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12.02.16

Links 2/12/2016: Mint Betas, Chrome 55, KDevelop 5.0.3, PHP 7.1.0

Posted in News Roundup at 9:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Oracle kicks £1.1bn into European computer sciences and digital skills [Ed: Oracle cares not about education and research; look what it did to researchers who reverse-engineered stuff.]

    ORACLE IS PROVIDING $1.4bn (around £1.1bn) in direct, and what it calls ‘in-kind’ support for European computer sciences and skills.

    The cash is part of an $3.3bn kitty that applies worldwide and is designed to support digital literacy, something that we are often told is lacking.

  • Science

    • New standard helps optical trackers follow moving objects precisely

      Throwing a perfect strike in virtual bowling doesn’t require your gaming system to precisely track the position and orientation of your swinging arm. But if you’re operating a robotic forklift around a factory, manipulating a mechanical arm on an assembly line or guiding a remote-controlled laser scalpel inside a patient, the ability to pinpoint exactly where it is in three-dimensional (3-D) space is critical.

  • Security

    • Security Patches for Firefox and Tor Address Key Security Vulnerability
    • Mozilla Patches Zero-Day Flaw in Firefox

      Mozilla moves quickly to fix vulnerability that was being actively exploited in attacks against Tor Browser, which is based on Firefox.

      Late afternoon on November 30, Mozilla rushed out an emergency update for its open-source Firefox web browser, fixing a zero-day vulnerability that was being actively exploited by attackers. The vulnerability was used in attacks against the Tor web browser which is based on Firefox.

    • Thursday’s security advisories
    • ‘Fatal’ flaws found in medical implant software

      Security flaws found in 10 different types of medical implants could have “fatal” consequences, warn researchers.

      The flaws were found in the radio-based communications used to update implants, including pacemakers, and read data from them.

      By exploiting the flaws, the researchers were able to adjust settings and even switch off gadgets.

      The attacks were also able to steal confidential data about patients and their health history.

      A software patch has been created to help thwart any real-world attacks.

      The flaws were found by an international team of security researchers based at the University of Leuven in Belgium and the University of Birmingham.

    • Lenovo: If you value your server, block Microsoft’s November security update

      Lenovo server admins should disable Windows Update and apply a UEFI fix to avoid Microsoft’s November security patches freezing their systems.

      The world’s third-largest server-maker advised the step after revealing that 19 configurations of its x M5 and M6 rack, as well as its x6 systems are susceptible.

    • Symantec and VMware patches, Linux encryption bug: Security news IT leaders need to know
    • UK homes lose internet access after cyber-attack

      More than 100,000 people in the UK have had their internet access cut after a string of service providers were hit by what is believed to be a coordinated cyber-attack, taking the number affected in Europe up to about a million.

      TalkTalk, one of Britain’s biggest service providers, the Post Office and the Hull-based KCom were all affected by the malware known as the Mirai worm, which is spread via compromised computers.

      The Post Office said 100,000 customers had experienced problems since the attack began on Sunday and KCom put its figure at about 10,000 customers since Saturday. TalkTalk confirmed that it had also been affected but declined to give a precise number of customers involved.

    • New Mirai Worm Knocks 900K Germans Offline

      More than 900,000 customers of German ISP Deutsche Telekom (DT) were knocked offline this week after their Internet routers got infected by a new variant of a computer worm known as Mirai. The malware wriggled inside the routers via a newly discovered vulnerability in a feature that allows ISPs to remotely upgrade the firmware on the devices. But the new Mirai malware turns that feature off once it infests a device, complicating DT’s cleanup and restoration efforts.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • The New Red Scare

      “Welcome to the world of strategic analysis,” Ivan Selin used to tell his team during the Sixties, “where we program weapons that don’t work to meet threats that don’t exist.” Selin, who would spend the following decades as a powerful behind-the-scenes player in the Washington mandarinate, was then the director of the Strategic Forces Division in the Pentagon’s Office of Systems Analysis. “I was a twenty-eight-year-old wiseass when I started saying that,” he told me, reminiscing about those days. “I thought the issues we were dealing with were so serious, they could use a little levity.”

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Signs Of A Creepy Government Conspiracy At Standing Rock

      That vague title leaves a lot open to interpretation. And if the internet has taught us anything, it’s that interpretation is not the average person’s strong suit … or even their medium suit, for that matter. “Clash” suggests an equal meeting of force, and that’s really not the case when one side has military hardware and the backing of a multi-billion-dollar corporation, and the other side … well … doesn’t. Reading that headline makes the story sound identical to every other protest of the last 20 years. But thanks to sites like Twitter, “water protectors” with drones can put video of how that “clash” really looked in front of thousands of eyes…

    • Indonesia: Human rights abuses on palm oil plantations

      The world’s most popular food and household companies are selling food, cosmetics and other everyday staples containing palm oil tainted by shocking human rights abuses in Indonesia, with children as young as eight working in hazardous conditions, said Amnesty International in a new report published today.

    • Indonesia’s Forest-Fire Problem Is Nowhere Close to Being Solved. Here’s Why

      Choking haze caused by Indonesia’s annual slash-and-burn forest fires affects millions of people. Wetter weather provided some relief in 2016, but tackling the fires properly will require monumental change

    • Climate change escalating so fast it is ‘beyond point of no return’

      Global warming is beyond the “point of no return”, according to the lead scientist behind a ground-breaking climate change study.

      The full impact of climate change has been underestimated because scientists haven’t taken into account a major source of carbon in the environment.

      Dr Thomas Crowther’s report has concluded that carbon emitted from soil was speeding up global warming.

      The findings, which say temperatures will increase by 1C by 2050, are already being adopted by the United Nations.

  • Finance

    • Panama Papers: Europol links 3,500 names to suspected criminals

      Almost 3,500 individuals and companies in the Panama Papers are probable matches for suspected criminals including terrorists, cybercriminals and cigarette smugglers, according to a document seen by the Guardian.

      The analysis, which was carried out by Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, sheds more light on the breadth of criminal behaviour facilitated by tax havens around the world.

      “The main point here is that we can link companies from the Panama Papers leaks not only with economic crimes, like money laundering or VAT carousels, but also with terrorism and Russian organised crime groups,” Simon Riondet, head of financial intelligence at Europol, told a committee of MEPs.

    • EU, RI look to negotiate CEPA points

      Indonesia will seek a win-win outcome for the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with the European Union, having exchanged views on a number of crucial sticking points ahead of the next round of negotiations in January.

      The EU and Indonesia began earnest talks on the free trade pact in September following the signing of scoping papers earlier in April.

      Issues discussed in the negotiations include market access for trade in goods and services, customs and trade facilitation, sustainable development and dispute settlement.

    • Meltdown at the European Parliament

      The carefully calibrated “grand coalition” of Europe’s dominant political parties, which EU leaders have relied on to sustain their agenda and to manage a series of crises since 2014, this week imploded amid the collapse of a power-sharing deal in the European Parliament and the start of a bruising fight over the Parliament presidency.

      The rupture cast a shadow of uncertainty over Brussels, raising the prospect of weeks of distraction and legislative paralysis, and leaving European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk with little choice but to watch in dismay from the sidelines and brace for further turbulence.

    • Guggenheim Helsinki museum plans rejected by city councillors

      Venice and Bilbao will remain the only Guggenheim museums in Europe for the foreseeable future after Helsinki finally buried a controversial plan for a striking new shrine to modern and contemporary art on the city’s waterfront.

      After a stormy five-hour meeting lasting into the early hours of Thursday morning, city councillors voted by 53 to 32 to kill off the project, which had been fiercely contested in Finland since it was floated in 2011.

      Helsinki’s deputy mayor, Ritva Viljanen, who had supported the plans for a €150m (£126m) museum on a prime dockside site currently in use as a car park, said the project’s proponents would have to accept the decision.

      “Democracy has spoken, and in no uncertain manner; there can be no ifs or buts,” Viljanen told YLE, the state broadcaster. She said she was sorry feelings about the project had run so high, with some backers receiving threats of violence.

    • Revelations on tax avoidance of football stars: serious foul play against common good

      Today, the Spanish newspaper “El Confidencial” reports on leaked documents revealing tax avoidance practices by football stars like Cristiano Ronaldo. Although residing in Madrid, Ronaldo has been invoicing most of his advertising revenues through an Irish company. With this manoeuvre, he has benefitted from a significantly lower tax rate on his earnings. While Spain taxes at 43.5%, Ireland only charges 12.5%. MEP Sven Giegold, financial and economic policy spokesperson of the Greens/EFA group, comments on the so-called “football leaks”…

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Why the recount matters: Jill Stein

      There is nothing more important to our American way of life than our democracy. The lifeblood of this nation is the principle that each citizen’s vote is equal when it comes to choosing our president.

      But in the age of computerized voting machines and unprecedented corporate influence in our elections, our electoral system is under increasing threat. How can every citizen’s voice be heard if we do not know if every citizen’s vote is counted correctly?

      To help ensure it is, I have asked for a recount of the 2016 presidential election in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Our goal is not to change the result of the election. It is to ensure the integrity and accuracy of the vote. All Americans, regardless of party, deserve to know that this and every election is fair and that the vote is verified.

    • New evidence finds anomalies in Wisconsin vote, but no conclusive evidence of fraud

      Did the outcome of voting for president in Wisconsin accurately reflect the intentions of the electors? Concerns have been raised about errors in vote counts produced using electronic technology — were machines hacked? — and a recount may occur.

      Some reports involving statistical analysis of the results has been discussed in the media recently. These analyses, though, rely on data at the county level. Technology, demographics and other important characteristics of the electorate vary within counties, making it difficult to resolve conclusively whether voting technology (did voters cast paper or electronic ballots?) affected the final tabulation of the vote for president.

    • Chris Sacca: ‘Silicon Valley must stand up to Trump or risk destroying tech, America and the planet’

      Leading US venture investor Chris Sacca is calling on Silicon Valley to stand up and defend the technology industry from President-elect Donald Trump, or risk an unpleasant future where technology no longer provides solutions, but instead hurts people and spies on them, as well as potentially destroying the planet.

      “The hypocrisy is really risking what America stands for. I think the tech sector has to acknowledge that we’re making this problem worse. We can’t just be open source and say use [software, products and services] for whatever you want,” Sacca, an early seed investor in Twitter, Uber, Instragram, Twilio and Kickstarter told the audience at the Slush 2016 tech conference in Helsinki, Finland.

    • Teen becomes seventh ‘faithless elector’ to protest Trump as president-elect

      A teenager from Washington state has become the seventh person to indicate that she will break ranks with party affiliation and become a “faithless elector” in an attempt to prevent Donald Trump being formally enshrined as president-elect when the electoral college meets on 19 December.

      Levi Guerra, 19, from Vancouver, Washington, is set to announce that she is joining the ranks of the so-called “Hamilton electors” at a press conference at the state capitol in Olympia on Wednesday.

      The renegade group believes it is the responsibility of the 538 electors who make up the electoral college to show moral courage in preventing demagogues and other threats to the nation from gaining the keys to the White House, as the founding fathers intended.

    • Trump lawyers file objection to delay Michigan recount

      President-elect Donald Trump’s lawyers have filed an objection to the recount in Michigan, delaying and potentially blocking a review that was slated to begin Friday.

      Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson (R) said that the state’s Bureau of Elections received the objection from Trump representatives on Thursday, a day after Green Party nominee Jill Stein filed for a recount.

    • Trump Spokesmonster Scottie Nell Hughes: ‘There’s No Such Thing as Facts’

      We have officially entered the post-fact American era. Donald J. Trump presidential surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes, known for being one of the most wack in Trump’s pack, explicitly said on public radio’s “The Diane Rehm Show” yesterday that lying is official Trump strategy.

    • Dr. Jill Stein, Alleged Election Spoiler, Defends Her Recount Battle

      On the heels of the most contentious presidential election in recent history, comes an equally contentious recount effort. Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate who won only 1 percent of the popular vote, is now attracting far more media attention than her campaign ever did, after she launched a controversial effort to initiate recount proceedings in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan—three states where Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by roughly 1 percent.

    • Why a recount? Prof who sparked it explains

      How might a foreign government hack America’s voting machines?

      Here’s one possible scenario. First, the attackers would probe election offices well in advance in order to find ways to break into their computers. Closer to the election, when it was clear from polling data which states would have close electoral margins, the attackers might spread malware into voting machines in some of these states, rigging the machines to shift a few percent of the vote to favor their desired candidate.

      This malware would likely be designed to remain inactive during pre-election tests, do its dirty business during the election, then erase itself when the polls close. A skilled attacker’s work might leave no visible signs — though the country might be surprised when results in several close states were off from pre-election polls.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Assange’s dilemma: ‘The UK & Sweden are vassals of the United States’

      The rule of law has gone into the heap of history, and Julian Assange is one of the victims of that. I do hope the UK will come to its senses and start obeying international law, former CIA officer Ray McGovern told RT.

      A UN panel rejected an appeal from the British government in the case of Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for more than four years.

      The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention upheld its earlier ruling that the WikiLeaks founder is being arbitrarily detained.

    • U.S. veterans to form human shield at Dakota pipeline protest

      More than 2,000 U.S. military veterans plan to form a human shield to protect protesters of a pipeline project near a Native American reservation in North Dakota, organizers said, just ahead of a federal deadline for activists to leave the camp they have been occupying.

      It comes as North Dakota law enforcement backed away from a previous plan to cut off supplies to the camp – an idea quickly abandoned after an outcry and with law enforcement’s treatment of Dakota Access Pipeline protesters increasingly under the microscope.

    • Toronto university Muslim group accused of anti-Semitism

      Voices from Toronto’s Jewish community are accusing a group of Muslim and pro-Palestinian university students of scuttling a vote by their union to commemorate Holocaust Education Week.

      The controversy unfolded during Tuesday’s general meeting of the Ryerson Student Union (RSU), which was set to vote on a Jewish student group’s motion to hold Holocaust Education Week events.

      According to a member of Hillel Ryerson, students from the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP Ryerson) and the Muslim Students Association (RMSA) first called for an amendment to the motion to include all forms of genocide.

      But then they walked out, causing the meeting to lose quorum and the vote to die, Hillel Ryerson’s Aedan O’Connor says. “Instead of going through with trying to amend it, they … decided to walk out,” he said Wednesday.

    • Call 6 Investigates Rafael Sanchez denied press credential to Carrier event

      Call 6 Investigates Chief Investigator Rafael Sanchez was denied press credential access to the announcement event at the Carrier plant that will detail the deal the west-side Indianapolis plant made with President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence to keep more than half of the jobs of the original 1,400 slated to be moved to Mexico.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Popcorn, Football And Chocolate – US Idea To Prompt Discussions At WIPO TK Committee

      What do popcorn, chewing-gum, football, syringes, and chocolate have in common? According to a United States paper tabled at the World Intellectual Property Organization, they are all rooted in traditional knowledge. While most efforts are geared this week towards trying to find consensual language on a treaty protecting traditional knowledge, the US said a discussion on what is protectable and what is not would be instructive. Some other delegations resubmitted proposals introducing alternative means of protection than a binding instrument.

    • Copyrights

      • Canada’s music lobby admits WIPO Internet Treaty drafters were “just guessing”

        Michael Geist writes, “The global music industry has spent two decades lobbying for restrictive DMCA-style restrictions on digital locks. These so-called “anti-circumvention rules” have been actively opposed by many groups, but the copyright lobby claims that they are needed to comply with the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Internet treaties. Now the head of the RIAA in Canada admits that the treaty drafters were just guessing and that they guessed wrong.”

      • Spain Announces New Campaign to Fight Internet Piracy

        Spain’s Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport has announced a new initiative for tackling piracy, especially online. Minister Íñigo Méndez de Vigo said a special prosecutor’s office will be developed alongside enhanced technological and human resources. An educational campaign targeting children is also on the agenda.

12.01.16

Links 1/12/2016: Devuan Beta, R3 Liberates Code

Posted in News Roundup at 12:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Science

    • The conservative group behind efforts to intimidate professors

      Last week, a conservative group called Turning Point USA published a “Professor Watchlist” that targets academics accused of pushing a “radical agenda.” But the project is part of the group’s much larger effort to organize young conservatives on college campuses.

      Since its start in 2012, the group has started local chapters at hundreds of universities and high schools across the United States. Founder Charlie Kirk has used the megaphone of social media — he has over 84,000 followers on Twitter — and his regular television appearances as the conservative Millennial to bring attention to his organization and the Professor Watchlist.

      Although much of the The Turning Point USA website is benign, some of its resources claim affirmative action is unfair and suggest being confrontational with groups seeking safe spaces.

  • Hardware

    • Apple’s Bootcamp audio driver can permanently damage the speakers on the new MacBook Pro

      For the past 11 years, Apple has offered formal support for installing Windows on a Macintosh running OS X via its Boot Camp Assistant software. If you need Windows on a Macintosh and don’t want to use virtualization software to run it, Boot Camp will resize your hard drive partition to create a new Windows volume and ships with its own set of drivers for your underlying hardware. Apple tends to aggressively prune support for older operating systems — Boot Camp 6.1, which shipped with macOS 10.12 (Sierra), only supports Windows 10 — but Cupertino’s QA team clearly screwed up its compatibility testing, even with just one operating system to evaluate. Multiple customers who purchased one of Apple’s new MacBook Pros are reporting that the default Boot Camp audio driver can permanently damage the system’s speakers.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • WHO Board May Discuss UN High-Level Panel Report On Medicines Access

      The UN World Health Organization this week clarified that the possibility exists for the WHO Executive Board to discuss a recently released report from a UN Secretary General-appointed panel that makes recommendations for improving global access to medicines.

    • Tobacco giant predicts the end of smoking. Panic ensues

      A few years ago, I interviewed Dr Craig Ventner, the man who decoded the human genome, about his plan to save the planet. Ventner’s goal was to create a drop-in substitute for hydrocarbon fuels, using genetically modified algae.

      His algae facilities would be located beside high CO2 sources, and churn out synthetic oil. This could then be turned into aviation fuel, or petrol.

      It was the first low carbon project Exxon had ever invested in. The beauty of Ventner’s scheme was that much of the world’s transport infrastructure could carry on unmodified, with enormous savings on carbon dioxide emissions.*

    • Man in the Netherlands euthanised due to his alcohol addiction

      A man in the Netherlands has been allowed to die because he could no longer carry on living as an alcoholic.

      Mark Langedijk chose the day of his death and was telling jokes, drinking beer and eating ham sandwiches with his family hours before he passed away.

      He was killed by lethal injection at his parents’ home on 14 July, according to an account of the ordeal written by his brother and published in the magazine Linda.

      The Netherlands introduced a euthanasia law 16 years ago, which is available to people in “unbearable suffering” with no prospect of improvement.

    • Weaver: ‘It makes no sense’ Flint aid stalled

      Flint officials, including Mayor Karen Weaver, renewed their call Monday for Congress to approve aid for the lead-contaminated water crisis before its members break for the holidays.

      In a conference call, Weaver said lawmakers should push ahead for Flint aid in the Water Resources Development Act legislation funding for the city and its long-running water issues in a new budget bill.

      “Flint needs to stay a priority — we cannot let this go away,” she said. “This is November. We’re six months into our third year … that the residents of Flint have not been able to bathe or cool with their water. It makes no sense.”

    • There’s no water in Flint

      The most banal example philosophers use in discussing conceptual analysis is water; from Putnam’s twin earth papers to Kaplan’s two-dimensionalism, this is the classic example that is supposed to illustrate something valuable about the way that concepts work. I won’t delve too much into the traditional analyses, here, though a familiar observer may note this as a fairly strong rebuke of those analyses; I also won’t delve into whether or not water is a better or worse concept for such illustrations than its more problematic sibling, pain.

      Per Kaplan, we take it that any semantic analysis of water has to include two dimensions. The first dimension has to do with our ordinary exposure to water; water is the sort of thing that “plays the water role.” (To borrow Dave Chalmers’ locution.) That is, water is the stuff that functionally behaves like water, in that we drink it, and wash with it, etc. and that occupies the places that we expect water to occupy, e.g. lakes, rivers, bathtubs, etc. This is the ordinary dimension of water.

    • This Is Why the Flint Water Crisis Is Still Ongoing

      Of course you do. It’s the city in Michigan where drinking water was contaminated by lead seeping through pipes in 2014. City officials denied the leakage problem for months, causing a serious problem, NPR reported. High blood lead levels ensued as Flint residents drank the water, which was particularly harmful to children and pregnant women, causing learning disabilities in developing brains.

    • Flint family says Navy is retaliating for speaking out about water crisis

      Lee Anne Walters and her family were the first in Flint, Michigan, to discover that there were astronomically high levels of lead in the water and alert the Environmental Protection Agency. But the family now says her criticism and advocacy during the water crisis has been met with workplace retaliation and harassment against her husband, a sailor with the US Navy.

      “We’re still recovering from Flint. We never thought we’d be in this position again,” Walters said, explaining that she is afraid her husband is in danger of losing his job. “We are afraid now for our livelihoods.”

      Dennis Walters, a 17-year Navy veteran, has filed a complaint claiming mistreatment at work due to his wife’s role in the Flint water crisis.

      In a complaint filed last week, Dennis Walters claims that he has been repeatedly mistreated at the Sewells Point Police Precinct, which is part of Naval Station Norfolk, because his wife has been so outspoken. He claims that the pattern of harassment began in March after she testified in Congress.

      “Since I testified at the state Senate hearing, things got progressively worse,” Lee Anne Walters said. “They threatened to force him into a hardship discharge if he didn’t get me under control.”

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Wednesday
    • What Malware Is on Your Router?

      Mirai is exposing a serious security issue with the Internet of Things that absolutely must be quickly handled.

      Until a few days ago, I had been seriously considering replacing the 1999 model Apple Airport wireless router I’ve been using since it was gifted to me in 2007. It still works fine, but I have a philosophy that any hardware that’s more than old enough to drive probably needs replacing. I’ve been planning on taking the 35 mile drive to the nearest Best Buy outlet on Saturday to see what I could get that’s within my price range.

      After the news of this week, that trip is now on hold. For the time being I’ve decided to wait until I can be reasonably sure that any router I purchase won’t be hanging out a red light to attract the IoT exploit-of-the-week.

      It’s not just routers. I’m also seriously considering installing the low-tech sliding door devices that were handed out as swag at this year’s All Things Open to block the all-seeing-eye of the web cams on my laptops. And I’m becoming worried about the $10 Vonage VoIP modem that keeps my office phone up and running. Thank goodness I don’t have a need for a baby monitor and I don’t own a digital camera, other than what’s on my burner phone.

    • National Lottery ‘hack’ is the poster-girl of consumer security fails

      IN THE NEW age of hacking, you don’t even need to be a hacker. National Lottery management company Camelot has confirmed that up to 26,500 online accounts for their systems may have been compromised in an attempted hack, that required no hacking.

      It appears the players affected have been targetted from hacks to other sites, and the resulting availability of their credentials on the dark web. With so many people using the same password across multiple sites, it takes very little brute force to attack another site, which is what appears to have happened here.

    • Mozilla and Tor release urgent update for Firefox 0-day under active attack

      “The security flaw responsible for this urgent release is already actively exploited on Windows systems,” a Tor official wrote in an advisory published Wednesday afternoon. “Even though there is currently, to the best of our knowledge, no similar exploit for OS X or Linux users available, the underlying bug affects those platforms as well. Thus we strongly recommend that all users apply the update to their Tor Browser immediately.”

      The Tor browser is based on the open-source Firefox browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation. Shortly after this post went live, Mozilla security official Daniel Veditz published a blog post that said the vulnerability has also been fixed in a just-released version of Firefox for mainstream users. On early Wednesday, Veditz said, his team received a copy of the attack code that exploited a previously unknown vulnerability in Firefox.

    • Tor Browser 6.0.7 is released

      Tor Browser 6.0.7 is now available from the Tor Browser Project page and also from our distribution directory.

      This release features an important security update to Firefox and contains, in addition to that, an update to NoScript (2.9.5.2).

      The security flaw responsible for this urgent release is already actively exploited on Windows systems. Even though there is currently, to the best of our knowledge, no similar exploit for OS X or Linux users available the underlying bug affects those platforms as well. Thus we strongly recommend that all users apply the update to their Tor Browser immediately. A restart is required for it to take effect.

      Tor Browser users who had set their security slider to “High” are believed to have been safe from this vulnerability.

    • Firefox 0-day in the wild is being used to attack Tor users

      Firefox developer Mozilla and Tor have patched the underlying vulnerability, which is found not only in the Windows version of the browser, but also the versions of Mac OS X and Linux.

      There’s a zero-day exploit in the wild that’s being used to execute malicious code on the computers of people using Tor and possibly other users of the Firefox browser, officials of the anonymity service confirmed Tuesday.

      Word of the previously unknown Firefox vulnerability first surfaced in this post on the official Tor website. It included several hundred lines of JavaScript and an introduction that warned: “This is an [sic] JavaScript exploit actively used against TorBrowser NOW.” Tor cofounder Roger Dingledine quickly confirmed the previously unknown vulnerability and said engineers from Mozilla were in the process of developing a patch.

    • Mozilla Patches SVG Animation Remote Code Execution in Firefox and Thunderbird

      If you’ve been reading the news lately, you might have stumbled upon an article that talked about a 0-day vulnerability in the Mozilla Firefox web browser, which could be used to attack Tor users running Tor Browser on Windows systems.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • France wants urgent U.N. Security Council meeting on Aleppo

      France called on Tuesday for an immediate United Nations Security Council meeting to discuss the situation in Aleppo and said it would press for a U.N. resolution to punish the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

      Speaking ahead of a meeting in the Belarusian capital Minsk on the Ukrainian crisis, Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Syrian government forces and their allies would not resolve the Syrian conflict by carrying out one of the “biggest massacres on a civilian population since World War Two.”

    • Women who are captured by Isis and kept as slaves endure more than just sexual violence

      On August 3 2014, Isis attacked the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq, as part of their campaign to eradicate the Yazidi people and “purify” the region of non-Islamic influences.

      That same day, Prince Tahseen Said, leader of the Yazidi people, issued an “urgent distress call” to the international community to “to assume their humanitarian and nationalistic responsibilities” and help the 40,000 Yazidis who had fled their homes in the district.

      But it was already too late for Nadia Murad. Aged 19, she lived in the quiet farming village of Kocho, within the area around Sinjar ISIS had selected for “purification”. Before the Isis militants arrived, she lived with her large family of brothers and sisters and was studying at high school, harbouring dreams of becoming a history teacher and perhaps a make-up artist.

      But Nadia’s dreams were shattered as war ravaged Sinjar. Now she was simply an Isis sex slave.

    • Arrested German spy was a onetime gay porn actor — and a secret Islamist

      Two weeks ago, German intelligence agents noticed an unusual user in a chat room known as a digital hideout for Islamic militants. The man claimed to be one of them — and said he was a German spy. He was offering to help Islamists infiltrate his agency’s defenses to stage a strike.

      Agents lured him into a private chat, and he gave away so many details about the spy agency — and his own directives within it to thwart Islamists — that they quickly identified him, arresting the 51-year-old the next day. Only then would the extent of his double life become clear.

    • Reports: Islamic extremist mole found in German intel agency

      A 51-year-old German man working for the country’s domestic intelligence service is reportedly under investigation for allegedly disclosing internal information on Islamic extremist chat sites.

      Der Spiegel magazine reported Tuesday the man’s activities were detected by the intelligence agency, known as the BfV, about four weeks ago. He’s alleged to have been trying to pass on sensitive information while using a false name and also making Islamic extremist comments.

    • Law Enforcement In Ohio Apparently Unable To Sound Out Words To Motive In OSU Attack

      Islam demands the death or conversion of “the infidel,” which, no, isn’t to say that an individual Muslim necessarily practices this way.

      But the Quran is said to have been handed down from Allah to the Angel Gabriel, unlike the Bible, which was written by men. This means that the Quran is said to be unchangeable and unquestionable — including the violence-commanding verses, which “abrogate” (erase) the peaceful verses earlier in the book, from before Mohammed got power. This he did by not just starting a religion but a religion that gave his followers — basically early gang members — the go-ahead to attack and loot passing caravans and then even attack, murder, and rape people living in cities. (The men were slaughtered; the women were turned into sex slaves — as we see with the modern Yazidi women.)

      Here in America, we gave this man a home — this Somali refugee — and he repays us by trying to slaughter Americans.

    • Report: 240,000 Nigerians who fled Boko Haram still outside the country

      Nearly a quarter million Nigerians remain refugees in neighboring countries after fleeing Boko Haram, a government agency reported.

      Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency said in a report that it identified 239,834 refugees — including 20,804 in Chad, 80,709 in Cameroon and 138,321 in Niger. It added that 28,951 former refugees have returned to Nigeria.

      The report also cited the humanitarian work of NEMA and the United Nations in bringing relief aid to the displaced Nigerians, the Nigerian newspaper Vanguard reported Tuesday.

    • Was Brussels terror suspect radicalized in Sweden?

      A former Stockholm resident suspected of involvement in the recent terror attacks in Paris and Brussels also had links with an extreme Islamist network in the Scandinavian country, SVT’s Uppdrag granskning program reports.

      Mohamed Belkaid was killed during a police raid in Brussels on March 15th. Belgian investigators believe he played a role in the November 13th, 2015 massacres in Paris, as well as organizing the subsequent attack in Brussels, though he was killed before the bombings in the Belgian capital took place.

      The Algerian lived in Sweden between 2009 and 2013. In 2014, he travelled to Syria and signed up for Isis suicide missions, according to leaked records of people who signed up to the terrorist organization between 2013 and 2014 which Uppdrag granskning examined.

    • Suspect Identified in Ohio State Attack as Abdul Razak Ali Artan

      An Ohio State University student posted a rant shortly before he plowed a car into a campus crowd and stabbed people with a butcher knife in an ambush that ended when a police officer shot him dead, a law enforcement official said.

      Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, wrote on what appears to be his Facebook page that he had reached a “boiling point,” made a reference to “lone wolf attacks” and cited radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

      “America! Stop interfering with other countries, especially Muslim Ummah [community]. We are not weak. We are not weak, remember that,” the post said.

    • Trump Could Pump Tens of Billions Into the Army, Only to Make It Worse

      President-elect Donald Trump wants a much bigger and more powerful US military. More Navy ships. More Air Force fighter planes. And a much bigger Army with tens of thousands of additional soldiers.

