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10.25.15

Techrights Realigns to Focus on Corruption

Posted in Site News at 2:29 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The previous header, prior to our Web site’s anniversary, put aside for now

Older site header

Summary: The Techrights Web site is soon turning 9, whereupon we plan to invest even more time and effort to more effectively expose institutional corruption

IN SPITE of attempts to muzzle the site, Techrights is still going strong and broadening its audience. As one might expect, a site as outspoken as this (sometimes saying what others are afraid or reluctant to say) has become the target of some rather abusive people and as a result we intend to increase veracity, devotion, and persistence. Intimidation against us only makes us stronger. The coming week will bring some new reports about the EPO, whose Wiki we gradually improved over the weekend (identifying separable themes of abuses). We wholeheartedly thank both supporters and anonymous sources that made this possible.

“Freedom is not free and human rights are not free, either. They can go away when people stop fighting to protect them, history shows.”“Defending digital freedom and exposing corruption since 2006″ says the new banner (it might still not be visible because of multimedia caching at our proxy). It doesn’t mean that anything is changing with respect to TechBytes, the audiocast, it just means that we soon (in just a couple of weeks) celebrate an important anniversary and we also approach 20,000 posts/articles. The most active years were half a decade ago, back when we published over 3,600 posts per year (more than 10 per day, on average). In order to get back to these levels we might need readers’ support, which does not necessarily mean financial support. Freedom is not free and human rights are not free, either. They can go away when people stop fighting to protect them, history shows. People need to fight for them and people must defend free speech, sometimes at all costs. It’s when the ruling class manages to silence the oppressed that all hope is lost and change is anything but inevitable.

“Thank you” we again say to everyone who has supported us over the years and we look forward to another decade or more. Here is how to contact us anonymously. █

EPO Slammed for Granting Patents on Life

Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Mo’ patents, mo’ money, mo’ problems, so monopolists, the EPO, and patent lawyers benefit, respectively, at the expense of everybody else

Bell peppers

Summary: New opposition to the EPO’s continued expansion of patent scope to plants/seeds and various foods, serving to monopolise even the very essential elements of life and potentially increasing prices of basic foods

OUR criticism of the EPO began nearly a decade ago, primarily because of software patents in Europe (the campaign against them culminated little more than 10 years ago). This is part of an international problem that so-called ‘trade’ deals like the TPP (globalisation in the interest of very few rich people) serve to promote. But since then we have criticised the EPO for many other things; among them were patents on life, which are equally controversial (even among programmers, not just in life science disciplines). We wrote a great deal about it back in 2009 and when the EPO entered the fray with this abomination of an expansion of patent scope we spoke out again. It’s all in our archives. Now there’s news as things get even worse.

“Just how much longer can EPO management flagrantly stretch the scope of patents in a shameless effort to increase revenue and pretend that innovation is on the rise when in fact it’s monopolisation and protectionism (food monopolies) that are on the rise?”A reader has suggested that we remind people of patents on plants, potentially “the next EPO scandal” because it’s still work in progress (an internal subject of debate). Just how much longer can EPO management flagrantly stretch the scope of patents in a shameless effort to increase revenue and pretend that innovation is on the rise when in fact it’s monopolisation and protectionism (food monopolies) that are on the rise?

One of our readers has taken stock of coverage about this issue, dating back even to 2013.

“On May 8, 2013,” said this reader, “the EPO granted a patent (EP 2140023 B1) to Syngenta for insect-resistant pepper plants [PDF]. According to critics: “Such plants should definitely not be patentable under European patent law.””

“A broad coalition consisting of 34 NGOs,” continued this reader, “farmers’ and breeders’ organisations from 27 European countries, filed an opposition to the Syngenta pepper patent.” [1, 2]

“A question was also asked in the European Parliament. Here is the answer from the EU Commission.” [by Barnier, a huge UPC proponent]

“The topic was covered by IPKat in August 2014. In May of this year, Glyn Moody wrote a piece about the EPO’s current questionable practices concerning the patenting of plants. The topic has now resurfaced again with the recent grant of another questionable pepper patent to Syngenta.” [1, 2] (articles from 2-3 days ago)

“The specification of the most recently granted patent can be found here.” [PDF].

Even though Techrights covered these issues more than a year ago they seem to be resurfacing and getting even worse. The EPO is clearly out of control because of greed. Its priority is not to serve the public or provide a service in the public’s interest; instead it helps large corporations (like the infamous Monsanto) besiege and rip off the public.

How does one say in French “let them eat patents”? █

“As far as genetic engineering for food, that is the great experiment that has failed. They literally have the entire world market against them. All those dreams… the blind will see, the lame will walk… has turned out to be science fiction. They are basically chemical companies selling more chemicals. They’ve been able to spread these herbicide-promoting plants around because it is more convenient for farmers who can just mass-spray their crops. But they’ve given absolutely nothing to the consumer while causing more chemical pollution and contamination.”

–Lawyer, Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety (USA)

How the Chief Information Officer of the EPO is Connected to the President of the EPO

Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

René Kraft
Photo credit (CC): Groupe LINAGORA

Summary: René Kraft, the EPO’s Chief Information Officer, is criticised for improper use of public money (65 million euros)

OVER a week ago we publicly invited readers to provide information about the hardware, networking (not just at hardware level but packet management/switching too), and software used both at the server and desktop/client ends at the EPO. We are trying to better establish a potential for conflicting interests, as shall become more apparent in future write-ups.

