurred at Lankamura on October 12 centering immersion of Durga idol.

      After that, the TV channel was censored in visuals for few minutes. The by-elections in Barjala seat and Khowai seat would be held on November 19. Results of the elections would be declared on November 22.

    • Blocking of RT Accounts in UK is ‘Censorship and Example of Double Standards’

      RT’s Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said Monday that the international broadcaster’s accounts had been blocked in the United Kingdom. RT UK said it had been informed by NatWest that its banking arrangements with RT were null and void.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Google’s ad tracking is as creepy as Facebook’s. Here’s how to disable it

      Google has changed the way it tracks users across the internet so that it can now link people’s personally identifiable information from Gmail, YouTube and other accounts with their browsing records across the web. The company had previously pledged to keep these two data sets separate to protect individuals’ privacy.

      As first reported by Propublica, Google quietly updated its privacy settings in June to delete a clause that said “we will not combine DoubleClick cookie information with personally identifiable information unless we have your opt-in consent”.

      DoubleClick is an advertising serving and tracking company that Google bought in 2007. DoubleClick uses web cookies to track browsing behaviour online by their IP address to deliver targeted ads. It can make a good guess about your location and habits, but it doesn’t know your true identity.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • S’pore prison to look into alleged abuse of jailed blogger Amos Yee

      Singapore prison authorities said today that investigations are being launched into allegations that jailed teenage blogger Amos Yee has been assaulted by prison inmates.

      Yee began a six-week jail term on Sept 29 after he pleaded guilty to six charges of wounding the religious feelings of Muslims and Christians, through comments made on social media.

      But on Wednesday a Facebook post from the activist group Community Action Network (CAN) said that the group had been informed that Yee had been threatened, slapped and kicked by inmates.

      In a statement to dpa, the Singapore Prisons Service confirmed they were “aware” of the allegations made by Amos Yee, emphasising that the prison is committed to inmate safety and security.

    • Actress Shailene Woodley Reveals She Was Strip-Searched After Her Arrest Protesting Dakota Pipeline

      Actress Shailene Woodley pleaded not guilty on charges related to the resistance to the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline on Wednesday. She was arrested along with 27 others in North Dakota on October 10 during actions to mark Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Woodley was strip-searched and then put in an orange jump suit in the Morton County jail, which appears to be a common practice even for low-level misdemeanor charges. Woodley told Democracy Now!, “Never did it cross my mind that while trying to protect clean water, trying to ensure a future where our children have access to an element essential for human survival, would I be strip-searched. I was just shocked.” Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chair Dave Archambault II and others have also been strip-searched after being arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience against the pipeline.

    • FBI Director: We Need More Data On Police Shootings So Law Enforcement Can ‘Change The Narrative’

      FBI Director James Comey didn’t dig into his bag of “Ferguson Effect” rhetorical devices during his comments to a law enforcement conference on Sunday, but he came close. Under that theory, the possibility of being held accountable by citizens and their recording devices has apparently been holding officers back from enforcing laws, making arrests, or otherwise earning their paychecks.

      The problem now is a lack of data, Comey claims. Law enforcement has lost control of the narrative, he stated, as if a one-sided portrayal of every police use of excessive/deadly force was somehow beneficial to the nation.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • FTC Warns AT&T Court Victory On Throttling Could Screw Consumers For Decades

      AT&T stopped selling unlimited wireless data plans back in 2011, and instead started pushing more expensive capped and metered plans. Existing unlimited users at the time were “grandfathered,” but AT&T went out of its way to make life as unpleasant as possible for these users, ranging from blocking them from using Facetime unless they subscribed to metered plans, to throttling these “unlimited” users after only consuming a few gigabytes of data. Ultimately AT&T faced a $100 million fine by the FCC (currently being contested by AT&T), and a 2014 lawsuit by the FTC for misleading consumers and dramatically changing the terms of service while users were under contract.

10.21.16

Links 21/10/2016: MPV 0.21, Mad Max for GNU/Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 10:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Top 8 Linux Distributions Of 2016

      There are quite a number of linux distribution out there and new ones are being added as the days go by. This means picking a distro amongst the lot becomes quite a difficulty. Luckily for you, I have hand-picked the best linux distributions in 2016 for you. These are the top distributions targeting very different uses and users and I bet at least one is going to appeal to you. So let’s get started.

    • Patten: How to exorcise Windows from your old computer

      You may have heard of Linux (also known as GNU/Linux), but only as something that hackers use. It has a reputation for being unwieldy and hard. That reputation is deserved … sometimes.

      But anyone can learn it. And if it’s good enough for Barbie, it should be good enough for you.

      The best part: It’s free, free, free.

      Linux is actually a kind of operating system, just as a mammal is a kind of animal. Linux systems are all similar or identical at the core (also known as the kernel). But they come in a lot of varieties, or distros. (Fun fact: Much of the Android operating system is based on Linux.)

      The hard part about Linux isn’t learning. It’s choosing.

  • Server

    • Docker: Making the Internet Programmable

      Docker, and containers in general, are hot technologies that have been getting quite a bit of attention over the past few years. Even Solomon Hykes, Founder, CTO, and Chief Product Officer at Docker started his keynote with the assumption that people attending LinuxCon Europe know that Docker does containers, so instead of focusing on what Docker does, Hykes used his time to talk about Docker’s purpose saying, “It really boils down to one small sentence. We’re trying to make the Internet programmable.”

      Hykes described this idea of making the Internet programmable with three key points. First, they are focused on building “tools of mass innovation” designed to allow people to create and innovate on a very large scale. Second, applications and cloud services are allowing the idea of the Internet as a programmable platform to be realized, and they want to make this accessible to more people. Third, they are accomplishing all of this by building the Docker stack with open standards, open infrastructure, and a development platform with commercial products on top of the stack.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 4.8.3

      I’m announcing the release of the 4.8.3 kernel.

      All users of the 4.8 kernel series must upgrade.

      The updated 4.8.y git tree can be found at:
      git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.8.y
      and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:

      http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st…

    • Linux 4.7.9
    • Linux 4.4.26
    • Intel Turbo Boost Max 3.0 Patches Updated For Linux 4.9

      Intel has updated its currently out-of-tree Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 patches for compatibility against the Linux 4.9-rc1 kernel plus made other improvements to the code.

      These patches have been worked on the past few months after Intel PR initially claimed no TBM 3.0 Linux support. The patches have gone through several public revisions but sadly didn’t make it for integration into the mainline Linux 4.9 kernel.

    • Linux 4.9 Is Showing A Performance Boost On More Systems

      Earlier this week I posted some benchmarks of a Core i7 6800K Broadwell-E system seeing performance boosts under Linux 4.9 and it turns out it’s looking more widespread than just affecting a niche system or two. When testing a more traditional Intel Haswell desktop, Linux 4.9 Git is seeing more wins over Linux 4.8 and 4.7 kernels.

      Following that earlier 4.9 Git benchmarking I set out to do a fairly large Linux kernel comparison on a Haswell system to go back three or so years worth of kernel releases. That big kernel comparison will be finished up and posted in the days ahead, but already from this Core i7 4790K Devil’s Canyon system I am seeing some performance improvements with 4.9 Git to share over 4.7.0 and 4.8.0 stock kernels…

    • Linux Foundation Welcomes JavaScript Community

      Kris Borchers, executive director of the foundation, announced the news, saying that the JavaScript Foundation aims “to support a vast array of technologies that complement projects throughout the entire JavaScript ecosystem.”

      This includes both client and server side application libraries, mobile application testing frameworks, and JavaScript engines.

      All jQuery Foundation projects will also be united within the JS Foundation including jQuery, Lodash, ESLint, Esprima, Grunt, RequireJS, jQuery UI, Globalize, Sizzle, Jed, and Dojo.

    • Kernel 4.4.25 Has Been Released

    • Graphics Stack

    • Benchmarks

      • How to benchmark your Linux system

        The Software Center list will also include individual tests. These can be fine to use, but they can be tedious to open and configure manually. Keep your eye out for an entry called Phoronix Test Suite, or PTS for short. The Phoronix Test Suite is a powerful program that can run a single test, or an entire battery. PTS offers some built-in suites (collection of tests), or you can design your own suite. When tests are completed, you can choose to upload the test results to openbenchmarking.org, where other users can see your results and even run the exact same tests on their PC.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Leslie Zhai Talks 20 Years of KDE in China

        In 2002, as a computer science major university student, I went to a Legal Authoried software store in Wuhan, Guangputun, and bought Redhat7 including four install CDs, three src.rpm CDs and a very exquisite user manual for only RMB 50, because other software for Windows 98 was too expensive to a univerty student! It was my first time to use KDE 3. Yes I chose KDE as my default desktop enviroment, but I tried GNOME of course. Wink Then I tried to migrate my university’s course assignment developed in Turbo C to compile with GCC. I used Konsole and VIM to edit my source code, I tried Emacs but I did not know how to make coffee with it, so I switched to VIM Wink and my teachers switched to use Redhat8 instead of Windows 98 when teaching operating system courses.

      • Choose Your Own Experience in Plasma 5.8 and beyond

        One of the key points of Plasma is while giving a simple default desktop experience, not limiting the user to that single, pre-packed one size fits all UI.

      • KDevelop 5.0.2 released for Windows and Linux

        Four weeks after the release of KDevelop 5.0.1, we are happy to announce the availability of KDevelop 5.0.2, a second stabilization release in the 5.0 series. We highly recommend to update to version 5.0.2 if you are currently using version 5.0.1 or 5.0.0.

      • Wayland improvements since Plasma 5.8 release

        Two weeks have passed since the Plasma 5.8 release and our Wayland efforts have seen quite some improvements. Some changes went into Plasma 5.8 as bug fixes, some changes are only available in master for the next release. With this blog post I want to highlight what we have improved since Plasma 5.8.

      • Wayland For KDE Plasma 5.9 Should Shape Up Quite Nicely

        Plasma 5.8 was only released at the beginning of October but already there has been a number of Wayland improvements queuing up for the next milestone, Plasma 5.9.

        KWin maintainer Martin Gräßlin wrote a blog post yesterday about some of the early Wayland changes coming for Plasma 5.9. Some of this early work for the next KDE Plasma 5 release includes resize-only borders, global shortcut handling, support for keyboard LEDs via libinput, relative pointer support, the color scheme syncing to the window decoration, window icon improvements, multi-screen improvements, panel imporvements, and more.

      • Autumn Sale in the Krita Shop

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME at Linux Install Fest

        It’s an event organized in order to help first year students install a Linux distro on their laptops (here at our uni, we work almost entirely on Linux, so we need to help those that have never used it and set up their distros🙂 ).

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • Highlights of YaST development sprint 26

        One of the main reasons to adopt Scrum was to ensure we make a good use of our development resources (i.e. developers’ time and brains) focusing on things that bring more value to our users. In the past we had the feeling that many important things were always postponed because the developers were flooded by other not so important stuff. Now that feeling is gone (to a great extent) and we have a more clear and shared view of the direction of our development efforts.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Debian-Based Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15 “Nev” Gets First Test Build, Ships GNOME 3.22

          Today, October 21, 2016, the developers of the Debian-based Parsix GNU/Linux operating system proudly announced the availability for download of the first test build of the upcoming Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15 “Nev” release.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Turns 12, Happy Birthday!

