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12.08.16

British Media Slams Battistelli for Attempting to Cover Up 2 Years of Juridical Abuses With Help From the Administrative Council of the EPO

Posted in Europe, Patents at 10:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The Administrative Council of the EPO looks increasingly complicit, like a pack of docile chinchillas led by crooked Kongstad

FIFA coverup
Reference: Fifa accused of cover up as it emerges World Cup bid report to be kept secret (does it have to involve sports and celebrities for mainstream media to care?)

Summary: A growing voice of concern about the integrity of the European Patent Organisation, whose management appears to be in cahoots (overseers/regulators included) so as to cover up its own serious abuses

THE internal and external affairs at the EPO look uglier by the day, if it’s possible at all for things to get any uglier when staff already dies. The EPO crisis fascinates us enough to have already dedicated close to 1,500 articles to it. It won’t stop until justice gets served and the EPO is (hopefully, if not too late) saved.

If the EPO does not fire Battistelli next week (it probably won’t, but it definitely should), then the whole Organisation (which is fed by fees from the Office) will continue to descend to new lows and it’ll definitely harm Europe’s competitiveness. A lot of the corporate media (especially in Germany) does not seem to understand — or maybe does not want to understand — how pressing an issue this is.

Thankfully, some in the British media seem to be more responsive and are paying attention to the pleas of EPO staff. This morning the following article got published by The Register:

Guess King Battistelli’s plan to fix the Euro Patent Office. Yep, give himself more power

The president of the European Patent Office has responded to a formal rebuke of efforts to impose his will on the organization by asking for more power.

The man who last week was called a disgrace to his country in the French National Assembly has been accused of targeting EPO staff who opposed his reforms and of running sham disciplinary hearings as part of a campaign of intimidation.

Some of Benoit Battistelli’s reforms have been enacted, whereas others – especially those that grant the president additional powers and effectively place him above the EPO’s independent review and appeal processes – have been bitterly fought.

Several staff members, including the staff union’s secretary, were placed on administrative leave by Battistelli over a year ago and have been put through what many claim have been a series of illegal and irregular hearings.

In a decision that lent significant weight to the staff’s complaints, those hearings were effectively nullified last week by the International Labour Organization Administration Tribunal (ILO-AT). The ILO-AT found that Benoit Battistelli had delegitimized the EPO’s Appeals Committee (ApC) by inserting two staff “volunteers” on the five-person panel rather than allowing the EPO’s central staff committee to select them. It also found the EPO’s management had mishandled critical aspects of the appeals process.

But, true to form, Battistelli has reacted by doubling down.

[...]

Now that approach – of having two staff volunteers – has also been deemed illegal. So what is Battistelli’s solution? That’s right: to give him the power to appoint people to the Appeals Committee.

In a formal proposal to the EPO’s General Consultative Committee, Battistelli has attempted to reintroduce a change to the EPO’s “service regulations” that he previously put forward, but which was rejected.

Under his “new” proposal, “if the Central Staff Committee fails to make appointments to these bodies, the President shall take appropriate steps to ensure the necessary appointments, such as by drawing lots or calling for volunteers from among all elected Staff Committee members.”

[...]

This approach – where Battistelli tells people what he wants to happen; is told that breaks the organization’s rules; and then attempts to rewrite the rules to give him the power to do it regardless – has become the president’s modi operandi and the reason he has been dubbed “King Battistelli.”

This is a very good article from one who has followed these affairs closely. It’s even a two-page article, for a change. Found in WIPR yesterday [via, top story too] was this article which quotes anonymous EPO insiders. This London-based publication, which targets law firms (unlike The Register, which targets technology firms not only in Britain), said this:

A source close to the Staff Union of the European Patent Office said: “Once more we are sad that instead of fixing what he has broken (namely a functioning internal appeals committee), Battistelli’s new proposal shows that he solely aims to circumvent the central staff committee.”

They added that the staff committee had “solid legal reasons not to nominate staff into the internal committee after two of its members had been downgraded by Battistelli”.

The morally corrupt patent office of Battistelli is more interested in legalising its sheer abuses rather than actually addressing them. Corrupt. Utterly.

What can Battistelli say for himself? The headline from WIPR is far too soft (compared to The Register‘s). It says “Battistelli asks to nominate EPO appeals committee members” as if he’s some gentleman asking for staff participation. While he sharpens his sword maybe…

“Shark asks fish to nominate sacrifices” is the analogy I used yesterday.

Only a fool would want to issue a judgment/call that does not satisfy the monster, Mr. Battistelli. The Liar in Chief, who falsely accuses people along with his buddy’s wife (Bergot), often dismisses them (only after bankrupting them financially and mentally). When they do this they always disguise the real motivation, as Battistelli’s goon did on Dutch television, pretending that the pattern on attacks on staff representative was just an incredible coincidence, not a union-busting effort.

The EPO is rapidly becoming synonymous with corruption. Yes, corruption. Moral corruption and some tell us fraud, too. Where is the German police? Where are the German authorities? For political/economic reasons they seem to be turning a blind eye to anything that is being presented to them. And rightly so… considering what kind of employers they have paying their salaries. It doesn’t look as though even ILO (or the UN) can compel the EPO to obey the law. Dutch courts, including the highest court in the Netherlands, are the subject of scorn inside Team Battistelli. It’s like the Mafia in Italy, except the Mafia does occasionally have to fight for its corner and corrupt some officials for protection. What Battistelli does to the EPO right now is similar to what France did to Algiers and he sucks everything that’s inside the EPO (decades’ worth of reputation and assets) for short-term personal gain. The FIFA scandal is utterly minuscule compared to this.

To quote some new comments (posted anonymously in IP Kat, which has not yet written a single article on this subject):

New rule to be decided by the Council next week:

“if the Central Staff Committee, despite an invitation to do so, fails to make appointments to these bodies, the President shall take appropriate steps to ensure and make the necessary appointments, such as calling for volunteers or drawing lots from among eligible staff members.”

Attention: “from among eligible staff members” and not “from elected staff representatives”. Deliberately. A very interesting phrase.

Yes, we noticed this the other day. “Following their resignation they have been publically defamed by VP4 and VP5 and then abusively disciplined (both downgraded),” added another comment. To quote:

FACTS
the two staff reps nominees resigned during autumn 2014 (since they could not perform their work as they should have, due to several defficiencies reported to Battistelli and left uncorrected on purpose). Following their resignation they have been publically defamed by VP4 and VP5 and then abusively disciplined (both downgraded).

Facing such appaling situation the CSC did not want to nominate anyone anew before the reported defficencies had been corredted and insurance had been given that the new nominees would not be again pressurized and sanctioned.

As you may imagine Battistelli did nothing to redress the internal appeal system he and his associates had broken. Instead Battistelli “invited” all CSC nominees (read threathened them of disciplinary santions) and the weakest “volunteered”.

So much for independent judicial system at EPO

see here : http://techrights.org/2016/12/05/bunk-justice-at-epo/

“This “mis”management team should all be fired,” added another commenter.

Battistelli wants by all means to circumvent the staff representatives whom he truly hates since they do not wish to bend and praise his glory.

Battistelli’s problem is simple: he is enarque functioning with a software dating back last century. He thinks he knows better only he does not – see the mess he created and he has proven incapable solving?

The accolytes he recruited are no better. They too think they know better but the world outside is laughing at the EPO which they see sinking for the past 3 years.

The new “solution” is likely (once more) not to fly at the ILO-AT. Let’s see next week if the Administrative Council will approve that new pack of low quality legal work produced under the supervision of a German Vice President and a German Principal Directorate.

All this costs money and reputation. This “mis”management team should all be fired.

As we noted here earlier this week, Battistelli hopes to retroactively legalise his abuses. Battistelli is an utter catastrophe never seen in Europe, let aside the EPO. The term “Battistelli” might make the urban dictionaries one day, alongside Microsoft's Elop and Rick Belluzzo. Battistelli seems to be only destroying — not working for — the EPO, yet somehow Battistelli receives a secret salary from the EPO and nobody seems prepared to fire him.

“Thank you for your answers,” one person wrote. “Probably, now the usual EPO policy of changing the law when the judges interpret it in a way you do not like, will be carried out.”

“Further questions,” continued the thread. “Would it be possible for the staff reps who stepped down to come back? Though some have been dismissed, they are still legally elected staff reps appointed by the scs, aren’t they? How is the legal situation on that? If a staff rep gets dismissed, does he automatically cease to be staff rep? But that would necessitate new elections, wouldn’t it? Have those taken place? I do not think so. Anybody?”

Well, Battistelli is crushing anything that resembles a threat to his position and he is apparently immune, as the following comment makes clear:

Sadly it would appear that Article 52 of the EPO Service Regulations does not appear to apply to the President, the Vice-Presidents or to the Legal Services Department of the EPO.

Section 2 – Dismissal by the appointing authority

Article 52 – Professional incompetence

(1) Subject to Article 23 of the Convention, a permanent employee who proves
incompetent in the performance of his duties may be dismissed.
The appointing authority may, however, offer to classify the employee concerned in a lower grade and to assign him to a post corresponding to this new grade.