      But Trump and his administration should be careful. Lavishing the Army with money might result in a bigger Army, but it won’t necessarily result in a better Army. America’s ground-combat branch has a reputation for dramatically squandering huge cash windfalls.

      Trump hasn’t detailed exactly how he’ll grow the military—or how much it might cost. But outside experts estimate Trump’s Pentagon could cost US taxpayers an additional $900 billion over 10 years compared to President Barack Obama’s current spending plan.

    • Trump is considering a secretary of state with a much worse scandal than Clinton’s emails

      Yesterday, former CIA Director David Petraeus journeyed to Trump Tower, reportedly making an audition for the post. The visit brought to mind the scandal Petraeus has become known for, and invited parallels to Clinton’s misuse of classified information. But Petraeus’ incident, as far as it can be compared, was deemed far more severe by investigators.

      In 2012, Petraeus resigned as CIA Director, and it was later revealed he had provided classified information to his biographer and mistress, Paula Broadwell. Petraeus eventually admitted to providing information from “black books,” which included covert officers’ identities, intelligence capabilities, and notes on meetings with President Obama.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Shrinking glaciers cause state-of-emergency drought in Bolivia

      The government of Bolivia, a landlocked country in the heart of South America, has been forced to declare a state of emergency as it faces its worst drought for at least 25 years.

      Much of the water supply to La Paz, the highest capital city in the world, and the neighbouring El Alto, Bolivia’s second largest city, comes from the glaciers in the surrounding Andean mountains.

      But the glaciers are now shrinking rapidly, illustrating how climate change is already affecting one of the poorest countries in Latin America.

      The three main dams that supply La Paz and El Alto are no longer fed by runoff from glaciers and have almost run dry. Water rationing has been introduced in La Paz, and the poor of El Alto – where many are not yet even connected to the mains water supply – have staged protests.

    • Neil Young, Daryl Hannah Pen Message to Standing Rock Protestors

      Young and Hannah’s Facebook statement comes after police fired rubber bullets and water cannons at protestors at the site of proposed Dakota Access Pipeline, an altercation that sent nearly 20 protestors to the hospital.

      “We are calling upon you, President Barack Obama, to step in and end the violence against the peaceful water protectors at Standing Rock immediately,” the duo wrote.

      “Your growing activism in support of freedom over repression, addressing climate change, swiftly replacing a destructive old industries with safe, regenerative energy, encouraging wholistic thinking in balance with the future of our planet; that activism will strengthen and shed continued light on us all. These worthy goals must be met for the all the world’s children and theirs after them. This is our moment for truth.”

    • NYTimes: Veterans to Serve as ‘Human Shields’ for Dakota Pipeline Protesters

      As many as 2,000 veterans planned to gather next week at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota to serve as “human shields” for protesters who have for months clashed with the police over the construction of an oil pipeline, organizers said.

  • Finance

    • GoPro Slashes 15% of Workforce, Shuts Down Entertainment Division [Ed: Microsoft engaged in blackmail and extortion with patents against them this year]

      GoPro announced that it will lay off more than 200 employees and freeze hiring, amounting to a reduction of about 15% of its workforce, and as part of the restructuring is shutting down its entertainment division. In addition, the company said president Tony Bates will be leaving the company.

    • Ericsson confirms close of production in Boras, Kumla [Ed: Well, the company is a patent troll now. Avoid it.]

      Says as previously announced, Ericsson will make significant reductions in its operations in Boras and Kumla

    • Ericsson denies systematic bribery allegations

      Following the broadcast of a radio documentary on Swedish Radio on November 23, telecommunications and networking equipment supplier Ericsson has issued a statement saying that is disagrees with claims made in the media that Ericsson has used bribes deliberately and systematically.

    • Trump is apparently still terrified about financial conflicts so now he’s tweeting about flag-burning and CNN

      Last weekend, the New York Times published an outstanding, meticulously reported investigative story about Trump’s financial conflicts of interest — the sorts of things that could lead to forced divestiture, impeachment, or worse, triggering a tweetstorm from the president-elect about an imaginary, millions-strong cohort of fraudulent voters.

      However, the story about Trump’s conflicts is still in the news — it refuses to die the way that Trump’s $25,000,000 fraud settlement did — so Trump is scraping the barrel for new things to distract the press with.

      One of those subjects is flag-burning, a form of political speech twice deemed constitutionally protected by the Supreme Court (Trump says it isn’t, that people should be imprisoned and stripped of citizenship for participating in). Trump will get to appoint between one and three Supreme Court justices, and he says he’ll opt for a “strict constitutionalist” meaning that his court will uphold the First Amendment protections for flag-burners, so this isn’t a story.

    • A disappointing TTIP human rights assessment

      ECORYS published a final draft human rights assessment of the trade agreement with the US (TTIP). The official name is a Trade Sustainability Impact Assessment (TSIA). I provided feedback on an earlier draft, see here. In my opinion, the final draft is disappointing. I will give two examples.

    • EU Executive to step up efforts to set up international investment dispute settlement system

      EU Executive to step up efforts to set up international investment dispute settlement system

      The European Commission wants to give a strong push within the EU and around the globe for the establishment of a multilateral investment dispute settlement system to replace the controversial ad-hoc arbitration known as the investor to state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism. The aim is to set it up as soon as possible even with a small number of countries but with a “dock-in” system for others to join at the later stage.

    • Hundreds Of Civil Society Groups Urge RCEP Negotiators To Reject Imported TPP Clauses

      As 16 Asia and Pacific nations prepare to meet in Indonesia next week for the next round of negotiations for a large regional trade agreement called RCEP, more than 300 civil society groups signed a letter urging negotiators to reject efforts to bring in texts from the separate Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

      The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiation includes the 10 ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) members plus China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.

    • Goldman shares hit highest level since financial crisis in post-election rally [Ed: Billionaires love having an oligarch who loves them too in the White House]

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • 5 Signs Donald Trump Is Going To Hate The Next Four Years

      Holy shit you guys, Trump is going to be president. That’s bonkers. Like, I know you’re probably sick of hearing this every week on Cracked, but … Donald Trump is going to be the next president. Our president-elect is a spray-tanned reality TV star celebrated by actual white supremacists and terrorists. That is hilarious on paper, but deeply unsettling in reality … like Muppet rabies, or a wizard masturbating.

      But at least there’s a small silver lining, and it’s that, while the American people certainly don’t want Donald Trump to be president … Donald Trump doesn’t want to be president either. At least, not when the full weight of the job finally hits him, and it becomes chillingly clear that he is in way over his head in every conceivable way. Imagine how he’s going to feel when he realizes …

      [...]

      I hate to break this to you, future-President Trump (we both know you read all my work), but even popular presidents get booed a whole lot. Obama was a brainy personified bear hug of a man, and even he got 30 death threats a day. Because no matter your charm, there is always going to be a large group of people getting triple-screwed by the system. And policies and party completely aside, Donald Trump has no charm. In fact, Donald J. Trump has all the social and sexual appeal of a maternity ward fire. He’ll be the first president with less charisma than the foam puppet version Gwar slaughters on stage.

    • Trump: The Choice We Face

      With the election of Donald Trump—a candidate who has lied his way into power, openly embraced racist discourse and violence, toyed with the idea of jailing his opponents, boasted of his assaults on women and his avoidance of taxes, and denigrated the traditional checks and balances of government—this question has confronted us as urgently as ever. After I wrote a piece about surviving autocracy, a great many people have asked me about one of my proposed rules: “Do not compromise.” What constitutes compromise? How is it possible to avoid it? Why should one not compromise?

      When I wrote about my great-grandfather in a book many years ago, I included the requisite discussion of Hannah Arendt’s opinion on the Jewish councils in Nazi-occupied Europe, which she called “undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story” of the Holocaust. In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem she asserted that without Jewish cooperation Germany would have been unable to round up and kill as many Jews as it did. I quoted equally from the most comprehensive response to Arendt’s characterization of the Judenrat, Isaiah Trunk’s book Judenrat, in which he described the councils as complicated and contradictory organizations, ones that had functioned differently in different ghettos, and ultimately concluded that they had no effect on the final scope of the catastrophe.

    • The No-BS Inside Guide to the Presidential Vote Recount

      There’s been so much complete nonsense since I first broke the news that the Green Party would file for a recount of the presidential vote, I am compelled to write a short guide to flush out the BS and get to just the facts, ma’am.

    • Jill Stein: Recounts are Necessary Because Electronic Voting Invites Tampering, Hacking, Human Error

      Former presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is continuing her efforts to force recounts in three states: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. But on Tuesday the effort faced a setback as a Wisconsin judge refused to order a statewide hand recount. Instead, the judge ruled that each of the state’s 72 county clerks can decide on their own how to carry out the recount. Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin by less than 30,000 votes out of 2.8 million cast. The result was even closer in Michigan, where Trump won by just 12,000 votes. Stein is expected to file paperwork in Michigan by today’s deadline to request a recount there. More than 130,000 people have donated more than $6.5 million Stein’s efforts—that’s nearly double how much Stein raised during her presidential effort. We speak to Jill Stein.

    • Trump taps ex-Goldman banker Mnuchin for Treasury post

      President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs banker who profited from the housing meltdown, as his Treasury secretary, according to an official briefed on the decision.

      Mnuchin’s career has been full of contradictions. He started as a Wall Street insider working for old-line firms before running a series of eclectic businesses — including his own hedge fund and a West Coast consumer bank. In recent years, he has been a Hollywood movie producer.

    • Electoral College voters form group to block Trump presidency

      Electoral College voters based in Colorado have formed a political non-profit to block Donald Trump from the presidency.

      According to The Denver Post, Michael Baca, a Democratic elector, filed paperwork Tuesday with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office to create the “Hamilton Electors,” a group able to fundraise unlimited donations from individuals, corporations and labor unions for political reasons.

      The goal of the group is to convince Republican and Democratic Electoral College voters to unify behind a Republican alternative for President or force an Electoral College deadlock.

      “I was opposed, actually, to raising money because I would prefer to just have this done organically,” Baca told The Denver Post. “But we’ve had people throwing money at us through our website.”

    • Forget Jill Stein’s recount! It’s yet another distraction from the deep structural problems that led to President Donald Trump

      One thing I’ve learned from my infrequent forays into legal gambling is that no matter how rational a person might imagine herself to be, it’s damn near impossible not to fall into superstitious behaviors when you belly up to a craps table.

      You have no control over the dice. You know you have no control over the dice. But in your desperation to win, you start crossing your fingers, kissing the dice or doing other little rituals meant to exert some kind of imaginary control over those tumbling bones, to deceive yourself into thinking that you can escape the heartless mathematical probabilities that say there’s a 1 in 6 chance your roll will be a 7.

    • Why I Support An Election Audit, Even Though It’s Unlikely To Change The Outcome

      Here at FiveThirtyEight, we’ve been skeptical of claims of irregularities in the presidential election. As we pointed out last week, there are no obvious statistical anomalies in the results in swing states based on the type of voting technology that each county employed. Instead, demographic differences, particularly the education levels of voters, explain the shifts in the vote between 2012 and 2016 fairly well.

      But that doesn’t mean I take some sort of philosophical stance against a recount or an audit of elections returns, or that other people at FiveThirtyEight do. Such efforts might make sense, with a couple of provisos.

      The first proviso: Let’s not call it a “recount,” because that’s not really what it is. It’s not as though merely counting the ballots a second or third time is likely to change the results enough to overturn the outcome in three states. An apparent win by a few dozen or a few hundred votes might be reversed by an ordinary recount. But Donald Trump’s margins, as of this writing, are roughly 11,000 votes in Michigan, 23,000 votes in Wisconsin and 68,000 votes in Pennsylvania. There’s no precedent for a recount overturning margins like those or anything close to them. Instead, the question is whether there was a massive, systematic effort to manipulate the results of the election.

    • Security experts join Jill Stein’s ‘election changing’ recount campaign

      More election security experts have joined Jill Stein’s campaign to review the presidential vote in battleground states won by Donald Trump, as she sues Wisconsin to secure a full recount by hand of all its 3m ballots.

      Half a dozen academics and other specialists on Monday submitted new testimony supporting a lawsuit from Stein against Wisconsin authorities, in which she asked a court to prevent county officials from carrying out their recounts by machine.

    • Why is Jill Stein pushing for recounts, again?

      Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein of Lexington has agreed to pay millions for Wisconsin officials to begin recounting ballots, filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania, and indicated she will file for a recount in Michigan (the deadline is Wednesday).

      But why? There’s understandably a lot of confusion over Stein’s intentions for these costly legal proceedings, and both Democrats and Republicans are rolling their eyes at her efforts, which they view as a waste of time.

    • Trump’s team of gazillionaires

      Beyond Trump himself, who claims a net worth of more than $10 billion, the president-elect has tapped businesswoman Betsy DeVos, whose family is worth $5.1 billion, and is said to be considering oil mogul Harold Hamm ($15.3 billion), investor Wilbur Ross ($2.9 billion), private equity investor Mitt Romney ($250 million at last count), hedge fund magnate Steven Mnuchin (at least $46 million) and super-lawyer Rudy Giuliani (estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars) to round out his administration. And Trump’s likely choice for deputy commerce secretary, Todd Ricketts, comes from the billionaire family that owns the Chicago Cubs.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Jeremy Hunt is being accused of censorship over his plan to ban teen sexting

      British health secretary Jeremy Hunt has called for social media companies and messaging apps to ban teen sexting — prompting fury and ridicule from activists and internet users.

      “I just ask myself the simple question as to why it is that you can’t prevent the texting of sexually explicit images by people under the age of 18,” Hunt told a Commons health committee. “Because there is technology that can identify sexually explicit pictures and prevent it being transmitted.”

    • No Jeremy Hunt, you can’t use tech to ban sexting for the under-18s

      Cyberbullying, sexting and all other aspects of online life that cause teenagers misery may seem pretty complex and intractable problems. But not for Jeremy Hunt. Somehow, when not dealing with despairing junior doctors, he’s found the time to devise a simple solution to end them all.

      In case you’ve missed it, the health secretary’s big idea to tackle the – very real – problems of sexting and cyberbullying is to call on social media and tech companies to ban them.

    • Mossberg: Facebook can and should wipe out fake news [Ed: Well, who defines “fake”? Another censorship pretext. Like “hate”. Satire banned too?

      Totally false news isn’t a new thing in the United States. In our fourth presidential election, in 1800, two of our most brilliant founders — John Adams and Thomas Jefferson — faced off in a vicious campaign that involved newspaper editors on the take, and numerous false, often personal attacks. Some historians even claim that partisans for Adams spread the rumor that Jefferson was dead. (He won anyway.)

      But they didn’t have Facebook to present, amplify, and repeat those falsehoods instantly to millions of people. And that’s why the fake news problem is so serious, even outside the context of a presidential election.

    • WeChat Censoring User Messages Even Outside China, Study Says

      Users of the WeChat instant-messaging platform can have their content censored even if they leave China or switch to an overseas phone number, according to a research group.

      WeChat accounts registered with a mainland China-based phone number have keywords filtered out or messages blocked anywhere in the world as long they keep the same user name, according to a study by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. Accounts created abroad, such as through carriers in Hong Kong or the U.S., don’t face the same restrictions, it said.

      “The idea that you can’t escape a censorship system imposed on you at the time of registration is a troubling one,” said Jason Q. Ng, a research fellow at the Citizen Lab.

    • Universities Strive for Diversity in Everything but Opinion

      My seminar students at McGill University told me that you can’t say anything at this university without being accused of being sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, fascist, or racist, and then being threatened with punitive measures. They felt silenced by the oppressive atmosphere of political correctness. Nothing significant – sex, religion, relationships, public policy, race, immigration, or multiculturalism – could be discussed. Only the acceptable opinions could be expressed without nasty repercussions.

      It is generally held today in the West, if not elsewhere, that diversity is a good thing. Diversity in origin, ethnicity, gender, race, and sexual preference is now regarded as not only desirable, but mandatory. Universities strive to increase their physical diversity. The currently accepted theory in Western academia is that physical diversity reflects diversity of experience and thus an enriching diversity of viewpoint.

      McGill’s committee on diversity proposed that we no longer define excellence as intellectual achievement, but as diversity. Their view is that a university populated by folks of different colours or having different sexual preferences is by virtue of this diversity “excellent.”

    • Russia Turns to China for Help Building Its Own “Great Firewall” of Censorship

      Russia wants to step up its ability to censor the Internet, and it’s turning to China for help.

      China’s “Great Firewall” is the envy of the Putin regime, which has long feared that the rise of online political activism could loosen its grip on power. The government has spent years building a system for filtering the country’s Internet—but it is incomplete, and many U.S.-based Internet companies have thumbed their nose at the Kremlin’s rules.

      That’s now changing. In June, the Russian government passed a series of measures known as Yarovaya’s laws that require local telecom companies to store all users’ data for six months, and hang on to metadata for three years. And if the authorities ask, companies must provide keys to unlock encrypted communications. Human rights watchdog groups were aghast at the measure. Edward Snowden, who is holed up in Russia, called the package the “Big Brother law.”

    • Archive.org Moving To Canada Over Trump Censorship Fears

      The data isn’t in yet on whether Americans are packing for Canada in droves following Donald Trump’s electoral win, but a digital copy of the history of the Internet is going to make the move north.

      Archive.org, a digital library that caches and indexes older versions of websites for the historical record, says it’s creating a backup copy of its collection that it will keep on servers in Canada.

      “We are building the Internet Archive of Canada because, to quote our friends at LOCKSS, ‘lots of copies keep stuff safe’,” Archive.org said in a blog post published Tuesday.

    • Entire internet to be backed up in Canada over fears of Trump censorship
    • The Internet Archive is building a Canadian copy to protect itself from Trump
    • The Entire Internet Will Be Archived In Canada to Protect It From Trump

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • NSA and FBI Believe They Will Gain More Surveillance Power Under Trump

      Expanded surveillance power will likely be given to the FBI, NSA and CIA under President-elect Donald Trump. The Republican-controlled Congress will help this happen and privacy advocates have already started creating an opposition.

    • FBI, NSA, CIA Poised to Gain increased Surveillance Powers Under Trump

      The FBI, National Security Agency and CIA are likely to gain expanded surveillance powers under President-elect Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress, a prospect that has privacy advocates and some lawmakers trying to mobilize opposition.

      Trump’s first two choices to head law enforcement and intelligence agencies — Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general and Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo for director of the Central Intelligence Agency — are leading advocates for domestic government spying at levels not seen since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

    • The ‘snooper’s charter’ is a threat to academic freedom

      The UK Investigatory Powers Bill has passed into law. This bill legalises a variety of tools for intercepting and hacking by security services and was waved through without complaint by both houses. Academics should be concerned – and engage in some serious discussion about the (mis-)use of technological advances.

    • IRS Casts Unusually Wide Net for Bitcoin User Data

      A request by the IRS for user data from a bitcoin exchange highlights simmering tensions between compliance and customer privacy for financial institutions and will test how those demands are balanced in the young field of cryptocurrency.

      Under a procedure called a John Doe summons, the IRS this month asked a federal court in California to approve its request for Coinbase to turn over records on any user who had made digital currency transactions between 2013 and 2015.

      At issue is the indiscriminate nature of the request. Coinbase has accumulated nearly 5 million users, according to its website – which could mean the company might be forced to turn over financial records on millions of U.S. taxpayers.

    • ‘Snooper’s charter’ bill becomes law, extending UK state surveillance

      The “snooper’s charter” bill extending the reach of state surveillance in Britain was given royal assent and became law on Tuesday as signatures on a petition calling for it to be repealed passed the 130,000 mark.

      The home secretary, Amber Rudd, hailed the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 as “world-leading legislation” that provided “unprecedented transparency and substantial privacy protection”.

      But privacy campaigners claimed that it would provide an international standard to authoritarian regimes around the world to justify their own intrusive surveillance powers.

    • FBI to gain expanded hacking powers as Senate effort to block fails

      A last-ditch effort in the Senate to block or delay rule changes that would expand the U.S. government’s hacking powers failed Wednesday, despite concerns the changes would jeopardize the privacy rights of innocent Americans and risk possible abuse by the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.

      Democratic Senator Ron Wyden attempted three times to delay the changes, which will take effect on Thursday and allow U.S. judges will be able to issue search warrants that give the FBI the authority to remotely access computers in any jurisdiction, potentially even overseas. His efforts were blocked by Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican.

      The changes will allow judges to issue warrants in cases when a suspect uses anonymizing technology to conceal the location of his or her computer or for an investigation into a network of hacked or infected computers, such as a botnet.

    • U.S. border agents stopped journalist from entry and took his phones

      Award-winning Canadian photojournalist Ed Ou has had plenty of scary border experiences while reporting from the Middle East for the past decade. But his most disturbing encounter was with U.S. Customs and Border Protection last month, he said.

      On Oct. 1, customs agents detained Ou for more than six hours and briefly confiscated his mobile phones and other reporting materials before denying him entry to the United States, according to Ou. He was on his way to cover the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline on behalf of the Canadian Broadcast Corporation.

      If Ou had already been inside the U.S. border, law enforcement officers would have needed a warrant to search his smartphones to comply with a 2014 Supreme Court ruling. But the journalist learned the hard way that the same rules don’t apply at the border, where the government claims the right to search electronic devices without a warrant or any suspicion of wrongdoing.

    • Facebook has cut off Prisma’s Live Video access

      Style transfer startup Prisma added support to its iOS app for livestreaming its art filter effects in real-time via Facebook Live earlier this month — but almost immediately the startup’s access to the Live API was cut off by the social media platform giant.

    • Facebook Cuts Off Competitor Prisma’s API Access

      Photo-filter app Prisma, the popular program which makes pictures and video look like painterly art, had its access to Facebook’s Live Video API revoked this month, TechCrunch reports.

      According to Prisma, Facebook justified choking off Prisma’s access by stating, “Your app streams video from a mobile device camera, which can already be done through the Facebook app. The Live Video API is meant to let people publish live video content from other sources such as professional cameras, multi-camera setups, games or screencasts.”

    • China Turns Big Data into Big Brother

      That’s a reimagining of the introduction to George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. But it’s also set to become a reality for citizens of China if the government’s dream of an authoritarian big-data scheme comes to fruition.

      The Wall Street Journal reports that the Chinese government is now testing systems that will be used to create digital records of citizens’ social and financial behavior. In turn, these will be used to create a so-called social credit score, which will determine whether individuals have access to services, from travel and education to loans and insurance cover. Some citizens—such as lawyers and journalists—will be more closely monitored.

      Planning documents apparently describe the system as being created to “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.” The Journal claims that the system will at first log “infractions such as fare cheating, jaywalking and violating family-planning rules” but will be expanded in the future—potentially even to Internet activity.

    • Intelligence experts urge Obama to end Edward Snowden’s ‘untenable exile’

      Fifteen former staff members of the Church committee, the 1970s congressional investigation into illegal activity by the CIA and other intelligence agencies, have written jointly to Obama calling on him to end Snowden’s “untenable exile in Russia, which benefits nobody”. Over eight pages of tightly worded argument, they remind the president of the positive debate that Snowden’s disclosures sparked – prompting one of the few examples of truly bipartisan legislative change in recent years.

      They also remind Obama of the long record of leniency that has been shown by his own and previous administrations towards those who have broken secrecy laws. They even recall how their own Church committee revealed that six US presidents, from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon, were guilty of abusing secret powers.

    • Uber wants more user data

      The most recent update to Uber’s ride-hailing app allows the platform to track user location data even while the app isn’t in use, according to TechCrunch.

      Earlier versions of the app only tracked user data while the app was running, however, the update requests users’ permission to keep location sharing always on. Uber plans to use the data gained to improve the user experience, like by offering more accurate pick-up times and locations.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • How Stable Are Democracies? ‘Warning Signs Are Flashing Red’

      Yascha Mounk is used to being the most pessimistic person in the room. Mr. Mounk, a lecturer in government at Harvard, has spent the past few years challenging one of the bedrock assumptions of Western politics: that once a country becomes a liberal democracy, it will stay that way.

      His research suggests something quite different: that liberal democracies around the world may be at serious risk of decline.

      Mr. Mounk’s interest in the topic began rather unusually. In 2014, he published a book, “Stranger in My Own Country.” It started as a memoir of his experiences growing up as a Jew in Germany, but became a broader investigation of how contemporary European nations were struggling to construct new, multicultural national identities.

      He concluded that the effort was not going very well. A populist backlash was rising. But was that just a new kind of politics, or a symptom of something deeper?

    • Opinion: National Anthem in cinema halls may go against the very idea of why Supreme Court made it compulsory

      The Supreme Court on Wednesday made playing the national anthem in cinema theatres before the commencement of a film mandatory. The judgement, delivered by a bench led by Justice Dipak Misra underlined that the measure would ‘instil a sense of committed patriotism and nationalism’ in citizens. The root of the new compulsion is instilling a sense of national identity, integrity and constitutional patriotism.

      The top court has, however, made it very clear that the national anthem could not be commercially exploited and that no entity could either dramatise it or use it in abridged form. The national anthem is to be played along with the image of the tricolour and people must stand up in respect. A clarification was inserted here providing an exception for the disabled.

    • Play national anthem in all cinemas before film screening: Supreme Court

      “People now-a-days don’t know how to sing national anthem and people must be taught. We must respect national anthem,” the top court said.

    • UN Panel: WikiLeaks’ Assange a Victim of Arbitrary Detention

      A U.N. panel is sticking by its opinion that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a victim of arbitrary detention, rejecting a request by Britain to review the case.

      The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Britain had not presented enough new information to merit a new examination. The panel made the decision at a meeting last week, the U.N. human rights office said Wednesday.

      In February, the panel found that Britain and Sweden had “arbitrarily detained” Assange, saying he should be freed and entitled to compensation.

    • Julian Assange pleads to be ‘set free’ after UN panel ruling

      A statement on behalf of WikiLeaks said the original decision now stands and the UK and Sweden are once again required to “immediately put an end to Mr Assange’s arbitrary detention and afford him monetary compensation”.

      It continued: “Earlier this year the United Nations concluded the 16 month long case to which the UK was a party.

      “The UK lost, appealed, and today – lost again. The UN instructed the UK and Sweden to take immediate steps to ensure Mr Assange’s liberty, protection, and enjoyment of fundamental human rights.

      “No steps have been taken, jeopardising Mr Assange’s life, health and physical integrity, and undermining the UN system of human rights protection.

    • UN panel rebuffs Britain over Assange ruling

      Swedish prosecutors dropped a sexual assault probe into Assange last year after the five-year statute of limitations expired. But they still want to question him about the 2010 rape allegation, which carries a 10-year statute of limitations.

      Assange insists the sexual encounters in question were consensual.

    • Julian Assange: Ecuador says no ‘quick way out’ of embassy impasse

      The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has no “quick way out” of the Ecuadorean embassy in London where he took refuge more than four years ago, Ecuador’s prosecutor has said.

      An Ecuadorean state attorney accompanied by a Swedish prosecutor questioned Assange at the embassy on 14 November over allegations that he committed rape in Sweden in 2010.

      Ecuador’s prosecutor, Galo Chiriboga, said Ecuadorean officials would send the official transcript of Assange’s evidence to Swedish authorities “in mid-December”.

      Assange, who is Australian, has said he fears deportation to Sweden and the United States, where he could be charged for the publication of hundreds of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables.

    • Watergate-Era Church Committee Staffers Urge Leniency for Snowden

      Fifteen staff members who worked on a well-known bipartisan intelligence watchdog committee wrote to President Barack Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Monday requesting the administration negotiate a plea agreement with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

      “There is no question that Edward Snowden’s disclosures led to public awareness which stimulated reform,” wrote the staffers who served on the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operation with Respect to Intelligence Activities — called the Church Committee, after its chairman, Idaho Sen. Frank Church.

    • Michigan considered a ‘border zone,’ citizens subject to search, detention, ACLU says

      The ACLU says immigration officials conduct warrantless vehicle searches and detentions in Michigan because the state, surrounded by the Great Lakes, is considered a border zone.

      Federal law gives U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, “extraordinary powers” to search vehicles and detain people who are within a “reasonable distance” of the border, the American Civil Liberties Union said.

      CBP has set the “reasonable distance” at 100 miles, which makes the state the “functional equivalent” of an international border, the ACLU said.

      Customs and Border Protection and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

    • Burka ban backed by Dutch MPs for public places

      Dutch MPs have backed a ban on the Islamic full veil in some public places such as schools and hospitals, and on public transport.

      The niqab face veil and the burka, which covers the eyes, are included in the ban along with other face coverings such as ski-masks and helmets.

      The Dutch Senate must approve the bill, which has government backing, for it to become law.

      Supporters of the ban say people should be identifiable in public places.

      Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s ruling Liberal-Labour coalition described the bill as “religious-neutral”.

    • Labor abuses rife on Indonesia’s palm oil plantations – Amnesty

      Children as young as eight are working at plantations that supply palm oil to some of the world’s biggest brands, according to a new report by Amnesty International.

      Amnesty’s investigation into plantations in Indonesia also found workers performing dangerous tasks without adequate protection. Others were paid less than the legal minimum wage or exposed to dangerous chemicals.

      The rights advocacy group said it interviewed 120 workers, including supervisors, on Indonesian plantations that supply or are owned by Singapore-based Wilmar (WLMIF), the world’s largest palm oil producer.

    • Malaysia PM Najib Razak expresses support for strict Islamic laws to empower Sharia courts

      Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is facing a backlash over his alleged involvement in a multi-billion dollar scandal, has expressed his support for strict Islamic laws in the country in a bid to woo Malay Muslims.

      Malaysians are reported to be frustrated over corruption and the country’s economy ahead of next year’s election. Najib has fended off calls to quit over the last 18 months over the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal that drew widespread anger of Malaysians, including members of the ruling United Malay National Organisation (UMNO).

      Razak called on ethnic Malay Muslims to extend their support to a plan by the rival pan-Malaysian Islamic Party and push for the adoption of an Islamic penal code, called hudud. It is believed to be an Islamic concept that sets out punishment under Sharia law and includes amputations and public stoning.

      “We want to develop Islam,” Najib was quoted as saying by Reuters on Tuesday (29 November). “Non-Muslims must understand that this is not about hudud but about empowering the Sharia courts.”

    • ‘Bogus charges’: Standing Rock activists say they face campaign of legal bullying

      In what appears to be a concerted effort to deter people from joining the Standing Rock protests, North Dakota officials are pursuing serious criminal charges and threatening to levy hefty fines against Native American activists.