            Today, October 20, 2016, is Ubuntu’s birthday! Its 12th anniversary since the release of the first Ubuntu version, namely Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog), which was originally announced by Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth on the 20th of October 2004.

          • Celebrating 12 years of Ubuntu

            Founder Mark Shuttleworth announced the first public release of Ubuntu – version 4.10, or “Warty Warthog” – on Oct. 20, 2004. The idea behind what would become the most recognizable and widely used Linux distributions ever was simple – create a Linux operating system that anybody could use. Here’s a look back at Ubuntu’s history.

          • Happy 12th Birthday, Ubuntu!

            Yup, it’s twelve years to the day since Mark Shuttleworth sat down to tap out the first Ubuntu release announcement and herald in an era of “Linux for human beings”.

          • A Slice of Ubuntu

            The de facto standard for Raspberry Pi operating systems is Raspbian–a Debian based distribution specifically for the diminutive computer. Of course, you have multiple choices and there might not be one best choice for every situation. It did catch our eye, however, that the RaspEX project released a workable Ubunutu 16.10 release for the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3.

            RaspEX is a full Linux Desktop system with LXDE (a lightweight desktop environment) and many other useful programs. Firefox, Samba, and VNC4Server are present. You can use the Ubuntu repositories to install anything else you want. The system uses kernel 4.4.21. You can see a review of a much older version of RaspEX in the video below.

          • Download Ubuntu Yakkety Yak 16.10 wallpaper

            The Yakkety Yak 16.10 is released and now you can download the new wallpaper by clicking here. It’s the latest part of the set for the Ubuntu 2016 releases following Xenial Xerus. You can read about our wallpaper visual design process here.

          • Live kernel patching from Canonical now available for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

            We are delighted to announce the availability of a new service for Ubuntu which any user can enable on their current installations – the Canonical Livepatch Service.

            This new live kernel patching service can be used on any Ubuntu 16.04 LTS system (using the generic Linux 4.4 kernel) to minimise unplanned downtime and maintain the highest levels of security.

          • How to enable free ‘Canonical Livepatch Service’ for Linux kernel live-patching on Ubuntu

            Linux 4.0 introduced a wonderful feature for those that need insane up-time — the ability to patch the kernel without rebooting the machine. While this is vital for servers, it can be beneficial to workstation users too. Believe it or not, some home users covet long up-time simply for fun — bragging rights, and such.

            If you are an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS user (with generic Linux kernel 4.4) and you want to take advantage of this exciting feature, I have good news — it is now conveniently available for free! Unfortunately, this all-new Canonical Livepatch Service does have a catch — it is limited to three machines per user. Of course, home users can register as many email addresses as they want, so it is easy to get more if needed. Businesses can pay for additional machines through Ubuntu Advantage. Want to give it a go? Read on.

            “Since the release of the Linux 4.0 kernel about 18 months ago, users have been able to patch and update their kernel packages without rebooting. However, until now, no other Linux distribution has offered this feature for free to their users. That changes today with the release of the Canonical Livepatch Service”, says Tom Callway, Director of Cloud Marketing, Canonical.

          • KernelCare Is Another Alternative To Canonical’s Ubuntu Live Kernel Patching

            Earlier this week Canonical announced their Kernel Livepatching Service for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS users. Canonical’s service is free for under three systems while another alternative for Ubuntu Linux users interested in a commercial service is CloudLinux’s KernelCare.

            The folks from CloudLinux wrote in to remind us of their kernel patching solution, which they’ve been offering since 2014 and believe is a superior solution to Canonical’s service. KernelCare isn’t limited to just Ubuntu 16.04 but also works with Ubuntu 14.04 and other distributions such as CentOS/RHEL, Debian, and other enterprise Linux distributions.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Exclusive: Blockchain platform developed by banks to be open-source

    A blockchain platform developed by a group that includes more than 70 of the world’s biggest financial institutions is making its code publicly available, in what could become the industry standard for the nascent technology.

    The Corda platform has been developed by a consortium brought together by New-York-based financial technology company R3. It represents the biggest shared effort among banks, insurers, fund managers and other players to work on using blockchain technology in the financial markets.

  • European banks risk lagging Wall Street in blockchain race
  • Report: R3′s Banking Blockchain Software is Going Open Source
  • Major Banks Take First Steps Towards Creating Industry Standards For Blockchain Technology
  • ‘Disputive’ blockchain technology set to be co-opted by banks
  • Google’s Open Source Report Card Highlights Game-Changing Contributions

    Ask people about Google’s relationship to open source, and many of them will point to Android and Chrome OS — both very successful operating systems and both based on Linux. Android, in particular, remains one of the biggest home runs in open source history. But, as Josh Simmons from Google’s Open Source Programs Office will tell you, Google also contributes a slew of useful open source tools and programs to the community each year. Now, Google has issued its very first “Open Source Report Card,” as announced by Simmons on the Google Open Source Blog.

    “We’re sharing our first Open Source Report Card, highlighting our most popular projects, sharing a few statistics and detailing some of the projects we’ve released in 2016. We’ve open sourced over 20 million lines of code to date and you can find a listing of some of our best known project releases on our website,” said Simmons.

  • Events

    • LatinoWare

      Yesterday, Wednesday 19 oct, was the first day of LatinoWare thirteen edition hosted in the city of Foz do Iguaçu in Parana state with presence of 5155 participants and temperature of 36ºC. Currently this is the biggest event of free software in Brazil.

    • Attending a FUDcon LATAM 2016

      From my experience I will share my days at FUDcon 2016 held on Puno last week. There were 3 core days, and 2 more days to visit around.

    • FOSDEM Desktops DevRoom 2016 all for Participation

      FOSDEM is one of the largest (5,000+ hackers!) gatherings of Free Software contributors in the world and happens each February in Brussels (Belgium, Europe).

      Once again, one of the tracks will be the Desktops DevRoom (formerly known as “CrossDesktop DevRoom”), which will host Desktop-related talks.

      We are now inviting proposals for talks about Free/Libre/Open-source Software on the topics of Desktop development, Desktop applications and interoperability amongst Desktop Environments. This is a unique opportunity to show novel ideas and developments to a wide technical audience.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Nino Vranešič: Open Source Advocate and Mozilla Rep in Slovenia

        “My name is Nino Vranešič and I am connecting IT and Society,” is what Nino says about himself on LinkedIn. The video is a little hard to understand in places due to language differences and (we think) a slow or low-bandwidth connection between the U.S.-based Zoom servers and Eastern Europe, a problem that crops up now and then in video conversation and VOIP phone calls with people in that part of the world, no matter what service you choose. But Vranešič is worth a little extra effort to hear, because it’s great to learn that open source is being used in lots of government agencies, not only in Slovenia but all over Europe. And aside from this, Vranešič himself is a tres cool dude who is an ardent open source volunteer (“Mozilla Rep” is an unpaid volunteer position), and I hope I have a chance to meet him F2F next time he comes to a conference in Florida — and maybe you’ll have a chance to meet him if he comes to a conference near you.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Mirantis and NTT Com Double Down on OpenStack

      Mirantis continues to drive forward with new partnerships focused on the OpenStack cloud computing platform. The company and NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com) have announced that they will partner to offer fully managed Private OpenStack as a service in NTT Com Enterprise Cloud and its data center services across the globe. NTT Com, in becoming Mirantis’ first data center services partner, says it will offer Mirantis Managed OpenStack on NTT Com Enterprise Cloud’s Metal-as-a-Service.

    • Using metrics effectively in OpenStack development

      At the OpenStack summit taking place this month in Barcelona, Ildikó Váncsa will be speaking on metrics in her talk Metrics: Friends or Enemies? She will discuss OpenStack metrics and how they can be used in software development processes, both for the individual developer and manager.

      I caught up with Ildikó before her talk to learn more about how metrics in OpenStack help guide developers and companies, and how they also drive evolution of the OpenStack community itself.

  • Databases

    • MySQL and database programming for beginners

      Dave Stokes has been using MySQL for more than 15 years and has served as its community manager since 2010. At All Things Open this year, he’ll give a talk about database programming for newbies with MySQL.

      In this interview, he previews his talk and shares a few helpful resources, required skills, and common problems MySQL beginners run into.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

    • Nadella’s trust talk is just so much hot air

      Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella appears to have an incredibly short memory. Else he would be the last person who talks about trust being the most pressing issue in tech in our times.

      Over the last year, we have been treated to a variety of cheap tricks by Microsoft, attempting to hoodwink Windows users left, right and centre in order to get them to upgrade to Windows 10. After that, talking about trust sounds odd. Very odd.

      Microsoft does not have the best reputation among tech companies. It is known for predatory practices, for being convicted as a monopolist, and in recent times has been trying to cultivate a softer image as a company that is not as rapacious as it once was.

      That has, in large measure, come about as its influence and rank in the world of computing have both slipped, with other companies like Apple, Facebook and Google coming to dominate.

  • BSD

  • Public Services/Government

    • Open source where possible in Polish Gdańsk

      The city of Gdańsk, Poland’s sixth largest city, is using open source software applications where possible. Open source is called an ‘important element’ in the Operational Programmes, made public in August. This document describes the tasks and activities set out by the city to achieve the goals it defined in the Gdańsk 2030 Plus Development Strategy.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Ranking the Web With Radical Transparency

      Ranking every URL on the web in a transparent and reproducible way is a core concept of the Common Search project, says Sylvain Zimmer, who will be speaking at the upcoming Apache: Big Data Europe conference in Seville, Spain.

      The web has become a critical resource for humanity, and search engines are its arbiters, Zimmer says. However, the only search engines currently available are for-profit entities, so the Common Search project is creating a nonprofit engine that is open, transparent, and independent.

      We spoke with Zimmer, who founded Jamendo, dotConferences, and Common Search, to learn more about why nonprofit search engines are important, why Apache Spark is such a great match for the job, and some of the challenges the project faces.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

  • Programming/Development

Leftovers

  • What You Should Know About Ken Bone

    Photoshops, memes, witty comments, retweets, offhanded references … and now, for some reason, his sexual fetishes are making national news.

  • Come On Elon! Tesla Stupidly Bans Owners From Using Self-Driving Teslas For Uber

    We’ve talked a lot about the end of ownership society, in which companies are increasingly using copyright and other laws to effectively end ownership — where they put in place restrictions on the things you thought you bought. This is bad for a whole variety of reasons, and now it’s especially disappointing to see that Tesla appears to be jumping on the bandwagon as well. The company is releasing its latest, much more high powered, version of autonomous self-driving car technology — but has put in place a clause that bars Tesla owners from using the self-driving car for any competing car hailing service, like Uber or Lyft. This is not for safety/liability reasons, but because Tesla is also trying to build an Uber competitor.

    We wrote about this a few months ago, and actually think it’s a pretty cool idea. Part of the point is that it effectively will make Tesla ownership cheaper for those who want it, because they can lease it out for use at times when they’re not using it. So your car can make money for you while you work or sleep or whatever. That’s a cool idea.

  • Science

    • Artificial intelligence could be the greatest disaster in human history

      Stephen Hawking has warned artificial intelligence could be the greatest disaster in human history if it is not properly managed.