René Kraft, the Chief Information Officer of the EPO, Techrights previously mentioned in relation to his connection to Battistelli. Currently, we definitely need more information but we recently learned that the EPO’s IT roadmap is a “bottomless pit” (for obscenely huge spendings and a high budget, partly provided by European taxpayers to go into private hands). To quote one knowledgeable source:

When Mr Battistelli joined the EPO in mid 2010, he trumpeted proudly that with him, all would be better, much better than under his predecessors. He recruited a Chief Information Officer who had worked before for a company providing IT services to the French Patent Office (INPI) and gave him more power than any other PD or even VP2, nominally in charge of IT.

Twenty-four months and some 65 million EUR later, the results are conspicuous for their inconspicuousness. With the exception of a few improvements here and there – that can hardly qualify as IT investments – no major result worth the money spent is in sight. The current IT governance is becoming a place where in-house competence and knowledge are abandoned, leaving the playing field to expensive external bounty-hunters who come and go before having reached concrete results.

The lack of progress calls for an audit of IT. But then, if anything is to be learned from the past, Mr Battistelli will likely succeed in entrusting the Audit to yet another “trusted consultant”, who will surely find that all is compliant with… the EPO’s own unpublished rules.

If the above occurred in a EU institution, there would be a public debate and heads would likely roll. Not so at the EPO.

Kraft’s former employer, “Informatique CDC” (where he was Directeur General Delegue for 7 years), has a Windows Web site (quite a rarity these days, but historically it has been the case) and it is “a subsidiary of Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations,” according to Bloomberg. It is a financial organisation. Kraft previously spoke about migrations to OpenOffice, but given the lavish expenditure (as detailed above) we doubt Free/libre software was used in this case, otherwise the EPO would probably announce it. If someone can anonymously provide us with information about the computer systems at the EPO, that would be enormously helpful, especially for future articles which are work in process. █

How to Securely Provide Techrights With Information, Documents

Posted in Site News at 6:35 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The key is anonymity

A lock

Summary: Advice for potential whistleblowers, or sources with evidence of abuse that they wish to anonymously share with the world (via Techrights)

OVER the years Techrights has received critical information from dozens of sources, all of which remained safe (unexposed). But this does not mean that all of them did this safely. This article provides advice for those who wish to pass to us information in the safest of ways, without having to do a lot of complicated things.

Why Not Off-the-shelf, Self-contained Secure Software?

Over the past 6 months or so we have looked into various bits of Free/libre software, e.g. Briefkasten (no longer actively maintained, as of 2013) and SecureDrop, which is too big a project (massive also in the source code sense compared to Briefkasten, not to mention difficult to set up). After much effort we decided to settle for something which is simpler to use and is much faster to use. To facilitate leaking of sensitive documents (e.g. evidence of misconduct) we mostly require anonymity, as the content of the material does not — in its own right — do much (if anything) to expose the source.

Typically, whole frameworks are built for distributed and de-centralised leaking. This requires quite a bit of hardware, which in turn needs to be set up and properly configured. It’s complicated for both sides (source and receiver) and it’s usually developed for large teams of journalists, for constant interaction with sources, or a regular flow of material. We do not require something this advanced. In practice, a one-time document drop is usually enough.

Our Proposed Solution

We have decided that the following method would be good enough given the nature of leaks we normally receive. They are typically about technology, rather than some military or surveillance apparatus such as the CIA’s assassination (by drones) programme or the NSA’s mass surveillance programme.

For extra security, we kindly ask people to ensure anonymity/privacy tools are used, notably Tor. Without it, privacy/anonymity cannot be assured to a high degree. It’s possible, but it would not be unbreakable (meaning too great an effort and a challenge for spies to take on).

Establishing a Secure (Anonymous) Session

Follow the following steps, with (1) for extra assurance of anonymity.

  1. Install Tails or prepare a Tails device (e.g. Live CD) to boot on a laptop, in order to simplify session creation with Tor (for those who insist on using Windows we have this guide [PDF]).
  2. Irrespective of (1), seek public wireless/wired access in something like a mall (preferably not a sit-down like a coffee shop, where cameras are operated and situated in a way that makes it easy to track individuals by faces, payment with debit/credit cards and so on). The idea is to seek a place — any place — where it is hard to know the identity of the connected party, even by association (e.g. friend or family). Do not use a portable telephone (these are notoriously not secure and regularly broadcast location).
  3. Refrain from doing any browsing that can help identify patterns or affiliations of the user (e.g. session cookies). In fact, unless Tails is used, it might be worth installing a new browser (Opera for instance) and doing nothing on it prior to the sending of material. This reduces the cookie trail/footprint.

Send the material

Once logged in anonymously, anonymously (do not log in) submit text through Pastebin and take the resultant URL for later pasting. Do not pass PDFs for non-textual material. Instead take shots of them, to reduce/eliminate metadata which is often being passed along with them. Then submit to Anonmgur and make a note of the resultant URL for later pasting.

This is typically a one-way communication channel, so add any context which is necessary, then link to the above material as follows:

  • Log in to the #techrights IRC Channel via the Web browser.
  • Choose a pseudonym and sooner or later we will get around to seeing the new arrival and checking what there is to be said (there are dozens of us there).
  • Drop the link/s in the channel. If someone is on the keyboard at the time, there might even be time for interaction. Do not say anything that can help reveal identity (sometimes the language itself is revealing).

