Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS

01.22.15

Links 23/1/2015: Plasma 5.2, Manjaro 0.9-pre1

Posted in News Roundup at 10:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • The most obvious user for Linux isn’t who you think

    And then it dawned on me … just who the ideal candidate for Linux should be. It’s not the developer (though they probably get more benefit out of the platform than any user type), it’s not the gamer, it’s not the geek, and it’s not the administrator. The ideal candidate is the average user.

  • Designing with Linux

    3-D printers are becoming popular tools, dropping in price and becoming available to almost everyone. They can be used to build parts that you can use around the house, but more and more, they also are being used to create instruments for scientific work. Although a growing library of objects are available in several on-line databases, there is nearly an infinite number of possible things you might want to build. This means you likely will want to design and build your own creations.

  • Desktop

    • Librem 15, the first free software GNU/Linux laptop, makes funding goal

      Purism, the company behind the Librem 15, promises that it will ship an Intel CPU fused to run unsigned BIOS code. The hope is that this will allow a future where free software can replace the proprietary, digitally signed, BIOS binaries.

    • Acer Designs Chromebooks for Students’ Rough Handling

      Acer on Wednesday announced two new ruggedized Chromebooks geared for classroom use. Both will go on sale in February.

      The Acer Chromebook C910 and C740 have a durable design built around reinforced covers and hinges. The new models support multiple user sign-ons and offline file access.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Plasma 5.2 – The Quintissential Breakdown

        KDE is one of the oldest open-source desktop projects which can be found today, and over the years it has established a rich history of highs and lows. During some points it has been the undisputed ruler of the desktop world, while other times it had fallen behind or faced hard trials.

        A memory everything but forgotten, just over 6 years ago KDE tore itself apart in spectacular fashion to assemble itself anew. Brave users who wandered through the rubble and wreckage saw developers rebuild the KDE before their eyes, witnessing the birth of ‘Plasma Desktop’ and it’s sister project ‘KDE Development Platform’. It was universally understood that this twisted gnarled creature of a computing experience was both hideous yet full of potential, and over 5 years of refining Plasma it had struggled, crawled, hobbled, walked, run, and eventually mature into a fine desktop.

      • KDEGames kf5

        My objective was to release some games for the ’15.04′.

      • GSoC student digikam sprint experience
      • Season of KDE 2014 Post #2: Nearing Completion

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME Makes Progress On Sandboxed Applications

        GNOME has quietly been working on sandboxed applications support and for GNOME 3.16 they hope to ship an initial reference runtime implementation of their new technology.

        Matthias Clasen wrote a lengthy blog post tonight detailing the sandboxed applications for GNOME. The goal of sandboxed applications is to make it easy for third-parties to distribute applications that work on multiple distributions, give the applications as little access as possible to the host system, and to also make it easier to write applications.

      • GNOME 3.15.4

        GNOME 3.15.4 is out. This is a development snapshot, so use it with caution.

      • Cinnamon 2.6 Will Be Systemd-Compatible

        Not long ago, the Linux Mint team has decided to change their release policy and adopt only the LTS versions of Ubuntu, the systems released between to LTSs being only point releases that update the main components. Also, they have moved Linux Mint Debian Edition’s (LMDE) code base from Debian Testing to Debian Stable.

  • Distributions

    • A Look at Pentoo Linux and Its Security Analysis Tools

      There is no shortage of security-focused Linux distributions on the market, and among them is Pentoo Linux. While some security-focused Linux distributions concentrate on privacy, like Tails, others like Kali Linux and Pentoo focus on security research, providing tools that enable research and penetration testing. Pentoo Linux differentiates itself from other security Linux distributions in a number of ways. The primary difference is the fact that Pentoo is based on Gentoo Linux, which is a source-based Linux distribution that uses the Portage package-management system. Gentoo has capabilities known as “Hardened Gentoo,” which Pentoo also inherits, providing users with additional security configuration and control for the Linux distribution itself. Pentoo 2015 RC 3.7 was released Jan. 5, providing updated tools and features. Among the new features is the integrated ability to verify that the distribution files have not been corrupted. Pentoo provides many applications for security analysis, including wireless, database, exploit, cracking and forensic tools. In this slide show, eWEEK looks at key features and tools in the Pentoo 2015 RC3.7 release.

    • New Releases

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat: Security Makes Paying for Open Source Software Worth It

        Open source software vendors do something akin to selling air: They get people to pay for something that easily, and perfectly legally, can be had for free. But added security is becoming an increasingly important part of the value proposition, as Red Hat (RHT), maker of one of the leading Linux enterprise distributions, emphasized this week in a statement on its software subscriptions.

      • Red Hat Is Hiring More Developers To Work On Wayland, Open-Source Graphics

        Red Hat is hiring more developers that will focus on Fedora, especially the Fedora Workstation product, that in turn will flow back into RHEL and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation. Among the type of work that Red Hat is looking for in the candidates include experience with Wayland, LLVMpipe, X.Org, compiler optimizations, graphics driver enablement, etc.

      • Why A Maturing OpenStack Platform Will Lift Red Hat

        OpenStack is an open-source IaaS cloud platform that was developed through the collaborative efforts of Rackspace Hosting (NYSE:RAX) and NASA with the objective of countering the dominance of Amazon.com’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) AWS. The platform has AWS-like features including EC2 and S3 compatibility that allows businesses to build their own Amazon-like cloud services in their datacenters.

      • Fedora

        • More Changes Are In The Works For Fedora 22

          Ahead of evaluation by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo), more of the planned changes for Fedora 22 are being discussed on the Fedora developers’ list. Here’s some more of the likely Fedora 22 changes that haven’t been covered by our earlier articles on F22 feature work.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Samsung Z1 SM-Z130HWRD Listed in Samsung India estore

          The Samsung Z1 is the first Tizen based Smartphone to be launched and we are hoping it is the first of many Tizen Smartphones to come. The Z1 has now made its way to the Samsung eStore in India and can be yours for the price of 5,700 INR, which is a very competitive price for such tech.

        • Tizen OS 2.3 Samsung Z1 Review

          This is an Interesting little video that I found on the net. Created by YouTube user TheGarchaHD, it walks you through the User Interface of the Tizen based Samsung Z1 and shows you some of the features of the Tizen 2.3 Operating System.

        • WhatsApp now has a Chrome web client

          Messaging apps these days don’t have to just live in your smartphone or your tablet, they need to be with you wherever you are, and that might be sitting with you at your computer. Messaging apps like facebook, WeChat and Line already have this option and it seems to be the best you really do need to include the PC in your platform choices.

      • Android

Free Software/Open Source

  • Newsrooms see the light of open source

    Have you heard the one about the big media house whose new, proprietary content management system (CMS) handles its every need, worked straight out of the box and with which all the journalists are in love? No?

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google Pays Big Bug Bounties in Chrome 40 Fix

        Google is out with its first stable Chrome browser update of 2015, with security vulnerabilities fixes topping the list of improvements in the new release. In total, Google is patching 62 different security flaws in the update.

        In contrast, Microsoft has yet to provide a single security patch for its Internet Explorer browser in 2015, while Mozilla’s Firefox 35 had nine security advisories attached to it.

      • Chrome 41 Beta: New ES6 Features and Improved DevTools for Service Workers and Web Animations

        Today’s Chrome Beta channel release includes new Javascript ES6 features and improved workflows for debugging Service Workers and Web Animations. Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to Chrome for Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Has IBM made (hard) Hadoop easier?

      IBM pays analyst firm Evans Data Corporation for what are widely regarded as worthy reports — in this role, Evans has cited IBM as an “industry leader” for making Hadoop more accessible, scalable and reliable for developers in a new analyst survey.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Danish open source early warning system for schools

      A system for smartphones, tablet computers and PCs that can warn students, teachers and school personnel of emergencies is to be developed for the Norwegian Akerhus county. The solution will be built by the Danish ICT service specialist Magenta, using open source components.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Mirantis Broadens OpenStack Training, Certification

      Mirantis, focused on the OpenStack cloud computing platform, has expanded its ambitious Mirantis Training for OpenStack course collection with two new courses and a Certificate Verification portal. Mirantis’ training platform has been running since 2011, and is differentiated from some other training platforms in that the coursework is OpenStack distribution-agnostic. According to Mirantis, Eighty eight percent of students rate it as better than other professional industry training offerings due to the quality of its instructors, its hands-on format, and its curriculum that is removed of vendor bias.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Moscow to Beijing in 2 days: China to build $242bn high-speed railway

      The railway will be 7,000 kilometers long and go through Kazakhstan, reports Bloomberg citing Beijing’s city government on the social networking site Weibo, China’s alternative to Twitter. The railway will make travel easier between Europe and Asia, the statement said.

  • Security

    • Our South Korean Allies Also Hack the U.S.—and We Don’t Seem to Care

      South Korea’s online espionage program may be primarily focused on the North, but it’s also targeting the United States—and the U.S. government isn’t making a stink about it.

    • Thursday’s security advisories
    • Just WHY is the FBI so sure North Korea hacked Sony? NSA: *BLUSH*

      The NSA wasn’t much interested in North Korea at the time but that changed – partly because the spy agency managed to get its hands on useful zero-day exploits used against the Norks, according to recently disclosed files. NBC News adds that US intel agencies had no forewarning of the Sony hack. After Sony reported the breach to the FBI’s cyber unit on 24 November, it became possible to trace back the attack.

      So even after comprehensively bugging North Korea’s ‘net connection, the best the spy agency had was the equivalent of a CCTV camera rather than a burglar alarm capable of detecting a crime in progress.

    • Doubts Persist Over North Korean Link to Sony Hack Despite NSA Claim

      “The pieces don’t add up,” said Tal Klein, vice president of strategy for Internet-security firm Adallom. “I cannot dispute the fact that the NSA hacked the North Koreans, because that is the ultimate trump card—there’s empirical evidence that I will never be able to see. But the attack does not fit the mold of a nation-state attack, but of a revenge-oriented attack.” – See more at: http://www.eweek.com/security/doubts-persist-over-north-korean-link-to-sony-hack-despite-nsa-claim.html#sthash.8k1lwUtf.dpuf

    • Steptoe cyberlaw podcast – interview with David Sanger

      Our guest for Episode 50 of the Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast is David Sanger, the New York Times reporter who broke the detailed story of Stuxnet in his book, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power. David talks about his latest story, recounting how North Korea developed its cyberattack network, and how the National Security Agency managed to compromise the network sufficiently to attribute the Sony attack. We talk about how understanding the White House helped him break a story that seemed to be about NSA and the FBI, North Korean hackers’ resemblance to East German Olympic swimmers, and the future of cyberwar.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • US Trainers To Deploy To Ukraine

      American soldiers will deploy to Ukraine this spring to begin training four companies of the Ukrainian National Guard, the head of US Army Europe Lt. Gen Ben Hodges said during his first visit to Kiev on Wednesday.

    • Video: Hillary Does a Putin Impression

      Did you hear the one about Hillary doing an impression of Vladimir Putin in Canada? Because it actually happened, Jackie Kucinich reports. During a wide ranging policy speech to the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, Hillary answered a question about the American electoral system with an impression. The moderator began asking her “if for some reason you decided to be president” and then quickly corrected himself, “actually run for that because there is a process.”

      “There is a process, it’s not like Putin,” she said.

      Cue the laugh track.

    • The Threat of an Imploding Yemen

      It has taken decades of deteriorating politics and security for Yemen to reach its current level of crisis, though now the costs might come not just in the form of the suffering of the Yemeni people but also in regional instability and the proliferation of international terrorism. While the causes of Yemen’s crisis are intensely local—having to do with longstanding issues of corruption, tribal and North-South differences, and a constitution in need of amending—it is being amplified both by meddling regional actors and a menacing terrorist group with international reach.

    • Hezbollah, Iran threats to avenge ‘Israeli strike’ have Lebanon on edge

      The tensions in the North that have been heightened following this week’s alleged Israeli airstrike that killed senior Hezbollah officials in the Golan Heights are also being felt in Lebanon, where apprehension is growing over the specter of another cross-border war.

    • Obama’s State of the Union sidesteps mounting foreign policy setbacks

      Since Barack Obama’s previous State of the Union address, the US president has relaunched the Iraq war – this time with a Syrian appendix – ensured the presence of US troops in Afghanistan through 2024 and continued drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. Yet if Obama’s 2015 State of the Union is to be believed, “tonight, we turn the page”.

      On foreign policy and national security, Obama cannot be blamed for wanting the page turned. Unlike in his previous States of the Union, there is no dead Osama bin Laden or Muammar Gaddafi to tout. His strongest foreign achievement in 2014 – an admittedly historic one – has been to normalize relations with Cuba, though, as with all things Obama does, congressional Republicans vow opposition.

    • Dirty Harry Goes To Iraq

      A similar observation might be made of Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper about Iraq. Like the Iraq War itself, Eastwood’s movie begins by exploiting a historically inaccurate delusion and, then, sustains itself for two hours on the mission to protect US soldiers against the insurgency that arose in opposition to the US invasion and occupation based on the initial delusion.

    • Flogging of Saudi blogger delayed again on medical grounds

      The planned flogging of a Saudi blogger convicted of insulting Islam has been delayed for a second straight week, a leading international rights group said Thursday, a move that comes amid mounting pressure from Saudi Arabia’s Western allies for authorities to cancel the punishment.