      The world famous physicist said AI could bring about serious peril in the creation of powerful autonomous weapons and novel ways for those in power to oppress and control the masses.

      Hawking suggested AI could be the last event in the history of our civilisation if humanity did not learn to cope with the risks it posed.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • UNICEF Tender Allows Gavi To Supply Vaccines For Millions Of Children

      Gavi, the vaccine alliance, announced yesterday that a UNICEF pentavalent vaccine tender will secure sufficient supplies for the next three years to protect millions of children in Gavi-supported and transitioning countries.

      According to a Gavi press release, pentavalent vaccine will be accessible from a broad base of manufacturers at less than US$1: half this year’s average price.

      Pentavalent vaccine protects against five major infections in one shot: diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), according to Gavi.

    • Flint Water Panel Calls for New Emergency Management Rules

      Michigan should consider abandoning its one-person emergency management structure and instead install a team of three experts when deficit-ridden municipalities and school districts fall under state control, according to a report released Wednesday by a legislative committee that investigated Flint’s lead-tainted water crisis.

      Nine current or former government workers have been criminally charged since doctors detected elevated levels of lead in some children due to the discolored and smelly water supply in the impoverished city of nearly 100,000.

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Thursday
    • More information about Dirty COW (aka CVE-2016-5195)

      The security hole fixed in the stable kernels released today has been dubbed Dirty COW (CVE-2016-5195) by a site devoted to the kernel privilege escalation vulnerability. There is some indication that it is being exploited in the wild. Ars Technica has some additional information. The Red Hat bugzilla entry and advisory are worth looking at as well.

    • New Debian Linux Kernel Update Addresses “Dirty COW” Bug, Three Security Issues
    • CVE-2016-5195

      My prior post showed my research from earlier in the year at the 2016 Linux Security Summit on kernel security flaw lifetimes. Now that CVE-2016-5195 is public, here are updated graphs and statistics. Due to their rarity, the Critical bug average has now jumped from 3.3 years to 5.2 years. There aren’t many, but, as I mentioned, they still exist, whether you know about them or not. CVE-2016-5195 was sitting on everyone’s machine when I gave my LSS talk, and there are still other flaws on all our Linux machines right now. (And, I should note, this problem is not unique to Linux.) Dealing with knowing that there are always going to be bugs present requires proactive kernel self-protection (to minimize the effects of possible flaws) and vendors dedicated to updating their devices regularly and quickly (to keep the exposure window minimized once a flaw is widely known).

    • “Most serious” Linux privilege-escalation bug ever is under active exploit (updated)

      While CVE-2016-5195, as the bug is cataloged, amounts to a mere privilege-escalation vulnerability rather than a more serious code-execution vulnerability, there are several reasons many researchers are taking it extremely seriously. For one thing, it’s not hard to develop exploits that work reliably. For another, the flaw is located in a section of the Linux kernel that’s a part of virtually every distribution of the open-source OS released for almost a decade. What’s more, researchers have discovered attack code that indicates the vulnerability is being actively and maliciously exploited in the wild.

    • Linux Kernels 4.8.3, 4.7.9 & 4.4.26 LTS Out to Patch “Dirty COW” Security Flaw

      Today, October 20, 2016, Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced three new maintenance updates for the Linux 4.8, 4.7, and 4.4 LTS kernel series, patching a major security vulnerability.

      Known as “Dirty COW,” the Linux kernel vulnerability documented at CVE-2016-5195 is, in fact, a nasty bug that could have allowed local users to write to any file they can read. The worst part is that the security flaw was present in various Linux kernel builds since at least the Linux 2.6.x series, which reached end of life in February this year.

    • Canonical Patches Ancient “Dirty COW” Kernel Bug in All Supported Ubuntu OSes

      As reported earlier, three new Linux kernel maintenance releases arrived for various Linux-based operating systems, patching a critical and ancient bug popularly known as “Dirty COW.”

      We already told you that the kernel vulnerability could be used by a local attacker to run programs as an administrator, and it looks like it also affects all supported Ubuntu releases, including Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak), Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr), and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin), as well as all of their official or unofficial derivatives running the same kernel builds.

    • Linux users urged to protect against ‘Dirty COW’ security flaw

      Organisations and individuals have been urged to patch Linux servers immediately or risk falling victim to exploits for a Linux kernel security flaw dubbed ‘Dirty COW’.

      This follows a warning from open source software vendor Red Hat that the flaw is being exploited in the wild.

      Phil Oester, the Linux security researcher who uncovered the flaw, explained to V3 that the exploit is easy to execute and will almost certainly become more widely used.

      “The exploit in the wild is trivial to execute, never fails and has probably been around for years – the version I obtained was compiled with gcc 4.8,” he said.

    • Dirty Cow, Ubuntu @ 12, Save a Penguin

      Dirty Cow is a local privilege vulnerability that can allow one to gain root access. Specifically, “race condition was found in the way the Linux kernel’s memory subsystem handled the copy-on-write (COW) breakage of private read-only memory mappings. An unprivileged local user could use this flaw to gain write access to otherwise read-only memory mappings and thus increase their privileges on the system.” Linus signed off and pushed the patch to git a few days ago and distributions are currently updating their products. This is considered a critical bug and users are encouraged to update as soon as possible because researchers have found code in the wild to exploit it. Worse still, the exploit leaves little or no trace of being compromised. So, keep an eye on your update applets or security advisories over the next few days. Since this bug has been in existence for so long, Kees Cook had to revise his critical bug lifetime average from 3.3 to 5.2 years, while the overall average for all bugs increased only slightly.

    • Hackers Hit U.S. Senate GOP Committee

      The national news media has been consumed of late with reports of Russian hackers breaking into networks of the Democratic National Committee. Lest the Republicans feel left out of all the excitement, a report this past week out of The Netherlands suggests Russian hackers have for the past six months been siphoning credit card data from visitors to the Web storefront of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).

      [...]

      Dataflow markets itself as an “offshore” hosting provider with presences in Belize and The Seychelles. Dataflow has long been advertised on Russian-language cybercrime forums as an offshore haven that offers so-called “bulletproof hosting,” a phrase used to describe hosting firms that court all manner of sites that most legitimate hosting firms shun, including those that knowingly host spam and phishing sites as well as malicious software.

      De Groot published a list of the sites currently present at Dataflow. The list speaks for itself as a collection of badness, including quite a number of Russian-language sites selling synthetic drugs and stolen credit card data.

      According to De Groot, other sites that were retrofitted with the malware included e-commerce sites for the shoe maker Converse as well as the automaker Audi, although he says those sites and the NRSC’s have been scrubbed of the malicious software since his report was published.

      But De Groot said the hackers behind this scheme are continuing to find new sites to compromise.

      “Last Monday my scans found about 5,900 hacked sites,” he said. “When I did another scan two days later, I found about 340 of those had been fixed, but that another 170 were newly compromised.”

    • Thoughts on the BTB Paper

      The Branch Target Buffer (BTB) whitepaper presents some interesting information. It details potential side-channel attacks by utilizing timing attacks against the branch prediction hardware present in Intel Haswell processors. The article does not mention Intel processors later than Haswell, such as Broadwell or Skylake.

      Side-channel attacks are always interesting and fun. Indeed, the authors have stumbled into areas that need more research. Their research can be applicable in certain circumstances.

      As a side-note, KASLR in general is rather weak and can be considered a waste of time[1]. The discussion why is outside the scope of this article.

    • Donald Trump running insecure email servers

      In addition, Beaumont said he’d found that emails from the Trump Organization failed to support two-factor authentication. That’s particularly bad because the Trump Organization’s web-based email access page relies on an outdated March 2015 build of Microsoft Exchange 2007, he says. “Windows Server 2003, IIS 6 and Exchange 2003 went end of life years ago. There are no security fixes. They don’t have basics down,” the UK based researcher concludes.

    • Video: Endgame, Live from Grace Hopper 2016 [Ed: covers voting security]

      Andrea Limbago is interviewed by the CUBE at the Grace Hoper Celebration 2016 conference. She covers a number of interesting topics and I thought it was worth sharing. Enjoy!

    • Stable Linux Kernel Updates Roll Out To Address “Dirty COW” CVE
    • Dirty COW explained: Get a moooo-ve on and patch Linux root hole [Ed: If there was no branding, logo and Web site would it be news?]
    • Dirty COW: Linux kernel security flaw bypasses antivirus software
    • Warnings over Dirty Cow Linux bug [Ed: BBC found something negative to say about Linux so even a local privilege-escalation bug is “news”]
    • ‘Dirty Cow’ Linux vulnerability found after nine years [Ed: Wow, finally. The Guardian covers “Linux”… Couldn’t get the BBC and The Gurdian to cover Linux even when this kernel turned 25, but some old bug is major news? Shame. Both publications are Bill Gates-funded.]
    • “Dirty COW” Is The Most Dangerous Linux Privilege-escalation Bug Ever, Experts Say
    • Attackers exploit ancient ‘Dirty COW’ kernel flaw [Ed: My assessment: A CVE hyped up as “Dirty COW” is a lot more hype and fear-mongering than it ought to be. Pure marketing almost…]
    • Dirty COW Linux vulnerability – what you need to know
    • A serious Linux privilege-escalation bug has been in the wild for nine years
    • Linux Kernel Zero-Day CVE-2016-5195 Patched After Being Deployed in Live Attacks
    • ‘Dirty COW’ Linux kernel security vulnerability being exploited in the wild, warns Red Hat
    • The NyaDrop Trojan for Linux-running IoT Devices
    • Flaw resides in BTB helps bypass ASLR
    • Thoughts on the BTB Paper

      Though the attack might have some merits with regards to KASLR, the attack on ASLR is completely debunked. The authors of the paper didn’t release any supporting code or steps for independent analysis and verification. The results, therefore, cannot be trusted until the authors fully open source their work and the work is validated by trusted and independent third parties.

    • Spreading the DDoS Disease and Selling the Cure

      Earlier this month a hacker released the source code for Mirai, a malware strain that was used to launch a historically large 620 Gbps denial-of-service attack against this site in September. That attack came in apparent retribution for a story here which directly preceded the arrest of two Israeli men for allegedly running an online attack for hire service called vDOS. Turns out, the site where the Mirai source code was leaked had some very interesting things in common with the place vDOS called home.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Channel 4 News defends Facebook live stream of battle for Mosul

      Channel 4 News has defended its decision to live stream a conflict for the first time amid concerns over the dangers of watching the battle for Mosul on a Facebook live feed.

      The publicly owned broadcaster joined other TV stations including Al-Jazeera and Rudaw, the Kurdish news agency that provided the content, to live stream the advance of Iraqi troops and Kurdish fighters into Mosul, Islamic State’s last major stronghold in Iraq.

      Watched more than 500,000 times by lunchtime on Tuesday, the Channel 4 News feed prompted a mixed response with several users questioning the appropriateness of “liking” and pasting emojis on scenes of potential devastation.

    • US marines to establish Norway ‘base’ by January

      The US Marine Corps is to establish a new base in northern Norway as early as January, as Nato forces work to improve their ability respond rapidly to potential Russian aggression
      Maj. Gen. Niel E. Nelson, commander of US Marine Forces in Europe and Africa, told US broadcaster CNN that the new marine base was under discussion with the Norwegian government.