Caveats

While not impenetrable, it would take an enormous amount of effort (and connections in several high places) to unmask a source who follows the steps above. Unless it’s a high-profile political leak, such an unmasking effort would be well beyond what’s worth pursuing (expensive and complicated). MAC address-level spying often assumes access to very high places (and deep into back rooms), so therein lies no significant danger, especially when the best anonymity tools are properly used and the incentive to unmask isn’t great enough at high places (usually the political or military establishments). █

10.24.15

SUEPO Reiterates Call for Independent Mediation and “Doubts That There Can Ever be Social Peace With Mr Battistelli as President”

Posted in Europe, Patents at 12:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Scorpion’s instincts

Tortoise and Scorpion
The Scorpion and the Frog

Summary: The staff union of the EPO (SUEPO) expresses its views on the bogus “Union recognition talks”, which seem to promote a false sense of trust and leave the union leaders ever more exposed to union-busting

AS we promised a couple of days ago, EPO coverage is going to increase in terms of pace and depth. Next week we intend to look deeper inside the institutional corruption and also the granting of patents that never should have been granted. In the mean time, over the weekend perhaps, we wish to organise the Wiki based on themes, in order to make it simpler to navigate. The uninitiated should be able to promptly appreciate just how abusive the EPO has become.

One of the longstanding issues at the EPO is that the management always attacks the messengers who ‘dare’ to question the decisions of management. They are too arrogant to accept constructive criticism and instead they try to crush any morsel of dissent, criticism, disobedience, or the simple act of unionising (which is perfectly legal and protected by European standards). “The road to social peace,” as SUEPO calls it, would require “high level, independent mediation.” Here they are stating:

Mr Battistelli and Mr Kongstad have hailed “Union recognition talks” as the solution to the social conflict in the Office. SUEPO was sceptical from the beginning, for several reasons. One is that the prior reforms that caused the current problems are explicitly excluded from the present and future discussions. Another very fundamental reason is that any agreement or contract is meaningless if it cannot be enforced. We have already seen Mr Battistelli violates even rules he himself established as soon as they no longer suit him, and invokes “immunity” in order to uphold illegal practices. Blind trust is therefore not an option. In this context the “Memorandum of understanding” proposed by Ms Bergot (PD43) is quite revealing. Quite early on it states that “The union officials shall be bound by the legal framework applicable by the EPO” – a framework that the President can unilaterally change as he sees fit. The ongoing accusations of (and investigations in) alleged harassment amongst SUEPO officials and staff representatives (!), apparently targeting the better-known SUEPO representatives, also show that Mr Battistelli is more interested in destroying SUEPO than in recognizing it.

Thus far Mr Battistelli has refused to take on board any opinions other than his own. He has notoriously refused to respect unanimous recommendations of the Internal Appeals Committee and of the Disciplinary Committee – if these were in favour of staff. He has repeatedly refused to accept findings of invalidity by the Medical Committee. By now SUEPO very much doubts that there can ever be social peace with Mr Battistelli as President. But if there could be a road to social peace, it would have to come through high level, independent mediation. SUEPO has repeatedly expressed its willingness to participate in a mediation process. Here we do so again.

Having watched this for well over a year, it seems abundantly clear that neither Battistelli nor Kongstad would be interested in ever recognising a staff union. Battistelli’s bulldog, Željko Topić, went as far as saying that “SUEPO has no standing in this office.” How can they ever pretend otherwise? As long as there is no acceptance of any sort of input from ‘low level’ staff (meaning, in the case of the EPO, highly technical people), there won’t be peace. It’s a shame that the management is too thick (or perhaps arrogant) to grasp this. █

RoboVM Takeover of Interest to Microsoft and Its Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (E.E.E.) Strategy Against Android, Which It Says It Wants to Fork

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Mono at 12:26 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

It sure looks like E.E.E.

Miguel de Icaza and other Microsoft MVPs
Miguel de Icaza with his friends from Microsoft

Summary: Further analysis of the news about RoboVM, which got taken over by a Microsoft-connected company (one might say offshoot or proxy), funded in part by Microsoft money

MICROSOFT’S WAR against the Linux-powered Android platform is well under way, currently descending into the 'extend' phase in E.E.E. against Free/libre software and against GNU/Linux. Readers of Microsoft puff pieces don’t agree with what Microsoft is saying and people at LXer recognise this strategy even from a great distance (see for example “Microsoft’s Death Embrace”). Recall what Microsoft did to Nokia and do not assume that a top contributor to Linux (which Nokia once was) will stay this way after Microsoft moles somehow manage to enter. Elop had destroyed companies before he entered Nokia and Miguel de Icaza had derailed Novell before he became a lot more closely connected to Microsoft, even working for Microsoft.

Yesterday we wrote about Xamarin‘s takeover of RoboVM (with money that came in part from Microsoft veterans). Tim Anderson oddly enough suggests that:

It may not be so welcome to Microsoft, if in the long term it dilutes the focus on C#, which has made Xamarin a key partner.

That’s assuming that the RoboVM-derived/produced work (including users of RoboVM’s products) won’t be diverted away to .NET, rather than be preserved in its current (and formerly independent) form. Perhaps it remains to be seen what Xamarin makes of RoboVM, but judging by the track record of de Icaza, the folks at RoboVM, living across the border from Nokia, may have just let in an ‘Elop’.