      The London-based Amnesty International said that around eight doctors carried out medical tests on Raif Badawi, 31, and recommended that he not be flogged this Friday. Saudi authorities postponed his flogging last week after a doctor concluded that his wounds from the first 50 lashes had not yet healed, according to Amnesty.

    • Saudi King Abdullah dies aged 91

      The announcement, made early on Friday, said his brother, Salman, had become king.

    • The drone operator who said ‘No’

      He was told that he helped to kill more than 1,600 people, but as time went by he felt uneasy with what he was doing. He found it hard to sleep and started dreaming in infra-red.

    • Drone attacks have become a hallmark of Barack Obama’s presidency, and the talk of ‘precision’ is deeply problematic

      In May 2009, a former adviser to General David Petraeus named David Kilcullen wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling for a moratorium on drone strikes carried out by the United States against al-Qaida and its associates in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The military advantages of using drones (the US Army defines a drone as a “land, sea or air vehicle that is remotely or automatically controlled”) are outweighed, Kilcullen argued, by their costs.

    • GUEST OPINION: Shining light on U.S. drone policy

      An estimated 3,500 people — hundreds of them children — have been killed by drones. While some of those killed were undoubtedly violent terrorists, fewer than 50 (2 percent) were confirmed to be high-level targets, according to a study undertaken by Stanford Law School and New York School of Law. There are numerous allegations, some confirmed by reliable news sources, of entire wedding parties and extended families being killed by U.S. drones.

    • Federal Prison Sentence Begins for Anti-Drone Activist

      On January 23, Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare, will begin a three-month jail sentence in federal prison for a protest against drones (also known as “unmanned aerial vehicles”) at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. I had a chance to interview her before she had to turn herself in.

    • ‘We didn’t even really know who we were firing at’ – former US drone operator

      Former US drone sensor operator Brandon Bryant admits he “couldn’t stand” himself for his participation in the country’s drone program for six years – firing on targets whose identities often went unconfirmed.

    • The 2014 Drone Wars Death From the Sky

      In closing, here is a quote from the ACLU regarding the use of drones:

      “The executive branch has, in effect, claimed the unchecked authority to put the names of citizens and others on “kill lists” on the basis of a secret determination, based on secret evidence, that a person meets a secret definition of the enemy. The targeted killing program operates with virtually no oversight outside the executive branch, and essential details about the program remain secret, including what criteria are used to put people on CIA and military kill lists or how much evidence is required.

    • Mystery motive for Qunaitra drone strike

      While Lebanon and Israel await Hezbollah’s response to Sunday’s deadly Israeli drone strike in the Golan Heights, the motive for the provocative attack, which could yet trigger further violence, remains shrouded in confusion.

      The continued silence from the Israeli government and military over the airstrike combined with some ambiguous comments in the media from Israeli security sources have only added to the puzzlement and drawn criticism in Israel.

    • Despite ambiguity, Netanyahu must answer for Syria attack

      The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee devoted itself to an important issue on Tuesday: the Israel Defense Forces’ decision to stop stationing soldiers in communities near the Gaza Strip. But if these Knesset members aren’t too busy with the election campaign, perhaps they should also make some time in the near future to discuss what is beginning to look like a major security crisis: the open threats by Iran and Hezbollah to take revenge for Sunday’s assassination of senior officials from both Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which they attribute to Israel.

    • Obama’s YouTube Interview Highlights: From Cyberbullying to SportsCenter

      The president said it was important to have legal constraints on the controversial drone program but that the program was aimed at minimizing casualties. “Under that our goal has always been: how do we target very specific terrorists who are proven to be trying to kill us — or more frequently kill innocent Muslims in their home countries,” he said.

    • Drone Warfare

      Yet there is something about drone warfare that is profoundly disturbing. How do our military and intelligence officials know if someone is a potential terrorist? Do we know the criteria by which a person or persons are targeted? Is it someone who is poised to kill, or is it someone who once killed? Is it prevention or revenge?

    • America’s Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing

      Our tactics produce more dangerous, more committed extremists

    • Don’t believe the U.S. military when it says it doesn’t keep body counts

      Since the Vietnam War, with its gruesome and inflated U.S. tallies of enemy dead, the Pentagon has denied keeping body counts. But, in fact, the military does add up the number of enemy fighters it believes it has killed — and proudly boasts of the totals in official documents that it never intends for public circulation.

    • American Sniper mirrors the war on terror propaganda

      American Sniper retells the story about four Iraq combat tours of the most lethal sniper in US military history, Chris Kyle. Despite having been nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, the Clint Eastwood directed film was better than I expected, and I still hated it.

      With a record breaking $105 million in box office earnings in its opening weekend, the film has arguably generated more controversy in the US than any movie I can recall.

      Much of the controversy has centred on the portrayal of the late Chris Kyle himself. Veterans who served with Kyle have praised the accuracy of actor Bradley Cooper’s impersonation, but a number of liberal journalists have lambasted the film for not staying true to Kyle’s autobiography. In fact, the film came close to portraying Kyle as a reluctant warrior. You know, the whole “I’m just doing my job” routine. In the book and in Kyle’s own words, however, killing 160 Iraqis, who were mostly the “civilian by day, soldiers by night” type, was something Kyle actually took great satisfaction from.

      “I don’t shoot people with Qurans. I’d like to but I don’t,” Kyle told a military investigator after being accused of killing an unarmed Iraqi civilian. In other parts of his book, Kyle writes: “I couldn’t give a fuck about the Iraqis” and “I hate the damn savages.”

    • American Justice?
    • Nick Turse, A Shadow War in 150 Countries

      From the point of view of the U.S. military and the national security state, the period from September 12, 2001, to late last night could be summed up in a single word: more. What Washington funded with your tax dollars was a bacchanalia of expansion intended, as is endlessly reiterated, to keep America “safe.” But here’s the odd thing: as the structure of what’s always called “security” is built out ever further into our world and our lives, that world only seems to become less secure. Odder yet, that “more” is rarely a focus of media coverage, though its reality is glaringly obvious. The details may get coverage but the larger reality — the thing being created in Washington — seems of remarkably little interest.

      That’s why websites like TomDispatch matter. They offer the larger picture of a world that’s being built right before our eyes but is somehow seldom actually seen — that is, taken in meaningfully. America’s Special Operations forces are a striking example of this phenomenon. The commando is, by now, a national culture hero, the guy who stands between Hell and us. But what special ops forces really do all — and I mean all — over the planet, doesn’t seem of any particular interest to Americans in general or the mainstream media in particular. The way those “elite” forces have parlayed their popularity into a staggering growth rate and just what that growth and the actions that go with it actually mean in terms of, say, blowback… well, that’s something you’re simply not going to read much about, other than at a website like this one.

    • As Fox News Apologizes, Jeremy Scahill on Fake “Terror Experts” & Challenges of Real War Reporting

      Fox News has apologized for broadcasting false information about Muslims in the wake of the Paris attacks. Last weekend, self-described terrorism expert Steve Emerson claimed on air that parts of Europe, including the entire English city of Birmingham, were totally Muslim areas where non-Muslims do not go. Emerson was forced to apologize, but the claim about so-called “no-go zones” was repeated by other Fox guests and anchors. On Saturday, according to a CNN Money tally, Fox News took time out of four broadcasts to apologize for reports on Muslims. Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, discusses the rise of so-called “terrorism experts” by Fox News and other major cable networks. In two recent interviews with CNN, Scahill has criticized the news giant and others for their use of “on-air analysts who also work in the private sector and make money on the idea that we should be afraid.” He also responds to blistering criticism from FBI chief James Comey of using an anonymous al-Qaeda source in reporting on the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and analyzes what al-Qaeda’s claim of responsibility will mean for the U.S. drone war in Yemen.

    • Who speaks for an anti-war position?

      War, then, is to be sustained and expanded. Put simply, Western governments with large-scale militaries and jihadist organizations with violence central to their strategies are engaged in an asymmetric exchange of violence, wherein killing of both combatants and civilians is routine. Drone strikes and bombing raids over Iraq and Syria generate reciprocal responses from al-Qaeda and groups now associated with ISIS in the form of beheadings, kidnappings and killing of civilians through various means.

      It is an “a-symmetric” conflict because Western states’ strikes are far more lethal than those of jihadi organizations and ISIS. For every innocent civilian murdered by ISIS, U.S. drones and air strikes — and now French bombing raids — kill many, consequently rallying new recruits against the United States and France with each raid.

      [...]

      Who among our congressional leaders speaks for an anti-war position? Will we see an anti-war presidential candidate in 2016? It seems unlikely.

    • UK to launch enhanced “anti-terror measures” and domestic use of troops

      The former head of Britain’s intelligence agency MI5, Lord Evans, has added his voice to demands for a clampdown on the Internet and e-communications in the wake of the terror assaults on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris and a Jewish supermarket, in which 17 people were killed.

    • Charlie Hebdo: A Missed Bottom-Up, Kumbaya, Opportunity?

      We have allowed fear and hate to foster the rise of paranoiacs, demagogues, opportunists and fools, driving our attention and resources away from immediate, dire situations: climate change, globalism, economic inequality and the degradation of education and the national infrastructure.

    • Foreign Policy and the State of the Union: What to Expect, or Not

      White HouseWhite HouseWhat can we expect in President Obama’s State of the Union with regard to U.S. foreign policy in 2015? Not much. As in every every State of the Union since 2002, the president is expected to address foreign policy largely within the framework of the war on terror and counterterrorism operations. But the State of the Union is largely a vehicle for rhetoric, not honest explanations of policy. President Obama mentioned drones in a State of the Union for the first time last year, claiming his administration had “imposed prudent limits” on their use.

  • Finance

    • Ex-Swiss banker found guilty in WikiLeaks trial, avoids jail

      Tethong said she would appeal the ruling.

      During the trial, which began in December but was halted when Elmer collapsed outside the Zurich courtroom, Tethong argued that Elmer had not broken any Swiss laws because he had not obtained the information as an employee of a Swiss bank.

    • Inequality is at top of the agenda as global elites gather in Davos

      A new report from the anti-poverty group Oxfam has helped put inequality back near the top of the global agenda, just in time for the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering of global elites in Davos, Switzerland. In particular, one striking claim from the Oxfam report has generated headlines: By next year, the top 1% of the world’s population could own more wealth than the other 99%. The Oxfam report – just one of many attempts at measuring worldwide economic disparities – fits into a broader pattern of growing interest in, and concern about, inequality.

    • Braintree now lets all U.S. merchants accept Bitcoin

      Braintree first announced the v.zero SDK back in July last year. The SDK allowed automatic shopping cart integration with PayPal among other payment types. In September, Braintree revealed a partnership with Coinbase to accept Bitcoin, but this is the first implementation of their collaboration.

    • Oil jumps after Saudi king’s death amid huge market shifts

      Oil prices jumped in early Asian trading on Friday as news of the death of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah added to uncertainty in energy markets already facing some of the biggest shifts in decades.

      Abdullah died early on Friday and his brother Salman became king, the royal court in the world’s top oil exporter and birthplace of Islam said in a statement carried by state television.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • 5 Years After Citizens United, Newspapers Fail To Cover Its Impact On Judicial Elections

      Five years after the Supreme Court opened the floodgates of campaign spending with its Citizens United decision, top newspapers in the three states with the most expensive judicial campaigns, Ohio, Alabama, and Texas, have largely failed to connect Citizens United with major changes in these races. The influx of money into state judicial elections following the decision has accelerated negative advertisements and campaign financing that may influence judges’ decisions.

    • Progressive Policies Are Popular–So Why Should Democrats Be Afraid of Them?

      CNN’s post-speech discussion of Barack Obama’s State of the Union address included anchor Wolf Blitzer’s reaction to colleague Jake Tapper’s view that the president had outlined a liberal economic agenda. Blitzer’s analysis illustrates the logic behind corporate media’s longstanding efforts to dissuade politicians from advocating for progressive policies…

    • Poll Finds Agenda Gap Between Leaders, American People

      Republicans are trying to burnish their party’s image–and Congress’–by promising to “get things done” now that the GOP controls both the House and Senate. But a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that the public doesn’t care much about some of the first things the GOP, or President Barack Obama, is trying to do.

    • Fox News Shows Ignore Scott Walker’s ACA Remarks After Months Of Gruber Coverage

      Despite dedicating numerous segments to comments made by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber about tax credits established under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that appear to support a right-wing challenge to their legality, Fox News’ programming on weeknights has ignored remarks made by Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) that undermine the legal theory behind this upcoming Supreme Court case.

  • Censorship

    • Charlie Hebdo, The Interview, and Censoring Torture Photos

      In France and the United States, there seems to be near-universal agreement that to self-censor because of threats of violence is unwise and cowardly. The slogan “Je Suis Charlie,” which millions adopted in the wake of the Paris attacks, meant different things to different people, but its core, defiant message was that terrorists shouldn’t get to decide the boundaries of our political debate.