      “We enjoy a very close relationship with the Norwegian Armed Forces and a limited rotational presence in Norway would certainly enhance this relationship and our ability to operate together,” he said in a statement

    • Let’s Rethink What ‘Leadership’ Means in Foreign Policy

      As a retired lieutenant colonel for the U.S. Army, I want to be positive. Even when I’ve identified major conceptual and practical failures in the conduct of American foreign and military policy, I’ve suggested alternatives that could improve the situation. But when looking at the state of our foreign policy in this moment, and given how entrenched the foreign-policy elite in Washington has become, a rational optimism is getting more and more difficult to find.

      In practice, the current administration tries to keep a lid on problems by applying limited military power—at least regarding troop levels—over large sections of the globe. These military operations are tactical in nature, designed to achieve small-scale results, without the consideration of how or even whether they support some larger strategic objective.

    • Agencies Found to Be Ignoring IGs to the Tune of $87 Billion

      Federal agencies are wasting $87 billion by failing to implement more than 15,000 inspector general recommendations, according to a new report released by Republican senators.

      Many of the proposals have been floated for more than 10 years, wrote Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in their findings. The lawmakers and their staffs compiled the data over the last year from 72 different inspectors general at federal agencies governmentwide, and issued the final document without Democratic input.

    • Washington’s foreign policy elite breaks with Obama over Syrian bloodshed

      There is one corner of Washington where Donald Trump’s scorched-earth presidential campaign is treated as a mere distraction and where bipartisanship reigns. In the rarefied world of the Washington foreign policy establishment, President Obama’s departure from the White House — and the possible return of a more conventional and hawkish Hillary Clinton — is being met with quiet relief.

      The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American foreign policy, via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House.

    • Clinton’s “Incredibly Dangerous” Nuclear Brinkmanship

      Rowley, a former FBI special agent and division counsel whose May 2002 memo to the FBI Director exposed some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures was named one of TIME magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. She said today: “Clinton is engaging in incredibly dangerous brinkmanship with a nuclear superpower but at the same time, trying to lull the public into complacency about the danger she intends to place them in. Last night, she again pledged she would, after being elected, institute a ‘no-fly zone’ and ‘safe zones’ over Syria but she evaded answering the debate moderator’s direct question as to whether she would give the order to shoot down Russian aircraft over Syria. Her evasive response was directly at odds with the recent assessment of General Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in testimony to Congress (as well as earlier assessments from former Chief Martin Dempsey and other top generals) that establishing a ‘no-fly zone’ would almost certainly mean war with Syria (and Russia).

      “In addition, Clinton mischaracterized what the intelligence agencies are saying about the emails to/from her campaign chief of staff, John Podesta, that are being put out by WikiLeaks. She claimed they have come from ‘the highest levels of the Russian government, clearly, from Putin himself, in an effort, as 17 of our intelligence agencies have confirmed, to influence our election.’

      “In fact, a carefully crafted statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (James Clapper) was far less definitive, stating: ‘The recent disclosures … are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts.’ It’s also worth noting that this was not the conclusion of a National Intelligence Estimate, merely a statement from the ODNI and Department of Homeland Security.” [Note: Because of an editing error by IPA staff, this news release originally quoted the line from the ODNI statement: “However, we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government.” But that sentence was referring to “scanning and probing of … election-related systems” — not to the recent WikiLeaks disclosures. IPA regrets the error.]

      ELIZABETH MURRAY, emurray404[at]aol.com, @elizabethmurra
      Murray served as deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East in the National Intelligence Council before retiring after a 27-year career in the U.S. government, where she specialized in Middle Eastern political and media analysis. See her page at Consortium News, including “How U.S. Propaganda Fuels New Cold War” and “Seeking a Debate on ‘Regime Change’ Wars.”

    • ‘Time to say goodbye to US,’ Philippines’ Duterte proclaims on historic China visit

      It’s “time to say goodbye” to the United States, said Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte on a visit to China, where he and President Xi Jinping are turning the recently-frosty tide with bilateral agreements, while Washington now gets the cold shoulder.

      Duterte spoke to the press in Beijing on Wednesday, on the eve of talks with Xi. There was scant information about what was to come on Thursday, but Duterte’s conference coincided with talk of unprecedented agreements being written up – particularly the granting to the Philippines the use of Scarborough Shoal territories – a disputed resource-rich area in the South China Sea.

    • ‘The Promise:’ The Armenian Genocide Epic Kirk Kerkorian Spent a Fortune to Make

      “The Promise,” a sweeping historical romance starring Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale, is the kind of movie epic they just don’t make anymore. It’s a throwback to David Lean’s “Doctor Zhivago” and Warren Beatty’s “Reds,” movies that transposed big, emotional stories against a sprawling canvas, and tugged at the heartstrings while dealing with thorny political periods.

    • Finland: Russian propaganda questioning our validity risks destabilising country

      Finnish government communications chief Markku Mantila said his officials had observed a barrage of state-sponsored media attacks ahead of the country’s celebrations marking 100 years of independence from Russia

    • Pakistan bans Bollywood and Indian television as Kashmir dispute spills over into entertainment industry

      Pakistan is banning Bollywood films and all Indian programmes and music across the country’s television and radio networks amid heightened tensions with its neighbour in the disputed Kashmir region.

      The two countries have exchanged cross-border fire in recent weeks, after India blamed Pakistani forces for raid on one of its army bases that left 18 soldiers dead last month and responded with “surgical strikes”.

      Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, vowed that the attack would “not go unpunished”, while his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif denied his country’s forces were involved and condemned “the unprovoked and naked aggression of Indian forces”.

      The escalation has provoked international alarm, spilling over into the world of entertainment and celebrity in both countries.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • 4chan, Anonymous working to get Julian Assange working internet

      It’s been a rough week for WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange, who’s cooped up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London with no internet and, possibly, poisonous vegan meals trying to kill him.

      But members of 4chan and Anonymous are rallying together to get Assange the Wi-Fi he needs so that a good samaritan can stop reading him everything off of the internet.

      The plan, per a report by The Next Web, is called “Operation Hot Pockets” and involves members of the notorious internet gathering around the embassy, in shifts, to create wireless hotspots so Assange can, once again, access the internet to leak emails, update his Friendster account, and do whatever else he needs to do (Instacart?).

    • WikiLeaks claims sham U.S. firm is trying to smear Assange

      The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks is claiming that an elaborate and somewhat wacky smear campaign has targeted the group’s founder, Julian Assange, to paint him as a pedophile and Russian client.

      WikiLeaks said the smear efforts, which it’s outlined in tweets and a series of documents over the past two days, include a sham offer from the Russian government to pay Assange $1 million to promote a women’s dating site and a separate scheme to link Assange to a criminal case in the Bahamas.

      The assertions are the latest twist in events that have kept Assange and WikiLeaks at center stage of the presidential campaign. The smears come as WikiLeaks releases tens thousands of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and from the personal email account of campaign chairman John Podesta.

    • ‘We wouldn’t not publish Trump documents or suppress them, but we can only work with what we’ve got’

      Last Sunday, Sarah Harrison stayed up to watch the second US presidential election debate between Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican rival Donald Trump. The organisation she works for, WikiLeaks, got a special mention at the showdown.

      “Our intelligence community just came out and said, in the last few days, that the Kremlin… are directing attacks, are hacking American accounts to influence the election,” Clinton said. “WikiLeaks is part of that, as are other sites.”

      It’s an accusation that rankles a little bit with Harrison.

      “This sort of attack keeps coming against us,” she says. “She [Hillary Clinton] is basically saying that the US intelligence community has confirmed this. But in their statements they have used vague language like ‘it’s the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from the Russians’. There’s no proof it comes from the Russians. We operate on the basis of source anonymity. We don’t comment on sourcing.”

    • Former CIA Employee Sues Agency Over Its Refusal To Provide Documents In Electronic Form

      The CIA is still causing problems for Jeffrey Scudder. Scudder used to work for the CIA. He was forced out of the agency after making a FOIA request for “historical documents of long-dormant conflicts and operations” while still employed there. Perhaps the agency thought only citizens outside of the agency should be making FOIA requests. Or maybe it thought Scudder was engaged in a particularly labyrinthine plot to exfiltrate declassified documents out of the agency. Whatever its thought process, it resulted in an FBI raid of Scudder’s house, the seizure of his electronics, and the end of his career.

      Unfortunately for the CIA, this has given Scudder more time to file FOIA requests and sue the agency when it responds in increasingly ridiculous ways. Scudder has already tangled with the CIA over its refusal to join the 20th century (never mind the current one) when turning over responsive documents. His last major request to the agency asked for “softcopy” — i.e., not paper — copies of 419 articles from the CIA’s “Studies in Intelligence.”

      The CIA told him it had no way of providing him documents in the format he asked for. Instead, it claimed it only had one way to comply with the request: the stupidest, most circuitous way.

    • The Wikileaks Story Is Even More Dramatic Thanks to This Composer’s Auto-Tuned Opera

      In early 2010, a US Army intelligence analyst stationed in Iraq sent three quarters of a million military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks, a non-profit founded by Julian Assange dedicated to sharing official documents “alleging government and corporate misconduct,” according to their website. Private Bradley Manning, the analyst behind the biggest intelligence leak in US history, then confessed to his deed in an online chat with a known hacker named Adrian Lamo. In May of 2010, Lamo reported the confession to US Army counterintelligence, the chat logs were published by Wired.com, and by July of 2013, Private Manning had been charged by the US government with 22 offenses, including “aiding the enemy.” After pleading guilty to 10 of the charges and the trial finished on August 21st in 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

    • This Is Huge: New Project Releases All Current (Non-Confidential) Congressional Research Service Reports

      Going back nearly a decade, we’ve been talking about the ridiculousness of Congress refusing to publicly release reports from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). As we’ve discussed many times, CRS is an in-house think tank for Congress that is both famously non-partisan and actually really good at what they do. CRS reports tend to be really useful and highly credible (which is part of the reason why Congress isn’t a fan of letting them out into the public). Of course, as works of the federal government, CRS reports are in the public domain, but the way it’s always worked is that the reports are released only to members of Congress. These include both general reports on topics that are released to every member of Congress, or specific research tasked by a member for the CRS to investigate and create a new report. The members who receive the reports are able to release them to the public, and some do, but the vast majority of CRS work remains hidden from public view. For the most part, both CRS and Congress have resisted any attempt to change this. Going back decades, they’ve put together a mostly ridiculous list of reasons opposing plans to more widely distribute CRS reports.

      Some members of Congress keep introducing bills to make these public domain CRS reports actually available to the public. We’ve written about such attempts in 2011, 2012, 2015 and earlier this year. And each time they get shot down, often for completely ridiculous reasons, including the belief that making these reports public will somehow hurt CRS’s ability to continue to do good, non-partisan research.

      At times, different organizations and groups have taken up the cause themselves. Back in 2009, Wikileaks hit the jackpot and released nearly 7,000 such CRS reports. Steve Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists has been posting CRS reports to a public archive for quite some time. There’s also Antoine McGrath’s CRSReports.com and some other sites that all create archives of CRS reports that they’ve been able to collect from various sources.