      Despite state and federal evacuation orders, a government roadblock, escalating police violence and aggressive prosecutions that attorneys say lack basic evidence, thousands of veterans are preparing to travel to Cannon Ball this weekend to support the growing movement to stop the Dakota Access pipeline.

      Since the demonstrations against the $3.7bn oil project began in April, law enforcement have made more than 500 arrests, with state prosecutors filing serious charges, including rioting and conspiracy, against many of them.

    • German police betrayed by justice system – union chief on ‘Sharia patrol’ ruling

      The head of a major German police union has lashed out at the country’s “failed” justice system, following a number of controversial court rulings. The most recent case involved a ‘Sharia police’ group operating in a suburban town, which was deemed legal.

      “The full force of the law these days often means we determine the identities of offenders, but the judges just let them go free,” Rainer Wendt, head of the German Police Union (DPolG), told the Passauer Neue Presse (PNP) newspaper on Wednesday.

      The official spoke about the recent incident involving the German court system, when a group of Islamists was cleared of charges for forming a ‘Sharia police force,’ a volunteer initiative to patrol the streets and uphold peace in the western German town of Wuppertal in 2014.

      The town is one of Germany’s most popular destinations for Salafists, who follow a very conservative interpretation of Islam and reject any form of democracy.

    • How Cops Use Civil Forfeiture to Keep The Public In The Dark About Surveillance

      Police across Canada are using civil forfeiture laws to seize everything from houses and cars to small amounts of cash from people who sometimes haven’t been convicted of a crime. Some of this money is paying for cutting-edge surveillance equipment, a practice that critics say keeps the public in the dark about police capabilities.

      “We are very suspect about what is being purchased [with forfeiture funds],” said Micheal Vonn, policy director for the BC Civil Liberties Association, in an interview. “We have very little public insight into the kinds of equipment that police are using.”

    • Students get 100 lashes for sex outside marriage in Indonesia

      Nineteen-year-old Indonesian students who received 100 lashes were among a group of people flogged in the conservative province of Aceh, which adheres to Sharia law.

      A total of five people, including two women and three men, were caned outside a mosque in the provincial capital Banda Aceh on Monday, according to AFP.

      The 34-year-old woman was flogged with a rattan cane at least seven times for being in close proximity to a man. The 32-year-old male who was with her was also flogged seven times.

      “It hurts so bad,” the woman said, as cited by AFP, raising her arms into the air.

      Among the others who were flogged on Monday were two university students, both 19, who confessed to having sex outside marriage. They received 100 lashes.

      A man found guilty of sex outside marriage was also flogged at least 22 times by the person delivering the punishment, who was dressed in long robes and a hood. His partner, who is two-months pregnant, is still waiting for her fate to be decided.

      In such situations, officials in the province usually order the flogging of women after they give birth.

    • The Government Is Using a No Fly Zone to Suppress Journalism At Standing Rock

      In recent weeks, videos shot by Native American drone pilots have shown percussion grenades launched from an armored vehicle deep into a crowd of people protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. They have shown people being knocked backward with a constant barrage of water being shot from fire hoses. They’ve shown a line of body armor-clad cops aiming guns at unarmed water protectors holding their hands high above their heads. Another video, shot at night, shows that construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline continues under the cover of darkness.

      In recent weeks, Dakota Access Pipeline protesters have been tear gassed, sprayed with water cannons in freezing temperatures, and shot with rubber bullets by a police force using military-style vehicles and violent riot suppression tactics. Every suppression apparatus the government has at its disposal has been used—even the National Guard has been called in.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Dropbox CEO urges Donald Trump to protect net neutrality

      DROPBOX CEO Drew Houston has said that he hopes president-elect Donald Trump will respect the rights of all workers in the country and won’t ditch net neutrality legislation, but admitted nothing is clear for now.

      When quizzed on Trump by INQ at a roundtable event in London, Houston said that it is too soon to tell if Trump will adopt the positions he used to gain election.

      “It’s pretty wild times […] I think a lot of us are sort of waiting to see what actually happens. I mean there’s a lot of speculation about what from a policy standpoint is going to change, or not change,” he said.

    • Trump Appoints Third Net Neutrality Critic to FCC Advisory Team

      President-elect Trump today added yet another fierce critic of net neutrality to his FCC transition team. The incoming President chose Roslyn Layton, a visiting fellow at the broadband-industry-funded American Enterprise Institute, to help select the new FCC boss and guide the Trump administration on telecom policy. Layton joins Jeffrey Eisenach, a former Verizon consultant and vocal net neutrality critic, and Mark Jamison, a former Sprint lobbyist that has also fought tooth and nail against net neutrality; recently going so far as to argue he doesn’t think telecom monopolies exist.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Report: IP, Access To Science A Troubled Relationship

      A new academic report looks into the relationship between intellectual property and access to science and culture, in the wake of work on the issue by former United Nations Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Farida Shaheed. Contributors to the report aimed at reflecting on how the intellectual property system can foster economic growth while encouraging non-economic values and objectives of human development.

    • New Draft Articles For The Protection Of Traditional Knowledge On Table At WIPO

      New draft articles published this morning at the World Intellectual Property Organization committee on traditional knowledge show signs of progress in terms of reducing options. Meanwhile, the United States introduced a proposal for a discussion of what should be protectable and what is not intended to be protected. Delegates have to deliver their take on both documents this afternoon.

    • Copyrights

      • Antigua & Barbuda Threatens to Punish U.S. With Piracy Free-For-All

        A long-running dispute between Antigua and Barbuda and the United States over gambling services has reached a critical point. In a letter to the WTO, the Caribbean nation warns that unless the US either stops blocking or compensates its gambling services, it will lift protection of US intellectual property rights in 2017.

      • UK ISPs to Start Sending ‘Piracy Alerts’ Soon

        Early 2017 will see the long-awaited start of a broad UK anti-piracy effort. With help from copyright holders, ISPs will send email notifications to subscribers whose connections are allegedly used to pirate content. These “alerts” will educate copyright infringers about legal alternatives in the hope of decreasing piracy rates over time.

      • Court Awards Damages Following Bogus DMCA Takedowns

        Topdawg Entertainment Inc., Interscope Records and Universal Music Group must pay damages after issuing false DMCA notices which damaged an artist’s reputation. Montreal hip hop artist Jonathan Emile teamed up with Kendrick Lamar on a track, but the labels wrongfully took it down from YouTube, iTunes and Soundcloud.

11.30.16

Links 30/11/2016: Git 2.11, GOG Surprise Tomorrow

Posted in News Roundup at 8:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • GNU/Linux As An Alternative To Windows For A Small Business

      In the following article, I present a real-world case scenario as an example for setting up a small business with Linux as a desktop solution. It is presented as a single illustration of a unique case, and Linux/open source deployments will of course vary based on the number of users, business need and security requirements.

      A friend recently launched her own small startup, and because she’s funding it out of her own pocket, she came to me in the early stages with questions about Windows licensing, applications, support, etc. Her primary concern was the overhead of seeding her small office with Windows and all the required application licenses needed to run a business.

      Because of the nature of her startup, I suggested Linux as the standard desktop for her office. She was unsure of this choice, and some of her questions, all justified, included “I’ve heard Linux isn’t user-friendly”, and “are there viable business applications available for Linux?”

    • 4 alternatives to the Chrome browser on Chrome OS

      Now that even more Chromebooks support Android apps, Jack Wallen takes a look at the available browsers to see how they stack up against for the default Chrome browser.

  • Server

    • Outlook.com is still not functioning properly for some Microsoft punters

      Microsoft is still working to resolve “difficulties” faced by its Outlook customers, despite months of complaints about the disappearance of sent emails and 550 Errors.

      A growing number of complaints threads have been posted to Microsoft’s questions page regarding Outlook after recent upgrades to the service. They both precede and follow last week’s outage, which Redmond’s PRs failed to explain to us.

    • OpenStack Becomes a Standard Building Block for NFV

      OpenStack is becoming the de facto standard for infrastructure orchestration for NFV deployment by leading Communications Service Providers (CSPs). CSPs are trading off the challenges of OpenStack implementations (e.g. immature technology and evolving standards) for the benefits of open source and open architectures (i.e. reduced vendor lock-in). Lack of standards for NFV management and orchestration (MANO) remains a leading impediment.

    • The Docker monitoring problem

      You have probably heard of Docker—it is a young container technology with a ton of momentum. But if you haven’t, you can think of containers as easily—configured, lightweight VMs that start up fast, often in under one second. Containers are ideal for microservice architectures and for environments that scale rapidly or release often.

      Docker is becoming such an important technology that it is likely that your organization will begin working with Docker soon, if it has not already. When we explored real usage data, we found an explosion of Docker usage in production: it has grown 5x in the last 12 months.

      Containers address several important operational problems; that is why Docker is taking the infrastructure world by storm.

      But there is a problem: containers come and go so frequently, and change so rapidly, that they can be an order of magnitude more difficult to monitor and understand than physical or virtual hosts. This article describes the Docker monitoring problem—and solution—in detail.

      We hope that reading this article will help you fall in love with monitoring containers, despite the challenges. In our experience, if you monitor your infrastructure in a way that works for containers—whether or not you use them—you will have great visibility into your infrastructure.

    • Keynote: New Requirements for Application Delivery in a Micro-services Application World
    • Kontena Introduces Production-Ready, Open Source Container and Microservices Platform

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Intel’s Clear Linux Now Shipping X.Org Server 1.19, Kernel 4.8.11 & Mesa 13.0.1

        Clear Linux’s Eva P. Hutanu informs the community of the Linux-based operating system designed for Intel Architecture and built for various cloud use cases about the latest updates that landed for the OS.

        But first, the team is proud to announce that Clear Linux is now an auto-updating operating system, which means that users will automatically receive updates when they are pushed into the repositories. Of course, you can opt out of this feature if you don’t want these updates to be automatically installed on your computer (see the command below).

      • Zentyal announces Zentyal Server 5.0, major new Linux Small Business Server release

        Zentyal today announced Zentyal Server 5.0, a major new release of the Zentyal Linux Small Business Server. Amid the generalized push for cloud, small and medium business continue requiring on-site server solutions and with this release Zentyal responds to their needs, offering an easy to use all-in-one Linux server with native compatibility with Microsoft Active Directory®.

        Zentyal Server 5.0 is based on Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) and comes with the latest versions of all the integrated software. The single most important improvement Zentyal Server 5.0 introduces is the integration of the latest Samba version (Samba 4.5.1) directly from upstream. Due to the fast development of the Samba project, from this version onwards Zentyal will integrate the latest stable Samba packages available upstream. This allows quicker introduction of new Samba features, fixes and updates to Zentyal.

      • Zentyal Server 5.0 Out Now Based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Adds New HTTP Proxy Module

        On November 29, 2016, the Zentyal development team proudly announced the release and immediate availability for download of the Zentyal Server 5.0 Linux-based server-oriented operating system with Active Directory interoperability.

        Based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), Zentyal Server 5.0 comes with the latest Open Source software and GNU/Linux technologies, including an untouched Samba 4.5.1 implementation from upstream, which puts a layer of performance to the AD (Active Directory) interoperability of the small business server.

      • Peppermint 7 Respin Released

        Team Peppermint are pleased to announce the release of the Peppermint 7 Respin, in both 32bit and 64bit editions.

      • Peppermint 7 Linux Respin ISO Image Released with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Goodies, More

        Peppermint OS developer Mark Greaves announced today, November 29, 2016, the release and immediate availability of the first ISO respin image of the Peppermint 7 Linux operating system.

        Sporting all the latest updates from the upstream repositories of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, the Peppermint-7-20161129 image is now powered by the 4.4.0-47 kernel with all the recent security patches. The new ISO also includes the HPLIP (HP Linux Imaging and Printing) software for out-of-the-box support for HP printers and scanners.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • openSUSE project presentation at school, Nov 24th, 2016

        On November 16th there was the release of openSUSE Leap 42.2. On November 24th, I had the opportunity to present openSUSE Project at school.

        I was asked to make an introduction to FLOSS in general and more specific about openSUSE Project. The school was for middle aged people, for persons who quited school to work and conftibute financially to their families. There were 3 classes that they taught something computer related. It was a great opportunity for them to learn what FLOSS is and what makes openSUSE great Linux distro.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • systemd free Linux distro Devuan releases second beta

          The self-proclaimed “Veteran Unix Admins” forking Debian in the name of init freedom have released Beta 2 of their “Devuan” Linux distribution.

          Devuan came about after some users felt it had become too desktop-friendly. The change the greybeards objected to most was the decision to replace sysvinit init with systemd, a move felt to betray core Unix principles of user choice and keeping bloat to a bare minimum.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Linux-friendly modules adopt hexa- and octa-core Rockchip SoCs

      Theobroma unveiled a Qseven module built around a hexa-core, Cortex-A72/-A53 Rockchip RK3399 SoC, plus a µQseven version based on an octa-core -A53 RK3368.

      Austrian Qseven specialists Theobroma Systems announced two computer-on-modules that build on Rockchip SoCs with Linux and Android support. The Qseven-based “RK3399-Q7” features the new Rockchip RK3399, with dual Cortex-A72 cores at up to 2.0GHz and a quad-core bank of Cortex-A53 cores at up to 1.42GHz. It’s billed as the first Qseven module with a Cortex-A72. This appears to be true, although several COMs, such as the eInfochips Eragon 820, have tapped Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820, which has four “Kyro” cores that roughly mimic the Cortex-A72.

    • IoT gateway runs Linux on i.MX6UL, offers Thread and ZigBee

      NXP’s Volansys-built, highly secure “Modular IoT Gateway” reference design runs Linux on an i.MX6 UL SoC, and offers Thread, ZigBee, WiFi, and NFC.

      NXP has released a Modular IoT Gateway reference design for large-node, 250+ wireless IoT networks. The gateway provides pre-integrated, tested, and RF-certified 802.15.4 mesh networking modules connected via MikroBus connectors, including Thread and ZigBee modules, and soon Bluetooth LE. Other options include an NFC chip for one-tap, no-power commissioning of IoT leaf nodes. The system also offers multiple layers of security.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • 7 tech advent calendars for the holiday season

    Technical advent calendars work in a similar way: Each day a new treat is revealed; sometimes it’s an article explaining a new tip or technique, whereas other times the treat is an exercise to help you hone your skills. Tech advent calendars, although secular, run at the same time in the holiday season. This means they’ll be kicking off on December first, giving the opportunity to learn all month long.

  • Events

    • #LinuXatUNI

      This last Saturday 26th was celebrated the #LinuXatUNI event at National University of Engineering. There were more than 250 people registered, but we have only 84 attended, though. I was surprised about this! It might be the upcoming final exams at universities in Lima or the early time on weekend.

    • Keynote: Breaking Barriers: Creatively and Courageously

  • CMS

    • HP5: A CMS plugin for creating HTML5 interactive content

      Many educators want to create interactive content for their classroom or online course. If you’re not a HTML5 programmer like most of us, but you have heard HTML5 can simplify your work and provide a great, standard web experience for your students, here’s how to get started.

      H5P is a free and open source tool that helps you create HTML5 content in the browser of your choice and share it across all operating systems and browsers. To explain more about the tool, I talked to Svein-Tore Griff With, the lead developer at Joubel.com, who together with his team, created H5P.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Public Services/Government

    • UK.gov was warned of smart meter debacle by Cabinet Office in 2012

      The government was warned of the risks surrounding its controversial smart meter programme four years ago, according to a leaked internal report seen by The Register, but appears to have largely ignored those concerns.

      A review of the programme from March 2012 highlights the vulnerability of smart meters to cyber-attacks, and flagged estimates that the scheme could leave the taxpayer out of pocket by £4.5bn rather than save consumers cash.

      Some 53 million smart meters are due to be installed in residences and small businesses by the end of 2020 at an estimated cost of £11bn.

      So far 3.5 million have been installed. The government has said it expects the scheme will save £17bn. However, a recent delayed report found that benefits to the consumer could be much smaller than originally thought.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Programming/Development

    • IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla and NodeSource Join Forces on Node.js API; Node.js Build System will Start Producing Nightly node-chakracore Builds

      Part of Node.js Foundation’s mission is growing Node.js everywhere. The Node.js platform is already available on a variety of VMs, like Samsung’s JerryScript, a lightweight JavaScript engine for the Internet of Things. While many steps are needed to allow Node.js to work in VM environments outside of V8, the work the Node.js API working group and ChakraCore are doing are important steps to offer greater choice.

    • Open source dependency management is a balancing act

      When we started development of the Open Chemistry project we looked quite seriously at requiring C++11, and I was dissuaded at the time by several in our community. We ended up using some small parts of C++11 that could be made optional and falling back to Boost implementations/empty macro definitions. At the time I think it was perhaps a little too aggressive, but if I could go back I would have told my former self to go for it. The project was new, had few existing users, and was mainly targeting the desktop. Add to that the fact that adoption often takes a few years and there is the cost of supporting older compilers.

      [...]

      Hopefully we can maintain a good middle ground that best serves our users, and be cognizant of the cost of being too conservative or too aggressive. Most developers are eager to use the latest features, and it can be extremely frustrating to know there is a better way that cannot be employed. I think there is a significant cost to being too conservative, but I have seen other projects that update and change too aggressively lose mind share.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Sleep deprivation ‘costs UK £40bn a year’

      Sleep-deprived workers are costing the UK economy £40bn a year and face a higher risk of death, says a new study.

      The calculation is based on tired employees being less productive or absent from work altogether.

      Research firm Rand Europe, which used data from 62,000 people, said the loss equated to 1.86% of economic growth.

  • Security

    • Emergency Bulletin: Firefox 0 day in the wild. What to do.

      We’re publishing this as an emergency bulletin for our customers and the larger web community. A few hours ago a zero day vulnerability emerged in the Tor browser bundle and the Firefox web browser. Currently it exploits Windows systems with a high success rate and affects Firefox versions 41 to 50 and the current version of the Tor Browser Bundle which contains Firefox 45 ESR.

      If you use Firefox, we recommend you temporarily switch browsers to Chrome, Safari or a non-firefox based browser that is secure until the Firefox dev team can release an update. The vulnerability allows an attacker to execute code on your Windows workstation. The exploit is in the wild, meaning it’s now public and every hacker on the planet has access to it. There is no fix at the time of this writing.

    • [Older] E-Voting Machines Need Paper Audits to be Trustworthy

      Election security experts concerned about voting machines are calling for an audit of ballots in the three states where the presidential election was very close: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. We agree. This is an important election safety measure and should happen in all elections, not just those that have a razor-thin margin.

      Voting machines, especially those that have digital components, are intrinsically susceptible to being hacked. The main protection against hacking is for voting machines to provide an auditable paper trail.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Think Trump’s scary now? Obama is leaving him with broad war powers

      In all the outrage about the unhinged things Donald Trump keeps tweeting and saying, there’s been almost zero criticism at the fact that Obama will be partly responsible for the extraordinary scope of powers Trump inherits. The Obama administration has not only done nothing to curtail the slew of extreme national security and war powers that Trump is about to acquire since the election – the White House is actively expanding them.

  • Finance

    • Brexit is not a game of poker

      There are still those who nod-along with the “not showing your cards” defence of the government’s secrecy about what, if any, negotiating strategy it has for achieving Brexit.

      They tweet things to those calling for transparency with comments such as “you should not play poker” or similar.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, The Swamp of War

      Sometimes it’s tough to pull lessons of any sort from our confusing world, but let me mention one obvious (if little noted) case where that couldn’t be less true: the American military and its wars. Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. has been in a state of more or less permanent war in the Greater Middle East and northern Africa. In those years, it’s been involved in a kaleidoscopic range of activities, including full-scale invasions and occupations, large-scale as well as pinpoint bombing campaigns, drone strikes, special ops raids, advisory missions, training programs, and counterinsurgency operations. The U.S. military has fought regular armies, insurgencies, and terror groups of all sorts, Shiites as well as Sunnis. The first war of this era, in Afghanistan — a country Washington declared “liberated” in 2002 — is still underway 16 years later (and not going well). The second war, in Iraq, is still ongoing 13 years later. From Afghanistan to Libya, Syria to Yemen, Iraq to Somalia, the U.S. military effort in these years, sometimes involving “nation building” and enormous “reconstruction” programs, has left in its wake a series of weakened or collapsed states and spreading terror outfits. In short, no matter how the U.S. military has been used, nothing it’s done has truly worked out.

    • Donald Trump’s most obvious conflict of interest problem is right down the street from the White House

      The new Trump International Hotel in Washington DC is a ticking time bomb for Donald Trump, and not just because foreign countries seeking to win his favor are already planning events there to line the US president-elect’s pockets.

      Steven Schooner and Daniel Gordon, lawyers specializing in federal procurement rules, write in Government Executive that Trump’s inauguration will immediately place him in violation of the law because the hotel is in the Old Post Office Pavilion, a building just blocks from the White House that was leased to a Trump-led consortium by the federal government.

      The lease, signed by Trump’s organization in 2013, includes a clause that says “no … elected official of the Government of the United States … shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom.”

    • Conflict of interest fears over Georgieva’s World Bank dealings

      Six months before European Commission Vice President Kristalina Georgieva announced that she would be returning to the World Bank, her office negotiated changes in the way the European Union funds her former and future employer, according to EU officials and documents obtained by POLITICO.

      The new arrangement with the Bank is raising alarm bells at the Commission and the European Parliament about a potential conflict of interest. The concern comes as the Commission is trying to tighten so-called revolving door rules on what jobs senior officials can take once they leave EU institutions.

    • Juncker’s Parliamentary headache

      Martin Schulz’s decision to quit the European Parliament and take his talents to Berlin last week provoked breathless speculation about his political future in Germany and that of his Socialist group without him in Brussels.

      There is, however, one real world impact of Schulz’s departure in January: It is going to make the Parliament a huge pain where it hurts for the European Commission and its president, Jean-Claude Juncker.

      Though on paper a conservative who belongs to the European People’s Party, Juncker has made no secret of the importance of his bromance with the departing parliamentary chieftain from the other side of the aisle.

    • Sweden’s unsent letter to a President-elect Hillary Clinton: ‘It is a milestone for the world’

      Ahead of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 8, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven drafted two letters. One was addressed to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee who enjoyed broad approval among Swedes. The other was to Republican Donald Trump, the upstart candidate who was viewed negatively by many in Sweden.

      The letters were intended to congratulate the winner of the election.

      Only one was ever sent.

      Lofven’s office released parts of the letter sent to Trump last week, though considerable sections of it were censored under Sweden’s official secrets act. On Monday, the Expressen newspaper released what it said was a copy of the letter in its entirety.

    • For $1 million and up, inaugural donors will get ‘candlelight dinner’ with Trump and other access

      The committee raising money for President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural festivities is offering exclusive access to the new president, Cabinet nominees and congressional leaders in exchange for donations of $1 million and more.

      For seven-figure contributions, Trump’s richest supporters will get a slew of special perks during the inauguration weekend, including eight tickets to a “candlelight dinner” that will feature “special appearances” by Trump, his wife, Melania, Vice President-elect Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, according to a sheet detailing “underwriter package benefits” obtained by The Washington Post. The 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee confirmed the authenticity of the donor brochure, which was first reported by the Center for Public Integrity.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Why Facebook’s China adventure will need more than censorship to succeed

      Facebook needs to invest in more than just censorship tools if it hopes to lift a seven-year ban in China, experts say, amid a tightening space for foreign technology companies in the world’s most populous nation.

      Last week it emerged Facebook is working on software designed to suppress content – widely seen as a prerequisite to ending the ban, put in place in the wake of deadly ethnic riots in 2009 in attempt to quell the sharing of information about the violence.

      Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, have embarked on a high-profile and often controversial campaign to lift the China block in recent years.

      “Censorship is the biggest requirement,” said Adam Segal, director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, “and then they should start to invest in the ecosystem around them, in Chinese startups and funds, to show that they are friends of China.”

    • Censorship in Social Media Leaves Users in Frustration

      User reports of censorship of social media posts show a deep frustration with companies’ content moderation policies, according to an analysis by Onlinecensorship.org, a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Visualizing Impact.

      In “Censorship in Context: Insights from Crowdsourced Data on Social Media Censorship,” researchers analyzed reports of content takedowns received from users of Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube from April to November of 2016. At a time when many are asking for more content moderation—like calls for Facebook to crack down on “fake news”—election-related censorship complaints focused on the desire of users to speak their minds and share information about a tight election without worrying that their posts will disappear.

    • Russia Draws On Chinese Expertise And Technology To Clamp Down On Internet Users Even More

      The Russians apparently see no other option than to invite Chinese heavyweights into the heart of its IT strategy. “China remains our only serious ‘ally’, including in the IT sector,” said a source in the Russian information technology industry, adding that despite hopes that Russian manufacturers would fill the void created by sanctions “we are in fact actively switching to Chinese”.

      That Russian source is clearly trying to suggest that this new partnership is all the fault of the West for imposing those silly economic sanctions, and that this could have been avoided if everybody had stayed friends. But the coziness between Russia and China has been coming for a while, as their geopolitical ambitions align increasingly, so the collaboration over surveillance and censorship technologies would probably have happened anyway. The interesting question is how the new alliance might blossom if the future Trump administration starts to reduce its engagement with the international scene to concentrate on domestic matters. The new Sino-Russian digital partnership could be just the start of something much bigger, but probably not more beautiful.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • [Older] Who Has Your Back in Colombia? A New Report Shows Telecom Privacy Slowly Improving

      Fundacion Karisma—the leading Colombian digital rights organization—has published the 2016 ¿Dónde están mis datos? report, which evaluates how well Colombian telecommunications companies protect their customers’ privacy.

      Karisma’s second annual report examines publicly-available policies on government surveillance transparency, data protection, privacy, and free expression from five of the biggest telecommunications companies: Claro, Tigo-UNE, Telefónica-Movistar, ETB (Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Bogotá), and DirecTV.

    • Something Happened to Activist Email Provider Riseup, but It Hasn’t Been Compromised

      Over the last week, rumors have been spreading across the digital activist community that the technology collective riseup, which provides email, chat, VPN, and other services to activists, may be compromised after receiving a secret government subpoena accompanied by a gag order. The collective provides email service to roughly 150,000 users, hosts activism-related mailing lists with 6.8 million subscribers, and delivers more than 1 million emails per day. According to a representative of the riseup collective, the rumors are outsized. But it is clear that something happened, and that riseup is unable to speak about it publicly. “Riseup will shut down rather than endanger activists,” the spokesperson said. “We aren’t going to shut down, because there is no danger to activists.”

      Riseup, which began in Seattle in 1999, is one of the most privacy-friendly and anti-surveillance service providers online today. “We believe it is vital that essential communication infrastructure be controlled by movement organizations and not corporations or the government,” the collective’s website states. “Riseup does not log IP addresses and has not done so since the early ’00s,” the collective member told me in an encrypted email. “We work hard to minimize the amount of data (and metadata) stored as [much as] possible. The only way to protect the information of activists around the world is by not having the information in the first place.” Riseup’s privacy policy promises that the service will log as little as possible and never share user data with any third party.

    • GCHQ Virtually A Branch Office Of NSA – Parliament Unable To Hold It To Account

      By OpenRightsGroup – The NSA and GCHQ are virtually joined at the hip. GCHQ shares nearly all the data it collects, and relies on US technology for its key operations.

      Donald Trump“If there were a crisis in the relationship between the UK and the US, what risks would our shared intelligence arrangements pose?”

      We asked this question in our 2015 report about the Snowden leaks. We might be about to find out the answer.

      Chapter 5 of our report details the technological and data sharing integration. The Snowden documents show that Britain’s GCHQ and America’s NSA work very closely together. They are integrated in a way that means it is difficult for our Parliament to hold GCHQ to account. We rely so much on US technology and data that it poses questions for our sovereignty.

    • Florida Cops Have a New Device For Tracking Your Cell Phone

      For years and in almost complete secrecy, cops and feds in the United States — and elsewhere — have been using powerful devices called “Stingrays,” “cell site simulators,” or “IMSI catchers” to track and spy on cell phones.

      Over the last few years, and only after long legal fights and several public documents requests, we’ve learned a little bit more about IMSI catchers, including some of the agencies that use them.

      Yet we’ve rarely seen them. Some official pictures have been published online, mostly mined from patent applications, but we’ve practically never seen them in the wild … until now.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • The War on the First Amendment Didn’t Start Last Week

      For those who woke a week ago to realize the First Amendment is under attack, I lost my job at the State Department in 2012 for writing We Meant Well, a book the government did not like, and needed the help of lawyer Jesselyn Radack and the ACLU to push back the threat of jail.

      My book was critical of actions in Iraq under both the Obama and Bush administrations. One helped protect the other.

      Braver people than me, like Thomas Drake, Morris Davis, and Robert MacLean, risked imprisonment and lost their government jobs for talking to the press about government crimes and malfeasance. John Kiriakou, Chelsea Manning, and Jeff Sterling went to jail for speaking to/informing the press. The Obama administration tried to prosecute reporters from Fox and the New York Times for stories on government wrongdoing.

      Ray Maxwell at the State Department went public with information about Hillary Clinton’s email malfeasance before you had even heard of her private server. The media that covered the story at all called him a liar, an opportunist, and a political hack, and he was pressed into retirement.

    • The West’s Shift Toward Repression

      Forgive my “infamously fluent French” but the phrase “pour encourager les autres” – a reference to executing one powerful person to send a message to others – seems to have lost its famously ironic quality. It seems that the U.S. government is globally paying big bucks to people to encourage them to expose the crimes of their employers, but only if they’re working for banks and other financial institutions – as opposed to say working for the government and its intelligence agencies.

      I have been aware for a few years that the U.S. government instituted a law in 2010 called the Dodd-Frank Act that is designed to encourage people employed in the international finance community to report malfeasance to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in return for a substantial percentage of any monies recouped.

      [...]

      But, from all recent examples, it would appear that you get damn few thanks for such patriotic actions. Take the case of Thomas Drake, a former senior National Security Agency executive who in 2007 went public about waste and wanton expenditure within the agency, as I wrote way back in 2011. Before doing so, Drake had gone through all the prescribed routes for such disclosures, up to and including a congressional committee.

      Despite all this, Drake was abruptly snatched by the FBI in a violent dawn raid and threatened with 35 years in prison. He (under the terrifying American plea bargain system) accepted a misdemeanor conviction to escape the horrors of federal charges, the resulting loss of all his civic rights and a potential 35 years in prison. He still, of course, lost his job, his impeccable professional reputation, and his whole way of life.