(2) Any proposal for the dismissal of a permanent employee shall set out the reasons on which it is based and shall be communicated to the employee concerned. He shall be entitled to make any comments thereon which he considers relevant.
The appointing authority shall take a reasoned decision, after following the procedure laid down in regard to disciplinary matters.

(3) Subject to Article 13, a permanent employee shall not be dismissed without notice. The notice shall be calculated on the basis of one month for each year of actual service; it shall not, however, be less than three months, nor greater than nine. The period of notice shall commence on the first day of the month following the date of notification of the decision to dismiss the employee. The period of notice shall be increased by one month for a permanent employee having his home as defined in Article 60, paragraph 2, in a country other than that in which he is employed.

We don’t believe that crooked Kongstad and his chinchillas (the delegates) will fire Battistelli just before Christmas, so we need to keep fighting for justice and we need to expose the serious abuses of the EPO. We continue to invite readers to anonymously send material to us. The more the public knows, the more often journalists all across Europe will need to subject authorities to scrutiny, and the more politicians will push to end the EPO’s tyranny. █

Boards of Appeal Still Under Attack From Team Battistelli While the EPO Proceeds to Granting Patents on Carlsberg BEER!

Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Good for Denmark, where crooked Kongstad still manages the national patent office

Kongstad beerSummary: The lunacy of the EPO with its patent maximalism will likely go unchecked (and uncorrected) if Battistelli gets his way and turns the EPO into another SIPO (Croatian in the human rights sense and Chinese in the quality sense)

A COUPLE of days ago we warned that the EPO is replacing well paid (and experienced full time) staff with interns. There’s a pattern to it and yesterday (again) the EPO tweeted this: “This programme allows participants to learn by “shadowing” technical board of appeal members…”

These boards have been intentionally understaffed for years (Kongstad and Battistelli didn’t seem to bother advertising to fill up vacant positions) and now they want some temporary workforce to replace skilled staff? This is part of a pattern that staff representatives have been warning about for a while.

“This is part of a pattern that staff representatives have been warning about for a while.”As we noted here last week, the Enlarged Board of Appeal does invaluable work keeping the scope of patents in check (see this latest coverage about its key decision [1, 2, 3, 4]; an article by Julian Asquith of Marks & Clerk was also reposted in another site of lawyers two days ago) and the last thing Battistelli wants right now is a bunch of independent staff stating out in public that he has demolished patent scope. Who would be brave enough to state the obvious, seeing all the ordeals/suffering one judge — along with his wife — has been subjected to for over two years (his salary too got slashed a few months ago)?

Mr. "production" Battistelli strives to only ever demolish the boards, little by little (because his actions are still technically limited by the EPC). It doesn’t take a genius to assess the trajectory of things and deduce that Battistelli wants an Office with no quality control and nothing independent, having already demolished and even shut down some auditory divisions. No king/autocrat wants to have his power questioned, let alone effectively challenged.

We have already written about the exile, the fee hikes, shortened appeal window, the intimidating manner in which Battistelli tries to compel staff to fire a colleague and so on. Marks & Clerk has just produced this this new article about when it will be “too late to file submissions with the Board of Appeal at the EPO” (Battistelli shortened and limited this even further, probably in an effort to further marginalise these boards). To quote this article:

In T 416/12, the Board of Appeal at the European Patent Office (EPO) considered the admissibility of amendments submitted by the patent proprietor made 29 days before the date of oral proceedings. Whilst it is possible for the Board to admit such submissions, it was ruled that the amendments in question should not be admitted since it was too late to fairly deal with the submissions at the impending oral proceedings. The patent was subsequently revoked. This case provides confirmation as to how the relevant regulations may be interpreted regarding the timeliness required for filling submissions before oral proceedings at the EPO.

Well, how much time is left for the BoA (whatever is left of it) to even exist after Battistelli is done burning the whole Organisation to the ground? Time is running out. The other day we saw a new article by BRIFFA about Carlsbergate — a little scandal which we covered here last month [1, 2]. To quote the article:

Are Carlsberg’s New Beer Patents Controversial? Probably …

This year, the European Patent Office (EPO) granted three new patents to Carlsberg (EP2384110, EP2373154 and EP2575433) relating, broadly, to the harvest of kernels from barley plants, the process for brewing and the drinks produced by these methods. European patent law prohibits patents on plant varieties and breeding; however, notwithstanding these prohibitions, the patents have been granted by the EPO.

The European Commission has stated that plants and animals resulting from essentially biological breeding should not be patented. Accordingly, there have been calls for Carlsberg to voluntarily relinquish the three patents on the basis that there should be no patents on beer and brewing barley since the cultivation of plants and beer brewing stems from a tradition that is centuries old. There have also been calls for European governments to bring the EPO under political control.

It remains to be seen whether the EPO will respond to statements made by the European Commission and the European Parliament and whether Carlsberg will respond to calls to voluntarily relinquish the patents.

Well, Kongstad’s high society Danish friends must be happy. Maybe they can have a good laugh (and a drink of Carlsberg!) over this, maybe in his chichillas slaughterhouse this cold winter. Kongstad is evidently uninterested in taking any action amid this EPO crisis, no matter how much pressure comes from politicians, from staff, from stakeholders, from labour rights groups, from ILO/UN, and from people all across Europe. Earlier this year someone passed to him a polite letter from me and suffice to say — as usual from Kongstad — he didn’t even bother replying. He only replies indirectly and by attacking style, not substance. Given that he knows Battistelli’s salary and constantly helps cover Battistelli’s behind, there is no doubt Kongstad is inherently complicit, much as we alleged even back in 2014.

The EPO is so rotten right now that with the help of yeast we can probably make Battistelli intoxicated enough not to see it and maybe we can even patent this method at the Battistelli-led EPO (an EP on a method for making a naked emperor drunk enough not to realise he’s naked). █

Memo “Deliberately Leaked to Cover up the UPC” With Its Many Associated Issues Amid Brexit

Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Information still required on why Lucy did the unthinkable

Neville-Rolfe and Battistelli

Summary: Some eye-opening updates about the awkward move from Lucy Neville-Rolfe, who made promises (expression of intent) she can neither fulfill nor justify to the British public

THE EPO scandals are so broad and diverse that it’s becoming hard to keep track of them all. What’s also not helping is Battistelli’s latest distractions (warning: epo.org link) which are amplified by the PR team (never ever mentioning anything related to these remarkable scandals, thus leaving applicants in the dark). The real news isn’t some photo op of Battistelli in Belgium (same thing he did with Neville-Rolfe in England to distract from the real news -- a strike!) but unprecedented abuses against staff — a subject we’ll cover separately.

Recently, Battistelli and media which he had paid were spreading misleading talking points (or utter lies) about the UPC. These set the tone for yet more misleading coverage. See this new misleading headline, which is a statement that is untrue and compare this to “Brexit’s Effect on UK Unitary Patent System and Court” — an article that says “UK government intends to ratify the Unitary Patent System and the Unified Patent Court prior to Brexit.”

“The real news isn’t some photo op of Battistelli in Belgium (same thing he did with Neville-Rolfe in England to distract from the real news — a strike!) but unprecedented abuses against staff — a subject we’ll cover separately.”We wrote a very long series about this last week and earlier this week. The UPC won’t happen. Brexit has made the UPC practically impossible, if not just in Britain then in the entire EU (and beyond). Basically, sooner or later there’s the conflict they’re trying to stay blind to, as we explained before (especially in parts 6 and 7 of our series). Valea AB wrote at the end of last month (just bumped up again in news feeds) that “UK Government Confirms it is Proceeding with Ratification of the UPC,” but actually it was only an expression of intent and nothing formal or a legally-binding commitment. It’s truly a shame that a lot of media, not just law firms' biased media, continues to get the story wrong.

A story which was mentioned here in the latest couple of parts (in the section about MIP’s pro-UPC events) reveals one of the reasons the UPC is a horrible idea. Software patents are currently not permitted in Europe, yet experts said that the UPC would likely change that. In fact, as Benjamin Henrion noticed, based on an admission from a British law firm, lawyers too understand that. “Will Cook (Marks&Clerk) noted that first movers may be able to shape UPC jurisprudence in these fields [ICT/software],” he wrote today. “Maureen Kinsler (Marks&Clerk),” he continued, is quoted as saying that “It’s probably easier to get a software-related patent in the EPO than in the US now” (look what crooked Battistelli has done, causing potentially huge damage to Europe’s software industry).

“As we said repeatedly last week, we are eager to receive leaks pertaining to why Lucy did what she did regarding the UPC.”“Interesting read about behind-the-curtain rumours regarding the UK announcement,” wrote one comment in IP Kat, linking to this valuable and belated blog post about something we sure wondered about. The title is “The UK and UPC: is the UK trying to have its cake and eat it?”