    • Agents of influence: How reporters have been “weaponized” by leaks

      Since June, some entity has been releasing e-mails and electronic documents obtained via network intrusions and credential thefts of politicians and political party employees. Some of the releases have appeared on sites believed to be associated with Russian intelligence operations; others have appeared on Wikileaks. On occasion, the leaker has also engaged journalists directly, trying to have them publish information drawn from these documents—sometimes successfully, other times not.

      The US government has pinned at least some of the blame for these leaks on Russia. This has led some observers to argue that WikiLeaks and Russian intelligence agencies are “weaponizing” the media. This is what national security circles refer to as an “influence operation,” using reporters as tools to give credibility and cover to a narrative driven by another nation-state. The argument is that by willingly accepting leaked data, journalists have (wittingly or not) aided the leaker’s cause. As such, they have become an “agent of influence.”

    • Agent of Influence 2.0

      An agent of influence is a particular type of agent used by an agency to deliver information (or a narrative) they hope will sway public opinion. There are three types of agent of influence:

      Controlled Agent — an agent under the direct control of an agency

      Trusted Contact — someone who is aware that they are being fed data by an agency; who is also looking to advance the same/similar agenda, but is not directly under the control of the agency

      Unwitting Agent — sometimes called a “useful idiot,” these agents are not aware of their role as conduits of data for an agency

      The primary role for an agent of influence is to add credibility to the narrative / data that the agency is attempting to get out and help influence the public.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • World’s mammals being eaten into extinction, report warns

      Hundreds of mammal species – from chimpanzees to hippos to bats – are being eaten into extinction by people, according to the first global assessment of the impact of human hunting.

      Bushmeat has long been a traditional source of food for many rural people, but as roads have been driven into remote areas, large-scale commercial hunting is leaving forests and other habitats devoid of wildlife.

      The scientists behind the new analysis warned that, without action, the wiping out of these species could lead to the collapse of the food security of hundreds of millions of people reliant on bushmeat for survival.

      The work comes against the backdrop of the natural world undergoing the greatest mass extinction since a giant meteorite strike wiped out the dinosaurs 65m years ago, with species vanishing far more rapidly than the long term rate, driven by the destruction and invasion of wild areas by humans and their livestock and hunting.

    • Norway nature group calls for limits to tourist hikers

      Norway’s leading hiking group has called for limits to the huge number of tourists hiking to Pulpit’s Rock and other attractions.
      Lasse Heimdal, leader of Friluftsliv, an umbrella organisation for those engaged hiking and other outdoor pursuits, said there was a risk that the huge spike in tourists seen in recent years would damage the most popular sites.

      He argued that was “urgent that we now take measures to ensure that outdoor life is safeguarded”.

      “If the large loads might damage nature, the authorities are obliged to impose countermeasures,” he told NRK. “Limiting access can be one of the measures.”

    • Greenland is Melting

      Not long ago, I attended a memorial service on top of the Greenland ice sheet for a man I did not know. The service was an intimate affair, with only four people present. I worried that I might be regarded as an interloper and thought about stepping away. But I was clipped onto a rope, and, in any case, I wanted to be there.

      The service was for a NASA scientist named Alberto Behar. Behar, who worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, might be described as a twenty-first-century explorer. He didn’t go to uncharted places; he sent probes to them. Some of the machines he built went all the way to Mars; they are orbiting the planet today or trundling across its surface on the Curiosity rover. Other Behar designs were deployed on Earth, at the poles. In Antarctica, Behar devised a special video camera to capture the first images ever taken inside an ice stream. In Greenland, he once sent a flock of rubber ducks hurtling down a mile-long ice shaft known as a moulin. Each duck bore a label, offering, in Greenlandic, English, and Danish, a reward for its return. At least two made it through.

      When Behar died, in January, 2015—he crashed his single-engine plane onto the streets of Los Angeles—he was at work on another probe. This one, dubbed a drifter, looked like a toolbox wearing a life preserver. It was intended to measure the flow of meltwater streams. These so-called supraglacial rivers are difficult to approach, since their banks are made of ice. They are often lined with cracks, and usually they end by plunging down an ice shaft. The drifter would float along, like a duck, collecting and transmitting data, so that, by the time it reached a moulin and was sucked in, it would have served its purpose.

  • Finance

    • Saudi Arabia’s $17.5 Billion Bond Sale Draws Investors

      Banks and investors flocked to buy Saudi Arabia’s first global bonds, a milestone in the giant oil producer’s efforts to diversify its economy and embrace global financial markets.

    • Iain Macwhirter: Panic! We’re led by a Dad’s Army of Brexiter buffoons

      The vote to leave the EU has been widely interpreted as a cry of anguish, predominantly from the dispossessed in non-metropolitan England: white working class people, typically in the north, who feel they have been left behind by globalisation, rising inequality, casualisation and low pay.

      It is a cruel irony, therefore, that it is these people, the ones at the bottom of the social heap, who stand to be worst hit by the emerging post-Brexit economy. There have been howls of anguish from financiers in the City of London, who are demanding a special deal in the EU, and, since money talks, they’ll probably get one. But the first casualties, as The Herald reported yesterday, will be low-income families caught in the vice of rising living costs and benefit cuts who stand to lose £360 a year. As we know, most of the working-age benefit claimants are actually in work and their income had already been squeezed by 10 per cent since the 2008 crash.

    • CETA – new documents and declarations (as of 19 October)

      Several documents have been transmitted to the Walloon parliament, including these.

      Again, nothing clear about the legal weight of these documents. Interesting to see how many of them are unilateral declarations of the Commission or of the Council or even of one member state, which means they did not convince Canada to make those joint statements, which makes them even weaker than the joint interpretative declaration that has already wiedly been criticised. Indeed, even a joint interpretative declaration cannot solve the concerns that have been expressed.

    • Citizens’ Summit Contra CETA: It’s Not Only Wallonia

      With the vote on the European Union-Canada trade agreement (CETA) on the agenda once more at the upcoming EU Council meeting tomorrow the representatives of European and Canadian cities and regions gathered at Brussels today for a “CETA Citizens’ Summit.” Gerardo Pisarello, vice mayor of the city of Barcelona, said that cities like his see CETA as a barrier to their plans to remunicipalize water and energy services and the attempts “to open up public procurement to small companies and cooperatives.”

    • Power company drags Guatemala back to ICSID

      The case is the second ICSID claim to be filed against Colombia. The first, by mining company Glencore International, was filed earlier this year. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer is acting for the claimants in the two cases and also defended Guatemala in its dispute with TECO, though so far the state has not instructed counsel for the resubmitted claim.

      Last week, another ICSID tribunal issued a decision on rectification in a dispute between Philip Morris and Uruguay, making only minor corrections to an award issued earlier this year, which had held the state’s tobacco control regulations were not in breach of an investment treaty.

    • TTIP: the impact on the Greek democracy, economy and society

      The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), belongs to the “new generation”of trade agreements. Together with Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is one of the most important forthcoming steps for the wide-ranging transformation of the bourgeois society and capitalism.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • WikiLeaks poisons Hillary’s relationship with left

      Donald Trump is pointing to a stream of hacked emails as proof that Hillary Clinton would be a compromised president, but a surprising number of progressives are drawing similar conclusions — albeit for a totally different reasons.

      Some of the left’s most influential voices and groups are taking offense at the way they and their causes were discussed behind their backs by Clinton and some of her closest advisers in the emails, which swipe liberal heroes and causes as “puritanical,” “pompous”, “naive”, “radical” and “dumb,” calling some “freaks,” who need to “get a life.”

    • Jill Stein op-ed: Break the blackout on political competition in America

      A voter revolt is brewing in America. People are fed up, and they should be. The super rich are destroying our economy, sending our jobs overseas and making our planet uninhabitable. But instead of offering real solutions, the two-party system has produced the two most disliked and distrusted candidates in history.

      In a Fox News poll from Sept. 30, 57 percent of voters said their choice in the presidential election is motivated primarily not by enthusiasm, but by fear of the other candidate. Democrats and Republicans have lost ground to independents, now the largest voting block. Meanwhile, an incredible 57 percent of Americans polled recently by Gallup say the Democratic and Republican parties have failed and we need a new major party. In short, the American people are ready for real competition to the two-party system.

      As I travel the country, I hear disgust with both parties, especially among young people. They see a political establishment that is unwilling or unable to tackle the dead-end economy, crushing student debt, endless expanding wars, growing climate crisis and injustice in our legal and immigration systems. They see Donald Trump as an ignorant, bigoted predator and Hillary Clinton as an untrustworthy insider with a troubling record. The Green Party’s message makes sense to many because Greens have the freedom, as the only national party that doesn’t take corporate money, to speak out for fair, common-sense solutions that establishment politicians won’t touch.

    • Op Ed: Investigative Journalism is Not Dead

      Okay, so, I wasn’t going to submit these here because I’ve really had quite enough of politics for the year but it seems the mainstream media are having an absolute blackout on anything critical of Hillary, to the point of CNN has both coincidentally lost a sitting congressman’s satellite feed immediately after mentioning wikileaks and tried to tell their viewers that even reading the wikileaks emails is illegal.

      These two videos by Project Veritas Action, apparently with more to come, are the result of a year or so of actual investigative journalism and deserve coverage somewhere though. I don’t personally care at all if you like Hillary or not but it’s always better to know the truth than to stick your head in the sand, so here they are.

    • If You’re Ever Dissed in a Hacked Email, Try to Respond Like Larry Lessig

      Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Harvard Law School, a leading advocate for campaign finance reform, and short-lived presidential candidate.

      He was also, in the view of the Clinton campaign, circa August 2015, a “smug,” “pompous,” loathsome guy whom a reasonable person might wish “to kick the shit out of on Twitter.”

    • Jill Stein offers third party perspective on final debate

      The final debate of the 2016 Presidential Election was a terse one, with more jabs than a UFC event. While the debate only featured the two mainstream candidates, Jill Stein used Facebook Live to communicate the Green Party’s goals for the country and politics.

      While the mainstream debates mostly focused on which candidate is more corrupt politically and morally, Jill Stein’s Facebook Live event drew 12,500 viewers who were excited to hear of an alternative to the two-party system. Leaving Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to mudsling and name-call, Stein wanted to focus on the need for a three-party system and offering alternatives to the corporate-backed political system.

    • Green Party V.P. candidate makes visit to Muskegon, hopes for support

      Green Party vice-presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka visited Muskegon, and his stop was not at a college campus or a coffee shop but the Michigan Department of Corrections campus.

      Baraka visited Wednesday, Oct. 19, with prison inmate Rev. Edward Pinkney, who is serving time at the prison for a conviction on an election law forgery charge.

      “For him to be given a 30-month sentence allegedly for changing some signatures on a voter card that is outrageous,” Baraka said.

      Baraka has a message to voters looking for a home this election cycle: “We say you only have one choice and that is to support the Green Party. Don’t let fear undermine your commitment to principal.”