“It has happened before, so it can happen again; Microsoft takes great in the strategy of befriending the competition in an effort to betray and eventually kill it.”The news of the buyout (copies of the press release aside [1, 2, 3]) was covered mostly by Microsoft boosters, Microsoft-connected ‘news’ sites (multiple copies even), Microsoft apologists, and RoboVM itself. It’s almost as though the only parties interested in this are Microsoft, the acquiring party (with some funds from Microsoft veterans), and the acquired party. These are all the articles I was able to find when searching the Web. The interested parties are clear to see here. Google has absolutely nothing to gain from this.

In Xamarin’s forums Joseph Hill has said in relation to this takeover that “C# is a beautiful, advanced language with an incredibly large and passionate developer base that is continuing to adopt Xamarin in large and growing numbers.” My instinct tells me that this is part of Microsoft’s E.E.E. against Android and other mobile platforms. It has happened before, so it can happen again; Microsoft takes great in the strategy of befriending the competition in an effort to betray and eventually kill it. █

“We need to slaughter Novell before they get stronger….If you’re going to kill someone, there isn’t much reason to get all worked up about it and angry. You just pull the trigger. Any discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger.”

–Jim Allchin, Microsoft’s Platform Group Vice President

Microsoft is Gradually Dying, So Patent Blackmail and Mass Surveillance (for Snitches) the Remaining Two Business Strategies

Posted in Finance, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 11:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Remember these words from Microsoft itself (click for source PDF):

Microsoft dirty tactics

Summary: Analysis of Microsoft’s abysmal state and what it has been trying to do as a result of its inability to compete fairly with Free (as in freedom) software such as GNU/Linux, Android, Java, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL etc.

TECHRIGHTS has been a critic of Microsoft for a very long time; never before have we seen Microsoft in such poor form. The attempts to derail GNU/Linux and Free/Open Source software from the inside are part of a fight for the company’s very survival. Its cash cows are losing their luster and the only way to keep their momentum/inertia is to force companies to bundle them; Microsoft now does this forcing (or blackmail) using software patents (Samsung, Kyocera, ASUS and Dell are the main examples of this strategy, so far).

Microsoft’s history of cooking the books and avoiding taxes has led to the perception that Microsoft is very rich, but after the losses announced in the last quarter (in the billions of dollars) comes another poor quarter and the signs are on the wall. As Robert Pogson put it:

The monopoly is not dead yet, unfortunately, but it is on its death-bed.

Parts of the monopoly are already dead and formats lock-in too is being loosened, in spite of Microsoft’s OOXML crimes. Several countries recognised what Microsoft had done and moved to ODF, sometimes to Free/libre software as well. See last week’s example from the British government.

“Parts of the monopoly are already dead and formats lock-in too is being loosened, in spite of Microsoft’s OOXML crimes.”Microsoft cannot sell hardware (potentially a profitable business) and finds ‘creative’ accounting tricks to hide it [1]. This huge failure, which has become a massive embarrassment for the abusive monopolist, shows no signs of reversal because products keep dying and are not at all recognised by the public [2,3]. Putting speech recognition, which does not even work properly [4,5], on devices such as phones won’t work, primarily because Microsoft has no presence in mobile and not even in cars, despite tall ambitions [6] (where poor speech recognition can result in fatalities).

With internal cultural problems and costs associated with litigation (e.g. sexism lawsuits [7]) Microsoft falls back on an evil business model similar to that of Facebook (as Vista 10 serves to show), namely turning users into “products”, then selling their private data to many companies or malicious entities such as GCHQ, NSA etc. Microsoft continues to be a leading proponent of the NSA while working for the military and war complex [8] (they call it “information-sharing partnership”, but what it means is mass surveillance plus data-passing). █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Windows, Surface and phones post revenue declines as Microsoft’s MPC segment falls 17%

    The inclusion of the typically very profitable Windows in the MPC division offsets and hides the profitability, or lack thereof, of Microsoft’s hardware endeavors, Dawson added.

  2. NFL Fumbles Microsoft’s $400 Million Surface Ad Deal (Again), Still Gets Called An iPad

    In one of the most highly anticipated games of the season, quarterback Tom Brady and the New England Patriots defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers last Thursday to kick off the National Football League (NFL) season. The first game of the season is always popular, though this particular match-up drew interest from fans wondering how Brady would fare after being dogged in the media for the past seven months over something known as Deflategate. With all that attention, Microsoft can’t be pleased that on-air commentators are still referring to its sponsored Surface tablet as an iPad.

  3. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) To Shut Down Zune Services In November

    Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has possibly the most outstanding reputation for its products and services. The company is synonymous with quality, and it is hard to think about the technology sector without Microsoft. However, Zune is another story altogether. The music service, which was started to counter the growing popularity of online music streaming services, has always played second fiddle to the more established players in the market.

  4. Watch: Cortana embarrasses Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during keynote address

    Satya Nadella was delivering a keynote address at Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce conference. The Microsoft CEO was in the midst of demoing some productivity tools and also also occasionally showing off Windows 10 capabilities when he attempted to showcase Microsoft virtual assistant Cortana’s ability to understand voice commands and to deliver relevant results.

  5. Satya Nadella endures a classic Microsoft demo fail moment

    Nadella could immediately see that Cortana was not getting it. “Come on,” he implored, the annoyance showing in his voice.

    Finally he gave up and said, “No, this is not going to work.”

  6. Microsoft Cortana may be headed to your car

    A Microsoft-connected car, reportedly in trial mode, would let you issue commands using the Cortana voice assistant.