      This was also the perspective of many Americans when, at the end of last year, a mysterious group said to be associated with North Korea threatened to wreak havoc if Sony didn’t cancel “The Interview,” a comedy about a plot to assassinate Kim Jong-un. Political leaders of both national parties criticized Sony for withdrawing the film. Some particularly outraged Americans urged their fellow citizens not just to watch the film but to pay for the privilege on the theory that their doing so would convey an appropriate message to the dictator. President Obama weighed in, too, saying, “we cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States.”

  • Privacy

    • German TV documentary on the hunt for Edward Snowden

      The revelations of Edward Snowden have exposed to the world a massive breach of democratic rights by the US intelligence agencies and their allies. They have also unleashed protests and expressions of sympathy for Snowden’s efforts among broad social layers.

      [...]

      The documentary begins with a dramatic statement by US Senator Dianne Feinstein (Democrat, California). The Senate Intelligence Committee chairman declares: “I want him to be captured. The hunt is on!” The programme assumes the guise of a spy thriller. The measures taken by the US authorities to remove Snowden from circulation are extraordinary and menacing. This is not only the view of the documentary, but of the protagonists themselves: Edward Snowden, as well as Julian Assange and Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks.

    • Banning encryption is digital equivalent of banning books

      The widespread dissemination of ideas can disrupt society and subvert the power of those at its top.

      Gutenberg’s printing press, for example, helped spur the Protestant Reformation that over time helped overturn the religious and political order of Europe.

      In an often-bloody process that took about 400 years, the authoritarian empires that ruled the continent gave way to modern, democratic nation-states.

      Books have been banned (and burned) precisely because new ideas are a threat to the people in charge.

    • Sam Adams Award

      I am in Berlin for the annual Sam Adams Award – this time to William Binney, formerly Technical Director of the NSA. There will be an address by Edward Snowden (and a short contribution from me). It really is a tremendous event, with some very senior former intelligence professionals making revelations about the extent to which the security state is out of control, a tool of immoral governments dominated by corporate interests.

    • Snowden Documents Show NSA Can’t Keep Its Eyes On Its Own Papers; Harvests Data From Other Surveillance Agencies

      Another pile of Snowden documents has been released by Der Spiegel, detailing more of previously revealed NSA/GCHQ activities — like the harvesting of exploits and hardware shipment “interdiction” — along with some new stuff, including the NSA’s piggybacking on other countries’ surveillance to further buttress its massive haystacks.

    • NSA: We’re in YOUR BOTNET

      The NSA quietly commandeered a botnet targeting US Defence agencies to attack other victims including Chinese and Vietnamese dissidents, Snowden documents reveal.

    • Chris Christie, Port Authority Official Abused E-ZPass Data For Their Own Ends

      What data is harmless in the hands of the government? Apparently, not much. Case in point: the data collected by E-ZPass transponders. While the system helps alleviate traffic congestion, it also tracks drivers’ movements. If you thought it just triggered toll payments, you’re drastically underestimating the government’s desire for data.

    • A Little Snooping Never Killed Nobody: South Korea Spying on the US

      Edward Snowden, the infamous former NSA employee, leaked a number of secret documents. Just recently Der Spiegel released another one, revealing that South Korea’s cyber espionage program has been targeting the US for a while now, despite officially being aimed against North Korea.

    • New Snowden documents show that the NSA and its allies are laughing at the rest of the world

      A team of nine journalists including Jacob Appelbaum and Laura Poitras have just published another massive collection of classified records obtained by Edward Snowden. The trove of documents, published on Der Spiegel, show that the National Security Agency and its allies are methodically preparing for future wars carried out over the internet. Der Spiegel reports that the intelligence agencies are working towards the ability to infiltrate and disable computer networks — potentially giving them the ability to disrupt critical utilities and other infrastructure. And the NSA and GCHQ think they’re so far ahead of everyone else, they’re laughing about it.

    • How The NSA Gets Around Oversight

      Whistle-blowers like Bill Binny, Thomas Drake, and Edward Snowden, along with wrongly accused U.S. citizens, have been fighting for their rights. Not from terrorists, but from the U.S. government.

      While they fight, many Americans have become complacent with their diminished rights and lack of privacy.

      The Patriot Act passed 6 weeks after 9/11 in a climate of fear and imminent threat. It diminished freedom in the U.S., providing the government sweeping powers to spy on, arrest, and detain individuals. The original legislation provided little oversight. Since 2001, there has been a major struggle between protecting constitutional rights and increasing government powers to battle imminent terror.

    • Obama promises to release new NSA spying report next month
    • Obama: I haven’t forgotten NSA reform
    • Guest column: The NSA is hurting more than helping
    • Kim Dotcom launches NSA-proof MEGAchat with E2EE to take on Skype
    • ‘Anti-NSA’ messaging service MegaChat debuts in beta version
    • America’s Surveillance State: Docu-series exposes NSA’s long reach
    • Four and Counting: States Consider Bills to Turn off Resources to NSA
    • Alaska Bill Would Ban Material Support or Resources to NSA

      A bill filed in Alaska late last week would ban “material support or resources” to the NSA. This would not only support efforts to turn off NSA’s water in Utah, but have practical effects on federal surveillance programs if passed.

      Alaska Sen. Bill Wielechowski prefiled SB13 on Jan. 16. The legislation would prohibit the state and its municipalities from using assets, including personnel, to assist a federal agency in collecting certain telephone records or electronic data without a warrant, making it the fourth state to introduce legislation similar to a bill up for consideration in Utah this year.

    • NSA Cyber War Will Use Internet of Things as Weapons Platform; Your Home is the Battlefield

      “World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.” – Marshall McLuhan, Culture is Our Business, 1970

      New Snowden documents recently revealed that the NSA is getting ready for future digital wars as the agency postures itself in an aggressive manner towards the world. “The Five Eyes Alliance“, a cooperation between United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, is working hard to develop these weapons of Cyber Warfare.

      So called “D” weapons, as reported by Der Spiegel, will paralyze computer networks and infrastructure that they monitor. Water supplies, factories, airports, as well as the flow of money are all potential targets.

    • The Latest Rules on How Long NSA Can Keep Americans’ Encrypted Data Look Too Familiar

      Does the National Security Agency (NSA) have the authority to collect and keep all encrypted Internet traffic for as long as is necessary to decrypt that traffic? That was a question first raised in June 2013, after the minimization procedures governing telephone and Internet records collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were disclosed by Edward Snowden. The issue quickly receded into the background, however, as the world struggled to keep up with the deluge of surveillance disclosures. The Intelligence Authorization Act of 2015, which passed Congress this last December, should bring the question back to the fore. It established retention guidelines for communications collected under Executive Order 12333 and included an exception that allows NSA to keep ‘incidentally’ collected encrypted communications for an indefinite period of time. This creates a massive loophole in the guidelines.

    • ‘Citizenfour’ Hinted to the 2nd NSA ‘Whistleblower’

      The new Documentary ‘Citizenfour’ revealed the existence of another ‘whistleblower,’ someone even higher ranking than Snowden who came forward.

    • Surveillance Is Just First Phase as NSA Plans ‘Guerilla’ Tactics for Global Cyberwar

      As the team of journalists reporting for Der Spiegel describe it, “the US government is currently undertaking a massive effort to digitally arm itself for network warfare.” And, they report, the NSA—along with its intelligence partners around the world—”have adopted ‘plausible deniability’ as their guiding principle for Internet operations.”

    • ‘Snooper’s charter’: four Lords in bid to pass changed version before election

      A cross-party alliance of former defence ministers, police chiefs and intelligence commissioners will try to force a revised “snooper’s charter” into law before the general election.

      The proposals to amend the counter-terrorism bill currently in the Lords and due for debate on Monday have been tabled by a group led by former Conservative defence secretary Lord King. The other supporters are the Liberal Democrat former reviewer of counter-terror laws, Lord Carlile, the former Labour defence minister, Lord West, and the former Metropolitan police commissioner, Lord Blair.

    • Dutch secret services work for America: Edward Snowden

      Dutch intelligence services AIVD and MIVD walk on the leash of USA’s National Security Agency (NSA) and are “extremely docile” and seen as “subordinates”, says former NSA and CIA employee Edward Snowden in an interview to Volkskrant and Nieuwsuur.

    • Dutch security services ‘work for the US’, says whistleblower Snowden

      The Dutch security services AIVD and MIVD do whatever the US security service NSA tells them, according to whistleblower Edward Snowden in an interview with the Volkskrant.

    • ‘Social media encourages people to live lives online and accept Big Brother’s all seeing-eye’

      RT: Are people taking their privacy more seriously after all the Snowden revelations? Or are they just making a joke of it?

      AM: Yes, one of the jokes, of course, is “GCHQ is always listening to its customers.” I think people are beginning to take their privacy more seriously. It depends on which country you live in though because depending on the media coverage and the degree of media coverage people are more or less aware of what’s going on.

      For example, in Germany there is a historic understanding of the importance of privacy as the last defense against sliding towards tyrannical government. And also people are very conscious still of more recent history, things like the Stasi secret police. So they take these issues very seriously and in fact there are a number of initiatives in Germany to up the protection of citizens’ rights.

      However in places like the UK for example where the media has been largely censored around reporting some of the very serious disclosures which Mr. Snowden produced, there is less awareness; there is more a sort of complacency that the spies are always the good guys, that … if you do nothing wrong you have nothing to hide. But I think even in the UK people are waking up to this, so all we can do is thank Edward Snowden for all he has done for raising awareness of these various issues around the world.

    • A Spy in the Machine

      How a brutal government used cutting-edge spyware to hijack one activist’s life

    • Snowden: French spying didn’t stop terror attacks

      Edward Snowden is pointing to the recent terror attacks in Paris as proof that government surveillance can’t stop terrorism.

      “The problem with mass surveillance is that you’re burying people under too much data,” the government leaker said in an interview with a Dutch public broadcaster.

      “We see that France passed one of the most intrusive, expansive surveillance laws in all of Europe last year, and it didn’t stop the attack,” he added. “This is consistent with what we’ve seen in every country.”

  • Civil Rights

    • Press release: Barrett Brown will finally be sentenced tomorrow

      Concluding a controversial case that has dragged on for over two years, on Thursday morning the jailed journalist Barrett Brown will go before a federal judge to receive his sentence. He faces up to 8.5 years in prison.

    • EFF Statement on Barrett Brown Sentencing

      The charges relating to the hyperlink represented a serious threat to press freedom. EFF and other press organizations planned to file an amicus brief supporting Brown’s motion to dismiss eleven of the hyperlinking charges, noting that journalists routinely link to documents that, while illegally obtained, are of interest to the public. Thankfully, the government came to its senses in March 2014 and (before we could file our brief), dismissed eleven of the charges based on hyperlinking. The next month, Brown signed a sealed plea agreement that significantly reduced the remaining charges. Ultimately, he pleaded guilty to three crimes: being an accessory after the fact to the unauthorized access to Stratfor’s computers; interfering with the execution of a search warrant by hiding a laptop; and, most seriously, threatening an FBI agent.

    • European Court fast-tracks decision on challenge to state surveillance of journalists

      A campaign to stop the UK Government spying on journalists and their sources has today been given “priority” by the European Court of Human Rights (pictured, Shutterstock).

      The Bureau of Investigative Journalism submitted a legal challenge to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act prompted by Edward Snowden’s revelations over state mass electronic surveillance.

      It claims that the UK state is breaching European law by accessing the electronic communications and telecoms records of journalists.

      Today the Bureau learned that the ECHR has prioritised its legal challenge, meaning a judgment is expected with around a year rather than the usual four or five years.

    • Every UK national newspaper editor urges Prime Minister to stop RIPA spying on journalists

      Every national newspaper editor has backed the Press Gazette Save Our Sources campaign and signed a joint letter of protest to Prime Minister David Cameron over police spying on journalists’ phone records.

      Around 100 editors have signed a letter co-ordinated by Press Gazette and the Society of Editors to warn that the draft code of practice on use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act puts journalists’ sources at risk.

      Politicians promised new controls in the code, but instead the new draft guidance states that police can continue to secretly view journalists’ phone records provided they give “special consideration” to the “proportionality” of doing so.

      The joint letter (full text below), submitted as part of the RIPA code consulation, states that the draft code “provides wholly inadequate protection for journalists’ sources”.

      And it warns that there is nothing in the new code to stop police again targeting the phone records of journalists in order to uncover lawful sources, as they did with The Sun.

      The draft code appears to encourage police to access journalists’ phone records by stating that they are not “privileged information”.

    • Israeli Government Watchdog Investigates Military’s Conduct in Gaza War

      Israel’s government watchdog, the state comptroller, said on Tuesday that he had opened an investigation into decisions made by military and political leaders during last summer’s 50-day war with the Hamas militant group in Gaza.

      The announcement was Israel’s latest effort to head off an International Criminal Court inquiry into its conduct during the war, and came days after prosecutors at the court opened a preliminary examination of possible war crimes committed in the Palestinian territories, the first formal step that could lead to charges against Israelis.

    • Your Home Is Your Prison

      On January 27th, domestic violence survivor Marissa Alexander will walk out of Florida’s Duval County jail — but she won’t be free.

      Alexander, whose case has gained some notoriety, endured three years of jail time and a year of house arrest while fighting off a prison sentence that would have seen her incarcerated for the rest of her life — all for firing a warning shot that injured no one to fend off her abusive husband. Like many black women before her, Alexander was framed as a perpetrator in a clear case of self-defense. In November, as her trial date drew close, Alexander accepted a plea deal that will likely give her credit for time served, requiring her to spend “just” 65 more days in jail. Media coverage of the development suggested that Alexander would soon have her “freedom,” that she would be “coming home.”