    • Green Party Candidate Jill Stein Rips John Oliver’s ‘Deceptive Attack’

      “Coming from someone who made a stunt of buying and canceling medical debt on his show, and who claims to want alternatives to the failed two-party system, this disingenuous attack on the idea of canceling student debt is both puzzling and hypocritical,” Stein’s campaign said in a statement. “It was beyond disappointing to see that our responses were completely ignored. The same tired, misleading attack lines were trotted out, and Oliver chose to misrepresent our campaign on the lone substantive issue that he addressed: our plan to cancel student debt.”

      In Sunday’s episode, Oliver said Stein’s plan to eliminate student debt relies on an economic method called quantitative easing, which is essentially the printing of new money. The problem, Oliver said, is that the Federal Reserve doesn’t have the jurisdiction of the president. “It’s basically akin to saying, ‘I’ll make us energy independent by ordering the Post Office to invade Canada,’” Oliver said. “No, Jill. That’s impractical, it’s a terrible idea, and you don’t seem to understand anything about it.”

    • Jill Stein Pitches a Green Foreign Policy

      On The Gist, Green Party candidate Jill Stein lays out her foreign policy. She debates Mike Pesca about Hillary Clinton, Yemen, and America’s use of force. Stein believes the United States is closer to nuclear war than ever, including the Cold War. She explains how de-escalating nuclear tensions with Russia should take priority, and how neither of the major party candidates is up to the job. This year marks Stein’s second run for the presidency.

    • Why These Americans Refuse to Vote

      In Nevada, residents are afforded a luxury not enjoyed by any other Americans: When they trudge to the polls next month, they’ll have the chance to check a box that reads, “None of These Candidates.” Nevada voters are statutorily entitled to signal their discontent with the entire array of presidential contenders before them by saying “screw it” and selecting that particular option. And it’s not a joke—this ultimate “F you!” has actually won various Nevada state primary elections in the past.

      One can only guess what percentage of voters would choose “none” were the option available nationwide, but there are some clues it’d find sizable traction: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the two most despised major party nominees in modern electoral history. But outside Nevada, there’s no way to formally register your across-the-board disillusionment with the political system that produced them: You’ve got to pick Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or one of the third-party also-rans. (Or you could write somebody in, such as Fred Flintstone or LeBron James.)

    • Green Party’s Jill Stein on “Donald Trump’s Psychosis and Hillary Clinton’s Distortions”

      After Wednesday’s debate, Democracy Now! spoke to Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presidential nominee. She and Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson were excluded from the debate under stringent rules set by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is controlled by the Democratic and Republican parties.

    • A Tale of Three Foundations
    • Donald Trump Just Lost, But So Did American Democracy

      Trump called Clinton a liar, a “nasty woman” and someone who should have “never been allowed to run” because she is a crook.

    • Presidential Conflicts of Interest, and More from CRS

      “Does federal law require the President to relinquish control of his or her business interests?” That question is considered in a new analysis from the Congressional Research Service.

      The short answer appears to be No. “There is no current legal requirement that would compel the President to relinquish financial interests because of a conflict of interest.”

      There are, however, certain legal disclosure requirements that apply to candidates for the Presidency. It is those requirements that are “the principal method of regulation of potential conflicts of interests for elected officials such as the President.”

    • Natasha Stoynoff’s account of Trump sexual assault now backed by 6 witnesses

      Former People magazine contributor Natasha Stoynoff recently went public with her claim that she was sexually assaulted by the GOP Presidential Nominee, Donald Trump.

      Trump and his paid toadies on the campaign trail mocked Stoynoff, and questioned her motives. There were no witnesses, Trump said, adding, “She lies! Look at her, I don’t think so.”

      A totally normal thing for an innocent man to say when accused of sexual assault.

      “We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat,” she wrote.

      Six people have now come forward to corroborate Stoynoff’s account.

      She wasn’t lying, they say. It happened. And it happened just like she said it happened.

    • Revealed: 6 People Who Corroborate Natasha Stoynoff’s Story of Being Attacked by Donald Trump

      Six colleagues and close friends who corroborate former PEOPLE writer Natasha Stoynoff’s account of being attacked by Donald Trump in 2005 are now coming forward. Among them is a friend who was with Stoynoff when she ran into Melania Trump later in N.Y.C.

      The wife of the Republican nominee denies meeting Stoynoff after the attack, but Stoynoff’s friend Liza Herz remembers being there during the chance meeting.

      “They chatted in a friendly way,” Herz, who met Stoynoff in college, says. “And what struck me most was that Melania was carrying a child and wearing heels.”

      Stoynoff’s story, which made national news when it broke last week and is reprinted in this week’s issue of PEOPLE, describes a run-in with Trump when she was covering him and pregnant wife Melania on assignment for PEOPLE in December 2005.

    • Michael Moore quietly made a Donald Trump movie. “TrumpLand” opens this week.

      Filmmaker Michael Moore has an “October surprise” for America: A stealthily and quickly made movie about the presidential campaign of GOP nominee and accused serial sexual predator Donald Trump.

    • What Michael Moore Understands About Hillary Clinton

      “Michael Moore in TrumpLand” isn’t quite the film that I expected it to be, and that’s all to the good. Moore is, of course, a genius of political satire, deploying his persona—as a populist socialist skeptic with a superb sense of humor and a chess player’s skill at media positioning—to deeply humane ends that are mainly detached from practicality, policy, and practical politics. The very idea of the new film—a recording of Moore’s one-man show from the stage of a theatre in a small, predominantly Republican town in Ohio—runs the risk of self-parody, being a feature-length lampooning of Trump, laid out with meticulously researched facts set forth with the sublime derision of which Moore is a master. It would have been a highly saleable version of preaching to the converted.

    • Final Debate Review: One President vs One Petulant Child

      So the last Trump vs Hillary debate is done. It will be remembered as the debate where Trump put himself and his personal acceptance ahead of the opinion of 200 million voters. I think this will damage him more than any other third debate ever, and will bring on a wave of condemnation by Republicans and more un-endorsements. I think he will walk that statement back, soon, and may be forced to Apple-igize or non-apologize for it.

    • Clinton Campaign Makes Wildly Inconsistent Claims About Emails Published By WikiLeaks

      Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign contends the publication of emails from the campaign are part of a Russian plot. It believes raising the issue of Russia’s alleged involvement is enough to avoid discussion of the contents of emails. However, the campaign has been inconsistent in appearances on cable news networks.

      Multiple individuals explicitly insist there are doctored or forged emails to dodge questions. Some of these people had their email exchanges published by WikiLeaks. Yet no member of the Clinton campaign can name a single example of a forgery.

      Representatives of the Clinton campaign back away from talking points and answer questions about the emails if they can make a point that may be useful to the campaign about Donald Trump or Clinton’s progressive credentials. But when hosts of news programs ask questions they do not want to answer, they repeat a set of talking points; in particular, how Republican Senator Marco Rubio said this shows the Russians are trying to rig the election and people should stop talking about the emails.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Police mass face recognition in the US will net innocent people

      Live in the US? There’s a 50:50 chance that you’re in a police face recognition database, according to a report from the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law in Washington DC. The findings suggest that about a quarter of all police departments in the US have access to face recognition technology.

      That police are using face recognition technology is not a problem in itself. In a world with a camera in every pocket, they would be daft not to. But face recognition can be used far more broadly than fingerprint recognition, which means it carries a higher risk of tagging innocent people.

      Fingerprints are difficult to work with. Prints from known criminals can only be gathered in controlled environments at police stations, and dusting for prints is so time consuming that it is only done at relevant crime scenes. This narrows down the number of people in the sights of any one investigation.

      It’s much easier to build huge databases of identified photographs. The majority of the 117 million faces in the police datasets come from state driving licenses and ID cards. And when trying to solve a crime, gathering faces is as easy as pointing a camera at the street. People attending protests, visiting their church, or just walking by can all have their faces “dusted” without ever knowing it.

    • UK first to bring surveillance under rule of law, says former GCHQ director [Ed: So the spies broke the law for many years and our government will pardon them and legalise the crime]

      Former GCHQ head David Omand says the UK will be the first country in Europe to legislate to regulate digital intelligence and put it under judicial supervision with judicial review

    • NSA Can Access More Phone Data Than Ever

      One of the reforms designed to rein in the surveillance authorities of the National Security Agency has perhaps inadvertently solved a technical problem for the spy outfit and granted it potential access to much more data than before, a former top official told ABC News.

      Before the signing of the USA Freedom Act in June 2015, one of the NSA’s most controversial programs was the mass collection of telephonic metadata from millions of Americans — the information about calls, including the telephone numbers involved, the time and the duration but not the calls’ content — under a broad interpretation of the Patriot Act’s Section 215. From this large “haystack,” as officials have called it, NSA analysts could get approval to run queries on specific numbers purportedly linked to international terrorism investigations.

    • NSA, GCHQ and even Donald Trump are all after your data

      As production and usage of data keeps growing globally, it’s worth remembering that the US government wants access to your information and will use warrants, decryption or hacking to get to it.

      That’s not news and the US government has many tools in its box. Many had already heard of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (aka the Patriot Act) as the means by which the FBI would get access to data. Then the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act took centre stage (although the original version of this actually predated the Patriot Act by a couple of decades) following the Snowden revelations that the NSA had access to data on a massive scale.

      If Donald Trump gets elected as president, he might introduce more snooping powers. As part of his election campaign, he has already issued some tough statements which seem likely to rebalance powers in favour of the US government and away from the tech industry.

    • Local Superior Court Judge Says DEA’s Wiretap Warrant Factory Perfectly Legal

      Over the past several years, the DEA has run hundreds of wiretap warrants through a single county judge’s court after getting them approved by whoever happened to be in the local district attorney’s office when agents need one signed. The latter part of this process runs contrary to statutes enacted specifically to prevent abuse of wiretap warrants by the federal agencies.

      The approval process, which had been streamlined to eliminate any possible roadblocks to the DEA’s deployment of wiretaps all over the country, was considered by the DOJ to be far enough outside legal boundaries as to make the warrants questionable, if not legally “toxic.”

      The district attorney who was supposed to personally approve these wiretap warrants never did. Former Riverside County district attorney Paul Zellerbach delegated this task to anyone but himself. Because of this, some of the warrants have been challenged in court, leading to the DOJ stepping in to salvage wiretaps its lawyers had previously instructed DEA agents to keep out of federal courts.

    • New Research Blames Insiders, Not North Korea, for Sony Hack

      Growing evidence suggests it was not North Korea.

      A leading cyber security firm says it has evidence that contradicts the government’s allegation that North Korea was behind the debilitating cyber attacks against Sony Pictures.

      Researchers from the firm Norse told Security Ledger, an independent security news website, that they believe that a group of six individuals orchestrated the hack, including at least one former employee who was laid off in company-wide restructuring in May.

    • “I’ve seen pretty much all your tech secrets”

      Government prosecutors intend to file charges under the Espionage Act against a former NSA contractor who was arrested in August and charged with stealing a massive trove of top-secret intelligence documents.

      In court papers filed Thursday [you can read them below], the government said Navy veteran Harold T. Martin III stole 50,000 gigabytes of data over the course of two decades, which far exceeds the number of documents Edward Snowden took from the NSA and leaked to journalists. (One gigabyte can store about 10,000 pages.)