      He was part of a NSA group that also included William Binney, the NSA’s former Technical Director, and his fellow whistleblowers Kirk Wiebe, Ed Loumis and Diane Roark. These brave people had developed an electronic mass-surveillance program called Thin Thread that could zero in on those people who were genuinely of security interest and worth targeting, a program which would have been relatively cheap, costing only $1.4 million and would have been consistent with the terms of the Constitution. According to Binney, it could potentially have stopped 9/11 and all the attendant horrors..

    • Sumi Cho and Alicia Garza on Election and Intersection, James Loewen on Misreporting History

      That’s not, naturally, how social justice advocates are responding. They’re getting together to share strategies for protecting vulnerable communities and resisting the predations on our civil rights. One such gathering of activists and academics was a recent webinar hosted by the African American Policy Forum. It featured a range of voices. I’ll bring just two: Sumi Cho, professor at DePaul University School of Law, and Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter.

    • ‘Race Is at the Bottom of His Immigration Policy’

      Few if any groups received more venom from the Trump campaign than immigrants. Slurring millions of people as rapists, terrorists and freeloaders, Donald Trump promised, along with the infamous wall on the southern border and a ban of Muslims, tens of thousands of deportations and the seizure of money that people in the US send to families in Mexico. Distressing as all of this is in itself, it’s coming after years that have already seen many, many family-severing deportations and a struggle to enact reforms.

    • ‘People Can Protect the Rights of Everyone in Their Community’

      From promises of mass surveillance, stepped-up stop and frisk, to religion-based bans on entry to the country, a Trump White House looks to be a nightmare for civil rights and liberties. Here to talk about how folks are planning to get through it is Sue Udry. She’s executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, joined now with the Defending Dissent Foundation. She joins us by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome to CounterSpin, Sue Udry.

    • Where Are Sting and Bill Clinton When You Need Them?

      Is Gulnara Karimova dead? The source of today’s reports is Galima Burkabaeva, who is a first class journalist. She personally spoke with the Uzbek security service (SNB) source who told her Gulnara was killed by poisoning on 5 November. Galima does not vouch for the story’s truth, but she believes the source had credibility, and she is well placed to make that call.

      Gulnara was once the wealthiest female oligarch in Moscow society. She had amazing friends. Unfortunately she failed to notice that the kind of friends who do not care if you made your money out of child forced labour in the cotton fields, are the same kind of friends who will not care if you are chained to an iron bedstead in an ex-Soviet mental institution being pumped full of lobotomising chemicals with only a tin potty for company.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • AT&T Just Showed Us What The Death Of Net Neutrality Is Going To Look Like

      For some time now we’ve warned how the FCC’s decision to not ban zero rating (exempting some content from usage caps) was going to come back and bite net neutrality on the posterior. Unlike India, Japan, The Netherlands, Norway, Chile, and other countries, the FCC crafted net neutrality rules that completely avoided tackling the issue of usage caps and zero rating. Then, despite ongoing promises that the agency was looking into the issue, the FCC did nothing as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast all began exempting their own content from usage caps while still penalizing competitors.

      Fast forward to this week, and AT&T has delivered what may very well be the killing blow to net neutrality thanks predominantly to the FCC’s failure to see the writing on the wall.

      AT&T this week is launching its new “DirecTV Now” streaming video service. According to the full AT&T announcement, the service offers various packages of streamed TV content ranging from $35 to $70 per month. Thanks to AT&T’s looming $100 billion acquisition of Time Warner, AT&T’s even throwing in HBO for an additional $5 per month, the lowest price point in the industry. Though a bit hamstrung to upsell you to traditional DirecTV (two stream limit, no 4K content, no NFL Sunday Ticket, no DVR functionality), all told it’s a fairly compelling package for cord cutters.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Dominica Accepts TRIPS Health Amendment; Two More To Go?

      The government of Dominica has deposited its instrument of acceptance of the 2005 so-called “paragraph 6” amendment to international intellectual property trade rules aimed at making it easier for countries to export affordable medical products to developing countries. Dominica’s signing brings the number of signers to 65 percent of WTO members, according to the WTO. Two-thirds of WTO members must accept it for the amendment to go into effect, but it is unclear exactly how many members that represents. It appears that two or three more members will tip the scale.

11.29.16

Links 29/11/2016: Core Apps Hackfest, MuckRock Goes FOSS

Posted in News Roundup at 3:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Greenlight for Girls: Finding the STEM Leaders of the Future

      There is growing anxiety within tech companies about the lack of skilled professionals to keep up with demand. There’s also a realization that one of the largest untapped resources is women. A keynote at the recent Embedded Linux Conference Europe in Berlin described a potential solution to the challenge called Greenlight for Girls, a non-profit organization with a mission to provide girls around the world with the opportunity to love STEM.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Fans poke fun of Flint Water Crisis before U-M, Ohio State game

      It’s not surprising that during rivalry week between the University of Michigan and Ohio State University, offensive and vulgar things are exchanged by the two fan bases.

      Usually, the insults are directed at the teams, players and schools involved in the rivalry.

    • Michigan Pediatrician Gives Update On Children’s Health, One Year After Flint Water Crisis

      Flint, Michigan is still struggling more than a year in a half after dangerous lead levels were found in the water. Dr. Hanna-Attisha was one of the first to raise concerns about children’s health. NPR’s Scott Simon asks the pediatrician for an update.

    • Send patients to private sector to avert winter crisis, hospitals told

      Hospitals have been told to discharge thousands of patients and pass some scheduled surgery to private organisations to reduce pressure ahead of a potential winter crisis, it was reported.

      Leaked memos also revealed that managers have been banned from declaring black alerts, the highest level, when hospital services are unable to cope with demand, the Daily Telegraph said.

      The newspaper claimed instructions were sent by NHS England and the regulator NHS Improvement last month to reduce the levels of bed occupancy in hospitals, which are the most crowded they have ever been ahead of winter.

      In the three months to the end of September, 89.1% of acute and general beds were full, compared with 87% last year, prompting the order for hospital trusts to take the drastic measures.

    • WHO Group Suggests New Name For Falsified Medicines, Dropping ‘Counterfeit’

      A widely representative World Health Organization technical working group has recommended new terminology for substandard or falsified medicines, after years of sharp disagreement among WHO members that led to the tongue-twister: “substandard/spurious/falsely-labelled/falsified/counterfeit” medical products. The working group recommends a simpler formula: kick out intellectual property rights by dropping the term “counterfeit” and just call the products “substandard and falsified.”

    • FAO Postpones New Director For Office In Geneva

      The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) today announced the postponement of the assumption of duties of the person appointed to become the new director of the FAO liaison office in Geneva. The postponement comes after the government of Peru raised concerns that FAO’s appointment of former Peruvian first lady Nadine Heredia Alarcón interferes with a government investigation of corruption and money-laundering against her.

  • Security

    • ‘You Hacked,’ Cyber Attackers Crash Muni Computer System Across SF [Ed: Microsoft Windows]

      That was the message on San Francisco Muni station computer screens across the city, giving passengers free rides all day on Saturday.

    • SF’s Transit Hack Could’ve Been Way Worse—And Cities Must Prepare

      This weekend, San Francisco’s public transit riders got what seemed like a Black Friday surprise: The system wouldn’t take their money. Not that Muni’s bosses didn’t want to, or suddenly forgot about their agency’s budget shortfalls.

      Nope—someone had attacked and locked the computer system through which riders pay their fares. Payment machines told riders, “You Hacked. ALL data encrypted,” and the culprit allegedly demanded a 100 Bitcoin ransom (about $73,000).

      The agency acknowledged the attack, which also disrupted its email system, and a representative said the agency refused to pay off the attacker. Unable to collect fares, Muni opened the gates and kept trains running, so people could at least get where they were going. By Monday morning, everything was back to normal.

    • Newly discovered router flaw being hammered by in-the-wild attacks

      Online criminals—at least some of them wielding the notorious Mirai malware that transforms Internet-of-things devices into powerful denial-of-service cannons—have begun exploiting a critical flaw that may be present in millions of home routers.

    • Locking Down Your Linux Server

      No matter what your Linux, you need to protect it with an iptable-based firewall.

      Yes! You’ve just set up your first Linux server and you’re ready to rock and roll! Right? Uh, no.

      By default, your Linux box is not secure against attackers. Oh sure, it’s more secure than Windows XP, but that’s not saying much.

    • Tuesday’s security updates
    • Reproducible Builds: week 83 in Stretch cycle
    • Neutralizing Intel’s Management Engine

      Five or so years ago, Intel rolled out something horrible. Intel’s Management Engine (ME) is a completely separate computing environment running on Intel chipsets that has access to everything. The ME has network access, access to the host operating system, memory, and cryptography engine. The ME can be used remotely even if the PC is powered off. If that sounds scary, it gets even worse: no one knows what the ME is doing, and we can’t even look at the code. When — not ‘if’ — the ME is finally cracked open, every computer running on a recent Intel chip will have a huge security and privacy issue. Intel’s Management Engine is the single most dangerous piece of computer hardware ever created.

    • Muni system hacker hit others by scanning for year-old Java vulnerability

      The attacker who infected servers and desktop computers at the San Francisco Metropolitan Transit Agency (SFMTA) with ransomware on November 25 apparently gained access to the agency’s network by way of a known vulnerability in an Oracle WebLogic server. That vulnerability is similar to the one used to hack a Maryland hospital network’s systems in April and infect multiple hospitals with crypto-ransomware. And evidence suggests that SFMTA wasn’t specifically targeted by the attackers; the agency just came up as a target of opportunity through a vulnerability scan.

      In an e-mail to Ars, SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose said that on November 25, “we became aware of a potential security issue with our computer systems, including e-mail.” The ransomware “encrypted some systems mainly affecting computer workstations,” he said, “as well as access to various systems. However, the SFMTA network was not breached from the outside, nor did hackers gain entry through our firewalls. Muni operations and safety were not affected. Our customer payment systems were not hacked. Also, despite media reports, no data was accessed from any of our servers.”

    • Researchers’ Attack Code Circumvents Defense Mechanisms on Linux, Leaving Machines Susceptible

      Researchers develop such attack codes for aiding Linux security’s onward movement. A demonstration of the way an attack code is possible to write towards effectively exploiting just any flaw, the above kinds emphasize that Linux vendors require vigorously enhancing the safety mechanism on Linux instead of just reacting when attacks occur.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • ‘CIA created ISIS’, says Julian Assange as Wikileaks releases 500k US cables

      WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange today said the CIA was responsible for paving the way for ISIS as the whistle blowing organisation released more than half a million formerly confidential US diplomatic cables dating back to 1979.

    • Half of returning jihadists still devoted to cause: report

      One in four jihadists who returned to Germany after going to fight with terror groups in Syria or northern Iraq cooperate with authorities, according to a new government report seen by Die Welt and reported on Monday.
      The report was conducted by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), domestic security agency the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), and the Hessian Information and Competence Centre against Extremism (HKE).

      The 61-page report showed that in recent years, around 850 people have left Germany to fight in Syria and Iraq. The study reviewed the actions of 784 people between the ages of 13 and 62 who had joined Isis, Jabhat al-Nusra or Junud al-Sham.

    • Obama Expands War With Al Qaeda to Include Shabab in Somalia

      The escalating American military engagement in Somalia has led the Obama administration to expand the legal scope of the war against Al Qaeda, a move that will strengthen President-elect Donald J. Trump’s authority to combat thousands of Islamist fighters in the chaotic Horn of Africa nation.

      The administration has decided to deem the Shabab, the Islamist militant group in Somalia, to be part of the armed conflict that Congress authorized against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to senior American officials. The move is intended to shore up the legal basis for an intensifying campaign of airstrikes and other counterterrorism operations, carried out largely in support of African Union and Somali government forces.

    • Relativism and Castro

      Anybody who, like myself, has devoted much of their life to African development, is bound to have acquired a bias towards Fidel Castro. Cuba played a crucial role in sustaining the liberation struggles throughout Southern Africa. If Castro had done nothing else, he would deserve warm remembrance for that. But much less well-known in Europe is Cuba’s extraordinary contribution to healthcare throughout Africa. Ghanaian, Togolese and Beninois villages and hospitals had excellent Cuban doctors, and I know part-Cuban families in each of those countries as a result. I am sure it was widespread across much of Africa, I just highlight that for which I can personally vouch. That a tiny island, itself a victim of colonialism and slavery, should be able to make a contribution to African healthcare that can without a stretch be mentioned in the same sentence as the aid efforts of the major western powers, is an incredible achievement.

      It was of course the export of Cuba’s tremendous domestic achievement in healthcare and education, and some of the attempts these last 24 hours to belittle that have been pathetic.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Doubting Thomases

      I have been quite amused to receive some – well actually rather a lot of – rather aggressive tweets and other social media messages from people who believe Julian Assange is dead, and are therefore outraged I had supper with him on Friday. This seems to me the ultimate in concern trolling – to pretend to adore someone so much that you are angry and upset to find the object of your adoration has not been killed or kidnapped. There are youtube videos alleging that Julian is dead which together have attracted millions of viewers. It is a peculiar kind of cargo-cult.

      [...]

      I have been visiting Julian since before Jane from Idaho heard of him, and the purpose of visiting him is not to provide comfort to Jane from Idaho. If my word does that, fine. If she does not want to take my word, also fine. But if people could at least research who John Pilger, Yanis Varoufakis and myself are before deciding we are a CIA plot, that would be helpful. Stopping the aggressive and insulting tweets would be nice too.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Finland wants to bring 250,000 electric cars onto its roads by 2030

      Berner (Centre), the Minister of Transport and Communications, believes a variety of measures, such as tax incentives, are needed to raise the number of electric vehicles on Finland’s roads to 250,000 by 2030.

      Finland is intent on raising the number of electric and natural gas vehicles on its roads to 250,000 and 50,000 respectively by 2030, Anne Berner (Centre), the Minister of Transport and Communications, revealed in news conference on Thursday.

      With the country currently having fewer than one thousand registered electric vehicles, measures such as tax incentives will be required to achieve this objective, she acknowledged.

    • ‘Nothing to See Here’ Headlines Conceal Police Violence at Dakota Access

      Sorry, New York Times–when more than 470 people have been arrested opposing the pipeline since August, that’s not the news. Nor did the print edition headline—“16 Arrested at North Dakota Pipeline Protest as Tensions Continue”—add anything.

      No, the news in the story came in the second paragraph, where reporter Jonah Engel Bromwich wrote that “officials also defended their use of fire hoses against protesters the night before, despite the below-freezing weather.”

  • Finance

    • EU chief tells Brexiteer MPs they have ‘very interesting argument, the only problem being that it has nothing to do with reality’

      The President of the European Council has suggested Brexiteer MPs are putting forward an argument that “has nothing to do with reality” as he blamed Britain for the “anxiety” affecting EU nationals in the UK.

      Donald Tusk’s intervention comes after his office received a letter, organised by Conservative MP Michael Tomlinson and signed by 80 MPs, criticising Brussels’ refusal to allow formal talks on the issue.

      But in a blunt response, Mr Tusk said: “It’s a very interesting argument, the only problem being that it has nothing to do with reality”

    • Stripe’s Valuation Nearly Doubles to $9.2 Billion
    • No Credit History? No Problem. Lenders Are Looking at Your Phone Data

      Financial institutions, overcoming some initial trepidation about privacy, are increasingly gauging consumers’ creditworthiness by using phone-company data on mobile calling patterns and locations.

      The practice is tantalizing for lenders because it could help them reach some of the 2 billion people who don’t have bank accounts. On the other hand, some of the phone data could open up the risk of being used to discriminate against potential borrowers.

      Phone carriers and banks have gained confidence in using mobile data for lending after seeing startups show preliminary success with the method in the past few years. Selling such data could become a more than $1 billion-a-year business for U.S. phone companies over the next decade, according to Crone Consulting LLC.

    • How Humans Became ‘Consumers’: A History

      “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production,” Adam Smith confidently announced in The Wealth of Nations in 1776. Smith’s quote is famous, but in reality this was one of the few times he explicitly addressed the topic. Consumption is conspicuous by its absence in The Wealth of Nations, and neither Smith nor his immediate pupils treated it as a separate branch of political economy.

      It was in an earlier work, 1759’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, that Smith put his finger on the social and psychological impulses that push people to accumulate objects and gadgets. People, he observed, were stuffing their pockets with “little conveniences,” and then buying coats with more pockets to carry even more. By themselves, tweezer cases, elaborate snuff boxes, and other “baubles” might not have much use. But, Smith pointed out, what mattered was that people looked at them as “means of happiness.” It was in people’s imagination that these objects became part of a harmonious system and made the pleasures of wealth “grand and beautiful and noble.”

    • This is how unequal German society has become

      Measuring the after-tax income of German households in terms of Gini coefficients, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation released a report on Monday which showed that German income inequality reached a peak of 28.8 in 2013.

      A Gini coefficient of zero represents absolute equality, while 100 represents absolute inequality.

    • New leaks confirm TiSA proposals that would undermine civil liberties

      Today, on 25 November 2016, German blog Netzpolitik.org in association with Greenpeace published new leaked documents concerning the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), a “trade” agreement that is currently being negotiated between 23 members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), including the European Union.

    • The TPP wasn’t killed by Donald Trump – our protests worked

      The reports are rolling in: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is dead. If you read the obituaries, most news outlets seem to agree that the cause of death was simple: the election of Donald Trump, who railed against the deal during his campaign. But the pundits have the story wrong.

      The real story is that an unprecedented, international uprising of people from across the political spectrum took on some of the most powerful institutions in the world, and won.

    • Some Trade Deals on Hold after Trump’s Election, but Danger Lurks in the Lesser-Known Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA)

      Fair Traders who are celebrating the defeat of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) may see their hard work undone if the talks towards the proposed Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) continue under a Trump administration.

      Many Democrats who minimized the importance of the negative impacts of corporate trade deals on working class Americans have now paid the price in the recent elections. As my colleagues at the Center for Economic and Policy Research have pointed out, racists and xenophobes were always going to vote for Trump but the key voters the Democrats were counting on that they lost were largely working class voters, many of them union members, in states hit hard by trade deals (supported by both parties) that put working class people in competition with lower-income manufacturing workers in other countries while preserving protections for intellectual property-holders and high income professions.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • David Petraeus, Secretary of State Candidate, Meets With Trump

      Mr. Petraeus, a retired general and former C.I.A. director, spent an hour with Mr. Trump at his offices in Trump Tower in Manhattan and told reporters afterward that the president-elect had given him a tutorial on world affairs.

      “He basically walked us around the world,” Mr. Petraeus said. “Showed a great grasp of a variety of the challenges that are out there and some of the opportunities as well. Very good conversation, and we’ll see where it goes from here.” In a Twitter post 15 minutes later, Mr. Trump said, “Just met with General Petraeus — was very impressed!”

    • Far From a Distraction, Hamilton Feud Calls Attention to the Real Issue: Trump’s Historic Unpopularity

      I would argue that the most important undercovered story of the Trump transition period is the fact that Trump is the least popular president-elect in modern history (Daily News, 11/17/16). This information has tremendous import both for the strength of Trump’s brand of far-right politics and for the potential for public mobilization to block his most damaging policies—if the public is aware of it, that is.

      The Hamilton audience booing Pence—though far from a random sample—is, in fact, a manifestation of the majority opinion in the United States. Coverage of the controversy would have done well to make that clear.

      The scandals that the blogosphere scolds think we should have been paying more attention to are indeed important—but not because Trump will ever be held directly accountable for them, or even because they will have a direct impact on the lives of people. Instead, they’re important because they illustrate the unprecedented corruption of the Trump regime, and this should lead to even greater unpopularity for Trump. In other words, stories like the Trump University settlement are important because they may lead to more stories like the Hamilton confrontation.

    • 3 Things Killing American Democracy (That Aren’t Trump)

      The Senate Killed A Third Of Our Government, And We Re-Elected Them For It

    • ‘A recipe for scandal’: Trump conflicts of interest point to constitutional crisis

      Constitutional lawyers and White House ethics counsellors from Democratic and Republican administrations have warned Donald Trump his presidency might be blocked by the electoral college if he does not give up ownership of at least some of his business empire.

      “The brand is certainly a hotter brand than it was before,” Donald Trump told the New York Times on Wednesday, and his election victory buzz does indeed seem to have been good for business.

      Since the surprise outcome of the 8 November vote, foreign diplomats have been flocking to the newest Trump hotel in Washington to hear sales pitches about the business and vie to book their delegations into its rooms overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue for the inauguration on 20 January.

    • Stein nears goal for Mich. recount

      Michigan could come roaring back into the national presidential spotlight this week as Green Party candidate Jill Stein prepares to demand a statewide recount that Republican President-elect Donald Trump is denouncing.

      Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers meets at 2 p.m. Monday to vote on certifying election results in all 83 counties that show Trump narrowly prevailed over Democrat Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes.

      That action will start a 48-hour clock for Stein to exercise her right to request and pay for a hand recount of 4.8 million votes cast in the contentious Nov. 8 election.

    • Official: Trump could object to Michigan recount request

      President-elect Donald Trump would have the right to object to a recount requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, with the Board of State Canvassers deciding the issue, an election official said Monday.

      But Chris Thomas, director of the Bureau of Elections, said Monday he doesn’t think Trump could argue there should be no recount at all, provided Stein pays the required fee and raises the prospect of a mistaken count or fraud. Instead, Instead, Trump could argue about what form the recount should take, Thomas said. Attorneys representing Trump said Monday they favor a machine recount, which they said would be more efficient than a hand recount, which Stein is expected to request.

    • Backlash against voting audits makes elections less secure

      Almost three weeks after Election Day, Wisconsin is getting ready to recount its votes, and Pennsylvania and Michigan may soon follow suit. Green Party candidate Jill Stein has raised over $6 million to fund the effort, saying fears of a hacked election couldn’t be dismissed in light of earlier hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign staff. Hillary Clinton’s team signed on to the recount campaign over the weekend, citing similar concerns.

      Many are still skeptical. Although Trump won Wisconsin by just over 25,000 votes, there’s still no technical evidence of vote-tampering and the results are generally consistent with polling and demographic data. As a result, it’s extremely unlikely that a few hacked precincts could have tipped the scales. At the same time, even the suggestion of an audit has set off political chaos, as President-elect Trump responded with unfounded allegations that millions of votes had been cast illegally.

    • The 13 impossible crises that humanity now faces

      Please don’t read this unless you are feeling strong. This is a list of 13 major crises that, I believe, confront us. There may be more. Please feel free to add to it or to knock it down. I’m sorry to say that it’s not happy reading.

    • America is Just Losing It

      America, you are losing it. Seriously, you have got to chill.

      I know your candidate lost to Trump — only by the electoral vote! — and I know this came as a surprise. I know you feel the apocalypse is upon us. Maybe it is, but writing things like the following is not going to help. It may even cause reasonable people to think you are insane and want to run away from the politics you think you are supporting. It may even make you sound like the people you Hate, the people you feared would not support the results of the election, the conspiracy theorists and closed-minded, the uneducated.

      As for why Hillary Clinton lost, here’s New York Times columnist Paul Krugman saying “So it looks more and more as if we had an election swung, in effect, by a faction of our own security sector in alliance with Putin.” Krugman is actually saying his educated brain is telling him Clinton lost because the FBI colluded with Vladimir Putin to throw the election to Trump for reasons not specified by Krugman.

    • A Brief History of the Election OMG PUTIN IS TAKING CONTROL OF THIS ARTICLE!!!!!!!!!!!

      Media ignore Clinton’s weaknesses and Trump’s strengths for 18 months to epically blow election predictions.

      No calls for recounts.

      Clinton concedes.

      No calls for recounts.

      Despite over 200 years of the electoral college system, and this being the fifth presidential election where the winner did not receive the majority of the popular vote, Clinton supporters begin bleating about her winning the popular vote so, whatever, she should become president. Many seem surprised to learn of this “electoral” system;

      No calls for recounts.

      Clinton supporters hold street protests.

      No calls for recounts.

      Effort made to talk electors out of voting for Trump fails to gain traction.

      No calls for recounts.

      Two weeks after the election in the midst of the Trump transition OMG the Russians hacked the election Putin is controlling America with RT.com thought waves and fake news so we gotta recount it but only so faith in American democracy is restored.

    • Appeal to the Working Class? Don’t Bother, Says Krugman

      In the wake of a disastrous Election Day, does the Democratic Party need to present economic policies that have more to offer the majority of voters? Don’t bother, argues New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (11/25/16).

      Krugman begins by acknowledging what some have denied—that class played some role in what happened on November 8: “What put Donald Trump in striking distance was overwhelming support from whites without college degrees,” he writes. “So what can Democrats do to win back at least some of those voters?”

    • Euphemism as Journalism: Distracting the Audience by Focusing on Trump’s Skill at Distraction

      Euphemism isn’t journalism, but conflating the two can be irresistible for mainline journalists when candor might seem overly intrepid. Two months before Inauguration Day, a straw in the US media wind pointed toward evasive fog around the incoming president when PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff convened a roundtable segment (11/21/16) with program regulars Tamara Keith of NPR and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report.

      From the outset, the journalists emphasized that the new president won’t be “traditional.” Walter said: “We have to stop treating Donald Trump like this is just a traditional, normal political candidate who’s now going to be a traditional, normal president.”

      Moments later Keith, a White House correspondent for NPR, was explaining that Trump “has not related to the press or the public in a traditional way ever. And he’s had an incredible skill at distracting, at creating—there was this movie Up and there was a dog who gets distracted, and, squirrel, squirrel. That’s what happens.”

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Putin brings China’s Great Firewall to Russia in cybersecurity pact

      Russia has been working on incorporating elements of China’s Great Firewall into the “Red Web”, the country’s system of internet filtering and control, after unprecedented cyber collaboration between the countries.

      A decision earlier this month to block the networking site LinkedIn in Russia is the most visible in a series of measures to bring the internet under greater state control.

      Legislation was announced this month that gives the Kremlin primacy over cyberspace – the exchange points, domain names and cross-border fibre-optic cables that make up the architecture of the internet.

    • University Pledges End to Bans and Censorship On Campus, Supports Free Speech

      A university has pledged to end its culture of censorship and no-platforming, and has instead pledged to defend free speech.

      Cardiff University in Wales has said it will no longer ban events by controversial speakers, declaring “censorship is not the answer”.

      The decision was made by the Cardiff University Students’ Union at their annual conference last week, where they passed a motion called “Challenge, Don’t Censor”.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • FBI and NSA Poised to Gain New Surveillance Powers Under Trump

      The FBI, National Security Agency and CIA are likely to gain expanded surveillance powers under President-elect Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress, a prospect that has privacy advocates and some lawmakers trying to mobilize opposition.

      Trump’s first two choices to head law enforcement and intelligence agencies — Republican Senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general and Republican Representative Mike Pompeo for director of the Central Intelligence Agency — are leading advocates for domestic government spying at levels not seen since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Detained VOA Reporter Released in Turkey

      Hatice Kamer, (who also goes by the name Khajijan Farqin), a freelance reporter working for the Voice of America’s Kurdish service, has been released after being detained by Turkish authorities in Diyarbakir.

      Details of her arrest Saturday were relayed by a family friend, who said the reasons for Kamer’s detention remain unclear. Her family has said that because of a state of emergency declared in the area, even her attorney was not able to contact her.

    • BBC, Voice of America reporters detained in southeast Turkey

      Turkish authorities detained two reporters working for foreign news organizations in southeast Turkey, the latest journalists taken into custody as part of the government’s sweeping crackdown following a failed coup in July.

      BBC Turkish correspondent Hatice Kamer was detained Saturday in the town of Sirvan while covering a recent copper mine collapse that killed at least 11 workers, the broadcaster said. Voice of America said its freelance reporter, Khajijan Farqin, was detained the same day in Diyarbakir.

    • Norway can extradite wanted Islamist to Italy: court

      The infamous Norway-based fundamentalist preacher Najmuddin Ahmad Faraj, better known as Mullah Krekar, lost his appeal to the Supreme Court on Wednesday and now faces extradition to Italy where he faces terror charges.
      Krekar had appealed against earlier decisions by the Oslo District Court and the Borgarting Court of Appeal, but Norway’s highest court upheld the decisions on Wednesday and cleared the way for Krekar’s extradition.

      The 60-year-old Islamist can now be sent to Italy to stand trial on charges that he led the Rawti Shax, a network that has planned to carry out attacks in the West.

    • ‘Trojan Horse’ plotters dodge teaching ban

      A third figure who helped run a Trojan Horse school, Mohammed Ashraf, has become secretary of a local constituency Labour Party. He has applied to be a Labour council candidate at the next local elections, but claimed last night he had dropped the application. Ashraf was a governor at Golden Hillock School, which banned the teaching of some subjects and segregated boys and girls. He was later removed from the…

    • Moroccans Launch Petition Following 2M’s Broadcast of ‘Makeup Tutorial’

      Rabat – Moroccan women launched a petition on Friday calling for Morocco’s government and the High Authority for Audio-visual Communication, known better as HACA, to penalize National television service, 2M, for broadcasting “tutorial instructions for females to hide bruises of domestic violence,” on its morning show “Sabahiyates,” on Wednesday.

      Amid the heated scandal that the show stirred on social media, Moroccan women took to change.org to create a petition calling for all Moroccans to sign it as a moving step toward denouncing the “standardization of violence against women.”

    • Hey Media, We Don’t Need Another Glossy Profile on That Nazi Dork

      There’s been a recent wave of press for a certain unnamed Nazi Dork who threw a gathering in Washington, DC, for his Nazi friends this past week, attempting to use the Trump victory to raise the profile of himself and his Nazi “think tank.” The man who coined the term “alt right”—which has become a popular euphemism for those unwilling to use “white supremacist” or “neo-Nazi”—has of late received fairly softball interviews in Mother Jones (10/27/16), the LA Times (11/19/16) and, most recently, the Washington Post (11/22/16)

      His Nazi get-together got endless coverage, from the New York Times to The Atlantic to USA Today to CNN. The actual event itself, according to the Post, had a Nazi attendee–to–reporter ratio of 6 to 1. The Nazi Dork’s goal was to exploit and feed off the Trump campaign and subsequent victory, and he did it with tremendous success, thanks in part to a shiny-object obsessed media.