“Incidentally,” says the author, “the “accidental” leaking of the “Have cake” memo sounds like a plot straight out of The Thick Of It and therefore, I would venture, probably means it was anything but accidental. It’s a leap too far to suggest it was deliberately leaked to cover up the UPC news (patents are way down the agenda) but that seems to have been the effect nevertheless.”

Read the whole thing. As we said repeatedly last week, we are eager to receive leaks pertaining to why Lucy did what she did regarding the UPC. Certainly some people out there have access to this information; we can be contacted securely and anonymously and we have never compromised a source (in over ten years). █

Links 8/12/2016: Korora GNU/Linux 25, SparkyLinux 4.5.1

Posted in News Roundup at 7:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Remembering Linux Installfests

      Ah, yes. I remember the good old days when you had to be a real man or woman to install Linux, and the first time you tried you ended up saying something like “Help!” or maybe “Mommmmyyyyy!” Really, kids, that’s how it was. Stacks of floppies that took about 7,000 hours to download over your 16 baud connection. Times sure have changed, haven’t they?

      I remember Caldera advertising that their distribution autodetected 1,500 different monitors. I wrote an article titled “Monitor Number 1501,” because it didn’t detect my monitor. And sound. Getting sound going in Linux took mighty feats of systemic administsationish strength. Mere mortals could not do it. And that’s why we had installfests: so mighty Linux he-men and she-women could come down from the top of Slackware Mountain or the Red Hat Volcano and share their godlike wisdom with us. We gladly packed up our computers and took them to the installfest location (often at a college, since many Linux-skilled people were collegians) and walked away with Linuxized computers. Praise be!

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux Foundation events expand with Open Source Summits

      The Linux Foundation released its 2017 schedule, including an Embedded Linux Conference in Portland on Feb. 21-23 that needs proposal ideas by Dec. 10.

      This year, Linux Foundation events attracted over 20,000 “developers, maintainers, sysadmins, thought leaders, business executives and other industry professionals from more than 4,000 organizations across 85 countries,” and 25,000 are expected in 2017, says the not-for-profit Linux advocacy organization. In truth, the LF is now more of an open source advocacy organization as it spreads into non-Linux projects like Zephyr. Fittingly, the co-located LinuxCon + ContainerCon + CloudOpen events in Japan, North America and Europe have this year combined into new umbrella events called Open Source Summits.

    • Why Is Microsoft Showing So Much Interest In Linux? [Ed: Someone needs to explain to Mathew Lodge what EEE is and how it works. Is the Linux Foundation (including Torvalds as well) still permitted to criticise Microsoft or is it frowned upon internally?]
    • Linux on the Mac — state of the union

      The MacBook Pro introduction in October caused unusually negative reactions among professional users due to the realization that Apple no longer caters equally to casual and professional customers as it had in the past [YouTube video]. Instead, the company appears to be following an iOS-focused, margin-driven strategy that essentially relegates professionals to a fringe group. This has well-known developers such as Salvatore Sanfilippo (of the Redis project) consider a move back to Linux. Perhaps that’s a good moment to look at the current state of Mac hardware support in the kernel. While Macs are x86 systems, they possess various custom chips and undocumented quirks that the community needs to painstakingly reverse-engineer.

    • How well does the Linux kernel support Mac hardware?

      There is an interesting subset of Linux users that prefer to run it on a Mac. Yes, a Mac. That might seem odd given how Apple is known for its closed ecosystems and high cost hardware, but the Linux on Mac folks really do exist out there.

      But how well does the Linux kernel support Mac hardware? LWN.net has a “state of the union” article for Linux on the Mac that could be quite helpful if you are thinking about installing Linux on your Mac.

    • New Kernel Vulnerability Allows Local Root For Unprivileged Processes

      There is yet another new Linux kernel vulnerability being disclosed today that allows for unprivileged processes to gain kernel code execution abilities.

      This new vulnerability is CVE-2016-8655 but it doesn’t seem to be getting too much attention yet. CVE-2016-8655 comes down to a race condition within the af_packet.c code for gaining local root access. The researcher that found it was able to write an exploit to gain root shell on an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS system and defeats SMEP/SMAP protection too.

    • Avoiding CVE-2016-8655 with systemd

      Just a quick note: on recent versions of systemd it is relatively easy to block the vulnerability described in CVE-2016-8655 for individual services.

      Since systemd release v211 there’s an option RestrictAddressFamilies= for service unit files which takes away the right to create sockets of specific address families for processes of the service. In your unit file, add RestrictAddressFamilies=~AF_PACKET to the [Service] section to make AF_PACKET unavailable to it (i.e. a blacklist), which is sufficient to close the attack path. Safer of course is a whitelist of address families whch you can define by dropping the ~ character from the assignment. Here’s a trivial example:

    • The Best Features Of The Linux 4.9 Kernel
    • Another nasty Linux kernel bug surfaces [Ed: Did you know that local priv. escalation is a “nasty” bug? CVE isn’t so sexy. Give it a logo, name, and Web site maybe? Look what a disgusting thing the security ‘industry’ and reporting have become…]
    • Don’t have a Dirty COW, man: Android gets full kernel hijack patch

    • Graphics Stack

    • Benchmarks

      • Linux Distributions vs. BSDs With netperf & iperf3 Network Performance

        With now having netperf in the Phoronix Test Suite as well as iperf3 for the latest open-source benchmarks in our automated cross-platform benchmarking framework, I couldn’t help but to run some networking benchmarks on a system when trying out a few different Linux distributions and BSDs to see how the performance compares. The operating systems ran with these networking benchmarks included Debian 8.6, Ubuntu 16.10, Clear Linux 12020, CentOS 7, and Fedora 25. The BSDs tested for this comparison were FreeBSD 11.0 and DragonFlyBSD 4.6.1.

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • Kali Alternative: BackBox Linux 4.7 Arrives With Updated Hacking Tools

      BackBox Linux is an Ubuntu-based operating system that’s developed with a focus on penetration testing and security assessment. If you take a look at our list of top 10 ethical hacking distros, BackBox ranks in top 3.

      This alternative of Kali Linux operating system comes with a variety of ethical hacking tools and a complete desktop environment. The software repositories of the hacking tools included in BackBox Linux too are frequently updated. Earlier this year in May, we witnessed the release of BackBox Linux 4.6 that was based on kernel 4.2 and Ubuntu 15.10.

    • New Releases

      • SparkyLinux 4.5.1 MinimalGUI

        There is an update of Sparky 4.5.1 MinimalGUI available to download.

        The Sparky Advanced Installer doesn’t work as it should in the MinimaGUI edition, if you are trying to install an additional desktop. The installer calls a ‘desktop-installer’, but it does not coming back to the main installer with right privileges after. It used to do before, but not any more.

      • SparkyLinux 4.5.1 MinimalGUI ISO Respin Improves the Sparky Advanced Installer

        Only four days after the official release of the Debian-based SparkyLinux 4.5 operating system, the development team published an update MinimalGUI ISO image dubbed SparkyLinux 4.5.1.

      • Kodi-Based LibreELEC 8.0 “Krypton” Sees New Alpha Powered by Linux Kernel 4.8.12

        The development of the open-source and platform-independent LibreELEC (Libre Embedded Linux Entertainment Center) operating system based on the latest Kodi media center software received a new Alpha milestone on December 6, 2016.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • Announcing openSUSE’s GPG Key Server – keyserver.opensuse.org

        Does it happen to you, too, that there are moments where you ask yourself why others want something from you that is there already since a while? Exactly this happened with https://keyserver.opensuse.org/: the original machine was set up a long time ago to make it easier for people attending the openSUSE GPG key-signing parties, but it looks like nobody officially announced this “new service” for our users…

        …and so here we are: the openSUSE Heroes team is pleased to announce that keyserver.opensuse.org is up and running as public GPG keyserver. We are of course also part of the official keyserver pool, which means that some people might already noticed us, as they got redirected to our server with their requests. (And for those who are interested to setup their own SKS keyserver: we have also written a nice monitoring plugin that helps you keeping an eye on the pool status of your machine and the ones of your peers.)

      • OpenSUSE Ends Support For Binary AMD Graphics Driver

        Bruno Friedmann has announced the end to AMD proprietary driver fglrx support in openSUSE while also announcing they don’t plan to support the hybrid proprietary AMDGPU-PRO stack either.

        Friedmann wrote, “Say goodbye fglrx!, repeat after me, goodbye fglrx… [In regards to the newer AMDGPU-PRO stack] I will certainly not help proprietary crap, if I don’t have a solid base to work with, and a bit of help from their side. I wish good luck to those who want to try those drivers, I’ve got a look inside, and got a blame face.”

    • Slackware Family

      • Absolute 14.2.2 released

        The update is for the 64-bit version. Updated kernel and Xorg, as well as taking care of security and functional fixes (such as tweaks to pulse audio, network manager, battery management.) Installer also updated to correct error of sometimes not finding drives for autoinstall. All Slackware updates in current included and several programs recompiled to keep up with dependency changes.