      Prosecutors say Martin, who had been a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton — the same company that employed Snowden at the time of his leak — is a national security threat and a flight risk, and must remain behind bars until a trial in his case begins next year. Earlier this week, Martin’s attorneys requested a court hearing to determine if he could be released pending trial; the hearing is scheduled to take place Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Maryland.

      In the court papers, the government for the first time characterized the documents that Martin allegedly stole, which prosecutors said lay bare a “course of felonious conduct that is breathtaking in its longevity and scale.” According to the government, in addition to numerous digital media devices the FBI seized from Martin, there were also “hard-copy documents that were seized from various locations during the search that comprise six full bankers’ boxes worth of documents.”

    • Trove of Stolen Data Is Said to Include Top-Secret U.S. Hacking Tools

      Investigators pursuing what they believe to be the largest case of mishandling classified documents in United States history have found that the huge trove of stolen documents in the possession of a National Security Agency contractor included top-secret N.S.A. hacking tools that two months ago were offered for sale on the internet.

      They have been hunting for electronic clues that could link those cybertools — computer code posted online for auction by an anonymous group calling itself the Shadow Brokers — to the home computers of the contractor, Harold T. Martin III, who was arrested in late August on charges of theft of government property and mishandling of classified information.

      But so far, the investigators have been frustrated in their attempt to prove that Mr. Martin deliberately leaked or sold the hacking tools to the Shadow Brokers or, alternatively, that someone hacked into his computer or otherwise took them without his knowledge. While they have found some forensic clues that he might be the source, the evidence is not conclusive, according to a dozen officials who have been involved in or have been briefed on the investigation.

    • Feds seized 50TB of data from NSA contractor suspected of theft

      In a new Thursday court filing, federal prosecutors expanded their accusations against a former National Security Agency contractor. Federal investigators seized at least 50 terabytes of data from Harold Thomas Martin III, at least some of which was “national defense information.” If all of this data was indeed classified, it would be the largest such heist from the NSA, far larger than what former contractor Edward Snowden took.

      Prosecutors also said that Martin should remain locked up and noted that he will soon be charged with violations of the Espionage Act. That law, which dates back nearly a century, is the same law that was used to charge Chelsea Manning and Snowden, among others. If convicted, violators can face the death penalty.

      United States Attorney Rod Rosenstein and two other prosecutors laid out new details in the case against Martin, whose arrest only became public earlier this month. Martin had been a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton and possessed a top-secret clearance.

      The new filing states that Martin also took “six full bankers’ boxes” worth of paper documents, many which were marked “Secret” or “Top Secret.” The documents date from between 1996 through 2016.

    • Cops Monitoring Social Media Is Much More Than Just Collecting Tweets

      It’s not just your friends following you on Facebook or Twitter. The cops are, too.

      Law enforcement agencies around the world have used social media monitoring software to keep tabs on populations en masse, sweeping up their posts and tweets, giving police a bird’s-eye view of what, say, Twitter users are broadcasting in a specific area, or about a particular topic. Tweeting from an Olympic stadium? Sharing a post with a hashtag supporting Black Lives Matter? Police may be watching that, in real time.

      On the face of it, you might not have a problem with cops reading public social media posts or tweets: individuals presumably took the decision to put the information out there themselves. But law enforcement’s monitoring of social media is not that simple.

      “Social media monitoring is so much more than it first appears. Programs to monitor social media are rarely about manual review of public information,” Amie Stepanovich, US policy manager at activist group Access Now, told Motherboard in a Twitter message.

    • DNA testing for jobs may be on its way, warns Gartner

      It is illegal today to use DNA testing for employment, but as science advances its understanding of genes that correlate to certain desirable traits — such as leadership and intelligence — business may want this information.

      People seeking leadership roles in business, or even those in search of funding for a start-up, may volunteer their DNA test results to demonstrate that they have the right aptitude, leadership capabilities and intelligence for the job.

      This may sound farfetched, but it’s possible based on the direction of the science, according to Gartner analysts David Furlonger and Stephen Smith, who presented their research at the firm’s Symposium IT/xpo here. This research is called “maverick” in Gartner parlance, meaning it has a somewhat low probability and is still years out, but its potential is nonetheless worrisome to the authors.

    • How to endorse a political candidate on Facebook and lose friends forever
    • How to find out what Facebook knows about you

      Close to the top of this page you’ll see a section called “Interests” with a whole lot of tiles. Each tile represents an interest, and Facebook organizes your interests under a variety of categories including sports, news, entertainments, people, and technology.

      All you have to do is go through this list. If you see something that shouldn’t belong—or you’d rather not have belong—just click the “X” that appears in the upper-right corner of the tile when you hover over it with your mouse. This should remove or at least reduce any ads you see related to that content.

      Perhaps the most interesting section for most of us right now is the “Lifestyle and culture” section, which houses political interests. For me, personally, this area was way off. It said I had liked pages related to political parties I don’t support.

      My best guess as to how this happened is that in the last few weeks I’ve liked a bunch of articles criticizing the other side. Do that enough times and one particular candidate’s name comes up more than the other’s, and (perhaps) an association is made between you and the side you disagree with.

    • Email/Web footer – For the NSA….

      I responded to a spam message from my credit union, asking to be removed from their mailing list for things not directly related to my current account status using my standard Live.com email which has for at least 10 years now contained a footer labeled for the NSA which contains dozens of keywords sure to get you scanned. Well it finally worked… 2 days later the Yuma PD responded to my door and questioned me regarding the text of the footer which was reported to them by my credit union as a terrorist bomb threat. 2 Yuma PD marked cars and an unmarked vehicle containing a ‘detective’ arrived, rang the door bell and asked to speak to me, they wanted in the house badly but I chose to speak to them on the front porch. They had a copy of the email and were as they termed it just following up on a complaint lodged by the AEA credit union. The detective asked some rather pointed questions and tried real hard to get me to admit that the footer was really a threat but seemed rather embarrassed at his presence and went away after apparently I turned out to have valid ID and wasn’t brown. The patrol officers openly laughed with me at the over reaction and accepted a bottle of water on their way out. I am debating wearing a turban to the credit union to close my account out and demanding cash in lieu of a cashiers check, but given the state I am in and the gun carry laws that might be too much. I’ll report back if I don’t end up in Gitmo.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Denmark: Muslims stage organised attack against teenagers for being “American”

      The below story also shows how little security Danes (and American tourists) have, now because the police is overwhelmed by Muslim crime and terror.

    • Segregated Housing For Black Students At Cal State LA

      Welcome to the indoctrination station.

      Martin Luther King, please report to the front desk. You’re being brought to trial on charges of microaggressions for this “content of their character” microaggression.

    • Uh, America’s Take On The Salem Witch Trials Is Really Weird

      Imagine someone accusing you of a crime so ridiculous that the crime itself isn’t a real thing, like “French-kissing a pink elephant while enjoying free healthcare and a living wage.” And before you can even figure out how to mount a reasonable defense, you and a dozen other people in your community are dead, swinging from a hanging tree while the rest of the town pats themselves on the back for sending the pink-elephant-kissers back to Hell where they belong.

      Now imagine that a few hundred years have passed, and instead of mourning the terrible crime committed against you, everyone in town dresses up as a cartoon version of you and encourages tourists to buy trinkets that minimize and celebrate your death.

      Got all of that? Cool, you’ve basically pictured what’s happened in Salem, Massachusetts. This town is famous for witches and witch trials, which is another way of saying “mob hysteria which resulted in the murder of over 20 people.” Instead of solemnly remembering their dark past with humility, Salem has gone a different route — specifically, the route populated with merchandise and Ferris wheels.

    • Imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi faces more lashes: supporters

      Imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, whose public flogging in the kingdom in 2015 generated global outcry, now risks a new round of lashes, a co-founder of a Canadian foundation advocating for his release said on Tuesday.

      Evelyne Abitbol, who founded the Raif Badawi Foundation with Badawi’s wife, said a “reliable source” in Saudi Arabia claims he faces a new flogging after being sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and 1000 lashes in 2014 for breaking the kingdom’s technology laws and insulting Islam.

    • Outrage over actor Rahama Sadau’s hug highlights Nigeria’s divisions

      She is a hugely popular actor. He is a hugely popular rapper. But when Rahama Sadau and ClassiQ briefly touched in a music video released this month in northern Nigeria, their fleeting embrace set off a storm of controversy that has revealed the deep divides in the country.

      Sadau, 22, found herself lambasted by conservative commentators and banned from working in the predominantly Muslim north of Nigeria.

      “Rahama has been banned for life from acting … This is as a result of her recent immoral appearance in a certain video song where she appeared … hugging and cuddling,” said Salisu Mohammed, the head of the Motion Picture Practitioner’s Association of Nigeria, based in Kano state.

      The actor apologised for any offence she might have caused but called for a “more forgiving and tolerant” attitude.

      The northern Hausa-language film industry is only one part of the vast Nigerian movie business. Dubbed “Nollywood”, but divided along linguistic and cultural lines, it claims to be the second largest in the world, producing 2,000 films a year. Only Bollywood, the Indian film industry, which has been a huge influence on its Nigerian counterpart, produces more.

    • Muslim leader jailed for life after hiring hitman to kill mosque rival

      A Muslim leader has been jailed for life after hiring a hitman to execute his rival in cold blood following a bitter dispute over control of a controversial mosque.

      Khalid Rashad, 63, a Muslim convert, is the brother of Liz Mitchell, the lead singer in the 1970s band Boney M, famous for disco hits such as Rivers of Babylon, Rasputin and Daddy Cool.

      She appeared as a character witness in his trial, held in January this year, explaining how they had grown up in a large Christian family in Jamaica.

      The case can finally be reported at the end of a second trial in which Rashad was convicted of possessing military-grade plastic explosives and rounds of ammunition at his home, yards from Wembley stadium.

      In the first case, Abdul Hadi Arwani, 48, was found slumped in the driver’s seat of his VW Passat in a street in Wembley, north London, with the engine still running and bullet wounds in his chest in April last year.

      There was speculation that the preacher could have been murdered by a Syrian hitman when it emerged that he had been a vocal opponent of the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

    • Journalist Charged in North Dakota with Rioting; Case is Dismissed

      Amy Goodman, host of the New York City-based leftist news programme Democracy Now! was charged with criminal trespass by the North Dakota state’s attorney (prosecutor). The charge was changed to riot, then was dismissed due to lack of evidence when Goodman appeared in court on Monday. The charges stemmed from her presence at a protest in September against construction of the Dakota Access (Bakken) oil pipeline, after the protest was reported on her show.

    • Christian refugees persecuted by Muslim asylum seekers in German shelters – survey

      Christian asylum seekers as well as members of other religious minority groups living in refugee shelters across Germany face systematic persecution from both Muslim refugees and Muslim staff, a recently published survey shows.

      As many as 743 Christian refugees and 10 Yazidis living in refugee centers in various German states have reported religiously motivated attacks between February and September 2016, a survey conducted by several charitable NGOs says, stressing that collected data should be “considered … as the tip of the iceberg,” as “there are a high number of unreported cases.”

      Fifty-six percent of the affected refugees said that they were subjected to violent assaults and were beaten up while 42 percent of them said that they or their family members received death threats both from fellow refugees and Muslim staff, including volunteers and security personnel working at the centers.