      The balance between covering hate and promoting it is a difficult one, and one that we shouldn’t dismiss out of hand. But after a week of wall-to-wall coverage, most of which one could imagine the Nazi Dork and his Nazi friends reading and posting to Facebook with a smirk, the balance has come down heavily on the side of fascist agitprop.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Net neutrality shouldn’t be a debate – it’s a symptom of something worse: gatekeepers

      Net neutrality should not even be a debate. Any market actor who abuses their customers and trust to the level of not respecting net neutrality, on a functioning market, will be dropped like a bad habit. Therefore, the mere existence of a net neutrality debate is a symptom of something much worse: the existence of gatekeepers. That’s the underlying problem that needs to be solved.

      Let’s pick a western Internet country ranked roughly in the middle of the pack. In this particular country, Internet connectivity is seen as a random utility, delivered the last mile by the municipal energy infrastructure. When signing up for an ISP, every household has 10-15 operators to choose from, at 100/100 Mbit speeds (or higher), unmetered, for about $27 per month. This is what happens when gatekeepers aren’t involved.

      Actually, let’s back up a bit here. The energy infrastructure provider could have been acting as an Internet gatekeeper, as it technically controls the only pipe to the homes, but has no strategic interest in doing so. This nuance is absolutely crucial: unlike telco and cable industries, the energy companies are not under existential threat by the Internet.

    • I can’t just stand by and watch Mark Zuckerberg destroy the internet.

      Mark Zuckerberg — Facebook’s CEO — is probably the most powerful person alive today. He may even be the most powerful person ever.

      Traditionally, the president of the United States has been considered the most powerful person on Earth. After all, President Obama controls the most powerful military on the planet, and has considerable influence over the $18 trillion US economy.

      [...]

      Mark Zuckerberg has none of these limitations. His power flows from Facebook, the seventh largest corporation on the planet by market capitalization, of which he owns 18% of the stock and controls 60% of the voting rights.

      At 32 years of age, he could remain the CEO of Facebook for another 50 years.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Antigua & Barbuda To Lift US IP Protection In 2017 If US Fails To Comply With WTO Ruling

      Caribbean nation Antigua & Barbuda has declared that it will exercise an option granted it by a World Trade Organization dispute settlement panel to lift protection on US intellectual property rights starting in 2017 if the US does not finally change a law blocking the island nation’s online gambling services or compensate it.

      According to a WTO release circulated today, Antigua & Barbuda said the 12-year case has dragged on too long and its losses have totalled some US$ 250 million, causing harm to the country’s small economy.

    • Copyrights

      • UK Police “Don’t Anticipate” Working With Copyright Troll Partner

        Last week following his release from prison, UK-based copyright troll partner Robert Croucher said that he’d become involved in a private funding initiative for the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit. Speaking with TorrentFreak, PIPCU have confirmed that while they have met with Croucher, they don’t anticipate doing business with him.

      • Google Asked to Remove a Billion “Pirate” Search Results in a Year

        Copyright holders asked Google to remove more than 1,000,000,000 allegedly infringing links from its search engine over the past twelve months. A new record, in line with the continued rise of takedown requests and the increase in pressure on Google to do more to tackle piracy.

11.28.16

Links 28/11/2016: X-Plane 11 Beta, Early Work For C++20, Microsoft Hole in RHEL

Posted in News Roundup at 7:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Managing devices in Linux

    There are many interesting features of the Linux directory structure. This month I cover some fascinating aspects of the /dev directory. Before you proceed any further with this article, I suggest that, if you have not already done so, you read my earlier articles, Everything is a file, and An introduction to Linux filesystems, both of which introduce some interesting Linux filesystem concepts. Go ahead—I will wait.

    Great! Welcome back. Now we can proceed with a more detailed exploration of the /dev directory.

  • Open source has won, and Microsoft has surrendered

    I have covered Microsoft’s interference with FOSS [free and open-source software] for over a decade and carefully studied even pertinent antitrust documents. I know the company’s way of thinking when it comes to undermining their competition

    The pattern of embrace and extend (to extinguish) — all this while leveraging software patents to make Linux a Microsoft cash cow or compel OEMs to preinstall privacy-hostile Microsoft software/apps with proprietary formats (lockin) — never ended. What I see in the Linux Foundation right now is what I saw in Nokia 5 years ago and in Novell 10 years ago — the very thing that motivated me to start BoycottNovell, a site that has just turned 10 with nearly 22,000 blog posts. It is a saddening day because it’s a culmination, after years of Microsoft ‘micro’ payments to the Linux Foundation (e.g. event sponsorship in exchange for keynote positions), which will have Microsoft shoved down the throats of GNU/Linux proponents and give an illusion of peace when there is none, not just on the patent front but also other fronts (see what Microsoft’s partner Accenture is doing in Munich right now).

  • Desktop

    • Pinebook crams ARM CPU and Linux support into an $89 laptop

      Last year Pine64 debuted a tiny little Linux computer that packs an Allwinner A64 ARM processor inside a small, clear shell. The big deal with that tiny computer was that it cost only $15 or starters. Pine64 is back and this year it has a new laptop that is impressively cheap called the Pinebook.

      This laptop packs in the Allwinner quad-core, 64-bit processor and pairs that processor with 2GB of RAM. Internal storage is 16GB and the Pinebook features WiFi and Bluetooth built-in. The machine has dual USB 2.0 ports, a microSD card slot, a mini HDMI output, and a headphone port. It’s not going to be a powerhouse machine, but the hardware isn’t bad considering that the 11.6-inch screen version sells for $89.

  • Server

    • Docker 1.13.0 RC2 Supports Building of Docker DEBs for Ubuntu 16.10 on PPC64LE

      Two weeks ago, we discussed here the upcoming features of the Docker 1.13.0 open-source and cross-platform application container engine as part of the new version’s first Release Candidate build.

      And now, Developer Victor Vieux announced the availability of the second RC version for the Docker 1.13.0 release, which appears to bring lots of improvements and bug fixes. Notable changes include support for labels on volumes, the ability to filter volumes by label, along with the ability to purge data from a deleted volume using the “–force” parameter in the “docker volume rm” command.

    • AWS Launches Amazon Linux Container Image

      AWS recently launched a Docker container image for its Amazon Linux operating system, complementing the EC2 specific Amazon Linux AMI with a versatile deployment option for custom cloud and on-premise environments. The image is available through the Amazon EC2 Container Registry (Amazon ECR), and also as an official repository on Docker Hub.

      The Amazon Linux AMI is a “supported and maintained Linux image provided by Amazon Web Services” that is designed to “provide a stable, secure, and high performance execution environment for applications running on Amazon EC2″. It has long been the base image for most of AWS’ Linux based offerings, such as the AWS Elastic Beanstalk platforms, the Amazon Elastic MapReduce releases, and the Amazon EC2 Container Service instances.

    • 3 Emerging Cloud Technologies You Should Know

      In previous articles, we’ve discussed four notable trends in cloud computing and how the rise of microservices and the public cloud has led to a whole new class of open source cloud computing projects. These projects leverage the elasticity of the public cloud and enable applications designed and built to run on it.

      Early on in cloud computing, there was a migration of existing applications to Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft’s Azure. Virtually any app that ran on hardware in private data centers could be virtualized and deployed to the cloud. Now with a mature cloud market, more applications are being written and deployed directly to the cloud and are often referred to as being cloud native.

      Here we’ll explore three emerging cloud technologies and mention a few key projects in each area. For a more in-depth explanation and to see a full list of all the projects across six broad categories, download our free 2016 Guide to the Open Cloud report.

    • Why the fuss about serverless?

      To explain this, I’m going to have to recap on some old work with a particular focus on co-evolution.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 4.9-rc7

      Still on the regular Sunday release schedule, here’s rc7.

      I think we got all the silly problems I was aware of fixed, and on the
      whole things are looking pretty good. In fact, if next week ends up
      being very quiet, this _might_ be the last rc, although honestly I
      strongly suspect I’ll end up doing an rc8. It’s been a big release,
      and rc7 could have been quieter. We’ll see.

      I basically reserve the right to make up my mind next weekend.

      The changes in rc7 are mainly drivers, architecture and networking. In
      fact, most of the driver updates are networking drivers, so I guess I
      could say “mostly networking and architecture updates, with a
      smattering of other driver updates” (the main other driver areas being
      usb, gpu, hid, i2c, iommu). And we’ve got the usual small random
      stuff all over (core kernel, a eBPF fix, some filesystem fixes etc).

      The appended shortlog gives a reasonable view into what’s up.

      Linus

    • Linus Torvalds Outs the Seventh RC for Linux Kernel 4.9, Might Be the Last One

      It’s Sunday here is the US, and, for hardcore Linux users, this means that they test drive yet another RC (Release Candidate) build of the soon-to-be-released Linux 4.9 kernel.

      That’s right, Linus Torvalds just made his weekly announcement to inform the Linux community on the immediate availability of the seventh Release Candidate (RC7) development milestone for the upcoming Linux kernel 4.9 series, which has been delayed for a week due to the size of the patch.

    • Linux 4.9-rc7 Kernel Released: Final In 1~2 Weeks

      The Linux 4.9-rc7 test kernel is now available although it’s yet undecided whether there will be an RC8 before declaring it gold.

    • Shhhhh! If you’re quiet, Linus Torvalds might release new a Linux

      The world almost certainly needs to wait another week for Linux 4.9, says the operating system’s overlord Linus Torvalds.

      In his weekly post on the progress of the next kernel release, Torvalds announced release candidate seven of Linux 4.9, saying “ I think we got all the silly problems I was aware of fixed, and on the whole things are looking pretty good.”

    • Linux Kernel 4.4.35 LTS Hits the Streets with x86 Improvements, Updated Drivers
    • Linux Kernel 4.8.11 Improves Wireless and AMDGPU Drivers, Fixes AArch64 Issues

    • Graphics Stack

      • VK9, the open source project to implement d3d9 over Vulkan continues to improve

        VK9, formerly known as ‘SchaeferGL’ is an open source project that aims to implement d3d9 over Vulkan.

      • Mesa 13.0.2 Released, Includes Many Intel/RADV Vulkan Driver Fixes

        For those riding the stable Mesa release train, Mesa 13.0.2 is now available as the newest Mesa 13.0 point release.

        As covered last week, the 50+ changes in this version include many fixes to VC4, i965, Radeon, and RADV drivers. There are also a number of Vulkan WSI (windowing system integration) fixes plus driver specific work, more smoke-testing, and memory leak fixes. The Intel Mesa driver also has received its share of support for Intel Geminilake hardware coming out in 2017.

      • Mesa 13.0.2 Adds Intel Gemini Lake Support, Great Improvements to Vulkan Drivers

        Today, November 28, 2016, Collabora’s Emil Velikov announced the release of the second maintenance update to the stable Mesa 13.0 3D Graphics Libray for Linux-based operating systems.

      • Qualcomm Adreno A5xx Open-Source Driver Bringup For Freedreno

        There’s now patches for bringing up open-source graphics driver support in the Freedreno stack for Qualcomm’s latest-generation Adreno graphics hardware.

        The Adreno 505, 506, 510, and 530 GPUs are found in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SoCs like the Snapdragon 820, 821, 650, and 430. The Adreno 500 series is fully Vulkan 1.0 compliant, supports OpenGL ES 3.1/3.2, and has full support for OpenCL 2.0.

    • Benchmarks

      • 20-Way NVIDIA/AMD GPU Darktable OpenCL Photography Performance

        With the holiday season in full swing, whether you are just a casual photographer or professional, Darktable is easily one of the best photography workflow applications and it’s free software! Darktable has offered OpenCL acceleration for providing faster performance on GPUs and with the imminent Darktable 2.2 release there is even better OpenCL results. For those curious about the OpenCL performance of Darktable, I’ve done some Darktable 2.2-RC1 benchmarks on a variety of NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon graphics cards under Ubuntu Linux.

      • More Darktable GPU/CPU Benchmarks – 27 Different Setups

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Chakra GNU/Linux Users Get KDE Plasma 5.8.4, Apps 16.08.3, and Frameworks 5.28.0

        On November 27, 2016, Chakra GNU/Linux developer Neofytos Kolokotronis informs the community about the availability of a set of new software updates for the rolling distro originally based on Arch Linux.

        A week ago, we reported on the availability of the cups 2.1.4-3 and pepperflashplugin 23.0.0.207-1 packages in the Chakra GNU/Linux repositories, which required manual intervention from the user. And, after some issues with their hosting provider, the promised KDE goodies are finally here, along with numerous other updates.

      • Google Code-in begins soon; KDE mentors welcome students

        The KDE community will once more be participating in Google Code-in, which pairs KDE mentors with students beween the ages of 13 and 18 to work on tasks which both help the KDE community and teach the students how to contribute to free and open source projects. Not only coding, but also documentation and training, outreach and research, quality assurance and user interface tasks will be offered.

      • KDE Developer Guide needs a new home and some fresh content

        As I just posted in the Mission Forum, our KDE Developer Guide needs a new home. Currently it is “not found” where it is supposed to be.

        We had great luck using markdown files in git for the chapters of the Frameworks Cookbook, so the Devel Guide should be stored and developed in a like manner. I’ve been reading about Sphinx lately as a way to write documentation, which is another possibility. Kubuntu uses Sphinx for docs.

        In any case, I do not have the time or skills to get, restructure and re-place this handy guide for our GSoC students and other new KDE contributors.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • This week in GTK+ – 26

        In this last week, the master branch of GTK+ has seen 40 commits, with 1551 lines added and 1998 lines removed.

      • Linux communities, we need your help!

        There are a lot of Linux communities all over the globe filled with really nice people who just want to help others. Typically these people either can’t (or don’t feel comfortable) coding, and I’d love to harness some of that potential by adding a huge number of new application reviews to the ODRS. At the moment we have about 1100 reviews, mostly covering the more popular applications, and also mostly written in English.

      • Work Underway for GTK+ 4 Toolkit, Graphic Tablet Support Was Improved on Windows

        Emmanuele Bassi, senior software engineer at Endless and GNOME/GTK+ collaborator, reports today, November 28, 2016, on the work that happened this last week for the cross-platform and open-source GTK+ GUI toolkit.

        With 1551 lines added and 1998 lines removed, the master branch of GTK+ has seen 40 commits since Emmanuele Bassi’s last report, and it appears that the first GTK+ 4 development snapshot is now ready for public testing, versioned 3.89.1. According to the current GTK+ road map, all deprecated APIs have now been removed.

  • Distributions

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Developer Toolset 6 released

        On the one hand, businesses want the most stable operating systems. That’s why Red Hat has Red Hat Enterpise Linux (RHEL). On the other, developers want the newest and fastest development tools. That’s why Red Hat also puts out the community Fedora Linux distribution. But what if you want both? Red Hat has you covered with Red Hat Developer Toolset 6.

      • For HPC, Red Hat Offers Much More than just Linux

        In this video from SC16, Dan McGuan from Red Hat Inc. describes the company’s wide range of software offerings for the HPC market.

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Jose Bonilla: How do you Fedora?

          Bonilla first got involved in the Fedora community when he was studying for the RHCSA (Red Hat Certified System Administrator) exam. He felt using Fedora was the best way to prepare for the exam. “One criteria I use when choosing any open sourced software is to examine the community.” Jose looks at the number of users, forums, blog posts, and issue resolution all as part of the community. The Fedora community exceeds all his expectations.

          Jose would like to see more development of Cockpit. “I feel that web-based server administration tools are the future and perhaps the gateway for new interest in Linux administration.” Bonilla did not credit any single person for influencing his decision to contribute to Fedora. It was a “multitude of people and their stances,” he said. Bonilla commented that his “goal is to convince people, by example, that open source projects such as the Fedora Project are important and viable solutions to anyone’s computing needs.”

        • Where has puppet gone in EPEL-6 (and when will it be back?)
        • Abiword for EL-7

          Over Thanksgiving break, I decided to go through a long list of emails that were marked “when you have a spare moment”. I really didn’t have one but I realized that many of those emails were crufty and old. One was some people asking about getting abiword together for EL-7. This looked like a straightforward enough task so I got into it and started working out all the packages that would need to be branched to say EPEL and what would be needed to compile them.

    • Debian Family

      • The Systemd-Free Debian Fork Celebrates Its Second Birthday

        Devuan, the Debian fork that frees the system of systemd, is now two years old.

        Yesterday marked two years since the announcement of the systemd-free Debian fork, Devuan.

        Two years going, this Linux OS that aims for “Init Freedom” isn’t the most vibrant distribution out there. When’s the last time you’ve heard of Devuan or even used it yourself? This year much of the systemd “hate” seems to have calmed down compared to prior years, although new features continue to be tacked onto systemd. Here’s an interesting Google Trends comparison for those interested.

      • Debian with three monitors under low cost graphics interface

        Since 2008 I use two monitors in my desktop. Yesterday I bought a new graphics interface and a third monitor. Some time I was looking for a low cost graphics interface. Ok, I am using GeForce GT 740 which has three output ports: VGA, DVI and HDMI. In Brazil this interface card can be found around R$ 400 (US$ 117, but my card was US$ 87 in Brazilian Black Friday). In Amazon.com, it is between US$ 51 and US$ 109. The chosen manufacturer was Zotac, but all GT 740 and 750 will work fine (I tested the GT 750 too).

      • Derivatives

        • Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15 (Nev) and 8.10 (Erik) Get New Security Updates from Debian

          Today, November 27, 2016, the developers of the Debian-based Parsix GNU/Linux distribution announced the availability of new security updates for the Parsix GNU/Linux 8.10 “Erik” and 8.15 “Nev” releases.

          While the upcoming Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15 “Nev” release is still in the works, it gets the same security update as Parsix GNU/Linux 8.10 “Erik,” which are being ported from the upstream repositories of Debian GNU/Linux 8 “Jessie” (a.k.a. Debian Stable) to Parsix GNU/Linux’s own repos.

          It’s been a week since our previous report on the security updates pushed to the stable Parsix GNU/Linux repositories, and we’re seeing updated versions of the Vim text editor, Apache Tomcat 7 and 8 Java Servlet Containers, as well as Wireshark network protocol analyzer.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Canonical Announces the Availability of Ubuntu Advantage VG on AWS Marketplace

            Canonical, through Udi Nachmany, head of the Ubuntu Certified Public Cloud program, was proud to announce the availability for purchase of Ubuntu Advantage Virtual Guests on the AWS marketplace.

          • Mir is not only about Unity8

            Mir is a project to support the management applications on the display(s) of a computer. It can be compared to the more familiar X-Windows used on the current Ubuntu desktop (and many others). I’ll discuss some of the motivation for Mir below, but the point of this post is to clarify the relationship between Mir and Unity8.

          • Mir/Ubuntu Developer Talks Up Mir Outside Of Unity 8

            Most talk these days of Ubuntu’s Unity 8 next-gen desktop experience and their Mir display server goes hand-in-hand since the change-over is planned in-step before Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, but there’s a new Ubuntu Insights blog post up working to promote Mir as more than just tech for the Unity 8 desktop.

            Canonical engineer Alan Griffith has written a blog post today about Mir outside of Unity 8. Mir’s abstraction layer is providing libmiral.so as a stable library to Mir providing window manager, the miral-shell providing both traditional and tiling window manager, and miral-kiosk as a sample “kiosk” with basic window management.

          • What’s New in Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) – Overview

            Ubuntu 17.04, code named Zesty Zapus, is the future release that will succeed Ubuntu 16.10, and even though it’s End of life date has been scheduled for January 2018, the development team aims to bring a lot of upgrades, fixes, and additions in this release.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Maui 2.1 “Blue Tang” ISO Fixes Installer Issues, Includes Updated Packages

              It’s been almost a month since the Maui 2 “Blue Tang” Linux distro arrived based on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system and KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS desktop environment, and now the first ISO respin is here.

              Maui 2.1 is a refreshed installation medium for those who want to install the Ubuntu-based distribution on their personal computers, including various updated packages, but it mainly focuses on fixing various issues reported by users with the Calamares installer since Maui 2.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Productivity hacks: Optimizing your workflow with open source

    Communication with your team is key.

    For chat, IRC or Mattermost are great ways to stay in touch in real time. But chat can be a productivity killer if you feel like you have to be present at all times. Structure your day so that you only focus on necessary chat converstions; log off of chat when you need to focus on another task and set expectations with your team. Also, talk to your team about what types of things will be discussed on chat and what discussions are better for a different method, like a meeting.

    For meetings, talking with people in person can be necessary and very helpful for getting things done, but meetings can also be a time sink. Try to set them for only 30 minutes and stick to it. If you need more time, then take it as needed. If you set an agenda (try Etherpad for this), stick to it. Use your calendar to track your time—check out these open source Google calendar alternatives.

  • 15 JavaScript frameworks and libraries

    JavaScript’s open source stance is also one of the best. Contrary to popular belief, JavaScript is not a project, but a specification with an open standard where the language is evolved and maintained by its core team. ECMAScript, another fancy name of JavaScript, is not open source, but it too has an open standard.

    You can easily see evidence of JavaScript’s popularity when you look at both at GitHub. JavaScript is the top programming language when it comes to the number of repositories. Its prominance is also evident on Livecoding.tv, where members are diligently creating more videos on JavaScript than any other topic. At the time of this writing, the self-dubbed edutainment site hosts 45,919 JavaScript videos.

  • Yelp offers up Kafka tools to open source

    Yelp saved itself US$10 million by building out its Apache Kafka-based Data Pipeline, and now it wants to spread that love to other enterprises. Just before the holidays, Yelp open-sourced its Data Pipeline and assorted utilities used to maintain and build out this streaming data platform.

    Data Pipeline is now available on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license. Using Data Pipeline, developers can tie their applications into the constantly flowing stream of Kafka data. The company detailed this in a blog entry.

  • Nomulus: Google’s open-source TLD registry platform

    In mid-October, Google open-sourced the core software behind their TLD registry: Nomulus. This software allows creation and management of new top-level domains (TLDs) in the cloud, enabling current businesses in the Internet real-estate market to expand into the new, rapidly growing generic TLD (gTLD) space, as well as reducing the technological barrier for prospective newcomers.

    Nomulus provides a wealth of core features out of the box. Because it is designed to run on Google App Engine, Nomulus is cloud-based and can scale quickly and efficiently as domains leased increase in popularity and number of registrations or inquiries.

  • Contribute To Open Source On #OpenCyberMonday

    Today is Cyber Monday, the day when everyone in the US goes back to work after Thanksgiving. Cyber Monday is a celebration of consumerism, and the largest online shopping day of the year. Right now, hundreds of thousands of office workers are browsing Amazon for Christmas presents, while the black sheep of the office are on LiveLeak checking out this year’s Black Friday compartment syndrome compilations.

  • Pentaho’s Quentin Gallivan: Open-Source Framework, Analytics Tools Key to Agencies’ Data Integration Efforts

    Quentin Gallivan, CEO of Hitachi Data Systems’ Pentaho subsidiary, has said government agencies should develop a “centralized” plan that seeks to leverage the use of business analytics tools and an open-source framework like Hadoop in order to facilitate data integration and access.

    Gallivan wrote that agencies should adopt an open-source framework that includes governance practices on the use of data and works to support big data processing operations.

  • Bitcoin in 5 minutes

    Blockstream’s Eric Martindale opened his five-minute All Things Open lightning talk with a bold claim: “Bitcoin is one on the most significant innovations of our time.”

  • 3 alternative reasons why you should test Nextcloud 11 Beta

    On the Nextcloud blog I just published about the beta for Nextcloud 11. The release will deliver many improvements and is worth checking out in itself, plus I put a nice clickbait-style title and gave three reasons to test it.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • The Glass Room: Looking into Your Online Life

        It’s that time of year! The excitement of Black Friday carries into today – CyberMonday – the juxtaposition of the analog age and the digital age. Both days are fueled by media and retailers alike and are about shopping. And both days are heavily reliant on the things that we want, that we need and what we think others want and need. And, all of it is powered by the data about us as consumers. So, today – the day of electronic shopping – is the perfect day to provoke some deep thinking on how our digital lives impact our privacy and online security. How do we do this?

  • Databases

    • phpMyAdmin security issues

      You might wonder why there is so high number of phpMyAdmin security announcements this year. This situations has two main reasons and I will comment a bit on those.

      First of all we’ve got quite a lot of attention of people doing security reviews this year. It has all started with Mozilla SOS Fund funded audit. It has discovered few minor issues which were fixed in the 4.6.2 release. However this was really just the beginning of the story and the announcement has attracted quite some attention to us. In upcoming weeks the security@phpmyadmin.net mailbox was full of reports and we really struggled to handle such amount. Handling that amount actually lead to creating more formalized approach to handling them as we clearly were no longer able to deal with them based on email only. Anyway most work here was done by Emanuel Bronshtein, who is really looking at every piece of our code and giving useful tips to harden our code base and infrastructure.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Funding

    • Time is running out for NTP

      Everyone benefits from Network Time Protocol, but the project struggles to pay its sole maintainer or fund its various initiatives

    • KDE End of Year Fundraising

      Have you ever felt that you wanted to give back to the KDE project? As the season of giving draws near there’s never been a better time to support KDE and help the project continue to bring free software to millions of lives worldwide.

      By participating in the end of year fundraiser, you can help us in our mission. Your donations are used to pay for transport and accomodation for developers to attend sprints as well as to support the server infrastructure required to keep the project running.

  • C++

    • The Latest On C++17, Early Work For C++20

      There was a C++ standards meeting recently in Issaquah, Washington and a report on it is now available with the latest on C++17 and early work around what will form C++20.

      This meeting resulted in the C++17 committee draft as the first feature-complete draft of the C++17 specification.Various tweaks to the language and library were accepted at this meeting. C++17 remains on track for seeing its official spec out in 2017.

  • Licensing/Legal

    • From Concept to License: Stewarding Your Own Open Source Project

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

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Leftovers

  • Unhappy Thanksgiving in Valentina-Vlad-Nikky Family

    So today is Thanksgiving and I am writing this from the GlobalRev studio in New York, while my wife Nikky and my daughter Valentina are in Madrid. I was supposed to be on the 10pm flight to Madrid today, but it was not meant to be. Yesterday, I got a call from the passport office that my passport application is going through “administrative processing” and will be delayed in issuance.

    A day earlier, when i was submitting paperwork for a same day passport renewal, they canceled my existing passport, so now i don’t have a passport to be able to travel. I have been given no indication as to how long this “administrative processing” can take.

    [...]

    This culminated yesterday when i got that call from the passport office. I was having lunch with a friend in Union square when the call came in. The gentleman on the other side of the phone first verified my identity and then informed me that I will not be able to fly to Spain today because my passport is being held up for “administrative processing” and he has no information on when that will be done, but assured me he will call me whenever that happens.

  • Security

    • European Commission knocked offline by ‘large scale’ DDoS attack

      THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION (EC) was struck by a large-scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Thursday, bringing down its internet access for hours.

      The EC confirmed the attack to Politico, saying that while it did fall victim to a DDoS attack, no data breached was experienced.

      “No data breach has occurred,” a Commission spokesperson said. “The attack has so far been successfully stopped with no interruption of service, although connection speeds have been affected for a time.”

    • Overclocked Wearables Can Pick Up Bio-Acoustic Signals

      The sensors incorporated into wearables can sometimes be repurposed to perform tasks beyond their intended applications. For example, it’s been shown that it’s possible to discover a victim user’s passwords and PINs by applying a sophisticated algorithm to the data gathered by wearable embedded sensors.

      Recently, researchers at the Future Interfaces Group at Carnegie Mellon University have overclocked the accelerometer of an LG smartwatch to extend its capabilities to more than just tracking fitness. By overclocking the off-the-shelf smartwatch via some software updates, they can now detect and process very small vibrations and audio signals.

      The new technology, dubbed ViBand, can allow different apps to understand the context of your activities by capturing bio-acoustic signals.

    • The Economics of stealing a Tesla with a phone

      A few days ago there was a story about how to steal a Tesla by installing malware on the owner’s phone. If you look at the big picture view of this problem it’s not all that bad, but our security brains want to make a huge deal out of this. Now I’m not saying that Tesla shouldn’t fix this problem, especially since it’s going to be a trivial fix. What we want to think about is how all these working parts have to fit together. This is something we’re not very good at in the security universe; there can be one single horrible problem, but when we paint the full picture, it’s not what it seems.

    • Config fumble left Azure Red Hat Enterprise Linux wide open

      A software engineer setting up a secure Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machine in the cloud discovered a serious configuration flaw that could be exploited to upload arbitrary software packages to Microsoft Azure update infrastructure.

      Ian Duffy found Microsoft had configured the Red Hat Update Appliance used for Azure in such a way that an attacker could easily get access to the content delivery servers and upload packages that client virtual machines would acquire when updating.

      Duffy was able to bypass the username and password authentication on the content delivery server by running a log file collector application. Once completed, the log file collector provided a link to a downloadable compressed archive.

    • Azure bug bounty Root to storage account administrator

      In my previous blog post Azure bug bounty Pwning Red Hat Enterprise Linux I detailed how it was possible to get administrative access to the Red Hat Update Infrastructure consumed by Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machines booted from the Microsoft Azure Marketplace image. In theory, if exploited one could have gained root access to all virtual machines consuming the repositories by releasing an updated version of a common package and waiting for virtual machines to execute yum update.

    • How to add more entropy to improve cryptographic randomness on Linux

      If you have Linux servers that depend upon encryption, you owe it to yourself to beef up the system entropy. Here’s how to do so with haveged.

    • Security advisories for Monday
    • FutureVault Inc.’s FutureVault

      Though short of Mr Torvalds’ aim of world domination, FutureVault, Inc., has set the ambitious goal to “change the way business is done” with its FutureVault digital collaborative vault application. Described by its developer as “at the epicenter of a brand new disruptive category in the financial services world”, FutureVault allows users to deposit, store and manage important financial, legal and personal documents digitally by means of a white-label, cloud-based, SaaS platform.

    • Azure glitch allowed attackers to gain admin rights over hosted Red Hat Linux instances

      A VULNERABILITY in Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform could have been exploited by an attacker to gain admin rights to instances of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and storage accounts hosted on Azure.

    • Microsoft update servers leave Azure RHEL instances hackable
    • Microsoft update left Azure Linux virtual machines open to hacking
    • Microsoft Azure bug put Red Hat instances at risk
    • Microsoft update servers left all Azure RHEL instances hackable

      Microsoft has patched flaws that attackers could exploit to compromise all Azure Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) instances.

      Software engineer Ian Duffy found the flaws while building a secure RHEL image for Microsoft Azure. During that process he noticed an installation script Azure uses in its preconfigured RPM Package Manager contains build host information that allows attackers to find all four Red Hat Update Appliances which expose REST APIs over HTTPS.