    • CIA leak trial enters final showdown

      But earlier Wednesday, the seventh day of the trial, defense attorneys poked holes in the government’s case. Hunt testified that around the time Risen began asking questions about the program in May 2003, she believed the most likely source for the leak was someone on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Sterling had talked to the panel’s staffers in March of that year about his concerns that Iran might be able to take advantage of flaws in the designs, in part because they were too obvious.

    • ISIS v. Saudi Arabia, Implementation of Sharia Law

      One is an enemy of America, a group of evil Sunni terrorists who ruthlessly employ their own twisted vision of Islamic Sharia Law to behead people, punish homosexuality and criminalize adultery.

      And the other’s one of America’s staunchest Sunni allies in the Middle East, on the road to democracy, albeit one that employs its own twisted vision of Islamic Sharia Law to behead people, punish homosexuality and criminalize adultery.

    • The CIA’s Most Important Overseer Is Abetting Its Torture Coverup

      Senator Richard Burr is acting like a man who doesn’t understand the role or duties that he now has. With the Republican Party assuming control of Congress, the North Carolinian is chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, the body charged with overseeing the CIA. His responsibilities are momentous. All senators are called to act as power-jealous checks on the executive branch. And the particular mission of the Senate intelligence committee, created in the wake of horrific CIA abuses, obligates Burr to “provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States” and “to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws.”

    • ‘US govt trying to pursue those who show courage’ – Former CIA officer
    • ‘Politicians use the attacks in Paris for their own benefits’

      Edward Snowden blames politicians who ask for more powers for intelligence services after the Paris attacks of ‘seizing a catastrophe for their own benefits’. They need to remember recent history, he says, pointing to the Patriot Act as the American response after 9/11. ‘A quick law is never a good law’, Snowden says in an interview with Dutch daily newspaper De Volkskrant.

    • Thoughts – How is the NSA preparing the U.S. for a digital arms race and future battles?

      According to top secret documents from the archive of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden seen exclusively by SPIEGEL, they are planning for wars of the future in which the Internet will play a critical role, with the aim of being able to use the net to paralyze computer networks and, by doing so, potentially all the infrastructure they control, including power and water supplies, factories, airports or the flow of money.

    • Government Tries to Convict Jeffrey Sterling for Retroactively Classified Documents about Rotary Phones

      A court officer handed out a packet of these same documents with bright red SECRET markings on the front to each juror (the government had tried to include such a warning on the binders of other exhibits, but the defense pointed out that nothing in them was actually classified at all). Judge Leonie Brinkema, apparently responding to the confused look on jurors’ faces, explained these were still-classified documents intended for their eyes only. “You’ll get the context,” Judge Brinkema added. “The content is not really anything you have to worry about.” The government then explained these documents were seized from Jeffrey Sterling’s house in Missouri in 2006. Then the court officer collected the documents back up again, having introduced the jurors to the exclusive world of CIA’s secrets for just a few moments.

    • CIA leak trial now in jury’s hands

      Prosecutors asked a federal jury Thursday to convict former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling on leak charges to send a message that the spy agency’s secrets can be protected and that those who cooperate with the U.S. intelligence can be confident the government will do all it can to keep their identities under wraps.

      But in its closing statement, the defense argued that government lawyers were long on conjecture and short on proof — and a lawyer for Sterling presented an alternative theory of who leaked top-secret details of a CIA operation aimed at undermining Iran’s nuclear program.

    • Leak Trial Shows CIA Zeal to Hide Incompetence

      Six days of testimony at the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling have proven the agency’s obsession with proclaiming its competence. Many of the two-dozen witnesses from the Central Intelligence Agency conveyed smoldering resentment that a whistleblower or journalist might depict the institution as a bungling outfit unworthy of its middle name.

    • ‘Guantánamo Diary,’ by Mohamedou Ould Slahi

      “Guantánamo Diary” is the most profound account yet written of what it is like to be that collateral damage. One fall day 13 years ago Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a 30-year-old electrical engineer and telecommunications specialist, received a visit at his house in Noakchott, Mauritania, from two officers summoning him to come answer questions at the country’s intelligence ministry. “Take your car,” one of the men told him, as Slahi stood in front of his house with his mother and his aunt. “We hope you can come back today.” Listening to these words, Slahi’s mother fixed her eyes on her son. “It is the taste of helplessness,” he writes, “when you see your beloved fading away like a dream and you cannot help him. . . . I would watch both my mom and my aunt praying in my rearview mirror until we took the first turn and I saw my beloved ones disappear.”

    • Family Seeks Release of a Guantánamo Detainee Turned Author

      On one of the roughest days in Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s 14 years of captivity at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an American interrogator initially suggested that he pray out loud, then ridiculed him when he began reciting the Quran.

      Chained, barefoot and wearing only a thin uniform in an interrogation room chilled to 49 degrees, Mr. Slahi found himself on the receiving end of a barrage of questions. “Yes or no?” one interrogator shouted at him.

    • C.I.A. Report Found Value of Brutal Interrogation Was Inflated

      Years before the release in December of a Senate Intelligence Committee report detailing the C.I.A.’s use of torture and deceit in its detention program, an internal review by the agency found that the C.I.A. had repeatedly overstated the value of intelligence gained during the brutal interrogations of some of its detainees.

      The internal report, more than 1,000 pages in length, came to be known as the Panetta Review after Leon E. Panetta, who, as the C.I.A.’s director, ordered that it be done in 2009. At least one of its authors won an agency award for her work, according to a recent briefing that the agency’s inspector general gave to staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

    • Cooperation between British spies and Gaddafi’s Libya revealed in official papers

      Britain’s intelligence agencies engaged in a series of previously-unknown joint operations with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s government, and used the information extracted from rendition victims as evidence during partially-secret court proceedings in London, according to an analysis of official documents recovered in Tripoli since the Libyan revolution.

      The exhaustive study of the papers from the Libyan government archives shows the links between MI5, MI6 and Gaddafi’s security agencies to have been far more extensive and than previously thought, and to have involved a number of joint operations in which Libyan dissidents were unlawfully detained and allegedly tortured.

    • NY Attorney General Proposes Not Terrible Cybersecurity Legislation

      Most legislation that includes the word “cyber” is nothing more than an excuse to give the government a larger piece of the action — generally by redefining the term “information sharing” to mean a one-way street of data collection running from private companies (and their customers) to various law enforcement and security agencies.

    • ‘US government was subverting entire US constitution’ – NSA whistleblower

      Award winning whistleblower William Binney says his new job is to make the US government honest, make them face the truth publically, and to prevent further violation of the rights which America has never intended to stand for.

      The Sam Adams Award for Integrity and Intelligence is to be given in Berlin this Thursday. This is an annual ceremony where intelligence professional are rewarded for their contribution in sharing light on governments’ wrongdoings. Such whistleblowers as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning have got this award in the past. This year the prize goes to William Binney, retired NSA technical director. He left his high profile job in order to try to bring the NSA to account.

    • Snowden files reveal how GCHQ spies tracked iPhone users

      Former NSA contracter-turned-whistleblower, Edward Snowden gave the documents to a team of nine journalists including Laura Poitras, who directed the documentary Citizenfour, and they were published by Der Spiegel.

    • Here’s Why Edward Snowden Refuses To Use An iPhone
    • NSA leaker Edward Snowden refuses to use Apple’s iPhone over spying concerns – report
    • Edward Snowden News: NSA Whistleblower Reportedly Believes the Apple iPhone Spies on Users
    • Playing NSA, hardware hackers build USB cable that can attack

      Just over a year ago, Jacob Appelbaum and Der Spiegel revealed pages from the National Security Agency’s ANT catalog, a sort of “wish book” for spies that listed technology that could be used to exploit the computer and network hardware of targets for espionage. One of those tools was a USB cable with embedded hardware called Cottonmouth-I—a cable that can turn the computer’s USB connections into a remote wiretap or even a remote control.

    • Journalist Barrett Brown sentenced to 63 months in federal prison, must pay $890K in restitution

      A court in Dallas has sentenced Barrett Brown to 63 months in federal prison, minus 28 months already served. For count one in the case, he receives 48 months. For count 2, he receives 12 months. And for count 3, he receives 3 months. He is also ordered to pay $890,000 in restitution.

      The government’s charges against the intelligence and security reporter stemmed from his relationship with sources close to the hacker group Anonymous, and the fact that Brown published a link to publicly-available copies of leaked Stratfor documents.

    • Here’s the speech Barrett Brown will deliver at his sentencing

      His original indictment carried a maximum sentence of 105 years. But as per the terms of a 2014 plea deal, the journalist and firebrand now faces a maximum sentence of eight and half years in prison.

    • The Sterling Closing Arguments: Who Is the Hero, Who Is the Storyteller?

      “Jeffrey Sterling was the hero of Risen’s story,” prosecutor Eric Olshan finished his closing argument in the Jeffrey Sterling trial. “Don’t let him be the hero of this one.”

      “They are patriots,” prosecutor Jim Trump ended his remarks, speaking of the many CIA officers the jury had heard from. “They do their work without accolades.” He then compared Sterling with those patriots. “Sterling is not a patriot,” he described after accusing Sterling of betraying the CIA and his colleagues. “He is the defendant, he is guilty.”

    • British spy agency intercepted emails of journalists, considers them ‘threats’ alongside terrorists and hackers

      This is yet another outrageous violation of press freedom by the British government, which has increasingly shown contempt for newsgathering and the rights of journalists.

    • British Spy Agency Swept Up Emails of Major U.S. and UK Media Outlets; Investigative Journalists Viewed as Threat

      Britain’s cyber intelligence agency collected emails from numerous media outlets from Britain, the United States and other countries while also declaring in internal communications that investigative reports should be considered a threat to government operations.

      With documents provided by National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Guardian reported that Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) intercepted emails from journalists working for American and European news sources. Those affected by the email sweep included the BBC, Reuters, The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Sun, NBC and The Washington Post.

    • Obama will fundamentally reshape the internet. But he hasn’t said how

      The president will have to address net neutrality, the Patriot Act and cybersecurity this year. The platitudes in the State of the Union aren’t reassuring

    • Barrett Brown sentenced to 63 months for ‘merely linking to hacked material’

      In a rebuke to a legion of online supporters and what the journalist and one-time member of Anonymous called a “dangerous precedent”, Barrett Brown was sentenced to 63 months in prison by a federal judge in Dallas on Thursday.

      Brown’s backers from across the web had hoped he would be able to walk free with his 31 months of time served for what they insist was “merely linking to hacked material”. But the 33-year-old, who was once considered something of a spokesman for the Anonymous movement, will face more than twice that sentence. The judge also ordered him to pay more $890,000 in restitution and fines.

    • Barrett Brown Sentenced To 63 Months In Jail For Daring To Do Journalism On Hacked Info

      We’ve written a few times about the ridiculous case against Barrett Brown, a journalist who took a deep interest in Anonymous and various hacking efforts. As we noted, a key part of the initial charges included the fact that Brown had organized an effort to comb through the documents that had been obtained from Stratfor via a hack. The key bit was that Brown had reposted a URL pointing to the documents to share via his “Project PM” — a setup to crowdsource the analysis of the leaked documents. Some of those documents included credit card info, so he was charged with “trafficking” in that information. Brown didn’t help his own cause early on with some immensely foolish actions, like threatening federal agents in a video posted to YouTube, but there were serious concerns about how the government had twisted what Brown had actually done in a way that could be used against all kinds of journalists.

    • Police to probe Leon Brittan’s alleged Westminster paedophile cover-up beyond the grave

      Child sex abuse campaigners have spoken of their fury that Leon Brittan has taken secrets of an alleged Westminster paedophile cover-up to his grave.

      The former Tory Home Secretary has died after a long fight with cancer – leaving unanswered questions about his role in the disappearance of a dossier said to reveal the existence of an abuse network at the top of government.

      And detectives declared they would still be investigating claims Lord Brittan raped a teenager in 1967.

      The dossier was handed to him in 1983 by Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens and the row over its “loss” led to Home Secretary Theresa May launching a wide-ranging public inquiry into the allegations of a paedophile ring.

    • British Company under Investigation for Offering Services to Guantanamo Base

      Internationally recognized agencies such as Amnesty International and Scotland Yard have undertaken an investigation into individuals who allegedly participated in acts of torture carried out in Cuba.

      I came across this startling bit of news in the British newspaper The Independent on January 14. There, I read that the British human rights group Reprieve submitted a report to the renowned police agency, asking that it investigate a British company for alleged complicity in extremely serious human rights violations.

      The accused company is named “G4S.” The British government, the newspaper adds, has been investigating G4S for some time to determine whether it has violated principles established by international conventions. According to the charges, the company offered administrative services to a harrowing prison, notorious for its abuses and for confining human beings without previous or due process: the United States’ Guantanamo Naval Base.