  7. Microsoft Corporation Faces Gender Discrimination Lawsuit

    Microsoft has been hit by a gender discrimination lawsuit by one of its ex-technician

  8. Microsoft renews information-sharing partnership with NATO

    Microsoft and NATO have agreed to renew a longstanding partnership that will see the tech giant provide the intergovernmental treaty group’s Communications and Information Agency with details of Microsoft products and services, as well as new information about cybersecurity threats.

10.23.15

Links 23/10/2015: New Verifone POS Suite Runs Linux, BlackBerry to Ship Linux November 6th

Posted in News Roundup at 7:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source design is ugly, here’s why

    In particular, Braithwaite said open source projects need design help in three key areas: User Experience, Branding, and Visual User Interface. But recruiting them isn’t going to be easy, Braithwaite said, because open source developers haven’t created an atmosphere where designers can feel like they’re part of a community. Open source communities can feel “highly ­exclusive,” Braithwaite said, adding: “It feels like a cool kids’ club that (designers) are not a part of ­ or maybe a really nerdy kids’ club.” Developers need to help motivate designers, he said.

  • Open source lessons for synthetic biology

    However, there are significant differences between the acceptance of open source software and open source biology, primarily boiling down to regulation and safety issues (after all, a badly written program can crash your computer, but a badly formed bacteria can kill you). The number of regulations that need to be followed when legally producing a transgenic organism are immense, particularly in ensuring that they are both non-harmful and unlikely to spread throughout the wild. These regulatory — and thus financial — burdens severely limit the degree to which any individual biohacker can take their ideas and develop them. Note, however, that this is individual biohackers — larger firms can naturally afford to bring developments through this stage to market. Can a larger firm thus make money from open source biology? We believe so, provided the company uses a method similar to Red Hat, Google, or Tesla, in using the open source component to drive customers toward their own market strength — for example, by releasing blueprints and software for lab automation, then selling that equipment and support.

  • TastyIgniter: An Open Source Platform to Manage a Restaurant

    Say you own a restaurant and you are ready to expand the reach of your services. You are thinking about incorporating online table reservations and ordering into your services but you have no idea what it entails. You like the idea but you don’t know how to code a website. There’s software you can install that will take care of all of that.

    What’s more? The software has features to aid kitchen management, customer and staff management, store management and internationalisation already built in.

    And it is free.

  • Swarm v. Fleet v. Kubernetes v. Mesos

    Most software systems evolve over time. New features are added and old ones pruned. Fluctuating user demand means an efficient system must be able to quickly scale resources up and down. Demands for near zero-downtime require automatic fail-over to pre-provisioned back-up systems, normally in a separate data centre or region.

  • Events

    • IoT and open source contributions keynote at All Things Open 2015

      One of my favorite things about the keynotes at All Things Open this year was that attendees didn’t have just one great speaker to listen to each morning—we had a few. I enjoyed hearing multiple stories and many insights from dynamic speakers all in one sitting.

    • FSF Blogs: Videos and photos from the FSF30 celebrations now available

      First, watch this video of FSF general counsel and Software Freedom Law Center President and Executive Director Eben Moglen’s talk, “FSF from 30 to 45,” given at the User Freedom Summit held at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Moglen looks ahead to the crucial issues facing the free software movement in its next fifteen years.

      At the 30th anniversary party held in Boston, we had two recorded greetings from friends of the FSF who were unable to attend in person. One was by FSF member, BoingBoing co-editor, and EFF fellow Cory Doctorow. The other greeting was from computer scientist and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge.

      Check out the video of the performance of the Free Software Song and the Bulgarian folk song that inspired it, Sadi Moma Bela Loza, by members of the Boston Bulgarian singing groups Divi Zheni and Zornitsa. We will have more videos of other guest toasts and RMS’s address soon.

    • Ubucon Slated for SCALE 14X, Bassel Offered MIT Job & More…

      I don’t say enough good things about Ubuntu, so when they give me reason to, I’m on it. I also don’t talk enough about openSUSE either; good, bad or indifferent.

      [...]

      But Wait, There’s More: Speaking of SCALE 14x, you still have a week to submit a talk for the first-of-the-year Linux/FOSS show in the world (now before linux.conf.au and FOSDEM in 2016, by some stroke of scheduling luck). SCALE 14x is four days of Peace, Love and Linux at the Pasadena Convention Center from Jan. 21-24, 2016…Getting the computers to the kids is no easy feat, even when the truck is working: My good friend and FOSS Force colleague (not to mention Houston Astros fan) Ken Starks has an Indiegogo campaign to replace the now-deceased delivery vehicle for Reglue (Recycled Electronics and GNU/Linux Used for Education). Throw in a few bucks if you can.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla commits $1M to support free open-source software projects

        Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser, announced today that it has allocated $1 million to dole out grants to support free and open-source software projects around the world.

      • Mozilla Launches Open Source Support Program

        Today Mozilla is launching an award program specifically focused on supporting open source and free software. Our initial allocation for this program is $1,000,000. We are inviting people already deeply connected to Mozilla to participate in our first set of awards.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • How CERN uses OpenStack to drive their scientific mission

      One of the world’s largest scientific organization is using OpenStack to understand what makes up everything in our universe. CERN runs one of the most collaborative scientific projects on Earth, responsible for producing enormous amounts of data on a routine basis to make Nobel prize winning discoveries such as the Higgs boson has some pretty unique computing requirements.

    • OpenStack Security Groups using OVN ACLs

      It’s worth looking at how this has been implemented with OVS in the past for OpenStack. OpenStack’s existing OVS integration (ML2+OVS) makes use of iptables to implement security groups. Unfortunately, to make that work, we have to connect the VM to a tap device, put that on a linux bridge, and then connect the linux bridge to the OVS bridge using a veth pair so that we have a place to implement the iptables rules. It’s great that this works, but the extra layers are not ideal.