    • Red Hat Family

      • New CloudLinux 7 Kernel Released, Rebased to Red Hat’s OpenVZ Linux 3.10 Kernel

        CloudLinux’s Mykola Naugolnyi announced the general availability of an updated kernel package for the enterprise-ready CloudLinux 7 operating system based on the freely distributed sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

        CloudLinux is the operating system of choice for hosting providers and data centers, powering over 20 million websites. It’s a super-platform designed for stability, security, and efficiency in shared hosting by isolating each occupant and giving them allocated server resources.

        A new kernel version, tagged as build 3.10.0-427.36.1.lve1.4.26, has been announced earlier for those who are using the CloudLinux 7 release on their server infrastructures, and it’s now available for installation from the updates-testing repository. It’s been rebased on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7′s OpenVZ rh7-3.10.0-327.36.1.vz7.18.7 kernel.

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 25: Bleeding edge and bloody brilliant

          I honestly never thought I’d consider Fedora a rock solid enough distribution to serve as a daily driver for anything but developing and testing. This came with good reason: Fedora was always released as a bleeding edge platform, a playground for testers and developers.

          That was the Fedora of old. What they have created with their 25th iteration is some sort of magical confluence of bleeding edge and bloody brilliant.

        • Developers Discuss Future Of CD/DVD Optical Images For Fedora

          With more laptops abandoning DVD drives, USB-based flash drive installers being well supported and widely-used, and CD/DVDs just being far less popular these days, Fedora developers are discussing the future of the official status for optical images in future Fedora releases.

          While Fedora developers continue discussing the possibility of making their release cycles longer, the latest post-F25 topic is the official state for the optical Fedora images. In particular, Fedora QA wondering about future requirements given the significant time requirements spent on testing Fedora CD/DVD images.

        • Korora 25 ‘Gurgle’ Fedora-based Linux distribution now available for download

          I regularly try many Linux-based desktop operating systems on my computers, just so I can be familiar with them. Ultimately, I always return to my favorite — Fedora. While that distribution is very good, it can also be a bit difficult to use — for some. Don’t get me wrong, it functions well ‘out of the box’, but once a user begins needing some non-free packages, it can be tough going. In other words, setting it up can sometimes be a chore.

        • Elections 2016: Nominate community members to Fedora leadership

          With Fedora 25 out the door a couple of weeks ago, Fedora is once again moving ahead towards Fedora 26. As usual after a new release, the Fedora Elections are getting into gear. There are a fair number of seats up for election this release, across both the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) and the Fedora Council. The elections are one of the ways you can have an impact on the future of Fedora by nominating and voting. Nominate other community members (or self-nominate) to run for a seat in either of these leadership bodies to help lead Fedora. For this election cycle, nominations are due on December 12th, 2016, at 23:59:59 UTC. It is important to get nominations in quickly before the window closes. This article helps explain both leadership bodies and how to cast a nomination.

        • Endless Sky now available on Fedora

          Endless Sky is a 2D space trading and combat game similar to Escape Velocity. The game sets you as a beginning pilot, just having made a down payment on your very first starship. You’re given a choice between a shuttle, a freighter or a fighter. Depending on what ship you choose, you will need to figure out how to earn money to outfit and eventually upgrade your ship. You can transport passengers, run cargo, mine asteroids or even hunt pirates. It’s an open-ended game that blends the top-down action of a 2D space shooter with the depth and replayability of a 4X.

        • Analysis is confusing

          I’ve known of affinity mapping, and even tried to use sticky notes to figure out some of my data in the first UX project I did. Unfortunately, as I found out at the time, analysis of the data I get in UX research doesn’t really lend itself to being done alone. Much like statistics, I suspect. I’m not at all sure how UX consultants do their analyses, given this!

        • Korora 25 Linux Released, Based on Fedora 25 Ships with Cinnamon 3.2, MATE 1.16

          On December 7, 2016, the development team behind the Fedora-based Korora Linux operating system proudly announced the release and general availability of Korora 25.

        • Remembering a friend: Matthew Williams

          One of the things about working in open source software communities is that you are always moving forward. It’s hard not to get a sense of momentum and progress when it seems you are constantly striving to improve and build on the work you and others have done before.

          But sometimes you have to pause to reflect, because sometimes there is loss.

    • Debian Family

      • Day trip in Cape Town, part 2

        Let me get some interesting tit-bits not related to the day-trip out-of-the-way first –

        I don’t know whether we had full access to see all parts of fuller hall or not. Couple of days I was wondering around Fuller Hall, specifically next to where clothes were pressed. Came to know of the laundry service pretty late but still was useful. Umm… next to where the ladies/gentleman pressed our clothes, there is a stairway which goes down. In fact even on the opposite side there is a stairway which goes down. I dunno if other people explored them or not.

      • Derivatives

        • Second Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15 “Nev” Preview Out Now with Linux Kernel 4.4.35 LTS

          Today, December 7, 2016, the development team behind the Debian-based Parsix GNU/Linux operating system have announced the release of the second preview version of the upcoming Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15 “Nev” distribution.

          Still based on the Debian GNU/Linux 8 “Jessie” repositories, Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15 “Nev” Test2 is here one and a half months after the previous development release, and ships with more recent technologies and Open Source software projects, including the latest GNOME 3.22.2 desktop environment and Linux 4.4.35 LTS kernel.

        • Welcome to Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15-TEST-2 Release Notes

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • This $90 Kit Converts an ODROID board into a Touchscreen Ubuntu PC

            We’ve seen what the Raspberry Pi can do when you throw in some extra hardware, and we recently heard about what the Pine64 is going to do once it’s inside a laptop casing.

          • Ubuntu Touch OTA-14 Released, This Is What’s New

            Ubuntu OTA-14, the latest over the air update to Ubuntu phone and tablet, has begun to roll out to supported devices. “This time not so many changes released in overall but with the goal of introducing less regressions,” says Canonical’s Lukasz Zemczak in the release announcement mailing list post.

          • How Do You Install Ubuntu: USB, or DVD?
          • What New Is Going To Be In Ubuntu 17.04 ‘Zesty Zapus’

            Right on the heels of Ubuntu 16.10 ‘Yakkety Yak’ is Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus. Ubuntu 17.04 is currently scheduled for release on April 13, 2017 but know that this is only an estimate. One thing to know is that all things being equal, it is going to be released in April 2017. Ubuntu Zesty Zapus will be supported for only 9 months until January 2018 as it is not a LTS (long term support) release.

          • Ubuntu Core has the keys to IoT security

            In October, a DDoS attack on Dyn’s infrastructure took down a big chunk of the internet, making sites like Amazon and Twitter inaccessible. It was the first major attack involving IoT (internet of things) devices. Fortunately, it was also a benign attack: no one got hurt, no one died.

            However, the next attack could be catastrophic. No one knows when it will happen. No one knows the magnitude.

            There are billions of IoT devices out there: web cameras, thermostats, doorbells, smart bulbs, refrigerators, heaters, ovens, and much more. IoT devices are low hanging fruits for cybercriminals because for all theoretical and practical purposes a majority of these IoT devices are insecure by design, they are insecure by default. It should be called IIoT: insecure internet of things.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Zorin OS 12 Ubuntu-based Linux distribution now available — a Windows 10 alternative

              Windows 10 is a really great desktop operating system, but it is not for everyone. For those that care deeply about security and privacy, an open source Linux-based operating system is a wise alternative. The problem? Learning a new user interface can be hard for some. If you have always used a Windows OS in the past, moving to a desktop environment like GNOME or Unity can be confusing and scary.

              Luckily, for those that have difficulty with change, there are some Linux-based operating systems that are designed for Windows-switchers. One fairly popular such offering, Zorin OS, has now reached version 12. It is designed to be familiar to former users of Microsoft’s OS. While the company does charge for an “Ultimate” version, the “Core” edition of Zorin OS 12 is entirely free.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Communicating To The World: Why Open-Source Could Help Your Small Business

    Just as groundbreaking advancements in technology in the ‘90s and 2000s have fundamentally changed the way film, music and television are produced and distributed today, more recent tech innovations have also provided entrepreneurs with the tools they need to compete in the global marketplace. Here is a look at some of the open-source solutions that you can use in order to realize your entrepreneurial ambitions.

    [...]

    The rise of high quality open-source web utilities has made it possible for anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of web design to make a quality site. In fact, open-source content management systems like WordPress are so easy to use and comprehensive, companies like Best Buy and Xerox use them to maintain their web presences. Additionally, open-source business management and accounting program Solegis, customer relationship management app ConcourseSuite and e-commerce solution Zen Cart all exist to empower entrepreneurs with limited resources.

  • What lies ahead for open source technology in 2017?

    2016 has been a polarising year. A year when the unexpected and largely unpredicted has occurred, shocking people worldwide. We have lurched into a post-truth era, where emotion transcends logic, and maintaining the status quo is no longer a given.

    Change is inevitable and there are vast swathes of global society who are disappointed and apprehensive about what lies ahead. In times of uncertainty, an increased focus on collaboration and community is appealing and desirable.