      From there Duffy found a package labelled PrepareRHUI (Red Hat Update Infrastructure) that runs on all Azure RHEL boxes, and contains the rhui-monitor.cloud build host.

      Duffy accessed that host and found it had broken username and password authentication. This allowed him to access a backend log collector application which returned logs and configuration files along with a SSL certificate that granted full administrative access to the four Red Hat Update Appliances.

    • Deutsche Telekom Says Cyber Attack Hits 900,000 Customers

      Deutsche Telekom (DTEGY) , Europe’s largest, said it could have been a victim of a cyber attack as 900,000 fixed-line customers face a second consecutive day of outages.

      The Bonn, Germany-based company, which has 20 million fixed network customers, said 900,000 customers with specific routers have faced temporary problems and marked fluctuations in quality, with some also receiving no service at all. It added that the problems have occurred in a wide region, not in a specific area.

    • San Francisco’s Muni Hacked

      It seems that on Friday, right in the midst of busy Thanksgiving weekend holiday traffic, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency or Muni, was hit by hackers, forcing the system to offer Saturday free rides on the system’s light rail trains. The breach was apparently a ransomware attack, with the hackers demanding 100 Bitcoin, or approximately $73,000, to unencrypt the system.

      It all began when the words “You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted” appeared on Muni agents’ screens. It’s not known whether Muni paid the ransom, although that’s considered unlikely. Operations of the system’s vehicles were not affected.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Latest Wikileaks cover Three Mile Island and worried governments’ response to partial meltdown

      A deluge of 1979 U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks on Monday illustrate how intensely the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island grabbed the world’s attention and thrust the future of nuclear energy into question.

      Included in those communications are a series involving initial estimates of the human and environmental risks, as well as the response from world leaders to the unfolding crisis at the plant outside Harrisburg.

      In a cable sent from the U.S. Embassy in Brussels to Dublin, Ireland’s days after the March 28 incident, mounting interest from European officials is evident. All cables are unedited, but in some cases they’ve been clarified.

      “Mrs. Aston, along with several other officials concerned with nuclear power situations in the ec [European Community], called DOE [U.S. Department of Energy] representative at usec brussels early this morning to request all available information on the subject incident.”

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Saudi Arabia tells OPEC it won’t attend non-OPEC talks on Monday

      Top OPEC oil exporter Saudi Arabia has told the producer group it will not attend scheduled talks in Vienna on Monday with non-OPEC oil producers, OPEC sources said on Friday.

    • Officials suspect chronic wasting disease in Michigan deer

      State wildlife regulators say another deer in southern Michigan may have been found with chronic wasting disease.

      The Department of Natural Resources says a hunter shot the 1½-year-old buck last week in Clinton County’s Eagle Township and took it to a check station.

    • Indonesia Is Burning, So Why Is The World Looking Away?

      In what is said to be one of the greatest environmental disasters of the 21st century, vast parts of Indonesia are currently on fire, burning from forest fires due to a whole range of sub-standard environmental policies.

      Due to deforestation, the land is sparse, as canals have dried up and the rain forest is set on fire to be cleared for the building of plantations. Palm oil is one of the main reasons for the clearing of the rain forests.

  • Finance

    • Economy Minister Rehn insists PM had no conflict of interest in mine deal

      Outgoing Economic Affairs Minister Olli Rehn has come out in defence of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä following reports that an engineering company owned by the PM’s relatives won a lucrative contract from the taxpayer-funded Terrafame mine in eastern Finland. Rehn said he is “absolutely sure” that Sipilä had no knowledge that the company owned by his uncles and cousins had won a half-a-million-euro order from the former Talvivaara mine.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Electoral College must reject Trump unless he sells his business, top lawyers for Bush and Obama say

      Members of the Electoral College should not make Donald Trump the next president unless he sells his companies and puts the proceeds in a blind trust, according to the top ethics lawyers for the last two presidents.

      Richard Painter, Chief Ethics Counsel for George W. Bush, and Norman Eisen, Chief Ethics Counsel for Barack Obama, believe that if Trump continues to retain ownership over his sprawling business interests by the time the electors meet on December 19, they should reject Trump.

      In an email to ThinkProgress, Eisen explained that “the founders did not want any foreign payments to the president. Period.” This principle is enshrined in Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, which bars office holders from accepting “any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”

    • When is a recount a sham?

      Recounts provide a peaceful dispute mechanism to help ensure that elections will be free and fair and equal to all. But the mere act of having a recount is not what helps elections be free and fair. The recount must be accountable to the public and fully transparent.

      A recount doesn’t need a smoking gun, and never needs to be apologized for. Done correctly, recounts add validity to elections.

      There is a great deal at stake in any recount. Observers should not make assumptions that every recount is honest, or that every statement made by public officials is true. The purpose of observation is authentication, and this responsibility should be taken seriously.

    • False CNN-porn report shows how fast fake news spreads

      No, despite what you read, CNN did not run porn for 30 minutes last night, as was reported by Fox News, the New York Post,Variety and other news organizations, several of which later corrected their stories.

    • Trump dismisses Wisconsin recount drive as ‘scam’

      Republican President-elect Donald Trump has described an impending recount of votes in Wisconsin as a “scam”.

      Mr Trump, who narrowly won the state, said the results “should be respected instead of being challenged or abused”.

      Green Party candidate Jill Stein had initiated the recount. She also wants recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania, citing “statistical anomalies”.

      Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign has said it would participate in Wisconsin’s recount.

      Results would need to be overturned in all three states to alter the outcome of the 8 November presidential election.

    • Trump calls recount effort a ‘scam’

      President-elect Donald Trump blasted Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein on Saturday for pushing for a recount in several states, calling her efforts a “scam.”

      “This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing,” Trump said in a statement.

      Citing concerns that voting systems have been compromised, Stein filed for a recount in Wisconsin on Friday afternoon, and has been fundraising off her vow to do the same in Pennsylvania and Michigan — all states in which Trump won or is leading.

    • Donald Trump blasts Wisconsin recount effort a ‘scam’ and says election is over

      Donald Trump has blasted the recount effort launched last week by the Green Party in Wisconsin which on Saturday attracted the formal support also of Hillary Clinton.

      From his Palm Beach retreat in Florida, Mr Trump issued a lengthy rebuke of the initiative calling it “ridiculous” and a “scam” that had been launched purely to benefit the Green Party’s nominee, Jill Stein, and “fill her coffers with money”.

      So far Ms Stein has raised close to $6 million through crowdfunding to pay to petition for recounts of the election results in three states. The request for a recount was submitted to the election authorities in Wisconsin on Friday. If she reaches her goal of raising $7 million in total she will be able to make similar filings to Pennsylvania and Michigan next week.

    • Paul Levy Discovers Head Of Reputation Management Company Signed Off On Forged/Fraudulent Court Docs

      As a result of a federal judge in Rhode Island taking a second look at an order he hastily granted earlier, Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen has been able to confirm Richart Ruddie — the head of an extremely-sketchy reputation management company — signed off on the forged and fraudulent documents delivered to the court. The documents — a bogus lawsuit featuring the forged signatures of both the plaintiff and the defendant — are apparently just part of Profile Defenders’ reputation management work.

      Nice work if you can get [away with] it. File a bogus lawsuit. “Locate” a bogus defendant. Produce a signed admission of guilt and ask the judge to order search engines to delist the offending content. Cash checks. Repeat until caught.

      Richart Ruddie has been caught.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • A Media Blacklist, Courtesy of WaPo: Now I’m Afraid for Our Democracy

      So: Clinton lost because Russia wanted Trump to win because Trump will favor Russia so Russia created fake news which influenced over 62 million Americans to overlook Trump’s flaws and vote for him. Got it.

      Proof? Stuff on Facebook. Main source of that proof? A group of unknown origin, financing, and makeup (“an independent team of concerned American citizens”) called PropOrNot, i.e., propaganda or not. The group also “strongly suspects that some of the individuals involved have violated the Espionage Act, the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and other related laws.”

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Privacy Activists Urge Obama To Trump-Proof the NSA Before Leaving

      Terrified of Donald Trump gaining access to the world’s most powerful spy apparatus, a growing coalition of civil liberties activists, companies, and individuals are calling for President Obama to enact emergency NSA reforms before leaving office.

      Many take cues from former National Security Agency systems analyst Edward Snowden, who, after stealing a cache of documents to give to the press in 2013, warned of a surveillance apparatus so powerful it would enable “turnkey tyranny” if inherited by a president inclined to abuse it.

      And more than any major party candidate in recent memory, Trump has shaken opponents with outright promises to abuse executive power, like proposing to register all American Muslims in a database and spy on them without a warrant. He has a history of wanting to spy, too: A number of sources have previously claimed Trump would listen in on his guests’ phone calls at his Mar-A-Largo resort.

    • The NSA spy fortress in the middle of New York City

      The Intercept has published a fascinating, and eerie, investigation into the iconic Brutalist tower at 33 Thomas Street in Manhattan. Built to withstand a nuclear bomb, the modern fortress has no windows.

    • “A disaster waiting to happen”: Can you trust the government to digitise your personal data?

      Last week, the government’s Digital Economy Bill hit the news because of a proposed ban on pornographic websites that didn’t comply with its planned age verification rules. The news was just the right amount of shocking and yes, sexy, to grab the nation’s attention, but in the meantime other parts of the Bill remained unscrutinised. A distinctly un-sexy aspect of the Bill – Part 5, “Digital Government” – aims to completely revolutionise the way your personal data is shared.

      In essence, Part 5 allows the government to digitise your data and bulk-share it without informing you or asking for your permission. This data includes your birth, death, and marriage certificates, as well as information on your taxes, court appearances, benefits, student loans, and even parking tickets. If the Bill passes, your information will be shared with local councils, charities, and even businesses – initially, gas and electricity companies.

    • Petition against ‘most extreme’ new spying laws receives enough signatures to force parliament to consider debate

      More than 100,000 people have asked Parliament to repeal new spying laws, forcing MPs to consider debating them. But they are likely to block any further discussion of the hugely controversial bill.

      A petition focusing the Investigatory Powers Bill criticises the new surveillance laws, arguing that they allow authorities “unprecedented levels of power” and that they must be revoked. It had received 120,000 signatures at the time of publication, meaning that Parliament must consider it for debate.

    • EULF Guidelines for public administrations on location privacy now published

      Public administrations increasingly use location data to deliver public services such as location-enabled tools, apps for tourists, toll collection services or cadastral web applications. Location data such as addresses, GPS coordinates or camera images is key to many public services and can also be linked to all sorts of other data, generating new information that was not available before. Despite the increase consumption of location data, its potential to reveal personal information is often underestimated, especially in comparison to other sensitive data, for instance in the financial and health domains.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • A Dakota pipeline’s last stand

      In the Dakota language, the word “oahe” signifies “a place to stand on.”

      And that’s what the Standing Rock Sioux and its allies in the environmental and activist movements say they are doing: using Lake Oahe in North Dakota as a place to take a stand by setting up camps and obstructing roads to block the controversial $3.7 billion Dakota Access pipeline.

      Their confrontations with police — who have responded with water cannons, pepper spray and rubber bullets — have steered attention to the 1,170-mile-long oil pipeline project and its owner, Energy Transfer Partners. But the real source of Native Americans’ grievance stretches back more than a century, to the original government incursions on their tribal lands. And those earlier disputes over their rights to the land, like the one over the Dakota Access pipeline, pitted the tribes against a persistent force, the Army Corps of Engineers.

    • Amid a media blackout of the Standing Rock protests, law enforcement targets the rare journalists on the scene

      Unicorn Riot is a media collective that formed in response to the lack of media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Tar Sands Blockade; their news comes direct from the front lines of some of the most significant and under-reported conflicts in the world, in the form of unedited livestreams from the conflict zone, and edited highlight reels after the fact.

      Unicorn Riot’s reporters are among the most targeted by Morton County Sheriff’s Deputies — the same law enforcement officers whom Unicorn Riot have outed for the sadistic use of water-canons in subzero temperatures and of firing tear gas cannisters directly into the protesters’ crowds, activities the deputies lied about when they denied doing either.

      The Morton County cops say that because Unicorn Riot has a point of view, they are protesters, not reporters (this is the same argument they used when they fabricated charges against Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman in October). This is wrong on its face: protesting is a thing you do, not a thing you believe. As Unicorn Riot’s Lorenzo Serna says, “I’m not participating. I’m not building the barricade. I’m not pushing off against the police. I’m not going to pray at the water ceremony. I’m literally there observing.”

      Discriminatory policing against journalists based on their political beliefs raises significant First Amendment questions, and they will only get more grave: the rise of crowdfunded, independent media; the decline of commercial, traditional news organizations; the practice of blacking out coverage of significant protests; and the coming, press-hostile, human-rights-hostile Trump years will put police and journalists into more conflict than ever.

    • Shariah laws already affect non-Muslims, SIS says

      Politicians’ argument that Shariah laws do not affect non-Muslims is disproved by existing interfaith custody battles, the Sisters in Islam group said today when urging the rejection of a Bill to enhance Shariah punishments.

      Citing the cases of M. Indira Gandhi and S. Deepa who both underwent high-profile custody battles with Muslim convert ex-spouses, SIS said this was just one of many reasons not to “bulldoze” through PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang’s private member’s Bill.

      “While proponents of RUU355 insist that the Bill will not affect non-Muslims, reality shows that existing syariah laws are already impacting non-Muslims in Malaysia,” the group said.

    • Gang shootings start weekend in Malmö and Gothenburg

      At around 7pm on Friday evening a 20-year-old man was shot in Biskopsgården, a district of Gothenburg long plagued by gang violence. Then at 2am on Saturday morning, a man in his mid-to-late 30s was shot inside a club in Norra Grängesbergsgatan, a Malmö street known for its illegal nightclubs.

    • Thai Computer Crime Law Raises Rights Concerns

      Amendments to Thailand’s controversial Computer Crime Act were debated in parliament this week, with rights groups expressing concerns that the law will bolster government efforts to restrict online freedoms and spy on users.

      The 2007 legislation was originally created to stop spam, identity fraud, hacking and other computer-related offenses.

      However, there are fears the military junta will use these new amendments to help in its bid to suppress dissent in the country, which it often does by using the ancient lese-majeste law forbidding criticism of the Royal Family.

      The proposed amendments, seen by Reuters, include articles 18 and 19 which say the authorities can grab user and traffic data from service providers without court approval, as well as demand computer devices from users.

      Article 20, meanwhile, apparently states that any website deemed to threaten national security or “offend people’s good morals” can be removed or suspended.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • On Eve Of WIPO Traditional Knowledge Negotiations, Nations Swap Experiences

      A seminar was organised by the World Intellectual Property Organization to provide a discussion platform on the eve of this week’s meeting on the protection of traditional knowledge, and as a way for countries to share systems of protection. Panellists presented views on possible graduated protection for different sorts of traditional knowledge.

    • Copyrights

      • EU Council Agrees To Remove Geo-Blocking Barriers To E-Commerce

        The European Union Council of member states today agreed on draft regulations to prevent blocking of cross-border e-commerce, but appears to retain copyright restrictions.

        “Geo-blocking is a discriminatory practice that prevents online customers from accessing and purchasing products or services from a website based in another member state,” the Council explained in a press release. The draft regulation will form the common position to start negotiations with the European Parliament and Commission, it said.

      • Book Review: Copyright Beyond Law

        This Kat was very excited when she heard about “Copyright Beyond Law: Regulating Creativity in the Graffiti Subculture” by Mart Iljadica with Bloomsbury Press. The perfect opportunity to top up her hipster street art card with some proper knowledge.

        The book begins with a notice that there are no images contained within the text, precisely because the author argues that graffiti is copyright protected. Iljadica invites readers to explore street art on their own (N.B. For London-based IPKat readers, I highly recommend the Alternative London walking tours near Liverpool St.) The book’s focus is instead on the creative process of graffiti making.

      • EU law forbids the resale of non-original tangible copies of computer programmes

        Last month the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued its decision in Microsoft, a reference for a preliminary ruling from Latvia concerning the principle of digital exhaustion as applied to computer programmes.

      • Streaming Cyberlockers ‘Hate’ Pirate Kodi Add-Ons

        Million of people use Kodi as their main source of entertainment, often with help from add-ons that allow them to access pirated movies and TV-shows. While these tools are a blessing for many, the streaming cyberlockers that provide the videos see the add-ons as a major threat to their business.

      • Hosting Companies Dragged into Piracy Lawsuit Alongside Cloudflare

        A lawsuit that accuses Cloudflare of providing services to alleged ‘pirate’ sites has been expanded. In an amended complaint, adult outfit ALS Scan now seeks to hold hosting providers OVH and Steadfast Networks liable for infringement, alongside operators and affiliates of several image hosting sites.

11.27.16

Links 27/11/2016: Linux 4.8.11, Linux 4.4.35, and Distrowatch Rankings

Posted in News Roundup at 4:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Riot releases end-to-end encryption: get ready to chat securely!

    End-to-end encryption gives users true privacy, preventing anyone else from eavesdropping on conversations — even the very communications services they’re using. This is incredibly important for a decentralised ecosystem like Matrix on which Riot is built, where data can span across many different servers, and users should not have to trust any of those servers.

    End-to-end encryption is also a real differentiating feature from most other popular collaboration apps whose business models fundamentally rely on being able to read, analyse and profile your conversations.

  • Progress update for AtCore.

    A few days ago we hit a milestone in our development of AtCore. We are now able to properly install the libary for general use. Not only is installing a necessary for a libary that you plan to use within other stuff it also means that we can now focus our attention mostly on Atelier. We have now entered that magical time in development when the real world usage begins to drive its development. Thanks to everyone efforts we are almost ready for the next stage. Patrick has been doing reviews on every pull request. While he has been unable to help with as many commits as he would have liked to. His advice and direction in his reviews has been really helpful and has kept our style and code quality at a high level. Tomaz has been busy fixing up AtCore to be a proper KF5 libary with all the cmake deployment parts to go along with it. Most all of the cmake stuff has been written by Tomaz. Lays has been working on Atelier setup and getting all the non AtCore parts working. Thanks to her effort we are now able to use Atcore from Atelier!

    As for me i have been adding stuff to AtCore. Since our last progress update a few new things have been added. Emergency Stop this simply allows you to stop the printer using the emergency stop code.It also cleans up any the command queue. Pause/Resume when paused we store the current location of the head that that way after resume you can move your print head out of the way to access the model.Pause supports a comma seperated string of commands to be sent after pause. For my printer i use “G91,G0 Z1,G90,G1 X0 Y195″ when pause this move my head up 1 mm and then pushes my model out toward the front fo the machine. This is useful if you want to maybe put a nut into printed part or change filament durring print and even to corrrect print defects while printing. We have also started to do lay ground work for more status info being picked out from the serial chatter. Setting of the firmware plugin can be done durring connect to force a specific plugin. A progress bar for printing progress. Some cleanup for autodetection of the plugin. There is still things to add to AtCore but it should provide enough for most use cases already!

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • NoScript is multi-process compatible now

        NoScript, the one must have add-on for Firefox if you ask me, has received an update recently that introduces full multi-process compatibility (e10s).

      • Firefox will only support WebExtensions by the end of 2017

        Mozilla announced a far reaching change coming to the organization’s Firefox web browser in late 2017.

        The organization plans to cut support of all extension technologies but the rather new WebExtensions when Firefox 57 Stable is released.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Funding

    • Money in Open Source, and How Needle & Thread Will Be Profitable

      Money is one of the most difficult subjects to talk about when it comes to open source projects. It’s a basic fundamental truth that all open source projects need money to operate, and while open source software provides a plethora of benefits, I don’t think any reasonable person would tell you that a steady stream of income is one of them. Lots of people and organizations have presented different ideas and undertaken different experiments to try and maximize the amount of money coming in, while at the same time remaining open, fair, and accessible.

  • BSD

    • DragonFlyBSD Works On EFI Runtime ABI Support, But Still Experimental

      The next release of DragonFlyBSD will feature better EFI support.

      DragonFly lead developer Matthew Dillon has landed EFI runtime ABI support that was ported over from the FreeBSD code-base.

      This EFI runtime ABI support allows for querying and setting the time, scanning EFI BIOS variables, and more. This code was ported from FreeBSD but with various changes for DragonFlyBSD’s different kernel interfaces.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Tear the wrapping paper off the 2016 Ethical Tech Giving Guide

      Electronics are popular gifts for the holidays, but people often overlook the restrictions that manufacturers slip under the wrapping paper. From surveillance to harsh rules about copying and sharing, some gifts take more than they give.

      The good news is that there are ethical companies making better devices that your loved ones can enjoy with freedom and privacy. Today, we’re launching the 2016 Giving Guide, your key to smarter and more ethical tech gifts.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Programming/Development

    • [Older] Samsung Joins the Eclipse Foundation

      We are proud to announce that Samsung has joined the Eclipse Foundation. The Eclipse Foundation is the leading open source organization whose projects are focused on building an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools, and runtimes for building, deploying, and managing software across the lifecycle. In tandem with Eclipse’s mission, Samsung provides an open and interoperable platform for IoT development through the Samsung ARTIK Smart IoT Platform.

    • How To Start Learning A Programming Language

      Have you ever wonder how everything works? From Smartphones Operating Systems to even each and every Linux Distro and every Operating System created by Microsoft and Apple. How does it play my favorite music? How does it save my files to the cloud? How does actually everything works? All this questions are answered with one big bolded and all capital “PROGRAMMING”.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Mars Ice Deposit Holds as Much Water as Lake Superior

      rozen beneath a region of cracked and pitted plains on Mars lies about as much water as what’s in Lake Superior, largest of the Great Lakes, researchers using NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have determined.

      Scientists examined part of Mars’ Utopia Planitia region, in the mid-northern latitudes, with the orbiter’s ground-penetrating Shallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument. Analyses of data from more than 600 overhead passes with the onboard radar instrument reveal a deposit more extensive in area than the state of New Mexico. The deposit ranges in thickness from about 260 feet (80 meters) to about 560 feet (170 meters), with a composition that’s 50 to 85 percent water ice, mixed with dust or larger rocky particles.

      At the latitude of this deposit — about halfway from the equator to the pole — water ice cannot persist on the surface of Mars today. It sublimes into water vapor in the planet’s thin, dry atmosphere. The Utopia deposit is shielded from the atmosphere by a soil covering estimated to be about 3 to 33 feet (1 to 10 meters) thick.

      “This deposit probably formed as snowfall accumulating into an ice sheet mixed with dust during a period in Mars history when the planet’s axis was more tilted than it is today,” said Cassie Stuurman of the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas, Austin. She is the lead author of a report in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

  • Hardware

    • AMD may launch next-generation Zen processors on January 17

      The latest rumor surrounding AMD’s upcoming and much-hyped Zen architecture has it slated for a launch on January 17. Purportedly the first chips to be released will be high-end desktop components, with their initial unveiling coming a week earlier at the CES event in Las Vegas.

  • Security

    • Azure bug bounty Pwning Red Hat Enterprise Linux

      Acquired administrator level access to all of the Microsoft Azure managed Red Hat Update Infrastructure that supplies all the packages for all Red Hat Enterprise Linux instances booted from the Azure marketplace.

    • pledge(2) … or, how I learned to love web application sandboxing

      I use application-level sandboxing a lot because I make mistakes a lot; and when writing web applications, the price of making mistakes is very dear. In the early 2000s, that meant using systrace(4) on OpenBSD and NetBSD. Then it was seccomp(2) (followed by libseccomp(3)) on Linux. Then there was capsicum(4) on FreeBSD and sandbox_init(3) on Mac OS X.

    • [Older] Why is Apache Vulnerable by Default?

      Apache is the most popular web server on Earth, with a market share of 46.4% — well above Nginx (21.8%) and Microsoft IIS (9.8%). Thanks to Linux package managers like Yum and APT you can install and get it up and running in minutes. The core installation even features powerful modules for URL rewriting, user authentication, and more.

    • [Re]discovering/correcting a ThinkPad supervisor password crack

      Don’t believe it? I didn’t either; it never worked for me. It turns out that’s only because the contemporary instructions for how to do it are wrong, or rather, they’ve mutated into a form that only works on some machines. As originally discovered, the hack reliably unlocks any* ThinkPad up to and including the Ivy Bridge models.

  • Finance

11.26.16

Links 26/11/2016: VLC 360, Wine 1.9.23

Posted in News Roundup at 2:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Microsoft & Linux & Patents & Tweets [Ed: Microsoft Loves Linux Patent Tax]

    Fact-checking some tweets about Linux Foundation’s newest member and their harvesting of other members’ money.

    [...]

    The revenue Microsoft gains comes a range of targets than can be colloquially called “Linux” with varying qualification. That includes embedded Linux and things that use it such as Android and shared SMB filesystems as well as Linux as a server and things that use it. Again, identifying the ratio of income per usage is impossible for anyone outside Microsoft (and probably for most people inside).

    Certainly the range of patents Microsoft is known to be attempting to monetise includes a broad range of functions. The best list I have found appears to have been inadvertently published by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce in 2014. But licensing activity is certainly not limited to Android; Microsoft also targets ChromeOS, Linux servers, Linux in consumer devices (each of those is a sample; there are plenty of other press releases) and much of the Android licensing actually appears to related to xFAT filesystem interoperability as in the Tom Tom case.

  • Desktop

    • Meet Pinebook, A Low Cost Linux Laptop That Looks Like A MacBook

      PineBook is a budget laptop running an Allwinner quad-core 64-bit processor. The device comes in two screen sizes both of them having 2GB RAM and 16GB eMMC storage along various ports and connectivity options. PineBook supports a number of Linux distros and Android versions.

    • Meet the Pinebook, a $89 ARM Laptop That Runs Ubuntu

      The Pine64 Pinebook is an ARM laptop priced from $89. It can run Android, ChromiumOS and various flavours of Linux, including Ubuntu.

    • Light and Thin 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook
    • The 12 Most Ridiculous Windows Errors of All Time

      Computers and humans are so different. While computers are infinitely faster at processing information, they run into trouble if they try to stray from their course. These “fast idiots” contrast to people, who can’t think as fast as machines but can adapt much more easily.

      These relations have produced some hilarious situations where novice users failed to grasp the basics of using Windows. On the other side of this are error messages. When a computer runs into an unexpected scenario, it usually throws up a message box for the user to review.

  • Server

    • Japan plans 130-petaflops China-beating number-crunching supercomputer

      Like 498 out of the top 500 systems, Japan’s 27 supercomputers in the Top 500 list all run Linux, and it is highly likely the new system will do so as well. It is not yet known who will construct the system for the Japanese government—bidding for the project is open until December 8.

  • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • RadeonSI’s Gallium3D Driver Performance Has Improved Massively In The Past Year

        As some more exciting benchmarks to carry out this US holiday week, here are benchmarks of all major Mesa releases from Mesa 11.0 from mid 2015 through the latest Mesa 13.1-dev code as of this week. Additionally, the latest AMDGPU-PRO numbers are provided too for easy comparison of how the open-source AMD GCN 3D driver performance has evolved over the past year. It’s a huge difference!

      • LLVM 4.0 Causes Slow Performance For RadeonSI?

        Several times in the past few weeks I’ve heard Phoronix readers claim the LLVM 4.0 SVN code causes “slow performance” or has rendering issues. Yet it’s gone on for weeks and I haven’t seen such myself, so I decided to run some definitive tests at least for the OpenGL games most relevant to our benchmarking here.

      • It Looks Like We’ll Still See A GUI Control Panel For AMD Linux

        Earlier this year I exclusively reported on the “Radeon Settings” GUI control panel may be open-sourced for AMD Linux users but since then I hadn’t heard anything publicly or privately about getting this graphics driver control panel on Linux for AMDGPU-PRO and the fully-open AMDGPU stack. But it looks like that it’s still being worked on internally at AMD.

      • Yet More AMDGPU DAL Patches This Week For Testing

        It had been a few weeks since last seeing any new enablement patches for AMD’s DAL display abstraction layer code, which is a big requirement for HDMI/DP audio, HDMI 2.0, potential FreeSync support, and also needed for next-generation GPUs. The lack of fresh DAL patches changed though this week when new patches were sent out and already another round of revising to this display code has now been mailed out for review.

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

      • An Everyday Linux User Review Of Q4OS 1.8

        Q4OS is fairly straight forward to get to grips with and it runs like a dream.

        When I tried it last year it was on a much older machine and really worked well. On this machine it performs magnificently.

        The Windows look and feel might not be to everybody’s taste especially the use of “My Documents” and “My Pictures” etc but you can easily rename them.

        The desktop environment is Trinity and it lacks certain features such as window snapping.

        I haven’t tried Q4OS out with my NAS drive or printer and other hardware yet but I did last time around and it had no issues so I suspect it will be the same this time. I will update you in the next blog post about this. I will also update you as to whether Steam works or not.

        As with last time around I can’t really fault Q4OS on anything. Well I suppoes there are a couple of things that could be improved such as dual booting and the network manager should be installed by default as the one that comes with Q4OS is a bit inconsistent.

        After just a couple of hours effort I had Q4OS installed with every application I need including PyCharm. I am now able to listen to music, watch films, surf the web, write software, edit documents, read and send mail, use DropBox, use Skype and play games.

        Q4OS also comes with WINE which is useful for running Windows software.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia 5 Support Extension and General Update

        With the delays to Mageia 6 and the approaching initial end of life (EOL) for Mageia 5 (initially planned for early December), we felt that it would be good to give an update on where things were with both Mageia 5 and 6.

        Firstly, every release so far has been supported until 3 months after the next release, and Mageia 5 will be no different. Since Mageia 6 is being delayed, Mageia 5’s support is automatically extended in order to give users 3 months to upgrade before Mageia 5 stops receiving security updates.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • Red Hat Family

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Korora 25 Upgrades, Mageia 6 Delays, Gift Ideas

          The Korora project announced a bit of good news for user waiting for the latest release while Mageia users will have to continue to wait. opensource.com published a gift buying guide for Open Source fans and it looks like the netbook is back is back. Gary Newell reviewed Q4OS 1.8 and makeuseof.com today reminded us of why we use Linux.

        • Impatient for Korora 25?

          We are busy preparing Korora 25 ‘Gurgle’ for release but those who already have Korora 64 bit 24 or 23 installations don’t have to wait.

        • Running Fedora 25 Design Suite on ASUS X550ZE laptop
        • Summary report on FUDCon APAC, Phnom Penh

          This year FUDCon APAC happened in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for two days 5th and 6th of November. This FUDCon happened as part of bigger conference called as BarCamp, ASEAN 2016. This BarCamp happened at Norton university from 4th to 6th November.