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • MPAA Boss Chris Dodd Talks About Sony Hack & Free Speech… Ignoring How It Revealed MPAA’s Plan To Undermine Free Speech

        First of all, I’m not quite clear on how the Sony Hack was really an “attack on free speech” unless you really believe the point of the hack was to get Sony to not show The Interview (a storyline that only showed up well after the hack). But, considering that some of the only real news to come out of the hack was an elaborate mulit-pronged strategy by the MPAA to censor the internet by twisting various laws, that statement is kind of ridiculous.

      • UK Prime Minister’s special advisor wants prison for people who watch TV programmes the wrong way

        The UK Conservative MP Mike Weatherley spoke at a second reading of the Intellectual Property Bill in Parliament and called for prison sentences for “persistent” downloaders. Mr Weatherley is a former entertainment industry executive and is Prime Minister Cameron’s Intellectual Property advisor. He also defended the idea of disconnecting families from the Internet if their router is implicated in accused acts of copyright infringement.

Microsoft is Dying Due to Free Software, Tries to Infect GNU/Linux With .NET and to Infect Moodle in Schools With Microsoft Office and OOXML Lock-in

Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Open XML at 12:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

–Bill Gates

Drugs

Summary: ‘Free’ drugs (a proprietary software analogy) the new strategy of Microsoft in its latest battle against Free software, especially in schools where choice is a rarity (if not an impossibility), with the premeditated intention of forming dependency/addiction among young people

The Microsoft marketer from the CBS-run ZDNet says that GNU/Linux has now successfully pushed the price of Windows down to $0. No wonder the company is laying off many employees and fighting with the IRS over its tax violations. Microsoft is a company in rapid decline and there are many ways to show this. Just because Microsoft pressures and even bribes people to pay lip service to Vista 10 doesn’t mean it’s real news or that FOSS sites should cover it too (but some do). It’s more of a distraction or a decoy amid a lot of negative publicity for Microsoft. Vista 10 is not ‘free’, neither gratis nor libre. That’s a lie perpetrated by Microsoft and propagated by Microsoft-friendly media. As Pogson put it in his rebuttal: “Freedom isn’t just about the price. An operating system isn’t a service. One needs software on a device to make it seem intelligent, nothing more. Bundling that other OS with every kind of device on the planet doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Microsoft has been trying to infiltrate the FOSS community and even infiltrate GNU/Linux (the winners at Microsoft’s expense). Here we have Microsoft’s proxy Xamarin producing yet another Microsoft entrapment for GNU/Linux users (Mono) and here we have Microsoft trying to repurpose Free software as Microsoft lock-in. When Microsoft says “open source” it means proprietary plus some exploitation of FOSS in the Trojan sense, based on its silly press releases that it pushed even into CNN, (i.e. paid for by Microsoft handsomely). For those who missed it, Microsoft is now trying to push proprietary software with OOXML lock-in, which Microsoft committed crimes for, into Moodle. Microsoft’s ally in schools, Blackboard (proprietary), also tried to accomplish that when it acquired the competition (Moodlerooms). It is capture by proxy (Microsoft uses its own proxy) and it serves to highlight an inherent vulnerability in the ‘openness’ of Free software (it leaves itself open to Trojan horses unless it is willing to put up some resistance). Microsoft did the same thing to Linux (proprietary Hyper-V through Novell as the bribed proxy) and it is becoming a serious issue. The media too plays a role in it (see the paid press releases above) and Bill Gates’ bribes to The Guardian are clearly paying off because this wicked paper is now portraying Gates as a champion of education with another mindless advertisement/puff piece. This is often about imposing Microsoft software on schools. Gates has already made it explicitly clear that he views children the same way drug dealers view them. It’s market share. It’s money. “In other news,” wrote a reader to us, “he is attacking Moodle quite heavily. I guess the goal is to make it 100% tied to MS Office, Sharepoint, Exchange and all the other crap.”

“Microsoft has been been trying to infiltrate the FOSS community and even infiltrate GNU/Linux (the winners at Microsoft’s expense).”“Wired still sucks up to Bill,” he added, linking to this latest puff piece. Gates has spent over a billion dollars so far bribing news sites, blogs, etc. so we have grounds for suspicion that Wired too (Condé Nast) has an unstated conflict of interest. Another news site of Condé Nast has employed full-time Microsoft boosters and one of them, Peter Bright (Microsoft Peter), is now openwashing Internet Explorer despite admitting that “Internet Explorer is closed from end to end.”

Watch out as Microsoft and Bill Gates try to hijack school curriculum to impose Microsoft as part of what’s obligatory (imposed from above). The attempt to make Moodle connected to the NSA PRISM-complying (Microsoft was first in PRISM) OOXML-spreading Microsoft Office is just the first step. █

Microsoft Symptoms of a Dying Company: More Boosters Depart, Back Doors Revealed, Microsoft’s Outlook Cracked

Posted in Microsoft, Security, Vista 10, Windows at 12:15 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Journalists currently under heavy barrage from Microsoft marketing (outsourced and in-house)

Office of telemarketing

Summary: Bad news for Microsoft shortly before the marketing extravaganza served to cover much of it up

IF YOU believe the hype (Microsoft has been talking about it for nearly 2 years), you will easily believe that Vista 10 is the return of Windows monopoly and supposed OS ‘leadership’, even though Microsoft is shrinking along with its notorious back doors and criminal behaviour (less Microsoft means less crime).

Those of us who have watched Microsoft closely for years saw a lot of the company’s boosters ebbing away. Microsoft laid off a lot of marketing people. It’s a ‘luxury’ it cannot afford anymore as breaking/infiltrating the media is not cheap. Last week we learned that Paul Thurrott left as well; he had been one of Microsoft’s leading boosters and now, according to a source of ours, he “[p]robably moved to be able to change focus, adding FUD against non-Microsoft stuff in the guise of coverage. This is how far he has gone.” (notice the usual and typical propaganda we have been seeing for weeks now).

Some falsely claim that Android is losing share and others try to paint Windows as running Android apps even though it cannot. That is the type of FUD we have been debunking here for years. This FUD is not dead yet. Just notice the patterns, part of the PR campaign perhaps. If many people repeat the same lie in unison, then the lie gains legitimacy. Just watch Microsoft’s propaganda network 1105 Media trolling FOSS yet again over ‘security’ (only yesterday). A lot of this PR/FUD started last April when a Microsoft-connected firm gave a name and a logo to a bug in OpenSSL. It did it exactly when Windows XP ran out of support (i.e. left totally vulnerable to crackers).

“A lot of this PR/FUD started last April when a Microsoft-connected firm gave a name and a logo to a bug in OpenSSL.”Either way, Microsoft boosters continue to be dissolved. We used to see many more FUD attacks on GNU/Linux or Free software several years ago and as Soylent News put it: “Longtime Microsoft-centric journalist and blogger Paul Thurrott has left Supersite for Windows, and the website he founded sixteen years ago, and its sister site Windows IT Pro, for reasons explained in his farewell post. The sites (the former of which is still branded ‘Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows’ for now, but that will surely change) will be maintained by a staff of journalists employed by Penton, an information services conglomerate.”

Microsoft very much relies on propaganda agents who blame Google for Microsoft's failings and incite against Microsoft’s top competitors (Chromebooks seem to be Microsoft’s nightmare at the moment, not just Google Docs and ODF). Consider this rebuttal from Thom Holwerda:

First, this article makes the usual mistake of calling these vulnerabilities “zero day”. They are not zero day. They are 90 day. A huge difference that changes the entire context of the story. Microsoft gets 90 days – three months – to address these issues.

The accusations against Google were repeated later, at around the beginning of last week (second time) and the end of last week (third wave). This is totally insane an accusation to make, but given that those blaming Google are longtime Microsoft boosters, one can expect it.

In other news, a new Bloomberg puff piece glamourises Microsoft privacy violations, milking the Paris shootings for Microsoft PR. What an unbelievably shallow puff piece; then again, it’s Bloomberg. In similar news, Outlook has been cracked [1]. Even Microsoft cannot maintain a state of security. “Clumsily done” labelled it our source. Maybe the back doors have taken their toll in the wrong country. That won’t be good for business. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Microsoft Outlook hacked following Gmail block in China

    Microsoft’s Outlook email service was subject to a cyberattack over the weekend, just weeks after Google’s Gmail service was blocked in China.

    On Monday, online censorship watchdog Greatfire.org said the organization received reports that Outlook was subject to a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack in China. A MITM attack intrudes on online connections in order to monitor and control a channel, and may also be used to push connections into other areas — for example, turning a user towards a malicious rather than legitimate website.

The Collapse of European Patent Office Management Culminates With Resignations

Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Benoit Battistelli

Summary: No blood is spilled, but even the management of the EPO is falling apart as the Director of Internal Communication is said to have just resigned

Battistelli does not have a monopoly on deciding which people must leave the EPO. He does not even need to throw people out because some are leaving on their own volition, at least based on what we can gather from our sources. Perhaps they realise that leaving the scandalous embarrassment that is EPO management would be better for their career.

Latest rumours from the EPO serve to show and at the very least reaffirm that the EPO is “burning”, as some have told us months ago. One source told us: “The latest rumour that we have heard is that the recently recruited Director of Internal Communication has “resigned”. We don’t have any details of the exact circumstances so we can’t say at this point whether he jumped or whether he was pushed.

“The person in question is Vincent Bénard who was formerly Head of Corporate Internal Communications at the Airbus Group. He had been widely tipped to take over from Oswald Schroder who departed under mysterious circumstances in October last year.

“If you look carefully at the recent internal EPO announcement concerning the “Public Apology to Zeljko Topic” you will see that it doesn’t bear any name for the “Author” which just given as “Internal Communication”.”

“Perhaps they realise that leaving the scandalous embarrassment that is EPO management would be better for their career.”For some background, see our recent articles about it. The censorship is backfiring. Mike Masnick dubbed it the “Streisand Effect”.

“The “Internal Communication” department is part of Directorate-General 4 and thus it comes under Topic’s direct control,” told us a source. “We suspect that Bénard had some kind of a “disagreement” with his boss i.e. Topic, over the publication of the “Public Apology” announcement on the EPO Intranet.”

This publication already led to some action that embarrasses Željko Topić and meanwhile, in response, Vesna Stilin is working hard to revoke the apology and restore the article from Zeljko Peratovic's 45lines.com. Imagine the size of the audience after restoration. The article that Topić wants to hide can be read here in English.

“All of this is just speculation on our part,” said our source, “but the rumour of Bénard’s departure at this particular juncture is a clear indication that all is not well on the upper floors of the EPO’s headquarters.”

We welcome sources to come forth with information if they have any that is relevant. We have never — in our history of nearly a decade — let down or got in trouble a source. The goal here is justice; if embarrassing those in positions of unjust power helps restore justice, then so be it. █

New LCA Talk: Open Invention Network’s Deb Nicholson on Software Patents and Patent Trolls

Posted in Patents, Videos at 10:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Deb Nicholson’s LCA talk is now publicly accessible

Talk by the Open Invention Network’s Deb Nicholson; see “Software Patents: Trolls and Other Bullies” and this schedule. Direct YouTube link (for downloading applications).

Links 22/1/2015: GNU/Linux Sysadmin Opportunities, TraceFS Introduced

Posted in News Roundup at 8:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • University’s Virtual Reality Setup Runs on Linux and Open Source Software

    Virtual reality may be best known for its entertainment value, but its practical applications are at least as compelling. With Cave automatic virtual environments (CAVE), for instance, engineers can save time and resources by testing out products and solutions in the lab to see which are best-suited to a particular problem or site in the real world.

  • From the Blogosphere With Love: A FOSSy Farewell

    It is with no small sense of regret that Linux Girl brings you this week’s Linux Blog Safari, dear readers, because in writing it she must convey some very difficult news.

    Namely, Linux Girl is departing LinuxInsider — her home away from home for lo all these years — and so must hang up her cape for good. By the time you read this, she’ll be off on new adventures — traveling new lands, telling new tales and testing new tequilas.

  • Desktop

    • Are Linux Graphic Apps Ready for Professionals?

      Yet the apparent reasonableness disappears on closer investigation. Blender, for one, was originally an in-house application for the Dutch design house Neo Geo and Not a Number Technologies (NaN) – a bit of history that immediately refutes any claim that it is not ready for professionals.

      Similarly, Krita owes its increasingly popularity to the project’s habit of consulting designers about each feature. Boudewijn Rempt, Krita’s maintainer, adds that ImagineFX, a major print magazine for illustrators and concept artists, recently gave Krita its Artist’s Choice Award.

    • Acer Unveils 2 New Chromebooks for Education

      Acer has unveiled two new Chromebooks aimed at schools and students, featuring durable construction to hold up under rough treatment and a myriad of technology features to help students get their schoolwork completed at home or at school.

    • Amazing Amazon.com

      That’s a testimony to how far Wintel has fallen as a force in consumer-IT. Wintel used to have >90% of the market. Intel used to have 80% of the legacy PC market. Now they have to sell Atoms and Celerons to remain relevant because Chromebooks do more computing on servers. Of course Intel is doing great on servers but so is GNU/Linux. Acer struggled to make a living with Wintel but is thriving with ChromeBooks. Acer has 35% of that market and is making a 15.6″ ChromeBook.

    • Why Chromebooks are killing Microsoft

      Chromebooks have generally been cheaper than Windows-based laptops…

    • Should You Use Linux for A Start Up?