    The internet has long been a polarising force, a connecting platform that allows individuals to find kindred spirits they might not have been able to find before, regardless of their allegiances and views.

  • Financial tech-ops chief: open source is a recruitment talent imperative

    Developers don’t want to take what companies tell them at face value: they want to look under the bonnet, and assess the quality and design of the code for themselves. If you want to win credibility among the developer community and encourage the right people to your brand, you need to share your work and demonstrate best practice, not just talk about it.

    The benefits to an open source approach don’t end with the positive impression it can help foster among developers.

  • Speaking in Tech: Did an open source guru just ask us to join Amazon?
  • FOSS DOS for 21st Century Hardware

    The founder and coordinator of the FreeDOS Project writes about FreeDOS 1.2, which is scheduled for a Christmas Day release. There is good news for classic gamers and nostalgia buffs: this one’s got games.

  • 4 open source drone projects

    Over the past few years, interest in both civilian and commercial use of drones has continued to grow rapidly, and drone hardware sits at the top of many people’s holiday wish lists.
    Even just within the civilian side of things, the list of unmanned aerial devices which fit the moniker of drone seems to be constantly expanding. These days, the term seems to encompass everything from what is essentially a cheap, multi-bladed toy helicopter, all the way up to custom-built soaring machines with incredibly adept artificial intelligence capabilities.

  • Lenovo Cloud Director: Open Source Technologies Are The Glue That Binds The Hybrid Cloud

    Hardware giant Lenovo is banking on a future where both public and private clouds are critical in driving IT innovation, and the glue binding those hybrid environments is mostly open source technologies.

    Dan Harmon, Lenovo’s group director of cloud and software-defined infrastructure, encouraged solution providers attending the NexGen Cloud Conference & Expo on Wednesday to explore opportunities to engage Lenovo as its products stock the next generation of cloud data centers.

    Both public and private clouds are growing rapidly and will dominate the market by 2020, Harmon told attendees of the conference produced by CRN parent The Channel Company.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • A Look At Async/Await JavaScript For Firefox 52

        While Chrome 55 has JavaScript async/await support, the Firefox support isn’t coming until the Firefox 52.0 stable release in March while currently it’s available in the latest Firefox Developer Edition and early alpha builds.

        Mozilla developer Dan Callahan wrote a post today on hacks.mozilla.org for the async/await support in Firefox and can be used if you are running the latest Firefox Developer Edition. Check it out if you’re interested in JavaScript async await support for more asynchronous programming for the web.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Cloudera Ratchets Up its Training for Top Open Source Data Solutions

      Recently, we’ve taken note of the many organizations offering free or low cost Hadoop and Big Data training. MIT and MapR are just a couple of the players making waves in this space. Recently, Cloudera announced a catalog of online, self-paced training classes covering the company’s entire portfolio of industry-standard Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark training courses. The courses, according to Cloudera, allow you to learn about the latest big data technologies “in a searchable environment anytime, anywhere.”

      Now, Cloudera has announced an updated lineup of training courses and performance-based certification exams for data analysts, database administrators, and developers. The expanded training offerings address the skills gap around many top open source technologies, such as Apache Impala (incubating), Apache Spark, Apache Kudu, Apache Kafka and Apache Hive.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Microsoft Office, Google Docs beware: This open-source startup is after your users

      “That was one of the reasons why we chose an open-source model. We want be open, want people to trust us, want to overcome that barrier they have in mind, those strong beliefs that there’s nothing but Microsoft Office, that nothing better could be created. We won’t change our mind about open source.”

      Bannov says he ultimately sees OnlyOffice becoming a firm that provides consulting, technical support and remote managed services to companies using its open-source products.

    • Collabora Online 2.0 Puts LibreOffice In the Cloud, Adds Collaborative Editing

      Today, December 7, 2016, Collabora Productivity, through Michael Meeks, is proud to inform Softpedia about the general availability of the long anticipated Collabora Online 2.0 office suite based on the LibreOffice, Nextcloud, and ownCloud technologies.

      After being in development for the past six months, Collabora Online 2.0 is finally here as the powerful cloud-based office suite that promises to protect users’ privacy and freedom of expression while editing various documents formats online. Collabora Online is mainly targeted at the enterprise world, hosting and cloud businesses.

  • CMS

    • Family Farming and Open Source Wireless Networking

      Open source methods are being covered more often on television and radio these days, as witnessed by this recent story posted Monday on YouTube by CNBC that mentions Drupal-based Farm OS and covers the story of Dorn Cox, an organic grain grower at Tuckaway Farm in Lee NH; the Director of Green Start, an organization working towards food and fuel security; and co-founder of Farm Hack, an open source community for resilient agriculture.

    • WordPress 4.7 Provides Improved Customization

      WordPress 4.7 was released on December 6, providing the tens of millions of internet users that rely on it, with a long list of new features.

      As always with every new major WordPress milestone, there is a new theme. For WordPress 4.7 the new theme is Twenty Seventeen, which provides users with video headers and features images.

  • Education

    • High School’s Help Desk Teaches Open Source IT Skills

      The following is an adapted excerpt from chapter six of The Open Schoolhouse: Building a Technology Program to Transform Learning and Empower Students, a new book written by Charlie Reisinger, Technology Director for Penn Manor School District in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In the book, Reisinger recounts more than 16 years of Linux and open source education success stories.

      Penn Manor schools saved over a million dollars by trading proprietary software for open source counterparts with its student laptop program. The budget is only part of the story. As Linux moved out of the server room and onto thousands of student laptops, a new learning community emerged.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • City of Rome: all new software should be open source

      The city of Rome, the fourth-largest city in the European Union, will increase its use of free and open source software, it decided in October. All new software solutions should be based on open source, and the city is to consider replacing existing proprietary solutions by open source alternatives.

    • Dutch govt should consider sharing all its software

      The Dutch government is to create a vision document on how all software developed for and by public administrations can be made available as open source. On Tuesday, the Lower House of the Dutch Parliament agreed that sharing software developed for or by the government has significant benefits, including information security, efficiency and openness.

  • Licensing/Legal

    • Open Compliance in the Enterprise: Why Have an Open Source Compliance Program?

      Traditionally, platforms and software stacks were implemented using proprietary software, and consisted of various software building blocks that originated as a result of internal development or via third-party software providers with negotiated licensing terms.

      The business environment was predictable and companies mitigated potential risks through license and contract negotiations with the software vendors. It was very easy to know who was the provider for every software component.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Programming/Development

    • Why You Should Have a Personal CI Server

      As a developer, I rely on a CI server to take care of the day-to-day routine of building, testing and deploying software…so much so that I often find myself committing code after every new class or group of methods as a “fire and forget” signal to the CI server to go ahead and run my tests, check my code for style violations, and push a new version to the dev server. When I have finished my train of thought, I can jump into the CI server and either be greeted with a green tick or have a handy (and more importantly authoritative) list of issues to be addressed.

      However, for all the convenience that a central CI server brings, there are times when this environment lets me down. Maybe my jobs are at the end of the queue, I can’t deploy to the dev servers during a certain time frame, or the configuration of the build just doesn’t quite do what I want it to do but I don’t have the authority to change it.

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • First Time Anywhere: 12 Biggest Tech/Media Platforms by Audience Reach, aka the 2 Billion Plus Club

    Time to publish another first, as the first ever source for a statistic related to tech, mobile, media and advertising. As I do my various workshops and seminars, my clients invariably love my numbers and the one they have most asked for, was a comparison of the different media and communication platforms. Because there wasn’t one. And it was a difficult task to try to do. Now I have done it. We have the 12 tech and media with largest reach.

  • Hardware

  • Health/Nutrition

    • No Decision On WTO Plain Packaging Dispute Before May 2017

      The much-awaited decision of the World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement Body on Australia’s law requiring that tobacco products be sold in plain packages, challenged by four countries, has been postponed and is now expected “not before May 2017.”

    • UNAIDS Board Considers Recommendations On Access To Medicines

      The Board of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) this week is considering a report calling for the 11 cosponsor agencies of the programme to follow the recommendations of the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines to improve policy coherence, and to produce reports on the use of intellectual property at country and regional levels, including the use of flexibilities.

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Wednesday
    • There’s a new DDoS army, and it could soon rival record-setting Mirai

      For almost three months, Internet-of-things botnets built by software called Mirai have been a driving force behind a new breed of attacks so powerful they threaten the Internet as we know it. Now, a new botnet is emerging that could soon magnify or even rival that threat.

      The as-yet unnamed botnet was first detected on November 23, the day before the US Thanksgiving holiday. For exactly 8.5 hours, it delivered a non-stop stream of junk traffic to undisclosed targets, according to this post published Friday by content delivery network CloudFlare. Every day for the next six days at roughly the same time, the same network pumped out an almost identical barrage, which is aimed at a small number of targets mostly on the US West Coast. More recently, the attacks have run for 24 hours at a time.

    • Open source Roundcube webmail can be attacked … by sending it an e-mail

      The developers of open source webmail package Roundcube want sysadmins to push in a patch, because a bug in versions prior to 1.2.3 let an attacker crash it remotely – by sending what looks like valid e-mail data.