    • Teat Scares Airlines: TSA Still Humiliates Nursing Mothers

      The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) still can’t identify an obvious breast pump used by women who are breastfeeding. According Hawaiian media, a mom was asked to prove her breast pump was real at the Lihue Airport.

      Agents told her she couldn’t take the pump on the plane because the bottles inside were empty. Interestingly, the same thing happened to Kossack Jesselyn Radack 8 years ago for the opposite reason: the bottles were full.

      This is not just a one-off. This is what occurs with measures intended to make people feel secure while doing nothing to actually improve security.

      Radack was on the No-Fly List, so maybe that’s why her breasts are more suspicious. But what the Hawaiian woman experienced is eerily similar and degrading as what Radack went through.

    • Arrested Backpage Execs Ask Kamala Harris To Drop Bogus Case She Herself Has Admitted She Has No Authority To Bring

      A few weeks ago, we wrote about the absolutely ridiculous and unconstitutional charges brought by California Attorney General Kamala Harris and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against the online classified site Backpage.com. We focused on the fact that Section 230 clearly protects Backpage from such a lawsuit, and went into detail on the ridiculousness of Harris’ “investigator” using the fact that Backpage itself actually worked with him to track down, remove, and block ads for prostitution as some sort of evidence of wrongdoing.

      The execs are now hitting back — as they should. They’ve asked the court to dump the case with a detailed and thorough filing. It highlights that the charges violate the First Amendment, Section 230 of the CDA and, at an even more basic level, the complaint doesn’t even satisfy the requirements for “pimping,” which is what they’re charged with.

    • By stealing from innocents, Chicago PD amassed tens of millions in a secret black budget for surveillance gear

      Since 2009, the Chicago Police Department has seized $72M worth of property from people who were not convicted of any crime, through the discredited civil forfeiture process, keeping $48M worth of the gains (the rest went to the Cook County prosecutor’s office and the Illinois State Police) in an off-the-books, unreported slush fund that it used to buy secret surveillance gear.

      Civil forfeiture is widely considered to be an invitation to abuse and exploitation, and Chicago’s system is especially pernicious, as the police get to keep the proceeds from seizure, and do not have to disclose or account for the money.

      The full scope of the program was revealed in late September by the Chicago Reader, who worked with Muckrock and the Lucy Parsons Lab to file public records requests that yielded more than 1,000 pages’ worth of CPD documents.

    • URGENT CALL: ask your MP to sign letter to Obama

      One week ago Lauri Love’s case was raised at Prime Minister’s Questions by David Burrowes MP. Lauri’s case, and the inadequacy of Theresa May’s forum bar, is now firmly on the Parliamentary agenda.

      David Burrowes is one of a cross-party group of MPs who are now campaigning for Lauri in Parliament. Along with Labour’s Barry Sheerman and Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesman Alistair Carmichael, he has written a letter to President Obama, asking for the extradition warrant to be withdrawn.

    • Iran arrests Baquer Namazi, father of imprisoned American businessman

      Six weeks after freeing U.S. citizens in a prisoner swap with the United States, Iran appears to have arrested yet another man whom Washington may take an interest in seeing freed.

      Baquer Namazi, 80, is the father of American businessman Siamak Namazi, who was detained in October and was not part of last month’s exchange. Before his father’s arrest, he was the last confirmed U.S. prisoner still being held in Iran.

      Baquer Namazi, a former UNICEF official, was arrested on Monday, his wife Effie Namazi said on Facebook. He is an Iranian-American.

      “I must share the shocking and sad news that Baquer was arrested in Tehran late evening of 22 February 2016 and as far as I have been told by those who took him taken to Evin prison,” she wrote. “Now both my innocent son Siamak and my Baquer are in prison for no reason. This is a nightmare I can’t describe.”

    • Muslims call for Norway minister to resign after pork post

      Norwegian Muslims have called on the country’s integration minister to step down after she said that immigrants should adapt to a culture of pork, alcohol and no face-veils.

      Sylvi Listhaug, a minister appointed by the anti-immigrant Progress Party, caused outrage on Monday when she made an incendiary post on the eve of an national integration conference.

      “I think those who come to Norway need to adapt to our society. Here we eat pork, drink alcohol and show our face. You must abide by the values, laws and regulations that are in Norway when you come here,” she wrote in a post that was ‘liked’ by 20,000 people.

    • Supporters of jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi fear flogging set to resume

      Supporters of jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi are sounding the alarm that his flogging could soon resume.

      The Montreal-based foundation that bears Badawi’s name said this week it has it on good authority his punishment will begin again.

      The information comes from a “private source” who is the same person who informed Badawi’s family in Canada about the first series of lashes in January 2015.

      Evelyne Abitbol, the foundation’s executive director, conceded Tuesday it isn’t known for sure if or when the lashes will resume. Nonetheless, the organization found the information credible enough to convey it publicly.

      “We believe this information is right because it came from the same source,” Abitbol said. “We thought: If we don’t do anything and he is flogged, we would not be happy about not alerting the international community.”

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • How the Web Became Unreadable

      It’s been getting harder for me to read things on my phone and my laptop. I’ve caught myself squinting and holding the screen closer to my face. I’ve worried that my eyesight is starting to go.

      These hurdles have made me grumpier over time, but what pushed me over the edge was when Google’s App Engine console — a page that, as a developer, I use daily — changed its text from legible to illegible. Text that was once crisp and dark was suddenly lightened to a pallid gray. Though age has indeed taken its toll on my eyesight, it turns out that I was suffering from a design trend.

      There’s a widespread movement in design circles to reduce the contrast between text and background, making type harder to read. Apple is guilty. Google is, too. So is Twitter.

      Typography may not seem like a crucial design element, but it is. One of the reasons the web has become the default way that we access information is that it makes that information broadly available to everyone. “The power of the Web is in its universality,” wrote Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web consortium. “Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”

    • Time’s Running Out for the FCC on Set-Top Reform, Privacy and Zero-Rating

      Dozens of leading public interest groups on Monday urged the Federal Communications Commission to swiftly approve new consumer protection policies aimed at promoting competition in the video marketplace, increasing online privacy, and ensuring internet openness.

      In a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and his colleagues, the groups asked the agency to take action on two of the most important issues facing US telecom regulators: Rules that would save consumers billions of dollars annually by breaking the cable industry’s stranglehold on the video “set-top box” market, and tough new policies designed to protect consumers from broadband industry privacy abuses.

      The public interest coalition is also urging the FCC to crack down on the controversial practice of “zero-rating,” in which internet providers exempt certain online services from monthly data caps. Open internet groups say such schemes violate net neutrality, the principle that all content on the internet should be equally accessible, because they favor certain services by giving consumers an economic incentive to use them over rival offerings.

    • Oversight Transition Isn’t Giving Away the Internet, But Won’t Fix ICANN’s Problems

      At midnight last Saturday morning, Washington DC time, oversight over the performance of ICANN’s IANA functions—notably its maintenance of the root zone database of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS)—passed from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to ICANN’s global multi-stakeholder community.

      Despite several weeks of heated discussion within the United States, we haven’t commented much on this transition. That’s because there has not been much to say: the talking points over ICANN have been mostly a product of American party politics (and the election season) rather than a debate on a substantive technical or policy issue. The outcome was unlikely to affect Internet users much one way or the other. Now that the transfer of oversight has gone through, life will go on pretty much as it did before, with the exception that a broader group of people will have the formal responsibility of ensuring that the DNS root zone is being administered according to community-developed policies. New accountability measures have been put in place by ICANN as a condition of the transition, which will give this community some extra teeth to make sure that it stays on the straight and narrow.

    • Vox Seems Kind Of Upset That We’re Building Gigabit Networks With Bandwidth To Spare

      If you want to see why broadband in the United States still stinks, your first stop should be to examine the state level protectionist laws used to stifle competition across countless markets. But despite the lobbyist stranglehold over state legislatures, we’re still seeing some impressive progress when it comes to the deployment of gigabit fiber networks. Google Fiber continues to slowly but surely expand its footprint, and we’re seeing the rise of numerous other piecemeal gigabit solutions, whether coming from the likes of Tucows or municipal broadband deployments in cities like Chattanooga, Tennessee.

      To be clear, the “gigabit revolution” is certainly a bit overhyped. The vast majority still can’t get this caliber of service, and the obsession with the mighty gigabit does tend to obscure a potentially more important conversation about broadband prices and the often glaring lack of real competitive options. But by and large most people can agree that gigabit fiber builds are a good thing in an era when most users can still only obtain DSL at circa 2002 speeds and prices, and two-thirds of homes lack access to speeds greater than 25 Mbps from more than one provider (aka a broken monopoly).

    • FCC Fines T-Mobile For Abusing The Definition Of ‘Unlimited’ Data

      For the better part of the last decade, wireless carriers have had an often vicious, adversarial relationship with the dictionary. More specifically, they’ve struggled repeatedly with the definition of the word “unlimited,” often pitching data services that proclaim to be unlimited, only to saddle users with onerous, often confusing restrictions. For the last decade, regulators have tried to cure them of this behavior, from Verizon paying $1 million to New York’s Attorney General in 2007, to the FCC fining AT&T $100 million last year.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • China’s Manufacturers Now Producing Copies Before Original Products Are Even Launched

      Techdirt has written a number of articles tracking how China is moving beyond its traditional counterfeit imitation culture to one of collaborative innovation, as exemplified by “gongkai”. An article on the Quartz site provides a useful update on this world, concentrating on developments in Shenzhen, generally regarded as China’s hardware equivalent of Silicon Valley.

    • Comments Received On South African IP Framework; Action Seen In Early 2017

      The invitation by the South African Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to intellectual property stakeholders to comment on its recently released IP Consultative Framework has reignited calls for the department to come clean on the status of the national draft IP policy.

    • US, India Trade Ministers Agree List Of IP Enforcement Actions For India

      United States Trade Representative Michael Froman and Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman met in Delhi today and discussed various bilateral issues including intellectual property rights. Based on the release from the meeting, it appears much of the IP focus was on tasks for India to do to better protect IP rights.

    • Copyrights

      • Skittles Photographer Actually Sues Trump Campaign Over Infringement

        A few weeks ago, we wrote about how David Kittos was threatening the Trump campaign with a copyright infringement lawsuit after Donald Trump Jr. tweeted out a really dumb image involving a bowl of Skittles and a ridiculous statement about refugees.

      • Megaupload User Fears Complete Data Loss, Asks Court For Help

        Millions of users lost access to their personal files when Megaupload was raided, and after nearly half a decade they are still stashed away in a Virginia warehouse. Former Megaupload user Kyle Goodwin has been trying to get his files back for years. This week he urged the court to take action, fearing that his data may soon be lost forever.

      • Our new brochure is finally here!

        After countless hours of work our new brochure “Ancillary Copyright for press publishers – Background and key issues” has arrived! It is easy to read and answers all relevant questions regarding an Ancillary Copyright for press publishers (AC). You can download it here for free.

        Much has happened in the past years. The first part of the paper reconstructs the development from the first discussions in Germany back in 2009 over the implementation in Germany and Spain with its consequences to Günther Oettinger’s current plans to introduce an AC at European level.

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