    • Oracle Puts OpenStack into Docker Containers

      There is a misconception among some people that Docker containers and OpenStack are competitive technologies. The truth is the exact opposite, and in fact, Oracle is now providing the best proof yet by using Docker images as a mechanism to actually install an OpenStack cloud.

    • OpenStack Addresses Network Orchestration Layer

      While the OpenStack community likes to present a unified front to the outside world, inside the various projects that make up the OpenStack framework, there is a lot of frustration with the Neutron networking component of OpenStack. Much of that frustration stems from the fact that after five years of effort Neutron still doesn’t scale particularly well. As such, many of the organizations that have embraced OpenStack wind up swapping in a commercial network layer of software to replace Neutron.

    • Exposing the Truth About OpenStack Cloud Deployments

      Lured by the siren song of better business agility and accelerated innovation, an increasing number of companies are considering or have already deployed private clouds as part of their IT strategy. Since emerging in 2010 as an open-source initiative to help organizations build cloud services on industry-standard hardware, OpenStack has garnered much attention, but its adoption in production environments has been tempered by an assortment of perceived limitations, both real and imagined.

    • Mapr Adds Apache Drill 1.2 to Its Hadoop Distro

      MapR announced it has added Apache Drill 1.2 to its Apache Hadoop distribution for additional analytics support.

    • MapR Delivers Apache Drill 1.2 in its Hadoop Distribution

      MapR Technologies which offers a popular distribution of Apache Hadoop that integrates web-scale enterprise storage and real-time database capabilities, has announced the availability of Apache Drill 1.2 in its Distribution as well as a new Data Exploration Quick Start Solution. The addition of Drill 1.2 comes right on the heels of MapR adding Apache Spark to its distribution.

  • Databases

    • Oracle MySQL 5.7 Database Nears General Availability

      Ahead of Oracle’s OpenWorld conference in 2013, the company first began to talk about a major new release of its open-source MySQL database. Now two years later, development on MySQL 5.7 is compete and general availability is set for October 26.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Template Management in LibreOffice 5

      If you’re a LibreOffice power user, you’ve probably ventured into the realm of templates. But, if you’ve upgraded to LibreOffice 5, you’ve probably noticed a few minor changes to the way this feature is managed. It’s not a profound or game-changing shift, but a shift nonetheless.

      Because many people overlook the template feature in LibreOffice, I thought it would be a good idea to approach template management for LibreOffice 5 as if it were a new feature…and one that should be considered a must-have for all types of users. So, sit back and prepare to discover that feature which will make your time with LibreOffice exponentially easier.

    • LibreOffice Developers Working on a New Toolbar Layout

      The LibreOffice developers are working on a new interface that aims to unify all the different toolbars. This is still under development, and it will be provided as an option and not as default.

    • UK licence deal to boost use of open source office

      Public administrations in the UK can get professional support for using LibreOffice, the open source office alternative, thanks to a licence deal by the UK’s central procuring agency Crown Commercial Service with Collabora, a UK-based ICT service provider.

    • First bug hunting session for LibreOffice 5.1

      Those who cannot join during the bug hunting session are always welcome to help chasing bugs and regressions when they have time. There will be a second bug hunting session in December, to test LibreOffice 5.1 Release Candidate 1.

    • LibreOffice 5.1 Is Working On New Features For A February Debut

      LibreOffice 5.1 is planned for release in early February while to catch some bugs early they’re organizing the first bug hunt from 30 October to 1 November. Builds of LibreOffice 5.1 Alpha 1 are already available for testing. More details via The Document Foundation’s blog.

    • finding UI crashes by fuzzing input events with american fuzzy lop

      As mentioned previously I’ve been experimenting using afl as a fuzzing engine to fuzz a stream of serialized keyboard events which LibreOffice reads and dispatches.

  • BSD

    • Deweloperzy OpenBSD: Dmitrij D. Czarkoff

      In 2005 I tried OpenBSD for the first time. I still recall how I was impressed by the fact that I only needed ifconfig (as opposed to ifconfig, iwconfig and wpa_supplicant on Linux) to configure my wireless network card.

    • Deweloperzy OpenBSD: Marc Espie

      Funny story actually. It was about 20 years ago, and I didn’t have any Internet access at home. I wanted to play with some Unix on my home Amiga, as I didn’t have root access on the suns at University. Getting anything on my Amiga was complicated, as I had to transfer everything through floppies. Turned out OpenBSD was the only OS with sane and clear instructions. NetBSD gave you so many different choices, I couldn’t figure out which one to follow, and Linux was a jungle of patches.

    • W^X enabled in Firefox port

      After recent discussions of revisiting W^X support in Mozilla Firefox, David Coppa (dcoppa@) has flipped the switch to enable it for OpenBSD users running -current.

    • Google Continues Working On CUDA Compiler Optimizations In LLVM

      While it will offend some that Google continues to be investing in NVIDIA’s CUDA GPGPU language rather than an open standard like OpenCL, the Google engineers continue making progress on a speedy, open-source CUDA with LLVM.

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • What Is the Most Dangerous Gang in Prison?
  • Mythbusters hosts say 14th season will be last, announce farewell tour

    In 2016, Mythbusters hosts and stars Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage will warn viewers not to try this at home for the last time. The duo announced on Wednesday that the Discovery Channel TV series’ 14th season, which begins airing January 9, will be its last.