      My personal experiences with Linux in the workplace actually started shortly after I adopted Linux on my home PC (well I was am still am dual booting Windows). I was at a startup who had installed Ubuntu on all the desktops, other than a few, and had no idea what they were doing. Luckily the IT guy and myself both were familiar enough with it to work through some of the early problems (mostly on the fly problem solving). Once we got past the growing pains that all start ups go though, we were in the clear. It saved the company a lot of money and, even though the new people we eventually hired did grumble about having to learn a new OS, it eventually worked out for the best.

  • Server

    • ​Get on the Linux job train with a new system administration class

      Want a good job in tech? Then learning Linux is well worth your time. In 2013, the tech job site Dice reported that senior Linux administrators were making $90,853. Last year, Dice stated that Linux jobs were more in demand than ever and that salaries and bonuses were going up.

    • Linux system administrators make big bucks

      The Linux job market has been hot for a while, and system administrators make top dollar. But being a successful Linux system admin requires some education and training.

    • How OpenPOWER Went From Zero to 80 in Its First Year

      In its first year, the OpenPOWER Foundation, an open development community created to leverage IBM’s POWER processor, went from zero to 80—figuratively and literally. After its formation in December 2013, the foundation now has more than 80 members across the full hardware and software stack from 20 different countries.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • The Linux Foundation Delivers 2015 Guide to the Open Cloud
    • Linux Foundation publishes open-source cloud guide
    • TraceFS: The Newest Linux File-System

      So basically TraceFS provides the same functionality now for kernel traces that is done currently via DebugFS. With TraceFS though you don’t need to worry about enabling the potentially security-prone DebugFS and by having their own file-system it can implement features not supported by DebugFS (e.g. mkdir and rmdir support). Assuming it clears developer review fine, it’s possible we could see TraceFS for Linux 3.20 or another near-term kernel update.

    • CoreOS Moves From Btrfs To EXT4 + OverlayFS

      CoreOS developers have had enough issues with the Btrfs file-system that they’ve decided to move from using the Btrfs file-system to instead use EXT4 plus OverlayFS.

      Since December the CoreOS developers and stakeholders have been debating switching off Btrfs due to issues. The original proposal mentioned, “We chose btrfs because it was the most straightforward Docker graph driver at the time. But, CoreOS users have regularly reported bugs against btrfs including: out of disk space errors, metadata rebalancing problems requiring manual intervention and generally slow performance when compared to other filesystems.”

    • Google Admin Encourages Trying Btrfs, Not ZFS On Linux

      Last year at LinuxCon a Google administrator was talking up Btrfs and encouraging attendees to try it. That Google admin, Marc Merlin, traveled down to New Zealand last week for LCA2015 to further promote the Btrfs file-system.

      Marc Merlin’s presentation at Linux.Conf.Au 2015 was entitled “Why you should consider using Btrfs, real COW snapshots, and file level incremental OS upgrades.” The talk was much like the one last August at LinuxCon Chicago where he was trumpeting Btrfs. Aside from openSUSE beginning to ship with Btrfs by default, most Linux distributions still tend to be EXT4/XFS based and leaving Btrfs as just an experimental install-time option. In fact, CoreOS switched away from Btrfs to EXT4+OverlayFS. Whether or not this next-generation Linux file-system is ready for production use remains a very controversial topic.

    • SDN Series Part VI: OpenDaylight, the Most Documented Controller

      Modular application development, in which a set of loosely coupled modules can be integrated into one large application, has been one of the most successful software development practices. The term “loosely coupled” highlights the fact that the modules are both independent and can communicate with one another. OSGI (the Open Services Gateway Initiative), a dynamic module system for Java, defines one such architecture for modular application development. The SDN controller OpenDaylight (ODL), which we will be discussing in this article, is one such controller (apart from Beacon/Floodlight) that is based on the OSGi architecture. ODL is an open-source collaborative project that focuses on building a multi-vendor, multi-project ecosystem to encourage innovation and an open/transparent approach toward SDN. We need to look at these terms, “open,” “multi-vendor,” “multi-project,” “innovation,” etc., in detail to really appreciate the strengths of ODL.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Intel’s Open-Source Graphics Team Poaches A Top Nouveau Driver Developer

        Martin Peres is now one of the newest members of Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center, working to improve the open-source Linux graphics support. On Monday there was a trivial Mesa commit but what was interesting is that it marked Martin Peres’ new email address as coming from “linux.intel.com.” After checking, on the X.Org BoD page it also now lists Martin’s affiliate as Intel. I’ve also confirmed Martin working for Intel through a source at XDC2014 last year in France where he originally heard this information, which was organized by Martin. (To be clear, Martin isn’t replacing Keith, the timing is just a coincidence.)

      • Mir 0.11 Working On Better Performance, Android External Display Support

        Earlier this month we covered new Mir features that ended up being incorporated into the Mir 0.10 release. Mir 0.11 is now under development and it’s already packing significant improvements.

      • 2D and 3D graphics with WebGL

        OpenGL is a well-known standard for generating 3D as well as 2D graphics; it’s extremely powerful and has many capabilities. OpenGL is defined and released by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB) and is a big state machine. Most calls to OpenGL functions modify a global state that you cannot directly access. WebGL is a JavaScript implementation of OpenGL ES 2.0 that runs on the latest browsers. The OpenGL ES (Embedded Subsystem) is the mobile version of the OpenGL standard and is targeted towards embedded devices. OpenGL ES is a C-based, Platform-Neutral API. The OS must provide a rendering context that accepts commands as well as a framebuffer that keeps the results of the drawing commands.

      • The Raspberry Pi Gallium3D Driver Has Made Much Progress In Less Than A Year

        It was just last June that Eric Anholt left Intel for Broadcom to focus on creating the Broadcom VC4 open-source graphics driver stack for the Raspberry Pi to have a new DRM/KMS driver and a Gallium3D driver. In less than one year, he’s made a lot of progress.

      • VMWare X.Org Driver Updated To v13.1

    • Benchmarks

      • Disk Encryption Tests On Fedora 21

        If you’ve been wondering about the impact of enabling full-disk encryption when doing a fresh install of Fedora 21, here’s some reference benchmarks comparing the Anaconda option of this latest Fedora Linux release.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • Enlightenment’s Elementary 1.13 Beta 1 Released

      One week after the Elementary 1.13 Alpha release, Enlightenment developers have released the first beta of v1.13.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Akademy 2015 – A Coruña, Spain – 25-31 July

        For more than 1800 years, the Tower of Hercules has guided ships sailing near A Coruña. Soon it will beckon KDE users and contributors, when Akademy—the annual KDE community meeting—is held in A Coruña (Galicia, Spain) 25–31 July. The conference is expected to draw hundreds of attendees from the global KDE Community to discuss and plan the future of the Community and its technology. Many participants from the broad free and open source software community, local organizations and software companies will also attend.

      • KDAB Continues Its Overview Of Qt3D 2.0, Demos Custom Rendering Effects

        KDAB has continued their interesting blog series about Qt3D 2.0 and what’s coming for this new component to Qt5.

      • Theme “Leaves” added to “KDE – Pairs”

        “Leaves” is the newest theme I created for KDE-Pairs as a part of my ongoing project ‘Theme Designing of Pairs’. This is done under the guidance of my mentor “Heena Mahour” who initially gave the idea about leaf structures. This will only work in 3 game modes namely, pairs, relations and logic.

      • Kolab Enterprise 14 Released with Advanced Tagging and Notes

        Following a month of usage at a group of pre-selected customers, Kolab Systems is happy to announce general availability for Kolab Enterprise 14. This latest feature release of Kolab Enterprise will be supported until 2019 and packs a whole set of new capabilities including tags, notes, better resource management, task delegation capabilities, usability improvements for deployments with very large numbers of shared groupware folders and much more.

      • Kolab Enterprise 14 Released
      • KWin on speed

        With the 5.2 release basically done, I decided to do some performance investigation and optimizations on KWin last week. From time to time I’m running KWin through valgrind’s callgrind tool to see whether we have some expensive code paths. So far I hadn’t done that for the 5.x series. Now after the switch to kdecoration2 I was really interested in the results as in the past rendering the decoration used to be a bottle neck during our compositing rendering loop.

      • KWin 5.3 To Have New Speed Optimizations

        Martin Gräßlin has fixed some outstanding bugs and further tuned the performance of the KWin window manager for the KDE Plasma 5 stack.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Moving update information from the distribution to upstream

        For a real-world example, see the GNOME MultiWriter example commit that uses this.

      • GNOME Shell 3.15.4
      • GNOME Shell Adds VP9 Screencasting, Mutter Improves Wayland

        Mutter 3.15.4 was checked in this morning by Florian Müllner and it has Wayland improvements and other exciting changes with GTK+ now drawing all window decorations, a change to replicate the monitor EDID parsing for Mutter on Wayland so it acts the same way as under X11, Mutter now handles input device configuration, and there’s support for pointer barriers with Mutter on Wayland. The pointer barriers on Wayland will ensure that the pointer never enters “dead areas” of the screen due to different monitor sizes, etc.

      • GNOME Now Lets Mutter Handle Input Device Configuration

        GNOME now has support in Mutter to synchronize and apply input device settings via a session-wide configuration.

      • Sandboxed applications for GNOME

        It is no secret that we’ve been interested in sandboxed applications for a while. It is evident here, here, here or here, to name just a few.

        What may not be widely known yet is that we have been working on putting together a working implementation of these ideas. Alexander Larsson has made steady progress, and we’re now almost at the point where it is useful for other people to start playing with it.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots

    • Red Hat Family

      • Want to join our innovative development team doing cool open source software?

        So Red Hat are currently looking to hire into the various teams building and supporting efforts such as the Fedora Workstation, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation and of course Fedora and RHEL in generaL. We are looking at hiring around 6-7 people to help move these and other Red Hat efforts forward.

      • The European Space Agency Builds A Private Cloud Platform With Red Hat

      • Fedora

        • Getting Linux Adopted and Fedora 22 Previewed

          Today in Linux news Matt Hartley has the key to getting Linux adopted. Christian Schaller discusses some of the coming attractions of Fedora 22 and Phoronix.com is reporting that KDE 5 may also be coming to Fedora 22. Elsewhere, Jamie Watson gives Tumbleweed a roll and Softpedia.com is reporting that Steam is safe for Linux again.

        • Fedora’s 32-Bit Scare
        • Fedora Workstation 22 To Have Better Wayland Support, Better Battery Life

          Fedora 21 was just released last month but already there’s a lot to get excited about for Fedora 22 when it’s released around the middle of May.

        • Fedora 23: 64-bit Only?

          For those of you keeping score at home, Smoogen is a long-time Fedora contributor who now serves on Fedora’s EPEL Steering Committee. And EPEL? That’s what’s commonly known as Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux, “a Fedora Special Interest Group that creates, maintains, and manages a high quality set of additional packages for Enterprise Linux, including, but not limited to, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS and Scientific Linux (SL), Oracle Linux (OL),” according to their wiki.

          [...]

          My guess is that this proposal will be debated among those in the Fedora Project, and my hope is that it crashes and burns. Smoogen made a “Devil’s Proposal,” but I hope he was prepared to catch hell for it.

        • See what’s coming in Fedora 22 Workstation

          Even though Fedora 21 is just over a month old, the Fedora Workstation developers are already hard at work planning the next release, Fedora 22. In a detailed post on his blog, Christian Schaller details some of the areas that the developers are focusing on for Fedora 22.

        • Mea Maxima Culpa

          I would like to apologize for my last blog post. My original intention was to make an absurd point by proposing to drop 32 bit architectures from being primary in Fedora. I didn’t communicate clearly that this was meant to be absurd. It also did not clearly state that the problem I am worried about is that with many core developers only focusing on x86_64 and hardware that is less than 4 years old that people using x86_32 and ARM32 are in effect on borrowed time.

        • Special update information for Fedora 21 users: PackageKit errors

          We have found some bugs in PackageKit and related components which require an update to fix. Unfortunately, the bugs can prevent Fedora Workstation’s default update mechanism – the ‘offline update’ system, where a notification of new updates appears, and you reboot to install them – from working correctly. The bugs can also cause problems with software installation and/or removal when using GNOME Software or Apper (the KDE software manager).

        • Python 3 Is Close To Becoming The Default In Fedora 22

          For Python stakeholders using Fedora, the Fedora 22 release is preparing to ship Python 3 as the one and only Python implementation on the installation media.

        • GCC 5 Will End Up Coming To Fedora 22

          Earlier this month it didn’t look like GCC 5 would be added to Fedora 22 unless the release was delayed and at least week’s FESCO meeting, the committee decided not to delay Fedora 22. After this week’s FESCo meeting, GCC 5 will now be added as the Fedora 22 compiler while still aiming for a mid-May release.

    • Debian Family

      • Expired keys in Debian keyring

        A new version of Stellarium was recently released (0.13.2), so I wanted to upload it to Debian unstable as I usually do. And so I did, but it was rejected without me even knowing, since I got no e-mail response from ftp-masters.