          On the first day of this BarCamp/FUDCon when we reach to the venue, we found it to be very nice place, full of people like students, volunteers, banners of BarCamp everywhere. It was a five floor building and the inauguration talk happened at the top 5th floor where all the honourable guests including Brian Exelbierd, Fedora Community Action and Impact Coordinator talked about FOSS.

        • Upgraded to Fedora 25

          Generally I used to upgrade after the Alpha releases, but this time I decided to wait till the final release. Reason: just being lazy. The other point is of course the nightly cloud images, which I am using for a long time.

          Before I upgraded my laptop, the first step was to sync the gold release of Everything repo, and then the updates repo for x86_84. The Everything repo is around 55GB, and the updates was 14GB+ when I synced. After I managed to get the local mirror at home fully synced, I upgraded using dnf system-upgrade.

    • Debian Family

      • Starting the faster, more secure APT 1.4 series

        We just released the first beta of APT 1.4 to Debian unstable (beta here means that we don’t know any other big stuff to add to it, but are still open to further extensions). This is the release series that will be released with Debian stretch, Ubuntu zesty, and possibly Ubuntu zesty+1 (if the Debian freeze takes a very long time, even zesty+2 is possible). It should reach the master archive in a few hours, and your mirrors shortly after that.

      • Debian package build tools

        When I was first introduced to Debian packaging, people recommended I use pbuilder. Given how complex the toolchain is in the pbuilder case, I don’t understand why that is (was?) a common recommendation.

      • vmdebootstrap Sprint Report

        This is now a little overdue, but here it is. On the 10th and 11th of November, the second vmdebootstrap sprint took place. Lars Wirzenius (liw), Ana Custura (ana_c) and myself were present. liw focussed on the core of vmdebootstrap, where he sketched out what the future of vmdebootstrap may look like. He documented this in a mailing list post and also presented (video).

        Ana and myself worked on live-wrapper, which uses vmdebootstrap internally for the squashfs generation. I worked on improving logging, using a better method for getting paths within the image, enabling generation of Packages and Release files for the image archive and also made the images installable (live-wrapper 0.5 onwards will include an installer by default).

      • Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata

        Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian installation system, observing how using eatmydata could speed up the installation quite a bit. My testing measured speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around 1000 packages from within the installer. The eatmydata package provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing. This is a bit risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a machine crashes at an inconvenient time. But for an installation, if the machine crashes during installation the process is normally restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed up the process make perfect sense.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Deepstream: an Open-source Server for Building Realtime Apps

    Realtime apps are getting really popular, but they’re also hard to build. Wolfram Hempel introduces deepstream, an open-source server he co-founded to make data-sync, request-response and publish-subscribe a whole lot easier.

  • Open Source Email Marketing with phpList

    Email marketing has been exploding in popularity. You might have heard of the likes of MailChimp and Emma advertising the use of their services to send a whole bunch of messages for prospects and profit. The number of ways to promote goods online is forever growing, and research shows emails are still the most effective. I like to compare it with the “desktop is dead” myth; while mobile is on the rise, desktop is here to stay. I believe the same about email.

    Having said that, it’s no surprise that the number of services competing in the field have mushroomed in recent years, capitalising on demand from firms of all sizes to get access to that most personal of places, the email inbox.

    While big brand proprietary platforms and their sponsorship deals have been busy establishing themselves, an Open Source alternative has been minding its own business, making regular releases and accumulating a committed base of users since the year 2000. Enter phpList, the email marketing app you can run yourself without paying for messages, subscribers, or additional features.

  • 3 alternative reasons why you should test Nextcloud 11 Beta

    And many of the folks about to be put in power by President-elect Trump favor more spying, including on US citizens, expansion of the NSA, a crackdown on whistleblowers and more. Trump’s pick for CIA director calls for Snowden’s execution. For, what I can only guess must be giving proof of illegal government spying to dangerous terrorists like the Washington Post and the Guardian, who proceeded to win a Pulitzer prize by disclosing this information irresponsibly to the US public.

  • Mickey Mouse Open Source, Close Call at WordPress, and More…

    These days we’re seeing a lot of companies that aren’t officially in the software business releasing code developed in-house for internal use under open source licenses. You can now add Disney to that list, which includes Capital One, Walmart and others.

    This was pointed out on Wednesday by InfoWorld’s Paul Krill, who notes that in addition to Mickey Mouse, Pinocchio and Nemo, the company has given us advanced image projects such as OpenEXR, as well as DevOps tools for the Mac, such as Munki. More information on Disney’s open source projects can be found on its GitHub page.

  • Plans Unveiled for R3s Corda to Move to Open Source

    Head over to corda.net on November 30 for links to the codebase, simple sample applications and a tutorial to get started writing your own CorDapps.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • How to Get Certified for Top Open Source Platforms and Applications

      The cloud computing and Big Data scenes are absolutely flooded with talk of shortages in people with deployment and management expertise. There just are not enough skilled workers to go around. The OpenStack Foundation, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and other organizations are now taking some important steps to address the situation.

      As 2017 approaches, here are some of the best ways to get certified for the open source cloud and Big Data tools that are makng a difference.

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

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • More Offloading Code Hits GCC Mainline For Both HSA & NVPTX

      For those following GCC’s offloading capabilities to devices like GPUs, more work continued being mainline this week. We are onto stage 3 development of GCC 7 but items that were still being reviewed at that time are still being allowed to land. It looks like in 2017 we may finally see more GCC support come to reality when it comes to AMD HSA support and OpenMP / OpenACC offloading to NVIDIA GPUs.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Data

      • Dutch Drecht cities published first batch of open datasets

        The Drecht cities (Drechtsteden), a collaboration of six municipalities in the delta region of the Netherlands, have published a first batch of open datasets. The data has been made available on several public open government data platforms. It includes information on complaints, monumental trees, groundwater levels, monuments, playgrounds, dumpsters, and real estate values. More datasets will follow in the near future.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Sweden publishes report on ‘The Social Contract in Digital Times’

      Last month, the Swedish Digitalisation Commission (Digitaliseringskommissionen) published a theme report on ‘The Social Contract in Digital Times’. The report comprises a collection of articles contributed by a dozen authors working in academia, science and innovation.

      The report highlights social issues such as the meaning of equality for the individual.
      Welfare, healthcare and education, for example, can be provided in new, more personalised ways. What can and should be the State’s commitment in this setting, and what rights and obligations should the individual have?

    • Two new planets for neuroscientists

      Those that have been around the free and open source community will already know what planets are. They’re web pages that aggregate feeds from various sources – usually community members’ blogs. There are quite a few around and I follow a few myself – Planet Fedora, Planet GNOME, and Planet Mozilla, for example. They’re extremely useful to keep onesself up to date with the happenings in the communities.

      So, I’ve gone ahead and set up two new planet instances to aggregate information from a myriad of neuroscience sources. The first is Planet neuroscience. The feeds this one aggregates are all from peer reviewed journals. So, pure research on this one. It’s one long list of new publications.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Tens of thousands of children at risk of starvation in Nigeria crisis

      More than 120,000 people, most of them children, are at risk of starving to death next year in areas of Nigeria affected by the Boko Haram insurgency, the United Nations is warning.

      Intense fighting in parts of Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon has left more than 2 million people displaced, farmers unable to harvest their crops and aid groups unable to reach isolated communities. One small state in Nigeria has more displaced people than the entire refugee influx that arrived in Europe last year.

  • Security

    • Friday’s security updates
    • Linux hardening: a 15-step checklist for a secure Linux server [Ed: paywall]

      Most people assume Linux is secure, and that’s a false assumption. Imagine your laptop is stolen without first being hardened. A thief would probably assume your username is “root” and your password is “toor” since that’s the default password on Kali and most people continue to use it. Do you? I hope not.

    • Homeland Security Issues ‘Strategic Principles’ For Securing The Internet Of Broken Things

      For much of the last year, we’ve noted how the rush to connect everything from toasters to refrigerators to the internet — without adequate (ok, any) security safeguards — has resulted in a security, privacy and public safety crisis. At first, the fact that everything from Barbies to tea kettles were now hackable was kind of funny. But in the wake of the realization that these hacked devices are contributing to massive new DDoS botnet attacks (on top of just leaking your data or exposing you to hacks) the conversation has quickly turned serious.

      Security researchers have been noting for a while that it’s only a matter of time before the internet-of-not-so-smart-things contributes to human fatalities, potentially on a significant scale if necessary infrastructure is attacked. As such, the Department of Homeland Security recently released what they called “strategic principles” for securing the Internet of Things; an apparent attempt to get the conversation started with industry on how best to avoid a dumb device cyber apocalypse.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Analysis: Why Sweden is giving an award to the ‘White Helmets’?

      Sweden did not succeed in getting Bob Dylan to come to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Nevertheless as a consolation the “White Helmets” did arrive to get the Right Livelihood Award.

      This article examines a likely geopolitical rationale that the Swedish elites had for selecting that organization. Also, facts suggest a congruence between the stances of those elites on Syria and the declared political aims of the organization White Helmets. The reviewing of the institutions involved in the award-decision and process can also result relevant in pondering the reason for the event. Finally, to inquire into the role of Carl Bildt, as member of the board of directors in the institution ultimately deciding, is interesting against the backdrop of his opposition regarding the participation of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden in previous international events organized by the same institutions –all of them under the umbrella of the Swedish Foreign Office.

    • Obama administration expands elite military unit’s powers to hunt foreign fighters globally

      The Obama administration is giving the elite Joint Special Operations Command — the same organization that helped kill Osama bin Laden in a 2011 raid by Navy SEALs — expanded power to track, plan and potentially launch attacks on terrorist cells around the globe, a move driven by concerns of a dispersed terrorist threat as Islamic State militants are driven from strongholds in Iraq and Syria, U.S. officials said.

      The missions could occur well beyond the battlefields of places like Iraq, Syria and Libya where Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has carried out clandestine operations in the past. When finalized, it will elevate JSOC from being a highly-valued strike tool used by regional military commands to leading a new multiagency intelligence and action force. Known as the “Counter-External Operations Task Force,” the group will be designed to take JSOC’s targeting model — honed over the last 15 years of conflict — and export it globally to go after terrorist networks plotting attacks against the West.

    • How Donald Trump responded to Fidel Castro’s death

      Trump came under intense scrutiny in September following allegations that he knowingly violated the U.S. Cuban embargo in the 1990s, news that threatened to sour Cuban-Americans’ opinion of him.

      A Newsweek story said the now-president elect spent $68,000 to send business consultants to Cuba despite the embargo. Trump Hotels reimbursed Seven Arrows Investment & Development Corp. shortly after Trump launched his bid for the White House.

    • Fidel Castro dies at 90

      Cuban leader Fidel Castro has died at age 90, his brother Raul announced on state television in the early morning hours Saturday.

      Raul Castro made a brief TV statement around 12:30 a.m. Eastern.

      “It is with great pain I come to inform our country, friends of our America, and the world that today, Nov. 25, 2016 at 10:29 p.m., the commander in chief of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, died,” he said.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Setting the World to Rights

      Julian is very aware of the persistent rumours about his position or health. He is fine apart from a cold, and buoyed by recent events.

    • Readers choose Assange over Trump as Time’s Person of the Year

      Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has overtaken President-elect Donald Trump for the lead in the online poll that allowed Time magazine readers to choose who the next person of the year should be.

      As of 1:00 pm (eastern time) on Monday, Assange and Trump were deadlocked with 9 per cent of all the “yes” votes cast by participants, but Assange pulled ahead to 10 per cent shortly after noon, Time reported.

      Wikileaks made headlines regularly during 2016 presidential election by releasing information, including leaked internal Democratic National Committee correspondence and messages from the account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Arctic ice melt could trigger uncontrollable climate change at global level

      Arctic scientists have warned that the increasingly rapid melting of the ice cap risks triggering 19 “tipping points” in the region that could have catastrophic consequences around the globe.

      The Arctic Resilience Report found that the effects of Arctic warming could be felt as far away as the Indian Ocean, in a stark warning that changes in the region could cause uncontrollable climate change at a global level.

    • Despite tough talk, Indonesia’s government is struggling to stem deforestation

      TEGUH, chief of the village of Henda, in the Indonesian portion of Borneo, enters his office brimming with apologies for being late. The acrid scent of smoke wafts from his clothes. He explains that he was guiding police and firefighters to a fire just outside the village. A farmer had decided to clear his land by burning it. Henda sits amid Borneo’s vast peatlands; the fire had set the fertile soil smouldering for nearly 24 hours. It was a small fire, he says—perhaps a couple of hectares—but Mr Teguh still struggled to contain his exasperation, given the destruction wrought by fires set for land-clearance just a year ago.

      Last year, in the autumn for the most part, at least 2.6m hectares of Indonesia’s forests burned—an area the size of Sicily. The fires blanketed much of South-East Asia in a noxious haze and released a vast plume of greenhouse gases. Much of the island’s interior was reduced to sickly scrub; along its roads stand skeletal trees, reproachful witnesses to the ravages they endured. Indonesia’s forest fires alone emitted more greenhouse gases in just three weeks last year than Germany did over the whole year. The World Bank estimates that they cost Indonesia $16bn in losses to forestry, agriculture, tourism and other industries. The haze sickened hundreds of thousands across the region, and according to one study, hastened over 100,000 deaths.

    • Scientists Across the World Are Nervous About Trump, Survey Says

      With Donald Trump set to step into the Oval Office this January, we’ve reported before that scientists are concerned his policies could mean an attack on America’s scientific prowess and integrity.

      In fact, 72 percent of scientists surveyed in a recent worldwide poll said the results of the election would have a negative impact on research and science in the US. The survey was conducted by the Science Advisory Board, a panel of over 75,000 doctors, researchers, and scientific experts. It polled 3,289 scientists from every continent, except Antarctica. Of the American scientists, 85 percent said they voted for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and about 10 percent said they voted for Trump.

    • Health Canada proposes ban on pesticide linked to bee deaths

      Canada’s health regulator is planning to ban a controversial neonicotinoid pesticide, which it says has contaminated waterways and killed important aquatic insects.

    • Feds move to ban common neonicotinoid insecticide, say use ‘not sustainable’

      The federal government is moving to phase out a common neonicotinoid insecticide after finding that it accumulates in waterways and harms aquatic insects.

      Health Canada has announced a 90-day public consultation period on imidacloprid, which is used on everything from cereals, grains, pulses and oilseeds to forestry woodlots and flea infestations on pets.

      Neonicotinoids as a class of pesticides have come under heavy scrutiny in recent years for their potential impact on bee populations.

  • Finance

    • TiSA-Leaks: Fundamental rights shall be levered out for free trade – also in the internet

      Today we publish new TiSA documents in cooperation with Greenpeace which have been kept secret until now. The „Trade in Services Agreement“ is a proposed trade treaty for services between 23 Parties, including the EU and the United States.

      The new leaks include the Annexes about Electronic Commerce and Telecommunications Services. Those will have a noticeable impact on net politics in the EU. They point to negative effects on data protection, net neutrality, freedom of speech and IT security.

      If the EU does not manage to defend its positions and grovels to the interests of industry lobbyists it will become unreliable and show that it prefers trade to fundamental rights.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Wisconsin is preparing to recount election votes after receiving petition from Jill Stein

      True to her word, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein filed for an election recount in the state of Wisconsin this afternoon, just 90 minutes before the deadline to file, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The move comes after Stein raised over $5 million through a fundraising effort to cover the cost of recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan — three key battleground states that helped Donald Trump gain the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the election. Trump won Wisconsin by a margin of just over 25,000 votes.

    • Trump election: Wisconsin prepares for vote recount

      Officials in Wisconsin are preparing to conduct a full recount of the votes from the US election in the state, which was narrowly won by Donald Trump.

      A formal request for the recount was filed by the Green Party’s Jill Stein.

      Dr Stein, the Green Party’s candidate, has also pledged to file for recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

      The result would need to be overturned in all three states to change the outcome of the election, something analysts say is highly unlikely.

      Dr Jill Stein reportedly wants to make sure computer hackers did not skew the poll in favour of Mr Trump.

    • Wisconsin to recount presidential votes

      Wisconsin will undertake a recount of its presidential election votes after two requests from third-party candidates.

      Green Party nominee Jill Stein filed her request just before the deadline Friday afternoon, the Wisconsin Elections Commission announced. Reform Party candidate Rocky De La Fuente also filed for a recount.

      “We are standing up for an election system that we can trust; for voting systems that respect and encourage our vote, and make it possible for all of us to exercise our constitutional right to vote,” Stein said in a statement.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Now Reddit is ‘censoring the alt-right’ after founder got fed up of being called a PAEDO

      THE CHIEF executive of Reddit has admitted to anonymously editing posts that were critical of him – changing them to refer to president-elect Donald Trump instead.

      Steve Huffman, posting under his username Spez on the discussion forum, told users that he was sick of being constantly called a paedophile in their discussions on the site.

    • Internet, a Double-Edged Sword Stained With Fake News and Censorship [Ed: The problem isn’t “fake news” but people not knowing how to validate news based on reputation of sources]

      By AsiaToday reporter Kim Eun-young – The Internet has created a new landscape of social change as an outlet for open communication. However, it also threatens Millennials with false information and censorship.

      Both Google and Facebook announced on Nov. 15 that they will ban fake news sites from using their ad networks to prevent the spread of false information, AFP reported. The shift comes as they face a backlash over the role they played in the U.S. presidential election by allowing the spread of false information supporting a particular candidate that might have contributed to the outcome of the election.

    • China Uses US Concern Over Fake News To Push For More Control Of The Internet

      In the context of this sentence, “reward” and “punish” both sound like they have the same definition. Unless the government official is hinting that those spreading fake news stories more aligned with the government’s aims will be given… something for their assistance in pushing the party line.

      The United States has long been looked to as a free speech ideal, something other countries can strive for in their own governance. But countries opposed to those ideals are watching much more closely, looking for anything that belies the ideals the US government claims to hold dear. So, when President Obama suggests fake news is an actual threat to democracy, countries like China are going to use this to justify further control of citizens’ communications and stricter regulation of news sources — for the “good of the nation.”

    • Election Prompts More Aggressive Twitter Censorship

      And according to some conservatives whose accounts have been suspended, Twitter has looked the other way when it comes to those on the Left who have bullied conservatives. An example discovered by USA Today was a California college student, Ariana Rowlands, who said she received personal attacks and death threats after Tweeting about her pride in her Hispanic heritage and her support for Trump. She said she reported the posts, but Twitter did nothing about the abusive account holders.

    • Gambia: Ahead of polls, digital media skirt censorship

      While state media in Gambia is government controlled and the private media practices self-censorship, political opponents of the small West African country’s strongman President Yahya Jammeh are using digital media to bypass the hurdles they face in reaching audiences.

      Gambians are heading to presidential polls next week, on Dec. 1, and campaigns are already in motion, with the incumbent facing his former ally and a coalition of seven opposition parties.

    • Major Journalism Trade Unions Stand with Sputnik Against Censorship

      Sputnik News Agency and Radio Broadcaster has received the support of both the International Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) following the passing of a controversial resolution by the European Parliament.

    • Nataliya Rostova: In Russia’s media, censorship is silent

      The idea of conducting a survey of Russian journalists came to me after seeing something similar in New York magazine, which earlier this year polled 113 people working in the US media on the problems and challenges they face. I thought it’d be interesting to compare the responses of journalists working on opposite sides of the Atlantic. On the one hand, you have the experience of a country where every schoolchild feels pride in the First Amendment, which forbids Congress to pass any legislation limiting freedom of speech and the press, and, on the other, experience from a country where censorship was officially banned only 26 years ago.

    • Will new censorship kill Chinese filmmaking?

      China’s new film censorship laws would, at first blush, be enough to make a director cry.

      Movies must not promote gambling, superstition, drug abuse, violence nor teach criminal methods. What’s more they should “serve the people and socialism”. The horror!

      So will this mean the end of great Chinese cinema and the drowning of dwindling audiences in sea of dull, paternalistic fare?

      Not necessarily.

    • Dodgy Age Verification And Censorship Are Not The Answer

      Open Rights Group has got to know a disastrous policy when it sees it. Back in 2010, during the last Digital Economy Bill, music companies demanded that people be cut off the Internet after “three strikes” if they were accused of file sharing.

      Even then, it was clear that this was a disproportionate response that wouldn’t bring any of the supposed benefits.

      “Three strikes” and disconnection was never put into action. It crashed and burned, and everyone does their best to forget it.

      Now, I am experiencing a strong sense of déja vu. The new incarnation of the Digital Economy Bill starts with a real concern, that children can access pornography online, and puts forward a ‘modest proposal”. This is a deserving group whose interests are indisputably important.

    • Brazilian Activists Outsmart Facebook’s Censorship of the Female Nipple

      Gradually this has been challenged in Brazil, with many feminist movements doing marches attended by many women who, in protest against hypersexualization and shaming of women’s bodies, bare their chests in public. This has been accompanied by increased frustration with Facebook and Instagram’s Community Standards, which allow specific non-sexual images of women’s nipples (they make exceptions for breast feeding and post-mastectomy photos), but not others. They also allow some images of graphic violence, such as photos of people who have been tortured. Hypersexualized images of female breasts are also considered appropriate (as long as the nipple is not clearly visible), while photos including women’s nipples ranging from indigenous ceremonies in Australia to campaigns against breast cancer are prohibited.

    • Facebook doesn’t need to ban fake news to fight it

      Mark Zuckerberg’s social media site doesn’t have to become a censor to help tackle false stories. It can do a lot by helping its own users with context

    • On Blacklists and Russia ‘Hacking’ American Democracy
    • MacWorld, PCWorld Kill Site Comments Because They ‘Value And Welcome Feedback’

      For a while now the trend du jour in online media is to not only block your readers from making news story comments, but to insult their intelligence by claiming this muzzling is driven by a deep-rooted love of community and conversation. NPR, for example, muted its entire readership because, it claimed, it “adored reader relationships.” Reuters and Recode, in contrast, prevented their own users from speaking on site thanks to a never-ending dedication to “conversation.” Motherboard similarly banned all on-site reader feedback because it greatly “values discussion.”

      There’s a number of reasons to ban comments, but few if any have anything to do with giving a damn about your community. Most websites, writers and editors simply don’t want to spend the time or money to moderate trolls or cultivate local community because it takes a little effort, and quality human discourse can’t be monetized on a pie chart. Instead, it’s easier and cheaper to simply outsource all public human interactivity to Facebook. In addition to being simpler, it avoids the added pitfalls of a public comment section where corrections to your story errors are posted a little too visibly.

    • Will Facebook’s China Censorship Tool Work?
    • Facebook ‘quietly developing censorship tool’ for China
    • Facebook is ready to censor posts in China — should users around the world be worried?
    • Court (Again) Tosses Lawsuit Seeking To Hold Twitter Accountable For ISIS Terrorism
    • The 5 Worst Places To Be An Internet User In Southeast Asia
    • Top 10 Countries With Highest Internet Censorship in 2016
    • ‘It’s like they were selling heroin to schoolkids’: censorship hits booksellers at Kuwait book fair

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Microsoft gives third-parties access to Windows 10 Telemetry data

      Microsoft struck a deal with security company FireEye recently according to a report on Australian news magazin Arn which gives FireEye access to all Windows 10 Telemetry data.

    • European Union wants to regulate cryptography?

      Regulating cryptography is of course a bad idea. It’s true that cryptography can be an obstacle for collecting digital evidence. Generally, that’s one of the aims of cryptographic methods: make it difficult to obtain plain-text data. It can be used for the good, as well as for the bad, as with many other tools or technologies. But it’s unclear if policy makers can achieve reasonable regulatory frameworks. And the stakes are high. Weakening cryptography would ultimately lead to far reaching negative impact on digital markets, society, trust, cybersecurity and privacy.
      Intentional weakening of cryptography and security solutions – whether by requiring weaker algorithms or key sizes, or introducing backdoors – in order to make life easier for local law enforcement agencies means that criminals and foreign powers will also benefit from those measures.
      Good cryptography is strong cryptography.

    • Edward Snowden’s extradition lawsuit is rejected by Norway’s Supreme Court

      Norway’s Supreme Court has rejected Edward Snowden’s attempt to win free passage to visit the country and receive an award for free speech.

      Mr Snowden, who currently resides in Russia, copied and leaked thousands of classified NSA documents in 2013, revealing the scale of US government surveillance after the 9/11 attacks.

      In April, the 33-year-old took Norway to court in an attempt secure free passage, through Oslo’s District Court, an appeals court and finally the country’s Supreme Court.

    • Edward Snowden loses Norway safe passage case

      Edward Snowden’s bid to guarantee that he would not be extradited to the US if he visited Norway has been rejected by the Norwegian supreme court.

      The former National Security Agency contractor filed the lawsuit in April, attempting to secure safe passage to Norway to pick up a free speech award.

      It had already been rejected by Oslo District court and an appeals court.

      Mr Snowden is a former NSA analyst who leaked secret US surveillance details three years ago.

      As a result, he is facing charges in the US which could put him in prison for up to 30 years.

    • Twitter Says Its API Can’t Be Used For Surveillance, But What Does It Think The FBI’s Going To Do With It?

      Dataminr, the company whose Twitter firehose access has become somewhat of cause celebre on both sides of the privacy fence, is back in the news. After being told it couldn’t sell this access to government agencies for surveillance purposes, Dataminr had to disconnect the CIA from its 500 million tweets-per-day faucet.

      Twitter was pretty specific about what this buffed-up API could and could not be used for. The CIA’s surveillance efforts were on the “Don’t” list. This rejection of the CIA’s access was linked to existing Twitter policies — policies often enforced inconsistently or belatedly. What the CIA had access to was public tweets from public accounts — something accessible to anyone on the web, albeit with a better front-end for managing the flow and an API roughly 100x more robust than those made available to the general public.

    • Here’s how to delete yourself from the internet – at the click of a button

      In our smartphone-obsessed digital age, we effectively live our entire lives online, which makes us increasingly vulnerable to unseen threats.

      Cyber crime, fraud and identity theft are exponentially growing concerns. Our personal lives, locations, and increasingly our passwords are made public online for anyone to find.

      If the highly invasive Investigatory Powers Bill (AKA the Snooper’s Charter) isn’t blocked, then every single digital move you make will be recorded for up to 12 months.

    • Germany planning to ‘massively’ limit privacy rights

      A draft law released by the German union for data protection (DVD) this week revealed that the interior ministry was proposing to drastically limit the powers of Germany’s data protection authorities, banning them from investigating suspected breaches of people’s medical and legal records.

      As well as expanding video surveillance with facial recognition software, the bill would limit the government’s own data protection commissioners to checking that the technical prerequisites are in place to ensure that doctors’ and lawyers’ files are secure, but it stops them from following up when citizens report concerns that their data has been leaked.

      The bill would also shut down citizens’ right to know what data is being collected about them – even by private firms, if releasing that information would “seriously endanger” a company’s “business purposes,” the SZ quoted the draft as saying. Thilo Weichert, former data protection commissioner for the state of Schleswig-Holstein and now DVD board member, condemned de Maiziere’s plans as a “massive” erosion of privacy in Germany.

    • Donald Trump’s national security chief ‘took money from Putin and Erdogan’, says former NSA employee

      A former NSA employee has accused Donald Trump’s selection for National Security Advisor of taking money from both Russia and Turkey and of breaching information security regulations.

      John Schindler said Michael Flynn, who Mr Trump has nominated for the senior post, had taken money from the governments of Vladimir Putin and Recep Erdogan. Mr Schindler claimed on Twitter that Mr Trump would be a “hypocrite” if he stood by his nomination of the former general given his promise to “drain the swamp” of Washington.

      “Flynn took money from Putin & Erdoğan AND he broke important INFOSEC laws+regs,” he said. “If Trump stands by him now, he is a monstrous hypocrite.”

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Bill Introduced To Push Back Approval Of DOJ’s Proposed Rule 41 Changes

      In addition, the DOJ wants permission to break into “compromised” computers and poke around inside them without the permission or knowledge of the owners of these computers. It also wants to treat anything that anonymizes internet users or hides their locations to be presumed acts of a guilty mind. The stripping of jurisdictional limits not only grants the FBI worldwide access for digital seizures and searches, but also encourages it to go venue shopping for judicial rubber stamps.

    • Jakarta’s violent identity crisis: behind the vilification of Chinese-Indonesians

      Before Jakarta, there was Batavia, the 17th-century capital city of the Dutch East Indies, built with the skill of just a few hundred ethnic Chinese artisans who had settled as traders along the shore.

      How little has changed.

      Many big projects in modern day Jakarta, a city of more than 10 million, have been built by developers from the minority group, the descendants of the original merchants and other Chinese who have arrived since.

      Chinese-Indonesians – estimated to make up 1% to 4% of the country’s 250 million people – have had an impact on Jakarta which is vastly disproportionate to their physical numbers. The economic success of the group’s small elite has led to repeated bouts of resentment, discrimination and even violent assaults.

    • Dozens injured, hundreds arrested in riot at Bulgaria refugee camp

      Around 1,500 migrants have rioted in Bulgaria’s largest refugee camp, triggering clashes that left two dozen police injured and prompted the arrest of hundreds of protesters, officials said.

      “Around 300 migrants, six of them considered a threat to national security, have been arrested,” Prime Minister Boyko Borissov told BNR public radio after visiting the camp in early hours of Friday.

      He added that 24 police officers and two migrants had been injured and that the situation had been brought under control.

    • Migrants Clash With Police in Bulgaria; 200 Detained

      Police detained 200 migrants after they clashed with police at a refugee camp in southern Bulgaria on Thursday, injuring several officers.

    • President Erdogan: I will open gates for migrants to enter Europe if EU blocks membership talks

      President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned Turkey could open its border for refugees to stream into Europe after EU MEPs voted for a temporary halt to membership talks.

      Speaking at a congress on womens’ justice in Istanbul, the president warned: “If you go any further, these border gates will be opened. Neither me nor my people will be affected by these dry threats. It wouldn’t matter if all of you approved the vote”.

      He said the EU had “wailed” for help controlling the flow of refugees and migrants in 2015 and the bloc worried what would happen if Turkey opened its borders. Mr Erdogan made specific reference to Turkey’s main border crossing with EU member Bulgaria.

    • North Dakota Pipeline camp prepares for winter with donations
    • Islamic banking is the another name of destruction of civilization through Economic Jihad.