  • Angry Birds’ Rovio Cuts 213 Jobs, Axes Learning To Refocus On Games And Video

    After announcing in August that it would cut up to 260 jobs, Rovio — maker of the Angry Birds games — today released details of the final number: the Finland-based company is letting go of 213 employees, around 25% of staff, as it continues to restructure and cut away unprofitable parts of its business. The whole of the company is being affected, with the exception of those working on the production of The Angry Birds Movie in the U.S. and Canada.

  • The Chinese Internet Wants To Know About David Cameron And Pigs

    The state visit to the UK by president Xi Jinping has been seen as a success in China, although ordinary people on Weibo keep asking David Cameron about pigs.

  • Security

    • Fitbit can allegedly be hacked in 10 seconds

      Fitness-tracking wristband Fitbit, which has sold more than 20 million devices worldwide, and tracks your calorie count, heart rate and other highly personal information, can be remotely hacked, according to research by Fortinet. This gives hackers access to the computer to which you sync your Fitbit.

    • Adobe releases emergency patch for Flash zero-day flaw
    • Adobe confirms major Flash vulnerability, and the only way to protect yourself is to uninstall Flash

      Just one day after Adobe released its monthly security patches for various software including Flash Player, the company confirmed a major security vulnerability that affects all versions of Flash for Windows, Mac and Linux computers. You read that correctly… all versions. Adobe said it has been made aware that this vulnerability is being used by hackers to attack users, though it says the attacks are limited and targeted. Using the exploit, an attacker can crash a target PC or even take complete control of the computer.

    • Western Digital self-encrypting hard drives riddled with security flaws

      Several versions of self-encrypting hard drives from Western Digital are riddled with so many security flaws that attackers with physical access can retrieve the data with little effort, and in some cases, without even knowing the decryption password, a team of academics said.

      The paper, titled got HW crypto? On the (in)security of a Self-Encrypting Drive series, recited a litany of weaknesses in the multiple versions of the My Passport and My Book brands of external hard drives. The flaws make it possible for people who steal a vulnerable drive to decrypt its contents, even when they’re locked down with a long, randomly generated password. The devices are designed to self-encrypt all stored data, a feature that saves users the time and expense of using full-disk encryption software.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • WikiLeaks publishes e-mail from CIA director’s hacked AOL account

      WikiLeaks has released a cache of e-mails which the site says were retrieved from CIA Director John Brennan’s AOL account.

      The e-mails include Brennan’s SF86, a form that he had to fill out to get his current position and security clearance. The form, from 2008, “reveals a quite comprehensive social graph of the current Director of the CIA with a lot of additional non-governmental and professional/military career details,” according to WikiLeaks’ description of the document.

    • WikiLeaks Is Publishing the CIA Director’s Hacked Emails

      WikiLeaks may describe itself as an outlet for whistleblowers, but it’s never hesitated to publish stolen documents offered up by a helpful hacker, either. So it’s no surprise that it’s now leaked the pilfered files of the CIA’s director, John Brennan.

      On Wednesday, the secret-spilling group published a series of selected messages and attachments from a trove of emails taken from Brennan’s AOL account. Though WikiLeaks hasn’t revealed its source, there’s little doubt the files were handed off by the self-described teen hackers calling themselves CWA or “Crackas With Attitude,” who claim to have hacked Brennan’s AOL account through a series of “social engineering” tricks.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Even corporate America wants campaign finance reform to stop crony capitalism

      Political corruption is eating our democracy out from the inside. Most Americans know that. But democratic and economic health can’t be easily disentangled. As it diminishes our public sphere and drowns out the myriad of citizen voices, it also sucks the energy and vitality from our economy. This causes pain to business owners.

      According to a recent report from the Committee on Economic Development, an old, white-shoe non-partisan organization that came out of the aftermath of World War II (and was a booster for the Marshall Plan), the United States economy is increasingly represented by crony capitalism, not competitive capitalism.

    • Fox Guest: Black Lives Matter Is A “Terrorist Group”

  • Privacy

    • Facebook Is The Borg

      For days, I had mysterious annoying bell dings on my Mac. It turns out that Facebook turned on sound notifications — entirely without my doing — for when people comment on posts.

    • Why Vietnam’s Communists Are Learning to Like Facebook

      Vietnam’s Communist government, which once blocked Facebook Inc., is now embracing the online tools of capitalism by establishing its own page on the social media website in order to reach young Internet-savvy users who turn to it for news and discourse.

    • The scientists encouraging online piracy with a secret codeword

      In many countries, it’s against the law to download copyrighted material without paying for it – whether it’s a music track, a movie, or an academic paper. Published research is protected by the same laws, and access is generally restricted to scientists – or institutions – who subscribe to journals.

      But some scientists argue that their need to access the latest knowledge justifies flouting the law, and they’re using a Twitter hashtag to help pirate scientific papers.

    • EFF’s Let’s Encrypt has support from super browser brothers

      A SECURITY CERTIFICATE EFFORT involving the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Mozilla, Cisco, Akamai, IdenTrust and the University of Michigan has lived up to promises to be in order by 2015.

    • Proposed German law: telecoms must store customer data on airgapped servers

      The German Bundestag (parliament) has passed a controversial law requiring telecoms and Internet companies to store customers’ metadata and to make it available to law enforcement agencies investigating “severe crimes.” Specifically, “phone providers will now have to retain phone numbers, the date and time of phone calls and text messages, and, in the case of mobile phones, location (approximated through the identification of cell phone towers).” In addition, “Internet providers are required to save the IP addresses of users as well as the date and time of connections made,” a post on the Lawfare blog explains.