      • Derivatives

        • Systemd Will Be Adopted Starting With Linux Mint 18 And LMDE 3

          Not long ago, the Linux Mint team has decided to change their release policy and adopt only the LTS versions of Ubuntu, the systems released between to LTSs being only point releases that update the main components. Also, they have moved Linux Mint Debian Edition’s (LMDE) code base from Debian Testing to Debian Stable.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Wants To Power Your Open Source Robot Servants Of The Future

            Earlier today, Canonical (“the company behind Ubuntu”) announced the arrival of Snappy Ubuntu Core, an operating system for the Internet of Things. The lightweight OS is designed to power things like drones, robots, appliances, and home automation platforms.

          • Canonical Extends Snappy Ubuntu Core to Smart Devices
          • Opening up the Internet of Things, Robots and Drones

            As I’ve noted before, open source is perfect for the currently-fashionable Internet of Things, where you need an extremely lightweight, low-cost, customisable but secure and rock-solid operating system that can be easily ported to thousands of devices. Only free software fits that bill. I’ve written a couple of times about AllSeen’s bid to become the de facto operating system for the Internet of Things. But of course, it would be too simple – and not necessarily advisable – if there were only one solution, even an open source one. And so it’s probably a good sign that other projects are starting to pop up to address this important sector.

          • Ubuntu Wants To Power Your Open Source Robot Servants Of The Future

            After years of hype, the Internet of Things is finally making its way into this here reality of ours. The array of connected devices trying to integrate themselves into our lives—from watches and workout clothes to kitchen appliances and cars—only seems to grow as time marches futuristically onward. And if the company behind Ubuntu Linux has anything to say about it, this vast array of intelligent objects will all be open source.

          • Canonical unveils Snappy Ubuntu Core, a lightweight operating system for your home
          • Open source Ubuntu Core connects robots, drones and smart homes
          • Canonical Embeds Ubuntu Linux Into Devices to Secure IoT

            The new effort will extend Ubuntu’s Snappy Linux technology to help enable the Internet of things.

          • What the heck are Ubuntu Unity’s Scopes?

            One of the elements of Ubuntu Unity that I have been able to handle the least is Scopes. Part of that is due to the fact that Canonical has done a pretty terrible job of properly showing people what Scopes are and what they do. The other part is… no… actually, that’s really the whole problem. Here is how Ubuntu defines this feature:

          • Ubuntu Aims to Make the IoT Snappy
          • Smart things powered by snappy Ubuntu Core on ARM and x86

            “Smart, connected things” are redefining our home, work and play, with brilliant innovation built on standard processors that have shrunk in power and price to the point where it makes sense to turn almost every “thing” into a smart thing. I’m inspired by the inventors and innovators who are creating incredible machines – from robots that might clean or move things around the house, to drones that follow us at play, to smarter homes which use energy more efficiently or more insightful security systems. Prooving the power of open source to unleash innovation, most of this stuff runs on Linux – but it’s a hugely fragmented and insecure kind of Linux. Every device has custom “firmware” that lumps together the OS and drivers and devices-specific software, and that firmware is almost never updated. So let’s fix that!

          • Canonical Brings Ubuntu to the Internet of Things

            The Internet of Things promises to immerse us in a world of intelligent everyday objects, from self-regulating heating systems and chargers than know when your device is fully charged to weight-watching kettles to the cliched “internet refrigerator”.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Why Jeff Hoogland Returned to Bodhi

              Not going to lie, talking with you a few weeks ago had me feeling a bit nostalgic about the project. This past weekend was one of my first full weekends at home in the last four months. I sat down to finish cleaning up the Bodhi build scripts and before I knew it I was spinning up some fresh ISO images.

              My schedule in the future is looking to be less hectic and I was able to set aside more time in the next six weeks to get things really ironed out for the new release. The new folks are still helping with the project, but I feel I asked too much of them by dumping the responsibility of a new major release on them.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • PC/104 “OneBank” option targets SoC-based SBC designs

      The venerable PC/104 stackable connector/mezzanine form-factor has gone through half a dozen major updates during its 24-year history. This time, the advancement takes the form of the addition of a significantly more compact OneBank bus connector option, added as part of rev 3.0 of the PC/104 Consortium’s “PCI/104-Express and PCIe/104 Specification.”

    • Smart Cars are the New Smart Phone

      While this is certainly exciting, virtualization remains a roadblock to some in the smart car industry. I personally had the opportunity to demonstrate GlobalLogic’s Nautilus platform for automotive virtualization at GENIVI’s CES demo and networking event. Leveraging a TI J6 SoC, I demo’d a dual-screen virtual cockpit with one screen emulating a Linux-powered driver information display, and the other screen emulating an Android-powered IVI system. The entire configuration ran on Xen Project Hypervisor 4.5 with three domains: Dom0 (thin control), DomU (Linux), and DomU (Android).

    • Social Robot Jibo Fueled for Mass Production With $25.3 Million

      The infusion comes just a few weeks after investors backed Rethink Robotics Inc. and highlights the latest in a string of artificial intelligence startups leveraging algorithms based on user preferences that deliver different results as the user evolves.

    • Phones

      • Smartphone Market Set To Mature In 2015

        General-purpose PCs have long since made a mature market and everyone in the food-chain is desperately trying to wring “value” from the legacy PC while they still can. There will continue to be a need for large screens, keyboards and mice but with voice-input becoming feasible in mobile, it won’t be long before keyboards will be optional on desktops. In such a market, adoption of GNU/Linux is one of the few ways forward that can still provide income to most of the food-chain. GNU/Linux costs less to buy and less to maintain but there’s still enough maintenance to provide a living to retailers and IT-types.

      • Android

Free Software/Open Source

  • 50 Open Source Mobile Tools

    In a relatively short period of time, mobile devices have become ubiquitous in the workplace. A recent survey of enterprise and small business workers found that just 3 percent of organizations ban their employees from using personal iPads or iPhones for business use, and only 7 percent ban Android devices. In fact, 40 percent of organizations provide iPhones for more than a quarter of employees, and 25 percent provide Android-based smartphones.

    The open source community has responded to this trend with a host of new projects, including solutions that help enterprises track and manage mobile devices, mobile development tools for creating new apps and open source apps that enable greater productivity. This month, we’ve put together a list of 50 of these tools that are worth notice. While there are many good open source mobile apps for home users, this list focuses instead on those that would be most useful in the workplace.

  • How the New York Times uses open source

    Marc Frons, senior vice president and chief information officer of the New York Times, discusses how The Times actively contributes to open source communities.

  • Open-source Java pals Groovy and Grails seek moneybags backer

    Two major open source Java projects, Groovy and Grails, are looking for new sponsors.

    Pivotal, a company which supplies tools for big data analytics and cloud-oriented agile development, has announced the end of its funding for Groovy (a dynamic language that runs on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and Grails (a web application framework which uses Groovy) from March 2015.

  • 7 questions to ask any open source project

    Whether you’re starting an open source project or deciding whether to participate in one, you don’t want to waste time in an endeavor that imposes arbitrary restrictions that will stop you in your tracks down the line.

    The Open Source Initiative, of which I am president, has successfully focused on copyright licensing as a concrete expression of software freedom. OSI does not only provide guidance in the form of the Open Source Definition; it also manages a process by which the copyright licenses used for outbound licensing by open source authors can gain OSI approval.

  • 007 DevOps: Ansible’s secret agentless route to IT automation

    AnsibleFest comes around at an interesting time i.e. every major software player from CA to HP to IBM and onwards is currently trying to sex-up the abilities of its software orchestration engines, configuration management tools and continuous delivery offering — and the term DevOps is never far away.

  • Events

    • The Daala Video Codec Still Needs At Least Another Year Of Development

      The Daala open-source, royalty-free video codec being developed by Xiph.Org and other organizations continues to be developed as an alternative to H.265 and VP9. While much progress is being made, it looks like another year of heavy development will be needed before Daala is ready for primetime.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Interview: Mirantis Co-Founder Boris Renski Talks OpenStack

      Earlier this month, Mirantis announced the launch of Mirantis OpenStack 6.0, the latest version of its OpenStack cloud computing distribution. According to the company, it is based on OpenStack Juno, and version 6.0 is the first OpenStack distribution to let partners write plugins that install and run their products automatically.

    • Mirantis Expands OpenStack Cloud Computing Training

      “Pure-play” OpenStack vendor Mirantis believes existing cloud computing training programs for OpenStack don’t meet the soaring demand for expertise in the open source cloud platform. That’s why it’s expanding its OpenStack training offerings with two new courses and a certificate verification portal.

    • Platform9 Launches Managed OpenStack Private Cloud Solution

      Platform9 is hoping to make it easier for organizations to adopt private cloud with the introduction of Platform9 Managed OpenStack. The company is describing the new solution as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that “transforms an organization’s existing servers into an AWS-like agile, self-service private cloud within minutes.”

    • Building a successful OpenStack group

      A conversation on the OpenStack-Community listserv caught my eye this week, which started with a simple question: “I’ve been contemplating starting a new OpenStack meet-up and am excited about meeting with and hearing what folks are doing in the local area. While continue working on this, I’m wondering how others who have created user groups got the word out and evangelized?”

    • A New Service Discovery Tool for Use with Apache Mesos

      Recently, Mesosphere has been covered here on OStatic in a series of posts, including an interview with the company’s Ben Hindman, in which he discusses the need for a “data center operating system.” Mesosphere’s data center operating system is built on the open source Apache Mesos project, which is being leveraged by many organizations for distributed resource and network management.

    • Targeted Tools Proliferate in the Hadoop, Big Data Ecosystems
    • IBM scores a $500M deal to build a hybrid cloud for Anthem

      IBM is announcing a significant stride in its bid to be the best cloud company with a $500 million services contract today with Anthem.

      Under the deal, IBM will build a hybrid cloud environment for Anthem, transforming that company’s information technology infrastructure. IBM recently formed its IBM Cloud business unit, bringing together a team of services, software, development, and research initiatives to further fuel IBM’s momentum in this market and accelerate new innovations into the marketplace.

  • CMS

  • Business

    • Open Source Strategies Releases Opentaps CRM2

      Open Source Strategies has released opentaps CRM2, a new free extension for online stores running Magento.

      Using big data analytics, the opentaps CRM2 extension for Magento automatically links email with orders. All past customer communications, support requests, and tasks for a customer are right where the customer’s orders are.

  • BSD

    • afl-fuzz – American Fuzzy Lop

      So, I dug in to how to set this up in an OpenBSD environment. First of all, whatever porting effort needed to make it run was already fixed, so “sudo pkg_add afl” takes care of that. Then you need to have a space to run the tests in, and since the fuzzer is going to create a huge amount of junk files to throw at your program, you really want this to be inside a tmpfs or mfs. This affects the speed a lot. It doesn’t need to be very big, just fast in creating and deleting files.

    • Apple Works To Bring Loop Distribution/Partial Vectorization To LLVM

      Adam Nemet as part of Apple’s compiler team is looking to work out loop distribution and partial vectorization for upstream LLVM. He explained, “We’d like to propose new Loop Distribution pass. The main motivation is to allow partial vectorization of loops. One such example is the main loop of 456.hmmer in SpecINT_2006. The current version of the patch improves hmmer by 24% on ARM64 and 18% on X86. The goal of the pass is to distribute a loop that can’t be vectorized because of memory dependence cycles. The pass splits the part with cycles into a new loop making the remainder of the loop a candidate for vectorization.”

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

    • Whatsapp now available to use in Linux through web browser

      Popular messaging service WhatsApp over 700 million monthly active users has now launched a new services called WhatsApp web. “Today, for the first time, millions of you will have the ability to use WhatsApp on your web browser”, Jan Koun, founder of WhatsApp posted on facebook. Let’s see how to use this on our PC or Chromebook.

    • Stellarium 0.13.2 Is a Premium Planetarium App Available for Free

      Stellarium is an open source planetarium software that displays a realistic and accurate sky in 3D that is built for multiple platforms. The supported platforms include Linux and the developers have added a large number of features and they’ve also ported some of the changes to an older version.

    • NetworkManager Now Supports WiFi Power Savings

      The latest feature added to NetworkManager is support for WiFi power-savings.

      With devices that support WiFi powersave for WiFi adapters that support a power saving mode, NetworkManager will now enable it when appropriate.

  • Public Services/Government

    • City of Arnhem aims to increase open source use

      The Dutch municipality of Arnhem wants to increase its use of free and open source solutions, says Martijn Leisink, municipal executive councilor responsible for ICT. The primary aim is to replace proprietary server solutions by open source alternatives. Getting rid of IT vendor lock-in on the desktop workstations will be difficult, and is deferred until later.

  • Licensing

    • What is a software forge?

      As we know, use of the term “infographic” generally causes involuntary gagging and may result in unwelcome skin irritation.

      Paradoxically, open source licensing and vulnerability management solutions company Protecode (pron: pro-ta-code) appears to be using the “information graphic” (to use the old school expression) approach to good effect.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Source Haptics Kit Aims to Democratize Force Feedback

      If you’ve been keeping up with augmented and virtual reality news, you’ll remember that spacial haptic feedback devices aren’t groundbreaking new technology. You’ll also remember, however, that a professional system is notoriously expensive–on the order of several thousand dollars. Grad students [Jonas], [Michael], and [Jordi] and their professor [Eva-Lotta] form the design team aiming to bridge that hefty price gap by providing you with a design that you can build at home.