      The authors overlooked sanitising the fifth argument (the _from parameter) in mail() – and that meant someone only needed to compose an e-mail with malicious info in that argument to attack Roundcube.

      [...]

      Roundcube posted a patch to GitHub at the end of November, and issued a version 1.2.3 here.

    • Open Source Flaws Found in Security Software

      Yet another industry survey has flagged open source software that according to one estimate accounts for half of the global code base as a growing security threat. Moreover, a review released by Flexera Software also found that the very security products designed to protect IT infrastructure are themselves riddled with vulnerabilities embedded in open source software.

    • Latest Android security update fixes Dirty COW, GPS vulnerabilities
    • News in brief: DirtyCOW patched for Android; naked lack of security; South Korea hacked
    • Millions exposed to malvertising that hid attack code in banner pixels

      Researchers from antivirus provider Eset said “Stegano,” as they’ve dubbed the campaign, dates back to 2014. Beginning in early October, its unusually stealthy operators scored a major coup by getting the ads displayed on a variety of unnamed reputable news sites, each with millions of daily visitors. Borrowing from the word steganography—the practice of concealing secret messages inside a larger document that dates back to at least 440 BC—Stegano hides parts of its malicious code in parameters controlling the transparency of pixels used to display banner ads. While the attack code alters the tone or color of the images, the changes are almost invisible to the untrained eye.

    • Backdoor accounts found in 80 Sony IP security camera models

      Many network security cameras made by Sony could be taken over by hackers and infected with botnet malware if their firmware is not updated to the latest version.

      Researchers from SEC Consult have found two backdoor accounts that exist in 80 models of professional Sony security cameras, mainly used by companies and government agencies given their high price.

      One set of hard-coded credentials is in the Web interface and allows a remote attacker to send requests that would enable the Telnet service on the camera, the SEC Consult researchers said in an advisory Tuesday.

    • I’m giving up on PGP

      After years of wrestling GnuPG with varying levels of enthusiasm, I came to the conclusion that it’s just not worth it, and I’m giving up. At least on the concept of long term PGP keys.

      This is not about the gpg tool itself, or about tools at all. Many already wrote about that. It’s about the long term PGP key model—be it secured by Web of Trust, fingerprints or Trust on First Use—and how it failed me.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Email cache proves Turkish oil minister’s links to Isis oil trade, WikiLeaks claims

      WikiLeaks has released a cache of thousands of personal emails allegedly from the account of senior Turkish government minister Berat Albayrak, son-in-law of the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which it says shows the extent of links between Mr Albayrak and a company implicated in deals with Isis-controlled oil fields.

      The 60,000 strong searchable cache, released on Monday, spans the time period between April 2000 – September 23 2016, and shows Mr Albayrak had intimate knowledge of staffing and salary issues at Powertrans, a company which was controversially given a monopoly on the road and rail transportation of oil into the country from Iraqi Kurdistan.

      Turkish media reported in 2014 and 2015 that Powertrans has been accused of mixing in oil produced by Isis in neighbouring Syria and adding it to local shipments which eventually reached Turkey, although the charges have not been substantiated by any solid evidence.

    • Wikileaks: Turkish Energy Minister Indirectly Involved In ISIS Oil Trade

      WikiLeaks published on Monday a searchable archive of nearly 58,000 emails from the private email account of Berat Albayrak – Turkey’s incumbent energy minister and son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – revealing the influence Albayrak has in Turkey and his correspondence regarding Powertrans, a company implicated in oil imports from ISIS-controlled oil fields.

      The emails encompass 16 years between April 2000 and September 23, 2016. A search by the ‘Powertrans’ keyword in the published WikiLeaks emails returns 32 results, including emails sent to Albayrak regarding personnel and salary issues at Powertrans.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Exclusive: ‘He will fight to the last breath’: Julian Assange’s mother speaks out six years after his arrest

      Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s mother Christine has told SBS News she feels “angry” but she’s still fighting six years after her son was arrested in relation to sexual assault allegations.

      Assange handed himself in to police in London on December 2010 and was released on bail.

      However, in June 2012 he broke his bail and sought asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London over fears he would be extradited to the US to face possible espionage charges.

      Since then police have kept the embassy surrounded, preventing him from leaving to Ecuador.

    • Pressure Builds for UK and Sweden to Release WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange

      WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been in confinement for over 2,100 days without being charged with a crime. Since 2012, Assange has been under asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London after he faced extradition to Sweden for questioning related to sexual offenses against two women, which Assange has consistently denied. Assange feared that if extradited to Sweden, he would subsequently be extradited to the United States, where he would likely face criminal charges for his work at WikiLeaks.

      Since its founding in 2006, WikiLeaks has published millions of documents exposing corruption in governments around the world, most notably the United States. WikiLeaks has shown light on the mass surveillance conducted by the NSA, torture in Guantanamo Bay, civilian deaths at the hands of the U.S. military, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) rigging the primaries for Hillary Clinton, and many other revelations. This has, in turn, provided WikiLeaks and Assange a despised reputation among the United States government officials implicated in their releases.

      The New York Times and Washington Post, who previously coordinated with WikiLeaks to publish documents, assisted in propagating a narrative that Assange was a Russian ally due to the damage resulting from the leaks of DNC and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s emails. Assange and his allies affirm that the abrasive attitude toward WikiLeaks from U.S. officials have been a primary cause of Assange’s prolonged detention by the U.K. and Sweden.

    • On Assange, Following the Rules or Flouting Them?

      It should not have been terribly surprising to Sweden or the United Kingdom that the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that the various forms of confinement suffered by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange violate his human rights. The Working Group has many times warned that it is unlawful to force someone to choose between liberty and a fundamental right, such as asylum, which Assange now enjoys only so long as he stays inside the walls of the Ecuadorean embassy.

      What is news are the deplorable rhetorical parries from the UK and Swedish governments, who both stated not just disagreement, but that the Working Group opinion would have absolutely no effect on their actions. This is not what one expects from democratic governments who usually support the UN mechanisms and international law.

    • Assange’s mother pleads for his release

      The mother of Julian Assange has pleaded with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to secure her son’s release, six years to the day after he was arrested.

      Christine Assange made phone calls to the PM’s and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s offices on Wednesday to ask for their help in releasing the WikiLeaks founder from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, six years after he was arrested in the UK on December 7, 2010.

      ‘Today he has been detained six years without charge,’ Ms Assange told AAP on Wednesday. ‘It’s time for the Australian government to stand up for my son’s human and legal rights.’

    • Julian Assange defies Swedish prosecutors by releasing rape statement

      Julian Assange has thumbed his nose at Swedish investigators, who he says have robbed him of his freedom for six years, by releasing the answers he gave to them under questioning in Ecuador’s London embassy last month.

      The decision to issue the statement, which contains for the first time a detailed account by the WikiLeaks founder of his encounter with a woman in August 2010 who made rape allegations against him, marks a fresh twist in a case in which Assange claims an early leak of information from the Swedish police has shaped opinion.

    • Julian Assange’s Defence Statement

      Julian Assange has published his statement given to the Swedish prosecutor. I give it in full below. I do implore you to read it. This is the first time his defence has been made public, although the media have been delighted to report the leaked allegations against him in detail.
      His defence will not be given in the same detail in the media.

      It is worth noting that under Swedish law the identity of both the accuser and the accused ought to be protected, but that did not prevent Swedish police and prosecutors leaking details to a complicit media, or the women concerned selling their story to the tabloids.

      You really do owe it to yourself, to justice and to personal honesty to read Julian’s side of the story.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s choice to lead the EPA, is a literal stenographer for the oil and gas industry

      Sometimes we say that so and so is a “mouthpiece” of some special interest, meaning that they’re in cahoots, that they express their views. Or maybe we say someone’s a “puppet” of industry. Most of the time these are metaphors.

      But sometimes they’re literal. Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s pick to head the EPA, is a mouthpiece and a puppet of the fossil-fuel industry. He’s a stenographer.

      How do we know this? We know this because in 2014 Pruitt sent a letter to that same EPA in his capacity as attorney general of Oklahoma. The letter argued that the agency was dramatically overstating how much pollution new gas wells in his state were causing.

    • Climate Deniers’ Top 3 Tactics

      Climate deniers don’t just want to deny global warming and its danger. They want you to deny it too.

      But man-made climate change is real, the danger is extreme, so they have to use guile to persuade you otherwise. There are three tried-and-false tactics they use often, and to great effect. Let’s take a close look at these misdirection methods, so you can arm yourself for defense against the dark arts.

    • Met Police is still running Windows XP on 19,000 PCs [Ed: I wrote about this before [1, 2, 3]. iophk says, “still running Microsoft at all is a problem”]

      THE METROPOLITAN POLICE SERVICE (MPS) is still running Microsoft’s now-defunct Windows XP operating system on 19,000 PCs.