    • DHS now needs warrant for stingray use, but not when protecting president

      As expected, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released its own stingray requirements. Agents must now obtain a warrant prior to deploying the secretive surveillance tool as part of criminal investigations. This new policy comes over a month after the Department of Justice released its own similarly policy.

      The new rules will apply to DHS, as well as agencies that fall under its umbrella, such as the Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    • CISA Moves Forward: These 83 Senators Just Voted To Expand Surveillance

      Well, it’s not a huge surprise that it moved forward, but the faux “cybersecurity” bill, which is actually a surveillance bill in disguise, CISA, has moved forward in the Senate via an overwhelming 83 to 14 vote. As we’ve discussed at length, while CISA is positioned as just a “voluntary” cybersecurity information sharing bill, it’s really none of those things. It’s not voluntary and it’s not really about cybersecurity. Instead, it’s a surveillance bill, that effectively gives the NSA greater access to information from companies in order to do deeper snooping through its upstream collection points. Even the attempts to supposedly “clarify” the language to protect data from being used for surveillance shows that the language is deliberately written to look like it does one thing, while really opening up the ability of the NSA and FBI to get much more information.

  • Civil Rights

    • Critics say air marshals, much wanted after 9/11, have become ‘bored cops’ flying first class

      At a price tag of $9 billion over the past 10 years, Duncan called the program “ineffective” and “irrelevant.”

      [...]

      Duncan acknowledged at an oversight committee last month that the program “has come to be a symbol of everything that’s wrong with the DHS, when 4,000 bored cops fly around the country First Class, committing more crimes than they stop.”

    • New ‘Car Safety Bill’ Would Make Us Less Safe, Block Security Research And Hinder FTC And Others

      The House Energy and Commerce Committee is pushing an absolutely terrible draft bill that is supposedly about improving “car safety.” This morning there were hearings on the bill, and the thing looks like a complete dud. In an era when we’re already concerned about the ridiculousness of how copyright law is blocking security research on automobiles (just as we’re learning about automakers hiding secret software in their cars to avoid emissions testing), as well as questions about automobile vulnerabilities and the ability to criminalize security research under the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act), this bill makes basically all of it worse.

    • Sheldon Whitehouse Freaks Out, Blames ‘Pro-Botnet Lobby’ For Rejecting His Terrible CFAA Amendment

      As we mentioned yesterday, one of the (many) bad things involved in the new Senate attempt to push the CISA “cybersecurity” bill forward was that they were including a bad amendment added by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse that would expand the terrible Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a law that should actually be significantly cut back. Senator Ron Wyden protested this amendment specifically in his speech against CISA. And, for whatever reason, Whitehouse’s amendment has been pulled from consideration and Whitehouse is seriously pissed off about it.

    • Why Internet Users Should be Very Angry about the TPP

      The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) exploded onto the Canadian media landscape last week, when negotiators from the 12 participating countries finally agreed on a deal. Even if you were paying attention, you might not have heard about the impacts on the Internet, since much of the focus was on the farming and auto sectors. But the TPP is about a lot more than dairy and cars – it’s also about our fundamental right to free expression.

    • Eritrean mistakenly killed opens old wounds in Israel

      Images of an Eritrean asylum seeker lying in a pool of blood as an angry mob kicks him has renewed debate in Israel over alleged racism and how to respond to violence.

      Habtom Zarhum, 29, was shot by a security guard this week at a bus station in the southern city of Beersheba after being mistaken for an assailant in an attack that killed an Israeli soldier.

      He later died of his injuries.

      Footage of Zarhum bleeding as an angry mob rains blows on his head and torso has spread rapidly on social media, prompting soul searching among Israelis over their response to a wave of attacks as well as their treatment of African migrants.

      One photo posted on Facebook shows Zarhum smiling with colleagues at a nursery where he worked.

    • Chase Madar on Prosecuting Police

      This week on CounterSpin: Nearly a year after 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by a Cleveland police officer, the county prosecutor is giving signs that he won’t be strenuously encouraging indictments, deflating the hopes of many that the officer, Timothy Loehmann, will face any punishment at all for the killing.

    • Rush Limbaugh Applauds Himself For Coining The Term “Feminazi”

  • YouTube/Internet

    • You Can Now Pay to Watch YouTube Without Ads

      Dubbed YouTube Red, the new service will offer ad-free versions of all current YouTube videos, as well as access to music streaming and additional exclusive content from some of the site’s top creators. It will cost $9.99 per month and launch on Oct. 28.

    • YouTube Red Doesn’t Want to Be Compared to Netflix

      YouTube believes its content, stable of talent and audience makes it an entirely new player in paid streaming.

    • Red Dawn

      An inside look at YouTube’s new ad-free subscription service

    • Europe’s ‘Net Neutrality’ Could Allow Torrent and VPN Throttling

      Next week the European Parliament will vote on Europe’s new telecoms regulation which includes net neutrality rules. While the legislation is a step forward for many countries, experts and activists warn that it may leave the door open for BitTorrent and VPN throttling if key amendments fail to pass.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Google Opposes Whole-Site Removal of “Pirate” Domains

        Google is rejecting calls from copyright holders to remove entire domain names from Google search based on copyright infringements. In a letter to the U.S. Government the company points out that this would prove counterproductive and lead to overbroad censorship.

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