    • Tap sat app gap, yaps Inmarsat chap: Orbiting bird API opened to devs

    • Open Data

      • Open Source Data and the Future of Mineral Exploration

        As a former database manager of a junior exploration company, I have had the run-down of how data should be kept: a secret. The majority of mining data is proprietary and companies carefully guard this data for a variety of different reasons. One of these reasons is the sheer cost of obtaining this data. My company spent over $20 million in exploration and at the end of the day what remains valuable is the data. Another reason that data is guarded so carefully is that it needs to go through a careful vetting process before it can get released to the public. Geologists must qualify for professional designation before being eligible to release technical reports to the public, in Canada; those technical reports are referred to as 43-101s. This requirement is in place to stop market scandals and hold geologists accountable for their scientific integrity. I agree that geological data should be released to investors and the public with ethical standards. The last reason that mining data and methods are kept proprietary is to maintain an edge over competitors. Logically speaking, it does make sense to avoid leaking trade secrets, however, the world is a rapidly changing place and we should consider radically new approaches to one of the oldest industries.

    • Open Access/Content

      • A shift in education: Teachers who create content, not consume

        I first met Stephen O’Connor, a fifth grade public school teacher at Wells Central School, at the New York State Association for Computers and Technology in Education Conference in 2007. I don’t recall the exact subject of his presentation, but I came away from his presentation with some new information that helped me implement Moodle in my classroom. He pointed me in the direction of a good hosting company that allowed me to work on Moodle, Drupal, and WordPress development, which I was most interested in at the time.

    • Open Hardware

      • The year in open hardware computers

        An open hardware computer is a computer for which all the specifications for manufacturing the computer are provided, not just the source for the software that runs on it. Software source code of an application enables experienced developers to rebuild, modify, and extend that software application. Similarly, the source code for an electronics printed circuit board (PCB) or mechanical drawings for a computer enclosure enables experienced developers to build, modify, and extend the hardware. By hardware, I mean that computer board in a case you put on your desktop, by your television, in your car or wherever you might be using it, even in your thermostat or water sprinkler.

  • Programming

    • MediaFire File Sharing Adds Open-Source Linux Support
    • MEDIAFIRE RELEASES LINUX AND OPEN-SOURCE TOOLKIT FOR DEVELOPERS

      At MediaFire, it’s no secret that we are huge fans of the open source community. From server management, to building next generation storage applications, open-source tools enable us to do great things.

    • Got an open source project? SimplyBuilt has a website for you

      Open source has helped shape the team at PushAgency.io into the programmers and developers we are today. We’ve used it throughout our educations and careers, and now incorporate it into the products and services we deliver.

      We look up to people like Linus Torvalds and companies like 37Signals for their contributions to the open source movement, and it’s a goal of ours to give back to the community in some way. Now that our business has reached a level of maturity, we feel we’ve made it to the point where we can devote some development time to open sourcing small parts of our product, SimplyBuilt. This is how our first open source project materialized.

    • New open source dependency manager on the scene

      When biicode began, almost two years ago, many risks were taken by both the founders and investors. Our funders invested a lot of money with just a simple prototype in their hands. Our founders quit their safe and well-paying job positions at prestigious universities. The opportunity was huge though, because there are approximately 4 million C/C++ developers, and both languages represent up to almost 20% of the world’s code. Moreover, these tools easily become standardized. Once the most popular and reused libraries of a specific programming language are handled with ease and effectiveness by a given dependency manager, this tool naturally becomes the standard.

    • Facebook Releases HHVM 3.5 As A PHP Alternative

      Facebook developers have released version 3.5.0 of HHVM as a faster alternative to the reference PHP implementation.

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Wild pollinators at risk from diseased commercial species of bee

      A new study from the University of Exeter has found that viruses carried by commercial bees can jump to wild pollinator populations with potentially devastating effects. The researchers are calling for new measures to be introduced that will prevent the introduction of diseased pollinators into natural environments.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • BBC Make Me Vomit

      The BBC led their 10 O’clock News today with a five minute piece on the delay to the Chilcot report. It gave a retrospective on the Iraq War that did not mention, once, Weapons of Mass Destruction as the raison d’etre but told us the war “removed a brutal dictator”. They said the dead of the war were in thousands – not hundreds of thousands, not even tens of thousands. “Thousands died”, they said. Literally true, but diminishing the scale. They could equally have said dozens died, also literally true – just an awful lot of dozens.

    • Inevitable Payback

      We caused it by our invasions, occupations and bombings of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, none of which had ever attacked the UK. We caused it by all the dead women and children that British bombs, missiles or bullets killed accidentally. We caused it by the terrible deaths of the people we killed deliberately, who were only defending their country from foreign invaders, just as most of us would do. We caused it by the detainees killed or tortured. As a country, the United Kingdom caused it.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • What Corporate Media Don’t Want You to Know About Joni Ernst

      CNN offered just a tiny bit more, saying that “she was a tea party favorite for her positions on everything from abortion to the federal minimum wage”–on the latter, “she doesn’t believe in a ‘one-size-fits-all approach’”; her position on abortion, and on everything else, went undescribed.

    • Bill O’Reilly Lies About His Role Pushing Debunked “No-Go Zones” Myth

      Fox News host Bill O’Reilly falsely claimed that he had no role in hyping the myth that Muslim “no-go zones” exist throughout France, just days after Fox News apologized for spreading the fiction. In fact, O’Reilly previously cited the so called “no-go zones” as one of the contributing causes of the Paris terror attacks.

    • Koch Party Delivers SOTU Response

      Newly-elected Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) will give the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address, perhaps providing further proof that the Koch political network has evolved into an independent political force.

    • Obama’s SOTU: Not Enough Blood, Sweat or Tears

      The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank complains that Obama’s State of the Union address didn’t have enough terrorism in it. Why, it only mentioned “terrorism,” “terror” or “terrorists” nine times!

    • This Washington Post Writer Has A Million Dollar Ethics Problem

      Rogers is a Republican strategist who chairs and co-founded the BGR Group with former Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) in 1991. As the Post itself has reported, the firm is one of the top Washington D.C. lobbying firms, having banked more than $15 million in 2014. The newspaper’s reporters have described Rogers as a “Republican mega-lobbyist,” “lobbyist extraordinaire,” and “a go-to guy for Republicans.”

    • 5 Years after Citizens United, Democracy Is for Sale

      This week, Republican presidential hopefuls like Gov. Scott Walker, Gov. Chris Christie, and Sen. Rand Paul will travel to an exclusive resort near Palm Springs, Florida to kiss the rings of David and Charles Koch.

    • Curious Cure: WI GOP Injects Partisan Politics into Nonpartisan Elections Board

      After a scorching two-year controversy involving a “John Doe” criminal investigation into potential illegal coordination between Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s campaign and outside big money groups, state GOP leaders are readying a legislative package to dismantle the nonpartisan elections board.

  • Censorship

    • Sky wants to know if you watch porn

      BROADCASTER SKY is joining the puritanical push for pornography filters and, like the rest of the industry, is throwing up a thick curtain in front of the more salacious elements of the web, and some of its security risks.

      Such curtains, we’ll call them sainted aunt filters, are employed by the majority of ISPs because that is how the UK government likes it.

  • Privacy

    • HealthCare.gov Sends Personal Data to Dozens of Tracking Websites

      The Associated Press reports that healthcare.gov–the flagship site of the Affordable Care Act, where millions of Americans have signed up to receive health care–is quietly sending personal health information to a number of third party websites. The information being sent includes one’s zip code, income level, smoking status, pregnancy status and more.

    • Legislating For Unicorns

      I remain convinced her and the Cabinet’s position on encryption is based on a non-technical misinterpretation of detailed advice from within the Home Office. Her response, and other responses by her colleagues and by the US government, imply that the security officialdom of the US & UK believes it can resurrect “golden key” encryption where government agencies have a privileged back door into encryption schemes.

    • Opinion: Show us your internet search history if you’ve got nothing to hide

      “I guess seeing your passwords on someone else’s computer screen generates some strong feelings,” cyber expert Markus Alkio said to me, as I stared at the results of what he’d managed to dig up.

      He was right. After two weeks of having my personal information raked over by researchers tasked with digging out as much as possible, I was indeed bewildered by just how much of what I’d thought was private turned out to be nothing of the sort.

  • Civil Rights

    • #Gamergate: Victim of video games trolling launches anti-harrassment network

      Video games developer Zoe Quinn is fighting a hate-filled online campaign against her by launching Crash Override – a service dedicated to helping other whose lives are made miserable by online abuse and threats

    • Child abuse inquiry panel member accuses counsel of intimidation

      The chaos behind the scenes of the official inquiry into child abuse has been laid bare with accusations of bullying and silencing members as the investigation struggled to get off the ground.

      One panel member, Sharon Evans, an abuse survivor and chief executive of the Dot Com children’s charity, told MPs the inquiry’s counsel, Ben Emmerson QC, had in effect taken it over in the absence of an appointed chairman, and had made threats and intimidated panel members.

      She made the accusations to the Commons home affairs select committee as the home secretary, Theresa May, considers whether to disband the independent panel and create a fresh statutory inquiry.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Broadband Industry Takes To Congressional Hearing To Praise Wimpy, Neutrality-Killing Proposal It Helped Write

      To derail February’s expected unveiling of Title II-based neutrality rules, the broadband industry is engaged in a last ditch effort to pass some of the flimsiest net neutrality rules we’ve seen yet. Spearheaded by Senator John Thune and Representative Fred Upton (the latter a particular magnet of Comcast campaign contributions), the goal appears to be to propose intentionally awful neutrality rules, offer a few meager concessions, then insist the marginally-less-awful result was crafted only after a long “public conversation” and with bipartisan support.

    • Proposed net neutrality bill is a ‘solution in search of a problem’

      The Senate and House are holding hearings today on a legislative proposal to prevent Internet service providers (ISPs) from blocking or throttling online traffic. It is encouraging that the bill’s sponsors, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), now recognize that net neutrality is a legitimate public policy concern rather than a “solution in search of a problem,” as Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, described it last year. However, as is often the case in policymaking, the devil is in the details.

  • DRM

    • Cory Doctorow To Push For Ending DRM

      This is Copyright Week, in which various people supporting more reasonable copyright laws highlight some of the problems with existing laws and important concepts that should be in copyright reform efforts. Today’s topic is “you bought it, you own it,” — a concept that is often held back due to bad copyright laws. A few months ago, a bill was introduced in Congress called YODA — the You Own Devices Act — which would allow the owner of computer hardware to sell the devices with the software on it without creating a copyright mess. It was a small attempt to take back basic property rights from copyright law which often stamps out property rights. Hopefully, a similar bill will show up in the new Congress, and become law. Even better would be for copyright law to actually recognize true property rights, rather than limiting them at nearly every turn.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • European Commission’s Clever Ruse To Introduce Corporate Sovereignty Regardless Of Ratification Votes In EU

      Because of the complicated nature of power-sharing in the European Union, some international agreements require the approval of both the European Parliament and of every Member State — so-called “mixed agreements.” It is generally accepted that both the Canada-EU trade agreement (CETA) and TAFTA/TTIP are mixed agreements, and will therefore require a double ratification: by the full European Parliament, and all the EU governments. Indeed, the European Commission has frequently cited this fact to bolster its assertion that both CETA and TAFTA/TTIP are being negotiated democratically, since the European public — through their representatives — will have their say in these final votes.

    • Copyrights

      • Who Will Own the Internet of Things? (Hint: Not the Users)

        From phones to cars to refrigerators to farm equipment, software is helping our stuff work better and smarter. But those features come at a high hidden cost: the rapid erosion of ownership. Why does that matter? Because when it comes to digital products, owners have rights. Renters on the other hand, have only permission.

      • Pirate party founder: ‘Online voting? Would you want 4chan to decide your government?’

        In 2012, a contest for US schools to win a gig by Taylor Swift was hijacked by members of the 4chan website, who piled ​on its online vote in an attempt to send the pop star to a school for deaf children.

        Now, imagine a similar stunt being pulled for a general election, if voting could be done online. Far-fetched? Not according to Rick Falkvinge, founder of Sweden’s Pirate ​party.

        “Voting over the internet? Would you really want 4chan to decide your next government?” he said, during a debate about democracy and technology in London, organised by the BBC as part of its Democracy Day event.

      • Fair Use Is Not An Exception to Copyright, It’s Essential to Copyright

        Over the past two years, as talk of copyright reform has escalated, we’ve also heard complaints about the supposed expansion of fair use, or “fair use creep.” That kind of talk woefully misunderstands how fair use works.

      • Where Copyright Fails, New Laws and Guidelines Help Secure Your Right to Tinker

        It may seem odd to say so during Copyright Week, but copyright in itself isn’t very important. Sure, EFF expends a lot of time and energy arguing about copyright law, and some of our adversaries spend even more. But we don’t do so because copyright has any independent value. Rather, its value is derived from its ability to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” (in the words of the US Constitution), as well as to promote other important values such as the rights to freedom of expression, privacy, education, and participation in cultural life.

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channels: Come and chat with us in real time

New to This Site? Here Are Some Introductory Resources

No

Mono

ODF

Samba logo






We support

End software patents

GPLv3

GNU project

BLAG

EFF bloggers

Comcast is Blocktastic? SavetheInternet.com



Recent Posts