      Islamic banking traces its roots to the 1920s, but did not start until the late 1970s, and owes much of its foundation to the Islamist doctrine of two people: Indian-born Abul Ala Maududi of the Jamaat-e-Islami and Hassan al-Banna of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. While these two pillars of the Pan-Islamist movement propagated jihad and war against the West, they also recognised the role international financial institutions could play in carrying out their political objectives.

    • Hacker who helped expose Ohio rape case pleads guilty, faces more prison time than rapists

      Earlier this week, Deric Lostutter, 29, known online as “KYAnonymous,” pleaded guilty in federal court in Kentucky to one count of conspiracy and one count of making false statements to law enforcement agents for his hack of the Steubenville (Ohio) High School football fan website Roll Red Roll in December 2012.

      Lostutter has said he hacked into the site to expose information about the gang rape of an unconscious teenage girl from West Virginia by members of the football team. Two of those team members, Trent Mays and Malik Richmond, were eventually sentenced to serve time — two years and one year, respectively — in a juvenile detention center for rape and kidnap.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Amended TRIPS Agreement Close To Ratification, Says WTO’s Azevêdo

      For Roberto Azevêdo, director general of the World Trade Organization, an amendment to the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement that affects access to pharmaceuticals for developing countries remains a priority of the WTO.

      It was witnessed this week by Benin, which signed up to an amendment to the agreement this week in Geneva, joining several other nations that have signed in 2016.

    • Copyrights

      • Court Freezes Megaupload’s MPAA and RIAA Lawsuits

        A federal court in Virginia has granted Megaupload’s request to place the cases filed by the music and movie companies on hold until April next year, while the criminal case remains pending. Meanwhile, Megaupload is working hard to ensure that critical evidence on decaying hard drives is preserved.

      • $1bn Getty Images Public Domain Photograph Dispute is Over

        Earlier this year, photographer Carol Highsmith received a $120 settlement demand from Getty Images after she used one of her own public domain images on her website. Highsmith responded with a $1bn lawsuit but after a few short months the case is all over, with neither side a clear winner.

11.25.16

Links 25/11/2016: Pinebook, Games Sales

Posted in News Roundup at 10:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Groovy, an Open Source Success Story

    Apache Groovy is a multi-faceted general purpose programming language for the Java platform. While primarily an object-oriented language with many dynamic language features, it also supports functional programming, static type checking and static compilation. This article looks at some interesting aspects of Groovy’s history and some of the significant guiding principles which help keep it a vibrant open source project.

  • The Conventions of Contributing to Open Source

    We all love using open source, right? I have done my fair share of contributing to open source, mainly through small contributions here and there. I’ve tried to open source some libraries in the past, with varying levels of success and failure. I would say I am somewhere in the middle on the Contributor’s Spectrum. There are those that do much more and those that do much less.

  • How Open Sourcing Bootstrap Made It Huge

    Teaching and learning from each other and building awesome stuff as a result of open communication and collaboration lie at the heart of the open source philosophy. Bootstrap certainly stands out as one of the most successful instances of the open source approach, which has made it what it is today.

  • Love the Amazon Echo? Meet these 3 open source projects

    But where does open source fit into the picture? Is voice-controlled, connected future destined to be forever dominated by a few proprietary choices of custom-built hardware/software combinations that are essentially black boxes to their users? We hope not!

    In fact, there are a few open source tools for voice control out there already, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the field grows as the technology becomes more pervasive. Looking for a weekend project? Check out a few of these options.

  • FreeDOS 1.2 Release Candidate 2

    We started FreeDOS in 1994 to create a free and open source version of DOS that anyone could use. We’ve been slow to make new releases, but DOS isn’t exactly a moving target anymore. New versions of FreeDOS are mostly about updating the software and making FreeDOS more modern. We made our first Alpha release in 1994, and our first Beta in 1998. In 2006, we finally released FreeDOS 1.0, and updated to FreeDOS 1.1 in 2012. And all these years later, it’s exciting to see so many people using FreeDOS in 2016.

  • FreeDOS 1.2 RC2 Arrives, Still Evolving After 22 Years

    The second release candidate of FreeDOS 1.2 is now available, approximately one month after FreeDOS 1.2-RC1 and twenty-two years after the FreeDOS open-source project began.

  • 10 holiday gift ideas for open source enthusiasts

    It’s that time of year again! Our amazing community members shared some of their favorite open-source-related products and gifts with us, and we’ve pulled together some of the best for our annual holiday gift guide.

    Kick off the holiday shopping season by checking out these 10 great gifts for open source enthusiasts. While you’re at it, don’t forget to enter our Holiday Gift Guide Giveaway for a chance to win your very own LulzBot Mini 3D printer.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice contributor interview: Leif Lodahl

      Until September 1st I was working as project manager and business developer in the company Magenta. From September 1st I’m working as IT architect at City of Ballerup (Ballerup Municipality). My work for (and with) LibreOffice has, until recently, been both professional and in my spare time.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Leftovers

  • Huge fire hits Manchester’s Chinatown

    Fire has ripped through a building in Manchester’s Chinatown, yards from the quarter’s imperial arch.

    The huge blaze began at about 2.15am and threatened to cause disruption as shoppers head out to grab Black Friday deals.

    A fleet of fire engines sent to tackle the flames illuminated the decorative gateway at the peak of the blaze and blocked city centre roads.

  • Fire breaks out in Manchester Chinatown

    The blaze began at about 02:15 GMT at a building on Nicholas Street and lit up the Chinatown arch at its peak, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue said.

  • Security

    • Hackers attack European Commission

      The European Commission was the victim of a “large scale” cyberattack Thursday, a spokesperson said.

      “The attack has so far been successfully stopped with no interruption of service, although connection speeds have been affected for a time. No data breach has occurred,” the spokesperson said.

    • 8 Books Security Pros Should Read

      Calling all infosec pros: What are the best books in your security library?

      On a second thought, let’s take a step back. A better question may be: Do you have a security library at all? If not, why?

      Security professionals have countless blogs, videos, and podcasts to stay updated on rapidly changing news and trends. Books, on the other hand, are valuable resources for diving into a specific area of security to build knowledge and broaden your expertise.

      Because the security industry is so complex, it’s impossible to cram everything there is to know in a single tome. Authors generally focus their works on single topics including cryptography, network security modeling, and security assessment.

      Consider one of the reads on this list of recommendations, Threat Modeling: Designing for Security. This book is based on the idea that while all security pros model threats, few have developed expertise in the area.

    • DoD Opens .Mil to Legal Hacking, Within Limits

      Security researchers are often reluctant to report programming flaws or security holes they’ve stumbled upon for fear that the vulnerable organization might instead decide to shoot the messenger and pursue hacking charges.

      But on Nov. 21, the DoD sought to clear up any ambiguity on that front for the military’s substantial online presence, creating both a centralized place to report cybersecurity flaws across the dot-mil space as well as a legal safe harbor (and the prospect of public recognition) for researchers who abide by a few ground rules.

    • Data breach law ‘will create corporate awareness’

      The introduction of a data breach law requiring disclosure of consumer data leaks is important because it will make big corporates aware they need to be transparent about their state of security, the head of a big cyber-security firm says.

      Guy Eilon, the country manager of Forcepoint, was commenting on the speech made by Dan Tehan, the minister assisting the prime minister on cyber security, on Wednesday.

    • US Navy breach: 130,000 soldiers at risk after HPE contractor hacked [iophk: "MS, possibly MS sharepoint?"]

      The Navy has acknowledged the breach and said it was made aware of the incident after being notified that a laptop belonging to an employee of Navy contractor Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) was compromised by hackers.

    • US Navy warns 134,000 sailors of data breach after HPE laptop is compromised

      Sailors whose details have been compromised are being notified by phone, letter, and e-mail, the Navy said. “For those affected by this incident, the Navy is working to provide further details on what happened, and is reviewing credit monitoring service options for affected sailors.”

    • Personal data for more than 130,000 sailors stolen, admits US Navy

      A spokesman for Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services, said: “This event has been reported to the Navy and because this is an ongoing investigation, HPE will not be commenting further out of respect for the privacy of our Navy personnel.”

    • Riseup’s Canary Has Died

      Popular provider of web tools for activists and anarchists and backbone of much infrastructure for internet freedom, Riseup.net has almost certainly been issued a gag order by the US government.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Haifa fires: Tens of thousands of Israelis flee city

      Tens of thousands of Israelis have been fleeing wildfires in the northern city of Haifa, with the prime minister warning that any proof of arson would be treated as “terrorism”.

    • Israel fires: Tens of thousands flee as fires hit Haifa

      “Every fire that was the result of arson or incitement to arson is terror in every way and we’ll treat it as such,” he was quoted by Haaretz newspaper as saying.

      “Anyone who tries to burn parts of the state of Israel will be severely punished.”

      Police chief Roni Alsheich said that if fires had been started deliberately it was “safe to assume… it is politically-motivated”.

    • Haifa fire overcome but others rage elsewhere in Israel

      Israeli firefighters on Friday reined in a blaze that had spread across the country’s third-largest city of Haifa and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes, but continued to battle more than a dozen other fires around the country for the fourth day in a row.

      Some 60,000 have yet to return to their homes as police forces and firefighting units were still heavily deployed in the Haifa area for fear that the fire could be reignited due to the rare dry, windy weather.

      Though no serious injuries were caused, several dozen people were hospitalized for smoke inhalation. Hundreds of homes were damaged and in a rare move, Israel on Thursday called up military reservists to join overstretched police and firefighters and made use of an international fleet of firefighting aircraft sent by several countries.
      Firefighters work in Haifa, Israel, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2016. A raging wildfire ripped through parts of Israel’s third-largest city on Thursday, forcing tens …

    • One by One, ISIS Social Media Experts Are Killed as Result of F.B.I. Program

      In the summer of 2015, armed American drones over eastern Syria stalked Junaid Hussain, an influential hacker and recruiter for the Islamic State.

      For weeks, Mr. Hussain was careful to keep his young stepson by his side, and the drones held their fire. But late one night, Mr. Hussain left an internet cafe alone, and minutes later a Hellfire missile killed him as he walked between two buildings in Raqqa, Syria, the Islamic State’s de facto capital.

    • Arms Sales To Saudi Arabia: The Kingdom Hires A Powerful Former Lawmaker To Lobby Trump White House And Congress

      Saudi Arabia just added another heavyweight to its already formidable team of lobbyists: former California Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon. The longtime GOP lawmaker isn’t any ordinary lobbyist. Between 2011 and 2015, he was the chair of the powerful House Armed Services Committee, which oversees the Department of Defense and its multibillion dollar foreign-military sales program to Saudi Arabia. According to data from the Center for Responsive politics, McKeon was among the top five recipients of defense contractor money in the U.S. House of Representatives.

    • UK rejects MPs’ calls to stop arms sales to Saudis

      The UK government has rejected calls by lawmakers to temporarily stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the Kingdom’s war crimes in Yemen.

      Britain has signed off £3.3 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia since March 26, 2015, when it launched a war in Yemen in order to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to Saudi-backed former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • London Calling: When Sweden Finally Questioned Assange

      On Tuesday 15 Sweden undertook questioning of Assange, the session lasting until the late afternoon. With a new statement provided by Assange and Sweden developing their enquiries based on the information Julian has given, in full cooperation, it is unclear at this point if the Preliminary Investigation has concluded or whether further visits from Sweden are planned. Pressure should be applied to the Swedish prosecutors to act swiftly in either scenario. It should be remembered the the initial investigation of the allegation against Assange was closed by the Stockholm area prosecutor in just 5 days on the basis “that evidence did not disclose any offence”. It is imperative that Ny either makes a formal charge or closes the investigation without further delay.

    • WikiLeaks releases The Yemen Files.

      The Yemen Files are a collection of over 500 documents from the United States embassy in Sana’a, Yemen. Comprising of over 200 emails and 300 PDFs, the collection details official documents and correspondence pertaining to the Office for Military Cooperation (OMC) located at the US embassy. The collection spans the period from 2009 until just before the war in Yemen broke out in earnest during March 2015. This time covers both Hillary Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (2009-2013) and the first two years of Secretary John Kerry.

    • WikiLeaks Releases Documents Evidencing US Arming Yemeni Forces Ahead of War

      WikiLeaks released on Friday more than 500 documents from the United States embassy in Yemen, offering documentary evidence of Washington arming, training and funding of Yemeni forces ahead of the war.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Finland set to become first country to ban coal use for energy

      Finland could become the first country to ditch coal for good. As part of a new energy and climate strategy due to be announced tomorrow, the government is considering banning the burning of coal for energy by 2030.

      “Basically, coal would disappear from the Finnish market,” says Peter Lund, a researcher at Aalto University, and chair of the energy programme at the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council.

      The groundwork for the ban already seems to be in place. Coal use has been steadily declining in Finland since 2011, and the nation heavily invested in renewable energy in 2012, leading to a near doubling of wind power capacity the following year. It also poured a further €80 million into renewable power this past February.

    • Arctic ice melt could trigger uncontrollable climate change at global level

      Arctic scientists have warned that the increasingly rapid melting of the ice cap risks triggering 19 “tipping points” in the region that could have catastrophic consequences around the globe.

      The Arctic Resilience Report found that the effects of Arctic warming could be felt as far away as the Indian Ocean, in a stark warning that changes in the region could cause uncontrollable climate change at a global level.

      Temperatures in the Arctic are currently about 20C above what would be expected for the time of year, which scientists describe as “off the charts”. Sea ice is at the lowest extent ever recorded for the time of year.

      “The warning signals are getting louder,” said Marcus Carson of the Stockholm Environment Institute and one of the lead authors of the report. “[These developments] also make the potential for triggering [tipping points] and feedback loops much larger.”

  • Finance

    • Kela’s outgoing director general voices support for basic income

      Liisa Hyssälä, the director general at the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela), has reiterated her concerns about the sustainability of the country’s social security system.

      “Our basic social security system is a patchwork and we cannot afford the constantly rising social security costs. Various benefits should be brought together into larger wholes both for the sake of customers and for the sake of sensible administration and the public economy,” she writes in a blog on Sosiaalivakuutus.fi.

    • 5 Things to Know about Billionaire Betsy DeVos, Trump Education Choice

      Billionaire Betsy DeVos, a major GOP funder and party activist from Michigan, has been tapped by Donald Trump to become the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education next year.

      Many have decried the choice as a looming disaster for public schools in America, with NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia observing that DeVos’ “efforts over the years have done more to undermine public education than support students. She has lobbied for failed schemes, like vouchers–which take away funding and local control from our public schools–to fund private schools at taxpayers’ expense.”

      Randi Weingarten, the president of AFT, stated that “Betsy DeVos is everything Donald Trump said is wrong in America–an ultra-wealthy heiress who uses her money to game the system and push a special-interest agenda that is opposed by the majority of voters. Installing her in the Department of Education is the opposite of Trump’s promise to drain the swamp.”

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Emails: CIA Official Reviewed Parts of Times Reporter’s Book Before Publication

      New York Times reporter David Sanger worked extensively with former deputy CIA director Michael Morell during the reporting of his book Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power—even arranging to provide Morell with access to an entire unpublished chapter for his review—according to documents obtained by Gizmodo.

      The records, consisting of internal emails from the CIA press office, show that Sanger met with Morell on more than one occasion in 2012 to discuss his then-forthcoming book, promising to bring with him a full chapter for Morell to read in case “he has issues” with the reporting. The emails, which we received under the Freedom of Information Act, are redacted in a manner suggesting that Morell and Sanger discussed sensitive national security information, and show that on at least one occasion, a CIA public affairs officer sent Sanger an encrypted message via email.

      While the notion of a national security reporter meeting with a senior CIA official is obviously not unusual—such transactions are in the reporter’s job description, and Sanger’s book acknowledges that he withheld information at the request of government officials—the extent of Sanger’s collaboration with Morell and the fact that the men apparently discussed sensitive information is noteworthy in light of the Obama administration’s unprecedented campaign against government leakers.

    • How long before the white working class realizes Trump was just scamming them?

      While we’re still analyzing the election results and debating the importance of different factors to the final outcome, everyone agrees that white working class voters played a key part in Donald Trump’s victory, in some cases by switching their votes and in some cases by turning out when they had been nonvoters before.

    • Washington Republican proposes charging protestors with ‘economic terrorism’

      The proposed bill would make protesting a class C felony should it cause any sort of “economic disruption” or “jeopardize human life and property.” Such a proposal would mean violators could face five years in prison, a $10,000 fine or both.

      Any group who organizes a protest that is considered disruptive would also be charged with “economic terrorism.” The law would not apply to strikes or picketing.

      The bill is aimed at protests in the Pacific Northwest, often by environmental activists, that are aimed at shutting down commerce and transportation.

      Protesters in Olympia, Wash., recently camped out for more than a week on railway tracks to stop a shipment of sand used for fracking.

      The bill is also being proposed at a time when anti-Trump protests are taking place across the country, including in Washington. Protests in Seattle have been reported to be peaceful and nonviolent so far.

    • Australia ceases multimillion-dollar donations to controversial Clinton family charities

      AUSTRALIA has finally ceased pouring millions of dollars into accounts linked to Hillary Clinton’s charities.

      Which begs the question: Why were we donating to them in the first place?

      The federal government confirmed to news.com.au it has not renewed any of its partnerships with the scandal-plagued Clinton Foundation, effectively ending 10 years of taxpayer-funded contributions worth more than $88 million.

      The Clinton Foundation has a rocky past. It was described as “a slush fund”, is still at the centre of an FBI investigation and was revealed to have spent more than $50 million on travel.

      Despite that, the official website for the charity shows contributions from both AUSAID and the Commonwealth of Australia, each worth between $10 million and $25 million.

    • By the Numbers: The Recount Scenarios (It is a Long Shot)

      Green Party candidate Jill Stein (Disclosure: I voted for Stein) is calling for a recount in key states, and has raised some $3 million for that purpose. Her funding page estimates the total cost, including lawyers, will be $6-7 million.

    • Trump’s team of gazillionaires

      Donald Trump campaigned as a champion of the “forgotten man” and won the White House on the strength of his support among the white working class.

      So far, he’s stacking his administration with masters of the universe.

      Beyond Trump himself, who claims a net worth of more than $10 billion, the president-elect has tapped businesswoman Betsy DeVos, whose family is worth $5.1 billion, and is said to be considering oil mogul Harold Hamm ($15.3 billion), investor Wilbur Ross ($2.9 billion), private equity investor Mitt Romney ($250 million at last count), hedge fund magnate Steve Mnuchin (at least $46 million), and super-lawyer Rudy Giuliani (estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars) to round out his administration. And Trump’s likely choice for deputy commerce secretary, Todd Ricketts, comes from the billionaire family that owns the Chicago Cubs.

      Even retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who’s up for the job of secretary of housing and urban development, has an estimated fortune of $26 million, while White House adviser Steve Bannon has likely earned millions off his stake in the show “Seinfeld” alone. Andrew Puzder, a possible labor secretary, is no slouch, either — he made more than $4.4 million in 2012 as CEO of the holding company that owns restaurant chains Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr.

    • Jill Stein raises over $4.5m to request US election recounts in battleground states

      Jill Stein, the Green party’s presidential candidate, is preparing to request recounts of the election result in several key battleground states.

      Stein launched an online fundraising page seeking donations toward a multimillion-dollar fund she said was needed to request reviews of the results in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

      The drive has already raised more than $4.5m, which the campaign said would enable it to file for recounts in Wisconsin on Friday and Pennsylvania on Monday.
      Hillary Clinton urged to call for election vote recount in battleground states
      Read more

      The fundraising page said it expected to need around $6m-7m to challenge the results in all three states.

    • Jill Stein asks for another $2.5 million after reaching goal to fund election recounts in two states

      Jill Stein has now crowdfunded more than $4.5 million to cover the costs of election recounts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The Green Party presidential candidate has since upped her requested total to $7 million, a figure that she says would also cover a recount in Michigan, a hotly contested battleground state where “statistical anomalies” in voting were identified.

    • Campaign: Stein raises millions for recount effort

      Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein raised more than $4 million over two days to fund recount efforts in three states.

      Donations had nearly reached her campaign’s $4.5 million goal by late Thanksgiving evening, according to a fundraising page on her web site.

      “Congratulations on meeting the recount costs for Wisconsin. Raising money to pay for the first round so quickly is a miraculous feat and a tribute to the power of grassroots organizing,” her campaign said.

      “Now that we have nearly completed funding Wisconsin’s recount (which is due on Friday), we can begin to tackle the funding for Michigan’s recount (due Monday) and Pennsylvania’s recount (due Wednesday).”

      Stein said Wednesday that many Americans are wondering if the election results were reliable after a “divisive and painful” race and reported hacks into voter and party databases and individual email accounts.

      [...]

      The total cost of the effort in the three states could be as high as $7 million, her campaign said, including attorney fees and recount observers.

      A group of election lawyers and researchers are urging Hillary Clinton to ask for a recount in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, claiming that they found evidence that voting machines had been tampered with.

    • Jill Stein campaign to recount key states in US election reaches $2.5m target

      A campaign launched by the Green Party candidate Jill Stein to recount key states in the US election has reached its initial funding target of $2.5m (£2m) in just a matter of hours.

      The money will allow Ms Stein to review the results in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where concerns have been raised about irregularities with electronic voting results.

      Each of the states voted narrowly in favour of Donald Trump (though the final Michigan count is still to be confirmed), and carry enough electoral college votes between them to change the result of the election if all were redeclared for Hillary Clinton.

    • Donald Trump’s Argentinian tower suddenly gets the green light to proceed

      Only three days after Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri called President-elect Donald Trump to congratulate him on his upset victory, it was announced that construction on a long held-up project for a Trump tower in Buenos Aires would proceed.

      As Quartz reported on Wednesday, Trump’s associates at YY Development Group in Buenos Aires told La Nacion, one of Argentina’s most influential conservative newspapers, that construction on the tower would be going ahead. La Nacion also reported that the initial call between Trump and Macri (who have been friends since the 1980s) was arranged due to efforts made by foreign minister Susanna Malcorra to get in touch with Trump’s son Eric through Felipe Yaryura, an Argentine businessman who is friends with Trump and was present to celebrate when he discovered that Trump had been elected. Eric Trump reportedly then put Malcorra in touch with Trump’s foreign affairs team.

      As Quartz also notes, Malcorra avoided answering a question posed by a reporter about whether she knew Yaryura and used him to get Macri in touch with Trump. Similarly, a spokeswoman from YY Development refused to comment to Quartz about any of these questions because “they have already had too much media exposure.”

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • The CEO of Reddit confessed to modifying posts from Trump supporters after they wouldn’t stop sending him expletives

      Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has confessed to modifying the posts of some users on the most visible Donald Trump-supporting “subreddit” community after they repeatedly slung verbal abuse in his direction.

      The story begins earlier this week, when The New York Times published a report on Comet Ping Pong, a Washington DC pizza place that a false news item on social media had pegged as the center of a child-abuse ring run by Hillary Clinton and her campaign head John Podesta, despite a lack of any evidence.

      Following that report, Reddit took steps to shut down the “r/Pizzagate” subreddit community, which had the stated goal of proving the existence of a conspiracy centering on Comet Ping Pong. “We don’t want witchhunts on our site,” says the warning that replaced the Pizzagate page on Reddit.

    • Reddit CEO admits to editing user comments amid Pizzagate malarkey

      Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, today admitted to editing several comments that criticised him on the site.

      He made the admission on Reddit, where he posts under the username Spez.

      Huffman got a lot of flak from members of the The_Donald, a subreddit for supporters of President-elect Donald Trump, after Reddit banned the Pizzagate subreddit. Pizzagate was dedicated to a debunked conspiracy theory linking Hillary Clinton to a paedophile ring.

      In response, he edited comments reading “fuck Spez” to instead be directed at moderators of the The_Donald subreddit.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Bill Binney: New UK spying law is going to kill people, ex-NSA technical director and whistleblower warns

      Britain’s new spying laws could kill people, the ex-technical director of the NSA has warned.

      Pursuing a strategy of allowing spies to look in on everything that everyone says “costs lives, and has cost lives in Britain because it inundates analysts with too much data”, Bill Binney has warned UK MPs who are scrutinising the Investigatory Powers Bill.

      The bill, also known as the Snoopers’ Charter, is set to be passed by parliament early this year and will bring with it huge and unprecedented spying powers for UK intelligence agencies and the government. But it has been criticised by privacy campaigners and technology companies who argue that it will put lives in danger.

      “It is 99 per cent useless,” Mr Binney said in a letter sent to MPs. “Who wants to know everyone who has ever looked at Google or the BBC? We have known for decades that that swamps analysts.”

    • Microsoft Shares Telemetry Data Collected from Windows 10 Users with 3rd-Party
    • Microsoft is reportedly sharing Windows 10 telemetry data with third-parties

      MICROSOFT HAS REPORTEDLY signed a deal with FireEye that will see it share telemetry data from Windows 10 with the third-party security outfit.

      So says Australian website ARN, which reports that Microsoft and FireEye’s partnership, which will see the security firm’s iSIGHT Intelligence tools baked into Windows Defender, will also see FireEye “gain access to telemetry from every device running Windows 10.”

      Microsoft uses telemetry data from Windows 10 to help identify security issues, to fix problems and to help improve the quality of its operating system, which sounds like a good thing. However, with the company previously admitting that it’s latest OS is harvesting more data than any version before it, Microsoft’s mega data-slurp also raised some privacy concerns.

    • The opportunity cost of mass surveillance is lost innovation and jobs

      Surveillance kills jobs and drives investment and innovation elsewhere. Lost among the common talking points of liberty, human rights, and Big Brother, there’s a much more economic effect when you force people to conform to a gray mass: you lose the radicals and the free thinkers, those who innovate and build the next generation of industries and jobs. Politicians care a lot more about that than about a theoretic concept of liberty.

      An opportunity cost is the cost you pay for not realizing the alternative you didn’t choose. When you choose a pizza, your opportunity cost is not having the hamburger. When you choose a bus ride because it’s cheaper, the opportunity cost is the time you’d save by taking a taxi. When you choose a cheap supplier of goods, your opportunity cost is low quality and more maintenance. And so on.

    • NSA Head Meets With Trump Team But Doesn’t Give Obama A Heads Up

      David Greene talks to Foreign Policy columnist James Bamford about the future of NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers, whose tenure has been rocked by cyber-security breaches of classified material.

    • Lawmakers decry possible removal of NSA director, call for hearings

      Several key GOP members of Congress began to weigh in this weekend with strong disapproval over suggestions that Adm. Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, may be fired during the final weeks of the Obama administration.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Dutch race hate row engulfs presenter Sylvana Simons

      The images of a black Dutch TV presenter’s face super-imposed on the hanged bodies of victims of a lynching are too nauseating to look at. And yet a video featuring the mocked-up pictures has been widely circulated online here.

      Sylvana Simons has for years been a familiar presence on Dutch TV and radio, and the attack on her has highlighted a debate bubbling inside the Netherlands far removed from its reputation as a liberal tolerant nation.

      A former presenter on talent show Dancing with the Stars, she recently joined the political party “Denk” (Think) and is running in the next election.

    • Bad Santa: German town sacks Father Christmas over alleged far-right support

      A town in Germany has sacked Santa Claus over alleged links to a far-Right movement.

      Peter Mück has dressed as Santa and distributed sweets to children at the annual Christmas market in the Bavarian town of Mühldorf for 30 years.

      But this year the Christmas market opened without him after the mayor of Mühldorf announced that he had been fired.

      Mr Mück was dismissed over comments he wrote on Facebook in support of a post by the far-Right “Identitarian Movement”, which campaigns against immigration and Islam, and has been accused of open racism.

    • Two Saudi Women Sentenced to 20 Lashes for Using ‘Obscene Words’ on WhatsApp

      One of the young women came to the Criminal Court in Jeddah and accused the other of using abusive expressions during their WhatsApp conversation. She then showed her phone at the Court’s request to prove her words.

      During the next session, the court confirmed that the woman had indeed sent obscene messages to the other, but the defendant said she was not the first to start the hassle and showed a message which she received from her counterpart two months ago.

    • #NoLove4USGov – An extradition too far

      Amber Rudd has signed Lauri Love’s extradition order despite huge public uproar, opposition both inside and outside her own party, inside and outside of government and a previous home secretary, now Prime Minister blocking an extradition with almost exactly the same conditions. Lauri is unlikely to meet justice in America, in his case the most likely outcome is jail without a trial.

      Naomi Colvin of Courage Foundation has previously said:

      “Judge Tempia’s ruling on Friday shows that the legal changes Theresa May introduced after she blocked Gary McKinnon’s extradition are not fit for purpose.”

      David A Elston Pirate Party Spokesperson said:

      “Clearly the US is not interested in justice and our own government is unwilling to stand up for our civil liberties.

      “Instead through extradition the USA is seeking to silence and lock up Love. Knowing this was blocked before, this clear failure of our government is a chosen path. The forum bar does not work as this is precisely the kind of scenario it was meant to prevent. More importantly they have failed Lauri and through the ruling on him, our civil liberties and our rights, our right to a fair trial has taken a heavy hit.

    • All residents in China’s restive Xinjiang region must hand in passports to police: media

      All residents in China’s restive region of Xinjiang must hand in their passports to local police stations for “examination and management”, the Global Times newspaper said on Thursday.

      “Anyone who needs the passport must apply to the police station,” an anonymous police officer in Aksu prefecture told the paper, adding that the policy had been implemented throughout Xinjiang.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Forget Net Neutrality, Trump FCC Advisor Wants to Kill the FCC Itself

      Under President Donald Trump, the US government’s policy protecting net neutrality, the principle that all internet content should be equally accessible to consumers, is likely to be rolled back, according to tech policy experts.

      But that shift, as important as it would be, may be just the beginning of the changes in store for the Federal Communications Commission under Trump’s administration. In fact, the nation’s top communications regulator itself may look very different than it does today.

      Like, very different. As in, practically non-existent.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Iceland (the country) is actually suing Iceland (the shop)

        The island nation of Iceland has said it is taking legal action against British frozen-food chain Iceland over the right to use their shared name.

        Iceland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it has challenged Iceland Foods at the European Union Intellectual Property Office. It says it is acting because the retail chain “aggressively pursued” Icelandic companies using the word Iceland in their branding.

        Iceland Foods holds a Europe-wide trademark registration for the word “Iceland,” and the Nordic country’s government said it was “exceptionally broad and ambiguous in definition.”

    • Copyrights

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