      This figure, confirmed to the INQUIRER’s sister site V3, marks a decrease of 7,500 from the 27,000 MPS PCs that were running Windows XP in August.

      This means a total of 15,500 machines have been upgraded from XP, although only to Windows 8.1, rather than Microsoft’s newer Windows 10 platform.

    • Trump taps Oklahoma attorney general to lead EPA

      President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate Scott Pruitt, the Republican attorney general of Oklahoma and a frequent legal adversary to President Obama, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a transition official told The Hill.

      If confirmed by the Senate to oversee the 15,000-employee agency, Pruitt would take the lead on dismantling the EPA regulations that Trump targeted throughout his campaign as job killers that restrict economic growth.

      Reuters first reported the news Tuesday.

  • Finance

    • Boeing Sweats Under Trump Spotlight as SoftBank Feels Warmth

      First came Ford and Carrier. Now Boeing and SoftBank are experiencing the power of Donald Trump’s Twitter feed.

      The president-elect jumped into corporate affairs again Tuesday, tweeting first to criticize one company and then to hail another. He began at 8:52 a.m. New York time by calling out Boeing Co. over costs to develop new Air Force One jets. Just over five hours later he celebrated a $50 billion investment in the U.S. by Japanese telecommunications firm SoftBank Group Corp.

      The tweets, coming after Trump last week announced a deal with United Technologies Corp. to cancel plans to close a U.S. factory, dominated news and moved markets even as details in both cases remained sketchy and the impacts unclear. Trump again showed a willingness to use his bully pulpit to criticize or congratulate companies over actions affecting American workers and government spending.

    • British workers living in poverty ‘at a record high’

      The number of workers living in poverty has reached a record high as the UK’s housing crisis fuels growing insecurity, a think tank has warned.

      Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) showed that 3.8 million workers, or one in eight, live in poverty.

      Low wages are regularly cited as the cause of in-work poverty, but the rising cost of rented housing is also pushing working people into extreme financial difficulty. A total of 7.4 million people, including 2.6 million children, are living in poverty despite being in working households, the report claims.

    • Sports Direct hits out at ‘extreme campaign’ as profits fall 25%

      Sports Direct’s chairman has accused the media, unions and politicians of a damaging “campaign” against the company amid its working practices and governance crisis.

    • The big money behind Trump’s tech deal is from Saudi Arabia

      Donald Trump has taken credit for a Japanese tech conglomerate’s plan to invest $50 billion in America.

      True, Masayoshi Son, the billionaire founder and CEO of SoftBank (SFTBF), pledged Tuesday to invest the huge sum in U.S. startups. But that’s only part of the story.

      In reality, a big chunk of the cash is likely to come from the Saudi government.

      In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Son said the source of the investment would be a $100 billion fund SoftBank launched in October with Saudi Arabia.

    • Opting Out of Uber’s Forced Arbitration (The Clock is Ticking)

      You have until December 21st. That’s it. But you can opt out.

      Here’s the deal: Uber changed its terms of service to force people into arbitrations, taking away consumers’ rights to sue the ride sharing company if something goes wrong. Like plow into another car because the driver was looking at his phone to see where his next right might come from.

      That kind of thing.

    • Excellent, deep series on Uber’s Ponzi-scheme economics

      For the past week, Naked Capitalism has run a series of articles by transportation industry expert Hubert Horan on the economic shenanigans of Uber, which cooks the numbers it shows investors, drivers and the press to make it seem like something other than a black box that uses arrogance and lawlessness to make a bet on establishing a monopoly on transport in the world’s major cities.

      Horan started with four articles on Uber’s economics: Understanding Uber’s Bleak Operating Economics; Understanding Uber’s Uncompetitive Costs; Understanding False Claims About Uber’s Innovation and Competitive Advantages and Understanding That Unregulated Monopoly Was Always Uber’s Central Objective — today, he finishes (?) up with a fascinating Q&A with the commentators who’ve followed the series.

    • How to Expose Trump’s Dastardly Bait-and-Switch

      Trump is not an economic populist, he’s just playing one on TV.

      [...]

      Trump’s opening speech of his “thank you tour” in Ohio laid out the bait. While putting forth his “action plan to make America great,” Trump dished out nationalist and populist themes with a characteristic mix of racist signaling. Trump promised to put America first: “There is no global anthem. No global currency. No certificate of global citizenship. We pledge allegiance to one flag and that flag is the American flag. From now on it is going to be: America First,” Trump said. “Never anyone again will any other interests come before the interest of the American people. It is not going to happen again.”

      Trump echoed Bernie Sanders with his focus on the “forgotten” American worker. Trump felt their pain, and indicted trade deficits and flight of manufacturing jobs. He promised good jobs. He will renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and take on China. He bragged about the Carrier deal, and pledged a 35 percent tariff on companies that offshore jobs and try to ship products back into the United States.

      Like Sanders, Trump proposed a major plan to rebuild America, including “our inner cities.” His plan will have “two simple rules”: “Buy America” and “Hire America,” phrases that too many Democrats would choke on.

      The conservative core of his program—corporate tax cuts, deregulation, reviving coal and oil, repealing Obamacare—is wrapped in this populist gauze.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Donald Trump just insulted a union leader on Twitter. Then the phone started to ring.

      Jones, a union leader in Indianapolis, represents the Carrier workers whose jobs Donald Trump has pledged to save. He said the sudden attention from the country’s next leader didn’t feel real.

      “My first thought was, ‘Well, that’s not very nice,’ ” he told The Washington Post on Wednesday night. “Then, ‘Well, I might not sleep much tonight.’ ”

      Jones, president of the United Steelworkers Local 1999, told The Post on Tuesday that he believed Trump had lied to the Carrier workers last week when he visited the Indianapolis plant. On a makeshift stage in a conference room, Trump had applauded United Technologies, Carrier’s parent company, for cutting a deal with him and agreeing to keep 1,100 jobs that were slated to move to Mexico in America’s heartland.

      Jones said Trump got that figure wrong.

    • Michigan election officials refuse to count ballots from black counties

      In Michigan, where Donald Trump won by just 10,704 votes, election officials are refusing to recount ballots in counties Hillary Clinton won handily.

    • U.S. judge reverses order requiring vote recount in Michigan

      A federal judge in Michigan on Wednesday revoked his order requiring a recount of the state’s presidential vote sought by Jill Stein, siding with a state appeals court that found the Green Party candidate had no grounds to mount the challenge.

      U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith’s ruling has the effect of halting the recount in Michigan, at least for now, following conflicting rulings a day earlier by federal and state appeals courts.

      The Michigan Court of Appeals on Tuesday ordered the recount stopped, while the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Goldsmith’s earlier decision and said the process should proceed. The dueling rulings had both sides claiming victory but left the future of Stein’s bid unclear.

      Goldsmith, in deferring to the Michigan appeals court, said Stein had not presented valid reasons for him to override that court’s decision, which found that she was not an “aggrieved” candidate with standing to demand a recount.

      The Stein campaign said in a statement following Goldsmith’s ruling that it had appealed again, to the Michigan Supreme Court, and sought to disqualify two justices there because they had been mentioned by Republican President-elect Donald Trump as potential nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court.

    • US judge reverses order requiring vote recount in Michigan

      A federal judge in Michigan on Wednesday revoked his order requiring a recount of the state’s presidential vote sought by Jill Stein, siding with a state appeals court that found the Green Party candidate had no grounds to mount the challenge.

      US District Judge Mark Goldsmith’s ruling has the effect of halting the recount in Michigan, at least for now, following conflicting rulings a day earlier by federal and state appeals courts.

      The Michigan Court of Appeals on Tuesday ordered the recount stopped, while the US 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Goldsmith’s earlier decision and said the process should proceed. The dueling rulings had both sides claiming victory but left the future of Stein’s bid unclear.

    • As it spreads online and off, Pizzagate gets weirder and more dangerous

      This past Sunday, a man fired a rifle into Comet Ping Pong, the Washington, DC pizza place at the center of an internet conspiracy theory dubbed Pizzagate that claims, in part, that the restaurant is a haven for a child abuse ring. The gunman surrendered to police after he realized there were no children being illegally harbored in the restaurant. What should have been an end to one of the internet’s strangest conspiracy theories appears to be just another moment in its convoluted timeline.

      This week, conspiracy theorists have named other pizza parlors as willing participants in the cover-up. DNA Info reports that New York pizzeria Roberta’s in Brooklyn received a threatening phone call last week after the restaurant was linked to Pizzagate.

    • Colorado electors sue state in effort to block Trump

      Two Democratic electors from Colorado filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday, challenging a state law that requires they vote for the winner of the state’s popular vote, the Denver Post reports.

      Polly Baca and Robert Nemanich had pledged to support Democrat Hillary Clinton, the winner of Colorado’s nine electoral votes.

      But now they are joining so-called “Moral Electors” in other states and say they’ll shift their Democratic votes to a consensus Republican pick — if one emerges.

      The “Moral Electors” want to persuade Republican electors in other states to vote for a third-party candidate, the Post reports, in an attempt to keep Donald Trump from receiving 270 electoral votes.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Women in Lebanon protest law allowing rapists to marry their victims to escape punishment

      Women in Lebanon are protesting for the removal of a law that allows rapists to escape punishment for their crimes as long as they marry the survivor.

      The outdated statute from the 1940s currently says that rape is punishable by up to seven years in prison. The penalty for raping a minor or someone with mental or physical disabilities is higher – but Article 522 of the law creates a loophole which says that criminal prosecution is suspended if the two people involved get married.

      The law is up for debate on Wednesday after it was raised by a member of parliament. Lebanon’s diverse Christian and Muslim political representatives are currently energised by the election of a president after a more than two-year-long paralysis which meant legislation could not be passed – and activists are optimistic something can be done.

    • Five Afghan teenagers are arrested after a boy is gang-raped at knifepoint for more than an hour in a forest in Sweden

      Five Afghan teenagers have been arrested after a boy was gang-raped at knifepoint in a forest in Sweden, it has emerged.

      The victim, who is under 15, was filmed during the attack, which happened in woodland in Uppsala, south east Sweden.

      He was beaten and dragged out to the forest at knifepoint before being subjected to an ordeal lasting more than an hour, prosecutors say.

    • Obama Leaves Trump a Mixed Legacy on Whistle-Blowers

      Back in 2008, Senator Barack Obama promised that, if elected, he would run the most transparent Administration in history and would champion the cause of whistle-blowers. “Such acts of courage and patriotism . . . should be encouraged rather than stifled,” Obama said of whistle-blowers during his campaign.

      Eight years later, these words ring hollow to admirers of dissenters such as Edward Snowden and Thomas Drake, two of eight national-security “leakers” who have been charged with violating the 1917 Espionage Act during Obama’s Presidency. His Justice Department has prosecuted more such cases against whistle-blowers than all previous Administrations combined, setting a precedent that some fear Donald Trump will invoke—and drastically build upon—to further muzzle dissent.

    • ‘The Moms’ co-host Denise Albert, who is battling cancer, says she felt ‘violated’ during TSA search

      A breast-cancer patient said she felt violated and humiliated in a public TSA search at Los Angeles International Airport Sunday after two security agents put her through what she called an aggressive pat down.

      Denise Albert, a frequent guest on the PIX11 Morning News and co-host of “The Moms,” was traveling through LAX security when two TSA agents pulled her aside for a manual search because she was trying to bring a necessary medical cream with her on her flight, Albert said.

      “I always let them know I have a medical port and that I am wearing a wig,” says Albert.

    • The Person Who Deciphered the Order to Shoot at Kent State

      Stuart Allen died on November 22, 2016. I learned of his death by way of an email from Laurel Krause, whose sister Allison was gunned down by the National Guard on May 4, 1970, just after the noon hour during a demonstration against the U.S. incursion into Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

      Stuart Allen would not like to be called a hero, although he certainly was one. Stuart was both an audio and video expert, with degrees in both fields and worked out of his lab and business in New Jersey that offers expert analyses of that kind of data. Stuart often worked for law enforcement, including the Justice Department and the FBI.

      In 2010, both Stuart and another forensic audio expert, Tom Owen, provided information at the request of the Cleveland Plain Dealer (“New analysis of 40-year old recording of Kent State shootings reveals that Ohio Guard was given an order to prepare to fire,” May 9, 2010) about a new analysis of the famous Strubbe tape, a recording of the events that led up to the death of four students and the wounding of nine others during a demonstration against the U.S. incursion into Cambodia.

      The tape that Stuart analyzed, and the results with which Tom Owen concurred, yielded dramatic new information. Using state-of-the-art forensic audio tools, one of which was developed by the Soviet KGB prior to the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Stuart found that a sequence of orders was given to the National Guardsmen as they reached the top of Blanket Hill on the campus of Kent State University, turned in unison, and fired 67 times at unarmed student demonstrators below the hill.

    • How a Muslim Group Shut Down Christmas Celebrations in Bandung

      A Christmas celebration led by preacher Stephen Tong at Sabuga Building in Bandung, West Java, on Tuesday (06/12) was forced to end after a Muslim hardliner group disrupted services.

      The group, identifying as Defenders of Ahlus Sunnah (PAS), forced organizers to end the event and claiming the religious service should be held in a church, not a public building.

    • Arrest of leading Egyptian feminist Azza Soliman sparks anger

      Human rights activists in Egypt have reacted angrily to the arrest of prominent women’s rights advocate Azza Soliman, saying it marked a “chilling escalation” of pressure on civil society organisations.

      Soliman, the founder of the Centre for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance (CEWLA), is one of a number of activists, lawyers and journalists to have been prevented from leaving Egypt in the past month.

      The rights lawyer and leading feminist said last week that she had been turned back on 19 November at Cairo airport. Soon after, Soliman discovered that her personal assets and those of her group had been frozen. On Wednesday, her foundation and a security source said she had been detained by police.

    • Tensions are rising, there are cracks in the façade, and change is in the air. When and how will things snap?

      Tensions between the industrial-age establishment and the networked people-at-large have been rising for years, if not for two decades. Politicians and elites striving to paint themselves on moral high horses are seen as increasingly isolated from the real world, enriching themselves at the expense of everybody else – not just expense in a monetary sense, but even more so in a liberty sense. With a perceived establishment increasingly insisting on their worldview, using an increasing amount of political violence and in contrast with people at large, major changes are inevitably in the cards.

      There are many signs that the political establishment is losing touch with reality – basically, losing touch with everything that happened since the Internet. The political structures they’re a part of were built to solve the problems of a different era, and those organizations are institutionally incapable of realizing that today’s conflicts are completely different from those that defined the industrial age. Therefore, politicians do two things – they keep hammering home messages that come across as increasingly irrelevant, while at the same time strengthening their own reality bubble where they are denying that the world is changing, has already changed, around them.

      [...]

      The UK is preparing for ten years in prison for teenagers who share music and movies directly, as people have always done but in violation of the copyright distribution monopoly, on the basis that they theoretically may have caused somebody to not earn as much money as they feel they should have. This is a prime example of a “let them eat cake” moment: in a referendum, would such a draconian measure even get a single percentage point of support?

      [...]

      When I can’t walk home safely, I just get angry when the taxation money I’ve worked hard for is being spent on things like gender pronoun awareness campaigns and parental leave bonuses within the administration instead of on fixing basic security and foundational liberty in the streets. The elites are now so far isolated from the common people, they’re not even aware that they’re working at the utterly wrong level of the Maslow Pyramid of Human Needs: politicians and establishment are operating at level five (self-emancipation) with society at large at level two (basic safety concerns).

    • Federal judge kills recount effort in Michigan

      A federal judge has stopped the hand recount of nearly 5 million ballots in Michigan, a decision that seems to secure Donald Trump’s narrow victory in the traditionally blue state.

      U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith, who effectively ordered the recount to begin Monday, sided with a state appeals court Wednesday in halting the effort, ABC News reported.

      On Tuesday, a Michigan appeals court ruled 3-0 that Green Party candidate Jill Stein should not have been allowed to demand a recount because she is not an “aggrieved candidate.” Goldsmith, after hearing arguments from the state Republican Party and GOP attorney general, agreed.

      “Because there is no basis for this court to ignore the Michigan court’s ruling and make an independent judgment regarding what the Michigan Legislature intended by the term ‘aggrieved,’ plaintiffs have not shown an entitlement to a recount,” Goldsmith said.

      The Stein campaign’s lead lawyers in Michigan said they were “deeply disappointed” with the ruling.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Court: Usenet Provider is Not Liable for Piracy

        After several years, the appeals court has reached a final decision in the case between anti-piracy group BREIN and Usenet provider NSE. The court ruled that the Usenet provider is not liable for the copyright infringements of its users. However, it also requires the service in question to offer a fast and “effective” takedown procedure.

      • YouTube’s $1bn royalties are not enough, says music industry

        YouTube has said it has paid the music industry $1bn (£794m) in royalties this year – but record companies have responded by claiming it is not enough.

        The spat began on Tuesday, when YouTube’s chief business officer Robert Kyncl posted a blog highlighting the site’s contribution to the industry.

        He said YouTube had distributed $1bn in advertising royalties alone, arguing that “free” streaming was as important as subscription sites like Spotify.

        But record labels were not impressed.

      • IFPI Sneers at YouTube’s $1 Billion Music Industry Revenue Payout

        Google has just announced that during the past 12 months, YouTube paid out $1 billion to the music industry from advertising alone. However, the IFPI remains unimpressed, accusing the platform of taking advantage of artists and producers. YouTube exploits loopholes in the DMCA, the industry group argues, while calling for legislative change to address the “value gap.”

      • Proposed EU Commission Copyright Reform Detrimental To Authors, CEIPI Says

        The opinion explains that recent empirical evidence from national implementation of publishers’ neighbouring rights confirmed a negative impact on small publishers. However, news aggregators might have a positive effect on online news sites, they said.

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